Ancient Narrative 1. (2000-2001)

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Table of contents List of illustrations

IX

Editors’ notes

XI

Articles B RACHT B RANHAM Representing Time in Ancient Fiction

1

J AAP -J AN F LINTERMAN ‘ … largely fictions …’: Aelius Aristides on Plato’s dialogues

32

K ONSTANTIN D OULAMIS Rhetoric and Irony in Chariton: a case-study from Callirhoe

55

K ATHARINE H AYNES Power of the Prude: Configurations of the Feminine in the Greek Novel

73

S AUNDRA S CHWARTZ Clitophon the Moichos: Achilles Tatius and the Trial Scene in the Greek Novel

93

M ARGARET E DSALL Religious Narratives and Religious Themes in the Novels of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus

114

P ATRIZIA L IVIABELLA F URIANI Il corpo nel romanzo di Achille Tazio

134

E DMUND P. C UEVA Longus in the Mir Istkusstva: Léon Bakst, Maurice Ravel and Marc Chagall

152

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

M ARTIN M. W INKLER The Cinematic Nature of the Opening Scene of Heliodoros’ Aithiopika

161

P AULA J AMES Keeping Apuleius In The Picture. A dialogue between Buñuel’s Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Metamorphoses of Apuleius 185 A.P. B ITEL Quis ille Asinus aureus? The Metamorphoses of Apuleius’ Title

208

S.J. H ARRISON Apuleius, Aelius Aristides and Religious Autobiography

245

W ERNER R IESS Between Fiction and Reality: Robbers in Apuleius’ Golden Ass

260

R OGER B ECK History into fiction: the metamorphoses of the Mithras myths

283

C ORINNE J OUANNO La réception du Roman d’Alexandre à Byzance

301

R OBERT H.F. C ARVER ‘True Histories’ and ‘Old Wives’ Tales’: Renaissance Humanism and the ‘Rise of the Novel’

322

H UGH M C E LROY The Reception and Use of Petronius: Petronian Pseudepigraphy and Imitation

350

W OUT VAN B EKKUM A Short Note on Ancient Jewish Narrative

379

Reviews S. F RANGOULIDIS , Roles and Performances in Apuleius' Metamorphoses. Reviewed by Regine May, Manchester.

382

TABLE OF CONTENTS

VII

Abstracts

389

Indices

399

Index locorum

399

General index

400

List of illustrations Fig. 1 The banquet of Mithras and Sol: reverse of a relief from Fiano Romano (V641, Musée du Louvre; photo: Chuzeville)

286

Fig. 2 Scenes from the Mithras myth: fragment of a relief from Virunum (V1430, Landesmuseum für Kärnten, Klagenfurt; photo: U.P. Schwarz) 287 Fig. 3 Scenes from the Mithras myth: altar from Poetovio (V. 1584, Ptuj, Mithraeum III; photo: Pokrajinski Muzej, Ptuj)

288

Fig. 4. Mainz vessel, scene A: ‘the archery of the Father’ (photo: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Rheinland-Pfalz)

289

Fig. 5. Mainz vessel, scene B: ‘the procession of the Sun-Runner’ (photo: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Rheinland-Pfalz)

290

Editors’ notes It is appropriate that the appearance of this first printed volume of Ancient Narrative (AN) should be celebrated with a combined editors’ preface by the four members of the editorial board. Gareth Schmeling, Stephen Harrison and I open with a few statements, and Heinz Hofmann rounds off with a more extensive Geleitwort. His prefatory essay expands on the developments which have led up to the founding of this journal, and introduces the reader to the contents of this volume; moreover, being written in German, it illustrates that AN is not exclusively English, but aspires to be truly international. We welcome contributions in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. We express our gratitude to those authors who pioneered contributions to the first electronic issues of AN, and whose essays now appear in print. We also thank those colleagues who graciously accepted our invitation to join the advisory board, and thus showed both their confidence in this new undertaking and their willingness to give advice. A special word of thanks goes to Jean Alvares, who has been actively involved from the start, and who has lent us invaluable assistance in various matters, for instance in making the Petronian Society Newsletter and its bibliographical archives available on the Website of AN. The foundation of AN would not have been possible without the steady support of Alex Klugkist, the University Librarian of the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, member of the steering committee. His advice at various stages can hardly be over-estimated. .... All this support has been so welcome, “ … tantisque datur spes maxima coeptis”.1 Maaike Zimmerman A group of scholars is joining together to begin a new journal. These are perhaps inauspicious times to inaugurate such a venture, but the need for such action is great. The impetus to start a new journal begins with need, the ————— 1

“ …. and the highest hope is allowed for so great an undertaking”: Valerius Maximus 1, 242.

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need to respond to the growing interest in ancient narrative. The editors of Ancient Narrative do not face anything like the problems which confronted Bruno Snell when he started Antike und Abendland in Hamburg in December 1944: we do not have a shortage of ink and paper, no one is dropping bombs on us, and we have electricity and water (see Snell’s Vorwort to volume 1 of A&A). We assure the readers of Ancient Narrative, however, that we do have the determination to make excellence the number one criterion of this journal, and to show that even in an age of great intolerance, the secular humanism of Classics is a civilizing force. Gareth Schmeling Ancient Narrative (AN) offers not only a niche journal for all those interested in Greco-Roman prose fiction and associated literary traditions, but also a ‘one-stop shop’ for contacts, information and bibliography in this important, exciting and still growing academic area. In these functions it both continues and expands the honourable traditions of the Groningen Colloquia on the Novel and of the Petronian Society Newsletter (the latter of which retains its own sector of the AN website). With the website as the journal’s key aspect and the expertise of Roelf Barkhuis, the electronic form in particular will make AN rapidly and easily available to the twenty-first century community it serves worldwide. Stephen Harrison

Geleitwort Seit ihrem Start im April 1986 haben sich die Tagungen der “Groningen Colloquia on the Novel” zu einem jour fixe entwickelt, der zahlreiche über den antiken Roman und seine Wirkungsgeschichte arbeitende Forscherinnen und Forscher regelmäßig nach Groningen geführt hat, wo sie ihre Ergebnisse in Referaten vorstellen oder sich in den Diskussionen und Gesprächen am Rande der Colloquia über den neuesten Stand und die Entwicklungen auf dem Gebiet des antiken Romans informieren konnten. Die seit 1988 im Verlag von Egbert Forsten in Groningen regelmäßig erscheinende Reihe der Groningen Colloquia on the Novel, deren regenbogenschillernde Farbenvielfalt in jeder wissenschaftlichen Bibliothek sofort ins Auge sprang, vereinigte einen großen Teil der auf jenen Tagungen gehaltenen Vorträge und entwickelte sich zu einem unverzichtbaren

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Vademecum für die Forschung zum antiken Roman, die jeder, der über den antiken Roman arbeitete, zur Kenntnis nehmen mußte, wollte er oder sie sich nicht dem Vorwurf mangelnder Kenntnis des neuesten Forschungsstandes aussetzen. Ich freute mich, daß auch nach meinem Wechsel an die Universität Tübingen im Jahre 1993 die Colloquia, wenn auch in verändertem Rhythmus – nur einmal jährlich, dafür aber über zwei Tage sich erstreckend – fortgesetzt wurden und auch weitere Bände in der Reihe der Groningen Colloquia on the Novel erscheinen konnten, bei denen mir Maaike Zimmerman (ab Band VII, 1996) als Mitherausgeberin zur Seite getreten ist. Die Colloquia und die Publikation der Bände waren auch weiterhin eng mit der Arbeit der Groninger Apuleiusgruppe verbunden: Während die Gruppe seit 1993 mit dem Kommentar zu Amor und Psyche (Met. 4, 28 – 6, 24) beschäftigt war, erschienen 1995 der Kommentar zu Buch IX, der von Mitgliedern der Gruppe insgesamt verfaßt wurde,2 und zwei weitere Kommentare, die als Dissertationen von mir betreut worden waren und nun in erweiterter Fassung in die Reihe der Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius aufgenommen wurden: im Jahre 2000 der Kommentar zu Buch X von Maaike Zimmerman3 und 2001 der zu Buch II von Danielle van MalMaeder.4 Für 2003 ist das Erscheinen des zweibändigen Kommentars zu Amor und Psyche vorgesehen5 – aus der Arbeit der Gruppe berichtet inzwischen ein höchst informativer Begleitband mit 12 Beiträgen zu einigen der zahlreichen Probleme dieser vieldiskutierten Erzählung6 –, so daß nur noch ein neuer Kommentar zu Buch I fehlt, den Wytse Keulen, ein ————— 2

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Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius: Apuleius Madaurensis, Metamorphoses, Book IX. Text, Introduction and Commentary, by B.L. Hijmans Jr., R.Th. van der Paardt, V. Schmidt, B. Wesseling, M. Zimmerman, Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1995, 436 S. Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius: Apuleius Madaurensis, Metamorphoses, Book X. Text, Introduction and Commentary, by M. Zimmerman, Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 2000, 487 S. Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius: Apuleius Madaurensis, Metamorphoses, Livre II. Texte, Introduction et Commentaire, par D. van Mal-Maeder, Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 2001, 488 S. Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius: Apuleius Madaurensis, Metamorphoses, Book IV 28 – VI, 24: Cupid and Psyche. Text, Introduction and Commentary, by M. Zimmerman, S. Panayotakis, V. Hunink, W.H. Keulen, S.J. Harrison, Th.D. McCreight, B. Wesseling, D. van Mal-Maeder, Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 2003 (im Druck). Aspects of Apuleius’ Golden Ass. Volume II: Cupid and Psyche. A Collection of original papers ed. by M. Zimmerman, V. Hunink, Th.D. McCreight, D. van Mal-Maeder, S. Panayotakis, V. Schmidt, B. Wesseling, Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1998, IX & 236 S.

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ehemaliger Groninger Student von mir und seit 1998 ebenfalls Mitglied der Apuleiusgruppe, im Januar 2003 als Dissertation vorlegen wird und der dann ebenfalls innerhalb der Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius veröffentlicht werden soll. Schließlich beabsichtigt Rudi van der Paardt seinen Kommentar zu Buch III, den er 1971 als Groninger Dissertation bei Prof. R.E.H. Westendorp Boerma eingereicht hatte,7 grundlegend neu zu bearbeiten, so daß in absehbarer Zeit die ersten zehn Bücher von Apuleius’ Metamorphosen in neuer Kommentierung aus Groningen vorliegen werden.8 Damit war auch das Ziel der Tagungen der “Groningen Colloquia on the Novel” erreicht, deren zwanzigste und letzte im Mai 1997 stattfand. Danach bereitete sich das Groninger Team unter der Leitung von Maaike Zimmerman auf die Organisation von ICAN 2000 vor, des dritten “International Congress on the Ancient Novel”, der nach seinen Vorgängern in Bangor/Wales 1976 und Dartmouth College (Hanover/NH) 1989 die Reihe der “Groningen Colloquia on the Novel” zu einem fulminanten Höhepunkt brachte und dessen Acta demnächst bei Brill in Leiden erscheinen werden.9 Leider hat sich der Verleger Egbert Forsten wegen mangelnder Unterstützung durch Druckkostenzuschüsse von seiten der Rijksuniversiteit Groningen und anderer Instanzen nicht mehr imstande gesehen, die Reihe der Groningen Colloquia on the Novel nach Band IX (1998) fortzusetzen, so daß das spektral erklingende Farbenspiel der Bände jäh abgebrochen wurde, obwohl schon wieder einige neue Manuskripte zum Druck angenommen waren, und auch die Pläne für eine Überführung der Reihe in ein Jahrbuch zum antiken Roman ließen sich in seinem Verlag nicht realisieren. Um so mehr besteht Anlaß zu Freude und Dankbarkeit, daß die Groninger Apuleiusgruppe eine Website “Ancient Narrative” einrichten konnte, auf der die neusten Informationen zu diesem Forschungsbereich zu finden sind und in die auch der Newsletter der Petronian Society, der bisher von Gareth ————— 7

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L. Apuleius Madaurensis, The Metamorphoses. A Commentary on Book III with Text & Introduction, by R.Th. van der Paardt (Diss. Groningen), Amsterdam: A.M. Hakkert, 1971, XVI & 218 S. Für Buch XI kann vorerst noch auf den Kommentar von G. Gwyn Griffiths verwiesen werden: Apuleius of Madauros, The Isis-Book (Metamorphoses, Book XI), ed. with an Introduction, Translation and Commentary, by J. Gwyn Griffiths, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975, XVIII & 440 S. (EPRO, 39). S. Panayotakis, M. Zimmerman, W.H. Keulen, eds., The Ancient Novel and Beyond, Leiden: E.J. Brill 2002.

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Schmeling (State University of Florida at Gainesville) im Druck herausgegeben wurde, integriert ist. In Verbindung damit ließen sich auch die Pläne für eine Internet-Zeitschrift Ancient Narrative und mit Hilfe von Roelf Barkhuis auch ihre Publikation in gedruckter Form verwirklichen, deren Ergebnis nun als “Ancient Narrative vol. I, Groningen 2002” vorliegt, damit auch die weniger versierten Internet-Surfer unter den Klassischen Philologen, von denen es gerüchteweise noch etliche geben soll, das Neueste auf dem Gebiet des antiken Romans schwarz auf weiß getrost nach Hause tragen können... Der erste Band des neuen Jahrbuchs Ancient Narrative, das, wie der Titel besagt, nicht nur die bisher unter die Gattung “Roman” subsumierten Texte behandelt, sondern die ganze antike Erzählliteratur einbeziehen will – selbst der jüdischen Erzählliteratur ist ein kurzer Aperçu gewidmet –, vereinigt 18 Beiträge unterschiedlicher Länge zu unterschiedlichen Themen und Aspekten antiker narrativer Literatur: Neben solchen zu einzelnen Autoren und Texten griechischer und lateinischer Romane – Chariton, Achilles Tatius, Longus, Heliodor, Petron, Apuleius und Alexanderroman – werden auch spezifische Probleme der griechischen Romane, Fragen der Religion und der Geschlechterrollen sowie der Fiktion in der Antike im allgemeinen diskutiert. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit ist wiederum, wie bereits in den Bänden der Groningen Colloquia on the Novel, der Rezeption und Wirkungsgeschichte der antiken Romane in Literatur, Malerei, Musik und Film gewidmet, mit denen sich insbesondere die Beiträge von Edmund Cueva, Paula James, Martin Winkler, Corinne Jouanno, Robert Carver und Hugh McElroy beschäftigen. So bleibt zu hoffen, daß Ancient Narrative sich zu einem internationalen Forum für die wissenschaftliche Diskussion und Erforschung der antiken Erzählliteratur im weitesten Sinne entwickelt, diese Diskussion und Forschung nachhaltig fördert und damit zu einem würdigen Nachfolger der einstigen Groningen Colloquia on the Novel wird. Tübingen, im September 2002 Heinz Hofmann

Representing Time in Ancient Fiction BRACHT BRANHAM

Emory University

The novel, from the very beginning, developed as a genre that had at its core a new way of conceptualizing time. Mikhail Bakhtin, “Epic and Novel: Toward a Methodology for a Study of the Novel” (1941)

Genealogies of a Genre It has been over forty years since Ian Watt argued in his persuasive and influential book that the novel was a cultural creation of the emerging English middle classes and that its salient formal feature was a new, more rigorous kind of realism — “formal realism.” By now his thesis has been repeatedly criticized on both logical and empirical grounds, but it still provides the most common point of reference for discussions of the origins of the novel. Watt’s claim that the novel is as uniquely English, at least in its origins, as it is distinctively modern in its methods still underlies the most ambitious attempts to revise or replace his account. Later refinements on Watt’s thesis have traced the novel back to other literary sources and areas of culture such as journalism or an assortment of popular and ephemeral forms (L.J. Davis, J.P. Hunter, W. B. Warner) or grounded his account more thoroughly in the evolution of pre-eighteenth century culture and society (M. McKeon). Even those scholars (like Reed and McKeon) who have acknowledged the inconvenient fact of novelistic fiction written in other languages in earlier centuries have balked at the idea that such fiction appears before the time of Cervantes. Now M.A. Doody has come along and cut the Gordian knot of origins by annulling the fundamental distinction between novelistic and

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other forms of fiction such as romance.1 With that old can of worms out of the way the history of the novel stretches right back to Chariton. What I would like to do here is to sketch an alternative Bakhtinian account of the genre that will do justice to the insights underlying the theses of both Watt and his critics, namely, that 1) something novel emerged in the fiction of the eighteenth century duly reflected in a new terminology (novel vs. romance) but that 2) these texts were far from being as unprecedented as the English department thesis suggests, since novelistic forms of fiction had appeared at least twice before, not only in Renaissance Spain but also in the Roman empire.2 While the varieties of fiction that appeared in the 18th century have become canonical examples of the genre of the novel in English, they do have a genealogy that can be traced back to antiquity, which illuminates what is distinctive about the novel as a form of discourse as well as what is and isn’t distinctively modern about it. As part of this genealogy, the ancient examples of novelistic fiction (e.g., Apuleius and Petronius) can be systematically or generically distinguished from the heroic romances written in Greek. In other words, novelistic fiction has been invented more than once and, while its earliest examples are still intimately related to romance and other pre-novelistic and oral forms of storytelling, they also provide interesting precedents for what have usually been considered some of the modern and early modern novel’s distinguishing features—such as contemporaneity and certain kinds of realism. There are many ways of worldmaking. Genres are one of them. As Nelson Goodman has argued; “The many stuffs—matter, energy, waves, phenomena—that worlds are made of are made along with worlds. But made from what? Not from nothing, after all, but from other worlds. Worldmaking as we know it always starts from worlds already on hand; the making is a remaking.”3 And so it is with genres. “Where do genres come from? Quite ————— 1

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3

Doody’s definition of the novel—i.e., “A work is a novel if it is fiction, if it is prose, and if it is of a certain length” (Doody 1996.16) —is simply too general to be useful. It gives the false impression that works as varied as Lucians Verae Historiae, Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe and Petronius’ Satyrica are somehow all examples of the same genre. Not only would this require us to ignore what is original and distinctive about each of these texts but in the process to adopt a critical stance utterly alien to the classical concern with genre, convention and tradition. The works referred to in this paragraph are: Watt 1957; Reed 1981; Davis 1983; McKeon 1987; Warner 1998, and Hunter 1992. Goodman 1978.6.

REPRESENTING TIME IN ANCIENT FICTION

3

simply from other genres,” or so argues Todorov:4 “A new genre is always the transformation of an earlier one, or of several: by inversion, by displacement, by combination.” But how does something new enter this system? Of course Bakhtin staked out a position in the 20’s in opposition to Russian Formalism that rejected the idea of genre “as the recombination of ready made elements.” 5 Instead, he argued that the category of genre be understood not simply as “a specific grouping of devices with a defined dominant”6—as the Russian Formalists had defined it—but more dynamically as a form of utterance, i.e., not as a set of repeatable rules or conventions that can be specified linguistically; thus by genre Bakhtin does not mean only the hierarchy of literary genres—the usual meaning of the term; his concept is much more capacious embracing the whole spectrum of verbal experience—spoken, written, and thought—as expressed in utterances whether called literary genres, speech genres, inner genres, or behavioral genres.7 In The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship the authors argue: “One might say that human consciousness possesses a series of inner genres for seeing and conceptualizing reality. A given consciousness is richer or poorer in genres, depending on its ideological environment.”8 Similarly, in Marxism and the Philosophy of Language Voloshinov observes: “Any utterance, no matter how weighty and complete in and of itself, is only a moment in the continuous process of verbal communication. But that continuous verbal communication is, in turn, itself only a moment in the continuous, all-inclusive generative process of a given social collective …verbal communication can never be understood and explained outside of this connection with a concrete situation.”9 On the next page he clarifies the point: “The process of speech broadly understood as the ————— 4 5 6 7

8 9

Todorov 1990.15. Bakhtin and Medvedev 1985.140. Bakhtin and Medvedev 1985.129. Of course Bakhtin distinguishes between “primary (simple) and… secondary (complex) speech genres—novels, dramas, all kinds of scientific, major genres of commentary, and so forth—[that] arise in more complex and highly developed and organized cultural communication (primarily written) that is artistic, scientific, sociopolitical, and so on. During the process of their formation, they absorb and digest various primary (simple) genres that have taken form in unmediated speech communion. These primary genres are altered and assume a special character when they enter into complex ones” (Bakhtin 1986. 61–2). Bakhtin and Medvedev 1985.134. Voloshinov 1973.95.

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process of inner and outer verbal life goes on continuously. It knows neither beginning nor end. The outwardly actualized utterance is an island rising from the boundless sea of inner speech; the dimensions and forms of this island are determined by the particular situation of the utterance and its audience.”10 All these formulations are attempts to deny that we can explain the genesis of genres solely by reference 1) to social conditions; 2) to language as a system (langue) or 3) to the individual psyche—as opposed to the utterance in which all three factors inevitably intersect. That is why Bakhtin can argue in his late essay “The Problem of Speech Genres” that “utterances and their types… are the drive belts from the history of society to the history of language.”11 Hence what is surprising and problematic about genres is not that new ones emerge or that old ones change over time but that they also persist over centuries and across cultures constituting a kind of transcultural memory, as Bakhtin argues.12 But as the Formalist Iurii Tynyanof points out, “it is only in the context of changing generic paradigms that a single genre’s function can be grasped.”13 The function (or meaning) of any one genre will be shaped most fundamentally by its place in—or outside of—the system of canonical genres that obtain in a given historical moment and, hence, by its relation to other genres. The function of Old Comedy, for example, depends on its relations to tragedy and satyr-play, which are more complex than mere opposition. Just as languages depend on a system of phonemic and semantic differences between words, so does the entire system of genres extending from complex literary genres to everyday speech genres. That is why a

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11 12 13

Voloshinov 1973.96. Cf. Voloshinov 1973. 40–41: “In the verbal medium, in each utterance, however trivial it may be, this living dialogical synthesis is constantly taking place, again and again, between the psyche and ideology, between the inner and the outer. In each speech act subjective experience perishes in the objective fact of the enunciated word-utterance and the enunciated word is subjectified in the act of responsive understanding in order to generate, sooner or later, a counter statement. Each word, as we know, is a little arena for the clash of differently oriented social accents. A word in the mouth of a particular individual person is a product of the living interaction of social forces”. Bakhtin’s contribution to the works of Medvedev and Voloshinov is of course problematic. The passages cited are consistent with his oeuvre as a whole. For the authorship of the disputed texts, see Morson and Emerson 1991.101–120. Bakhtin 1986.65. See “Response to a Question from the Novy Mir”: Bakhtin 1986. Fowler 1981.235.

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genre’s function, or meaning, cannot be determined in isolation or only by reference to its contents or tropes (as Doody has attempted.) One way of distinguishing recent attempts to account for the genre of the novel is the way its relationship to romance is conceived. For Watt, romance—particularly French heroic romance—is the foil for the novel and the contrast between the two genres is not considered problematic. More recently, a split has emerged between those like M. McKeon who see the novel emerging out of the transformation of romance—following Northrop Frye among others—and those like J. Paul Hunter who claim that the novel arises by some alchemy from almost any genre but romance, particularly minor journalistic genres that addressed the “desire for literary novelty.” Finally, there are those (like L.J. Davis) who acknowledge the difficulty that our two categories—novel and romance—are in some respects overlapping and so dismiss the distinction as “ideological” without spelling out in argument what this would mean. Aren’t all generic distinctions ideological? Doody takes this position to its logical conclusion by simply declaring that the distinction between novels and romances has outlived its usefulness—for whom?—without actually explaining why we are better off ignoring a distinction critics from Clara Reeves to Northrop Frye evidently have felt needed to be made—not to mention the fact that readers, reviewers and publishers employ the same distinction routinely. Literary history needs finer distinctions, not fewer categories. The sheer persistence of the distinction between novels and other kinds of fiction would suggest that it corresponds to something in our experience as readers. It is interesting therefore that Bakhtin thought it important to distinguish the different kinds of fiction produced in antiquity and did so independently of the distinction traditional in English between novels and romances. He investigated the ancient genres of fiction in at least three ways: 1) by analyzing the representation of space-time (or the chronotope) in Greek romance (taking Achilles Tatius as an example) and contrasting its practices with those of Apuleius and Petronius; 2) by distinguishing two major “stylistic lines of development” corresponding to Greek romance and Roman fiction; 3) by constructing “the image of man” or conception of the subject made possible by the literary practices examined in the first two categories. (Bakhtin’s conception of the novelistic hero is not unlike the idea that the novel introduced a new kind of realism into literature.)

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While many scholars of Greek romance have endorsed or disputed some of Bakhtin’s conclusions, rarely are the arguments by which he reached his conclusions examined, as if they were self-evident or irrelevant. But Bakhtin’s arguments are far from self-evident and this is an odd approach given the novel ways of thinking about prose fiction that Bakhtin attempted, particularly in his analysis of speech (or “images of language”) and spacetime (or “chronotopes.”) Elsewhere I have sketched a synoptic account of Bakhtin’s general theory of the novel as it applies to ancient literary history14 (and the evolution of narrative forms from Homer to Petronius, from heroic verse to comic prose.) What I would like to do here is to offer a dialogical account of some of Bakhtin’s specific interpretive claims, his conclusions and bold generalizations, in light of the analysis that produced them. This requires tracing the main stages in the argument, attending closely to Bakhtin’s own formulations and responding to the problems and gaps in his account. If we do so in the case of the chronotope of Greek romance, a clearly structured argument emerges in which the analysis of time correlates with that of space; both serve to account for the determining role of chance in these narratives, which in turn produces a characteristic kind of plot—“adventure-time”—and a certain “image of the individual” peculiar to the genre. To follow the course of Bakhtin’s argument it is important to remember that the analysis is always subordinated to a general anthropological interest in how the “individual,” “hero,” or “human being” is constructed and understood in a particular genre, which is what makes each genre its own way of apprehending the world. Genres are valuable cultural inventions that last for centuries and understanding how and why they differ is a high priority for him. It will emerge from our analysis that we only impoverish our understanding of ancient fiction by lumping its weird and heterogeneous representatives into a single literary category. What names we use to designate those categories isn’t the crucial question, of course, though the upshot of my argument favors preserving a set of distinctions that have proven useful over time. The interesting question for literary historians or theorists is whether only one distinct type of fiction was invented in antiquity, or as Bakhtin argues, at least two (and perhaps more) varieties of fiction can be usefully distinguished, each of which represents important stages as well as permanent possibilities in the history of prose fiction. ————— 14

“Inventing the Novel”: Mandelker 1995; Branham and Kinney 1997: xi–xxvii.

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Chronotopics To his astonishment, a man all of a sudden exists after countless thousands of years of non-existence and, after a short time, must again pass into a non-existence just as long. The heart says that this can never be right, and from considerations of this kind there must dawn even on the crude and uncultured mind a presentiment of the ideality of time. But this, together with the ideality of space, is the key to all true metaphysics because it makes way for an order of things quite different from that which is found in nature. This is why Kant is so great. Schopenhauer, “Additional Remarks on the Doctrine of the Vanity of Existence,” Parerga and Paralipomena (1850), trans. E.F.J. Payne The chronotope is Bakhtin’s ambitious attempt, inspired by Einstein according to Bakhtin and his biographers,15 to add the dimension of time to our idea of genre to account for the very different ways that have developed over the centuries for imagining and representing the spatial and temporal aspects of experience. But as Bakhtin points out in a footnote and as my epigraph from Schopenhauer is meant to suggest, the idea of the chronotope probably owes a lot more to Kant than to Einstein: In his “Transcendental Aesthetics” (one of the main sections of his Critique of Pure Reason) Kant defines space and time as indispensable forms of any cognition, beginning with elementary perceptions and representations. Here we employ the Kantian evaluation of the importance of these forms in the cognitive process, but differ from Kant in taking them not as “transcendental” but as forms of the most immediate reality. We shall attempt to show the role these forms play in the process of concrete artistic cognition (artistic visualization) under conditions obtaining in the genre of the novel.16

————— 15 16

Clark and Holquist 1984.69,277. Bakhtin 1981.85 (note 2). Bakhtin also records a debt to the physiologist A. A. Uxtomskij, whose lecture on the chronotope in biology he attended in 1925 (Bakhtin 1981.84.n.1).

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The idea seems to have two aspects as Bakhtin develops it: 1) the founding or “indispensable” assumptions of a genre (or indeed any utterance) that themselves may never be the object of representation and yet shape the parameters of the way that spatial and temporal relationships are “artistically expressed” in a given genre; 2) how these “appropriated aspects of reality” are used to articulate the specific meaning of a “concrete artistic cognition” or artifact. The chronotope is not simply another ingredient of genre, therefore, to be added to the other qualitative or quantitative constituents. As a fundamental working assumption that shapes the genre’s way of seeing reality, it should provide an analytic framework for understanding how and why each genre (or sub-genre) “is adapted to conceptualizing some aspects of experience better than others.”17 As the name suggests, the concept is meant to imply the “inseparability of space and time” (84), but the relationship is not symmetrical. Since time is a function of space—as its fourth dimension— every temporal concept necessarily implies a correlative concept of space or place, but as Bakhtin pursues his hypothesis, time clearly emerges as the focus of his interest, “for in literature the primary category in the chronotope is time” (85). If the utterance (or genre) is the atom or building block of consciousness and discourse, the chronotope is that which makes possible a particular type of utterance by determining its horizons in space and time. One way of focusing the concept of the chronotope is to consider some of the questions it is formulated to help us address: e.g., how does narrative contrive to make its verbal representation of experience “concrete?” How does the author simulate or assimilate temporal forms of experience? Specifically, what kinds of change are possible in a particular narrative world— spatial, biological, seasonal, psychological, social, cultural? Finally, and most importantly, what are the consequences of any particular chronotope for the way in which the “human image” is constructed in a given genre? For “the image of man is always intrinsically chronotopic,”18 and it is the answer ————— 17 18

Morson and Emerson 1990.276. Bakhtin 1981.85. As J. Ladin observes in his excellent analysis, “Fleshing Out the Chronotope” (Emerson 1999.212–236): “…chronotopes both become significant through their association with the presentation of human character and, at the most ‘major’ level, define and limit the ways in which human character can exist in the narrative. In effect, different constructions of identity, character, and —as in Rabalais —humanness in the broadest sense require different space-times for their representation …Ultimately, chronotopes are intertwined with character because, as Kant pointed out, time and space

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to this question that makes the emergence of any genre historically significant for Bakhtin. While the conception of the chronotope is clearly experimental, still in process as Bakhtin wrote — “a metaphor almost but not entirely”19 — fortunately, his analyses of the chronotope of Achilles Tatius and Apuleius are among his most extended and explicit. This account leads him to distinguish three ways of representing time in postclassical ancient literature, which can also be found in combination—1) “adventure-time,” 2) “everyday time,” and 3) “biographical time.” We will focus on the first two. Bakhtin’s first case study in his long essay on the chronotope is devoted to analyzing the kind of “adventure-time” ascribed to Greek romance. The Greek romancers not only invented “the technique of its use” but so perfected it that “in all subsequent evolution of the purely adventure novel nothing essential has been added up to the present day” (87). He begins his account of the genre by constructing a “typical composite scheme” of the romance plot:20 There is a boy and a girl of marriageable age. Their lineage is unknown, mysterious (but not always: there is, for example, no such instance in Tatius). They are remarkable for their exceptional beauty. They are also exceptionally chaste. They meet each other unexpectedly, usually during some festive holiday. A sudden and instantaneous passion flares up between them that is as irresistible as fate, like an incurable disease. However, the marriage cannot take place straightway. They are confronted with obstacles that retard and delay their union. The lovers are parted, they seek one another, find one another; again they lose each other, again they find each other. There are the usual obstacles and adventures of lovers: the abduction of the bride on the eve of the wedding, the absence of parental consent (if parents exist), a different bridegroom and bride intended for either of the lovers (false couples), the flight of the lovers, their journey, a storm at sea, a shipwreck, a miraculous rescue, an attack by pirates, captivity and prison, an attempt on the innocence of the hero and heroine, the offering-up of the heroine as a purifying sacrifice, wars, ————— 19 20

only become time and space after being constructed by individual consciousness” (223– 4). Bakhtin 1981.84. See Bender and Wellbery 1991. Bakhtin 1981.87–8.

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battles, being sold into slavery, presumed deaths, disguising one’s identity, recognition and failures of recognition, presumed betrayals, attempts on chastity and fidelity, false accusations of crimes, court trials, court inquiries into the chastity and fidelity of the lovers. The heroes find their parents (if unknown). Meetings with unexpected friends or enemies play an important role, as do fortune-telling, prophecy, prophetic dreams, premonitions and sleeping potions. The novel ends happily with the lovers united in marriage. Such is the schema for the basic components of the plot. In light of the composite he argues that none of the plot motifs found in the genre are actually new, but that “the elements derived from various other genre’s assumed a new character and special functions in this completely new chronotope—that of an ‘alien world in adventure-time’”(89). What then is “adventure-time” and how does it transform what would evidently be a very derivative genre into something both new and enormously influential? Bakhtin argues that the typical plot of Greek romance moves entirely between two poles, two moments that in and of themselves have “biographical significance” — the moment in which the protagonists meet and fall in love and that in which they are successfully united in marriage. Few readers would disagree with this observation, it is the next step in the argument that is provocative. “The gap, the pause, the hiatus that appears between these two strictly adjacent biographical moments and in which, as it were, the entire novel is constructed is not contained in the biographical time sequence; it lies outside biographical time; it changes nothing in the life of the heroes and introduces nothing into their life. It is, precisely, an extra temporal hiatus between two moments of biographical time” (90). Bakhtin calls the two biographical moments “strictly adjacent” because “in essence nothing need lie between them” (89). The romances do not actually revolve around the significance of these two biographical moments—as later novels might—but around the adventures that serve to separate them and thereby delay the fulfillment of desire. Yet by the end of the story, Bakhtin maintains, it is clear that these adventures have no lasting consequences— “it is as if nothing had happened between these two moments, as if the marriage had been consummated on the day after their meeting” (89). While Bakhtin qualifies this assertion in his concluding remarks, as we shall see, he explicitly rejects the idea that the purpose of the adventures and or-

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deals is to dramatize a process of maturation in which the heroes’ selfknowledge and mutual understanding increases: “then we would have an example of a much later European novel-type, one that would not be an adventure novel at all, and certainly not a Greek romance” (90). To illustrate his point he cites the parodic treatment of the timelessness of adventure fiction in Candide, where the protagonists overcome all obstacles by the story’s end only to discover that they have grown old and “the wondrous Cunegonde resembles some hideous old witch” (91). Biological time has overtaken adventure-time. While Bakhtin’s claims about the absence of change in Greek romance have been rejected in toto by some scholars, his analysis of how change is registered verbally in the romances, “of what it is like on the inside,” has been largely ignored.21 His argument is that adventure-time consists of a series of short segments corresponding to separate adventures: “within each such adventure, time is organized from without technically” (91). That of course does not deny the kind of duration that would appear to be intrinsic to narrative: “within the limits of a given adventure, days, nights, hours, even minutes and seconds add up, as they would in any struggle or any active external undertaking. These time segments are introduced and intersect with specific link-words: ‘suddenly’ and ‘at that moment’” (92). He then treats these key words as expressive of adventure-time; since they “best characterize this type of time, for this time usually has its origin and comes into its own in just those places where the normal pragmatic and pre-meditated course of events is interrupted—and provides an opening for sheer chance, which has its own specific logic” (92), namely, that of “chance simultaneity” (accidental meetings) and “chance rupture” (accidental separations). This “random contingency” makes the adverbs “earlier” and “later” of crucial ————— 21

It is always important to ask who is experiencing a given chronotope, as Ladin observes (in Emerson 1999): “both the aesthetic power of the chronotope and many of its conceptual difficulties grow out of the fact that a chronotope cannot be identified without specifying the relation between the represented space-time and consciousness …we must know whose chronotope we are examining: an individual character’s perception (an intrasubjective chronotope); a collective space-time that is actually or potentially shared by more than one character (an intersubjective chronotope); or an extradiegetic space-time perceptible only to narrator, author or reader …(a transubjective chronotope.) Each of these types of chronotopes is simultaneously defined by the consciousness (i.e., character) to which it is related and makes that consciousness visible; transubjective chronotopes are the primary means by which literature implicates readers and makes our responses (aesthetic, moral or otherwise) part of the work” (224).

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importance to this kind of narrative: “Should something happen a minute earlier or a minute later, that is, should there be no chance simultaneity or chance disjunction in time, there would be no plot at all and nothing to write a romance about” (92). The game chance (tukhe) plays with “suddenlys” and “at that moments” makes up the entire contents of the romance, as Bakhtin illustrates by analyzing the lucky and unlucky turns of plot in Achilles Tatius (92–4). Bakhtin’s point is that while any “event” will have duration such a series of adventures has no intrinsic limits. That is because the actions that transpire within adventure time lie outside the normal temporal sequences— historical, quotidian, biographical, biological, maturational— “beyond the reach of that force, time, that generates rules and defines the measure of a man” (91). Hence, such a series of adventures could in principle be extended to much greater length, as it would be in seventeenth century fiction, because “all the days, hours, minutes that are ticked off within the separate adventures are not united into a real time series, they do not become the days and hours of a human life” (94). Adventure-time is controlled by chance and consists of a series of interruptions of the “normal, intended or purposeful sequence of life events” (95). These interruptions are the point where nonhuman forces—the gods, fate, or fortune—intervene and “take all the initiative” (95).22 The heroes are forever having things happen to them, as a result: “a purely adventuristic person is a person of chance,” a person to whom a story happens (95). It is because such chance events can never be foreseen, that fortune-tellers, oracles, and dreams play the role they do in this kind of narrative.23 This account of time forms the premise for the analysis of space in the romances; but the link between space and time has “not an organic but a purely technical (and mechanical) nature” (99). That is, the nature of space in the romances is a function of plots ruled by chance. Such a plot requires “an abstract expanse of space …and plenty of it,” since “the contingency that governs events is inseparably tied up with space measured primarily by distance, on the one hand, and proximity, on the other” (99). Hence, while the world of the romances is in virtue of its plot “large and diverse,” it is for that very reason also “abstract.” By “abstract” Bakhtin means that the events ————— 22 23

Bakhtin does not mean that chance takes “any specific initiative”: Bakhtin 1981.97. Bakhtin concludes this stage of his analysis by considering the plot motif of “meeting” as “part of the concrete chronotope that subsumes it” (Bakhtin 1981.97).

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of the adventure can really unfold anywhere. They have “no essential ties with any particular details of individual countries” (99) of the kind that might figure in later novels as determining causes and are characteristic of classical or oral genre’s. The fondness of the romances for detailed descriptions does not alter the abstract character of their representation of place. Certain features associated with a particular part of the world may be carefully described, e.g., its odd animals or famous landmarks, but they are described as if they were, “isolated, single and unique. Nowhere are we given a description of a country as a whole, with its distinctive characteristics, with the features that distinguish it from other countries, within a matrix of relationships” (101). Hence, we lack a meaningful or concrete context in which to place the detailed descriptions, which often seem to be relished for their own sake.24 Thus the space of Greek romance is that of an alien world25 filled with “isolated curiosities and rarities,” e.g., natural or cultural wonders that stand free of a meaningful context: “These self-sufficient items—curious, odd, wondrous—are just as random and unexpected as the adventures themselves; they are made of the same material, they are congealed ‘suddenlys’, adventures turned into things, offspring of the same chance” (102). But that is why the genre coheres possessing “its own consistency and unity” (102). Indeed, the degree of abstraction is not a failure but a necessary characteristic of the genre since “every concretization, of even the most single and everyday variety would introduce its own rule generating force, its own order, its own inevitable ties to human life and to the time specific to that life” (100). This would have the effect of critically limiting “the power of chance; the movement of the adventures would be organically localized and tied down in space and time.” That is why the romancers never depict their own ————— 24

25

Descriptions of artifacts, a distinct subset of ekphrasis, or detailed description, cultivated particularly in the Second Sophistic, do stand apart from a concrete context but may be used to reflect on the aesthetics of the text they appear in, as they are, e.g., in Lucian, see Branham 1989.38–46. Cf. Bartsch 1989. Bakhtin calls the space of romance “alien” (or “foreign”) because it is not represented either as “native, ordinary and familiar” nor, by contrast, as actually strange and exotic. It may seem that part of the genre’s appeal is in fact in its presentation of the exotic or strange, but Bakhtin’s point is that to create an impression of the genuinely exotic a contrast is needed with a native, ordinary point of view but that the latter is present only to “a minimal degree” in Greek romance (Bakhtin 1981.101). For example, none of the romances even mentions the Roman empire. The world is largely imagined in terms to be referred to Greek tradition: Scarcella 1996.221–76.

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world, which would be completely incompatible with “that degree of abstractness necessary for Greek adventure-time” (101). So Bakhtin can conclude from his analysis of the chronotope of Greek romance that “the adventure chronotope is thus characterized by a technical, abstract connection between space and time, by the reversibility of moments in a temporal sequence and by their interchangeability in space” (100).26 It is important to remember that this characterization of the chronotope of Greek romance is contrasted not only with that of later novels but also with those of the classical genres such as epic and drama. Unfortunately, this all important element in the argument is treated only briefly (103–4), but it remains essential for understanding the direction of Bakhtin’s analysis: “The time of ancient epic and drama was profoundly localized, absolutely inseparable from the concrete features of a characteristically Greek natural environment, and from features of a man-made environment; that is of specifically Greek administrative units, cities and states …Historical time [e.g., Herodotus or Thucydides?] was equally concrete and localized—in epic and tragedy it was tightly interwoven with mythological time” (104). We would like to know more precisely what Bakhtin means here by “historical time” or “mythological time,” but it seems clear that the classical genres that originated in still predominately oral and local cultural contexts are distinguished by being concretely tied to particular places familiar to the audience and the author. (Consider the role of the Aereopagus in the Oresteia, for example.) That is why Bakhtin can conclude that “these classical Greek chronotopes are more or less the antipodes of the alien world as we find it in Greek romance” (104). Hence, contrary to some characterizations of his theory of the novel,27 Bakhtin’s account of romance does not reflect a desire to cast literary history in terms of a simple progression (e.g., from less to more realism, or from monoglossia to heteroglossia.) And it is only because the chronotope of romance differs so fundamentally from that of the classical genres that “the various motifs and factors worked out and still alive in other ancient genres” take on such different functions in the new genre: “in the romance ————— 26

27

Ladin in Emerson 1999: “Bakhtin’s ‘adventure time’ is actually a synthetic resolution of the conflict between abstract space-time in which the adventures of the Greek romance occur and the ‘realistic’ space-time that a reader naturally infers in creating the fabula [in the Russian Formalists’ sense] of such romances. The result is a new kind of space-time, which can be defined only by describing (as Bakhtin does) the conflict between extended narrative time and biological time” (225). Cf. McKeon 1987.11–14.

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they entered into a new and unique artistic unity, one, moreover, that was far from being a mere mechanical melange of various ancient genres” (104). The general picture implied by these remarks seems to be one that hinges on the contrast between classical genres that originated in the context of oral cultures and postclassical genres such as Greek romance that developed after the spread of literacy and had to adapt to the new conditions of their existence, in effect, by constructing novel chronotopes. While one postclassical chronotope, that of romance, is abstract and alien in time, the novel will develop strategies for creating concrete worlds in which characters are embedded in a network of temporal relations in which their “becoming, a man’s [Bakhtin's words] gradual formation” (392) can be represented. This is a process that would take centuries but already in Roman fiction we find, according to Bakhtin, new ways of constructing the spatiotemporal framework of the “human image.” Thus Bakhtin’s conception of the chronotope is an attempt to delineate time as an organizing principle of a genre, the ground or field against which the human image is projected, which necessarily sets it apart from all other forms of narrative in antiquity (as readers have often noted by contrasting Greek romance with Roman novels or Hellenistic epic.) Only when we have done so, he would argue, can we address the question which actually forms the telos of his investigation: “how indeed can a human being be presented in adventure-time” (105)? If he is essentially passive and unchanging, a person to whom things happen, “his actions will be by and large of an elementary-spatial sort” of “enforced movement through space (escape, persecution, quests).” It is in fact the human movement through space that “provides the basic indices for measuring space and time in Greek romance, which is to say, for its chronotope.” Indeed, that is what makes the primary couple’s most important action that of resisting change. Chance may run the game, Bakhtin observes, but the hero (or heroine) “keeps on being the same person …with his identity absolutely unchanged” (105).28 Bakhtin argues accordingly, and here he moves closer to contemporary readings, that the “enormous role played by such devices as recognition, ————— 28

Bakhtin then digresses on “the distinctive correspondence of an identity with a particular self” as the “organizing center” of the human image in Greek romance: “No matter how impoverished, how denuded a human identity may become in Greek romance, there is always preserved in it some precious kernel of folk humanity: one always senses faith in the indestructible power of man in his struggle with nature and with all inhuman forces” (Bakhtin 1981.105).

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disguise, temporary changes of dress, presumed death (with subsequent resurrection), and presumed betrayal (with subsequent confirmation of unswerving fidelity)” reveal the basic “compositional” or “organizing” motif to be a “test of the heroes’ integrity, their selfhood” (106). The centrality to the genre of testing the primary couple leads him to characterize this earliest type of fiction more fully as “the adventure novel of ordeal,” organized around trials of the primary couple’s “chastity and natural fidelity.” This organizing motif requires the artful fabrication of complex situations meant to test other qualities as well such as “nobility, courage, strength, fearlessness and—more rarely—their intelligence” (106). The fiction as a whole, therefore, is designed as an elaborate test presided over by chance of a set of highly valued traits conducive to survival, and, more importantly, to marriage. Thus Bakhtin’s argument moves from the analysis of time and space to the significance of chance and the organizing principle of testing to the conception of the human being and consequent meaning or function of the genre: “The result of the whole lengthy (story) is—that the hero marries his sweetheart. And yet people and things have gone through something, something that did not, indeed, change them but that did (in a matter of speaking) affirm what they, and precisely they, were as individuals, something that did verify and establish their identity, their durability and continuity. The hammer of events shatters nothing and forges nothing—it merely tries the durability of an already finished product. And the product passes the test. Thus is constituted the artistic and ideological meaning of Greek romance” (107).29 As if dissatisfied with his conclusion’s failure to account convincingly for the genre’s lasting appeal, its “enormous life-force,” Bakhtin then interjects that “no artistic genre can organize itself around suspense alone” (107). Yet the suspense excited by the testing of the primary couple seems to be the principal source of the genres appeal, at least as Bakhtin has analyzed it. And given the conventional and, hence, predictable nature of the romance plot, what suspense there is can concern only means—how will they get out of this one? — rather than ends—will they survive and be reunited? As if by way of qualification Bakhtin adds, “only a human life, or at least something directly touching it, is capable of evoking such suspense. This human factor …must possess some degree of living reality” (107). ————— 29

He sees it as the first example of the Prüfungsroman, a term long applied to the “seventeenth century Baroque novel by literary historians who view it as the furthest extent of the European development of the Greek novel” (Bakhtin 1981.106).

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This reveals a vexing problem. The description of the characters just offered as “already finished” products would seem to leave room only for an attenuated sense of “living reality” in romance. This evidently leads Bakhtin to supplement his account of the genre with some observations on the unique and paradoxical nature of the human image in Greek romance. It is unique, he says, in that privacy and isolation are the essential attributes of its characters making them unlike their counterparts in “all classical genres of ancient literature,” (108) since they concern us (or the author) only as private individuals. New Comedy might seem to provide a counter-example to this generalization, but the consequences of being the citizen of a particular city are still crucial to the genre, the basis for its plots, at least in its Greek form. But New Comedy is probably the classical genre closest to romance and it could be said of it, as Bakhtin says of Greek romance, that “social and political events” take on meaning only “thanks to their connection to the private life” (104). Yet, paradoxically, in view of the exclusive and novel focus of the genre on the private life of its heroes, it never developed a means of expression adequate to the inner life of the individual. The characters in romance speak and behave like the public figures of the classical genres, particularly the historical and rhetorical genres. Indeed, a public accounting of the adventures of the primary couple is characteristic of the genre’s ending and serves to provide a quasi legal and judicial “affirmation of their identity, especially in its most crucial aspect—the lovers’ fidelity to each other (and, in particular the chastity of the heroine.”) Hence, Bakhtin concludes “the public and rhetorical unity of the human image is to be found in the contradiction between it and its purely private content. This contradiction is highly characteristic of the Greek romance” and reflects the failure of the ancient world to generate “forms and unities that were adequate to the private individual and his life” (110). Such is Bakhtin’s argument. We may not agree with his conclusions but they are produced by a form of analysis that has some methodological interest in its own right. They are not merely the oracular pronouncements they often seem when cited and discussed out of context. The most obvious objection to Bakhtin’s account of the genre of Greek romance as the first form of the European novel is that one atypical work of Greek fiction, Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, is explicitly concerned with the protagonists sexual coming-of-age and measures its fictional time by the seasons. Nature and natural change are clearly thematized by Longus, even if

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the studied naiveté of the narrative’s presentation of character is more conducive to dramatizing sentiment and mood than representing psychological change. The changes that are represented take the form of distinct stages in a pastoral parable of eros. But Bakhtin acknowledges this exception arguing that the chronotope of Longus is an oddity among the romances: “At its center we have a pastoral idyllic chronotope, but a chronotope riddled with decay, its compact isolation and self-imposed limits destroyed, surrounded on all sides by an alien world and itself already half-alien; natural idyllic time is no longer as dense, it is cut through by shafts of adventure-time. Longus’ idyll cannot, of course, be definitively categorized as a Greek adventure romance” (87). It may be that in this as in many other respects Longus is the exception that proves the rule of the genre. But if there is a consensus among contemporary critics of the genre it is that Bakhtin could not be more wrong in denying time and change to the other Greek romances: “Time is of the very essence in the Greek novels.”30 “The heroes change, they are not the same persons in the end as they were in the beginning of the story …Character development through suffering is actually a favorite theme.” 31 The argument to support these claims is made most forcefully and subtly by David Konstan in his lucid exposition of the symmetry of desire in Greek romance. But when we inspect the argument carefully it turns out to support, not the reality of change, but the importance of endurance and constancy, the very qualities Bakhtin attributes to the genre. And constancy as a theme may well seem oddly suited to an emphasis on change or development. Konstan argues ingeniously that the very fact of endurance “supplements” or “qualifies” the original emotion. “This persisting love, eros augmented by fidelity, registers a change in the desire of the primary couple and differentiates their passion from that of rivals” (46–7). But does it work by actually registering change or rather the absence of change? Isn’t it the persistence of the original emotion that distinguishes the primary couple rather than a process of change? And is this change or maturation ever dramatized or reflected upon by the primary couple? Do they notice a change between their original passion and its “augmented” or “qualified” form? Or isn’t it just the opposite— the astonishing absence of change despite the countless reversals and misfor————— 30 31

Konstan 1994.47. Billault 1996.127–8.

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tunes they have endured, which do indeed affect their appearance but not evidently their loyalty?32 Indeed, Konstan concedes at the beginning of his argument that the situation in Greek romance “does not involve a progress in the character of the male protagonists or other figures” of a kind that has inspired modern romance since Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (45). This is precisely Bakhtin’s point. In fact, the more we look at these two accounts, the closer they appear. After all, Bakhtin concedes that the genre “affirms,” “verifies,” and “establishes” the primary couple’s identity, durability, and continuity. The qualities Bakhtin emphasizes are remarkably similar to those seen as evidence of change by Konstan. Fans of the genre may be engaging in special pleading in attributing to it thematic concerns and formal resources that we have come to value from later forms of fiction. It could be argued, however, that what Bakhtin’s analysis all but leaves out—the sources of the genre’s appeal and evident longevity—makes his account incomplete. Indeed, it is in a sense perverse to describe adventuretime privatively as an absence of change or time, since it is precisely the timeless quality of romance that makes possible the genres “magical narratives,”33 i.e., its appeal to fantasy and idealization. Similarly, it enables those “accident prone but indestructible” heroes to achieve a quasi mythic stature that comes from defying the ravages of time to which the rest of us are subject. And while Bakhtin is right to stress the crucial role of contingency in these stories, he never considers the way blind chance is magically transformed into providence to produce the wished-for ending. But isn’t this too a crucial component of the genre’s way of conceptualizing time and the human image? Be that as it may, the role of chance is clearly the key to Bakhtin’s conception of the chronotope of Greek romance. This characterization does indeed serve to differentiate Greek romance from forms of fiction in which the hero takes the initiative, as he often does in the nineteenth century novel or the earlier Bildungsroman. But it isn’t clear how it would distinguish Greek from Roman fiction, since in many respects Apuleius’ Lucius or Petronius’ ————— 32

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Konstan points out that at least in Xenophon the beauty that always marks the onset of eros continues to be attributed to the primary couple even when their adventures have altered their physical appearance beyond recognition: “Beauty is the beginning of eros and remains its emblem, even when the hero and heroine are so transformed in looks that they are unrecognizable” (Konstan 1994.48). Cf. Jameson 1975.

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Encolpius are characters whose stories happen to them. Indeed, we all are since “chance in general is but one form of the principle of necessity and as such has a place in any novel, as it has its place in life itself” (97). Nevertheless, the passivity of the heroes—if not the heroines—of Greek fiction has often been noted and even if there are important respects in which Encolpius and Eumolpus “take the ideological initiative” in their tirades on education and the arts they remain at the mercy of a plot that unfolds with the help of chance and adventure-time. But if the chance ruled domain of adventuretime is clearly central to Roman fiction, how and why does Bakhtin distinguish its chronotope from that of Greek romance? The “how” is easy: he posits a new category called the “adventure novel of everyday life:” “in a strict sense,” he says, “only two works belong to this category,” Apuleius’ Golden Ass or the Metamorphoses and Petronius’ Satyrica. What sets this category apart from the Greek romances is not simply that two ways of organizing time, namely, adventure time and everyday time, characterize it, but that “both adventure and everyday time change their essential forms in combination” producing a completely new chronotope, which Bakhtin glosses as “a special sort of everyday time” (111). Despite the fact that he will later say that the process of representing time (or historicity) is more advanced in Petronius than in Apuleius, Bakhtin focuses his only analysis of this chronotope on Apuleius, presumably because the text is complete and the story itself on the level of plot is emblematic of change, that is, “of how an individual became other than what he was” (115). What I want to do here is to summarize his analysis and to ask if we can extrapolate from it and some brief but suggestive comments on Petronius what form a Bakhtinian analysis of the chronotope of the Satyrica would take. While Bakhtin has specified two sequences that define this chronotope —everyday and adventure time—we find that his argument actually depends on constructing three sequences, the third being a sequence defined in moralreligious terms. First, he emphasizes that there is “no evolution…what one gets rather is crisis and rebirth. For the Golden Ass does not unfold in biographical time” but represents “exceptional” and “unusual” moments that “shape the definitive image of the man, as well as the nature of his entire subsequent life” (116). Such time is fundamentally unlike the adventure time of Greek romance precisely because it leaves “a deep and ineradicable mark” on the hero. It is nevertheless clearly a type of adventure time precisely be-

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cause it too consists of “exceptional” and “unusual” events, “events determined by chance which moreover manifest themselves in fortuitous encounters (temporal junctions) and fortuitous non-encounters (temporal disjunctions).” What clearly differentiates this time from that of Greek romance however, is that the “logic of chance is subordinated to another and higher logic” (116). Thus while most events in the novel are determined by chance, both the initial and the final links in the series are not. The initial link is determined by Lucius and reflects his personality, his curiosity, when he decides to experiment with magic. Similarly, the final link is not determined by chance but by Isis, who, Bakhtin argues, is not a mere synonym for “good fortune,” as are the gods of Greek romance, but “a patroness” directing Lucius to purification rituals, and askesis (117). Thus because both the initial and final links of the sequence lie beyond the power of chance “the nature of the entire chain is altered” (117). Instead of resulting in a “simple affirmation” of the hero’s identity, as does Greek romance, it rather constructs “a new image of the hero, as a man who is now purified and reborn,” i.e. who is not what he was (117). Therefore, he argues that the chance generating separate adventures “must be interpreted in a new way.” He cites the interpretation of the priest of Isis, who reads the entire adventure sequence of Lucius as one of “punishment” and “redemption.” Thus the adventure sequence dominated by chance is subordinated to a second sequence defined in moral and religious terms that “encompasses it and interprets it” as moving from guilt (or error) through punishment to redemption and blessedness. The crucial point is that it is the second sequence that determines “the shifting appearance of the hero” (118). Moreover, the logic of this sequence is alien to Greek adventure-time, since it is irreversible—the order of events matters—and is grounded in “individual responsibility,” i.e., in the initial choice of the hero. It has a definite shape and degree of ineluctability that the Greek adventure sequence shows no hint of. In contrast to Greek adventure time Bakhtin stresses the advantages of this chronotope for expressing “more critical and realistic characteristics of time: Here time is not merely technical, not a mere distribution of days, hours, moments that are reversible, transposable, unlimited internally, along a straight line; here the temporal sequence is an integrated and irreversible whole” (119), free of the “abstraction” he has attributed to Greek adventure time. Bakhtin also notes its crucial limitations: as in Greek romance the indi-

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vidual is “private and isolated.” His change or metamorphosis has “a merely personal and unproductive character” (119). This point may overlook the ideological implications of a novel that appears to celebrate conversion to a popular pagan cult at the very moment when the gospels were being written and disseminated. Nevertheless, Bakhtin argues that the basic temporal sequence of the novel is “a closed circuit, isolated, not localized in historical time,” by which he means it does not participate in what he calls “the irreversible historical sequence of time because the novel does not yet know such a sequence” (120). Such is his characterization of “adventure time” in this chronotope. But, he asks, how is “everyday time” expressed and “how does it mesh with this distinctive adventure time to form one novelistic whole?” (120) The way it is expressed is through the metaphor of the road taken by the hero as “the path of life:” “The choice of a real itinerary equals the choice of the path of life. The concreteness of this chronotope permits everyday life to be realized within it.” Nevertheless, the major turning points in the life of the hero are found “outside everyday life,” which, Bakhtin comments, seems to “spread out along the edge of the road itself, along the sideroads” (120). And this is the crucial point: Lucius “merely observes this life…in essence he does not participate in this life and is not determined by it” (121). What he does experience are still “events that are exclusively extraordinary” and are defined by the moral sequence “guilt : UHWULEXWLRQ : UHGHPSWLRQ : EOHVVHGQHVV´ (121). Thus the moral sequence ends up governing both adventure time by determining its initial and final moments—and everyday time—by giving it a necessary role in Lucius’ story, namely, that of punishment for error—as the priest of Isis reads it. Indeed, as Bakhtin points out, it coincides with Lucius’ presumed death—his family thinks him dead during the time he’s wandering through everyday time as an ass. Thus it is the moral sequence that links the extraordinary—adventure time—with the ordinary—everyday time—forming a temporal and novelistic whole. Still, while according to this reading of Bakhtin’s analysis everyday time has a genuine function in the novel, it is not, he insists a causal one. He stresses “the extreme importance” of the fact that the hero is an interloper and observer of everyday life but still outside it. He argues that the hero’s stance is a reflection of the fact that classical literature “was one of public life and public man” (123). The attempt to represent the private life, he says, produced “a contradiction between the public nature of literary form and the

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private nature of its content.” It was, he says, “in the process of resolving this problem” that the ancient novel emerged.34 Now what does this analysis imply for Petronius? Bakhtin’s remarks on Petronius are tantalizingly brief and not entirely consistent. He begins by stressing that unlike Apuleius in Petronius’ world “socially heterogeneous elements come close to being contradictory. As a result his world bears witness to the distinguishing features of a particular era, the earliest traces of historical time” (129).35 Moreover, “if such contradictions were to surface,” he says, “then the world would start to move, it would be shoved into the future, time would receive a fullness and a historicity” (129). He further observes that in Petronius “adventure time is tightly interwoven with everyday time (therefore the Satyricon is closer to the European type of picaresque novel.”) He then notes that while Petronius has no “clearly defined” moral sequence or metamorphosis—such as the guilt :UHWULEXWLRQ:UHGHPSWLRQ sequence of Apuleius—there is an “analogous motif” of persecution by an angry god, Priapus, parodying the Odyssey and Aeneid and novelizing the oldest way of motivating a plot. But Bakhtin only mentions this motif, he doesn’t analyze it. It does, however, suggest an irreversible order and a moral sequence. But then Bakhtin seems to contradict himself saying that “the location of the heroes vis-à-vis everyday life is in all respects the same as it was for Lucius the ass” (129). But how can we reconcile that with his assertion in the same paragraph that “in Petronius adventure time is tightly interwoven with everyday time,” whereas he has just argued at length that they are not interwoven in Apuleius but rather are at right angles and only intersect at two moments—those of punishment and redemption. Indeed, how could the two be tightly interwoven if everyday life plays no causal role in the novel, as he insists it does not in Apuleius? He then switches course again still in the same paragraph saying “But, we repeat, traces of historical time (however unstable) turn up in the social heterogeneity of this private-life world. The image of Trimalchio’s feast and the way it is described serve to bring out,” he says, “the distinguishing fea-

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35

This point may be important for understanding why Bakhtin says that Petronius took the process of representing “historicity” further than anyone else: Bakhtin 1981.129. Cf. the observation in Discourse in the Novel that “the most important elements of the double voiced and double languaged novel coalesce in ancient times” (Bakhtin 1981. 372).

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tures of the era: that is, we have to some extent a temporal whole that encompasses and unifies the separate episodes of everyday life” (129). Let us consider the last claim first, namely, that Trimalchio’s feast “brings out the distinguishing features of the era” and, more importantly, that it displays a “temporal whole” unifying and encompassing “the separate episodes of everyday life,” episodes that in Apuleius are, according to Bakhtin, “chopped up into separate segments” thereby presenting an everyday world that is “scattered, fragmented, deprived of essential connections” (128). Before we do so we need to recall how Bakhtin actually characterizes everyday time— “the time in which private life unfolds” (127). Everyday time seems to be defined primarily by what it is not: it is not cyclical, natural, mythical or sacred; nor is it like adventure time a series of “unusual” or “exceptional” events. Because it is by definition not public—in contrast to the classical genres—it is presented as the “underside of real life,” a kind of “nether world.” At its center is “the logic of obscenity,” literally that which is not supposed to be seen (or viewed publicly), which is for that very reason irresistible. Thus is “the alienation of the everyday plane from nature” actually emphasized (128). In light of these considerations what features of Trimalchio’s feast might Bakhtin cite to support his claim that in it “episodes of everyday life” are unified by an idea of time, a temporal whole? It clearly bristles with chronotopic motifs. Let us consider some of the most characteristic and what may unify them. First, it may be significant that the whole episode is introduced by an obscure reference to the last supper of gladiators, given that the feast is dominated by Trimalchio’s comic obsession with his own death and with measuring out the time of his life, which seems to thematize time from a particular cultural standpoint and to link the beginning of the feast to its end. The party is of course framed by references to clocks —by no means common in ancient literature36— the clock Trimalchio keeps in his dining room “with a trumpeter on call to announce the time, so that he knows at any moment how much of life he’s already lost” (26) and the sundial he plans for his funerary monument, “so whoever checks the time will have to read my

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See Dohrn-van Rossum 1996. Chap. 2; Borst 1993; Cipolla 1977; Cf. Barchiesi 1981.

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name, like it or not” (71). This statement comes close to identifying Trimalchio with the passage of time.37 Similarly, the feast is framed with funereal art—the mural seen upon entering and the description of Trimalchio’s tomb—and that art is autobiographical:38 Trimalchio’s career is depicted visually on the mural and summarized in the epitaph on his mausoleum; the description of the tomb is then followed by an autobiographical outburst or apologia (Satyrica 29, 71, 74–7). And that is when we learn of the Greek astrologer Serapa, who, Trimalchio reports, told him exactly how many days he would live: “right now I have thirty years, four months, and two days to live. And I shall soon come into a legacy. My horoscope says so” (77). Second, there is the disconnection of the present from the mythical past that is now a jumble of names and events comically recombined in Trimalchio’s memory: “Diomedes and Ganymede were two brothers. Helen was their sister. Agamemnon stole her and then gave Diana a stag instead. So now Homer tells how the Trojans went to war with the Parisians. Of course Agamemnon won and made his daughter, Iphigeneia, Achilles’ wife. That’s why Ajax went crazy, as he’ll explain in a minute” (59). Third, there is the literal representation of everyday time in the report on Trimalchio’s holdings, in which time is represented as a calendar of profits and losses: “July 26th, on the estate at Cumae, which belongs to Trimalchio, there were born thirty male slaves, forty females; 500,000 pecks of wheat were transferred from the threshing floor to the barn; 500 oxen were broken in. On the same day, the slave Mithridates was crucified for speaking disrespectfully of the guardian spirit of our Gaius” (53).39 Fourth, there is the social heterogeneity characteristic of the time expressed, for example, in the disjunction of wealth and social status, which is presented as a comic anomaly in the person of Trimalchio but registers a social shift symptomatic of the early empire; as do the non-Italic names of ————— 37

38 39

There also seems to be a systematic contrast between Trimalchio’s time — which is limited and running out — and his seemingly endless supply of money. Branham and Kinney 1997: note 29.2 Cf. the astrological calendar (tabula) Encolpius observes on his way to dinner: “[on it] were painted the phases of the moon and images of the seven planets, and lucky and unlucky days were marked with studs of different colors”: Branham and Kinney 1997.chap. 30.

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all the characters in the cena —except for Fortunata—signifying their foreign origins and lowly status in Italy. Fifth, in general, culture has triumphed over nature. Most obviously, food is a form of play; it is disguised so that its original nature is unrecognizable; it may contain living things; it is frequently chronotopic, e.g., in one of the first courses the food is arranged to represent the twelve signs of the zodiac, each of which is explicated by Trimalchio. Most significant though are the wishes of the guests to stretch or control time (like food): “I like nothing better than making one day in two,” says Habinnas, the mason best known for his tombstones. Of course the best example is provided by Trimalchio in his attempt to attend his own funeral: “Pretend I’m dead; play something beautiful,” are his last words in the novel. Finally, despite the ubiquitous clocks and calendars, we lose all sense of time at Trimalchio’s party until a rooster is heard crowing. When natural time intrudes, it is interpreted by Trimalchio as an ominous sign. Indeed, his panic soon leads to the end of the party. There are many other echoes of the time of Nero, chronotopic motifs which are themselves concerned with the registering and marking of time: for example, Trimalchio’s preservation of his first beard in a “none-toosmall golden casket” (29) — it is the extravagance of this rite-of-passage (as much as the fact that Nero is said to have done the same thing) that makes it specifically Neronian. Similarly, there is Trimalchio’s sundial, which may be a parodic echo of the monumental sundial in the Augustan complex in the Campus Martius; and his autobiographical mural which is imperial in its pretensions—it shows Mercury, Fortuna and the Three Fates presiding over Trimalchio’s career. We do, indeed, seem to have a concerted effort to construct a temporal whole that unifies separate incidents and expresses the distinguishing features of the era in a parodically exaggerated form, or as Schopenhauer would say, an idea of time not to be found in nature. What is this idea? What Petronius has done is to fuse what Bakhtin would call the chronotope of carnival rooted in ancient folkloric traditions associated, e.g., with the Saturnalia40 with the specific features of his own ————— 40

There are numerous Saturnalian motifs in the Trimalchio episode that I don’t discuss here, but they are clearly symptomatic of the chronotope: 1) Trimalchio keeps his guests waiting while he plays a game (33); later he has his slaves join the party (70. 10–11); he has a boar served with a freedom cup (pileus) on its head and then liberates a slave, Dionysus, who puts the pileus on his own head (41); the freedman Ganymede denounces corrupt bureaucrats (aediles) who live “like everyday is the Saturnalia” (44.4); Encolpius

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time and place in the age of Nero.41 Everyday episodes are unified by an idea at once traditional and strangely contemporary. The uncrowning of the old king (and the mock crowning of the new) is the defining image of Bakhtin’s concept of carnival—as he says in the Dostoyevsky book42—precisely because it expresses its chronotope, one in which death is seen as an aspect of life, not merely as its opposite or negation. The carnival king (Saturnalicius princeps)43 is an image of time’s passing.44 Trimalchio is the lord of misrule, the old king—and this is what makes him comic—who is eagerly awaiting his own uncrowning, which he enacts in a mock ritual. Trimalchio’s determined attempt to enjoy his own funeral, to witness his own exit and read his own epitaph is a comically literal version of Bakhtin’s idea. He expresses the chronotope in many ways, not least, for example, in the verses he composes while contemplating a toy skeleton: Alas poor us, we all add up to squat When Orcus gets his hooks in that’s the lot

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compares one of Trimalchio’s disguised dishes—fish and birds made of pork—to dinners made of wax or clay that he had seen at the Saturnalia in Rome (69.9); Trimalchio’s whimsical gifts for his guests recall Saturnalian gifts (chap. 56; see Branham and Kinney 1997. note 56.2); finally, one of the freedman angered by Ascyltus’ raucous laughter asks rhetorically, “What is this, the Saturnalia?” (58.1–2). Since this last instance shows that it is not literally the Saturnalia, taken with the other Saturnalian motifs it implies that Trimalchio lives a continual Saturnalia, a carnivalesque contradiction in terms—non semper Saturnalia erant (Seneca Apoc. 12.2)—that reminds us of the limits of the chronotope by transgressing them (cf. Branham and Kinney 1997 note 30.2). Bakhtin 1984a. 166: “Carnivalization is not an external and immobile schema which is imposed on ready-made content: it is, rather, an extraordinarily flexible form of artistic visualization, a peculiar sort of heuristic principle making possible the discovery of new and as yet unseen things.” See Döpp, “Saturnalien und lateinische Literatur” in Döpp 1993. 145–177. See Bakhtin 1984a. 124: “Under this ritual act of decrowning a king lies the very core of the carnival sense of the world. . .” Seneca, Apoc. 8.2. Temporary kings and the inversion of the hierachies associated with wealth and poverty, work and play, are central to Lucian’s image of the traditions about Cronos, who is pictured dressed like a king and carrying a “sharpened sickle” (Saturnalia 10). Aristotle (probably following a folk etymology) identifies him with time (kronos: Mu. 401a15). See Versnel 1993. chap. 3; Burkert, “Kronia-Feste und ihr altorientalischer Hintergrund” in Döpp 1993. 11–30. See Bakhtin 1984a. 124: “Carnival is the festival of all-annihilating and all-renewing time …he who is crowned is the antipode of a real king, a slave or a jester.”

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So live while it’s your turn, cause then it’s not. Satyrica 34.1045 The carnival is motivated not negated by the awareness of death. (The famous Sibyl in the bottle (in chapter 48) wants to die precisely because she cannot). I suspect that the Trimalchio episode is metonymical for the whole novel, much as the Cupid and Psyche story is for The Golden Ass. Is it just a coincidence that what we have of the novel concludes with another parodic funeral feast, this one parodying the last supper of the Christians, the model for a rite that does deny death? So much for Trimalchio. At least as fundamental as any of these features of the cena is Bakhtin’s claim that adventure time and everyday time are “tightly interwoven,” since this would characterize the whole Satyrica not just the Trimalchio episode. But how are they interwoven outside of the carnival series?46 Let us consider the motif of persecution by an angry god which seems to provide an irreversible sequence linking all we have of the novel. According to Quartilla, priestess of Priapus, Priapus’ wrath was provoked by the heroes inadvertently stumbling into a sacred rite in a grotto and “seeing what is forbidden to see. . .those ancient secrets that scarcely three mortals have ever known” (17). She tells them that to expiate their transgressions they must take part in a cure, i.e., a Priapic orgy which she presides over with her whalebone staff. Certainly, this episode fits Bakhtin’s characterization of everyday time as at bottom obscene and it is obscene in Bakhtin’s sense: “that is, the seamier side of sexual love, love alienated from reproduction, from a progression of generations, from the structures of the family and the clan. Here everyday life is priapic” (128). Of course we don’t know how or if Encolpius ever succeeds in appeasing the god, but at least from this point on he sees himself as persecuted by Priapus.47 He does say, however, in a fragment near the end of the novel (chapter 140): “There are greater gods who have made me whole again. For Mercury, the courier of ————— 45

46

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eheu nos miseros, quam totus homuncio nil est! sic erimus cuncti, postquam nos auferet Orcus. ergo vivamus, dum licet esse bene. Cf. Bakhtin 1984a. 133–4: “Behind all the slum-naturalism scenes of the Satyricon, more or less distinctly, the carnival square is glimmering. And in fact the very plot of the Satyricon is thoroughly carnivalized.” For Bakhtin’s analysis of the Widow of Ephesus as the realistic representation of a folklore sequence, see Bakhtin 1981. 221–24. See Satyrica 139.2.

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souls, by his good will has restored to me what an angry god had chopped off: consider me more favored than Protesilaus48 or any of the ancient heroes. With that I lifted my tunic and commended all of me to Eumolpus. At first he was shocked, but then, to be fully convinced, took the gifts of the gods in both hands.” 49 Encolpius is not a finished product, but still in process.50 Another crucial moment at which adventure time and everyday time would seem to intersect is in the Lichas plot. Somehow—in a part of the novel we don’t have—Encolpius and Giton become Lichas’ guests and then take advantage of his hospitality. There are references to Lichas’ wife that suggest she may have run off with Encolpius and company—another epic motif—and that her elopement also involved the theft from Lichas’ ship of a robe and a rattle sacred to Isis. Thus both Priapus and Isis intersect with the plot at these moments setting up sequences—which inevitably have a moral or religious dimension—that would appear to govern the whole. (I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be Isis who ultimately saves or redeems Encolpius from Priapus’ wrath, perhaps because he restores the stolen tokens.) In any event, it would appear that in the interweaving of everyday time and adventure time the trajectory of the heroes is determined (i.e., everyday time has become part of a causal sequence.) If so, we have a pair of sequences encompassing and unifying individual episodes and playing a causal role. So we can conclude as we began: “the novel, from the very beginning, devel-

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50

The reference to Protesilaus in this passage may be highly significant: “According to legend the first Greek to be killed at Troy, Protesilaus, was brought back to life for a brief tryst with his grieving wife, who had slept with his effigy in the interim (see Apollodorus, Epit. 3.30). This version of Protesilaus’ story is thus an inversion of that of Orpheus or Alcestis (Bowersock 1994. 112). But in the empire the legend of Protesilaus continued to grow until he became “the polytheists’ new representative of bodily resurrection” (Bowersock 1994. 113). See esp. Philostratus’ Heroikos.” Branham and Kinney 1997.150: note 140.3. For the theme of impotence, see Branham and Kinney 1997 notes 128.1, 131.1, 137.1 (and note 48 above); Cf. McMahon 1998. While it may be objected that Bakhtin’s emphasis on the development of characters or their experience of change is misplaced and alien to classical genres, Simon Swain has argued persuasively that in Plutarch, for example, individuality, gradual development (under the influence of both heredity and the environment), instability of character and the role of chance, or sudden change, are all acknowledged factors: Swain 1989. Cf. Edwards and Swain 1997.

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oped as a genre that had at its core a new way of conceptualizing time.” QED.51

Bibliography Bakhtin, M.M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination, ed, M. Holquist, trans. M. Holquist, C. Emerson. Austin. —. 1984a. Problems in Dostoyevsky's Poetics, trans. C. Emerson. Minneapolis. —. 1984b. Rabelais and His World, trans. H. Iswolsky. Bloomington. —. 1986. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Trans. V. W. McGee. Austin. Bakhtin, M.M. and P.N. Medvedev. 1985. The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship, trans. A. J. Wehrle. Cambridge, Mass. Barchiesi, M. 1981. “L'orologio di Trimalchione (Struttura e tempo narrativo in Petronio),” I Moderni alla Ricerca di Enea, ed. F. Della Corte, 189–46. Rome. Bartsch, S. 1989. Decoding the Ancient Novel, Princeton. Bender, J. and D.F. Wellbery, eds. 1991. Chronotypes: The Construction of Time. Stanford. Billault, A. 1996. “Characterization in the Ancient Novel,” in The Novel in the Ancient World. ed. G. Schmeling. Leiden, 115–129. Borst, A. 1993. The Ordering of Time: From Ancient Computers to the Modern Computer, trans. A. Winnard. Chicago. Bowersock, G.W. 1994. Fiction as History: From Nero to Julian. Berkeley. Branham, R.B. 1989. Unruly Eloquence. Cambridge, Mass. Branham, R.B. and D. Kinney, eds. 1997. Petronius' Satyrica. Berkeley. Cipolla, M. 1977. Clocks and Cultures 1300–1700. New York. Clark, K. and M. Holquist. 1984. Mikhail Bakhtin. Cambridge, Mass. Davis, L.J. 1983. Factual Fictions, The Origins of the English Novel. New York. Doody, M.A. 1996. The True Story of the Novel. New Brunswick. Dohrn-van Rossum, G. 1996. History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders, trans. T. Dunlap. Chicago. Döpp, S., ed. 1993. Karnevaleske Phänomene in antiken und nachantiken Kulturen und Literaturen. Trier. Edwards, M.J. and S. Swain, eds. 1997. Portraits: Biographical Representation in the Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman Empire. Oxford. Emerson, C., ed. 1999. Critical Essays on Mikhail Bakhtin. New York. Emerson, C. and S. Morson. 1990. Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics. Stanford. Fowler, A. 1981. Kinds of Literature. An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes. Cambridge, Mass. Goodman, N. 1978. Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis.

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This paper was presented at the International Conference on the Ancient Novel in Groningen (2000). It will appear in a slightly altered form in Bakhtin and the Classics, ed. Branham (Evanston 2001).

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Hunter, J.P. 1992. Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of English Eighteenth Century Fiction. New York. Jameson, F. 1975. “Magical Narratives: Romance as Genre”, New Literary History, 7.1, 135–63. Konstan, D. 1994. Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres. Princeton. Mandelker, A. 1995. Bakhtin in Contexts: Across the Disciplines. Evanston. McKeon, M. 1987. The Origins of the English Novel 1600–1740. Baltimore. McMahon, J.M. 1998. Paralysin Cave: Impotence, Perception, and Text in the “Satyrica” of Petronius. Leiden. Reed, W.L. 1981. An Exemplary History of the Novel: The Quixotic versus the Picaresque. Chicago. Scarcella, A.M. 1996. “The Social and Economic Structure of the Ancient Novels,” in The Novel in the Ancient World. ed. G. Schmeling. Leiden, 221–276. Swain, S. 1989. “Character Change in Plutarch,” Phoenix, 43.1, 62–8. Todorov, T. 1990. Genres in Discourse., trans. C. Porter. Cambridge. Versnel, H. 1993. Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion, 2. Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual. Leiden Voloshinov, V.N. 1973. Marxism & the Philosophy of Language, trans. L. Matejka, I. R. Titunik, Cambridge, Mass. Warner, W.B. 1998. Licensing Entertainment: The Elevation of Novel Reading in Britain, 1684–1750. Berkeley. Watt, I. 1957. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. Berkeley.

‘ … largely fictions …’: Aelius Aristides on Plato’s dialogues JAAP - JAN FLINTERMAN

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Introduction The observation that Plato’s dialogues are fictional compositions rather than records of actual conversations will come as no shock to students of ancient Greek literature, history, or philosophy. In fact, the characterization of the dialogues implied in this observation seems to be generally accepted among classical scholars. This consensus is exemplified by the fact that two monographs published during the last decade of the twentieth century, while proposing widely diverging views on the value of Plato’s dialogues as evidence for Socrates’ teaching, at least agree on their fictional nature: Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher by the late Gregory Vlastos (1991) and Charles Kahn’s Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form (1996). Kahn, who rejects the notion of a Socratic period in Plato’s oeuvre and who regards the early and middle dialogues as nothing more than stages in ‘the gradual unfolding of a literary plan for presenting his philosophical views to the general public’,1 unsurprisingly underlines the fictionality of the Socratic dialogue as a genre. According to Kahn, Plato’s dialogues are exceptional in this respect only as far as their effectiveness in conveying the illusion of reality is concerned: the ‘realistic’ historical dialogue created by the Athenian philosopher is ‘a work of imagination designed to give the impression of a record of actual events, like a good historical novel’.2 But Vlastos, who thought it possible to distil the philosophy of the historical Socrates from the early dialogues, did not deny the imaginary nature of these texts either; what we are able to reconstruct on the basis of the early dialogues is, Vlastos held, ‘the philosophy ————— 1 2

Kahn 1996, xv. Kahn 1996, 35.

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(…) of the historical Socrates, recreated by Plato in invented conversations which explore its content and exhibit its method’.3 While the fictional nature of Plato’s dialogues seems to be beyond discussion, the value of part of these texts as evidence for Socrates’ philosophy thus remains controversial. In addition, the serviceability of the dialogues as evidence for the views held by the author himself is the subject of a lively debate. Many Platonic scholars nowadays are inclined to favour a nondogmatic interpretation of the dialogues; their approach is characterized not just by a readiness to appreciate the philosophical significance of Plato’s preference for the dialogue form but by an outright refusal to treat Socrates or any other prominent character in a given dialogue as the philosopher’s spokesman.4 In other words, the dialogues may be fictions but the dialogue form is not. In a fairly recent debate on the Gorgias, however, Benjamin Barber described the mood of Plato’s dialogues as ‘monophony masquerading as polyphony’,5 and this rather unfashionable reading may serve to demonstrate that consensus on this issue is not imminent. The present author is qualified neither to embark upon a discussion of the historical Socrates nor to participate in a debate about the interpretation of Plato’s oeuvre. Instead, this contribution will deal with the observations made by the second-century Greek orator Aelius Aristides, in his so-called Platonic orations, on the fictional nature of Plato’s dialogues and on the philosopher’s use of the dialogue form. My aim is to elucidate the functions of these observations in Aristides’ apologetic strategy, to locate them within the tradition of anti-Platonic polemic in Antiquity, and to determine their relationship to ancient theorizing on the dialogue form. In other words, this paper focuses on the perception of fictionality in Plato’s dialogues by an ancient observer, as well as on the concepts employed by him in this context. This is not a wholly unnecessary undertaking. Whereas we, as moderns, may follow Arnoldo Momigliano in appreciating the fact that ‘the Socratics moved to that zone between truth and fiction that is so bewildering to the professional historian’,6 the mental capability or intellectual readiness of the ancients to do so is still contested. In a contribution to a recent collection of ————— 3 4

5 6

Vlastos 1991, 49. See e.g. Ostenfeld 2000, 211: ‘It seems to be a widespread, if not general, opinion these days that Plato has no spokesman among the interlocutors of his dialogues.’ Barber 1996, 363. Momigliano 1993, 46.

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articles on Dio of Prusa, Aldo Brancacci maintains that the ancients usually failed to distinguish the historical Socrates from the protagonist of Socratic literature: The distinction between a ‘historic’ Socrates and a ‘literary’ one, which for moderns represents a difficult historiographic problem, is present only in episodic and exceptional form in ancient literature.7 If the present inquiry succeeds in questioning the validity of this contention, it will have served at least one useful purpose. Moreover, it is hoped that an investigation into this line of reasoning in Aristides’ Platonic orations will further our understanding of these curious texts, which together form ‘un document sans équivalent dans la littérature conservée’8 and which are so characteristic of their author and of his socio-political and cultural milieu. In order to attain this twofold aim, I shall first introduce Aristides’ Platonic orations and briefly examine matters of dating. This introductory section is followed by a discussion of the apologetic strategy employed by Aristides in his debate with Plato. As the orator’s observations on the fictional character of Plato’s dialogues and on the philosopher’s use of the dialogue form are inextricably linked with this strategy, this discussion is a necessary preliminary to the survey and analysis of these observations presented in the next section. Subsequently, we will turn to possible sources of inspiration for Aristides’ characterization of Plato’s dialogues as fictional compositions: the tradition of anti-Platonic polemic and theorizing on the dialogue form among contemporary Platonists.

Aristides’ apologetic project Among the extant works of Aelius Aristides, there are three texts in which the Antonine orator makes a stand against the attack by Plato’s Socrates, in the Gorgias, on oratory and on the four leading statesmen of fifth-century Athens: Miltiades, Themistocles, Cimon, and Pericles. In the edition by Charles Behr,9 ————— 7 8 9

Brancacci 2000, 242f.; cf. Brancacci 1992, 3311. Pernot 1993, 316. P. Aelii Aristidis Opera Quae Exstant Omnia. Volumen I Orationes I–XVI complectens, Leiden: E.J. Brill 1976–80. Translation with copious annotation: Behr 1986. The discus-

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these are the second, third, and fourth orations: To Plato: In Defence of Oratory, To Plato: In Defence of the Four, and To Capito respectively. The titles of the second and third orations speak for themselves; the fourth oration is, in fact, a letter addressed to an admirer of Plato who had taken offence at the way in which Aristides had dealt with the philosopher’s Sicilian adventures in To Plato: In Defence of Oratory. To Capito is, therefore, later than In Defence of Oratory, and as Aristides’ letter adumbrates a large portion of the argument of In Defence of the Four,10 it is presumably earlier than the latter work. Capito was probably a citizen of Pergamum,11 where Aristides resided from 145 to 147 in the sanctuary of Asclepius. Behr has attempted to fix exact dates on these orations, assigning In Defence of Oratory and To Capito to the years in Pergamum and In Defence of the Four to the early 160s.12 His propositions have not met with general assent. David Sohlberg has expressed his disinclination to believe that In Defence of Oratory was composed almost two decades before In Defence of the Four,13 while Laurent Pernot has labelled Behr’s dating of the latter oration ‘conjectural’.14 In responding to Sohlberg’s criticism, Behr appealed to ‘the improbability of Aristides writing II, IV, and then III with little time intervening’.15 At first sight, the sheer scale of the Platonic orations — more than 400 pages in Behr’s edition — lends a certain plausibility to this observation. It seems, however, inadvisable to underestimate Aristides’ prolificacy. Moreover, I think that rather than perusing the Platonic orations for questionable chronological indications, we should study these texts on the basis of the assumption that they are parts of an apologetic project that was conceived as one entity. In doing so, we shall follow the lead of the author of a hypothesis of In Defence of the Four. This rhetorician — Sopater according

————— 10

11 12

13 14 15

sion of orr. 2–4 by Boulanger 1923, 210–39 still makes instructive reading; Pernot 1993 is the best treatment. Sohlberg 1972 and Karadimas 1996 focus on or. 2. Cf. Behr 1986, 479 n. 1: ‘This little treatise is the forerunner of The defense of the Four, …’ See or. 4,5 and 4,22, with Behr 1986, 480 n. 31. Or. 2 (145–47 AD): Behr 1968, 54–56 with n. 52; cf. Behr 1986, 449 n. 1. Or. 4 (towards the end of the same period): Behr 1968, 59f. with n. 60; cf. Behr 1986, 479 n. 1: ‘around August 147 AD’. Or. 3 (161–65 AD): Behr 1968, 94f. with n. 2; cf. Behr 1986, 460 n. 1. Sohlberg 1972, 178 n. 6. Pernot 1993, 316 n. 4. Behr 1994, 1165f. n. 117.

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to Friedrich Lenz16 — characterizes the oration as a deuterologia, a second speech for the defence,17 thus indicating that, in his opinion, In Defence of Oratory and In Defence of the Four should be considered parts of a whole. The choice of such a unitarian point of departure is justified to some extent by the fact that the line of reasoning on which this paper focuses can be found throughout the Platonic orations.

Defending Hellenism without losing Plato Confronting Plato was not an easy task; in fact, it placed Aristides in a predicament of frightening proportions. The classical past of Hellas in general and of Athens in particular was of inestimable value for the Antonine orator. It was the intellectual and emotional link with this past that constantly nourished his self-confidence as a Greek living in a world dominated by Rome. And it was oratory more than anything else that linked the contemporary Greek world with the classical past and thus served as the medium par excellence for the continual reaffirmation of Hellenic identity. In short, for a second-century Greek gentleman and man of letters such as Aristides, the attack by Plato’s Socrates on oratory and on the four Athenian statesmen could never be a matter of indifference given the importance of the classical heritage for his identity. At the same time, Plato was also part and parcel of the Hellenic heritage, and the biting criticism of Athenian political discourse in the Gorgias exemplified the contradictions within the classical tradition. Consequently, in vindicating the victims of the attack by Plato’s Socrates Aristides ran the risk of attacking a cultural icon and of undermining rather than reinforcing the integrity of Hellenism.18 How does Aristides deal with this dilemma? In the first place, a considerable portion of his arguments in defence of oratory and of the four Athenians is borrowed from Plato’s own writings: he has scrutinized the philosopher’s oeuvre for utterances which are at odds with the position in the Gorgias.19 This part of his apologetic strategy permits the orator to present Plato ————— 16

17 18

19

Lenz 1959, 15: ‘It is Sopater who speaks to us in H1, either directly or through the medium of one of his pupils who set forth the thoughts of his teacher writing down his introductory lecture on the oration.’ H1 158,5–11 Lenz = III 436,2–10 Dindorf. For Aristides’ phrasing of his dilemma see e.g. or. 3,129f.; cf. Pernot 1993, 330f.; De Lacy 1968, 10. Cf. Boulanger 1923, 212; De Lacy 1968, 10; Trapp 1990, 166f.; Pernot 1993, 325–328.

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as his strongest ally rather than his opponent.20 By thus turning the plaintiff into a witness for the defence, Aristides is able to refute the accusations against oratory and the four, while at the same time maintaining that he does not mean to give offence to Plato and to his admirers: How then could someone have good reason to be incensed with us when Plato himself confirms the truth of what we say?21 In the second place, Aristides repeatedly goes out of his way to give expression to his respect and admiration for Plato.22 The philosopher is literally showered with compliments. The function of this part of the orator’s apologetic strategy is similar to that of enlisting Plato as a witness for the defence. It can be illustrated by a passage from To Capito, where Aristides draws the attention of the addressee to the fact that, by taking offence at a small part of the argument of In Defence of Oratory, the references to Plato’s Sicilian adventures, Capito has failed to appreciate the introduction and the katastasis, the way in which Aristides has presented the facts of the case. Otherwise, Capito would not have missed the consideration and reverence that Aristides had shown for Plato.23 In other words, Aristides’ foremost aim in praising Plato was to avoid being left empty-handed if confronted with the accusation that he had not given the philosopher his due. Double-edged compliments In this velvet glove, however, there is an iron fist. Apart from some perfunctory compliments to Plato’s knowledge of things human and divine,24 Aristides’ praise refers to the philosopher’s literary genius: he consistently extols Plato as ————— 20 21

22 23

24

See e.g. or. 2,462 and or. 4,8. Or. 3,568: í#!^3#112ì0/'#-ÔQ3//X3€#y3'i#Æ{!1 &4Ä See De Lacy 1968, 10; Sohlberg 1972, 256–259; Pernot 1993, 323. Or. 4,22f.: R]3' »2/ /<0í .~ 3| 10…/1 /X3î, m231 1< /X3€# "€# /Y3€ $1131"1Ô!X!0!!»!/Y3!ã412/2/. See e.g. or. 3,461: … M3í"''"/y3'23}'"!2}2'0z/~3í 1'… I think that Sohlberg 1972, 259 overvalues utterances such as these by stating ‘dass es nicht nur der Stilist Platon ist, dem Aristides Anerkennung, ja im gewissen Sinne Verehrung entgegenbringt’.

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an exceptionally gifted author or, in Aristides’ words, as an orator.25 Already in the proem to In Defence of Oratory, it is suggested that the philosopher was not wholly averse to oratory.26 Plato is hailed as ‘greatest of the Greek tongues’,27 and accorded a place of honour in the chorus of Greek literature, an accolade he earns by being ‘closest to oratory’.28 And in the peroration of the same oration, Aristides proclaims Plato ‘the father and teacher of orators’.29 The ultimate tribute, however, comes in the letter To Capito, where the philosopher is ranked with Demosthenes as Aristides’ personal favourite.30 I certainly do not mean to suggest that Aristides’ admiration for Plato was insincere. The fact that he dreamed about being placed on a par with Plato is sufficient proof to the contrary:31 if anywhere, it is in his craving for glory that we should unhesitatingly trust Aristides. Nevertheless, in expressing his esteem for the philosopher in the Platonic orations, the Antonine orator had ulterior motives. As we have seen, praising Plato played a defensive role in his strategy: it was a way of anticipating the righteous anger of contemporary Platonists who might feel offended by Aristides’ attempt to refute the Gorgias. But while allegedly meant to appease Plato’s followers, Aristides’ admiration for Plato was likely to infuriate them, because it amounted to an attempt to appropriate the philosopher as a literary artist. Aristides must have been fully aware of this effect, and this gives his praise for Plato a polemical edge. This interpretation can be substantiated by a brief demonstration of the controversial nature of the literary appreciation of Plato’s oeuvre in the second- and early third-century cultural scene.32 Those who esteemed Plato primarily as a philosopher were not always all that happy about their less philosophically-minded fellow-admirers. Aulus Gellius, for example, relates how the Platonic philosopher Calvenus Taurus flew into a rage when confronted with a miscreant who read Plato’s dialogues in order to improve his style.33 The same deplorable habit is heavily ————— 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32

33

See Walsdorff 1927, 89: ‘Dennoch schätzt er auch Platon vor allem als Redner.’ Or. 2,15. Or. 2,72: n {232‚í33/3í'0'— quoting Cratinus (fr. 293 Kock) on Pericles (cf. or. 3,51). Or. 2,427f. Or. 2,465: … 3€3íâ3"'/3{"//~00y2/!… Or. 4,6; cf. or. 3,508. Or. 51,58. The next paragraph draws on Hahn 1989, 86–88; see also Holford-Strevens 1988, 67 with n. 34; Schmitz 1997, 87–89. Gell. NA 1,9,10.

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frowned upon by Plutarch.34 Apparently, the literary merit of Plato’s work was a mixed blessing for his philosophically-minded adherents. Calvenus Taurus teases those members of his audience, whom he suspects of a primarily rhetorical interest, with the grace and splendour of Plato’s prose, but at the same time he warns them against an aesthetic appreciation of the dialogues.35 If we can believe Isidorus of Pelusium, Plutarch went even further by deploring the alleged impact of Gorgias on Plato’s style; thus he accounted for the fact that the philosopher’s prose had lost the distinctive characteristics of genuine Atticism, clarity and simplicity. 36 Plutarch’s complaint reflects debates on the stylistic merits of Plato’s prose, as can be seen from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who accused Plato of inappropriate ‘Gorgianizing’.37 Given that the literary appreciation of Plato’s dialogues was a potential embarrassment for his philosophically-minded devotees, it was to be expected that the oratorical camp would seize the opportunity by making praise of Plato’s literary merits part of its polemic.38 This is what Philostratus does in his letter to Julia Domna.39 The Severan sophist gives Plutarch’s criticism of Plato’s style a positive turn: if even the divine Plato emulated Gorgias, Hippias, and Protagoras, it should be obvious that there is nothing wrong with the sophists. This is the background against which we should read Aristides’ praise of Plato, and I think that it is reasonable to conclude that the addressee of To Capito must have been less than amused when he was offered, in reply to his objections, an encore of such double-edged compliments from In Defence of Oratory.40 Platonic fictions As far as the fictional nature of Plato’s dialogues is concerned, Aristides comes straight to the point. In the proem to In Defence of Oratory, before quoting the ————— 34 35 36 37 38

39

40

De profectibus in virtute, Mor. 79d. Gell. NA 17,20,4–6; cf. the comments by Lakmann 1995, 168–177. Plu. fr. 186 Sandbach = Isid. Pel. Ep. 2,42. D.H. Dem. 5f.; cf. Walsdorff 1927, 9–15 and 85. Cf. Gefcken 1929, 105: ‘Die Verteidigung Platons als Stilisten hatte, weil sie zugleich ein Angriff war, erheblichen Erfolg’ [italics added]. Ep. 73; cf. Penella 1979, esp. 164f.; see also Flinterman 1995, 32; Flinterman 1997, esp. 81f.; and on the Severan empress as a patroness of literature and learning Hemelrijk 1999, 122–126. Or. 4,26, quoting or. 2,428 and 465; cf. above, n. 28 and 29.

40

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accusations against oratory made by Plato’s Socrates in the Gorgias,41 he claims that Plato contrived a meeting between Socrates and Gorgias at Athens (,!"!$/~ '"y3!$#Y!{1!#2$!$2/}2) in order to make his over-contentious statements about oratory.42 The use of the verb hypotithesthai does not necessarily imply that the meeting is fictitious, but certainly strongly suggests so. Roos Meijering, in her study on Literary and Rhetorical Theories in Greek Scholia, concludes from an analysis of the terms hypothesis and hypotithesthai that these words do indicate that a poet ‘occasionally deviates from tradition and reality if it suits him to do so’.43 As far as Aristides’ usage is concerned, it is relevant that he employs the verb for Plato’s presentation, in the Eighth Letter (355a–357d), of the by then dead Dio of Syracuse as a speaking person:44 a textbook example of eidôlopoiia and, as such, obviously a fictional device.45 Our interpretation of the passage under discussion is supported by the scholiast, who explains to the readers of In Defence of Oratory what Aristides meant to say: ‘you invented the meeting in order to inveigh against oratory’.46 The natural implication of Aristides’ assertion that the Gorgias is an account of a fictional meeting would be that the conversation between Socrates, Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles is also fictitious. For this obvious conclusion to be drawn, however, we have to wait until the summary of the argument of In Defence of the Four.47 In the meantime, the orator limits himself to first insinuating and then claiming that Plato’s Socrates is the philosopher’s mouthpiece — a point which is, of course, central to his apologetic project. That the Socrates of Plato’s dialogues is their author’s spokesman is assumed rather than argued when Aristides quotes a statement by the Socra————— 41 42 43 44 45

46

47

Or. 2,22 = Pl. Grg. 463a–465c. Or. 2,13. Meijering 1987, 133. Or. 2,321 and esp. 324: … Mü'/X3î31311$3„#Y13/{'i#$!$#… In the passages mentioned in the preceding note Aristides compares his own introduction of the four Athenian statesmen as speaking characters to Plato’s presentation of Dio in the Eighth Letter. The same device is employed by him at greater length in or. 3,365– 400. The latter case is mentioned as an example of 1<0'!!/ by [Hermog.] Prog. 9 (= 20,14–18 Rabe) and Aphth., Prog. 11 (= 44,28–45,1 Spengel). The remark of the scholiast at or. 3.365 about 3|,!R/3|"$!${ (III 671,6–7 Dindorf) does not refer to Plato’s art of characterization (as Ausland 1997, 376 n. 13 thinks) but bears witness to the fame of this passage from In Defence of the Four in later antiquity. Aristid. III 363,13–14 Dindorf: 0x 3!ã3! y2' 3| 2$!$2/ A/ %'"}2Ä# /3x â3!"Æ#. See below, text to nn. 74 and 75.

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tes of the Gorgias (469b–c) in order to elicit an answer from Plato to the question whether the premise that it is better to suffer than to do wrong entails the conclusion that being wronged is an experience to be welcomed (/="13). The statement is introduced as follows: If Plato would answer us, it would be of great value for our argument. And the answer is at hand. How? In the way in which he has made Socrates provide an answer.48 This explicit formulation of the mouthpiece view is, however, preceded by a more subtle discussion of the protagonist of Socratic literature. Aristides appeals to the Alcibiades of Aeschines of Sphettos (fr. 11 Dittmar = fr. 53 Giannantoni 1990) in order to find support for his claim that denying an activity the status of a technè does not necessarily imply a depreciatory judgment.49 He justifies the enlistment of Aeschines’ help by pointing out that Aeschines’ writings have always been considered highly congenial and suitable to Socrates’ character, a judgment that has even given rise to the false opinion that Aeschines’ dialogues are Socrates’ own writings.50 But in spite of the fact that no writings of Socrates are extant, Aristides continues, it is possible to make trustworthy statements about him. Such statements have to meet the criterion of unanimity among the Socratics. Thus, all Socrates’ associates agree that he pleaded complete ignorance, that he was nonetheless proclaimed the wisest of all men by the Pythia, and that he received signs from his daimonion.51 It is evident that the introduction of the criterion of the consensus omnium Socraticorum as a touchstone for reliable statements about the historical Socrates is potentially very damaging to the trustworthiness of Plato’s portrait of Socrates. In the Defence of Oratory, however, Aeschines’ Socrates is not yet employed to discredit Plato’s Socrates. All that changes in the Defence of the Four, where the orator contrasts with the disparagement of Themistocles in the Gorgias a laudatory statement on the Athenian statesman by Aeschines’ Socrates, in the Alcibiades (fr. 8 Dittmar = fr. 50 Gian————— 48

49 50 51

Or. 2,262: !X!ã 1< 3' /X3€# -Ô !"/3R 123R$ R3p   ! 3î ëYy"%10z/~3!ã3!í#i#/X3î '"y3#!"!{!#1!3/. Cf. the remark on the Apology in or. 28,82 Keil. Or. 2,61–65. Or. 2,77; for the false opinion see e.g. D.L. 2,60; cf. Döring 1979, 68 with n. 90. Or. 2,78–79.

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nantoni 1990).52 Unsurprisingly, Aristides holds that the view ascribed to Socrates by Aeschines better fits the opinion of the historical Socrates than the invectives of Plato’s Socrates. What is interesting, however, is that the orator connects the lack of trustworthiness of Plato’s portrait of Socrates with the philosopher’s superior literary talent. While the less gifted Aeschines is supposed to have limited himself to reporting what he had heard, or something very close to it, Plato’s genius finds expression in his ability to credit Socrates with views that he did not hold and with statements on issues in which he is agreed to have had no interest at all.53 The link forged by Aristides between Plato’s literary genius and the fictional character of his portrait of Socrates underlines the double-edged nature of his praise for Plato as a literary artist. The contrast between Plato’s and Aeschines’ Socrates is resumed in the part of In Defence of the Four in which Aristides summarizes his objections against the maltreatment of the fifth-century Athenian leaders in the Gorgias. Again, the complimentary statements about Themistocles by Aeschines’ Socrates (fr. 7 Dittmar = fr. 49 Giannantoni 1990) are favourably compared to a comment by Plato’s Socrates, in this case from the Alcibiades I (118b–c), on an Athenian politician, namely Pericles.54 And again, acknowledgment of Plato’s literary genius is very much a part of the orator’s polemic. In this case, however, Aristides does not confine his remarks to Plato’s Socrates, but broadens his argument to include the dialogues as such. For Aristides continues by pointing out that Plato’s superior talent finds expression in the majestic freedom that he permits himself, and that this poetic licence is not just a matter of word choice, but also applies to his handling of the subject-matter of his dialogues, the hypotheseis.55 The liberties taken by Plato with the historical facts are illustrated by a discussion of the inconsistencies in the dramatic dates of the Menexenus and the Symposium,56 expand————— 52 53

54 55 56

Or. 3,348–351; cf. Tarrant 2000, 132. Or. 3,351: f M 0z 3Æ# 4ƒ21'# RB/ %"3/ 3Ç 1"R$2¹ m21" /~ / $"/ 0R$ 01 "%13/ ~ 3î '"3R$# L*/3 1"~ o MRR1Ô3/ 0z 1Ô! "//31+12/. Cf. S.E. M. 7,9f. = Timo of Phlius fr. 62 Di Marco = Supplementum Hellenisticum 836: $1 /~ M ' /<3»3/ 3€ 3'/ ~ 3î !]3' /'1 3€ '"3RRÔ#//2݇.y"–42‡3€!XR3/1Ô/,R*R–. I owe this reference to Rein Ferwerda. Or. 3,575: … Q11R$LH$HVFKLQHVp  '"3#!X3|/X3|3"13R. Or. 3,577. Or. 3,577ff.

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ing a line of reasoning that had already been introduced at the end of To Capito.57 In the Defence of the Four, the exposure of the inconsistencies in the dramatic dates of the dialogues leads to the conclusion that the dialogues are fictions, plasmata: But these incongruities result from the licence that is customary in the dialogues. For owing to the fact that they are all largely fictions and that one is at liberty to construct the plot using any ingredient one chooses, these works as such are not conspicuous for scrupulous preservation of the truth.58 The term plasma refers to the well-known tripartite division of narrative according to its truth-content in history, myth, and plasma.59 This division goes back to the hellenistic period60 and is reproduced by Sextus Empiricus, among others. Sextus defines plasma as the narration of things that have not really happened but that are related as though they had.61 The equivalent term in Latin sources is argumentum, defined by Cicero and the Rhetorica ad Herennium as ficta res, qui tamen fieri potuit.62 In other words, the employment of the term plasma amounts to a characterization of Plato’s dialogues as realistic fiction. By now Aristides has argued at length for the dialogues in general what had been postulated for the Gorgias in the proem to In Defence of Oratory:63 the meetings between the interlocutors are fictitious. Traditionally, the standard examples of plasmata were comedy and mime.64 Appreciation of the liberties taken by tragic poets in adapting their traditional subject matter resulted in the addition of tragedy, and this devel————— 57 58

59 60

61

62 63 64

Or. 4,50f. Or. 3,586: p23~3/ã3/€3Æ#3í0/' !$2/#/2$Y1/#i"/ 3î x" /3/# /X3!‚# 1í# 1B/ 2/3/ /~ {1  1Ô/ 0p o  3# R+3/$12333!Ô#*R#/X3!Ô#!X240"/3"!ã3|}1/. On this classification see Barwick 1928; Meijering 1987, 76–90. Pace Hose 1996, who advances the hypothesis that the division originated in late republican Rome; Erler 1997 argues that it ultimately stems from Plato himself. S.E. M. 1,263: … 2/0z"/3'|1R'zM!'#0z3!Ô#1RR# 1R'VF$12#23 f cf. M. 1,252. Cic., Inv. 1,27; Rhetorica ad Herennium 1,13. Or. 2,13; see above, text to nn. 42–46. S.E. M. 1,263: …, i# /= '/~ Y!{21# /~ != Ô!. Cf. M. 1,252; Rhetorica ad Herennium 1,13.

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opment entailed the introduction of the term dramatikon diègèma as an equivalent of plasmatikon diègèma.65 Interestingly, in the Defence of Oratory Aristides in passing calls Plato’s dialogues dramata,66 while the scholiast applauds the designation of the dialogues, in the Defence of the Four, as plasmata, ‘because they resemble dramata’.67 It is certainly tempting to conjecture that in designating the dialogues as dramata Aristides is already hinting at their fictional status.68 At any rate, in the Defence of the Four the classification of the dialogues as plasmata is elaborated in an identification of the dialogues with comedy and tragedy. Aristides portrays Plato as a man who, despite his objections to dramatic poetry, is full of comedy himself69 as well as a tragic poet.70 Playing on the ambiguity of the verb mimeisthai (meaning both ‘to imitate’ and ‘to represent’), Aristides accuses Plato of inconsistency, because the philosopher does not heed his own warnings against dramatic representation:71 And while you say that one should not imitate bad men and should not make oneself like one’s inferiors, you yourself are not very consistent in following this precept, but you represent sophists, you represent syco-

————— 65

66 67

68

69

70

71

On this development see Meijering 1987, 87–90, with e.g. [Herm.], Prog. 2 (= 4,17f. Rabe): f3€0z/2/3*O/~0"//3€/!ã2!C/3x3í3"/í. Or. 2,164: fR#32~0"/2.*R# … r. 3,586, quoted above (n. 58); Aristid. III 716,31–34 Dindorf: /€3€2/3/’ R/2 x" R= 0RR 0"/2 0x 3€ $%1 /~ /X3!‚# !=/0!3!㠍"*2'/ /~ *R$#1"1Ô2/R[#0R1Ô3î3'. In this connection, we should note the juxtaposition, in the mosaic floor in the triclinium of the House of Menander at Mytilene, of a panel representing Socrates, Simmias, and Cebes, the chief interlocutors in Plato’s Phaedo, with eight panels showing scenes from Menander's comedies and one portraying the comic poet himself. See Charitonidis/Kahil/Ginouvès 1970, 33–36 and, for the date (third quarter of the third century AD) of the mosaic floor, 12. I owe this reference to Heinz Hofmann. At Rome Plato’s dialogues were staged as diversions during drinking-bouts, see Plu. Quaestiones convivales, Mor. 711b–d; cf. Lakmann 2000. Or. 3,614: p /X3€ 3€ "23!4y 3# $2p M 'ë0í Q3ë !‚ 3Æ# 'ë0/# 4/3#1"123. The comic representation of Aristophanes to which Aristides takes exception, can be found in Smp. 185c, see or. 3,579 and 581; or. 4,50; and cf. Ath. 187c. Or. 3,615, taking the Athenian Stranger as Plato’s double and the self-designation in Lg. 817b literally. Pl., R. 394e–396e.

‘… LARGELY FICTIONS …’

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phants, you represent Thrasymachus who never blushed, doorkeepers, children, and countless others.72 The consequence of the characterization of the dialogues as dramatic poetry and, as such, works of fiction is spelled out when Aristides takes Plato to task for the gratuitousness of his attack on the four Athenian statesmen. In the orator’s opinion, it would have been possible for the philosopher to conclude the argument without maligning them — just as comedy could do without ridiculing people by name!73 The possible objection that the names of Themistocles, Miltiades, Cimon, and Pericles had been brought up by Callicles (Grg. 503c) is brushed aside as ludicrous:74 For who does not know that Socrates, Callicles, Gorgias, Polus, all of this is Plato, who turns the discussion in whatever direction suits him?75 In fact, Aristides claims, there was no Callicles to cause trouble for Plato or to prevent him from concluding the argument as he wished.76 In other words, both the meeting hypothesized in the Gorgias and the reported conversation are products of Plato’s literary creativity. And Aristides’ manner of presenting this observation amounts to an exposure of the dialogue form as a sham: after all, all interlocutors are Plato’s puppets. This implication of the identification of the dialogues as fictional literary texts was adumbrated in the proem to In Defence of Oratory, where the Gorgias was characterized as an indictment and the role of Socrates’ interlocutors as defenders of oratory as a disguise:

————— 72

73 74

75

76

Or. 3,616: /~1#zi#!X%"|1Ô2/3!‚#4/ƒ!$#!X0p4!!!ã/Y3€3!Ô# %1"!2 /Y3€# 0p !X y$ %"Ç 3!ƒ3ë 0x 3R$# x Ç 2!423y# Ç 2$!4y3/# Ç -"/2+/%R 3€ !X01…!31 "$"y2/3/ $"'"!ƒ# /0/ $"!$#. The same accusation can be found in Ath. 505b. Or. 3,631; cf. or. 3,8. Or. 3,632: QR$ p 1< /~ M
/Æ# $3$%1 1"~ /X3í YR/, $23 z RB/ '#»3Rã3R. Or. 3,632: 3#x"RXRB01YQ3/~M '"3#/~M
/Æ#/~M,R"/#/~M íR# 3/ 3/ã3p 23~3'"€#3€0RRã/X3î3"'3R+#*R$#; Cf. the scholium ad loc. ( Aristid. III 724,8 Dindorf): 3/4/12/3/. Or. 3,640 /~ RX01~# /X3€
/Æ# /"„ 3"/331 RX0p ,$1 3€ | Q'# R+13/1"/13€*R.

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For it would be terrible if he, in undertaking to make his indictment openly, at least in a certain sense did not deny oratory its defence, but allowed two or three men to oppose, maintaining at least the pretence of a dialogue, while we, who are able and intend to help in every way, shall lack the courage to do so, as if it would not be allowed to bring in other arguments against Plato than the ones that he chose to make against himself.77 It is here that we touch upon the functions of Aristides’ constant harping on the fictional character of the dialogues. By pointing out the illusionary character of the dialogue form, he alerts his audience to its persuasive force and clears the way for his own apologetic project. His praise of Plato’s literary genius has proven to be more than a way of dealing with the dilemma caused by his decision to enter the lists against the philosopher and of sweetening the pill for Plato’s admirers, who might take offence at his arguments. As it leads up to the claim that the dialogues are fictions, it is also a highly effective ingredient in his polemic. At the same time, the exposure of the dialogue as a literary cover for an indictment adds a polemical dimension to the other method used by Aristides to lessen his predicament: borrowing arguments against Plato from Plato’s own writings. But before this assertion can be substantiated we should examine the possible sources of inspiration for Aristides’ observations.

Anti-Platonic polemic and Platonic theorizing We started our inquiry with the observation that the characterization of Plato’s dialogues as fictional compositions would come as no surprise to modern read————— 77

Or. 2,14: /~x"1@01*1<1ÔR#zYR23x#/3R"1ԍ"!4/!ã#RX 123"21 3"*R  3p /X3| 3í Yz" /Y3Æ# *' p 0'1 0$2~ /~ 3"2~311Ôi#Rã2%/30/*'-1Ô#0zR=3€QRR1Ô$%R31#/~ "RÄ"R|3R2R1m21"3R2/ã3p313'0RM*2//X3€# "€#/Y3€R$1. Incidentally, Aristides labels the attack on oratory in the Gorgias sometimes a /3R"/, sometimes a &*R#, an invective, see e.g. or. 2,15. Accordingly, his own Defence of Oratory vacillates between an apology and an encomium. The same is true of In Defence of the Four, which goes a long way to explain the difficulties experienced by Sopater in pigeonholing the latter oration as either forensic or encomiastic, H1 158,13–162,6 Lenz = III 436,12–437,33 Dindorf.

‘… LARGELY FICTIONS …’

47

ers. A concise survey of ancient views will suffice to demonstrate that the same should have been true of Aristides’ audience. Plato’s contemporaries and Greek intellectuals of the next generation can hardly have failed to recognize that his dialogues were not records of actual conversations. After all, in Aristotle’s Poetics the Socratic dialogue and the prose mime are bracketed together as examples of mimetic prose.78 Aristotle’s concept of mimèsis, elusive as it is, clearly leaves room for a positive appreciation of what we would call fiction: a representation of reality which does not have to correspond to actual events, but which constructs a course of events that reflects universal human behaviour and experience.79 It is, incidentally, likely that the bracketing of the Socratic dialogue with the prose mime was primarily motivated by the fact that both are also mimetic in the narrower sense in which Aristotle uses the word:80 in both genres, the spoken word is directly represented. In Aristotle’s Poetics, the labelling of Plato’s dialogues as mimetic prose does not have a polemical edge. Things must have changed, however, in the early Hellenistic period. With the vanishing of the last generation that had personal memories of fifth-century Athens, the fictional character of Plato’s dialogues ceased to be a self-evident truth. Instead, it became the outcome of biographical and literary research, and the results of such scholarly efforts could well be put to polemical use. Anecdotes such as the one told by Athenaeus about Gorgias and Phaedo, who protest never to have spoken the words that Plato puts in their mouths,81 may originate in this period, and a pun by Timo of Phlius on Plato and plattein, also quoted by Athenaeus,82 points in the same direction: in the third century BC the fictional character of Plato’s dialogues had become an argument in the armoury of anti-Platonic polemic. In the second century BC, Herodicus of Babylon produced one of the most vehement attacks on the Socratics written in antiquity, Reply to a Socrates-worshipper ("€# 3€ .R2'"3). Large extracts of this treatise are supposed to have been preserved in the books 5 and 11 of Athenaeus’ ————— 78

79 80 81 82

Arist. Po. 1447a28–b11. On the tradition that Plato was indebted to Sophron see Haslam 1972; Clay 1994, 33–37. See Halliwell 1986, 132f.; Rösler 1980, 309–311. Po. 1460a5–8; cf. Halliwell 1986, 126–131; Haslam 1972, 22. Ath. 505d–e = Swift Riginos 1976, anecdotes 37 and 58. Ath. 505e = fr. 19 Di Marco = Supplementum Hellenisticum 793: i#/3313' M1/2//+/3/1<0,#

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Deipnosophistae. Although Herodicus’ pamphlet is mentioned only once by Athenaeus,83 a good case has been made by Karl Schmidt for the theory that the attacks on philosophers in general and on Plato in particular in these books of the Deipnosophistae were, with few exceptions, taken from Herodicus.84 A characteristic ingredient of Herodicus’ anti-Platonic polemic is his use of archon lists to expose inconsistencies in the dramatic dates of the dialogues.85 Already Johannes Geffcken pointed out that Aristides refers to eponymous archons in his exposure of the inconsistency in the dramatic date of the Menexenus,86 and suggested that the orator’s treatment of this issue might ultimately stem from Herodicus’ pamphlet.87 Geffcken may well have been right, the more so since there are other rather striking similarities between Aristides’ Platonic orations and the anti-Platonic polemic in the Deipnosophistae. For example, Athenaeus combines a critical discussion of the dramatic date of the Parmenides with censure of Plato’s suggestion that Zeno had been Parmenides’ favourite;88 in To Capito, where Aristides for the first time brings up the inconsistencies in the dramatic dates of the dialogues,89 he takes exception at precisely the same intimation in the Parmenides.90 As Herodicus represented an extremely hostile tradition of antiPlatonic polemic, it is nothing less than a provocation that Aristides plays this card precisely in his letter to the already offended Capito. Thus Aristides probably borrowed the chronological arguments for his claim that the dialogues are fictional compositions from a tradition of anti————— 83

84

85 86 87

88 89 90

Ath. 215f: i# =23R"1Ô M õÿ"*0R# M
"/331R#  3RÔ# "€# 3€ .R2'"3. In addition, Athenaeus twice refers to Herodicus without mentioning a title. In 192b a comparison of the convivial customs of the Homeric heroes with the proceedings during the symposia described by Plato, Xenophon, and Epicurus (Ath. 186d ff.), presumably derived from a treatise 1"~2$R2', is rounded off with a quotation from Herodicus; in 219c Herodicus is cited as the source for a poem, allegedly by Aspasia, portraying Socrates as chasing after Alcibiades instead of the other way round. Schmidt 1886. Schmidt was followed by Düring 1941, an edition with commentary of Herodicus’ fragments; see also Geffcken 1929, 98–101, esp. 99 n. 1, and now Trapp 2000, 359f. Ath. 217a–218e. Or. 3.577f.; cf. above, text to n. 56. Geffcken 1929, 106 n. 12: ‘…, so kann hier Herodicus vorliegen.’ Düring 1941 prints or. 3,577–582 as fragments from Herodicus’ "€#3€.R2'"3. Ath. 505f, referring to Prm. 127b. Or. 4,50f.; cf. above, text to n. 57. Or. 4,37; note also the parallels mentioned above, nn. 69 and 72.

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Platonic polemic. For the claim itself, however, and especially for the exposure of the dialogue form as a cover for sustained argument, he may well have drawn on theorizing on the dialogue by contemporary Platonists. This becomes manifest if one takes a look at a definition of the dialogue prevailing among second-century Platonists. It is provided by Albinus, in his introduction to the study of Plato’s dialogues: [A dialogue] is nothing else than a text consisting of questions and answers on some political or philosophical subject, with proper characterization of the persons employed and written in a polished style.91 Almost the same definition of the dialogue can be found in Diogenes Laertius’ treatment of Plato’s writings,92 and the gist of these Middle Platonist definitions is reproduced by the sixth-century author of the anonymous Prolegomena to the Platonic philosophy, who is also generous enough to point out that the only difference between dialogue, on the one hand, and tragedy and comedy on the other, is that dialogues are in prose.93 Although there are minor differences between these three definitions, they are consistent in the importance they attach to èthopoiia, characterization. That èthopoiia is a procedure in which fiction has its part, is evident from the definition that we find in the Progymnasmata ascribed to Hermogenes: èthopoiia is the representation, through invented speech, of a person’s character.94 Aelius Theon, who prefers the term prosôpopoiia,95 mentions in one and the same breath Homer’s poetry, the dialogues of Plato and the other

————— 91

92 93 94

95

Alb. Intr. 147,17–21 Hermann (the pagination of Hermann’s edition is reproduced in the edition by Nüsser 1991): $233R$RXR3.*R# "'321'#/~R"21'# 2$11R# 1"! 3R# 3í R3í /~ 4R2*4' "/3' 13x 3Æ# "1R+2#,RR/#3í/"///R'"R2,'/~3Æ#/3x3| /3/ 21$Æ#. D.L. 3,48. 14,4–10 Westerink 1990. [Hermog.] Prog. 9 = 20,7–9 Rabe: öÿRR/23~2#0R$#YR1R$"R2,R$ RCR3/#1@R*R$#öú0"R%~Ûý3R". The element of invented speech is explicitly mentioned when the author explains what is, in his view, the difference between ,RR/ and "R2'RR/ (20,13f. Rabe): 1Ôzx"P3R#"R2,R$*R$# 33R13/ã/RXN"*2'R33R1. Theon, Prog. 10 = 115,11ff. Spengel.

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Socratics, and the comedies of Menander as models of this art of characterization in ascribed speech.96 The central importance of èthopoiia in Middle Platonic theorizing on the dialogue would, in itself, have sufficed to enable Aristides to maintain that the conversations reported in the dialogues are invented. More Platonist grist to Aristides’ mill could have been provided by treatises such as those reproduced by Diogenes Laertius or preserved on a second-century papyrus. In both cases, Socrates, Timaeus, the Athenian Stranger, and the Eleatic Stranger are taken as Plato’s spokesmen. In the words of Diogenes Laertius: His own views [Plato] expresses through four characters: Socrates, Timaeus, the Athenian Stranger, and the Eleatic Stranger.97 Moreover, characters such as Socrates’ interlocutors in the Gorgias are considered to have been introduced by Plato as whipping-boys: In order to refute false opinions, he introduces characters such as Thrasymachus, Callicles, Polus, Gorgias, Protagoras, and besides Hippias, Euthydemus and the like.98 This combination of the mouthpiece view with the whipping-boy interpretation is, of course, precisely what Aristides must have had in mind when he wrote that ‘Socrates, Callicles, Gorgias, Polus, all of this is Plato, turning the discussion in whatever direction suits him’.99 Nor is it surprising in the light of such theorizing on the dialogue by contemporary Platonists that the orator maintains

————— 96 97

98

99

Theon, Prog. 2 = 68,21–24 Spengel. D.L. 3,52: /~ 1"~ z 3í /X3î 0RR+3' R4/13/ 0x 3133"' "R2,' '"3R$# /R$ 3Rã öú/R$ R$ 3Rã öý13R$ R$ The version of the mouthpiece view found in the papyrus (P. Oxy. 3219 fr. 2 col. i) is different from Diogenes Laertius’ in that the former accepts without further ado what is denied by the latter: that the Eleatic Stranger is Parmenides and the Athenian Stranger Plato; cf. Tarrant 2000, 27–29. As we have seen above (or. 3,615, mentioned in n. 70), Aristides implicitly endorses the view expounded in the papyrus. D.L. 3,52: 1"~0z3í&1$0í1%RR$#1<21RCR-"/2+/%R/~
// /~ íR ,R"/ 31 /~ "'3/*"/ $3 3p E/ /~ ý$+0R /~ 0| /~ 3R‚# MRR$#. Or. 4,632 (quoted above, n. 75).

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that the meetings underlying the conversations are also fictitious: according to Diogenes Laertius, it is Plato who brings the characters on the stage.100 We have established that, at the very least, Aristides could have drawn on theorizing on the dialogue by contemporary Platonists. But what was the polemical point of bringing up the fictional character of the dialogues if Platonists themselves ‘would have acknowledged that Plato chose the historical setting for fictional conversations to suit his philosophical purposes’?101 A possible answer to this question can be found in the hypothesis that there were also second-century Platonists who maintained that the dialogues were meant to be records of actual historical conversations. Proclus, in a fascinating passage of his Commentary on the First Alcibiades, reports that some (3#) have made such an assumption,102 and John Dillon has suggested that ‘3# will be the Middle Platonists.’103 However, while Proclus’ remark concerns the dialogues as such, the evidence adduced by Dillon for his suggestion pertains to the Atlantis story and is, therefore, inadmissible in the present context.104 The identity of Proclus’ 3# must remain an enigma. In the meantime, we should assume that Aristides’ characterization of the dialogues as fictional compositions would, in itself, not have met with opposition among contemporary Platonists. But perhaps the question raised in the above paragraph is off the mark. For Aristides, the function of the line of reasoning that we have followed in this paper did not depend on the views of contemporary Platonists. By characterizing the dialogues as fictional compositions and by exposing the dialogue form as a cover for sustained argument the orator had sharpened the contrast between his own way of handling the dispute with Plato and the philosopher’s polemical methods. Whereas Plato had steered the discussion in whatever direction suited his argument, Aristides had, by borrowing arguments from Plato’s own writings, allowed his interlocutor to speak for ————— 100

101 102 103 104

ý<21 (D.L. 3,52) is the crucial word, see Mansfeld 1994, 80 n. 134; cf. Orig. Cels. 1,28 about the introduction by Celsus of a Jew as an anti-Christian polemicist öý1~0z /~"R2'RR1Ô>f@/~1<21ö,R$0/ÔR"€#3€ö,2RãR33/1"/'0í# /~RX0z4R2*4R$R»# R), with Andresen 1981, 339f. Tarrant 2000, 9. Procl. in Alc. 18,15–19,2 Segonds 1985. Dillon 1973, 232. Dillon 1973, 294f., referring to Procl. in Tim. 75,30ff. Diehl; cf. Tarrant 2000, 54f. with 225 n. 5, where it is suggested that =23R"/ & (the characterization of the Atlantis story attributed to Crantor by Proclus) ‘signifies a bare narrative rather than unadulterated history in our sense’.

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himself. Whereas Plato had disguised an indictment as a dialogue, Aristides had put into practice the principle of Plato’s Socrates that what matters in a discussion is obtaining agreement from one’s interlocutor.105 He had beaten the philosopher at his own game — and still, nobody could deny that he had given Plato his due.106

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Grg. 471e–472c; cf. Karadimas 1996, 163. This passage from the Gorgias is paraphrased in or. 3,643. The groundwork for this paper was done during a stay at Oxford in the spring of 1997 as a visiting scholar of Corpus Christi College, made possible by the College’s 4R 1/ and by grants from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and from the Faculty of Arts of Utrecht University. Previous versions were given in the Seminar Room of Corpus Christi College, at a colloquium occasioned by a visit of Suzanne Saïd to the Department of Ancient History and Classical Culture of Utrecht University, and at ICAN 2000. Those present at these occasions have been extremely generous in providing me with comments, criticisms, and helpful suggestions. Some of the debts incurred along the way have been acknowledged in the above footnotes. Thanks are also due to Ewen Bowie and Simon R. Slings for repeatedly allowing me to draw on their scholarly expertise. The sole responsibility for any shortcomings or factual errors is, of course, mine.

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zeption. Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Horst-Dieter Blume, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 277–289. Lenz, F.W. 1959. The Aristeides Prolegomena, Leiden: E.J. Brill. Mansfeld, J. 1994. Prolegomena. Questions to be settled before the study of an author, or a text, Leiden: Brill. Meijering, R. 1987. Literary and rhetorical theories in Greek scholia, Groningen: Egbert Forsten. Momigliano, A. 1993. The development of Greek biography. Expanded edition, Cambridge, Massachusetts/London: Harvard University Press. Nüsser, O. 1991. Albins Prolog und die Dialogtheorie des Platonismus, Stuttgart: Teubner. Ostenfeld, E. 2000. ‘Who speaks for Plato? Everyone!’, in: G.A. Press (ed.), Who speaks for Plato? Studies in Platonic anonymity, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 211–219. Penella, R.J. 1979. ‘Philostratus’ letter to Julia Domna’, Hermes 107, 161–168. Pernot, L. 1993. ‘Platon contre Platon: Le problème de la rhétorique dans les Discours platoniciens d’Aelius Aristide’, in: M. Dixsaut (ed.), Contre Platon. Tome I: Le platonisme dévoilé. Paris: Vrin, 315–338. Rösler, W. 1980. ‘Die Entdeckung der Fiktionalität in der Antike’, Poetica 12, 283– 319. Schmidt, K. 1886. De Herodico Crateteo, Elbing: A. Riedel. Schmitz, T. 1997. Bildung und Macht. Zur sozialen und politischen Funktion der zweiten Sophistik in der griechischen Welt der Kaiserzeit, München: C.H. Beck. Segonds, A.-Ph. 1985. Proclus, Sur le premier Alcibiade de Platon. Texte établi et traduit par A.-Ph. Segonds, Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Sohlberg, D. 1972. ‘Aelius Aristides und Diogenes von Babylon. Zur Geschichte des rednerischen Ideals’, MH 29, 177–200 and 256–277. Swift Riginos, A. 1976. Platonica. The anecdotes concerning the life and writings of Plato, Leiden: E.J. Brill. Tarrant, H. 2000. Plato’s first interpreters, London: Duckworth. Trapp, M.B. 1990. ‘Plato’s Phaedrus in second-century Greek literature’, in: D.A. Russell (ed.), Antonine literature, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 141–173. Trapp, M.B. 2000. ‘Plato in the Deipnosophistae’, in: D. Braund/J. Wilkins (eds), Athenaeus and his world. Reading Greek culture in the Roman empire, Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 353–363. Vlastos, G. 1991. Socrates, ironist and moral philosopher, Ithaca/New York: Cornell University Press. Walsdorff, F. 1927. Die antiken Urteile über Platons Stil, Bonn: Universitäts-Buchdruckerei Gebr. Scheur. Westerink, L.G. 1990. Prolégomènes à la philosophie de Platon. Texte établi par L.G. Westerink et traduit par J. Trouillard avec la collaboration de A.Ph. Segonds, Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

Rhetoric and Irony in Chariton: a case-study from Callirhoe.1 KONSTANTIN DOULAMIS

Exeter

Rhetoric plays a prominent part in Chariton’s Callirhoe, which comprises several rhetorical sections, including two interesting trial scenes in Book five.2 Chariton’s apparent fascination with rhetoric, especially forensic rhetoric, and familiarity with legal processes of his time (as demonstrated, for example, in the scene of the sale of Callirhoe to Phocas in Book one)3 has been conveniently attributed to his occupation as ‘clerk of the lawyer Athenagoras’,4 stated in the very opening of his work.5 Equally central to this novel is the theme of Love, which is more or less dictated by the subject-matter of the genre and is found in all Greek novels. In Callirhoe, Love seems to play a particularly important role. The reader is presented with an Eros who not only appears to be the invincible power that implants a burning desire in the heart and mind of the enamoured, but is also ————— 1

2

3 4 5

A form of this paper was first presented at the International Conference on the Ancient Novel in Groningen, July 2000. In an essay presenting the findings of his stylistic analysis of Chariton’s text, Hernández Lara (1990) argues that Callirhoe is ‘a clear case of artistic prose’ and shows that there are good reasons to believe that ‘the presence of Rhetoric [in Callirhoe] is unquestionable. Most rhetorical devices used coincide not only with those used by Atticists but also with Diodorus of Sicily, Flavius Josephus and Plutarch.’. Laplace (1997) has demonstrated in detail how Chariton exploits the rhetorical tradition known to him, mainly the works of Isocrates, to construct a novel which can be read as an encomium of Syracuse, Chaereas and Callirhoe, and Aphrodite – an encomium of Chaereas and Callirhoe and of Love more than anything else, in my opinion. In a much earlier study of Chariton’s novel, Billault (1981: esp. 210–211) had already noted the rhetorical character of Callirhoe and Chariton’s high level of sophistication. See Scarcella (1990). I have used the translations of Reardon (1989) and Goold (1995). 1,1,1.

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portrayed as constantly interfering in the characters’ lives and often haunting their mind and shaping their thoughts.6 In this article I aim to examine an example of amatory rhetoric from Chariton which combines these two central themes (Rhetoric and Eros), in the light of contemporary rhetorical treatises.7 More specifically, I intend first to analyse the structure, content and context of this passage. I will then determine the style of the speech by correlating it to its contemporary rhetorical tradition,8 and I will also address the question of whether it is intended to be taken seriously or ironically. Finally, I will conclude by making a suggestion about the likely readership of Chariton’s Callirhoe. Scholarship has already noted that nearly half of Chariton’s novel consists of direct speech,9 and most of the other half, i.e. the narrative parts, ‘is taken up with setting the stage’,10 which gives the characters of the novel several opportunities for rhetorical expression. Thus, the reader is not simply ————— 6

7 8

9 10

Eros engineers a meeting for the hero and heroine who fall in love at first sight (1,1,6); at 6,7,2 the king Artaxerxes, who has fallen madly in love with Callirhoe, is kept up all night by god Eros who keeps reminding him of the moment when he first saw her; at 6,4,4–7 Artaxerxes is burnt by his passion for Callirhoe and Eros adds fuel to the fire by putting in the king’s mind images of her beauty and fantasies about her; at 6,3,2 the King confesses that he has been captured by Eros as if a great battle had taken place (‘with irresistible might Love has invaded my heart. It is hard to admit, but I am truly his captive.’). For the presentation of the physiological and psychological effects of Love in Chariton’s novel and the influence of earlier literature see Toohey (1999). Alvares (1997) shows how Chariton transforms material from Greek historiography to create an erotic history that “revolves around Aphrodite and Eros”. Mainly Demetrius, On Style, and also Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Demosthenes. The rhetoric of the Greek novel and its relationship to its contemporary literary discourse is a relatively neglected area, although in recent years a few worthwhile attempts have been made to bring out the potential value of this approach. Hunter (1983: 84–98) has shown how stylistic clarity (//"!“3#), simplicity (/41“1/) and sweetness ($$“3#) are employed by Longus for certain parts of his novel. S. Bartsch (1989) has demonstrated the usefulness of considering the Greek Novel against the background of the contemporary rhetorical tradition and literary practices of the Sophistic world. With respect to Chariton’s novel, Ruiz Montero (1991a) has shown that there is a correspondence between Callirhoe and the “preliminary exercises” in Aelius Theon’s Progymnasmata, and Hunter (1994: esp. 1065ff.), in the course of an analysis of how Chariton exploits motifs from both epic poetry and historiography, discusses briefly the novelist’s stylistic and literary pretensions. In connection with the Roman Novel, Conte (1996) has pointed to ways in which reference to the idea of the “sublime” in rhetoric can help the reader to locate the authorial tone of Petronius’ Satyricon. Cf. Hägg (1971: 82ff.); Reardon (1999: 172–173). Goold (1995), xii–xiii.

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informed by the narrator of the characters’ actions or intentions, but is told by the characters themselves.11 Of all characters it is the heroine, Callirhoe, who seems to dominate the story with her emotional monologues every time she faces a dilemma or a crisis.12 Such a monologue is Callirhoe’s lament at the end of Book three (3,10,4–8), an example of amatory rhetoric on which I intend to focus, hoping to demonstrate how Chariton exploits effectively the rhetorical tradition in order to bring out the ironic and over-stated quality of the speech. The heroine has just been informed that the ship on which her husband Chaereas was travelling had been burnt down by oriental brigands the night before, and that the following day eye-witnesses had seen ‘blood mixed with water and corpses floating on the waves’ (3,10,2)Although Chaereas is not actually reported dead and no mention is made of his corpse being found, this piece of information is enough for Callirhoe to assume that he is dead. Not only does she jump to this conclusion, but she also grieves by ‘ripping her clothes off’ and by ‘beating at her eyes and cheeks’ (3,10,3). Later on, in the privacy of her room, we find her ‘sitting on the ground sprinkling dust on her head and tearing her hair’ (3,10,4). The ground has been prepared for Callirhoe to burst into a dramatic lament for the loss of Chaereas. Her monologue at the end of Book three echoes Andromache’s laments for Hector in Il. 22,477–514 and 24,725–745, both of which are included by Alexiou in the general category of ‘solo laments’: these are all of similar length and have the same three-part structure, consisting of a direct address, a narrative (future or past) and a renewed address together with an expression of grief and/or a reproach13. The passage in question seems to follow Alexiou’s model except that, instead of a renewed address to Chaereas, we have an address and reproach directed at the ‘unjust goddess Aphrodite’,14 ————— 11

12 13

14

Cf. Fusillo (1996: 53ff.): “il narratore sembra consegnare la parola ai personaggi, ottenendo una trasparenza piena della storia, che facilita l’identificazione del lettore”. Reardon (1999). Cf. Helms’ detailed portrayal of Callirhoe (1966: 42–66, 129–132). Under the same heading are also listed by Alexiou (1974: 132–134) the other two laments for Hector in Il. 24 (748–759 and 762–775), as well as a number of laments found in tragedy, including A. Pers. 532–597, 852–906, Ch. 306–478, S. .Aj. 992–1039, El. 86– 120, 1126–1170, Ant. 891–928, E. HF 451–496, IT 143–235, 344–391, Ph. 1485–1538, Med. 1021–1080. Aphrodite is no doubt invoked here in her capacity as the goddess of Love who should have used her divine powers to help and protect the couple. Throughout the novel the heroes, and especially Callirhoe, pray to the goddess when in need of aid (1,1,7–8, 2,2,7–8, 3,2,13, 3,8,7–9, 8,4,10–11), complain to her when a crisis arises (2,2,6 and 2,2,7–8,

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accused of showing no pity to the young lovers, and a second one directed at the ‘odious sea’, which is held responsible for the couple’s trials.15 The structure of the passage is organised as follows: – Direct address (to Chaereas): 3,10,4. – Narrative (past): 3,10,5–6. – First reproach (to Aphrodite): 3,10,7. – Lament: 3,10,8. – Final reproach (to the sea): 3,10,8. Callirhoe’s lament is introduced as gooi(3,10,4), a term used in Homer and in tragedy, normally for intense mourning.16 Also, at the beginning of Book four, we learn that the heroine had spent the entire night en thrênois17 (lamentations, 4,1,1),of which this passage represents, presumably, only a small part. The use of the above terms to describe Callirhoe’s mourning undoubtedly highlights the tragic character of her situation. Yet we also find in the text several subtle narrative comments which quite possibly undercut the seriousness of the entire scene. Firstly, the reader, who, unlike Callirhoe, is already aware that Chaereas has not died, is reminded that the latter is still alive (a possibility that had not crossed Callirhoe’s mind for a second!): ‘So Callirhoe spent that night in lamentation, mourning for Chaereas who was still alive.’ (4,1,1). ————— 3,2,12, 7,5,1–5) and thank her and pay homage to her when things go well (2,3,5, 3,8,7, 8,4,10, 8,8,15–16); cf. Helms (1966: 115–117). 15 Cf. Char. 3,6,6, where, ironically, Chaereas complains to the sea for preserving him. 16 Od. 1,242, 4,103, 4,758, 4,801, 8,540, 10,248, 17,8, 19,213, 19,251, 19,268, 19,513, 20,349, 19,251, 24,323; Il. 17,37, 18,51, 22,430, 23,10, 23,98, 24,723, 24,741, 24,747, 24,761; A. Pers. 947, Ch. 449; S. Aj. 579. Various forms of the verb goaô are also used extensively in the same sense: Od. 4,800, 8,92, 10,567, 19,210; Il. 6,373, 6,500, 14,502, 16,857, 22,363, 23,106; A. Pers. 676, 1072, Ch. 632, S. Tr. 51.  17úccording to Alexiou (1974, 11–14, and 102–103) the Homeric and Archaic goos and thrênos were distinguished on the basis of the ritual manner of their performance. The definitions given by LSJ imply a certain difference in the intensity of the lament expressed by each of these terms: LSJ (s.v. !# holds that goosis used for ‘louder signs of grief’ (e.g. Od. 4,103), while thrênoss.v. "Æ!# translated as ‘dirge, lament’, seems to be more of a ‘sad strain’. Perhaps the term goos instead of thrênos describing Callirhoe’s monologue here, is employed deliberately with intent to mark the intensity of the lament and single it out from the general lamentation (thrênoi) that went on for the whole night. 18 The Greek text reads: /ƒ3z!^3|ƒ3/
/"0Æ1"}!# /"{/ $3í3/1!ã2/Another possible translation here would be ‘…mourning for Chae-

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As equally undermining could be read the narrative statement in the scene whereby Callirhoe has a cenotaph built for her first husband. The reader is told that the tomb which had been constructed for Chaereas ‘was very similar to her own tomb in Syracuse in shape, size and opulence’ (4,1,6). This is obviously intended to remind us that Callirhoe too had ‘died’ and, after a sumptuous funeral complete with intense mourning, had miraculously returned to life, and at the same time it hints at Chaereas’ impending ‘resurrection’ later on in the narrative. In addition to 4,1,1 mentioned above, we are once again reminded that ‘this, (i.e. Chaereas’ tomb), just like that, (i.e. Callirhoe’s tomb), was for a living person’ (4,1,6)Also, later in Book four the author (rather light-heartedly) observes again that ‘while Callirhoe was burying Chaereas in Miletus, Chaereas himself was working in chains in Caria’ (4,2,1). It would seem that the above narrative comments result in undermining to a certain degree the otherwise tragic character of the heroine’s lament. The frequency of Callirhoe’s mourning in the course of the narrative also contributes to that. Not only is this not her only monologue in the novel but, in fact, she appears to lament her misfortune at every given opportunity, normally as soon as she finds herself alone:19 there are at least seven examples of such speeches in Chariton, mainly in Books one and five.20 Returning to the lament under discussion, it is noteworthy that the passage seems to be fairly ornate, which is not particularly surprising if we take into account the widely accepted view that Chariton wrote a novel for educated readers in an ‘educated koine’What is interesting and perhaps less —————

19 20

21

reas, although he was still alive’, but in either case the tragic irony of the sentence remains unaffected. Cf. the Trojan women’s laments for Hector when the latter, still alive, decides to throw himself into the battle, although admittedly in this case Hector will die eventually (Il. 6,500): /=z$3'€!Ûý3!"/­~!@ë Cf. Callirhoe soliloquises when she realises she has been buried alive (1,8,4); when she is carried off by Theron (1,11,2–3); when she is sold as a slave (1,14,6–10); when she is about to cross the river Euphrates on her way to Babylon to attend her present husband’s trial with Mithridates (5,1,4); when she appears in court in Babylon, where she ‘bitterly condemns her fate’ (5,5,2); and shortly after seeing Chaereas (whom she had thought dead) alive in court (5,9,4). Ruiz Montero (1991), after a close – though by no means exhaustive – study of Chariton’s vocabulary (including separate sections on colloquialisms, atticisms, literary terms, poeticisms, ionisms, late terms as well as the general linguistic style of Callirhoe), concludes that ‘Chariton uses two styles: that which corresponds to his time and that which was inherited from literary tradition. It is then a mixed language in which various levels

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obvious at first glance, however, is that Callirhoe’s lament seems to have the characteristics attributed by Demetrius to what he calls the ‘forceful style of composition’ (deinotês, deinôsis) in his rhetorical treatise On Style (1"~ "1/# 23 I will now demonstrate how Callirhoe’s address can be perceived as a forceful piece of rhetoric, by identifying in this passage the main markers of Demetrius’ forceful style. One of the features that Demetrius identifies as essential to a forceful text is the dialusis i.e. a word-arrangement characterised by lack of connectives24 (268, and esp. 269 and 301). This feature is found in the Chariton passage, where the conjunctive kai is used little and where two asyndeta can be found, the most striking of which is: ‘you have robbed me of my companion, my countryman, my lover, my darling, my husband’t The lack of connectives was not only seen as an effective way of lending forcefulness to a text, but it was also, apparently, thought to encourage a theatrical delivery, and was thus considered especially suited to debate and oral performance, as Demetrius points out elsewhere in his treatise: ‘the disjointed style is perhaps better for immediacy, and that same style is also called the actor’s style since the asyndeton stimulates dramatic delivery …’ (193). An author aiming at deinotês should keep his clauses as short as possible – in fact, the shorter the clauses the more forceful the text (241–242, and 274) – and periods should consist of no more than two clauses, advises De————— 22

23

24

25

26

of language are combined’. Cf. Hernández Lara (1990) and (1994), and Reardon (1996: 319ff.); Demetrius uses the terms deinotês t  and deinôsis   (derived from deinos meaning ‘fearful’ as well as ‘rhetorically skilled’) as synonyms, meaning ‘the capacity to make things appear fearful’. For a more extensive discussion of the meaning of deinos in classical and late antiquity see Grube 1961, App. I, A. I have used Grube’s (1961) text and translation in conjunction with the Loeb edition of Demetrius (ed. and transl. by D. C. Innes 1995). I have also consulted Rutherford’s work on ancient stylistic theories (1998). Cf. Dion.H. Dem. 20, where the use of antithetical pairs with men and de by Isocrates is identified as ‘frigid’ and lacking in force, and is blamed for ‘weakening the style’ of the text. The pair of terms erastês and erômenos, central to Plato’s Symposium and linked in antiquity with homosexuality (cf. Dover 1978) is applied here to a heterosexual relationship, that of Chaereas and Callirhoe, possibly to indicate that their love was reciprocated: Chaereas both loved and was loved by Callirhoe; cf. Konstan (1994: esp. 33–35). The list of epithets attributed to Chaereas, which seems to mark the stages of Callirhoe’s relationship with him in chronological order, is reminiscent of the famous list of Eros’ qualities in Agathon’s peroration in Plato’s Symposium (197D–E).

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metrius: ‘These massed periods should, however, be short (I suggest two clauses), since periods with many clauses will produce beauty rather than force.’ (252). The idea is that short phrases (but ones rich in content) are more likely to enhance vehemence and achieve the effect of speaking in abrupt and forceful manner, even when one does not really speak forcefully (240). Terseness and brevity of speech are mentioned here as examples of forceful and commanding expression, contrasted with speaking at length (makrêgorein), which is more appropriate in supplications and requests (‘length in speech suits supplications and requests.’ 242). Chariton, with his curt and sharp clauses, certainly lives up to the terseness recommended for forcefulness. Let us consider the following extract from the passage in hand:  ü$23$%!$ 2/ 1“%" $  1!!“ / !“&!/“ !31 /"1“/ / /’ 0“2!/ /$3ë  !“2/ 1“!/ 0  11 !Ý / 3/$ 3/“ 1 !“21 3'31“"//$3ë //!“2#12“213/%/"/ #/!“3/“0Ä3!’$!“// /!“3/“ ! /“3/ 1“!1 / /’ 3!’ 31“! “0 1"22!“Ý / "!2131“ /“"!$3! #/! #!"4/!“#//(3,10,5–6). Moreover, Demetrius maintains that ‘it also creates force to put the most striking part at the end, since if it is put in the middle, its point is blunted…’ (249). Again we find this in Callirhoe’s speech, where the most forceful word is left last in each sentence. The following two cases may serve as examples:  y3'# 0{ !  /!/1Ô ”//X! (3,10,4, instead of //Ô!y3'#0{!/!/1Ô).  "!213{ y" !$ 3!Ô# /!Ô# Ð"4/# (3,10,6, instead of L"4/€#"!213{y"!$3!Ô#/!Ô#  This word order not only allows the stress to fall on the last word, but it also links the final word with the preceding one, thus placing emphasis upon both and making the end of the sentence forceful: /!/1Ô //Ô! and 3!Ô#/!Ô#L"4/#

————— 27 28

‘Now it is indeed imperative for me to die.’ ‘For an orphan has been added to my misfortunes.’

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Other rhetorical devices found in the passage are the following: firstly, the repetition at the beginning of the lament („ z "!/!/1X . 2$/!/1X>f@/!/1X  Secondly, the succession of verbs in the Aorist (second person singular) in the part of the speech addressed to Aphrodite, which takes the form of a charge being brought against the goddess. The accusation is expressed by three successive pairs of verbs, one negative and one affirmative, stressing that Aphrodite did not do what she should have done, and that she did do what she should not have done: 2‚  1B01#f !X $01 /#f /"{0'/#f !X ,{2/#f {31/#f !X !}2/#   Thirdly, we have a homoioteleuton at the very end of the speech: /~ /"{/1<#3!0/1#4!1$Æ//~z"/Æ/3,10,8). Another feature that Demetrius sees as an integral part of forcefulness is kakophônia: ‘violence contributes to forcefulness in word-arrangement, for harsh sounds are often forceful, like rough roads.’32 (246)His examples of harshness of sound raise the question of the contemporary relevance of those categories. Demetrius based his study and observations about style on authors who wrote in the Attic Dialect,33 at a time when the koine in which Chariton wrote his novel was widely spoken. The koine of Chariton’s time had already undergone many changes in phonology and morphology34 and its vowel and consonant systems differed considerably from those of Attic.35 ————— 29

30 31

32

33

34

35

‘To die before or with (you) …to die even if after (you).’ The sequence of infinitive compounds with apothanein echoes Socrates in Plato’s Symposium (208D2–5). ‘Only you saw …you never showed …you delivered …you had no pity …you killed’. The term is used here as a synonym of dusphônia i.e. the combination of discordant sounds. Cf. Dion.H. (Dem. 20), who disapproves of the smoothness and softness of language in a text which ought to be ‘rough and harsh’ and have ‘almost the effect of a blow’ instead, otherwise it will lack ‘intensity and ‘force’. The Attic Dialect was undoubtedly the language of literary prose in Classical Greece and was employed not only by Athenians (such as Isocrates, Demosthenes and Plato) but also by men from other parts of Greece whose native dialects differed from it, (Aristotle, Theopompus of Chios, Anaximenes of Lampsacus). These changes are admittedly difficult to date with precision, not least because the literate few, from whom our literary evidence mainly comes, would naturally maintain in use words and forms which had already been replaced in everyday language. Besides, historical orthography makes phonological changes even more difficult to detect. In the case of the koine, such changes are normally given away by errors in papyrus letters and other documents. Browning (1983: 19–52, esp. 25–28); cf. Swain (1996: esp. 30–31) and Horrocks (1997: 67–70 and ch. 6). See also Kapsomenos (1985) and Andriotis (1992) It has been con-

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The overall effect was a number of new much softer sounds, which naturally raises the following question: would certain vowel and consonantal clashes sound as harsh to Hellenistic ears as they would have done to a Classical Greek? Could forcefulness still be achieved by means of harshness of sound in literature, even though in the everyday speech of the masses the same combination of sounds would not have had the same harsh effect as it would have done in the Classical period? It seems to me that Demetrius would not have included such a number of examples of harsh sounds in his handbook had he believed that there would be no practical use made of them. Moreover, if we accept the view that the majority of the people who read the Greek novels had a reasonably high level of education36 then we could assume that the average reader of Chariton’s work would still have the ability to identify in literature certain sounds as harsh (by Classical Greek standards) and perceive them as forceful, even though they may not have been pronounced in exactly the same way in everyday life. Such examples in Callirhoe’s lament are: 1.      

     

2$/!/1ÔX y  3îÆ  /31%!ã2/0$23$%!ã2/t  ÛP&!/!31 /"{/>f@Î  2/{!/  2#2}213/%/"»#  !X!}2/#$3~4!1"¼4!1$1! 

Rhetorical questions constitute another characteristic of forcefulness, according to Demetrius: ‘It is also forceful to express some points by asking the

—————

36

cluded that the complex vowel system of the Attic, consisting of five short and seven long vowels, was gradually replaced by a new system of only six short vowels and the second vowel of the diphthongs slowly disappeared. As for the consonant system, spelling mistakes and the transcription of linguistic borrowings, especially those from Latin, indicate that it had been simplified too. Bowie (1994) convincingly argues that the novel was known in intellectual circles, that ‘the novelists were steeped in sophistic literature, if not practising sophists themselves’, and that ‘their readership overlapped with the educated classes who read poetry, history, and occasionally philosophy and attended the lectures of sophists and philosophers.’; cf. Wesseling (1988) and S. A. Stephens (1990).

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audience questions rather than by making a statement …’ (279). These are also found in Callirhoe’s speech: 1. ‘For what hope is left any more to keep me alive?’  2. ‘Who could pray to such a goddess, who killed her own suppliant?’ t 3. ‘What crime had the warship committed for orientals to burn it, which not even the Athenians could vanquish?’   The questions here are seemingly addressed to Chaereas and Aphrodite, both of whom are of course absent from the scene. As Chariton has emphasised the absence of all other characters, it is not unreasonable to assume that what Demetrius calls the ‘akouontes’ are, in this case, none other than the readers, who automatically become the audience of this theatrical monologue. 37 At this point we may also think of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who points out that a powerful and forceful text invariably dictates the actions that must accompany the reading and that it stirs the emotions of the audience and has nearly the same effect on the reader as an oral delivery by the author himself would have had.38 Thus Isocrates’ lack of forcefulness in his political speeches is criticised on the ground that it results in a ‘virtual absence of spirit’ and a complete ‘lack of life and feelings in his style.’39 Perhaps the most interesting of the techniques recommended for deinotês,are the exairesthai along with the epanastasis (277–278), and the prosopopoeia (265–6). They are all said by Demetrius to give the speaker the opportunity of a histrionic delivery, and indeed would be appropriate for Callirhoe’s gooi in this case. The first two techniques are closely linked with each other, in that the exairesthaia rise in emotional tension in the speaker) normally causes the ————— 37

38 39 40

Chariton seems to acknowledge the theatrical dimension of certain scenes in his novel, e.g. in 5,8,2 when Callirhoe suddenly sees Chaereas (whom she thought dead) alive in court, and the narrator remarks: ‘Who could do justice to the scene in that courtroom? What dramatist ever staged such an extraordinary situation? An observer would have thought himself in a theatre filled with every conceivable emotion. All were there at once: tears, joy, astonishment, pity, disbelief, prayer.’ Dion.H. Dem. 22. Ibid. 18. Grube (1961, App. I, A) rightly observes that the very example from Demosthenes cited here by Demetrius for the exairesthai clearly shows that the word does not refer to elevation of style or to elaborate language, and therefore should not be confused with exairein

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epanastasis(a sudden rise in emotional tone). Demetrius explains that the epanastasis occurs ‘when in the middle [of what we are saying] we get emotionally aroused (exarthentes) and denounce someone’, and offers two examples, both from Demosthenes. The same type of emotional arousal is found in Callirhoe’s lament, when she suddenly interrupts her discourse to Chaereas to launch into a vehement invective against Aphrodite at the start and against the sea at the end. With short, clipped sentences and rhetorical questions, both fundamental characteristics of forcefulness as we have shown above, Callirhoe accuses them both of separating her from her husband. Her words are emotionally charged when she denounces Aphrodite first, whom she calls “unjust” (‘adike’  , and later the sea, which she calls “hateful” (‘miara’  Having Demetrius’ examples of epanastasis in mind, one can easily imagine Callirhoe altering the tone and volume of her voice at the change of addressee. The prosopopoeia is given by Demetrius a twofold definition: firstly, as personifying and making the personified figure speak, and secondly as bringing characters into the discourse in the form of dramatis personae (265–6). As far as the first definition is concerned, one could argue that the sea is personified in Callirhoe’s lament, since it is being charged with Chaereas’ murder and accused of Callirhoe’s enslavement, although it must be said that the personification is not made to speak in this case. As for the second type of personification, it renders a passage ‘much more vivid and forceful’, according to Demetrius, by turning it into some sort of ‘dramatic presentation’ (266). The above device is indeed employed by Chariton in this passage. In 3,10,5 Callirhoe does more than just commu—————

41

whose classical meaning is ‘to raise, to exalt’ (LSJ s.v.  /"' ) and it is so used in 122 and 123; the word exairesthai is used here in the sense of ‘getting excited’ to describe the emotional tension caused by the epanastasis (for which see following footnote), and it applies to the speaker. The word is often found to mean ‘rising up’ or even ‘rising up against, rebellion’ in Classical literature (LSJ s.v. /y23/2# and 2). In Demetrius it is used to describe the rise in the emotional tone which results from excitement in the speaker (LSJ s.v. /y23/2# , and as Grube (1961) points out, ‘the word does not seem to be used elsewhere in this sense or as a technical term’. Callirhoe’s lament is not the only example of such a rhetorical epanastasis in Chariton: in Book five, Mithridates seems to employ this very rhetorical technique (5,7,10), when towards the end of his speech (the style of which is strikingly theatrical) he raises his voice and asks for divine aid from the deities who rule Heaven and the Underworld; the epanastasis is there marked by the narrator, who observes that ‘taking up from this point, Mithridates raised his voice and uttered as though under divine inspiration …’ (5,7,10).

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nicate her thoughts; she acts them out in direct speech: ‘Until now I used to think in my misfortune, “Some day I shall see Chaereas and tell him all that I have suffered for him and this will endear me to him.” How overjoyed he will be to see our son!’ Admittedly this is dramatisation rather than personification, since it is only her own reflections that she is presenting in a more lively manner. However, this technique is not restricted only to Callirhoe’s mind, and the personification becomes more obvious when it is extended to other people’s thoughts, namely those of Chaereas and her parents: ‘At this moment the parents of both of us are sitting by the sea longing and waiting for our return, and whenever a ship is seen in the distance they say “Chaereas is bringing Callirhoe home!”’ The stage is set first with an introduction of the characters followed by a brief description of the set, and then, in direct speech, comes the line of the parents waiting in vain for their children to return. The personification in this case not only renders the description more vivid and the passage more forceful, but it clearly gives the soliloquy a dramatic character and makes it sound more like a theatrical monologue. This is not the only example of this type of personification in Chariton. The same technique is employed by other speakers too, e.g. by Mithridates when he strives to prove his innocence in court (5,6,7–5,7,10).42 So far I have tried to show that Callirhoe’s lament in Book three of Chariton possesses the main style-markers that Demetrius prescribes for the ‘forceful style’ (a style best exemplified by Demosthenes and ‘appropriate to censure’43). These include the accumulation of short clauses and periods, a marked lack of connectives, use of rhetorical questions, the personification, the sudden rise in the emotional tone, the juxtaposition of harsh sounds, and the use of rhetorical figures appropriate to forcefulness such as placing the most forceful word at the end of a sentence. I have also suggested that this speech has a theatrical quality, on the basis of its context, and, more specifically, the way in which the scene is introduced and presented. The theatricality of the passage is further reinforced by the use of rhetorical devices that allow or even require, according to Demetrius, a histrionic delivery: the use of rhetorical questions, the sudden rise ————— 42

43

Mithridates has the difficult task of refuting Dionysius’ arguments, which, we are told, ‘had impressed the audience’ (5,6,11). In an attempt to make his case even more impressive and as convincing as possible, he presents an elaborate hypothetical conversation between himself and the plaintiff! (5,7,1–7). Demetrius 301.

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in the tone resulting from a rise in the emotional tension in the speaker, and the personification. I shall now address the question of the tone of this passage.44 We are dealing here with what at first sight appears to be the serious lament of a young woman in a plight. She has been separated from her husband, she has died and has returned to life – twice – ,45 she has been sold as a slave and has been forced to live abroad away from her family and home, when she discovers that she is pregnant by Chaereas she is forced by the circumstances to remarry, always hoping that some day she will be reunited with her true love, and finally she finds out that Chaereas has been killed. One might argue that, under the circumstances, her tendency to mourn so often for her ordeals is understandable. But Chaereas is not really dead, which Callirhoe will be the very last one to find out, and he will come back to life just as she did in Book one. One might also argue that the tragic irony of Callirhoe’s ignorance is in accordance with the topoi and conventions of the genre, in which the ruling force of Fortune allows many sudden separations, unexpected reunions, astonishing revelations and other paradoxa to colour the incredible lives of its characters. However, it is difficult to ignore the humorous manner in which the author seems to handle tragic situations such as this, a manner often mirrored in more or less explicit comments and hints ex voce auctoris throughout the novel. And it is nearly impossible not to single out as highly unusual the fact that, in this scene, we have a woman declaiming.46 Not only that, but Callirhoe’s forceful and highly elaborate speech of reproach is levelled at none other than the goddess Aphrodite and the sea. At this point I would like to return to the first type of personification mentioned above and discuss briefly the use of a word from this passage, which I believe reflects the general tone of the whole speech. Personified or not, it is intriguing to note that the sea is qualified by the adjective miaros ————— 44

45

46

G. Anderson (1982, ch.2) has already detected a humorous and playful touch throughout the novel, and having established that Chariton ‘owes much to New Comedy’ he goes so far as to compare the characters from Callirhoe to characters from New Comedy. In the framework of this comparison he explores Chariton’s techniques of irony, including that of dramatic irony, which are used ‘to set up elaborate deceptions for the characters’. ‘As for Callirhoe, she experienced a second return to life.’ ( Callirhoe’s first ‘return to life’ (paliggenesia) was described in 1,1,15. Not surprisingly, it seems that women had been excluded from the teaching and practising of the art of declamation. See Russell (1983); cf. Richlin (1997).

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(3,10,8), which, in this context, does not mean ‘impure, sacrilegous’ or ‘offensive to moral feeling’, a meaning that occurs in Homer47 and Herodotus,48 and is also discussed by Aristotle,49 but rather ‘hateful, odious’.50 The latter meaning also occurs in tragedy,51 but it is particularly popular with orators. In fact, miaros seems to be one of the commonest epithets in the vocabulary of classical orators, who employ the term not in its traditional sense with direct connotations of impurity and moral pollution, but as a general imprecation when attacking their opponents.52 Its frequent recurrence in oratory, presumably, attests to the effectiveness of the term, but Aristophanes uses it too as a term of comic reproach.53 In Plato’s Phaedrus the word occurs in a semi-comic context. It comes up in the playful conversation between Socrates and Phaedrus before the former delivers his first speech. To Phaedrus’ serious threat never to read or tell Socrates of another discourse, the latter sarcastically replies: û// ò /"ÿ i# 1^ 1ã"1# 3| y 0"~ 4!ë!1ÔO11ƒÄ#54 It appears, therefore, that the legalistic tone of the indictment against Aphrodite is extended to the sea, which is being reproached with a term echoing forensic oratory. That this is what Chariton had in mind cannot be proved, but it seems likely enough that the strong term miaros with colourful connotations already from the Classical period, employed here as a term of reproach against thalassa which is being blamed for the ‘crime’ of contributing to the misery of a couple, is being used with a certain amount of irony. Callirhoe’s discourse is not impromptu but is a carefully structured and composed rhetorical speech. It starts off as a lament and suddenly takes the form of an indictment against Aphrodite and the sea. The forcefulness of the speech perhaps highlights the seriousness of Callirhoe’s plight, but at the same time it also underlines the role of the address as an accusation brought against a goddess and an element of nature, thus giving the passage a light ————— 47 48 49 50

51 52 53

54

E.g. used for Hector’s corpse in Il. 24,420. E.g. used for thêrion in Her. 2,47. Ar. Poetics 53B37–54A9. As translated by Reardon (1989); Goold’s translation as ‘cruel’ does not convey fully the meaning of the Greek miara in this passage. E.g. S.Ant. 746, S.Tr. 987. Moulinier (1952: 180, n.10) cites no less than fifty occurrences of the word in oratory. E.g. Ach. 182, 285, Eq. 218, 831. The superlative miarôtatos is also used extensively in Aristophanes. See O. J. Todd’s Index Aristophaneus (1932). ‘Oh, you wretch! What a nice way you found to make a lover of discourse do as you wish.’ (Pl. Phdr. 236E).

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touch of exaggeration. The theatrical element of the scene, on the other hand, in combination with the above characteristics gives the speech an over-thetop quality not suited to an otherwise serious lament. Was this passage deliberately composed as forceful in order to give the soliloquy an ironic tone? Is the reader really presented with a heart-rending lament or is this just a humorous melodramatic scene? Is this scene intended to move or amuse the reader? Athough it is impossible to answer with certainty any of the above questions, I would be inclined to see Callirhoe’s monologue as an example of Chariton’s ability to maintain a balance between pathos and irony, by injecting a light ironic twist into scenes which would otherwise be taken as serious, perhaps also reflected in the use of the adjective miarosdiscussed above. As for the reader’s response to this ‘forceful’ piece of rhetoric which also serves as the heroine’s lament for the death of her husband, I would think that it affords him ample opportunity for a second reading. In a world where rhetoric and oratory play a major part in education and in the culture more generally,55 rhetorical training inevitably moulds the novelist’s style of composition and at the same time also shapes the reader’s expectations of the novels. In the case of Callirhoe’s lament it would seem that, without excluding the less sophisticated reader, Chariton gives his educated readers the opportunity to get more pleasure out of this passage by enabling them to enjoy the text on a different level.56 Intelligent pepaideumenoi readers of Chariton, educated in a system to which rhetoric was central and being well familiar with the usual rhetorical exercises and at least some of the stylistic ————— 55

56

T. Morgan (1998: esp. ch. 6); Horrocks (1997: ch. 5, esp. 72–73, 79–83 and 97–98); Swain (1996: 89–100). A view expressed – but not elaborated – by Wesseling (1988: 75–76) mainly in connection with Petronius, Apuleius, Achilles Tatius, Longus and Heliodorus. It can be inferred that, by rejecting Perry’s theory about the readership of Callirhoe, Wesseling (op. cit.) adopts the same view for Chariton too (although not without scepticism) and concludes that “perhaps the real audience [of Chariton’s novel] was of a more varied composition.”. Wesseling also seems to include Chariton in the group of novelists whose intended audience was “probably the intellectuals in the first place but not exclusively”. The idea is exploited by Hägg (1994: 53–55) who presents convincingly the likelihood that Chariton’s novel required primarily but not exclusively a well-educated reader whose /01“/ would undoubtedly enable him to appreciate the novel on a different level and therefore give him the advantage of getting greater satisfaction out of it, without at the same time making it impossible for less educated readers to find delight – although possibly to a lesser degree – in reading it too. Bowie (1996: 95–96) also seems to accept the possibility of a “multi–level” reading of Chariton’s novel.

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theories of the period, would probably see more in this passage than just a tragic monologue. They would see an unusual type of female lament, vaguely reminiscent of Homeric models, dressed up with the stylistic features suitable for a forceful Demosthenic accusatory speech. All this, uttered by a woman and delivered in a theatrical way, would probably leave the discerning reader with more than just sympathy for the heroine. To the eyes of the educated reader, the tragic character of the text is undercut not only by the narrative comments surrounding it, but also by its forceful style. To the rest, the text is just one more of Callirhoe’s tragic monologues. The subtle reminder that Chaereas was still alive, which follows the lament, would probably enhance the tragic effect of the scene in the eyes of the ‘common’ type of reader, whereas it would merely justify the educated reader’s more sceptical reaction to Callirhoe’s monologue. In other words, the first type of reader would be swept along by the heroine’s mourning, adopt more or less her standpoint and follow her response to the crisis, whilst the second type of reader will form their own views and draw their own conclusions independently from Callirhoe’s reactions. Therefore, the only difference between the reaction to this passage of the unsuspecting, ordinary reader and that of the perceptive, well-educated reader would be that the latter would read it with more sceptical detachment. As the plot unfolds, the two categories of readers follow the same story-line and their understanding of the passage is the same, but, while the first group remain at the basic level of interpretation, only the second group will be able to go a step further and appreciate the ironic undertones in the text. In this case-study I have chosen to examine an erotic speech from Chariton’s Callirhoe, in which amatory rhetoric is prominent and there is scope for debate about the tone of the speeches. My aim was to give an example of how the study of speech-making in the Greek novels, an important and under-researched area, can help us in our interpretation of these works. Close attention to the rhetorical character of the Greek novels can have important implications for long-standing questions about the readership as well as the literary objectives of the novels, and it can contribute to placing them within the larger literary discourse of the late Hellenistic and Roman Imperial period.57 ————— 57

I am indebted to Prof. C. J. Gill for his very useful comments on this paper and generally for his help and support throughout its preparation.

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Bibliography Alexiou, M. 1974. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, Cambridge. Alvares, J. 1997. ‘Chariton’s Erotic History’, American Journal of Philology 118, 613–29. Anderson, G. 1982. Eros Sophistes: Ancient Novelists at Play, California. Andriotes, N. 1992. 23!"/3#1
# 22/#Ý3ÿ221"#1ÿ31#Thessaloniki. Bartsch, S. 1989. Decoding the Ancient Novel: The Reader and the Role of Description in Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius, Princeton. Billault, A. 1981. ‘Aspects du roman de Chariton’, Information littéraire 33, 205– 211. Bowie, E. L. 1994. ‘The Readership of Greek Novels in the Ancient World’, in: Tatum 1994, 435–459. — 1996. ‘The Ancient Readers of the Greek Novels’, in: Schmeling 1996, 87–106. Browning, R. 1983. Medieval and Modern Greek, Cambridge. Conte, G. B. 1996. The Hidden Author: an Interpretation of Petronius’ ‘Satyricon’ (trans.), Berkeley. Fusillo, M. 1996. ‘Il romanzo antico come paraletteratura? Il topos del racconto di ricapitolazione’ in: O. Pecere – A. Stramaglia (edd.), La letteratura di consumo nel mondo Greco-Latino, Atti del convegno internazionale, Cassino, 14–17 settembre 1994. Goold, G. P. (ed.). 1995. Chariton, Callirhoe (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, Mass. – London. Grube, G. M. A. 1961. A Greek Critic: Demetrius on Style, Toronto. Hägg, T. 1971. Narrative Technique in Ancient Greek Romances. Studies of Chariton, Xenophon Ephesius and Achilles Tatius, Stockholm. — 1994. ‘Orality, Literacy and the “Readership” of the Early Greek Novel’ in: R. Eriksen (ed.), Contexts of Pre-Novel Narrative: the European Tradition, Berlin – New York, 47–81. Helms, J. 1966. Character Portrayal in the Romance of Chariton, The Hague – Paris. Hernández Lara, C. 1990. ‘Rhetorical Aspects of Chariton of Aphrodisias’ in: Giornale Italiano di Filologia XLII.2, Rome. — 1994. Estudios sobre el aticismo de Caritón de Afrodisias, Amsterdam. Horrocks, G. 1997. Greek: a History of the Language and its Speakers, London – New York. Hunter, R. 1983. A Study of ‘Daphnis and Chloe’, Cambridge. — 1994. ‘History and Historicity in the Romance of Chariton’, ANRW 34.2, 1055– 1086. Innes, D. C. (ed. and trans.) 1995. ‘Demetrius. On Style’ in: G. P. Goold (ed.), Aristotle XXIII. Aristotle, Poetics – Longinus, On the Sublime – Demetrius, On Style (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, Mass. – London. Kapsomenos, S. 1985. ú323!"/3#1
# 22/#Thessaloniki. Konstan, D. 1994. Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres, Princeton.

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Laplace, M. 1997. ‘Le roman de Chariton et la tradition de l’éloquence et de la rhétorique’, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 140.1, 38–71. Morgan, T. 1998. Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds, Cambridge. Moulinier, L. 1952. Le pur et l’impur dans la pensée des grecs d’Homère à Aristote (Etudes et Commentaires, 12), Paris. Rademacher, L. (ed.). 1966. Demetrius Phalereus, De Elocutione, Stuttgart: Teubner. Reardon, B. P. (ed.). 1989. Collected Ancient Greek Novels, Berkeley – Los Angeles – London. — 1996. ‘Chariton’, in: Schmeling 1996, 309–335. — 1999. ‘Theme, Narrative and Structure in Chariton’ in: Swain 1999, 163–188. Ruiz Montero, C. 1991. ‘Aspects of the Vocabulary of Chariton of Aphrodisias’, CQ 41, 484–489. — 1991a. ‘Caritón de Afrodisias y los Ejercicios Preparatorios de Elio Teón’, in: L. Ferreres (ed.), Actes del IXe Simposi de la Secció Catalana de la SEEC, Treballs en Honor de Virgilio Bejarano, vol. 2, 709–713, Barcelona. Russell, D. A. 1983. Greek Declamation, Cambridge. Scarcella, A. M. 1990. ‘Nomos nel romanzo greco d’amore’, Giornale Italiano di Filologia 42, 243–66. Schmeling, G. (ed.). 1996. The Novel in the Ancient World, Leiden – New York – Köln. Stephens, S. A. 1990. ‘“Popularity” of the Ancient Novel’ in: Tatum and Vernazza 1990, 148–149. — 1994. ‘Who Read Ancient Novels?’, in: Tatum 1994, 405–418. Swain, S. 1996. Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World AD 50–250, Oxford. — (ed.). 1999. Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel, Oxford. Tatum, J. (ed.). 1994. The Search for the Ancient Novel, Baltimore. Toohey, P. 1999. ‘Dangerous Ways to Fall in Love: Chariton I 1,5–10 and VI 9,4’, Maia 51: 259–275. Usher, S. (ed. and trans.). 1974. Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The critical essays, volume I (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, Mass. – London. Wesseling, B. 1988. ‘The Audience of the Ancient Novels’, GCN I, 67–79.

Power of the Prude: Configurations of the Feminine in the Greek Novel KATHARINE HAYNES

The Open University

Introduction My choice of topic would first seem to merit some sort of apologia. ‘Configurations of the feminine’ seems perilously close to previous investigations of the prominent female protagonists. Such readings have ranged from a sensitive utilisation of reception theory to test the possibility of female reader identification1 through to analyses of the influence of religion, sometimes offered by advocates of the Mysterientexte theory.2 Why then revisit such an apparently well worked field? Part of the answer must lie in the fact that however useful the insights into generic gender patterning produced by these approaches, no one totalising theory can fully explain the ambiguities and tensions inherent in the novels’ presentation of ————— 1

2

The ‘female readership’ hypothesis has, in the past, functioned as the most popular means of explaining the prominence of the heroines. Such an approach will often take as its starting point the vexed questions of improvements in status, and levels of female literacy, and focus upon the centrality of the heroine as a possible point of identification for a female readership. See for example Sandy 1982, 61, Hägg 1983, 95–96, Johne 1987, 24; 1989, 158; 1996, 204, 207, Holzberg 1995, 35, and Fusillo 1996, 304. For a more overtly theoretical approach see Winkler 1990, Elsom 1992, Montague 1992, and Egger 1994. For the strong heroines as manifestations of the goddess, most famously see Merkelbach 1962,337. By identifying novelistic character types as ‘… nur Figuranten in einem heiligen Drama...’ he seemed to deny the genre its status as literature. For a similar stance see Witt’s 1971, 245 identification of Anthia as Isis Lysikomos and Hani’s 1978, 272 reading of Heliodoros as cultic narrative. Doody 1996, 172 has more recently provided a far more fluid interpretation of ‘religious influence’ that has interesting consequences for our reading of the heroines. She states that the novel ‘… has a religious grounding in the sense of the holy in human existence. And it has a high sense of the holy in all that may be called ‘feminine’…’

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gender. My own methodology then, is necessarily pluralistic. Here I have chosen to fuse an anthropological approach to my broadly historicist orientation, enabling me to recast the debate as the ‘constructed feminine’ rather than the well-worn ‘images’ or ‘portrayal of women’. Shifting the focus away from the vexed question of improvements in female status and from ‘real women’ may generate a new realisation of the polysemic qualities of gender, and how its intersections with the shifting categories of race and status may function as part of a wider discourse of self-definition.

The Constructed Feminine At the outset I wish to clarify what I mean by the ‘constructed feminine’. This has been formulated in different ways, by scholars working in different areas, though it rests upon the basic assumption that gender is capable of functioning as a means of communication, or basic organising principle of culture or society in general. To focus upon one of the more famous expressions of this belief, Lévi-Strauss 1963, 61 visualised the regulations surrounding marriage and kinship-systems ‘… as a kind of language, a set of processes permitting the establishment … of a certain kind of communication’. The ‘mediating factor’ being … the women of the group, who are circulated between clans, lineages, or families, in place of the words of the group, which are circulated between individuals … Woman may thus be reduced to sign, and the closed body of the chaste woman may come to signify or embody the cultural integrity of a particular social group.3 My application of anthropological theory does not, however, seek to deny socio-historical specificity. For example, I recognise that the utilisation of the female as projection of the male self would be less likely to ————— 3

This Levi-Straussian conceptualisation of woman as sign is hardly new, though it remains a fruitful way of investigating gender patterns in Classical texts. See for example the comments of Sorkin Rabinowitz 1993, and Zeitlin 1996. See also de Beauvoir’s 1972 realisation of the woman as Other, and in a different context Higonnet’s discussion 1994,11 of the female body as metonymy for the nation in nationalist texts of the Renaissance onwards.

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occur at times when gender politics themselves had become the focus of social anxiety. 18th/19th century novels In passing we might mention the English novel of the 18th and 19th centuries as a rather neat exemplification of this differing sexual ideology. Narrative patterns relating to the significance of physical integrity and female subjectivity appear to be grounded in a particular brand of political reality that goes hand in hand with an interest in social reform. So in Richardson’s Pamela4 as in Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles the locus of chastity is firmly established as the heroine’s body. Pamela, the poor servant, struggles to keep her virtue intact, and is rewarded both financially and socially by becoming her master’s wife. This novel was criticised at the time of its first publication for its so-called levelling tendencies: encouraging poor women to set as great a store by their honour as the rich. Tess too was perceived as an attack on bourgeois mores, for to the story of a girl seduced when young and later rejected by her hypocritical husband the author chose to add the provocative subtitle A Pure Woman. In both texts the female protagonist is permitted to emerge as subject in a far more direct and unproblematic manner than ever encountered in the Greek Novel. In Pamela the epistolary form privileges the heroine’s thoughts and feelings, functioning as the textual antithesis of Kleitophon’s first person narration, a technique which persistently situates the heroine as object of the male gaze. The eponymous Tess is also allowed to insist upon her individuality in a manner which has interesting implications for our readings of the novelistic heroines. Thus, when for her husband Angel, Tess is … no longer the milkmaid but a visionary essence of woman – a whole sex condensed into one typical form… He called her Artemis, Demeter, and other fanciful names. Tess is allowed to reassert her identity, her sense of self as a woman, with all her faults, rather than an ideal: ————— 4

This was first published in 1740.

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‘Call me Tess’, she would say askance, and he did.5 In contrast, more secure identifications of the female protagonists with various female deities regularly punctuate the texts of the Greek Novels. Although such narrative cues have of course been a focus for any scholar wishing to read these fictions as cultic allegory, it is perhaps more significant that these identifications will often, though admittedly not exclusively, occur in the public sphere, situating the heroine as silent civic spectacle.6

Real Women? This brief excursus has allowed us to focus upon the extent to which novelistic chastity has become dislocated from the bodies of real women and transformed into some sort of social signification. Narrative patterns such as Kallirhoe’s bigamous second union with Dionysios alert the reader to the instability of the conceptualisation of chastity in the genre; formulated as loyalty by Chariton, innocence by Longos and purity by Heliodoros. Whatever the precise configuration there is a sense in which the whole canon has become suffused with an aura of 2'4"!2ƒ: an impression strengthened by linguistic analysis of the usage of this word and its compounds in the extant texts. Although it refers to women on 27 occasions, on a further 18 it specifically relates to male behaviours. There still exists an imbalance in the standards of sexual continence set for men and women, yet scenes such as Theagenes’ chastity test7 demonstrate a surprising concern with the purity of the male body. Goldhill 1995,4 has viewed these generic patterns as symptomatic of ————— 5

6

7

Hardy 1891, Tess of the D’Urbevilles, 135. For an interesting parallel see Chariton 2,3 where Dionysios mistakes Kallirhoe for the goddess Aphrodite. In this case the heroine’s discomfiture is very much bound up with her loss of real status: her new master’s mistake being juxtaposed with the steward’s sharp reminder of her new status as slave. See for example Chariton 3,2 where Kallirhoe is identified as Aphrodite at her wedding to Dionysios, and 4.7 for a similar reaction as she travels to Babylon. At Xen. Ephes. 1,2 Anthia is closely identified with Artemis as she walks in procession with the other maidens at the festival of the goddess. The situation is more complex in Heliodoros, as the bandits mistake Charikleia for Artemis or Isis (1,2) though the omniscient narrator is quick to assure us of the superficiality of this observation (1,2, 1,7). While it is true that this identification does not occur in the civic context, the coding of the beach as liminal space might make this display of Hellenic superiority, juxtaposed to barbarian incredulity, even more significant. Hld. Aithiopika 10, 9.

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an on-going dialogue on the subject of self-control. Although this discourse is as much playful as serious, its centrality to the constitution of the elite male subject, as readers of Foucault 1985, 1988 will be aware, does not appear in doubt. A preliminary survey of the Greek canon isolates several passages where the female as object is co-opted as part of the construction of the male subject. Think of Kallirhoe, who conceptualises herself as a burden, a piece of household furniture, a desirable commodity passed from hand to hand, from man to man. Her complaint makes it clear that the exceptional beauty which renders her valuable has also diminished her: ‘That is why I have been handed over like a mere chattel to I know not whom…’ 8 The famous scene where she debates the fate of her unborn child defines the overriding consideration in the question of life and death as loyalty to Chaireas: I shall give my view first: I want to die Chaereas’s wife and his alone. To know no other husband – that is dearer to me than parents or country or child.9 The equally stirring scene at Ach. Tat. 6.11 where Leukippe bemoans her fate and articulates her feelings for the hero in contrast situates the heroine in terms of her relationship to those very social structures rejected by Kallirhoe. She states: Thersandros, cease to regard me as a slave. I am the daughter of a Byzantine general, and wife of one of the leading men of Tyre. I am not Thessalian, and my name is not Lakaina. This is an insult imposed by pirates who robbed me even of my name. My husband is Kleitophon; my country Byzantium; Sostratos is my father and Pantheia my mother. 10 ————— 8

9

10

Chariton 1,14: ‘0x 3!ã3! i# 21ã!# /"10 !X !Ï0/ 32’ The heroine is also termed 4!"3! or freight, another graphic image of objectification at 1.10 by the tomb robbers, and on another six occasions through the text. Chariton 2,11: ‘„z!^"…33||…!4/!/Ý{'x"!/1Ô /"{!$ !$ $} 3!ã3 ! /~ !{' 10! /~ /3"0!# /~ 3{!$ 1Ô"/ 0"€#3{"!$|/1Ôö Ach. Tat. 6,16,4-6: ‘}1!2Ä#0"y!0!1Ï/-{"2/0"123"/3!ã$y3" 1<~ û$/3' "…3!$ 3í $"' $}Ý !X 1<~ -133/} !X /!ã/ y// ]"# /]3 23~ 1"/3}Ý 1Å231$/ /~ 3!\!/ }" !
13!4í /3"~# û$y3! …23"/3!#/3}"}3"y1/’

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It is also surely significant that her name is only indirectly alluded to, thus aiding in the general sense of self erasure. Of course, it is not my intention to claim that the question of female subjectivity in the novel is simple and unproblematic. To take such a stance not only threatens to swamp the subtler insights of feminist influenced theory in a deluge of generalisations but also seeks to deny the complexity of the texts themselves. If we are prepared, in Fetterly’s terminology,11 to ‘read against the text’ we may, in our first example, view an object whose keen articulation of events could function as a small yet significant assertion of her own subjectivity. Yet even with this coda, it surely remains true that any selection of passages chosen to illustrate the heroines’ outspokenness or ‘independence’ will equally well highlight the issue of individuality. In this context it is not the nature of the speech or act which becomes important, but the question of on whose behalf it is being enacted.

The Christian Context It appears to make sense that the anthropological notion of ‘woman as sign’ might gain more currency in any time-period where a particular group feels the need to define itself within the larger social context. To establish whether the Second Sophistic, as the floruit of the Greek Novel can be viewed as such a time it seems wise to marshal some other literary comparanda from the same era, which might lend themselves to such a reading. To this end I will now turn to my second control, that of Christian texts circulating outside the boundaries of the orthodox community, and to another set of prominent heroines. In this case my focus lies on the manner in which the conceptualisation of the ideal female as bride or as virgin or male can come to stand as the clearest expression of the early church’s divided attitude to social conformity. At one end of the spectrum we find the exhortation to the Ephesians (5.28–29)12 emphasising reintegration, conformity and stability: ————— 11

12

Although Fetterly’s work focuses on American novels, her invitation to scholars to ‘unpack’ or ‘resist’ the dominant discourse as represented in a text, by choosing to concentrate upon those areas which may (incidentally) empower female characters, remains useful for those working on more ancient fictional forms. See especially 1978, xxiii. Ephesians 5.28–9: ‘]3'# L41!$2 != 0"1# /» 3x# /$3í $/Ô/# i# 3x /$3í 2…/3/ S /í 3| /$3!ã $/Ô/ /$3€ /¼Ý !X01~# y" !31 3|

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So, in this way husbands ought to love their own wives, as they love their own bodies. The man who loves his wife loves himself, for no-body ever hated his own flesh, but cares for it and cherishes it, just as Christ cares for the church. The social institution of marriage is elevated as the most appropriate emblem of Christ’s relationship with the congregation. In total contrast, at the other end of this ideological spectrum the Christian experience is explored through the representation of the assumption, by females, of traditionally male roles and prerogatives. Strong female figures such as Thecla and Perpetua, have, like the novelistic heroines, generated much speculation with regard to possible female reader identification,13 and with possibly more justification, given the emphasis on the themes of female friendship and solidarity. The power that they possess does also, however, in its reversal of normal biological and social roles, come to signal the transformative power of salvation. Thecla rejects her suitor Thamyris to follow Paul (20), and reinforces her abandonment of her allotted social function by her cutting of hair (25) and later by her adoption of male attire (40). She definitively demonstrates her new found autonomy with her aggressive counter attack on the civic dignitary Alexandros, ripping his cloak and throwing his crown from his head (26). This offence causes her to be condemned ad bestias, the ultimate confirmation of her place beyond social boundaries (27). Perpetua also emerges as a powerful figure, assuming a leadership role in prison and the events leading up to her death in the amphitheatre. This is in spite of the fact that she is only newly baptised as a Christian, there are men present in the band of prisoners, and she does not hold a formal office. On one occasion she persuades the prison officer not to maltreat the Christian prisoners (16,2), and on another she objects when the Christian woman are forced to dress as priestesses of the goddess Ceres (18,4). What is most significant, however, is her almost complete disassociation from her normal biological function. Perpetua, the young mother, hands over her infant son to the care of her father, and in answer to her prayers the child feels no more need for her milk, and she experiences no further discomfort in her breasts ————— 13

/$3!ã 2y"/ 221 ö 3"{41 /~ y1 /X3}Ý /„# /~ M "23€# 3| 2/Ý’ See Kraemer 1992,153 and Bremmer 1996, 1998.

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(6.10). This abandonment of her femininity is emphasised by Perpetua’s dream of her forthcoming ordeal in the arena. Instead of being thrown to the beasts she is ordered to fight a gigantic Egyptian. She is stripped and finds herself to be male.(10,7)14 So here we have the ultimate affront to patriarchal sensibilities: the woman who acts male, and the one who becomes male. Perpetua’s denial of her maternal role, and Thecla’s determined virginity also send out a different social signal from that of the chaste woman. MacDonald 1996, 180, referring to Thecla claims that The woman whose chastity was beyond question to such an extent that she neither married nor remarried came to symbolise the boundaries that separated the whole community from the outside world.15 Virginity is a desirable characteristic in the potential citizen bride. Perpetual virginity though is desocialising.

Reading Woman What implications does this have for our reading of woman in the novel? Scholarly interpretations of the relation of the novel to society have so far fallen into two categories. On the one hand the perceived difference between the sterile virginity of a Thecla and the marital fidelity of the novelistic protagonists has prompted those working in the field of early Christian literature to polarise these particular Christian texts and the pagan novels into asocial and social standpoints.16 Marriage, the means of the production of the next generation of citizens, is a reassuring microcosm of the social order. The association of romantic love with marriage in the genre is viewed as an attempt to render it palatable, and thus act as a goad to civic responsibility. ————— 14

15

16

Salisbury 1997, 109 interprets this as a metaphor of her change from catechumen to baptised Christian. She states ‘… the most compelling part of this image is its signalling of transformation. If one is looking for a metaphor of personal change, one cannot do better than a transformation of one’s gender, which is at the heart of one’s self-identity.’ Similarly see Clark 1998,107: ‘The closed body of the committed virgin symbolised the triumph over generation and corruption, and thus over mortality.’ See Cooper 1996, 24. For a similar view from a scholar working in the area of the novel see Segal 1984,90.

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This is a very neat hypothesis, and at first glance a convincing one. It is true, as we previously observed, that the heroines are often conceptualised in a manner which seems to reinforce their civic role, displaying their outstanding beauty and superiority as representatives of the city’s elite at public festivals.17 It is equally true that marriage plays an important part in the plot dynamic, functioning as it does as the narrative telos. However, certain textual signals still serve to disrupt this reading. Narrative cues such as the seeming dominance of the heroines, and the constant privileging of eros over gamos generate some discomfort. Does the genre act as confirmation of an improvement in female status, if such a nebulous phenomenon could ever be so quantified, or is it rather expressive of the new emphasis on the personal and the individual?18 To argue our way out of this closed circle, perhaps we need to do some conceptual re-coding. Instead of labelling patterns ‘personal’ or ‘female’, perhaps they make better sense when envisaged as ‘transgressive’ or ‘provocative.’ It is too easy to identify the upper class Greek male (the most likely candidate as primary intended reader)19 as somehow synonymous with the amorphous mass labelled the ‘social order’. Perhaps the situation of the civic elites in the Greek East under Roman rule is more subtle and complex than the apparent cultural assimilation or domination that scholars have been happy to locate.20 Instead of a nostalgic retreat into a pre-Roman Classical ————— 17

18

19

20

In the Roman period the image of female virtue could be exploited by the Greek elites in the context of euergetism. Women from the best families achieved a certain amount of prominence as civic benefactors. It is important to remember though that such behaviour was securely hemmed in by convention: inscriptions stress traditional female virtues and family connections. Even though women could become magistrates in certain circumstances they are rarely found occupying positions which would require them to speak in public. See in general MacMullen 1980, 216, Lefkowitz 1983, 56–57 and van Bremen 1996, 166, 186. Certainly there has been a school of scholarly interpretation, perhaps in part influenced by Dodds’1965 characterisation of the period as an ‘Age of Anxiety’ which has viewed the novelistic gender dynamics as expressive of individual fears and aspirations. See Reardon 1971, 401; 1982, 6, and more recently MacAlister 1991, 40 and Konstan 1994, 231 for slightly different expositions of the same basic standpoint. For recent expositions of this view see Stephens 1994 and Bowie 1994. See Bremmer 1998 for the most up-to-date discussion of ‘external’ evidence for a female readership. For a subtle analysis of the situation see Woolf 1994, 135. He defines the cultural positions occupied by Greece and Rome not so much as distinct division or cultural fusion, but rather a ‘dynamic tension’ which functioned as a principal structuring element of both societies. This situation continued until the barbarian invasions and Christianisation of the Empire necessitated the re-drawing of the cultural map.

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Golden Age,21 maybe the genre is, as Swain 1996, 109 has recently hypothesised ‘… another outlet for the cultural ideals and formulas of the elite, … another expression of their cultural hegemony.’22 The presentation of the heroine becomes an important weapon in this cultural conflict. Conventional enough to confirm male subjectivity, her carefully circumscribed reversal of the usual gender dynamic may be a deliberate and calculated affront to the bourgeois Imperial version of civic morality.

Interactions with the Barbarian Male The heroines’ interactions with figures such as the barbarian male function as the best expression of the genre’s somewhat ambiguous relation to social structures, and to more traditional representations of masculinity and femininity. Consider first, at one end of the ideological spectrum, Anthia, whose violent defence of her honour appears to exemplify the genre’s cautiously subversive stance towards convention. Margaret Doody has categorised Anthia’s stabbing of the would-be rapist Anchialos as substantially similar to Thecla’s lively counter attack on Alexandros, member of the civic elite. She reminds us that ‘Rome’s Lucretia exhibited her chastity and propriety by killing herself.’ (Doody 1996, 76) However, there remains some significant differences in both the characterisation of the male attacker, and the conceptual coding of the space in which the attack occurs. Firstly Alexandros’ identification with the social order appears relatively straightforward, while Anchialos appears, superficially at least, to be a more marginal figure, functioning beyond the social pale. Secondly, Thecla’s appearance in the public street, in a space traditionally coded as male destabilises normative perceptions of status, respectability and availability.23 Anthia, on the other hand, is unwilling, and in some senses unable, to leave the robbers’ cave after the attack. We are told that despite her fear, and desire to quit the scene: ‘… that was impossible; she could scarcely travel alone, and there was no-one to ————— 21 22

23

See Scobie 1973,19 and Holzberg 1995, 47. Similarly see Levin 1977, 26 on the novel as perpetuating a set of cultural values. More generally on the conscious archaism in the literature of the Second Sophistic as symptomatic of a Hellenic drive towards re-definition see Alcock 1993, 7. On the coding of the public realm in Roman Greece as elite and male see Økland 1998, 128.

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show her the way…’ 24. Possessed of enough spirit and presence of mind to defend herself, she cannot leave her allotted sphere even to save her life.25 Metaphorically she would be as unable to make her way along a street in her native Ephesos as she would be in a barbarian landscape.26 This streak of seeming conventionality in the face of extreme adversity at first sight confirms the conservatism sometimes ascribed wholesale to the genre. However, perhaps ultimately more telling is the heroines’ appropriation of another ‘typically male’ attribute; eloquence. Leaving aside these rare displays of aggression, the most significant tactic employed by the heroines in the defence of their honour has to be their use of rhetoric. Brigitte Egger 1988, 60 has focused upon the female protagonists’ emotional omnipotence as the defining characteristic in their apparent predominance, and yet coupled with this unconscious erotic power is the ability to manipulate situations on the social level. See for example, Kallirhoe’s well-judged response to the preliminary advances of the Great King, made through his eunuch Artaxates. Artaxates’ words struck at Callirhoe’s heart like a sword. She pretended not to understand. ‘May the gods continue to be gracious to the King’, she said, ‘and he to you, for taking pity on an unfortunate woman. Let him release me all the sooner from my worry, I beg, by deciding the issue, so that I may no longer be a burden to the Queen either.’ 27

————— 24

25

26

27

Xen. Ephes. 4, 5: ‘ 3!ã3! }%/! 2Ý !\31 x" - M0€# /X3Ç 1\!"!# 2 !\31 M  21!#3|!"1/…’ For an interesting parallel see the behaviour of the eponymous Kalligone PSI 981:35–42, whose reaction in the face of adversity is more confident: threatening to kill the man who has removed her sword to prevent her harming herself. Evidence from the fragmentary novelistic texts reinforces the impression that, in their representation of gender, as in so many other respects, the fully extant novels stand as a relatively homogeneous group. Similarly see Kallirhoe’s attitude when left alone in the shrine of Aphrodite: she does not dare leave on her own, and has to be led away by Leonas (Chariton 2, 3). She is ashamed (/<0!${). The conceptual dynamic is different in Longos: the woods may function as alternative ‘private sphere’ given the association of nature with the feminine principle. The arrival of the townsfolk causes Chloe to flee and take refuge in the countryside (Longus 4, 14): ‘… /<0121Ô2//~4!1Ô2/…’ Chariton 6, 5: ‘
/"0z1X‚#3|/"0/}/y1"Y€ 4!$#3!ã!$Ý "!21!1Ô3!0z|2${//~“1!~”42~“A1ë/21Ô0/{!12!~0z1Ô!# Q311Ô31$/Ô/0$23$%Æ0{!/»33!// y3'13Æ#4"!30!#/"32/# 3|"2A/{3!%í0z3Ç/20”

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Biting back her justified anger, this and later delicate evasions stress her intelligence, good breeding and heightened social awareness, and avoid the violent retaliation that would follow any direct refusal.28 The sparse nature of Xenophon’s prose means that we lack such detailed displays of rhetorical persuasiveness, yet there are repeated references to Anthia’s ability to concoct a lying tale. She is easily able to pander to her captors’ preconceptions. Psammis, with his barbarian credulity in matters religious is capable of reading her as consecrated virgin (3, 11), while for the brothel-keeper she expertly creates an alternative history that emphasises violence and possession (5, 7). In Achilles Tatius’ novel Leukippe, far from being cowed by the threats of her master Thersandros, and Sosthenes’ suggestions of further torture, takes ownership of these threats in a speech full of fire and passion: ‘Bring on the instruments of torture: the wheel – here, take my arms and stretch them, the whips – here is my back, lash away; the hot irons – here is my body for burning; bring the axe as well – here is my neck, slice through! Watch a new contest: a single woman competes with all the engines of torture and wins every round.’ 29 The repeated imperatives generate a feeling of immediacy and urgency in a portion of text that has the flavour of a Christian martyr account. The speech has the effect of upsetting Thersandros’ equilibrium and so helping her remain chaste. Finally we may turn to Heliodoros for a playful manipulation of the stereotypical image of the respectable woman. The remarkable Charikleia deceives the audience of assembled bandits with a demure display of apparent compliance in which she demonstrates a keen awareness of male attitudes to female speech. Before an accomplished display of rhetoric designed to delay the celebration of her marriage to the bandit King she disingenuously claims that : ‘It would have been more fitting for my brother

————— 28

29

See also 1, 11 where Kallirhoe’s remains acutely aware of her true plight on Theron’s vessel, but plays along with his plans to ensure her own safety. At 2, 5 she flatters the urbane Dionysios with appeals to his cultured background. Ach. Tat. 6, 21: ‘3x# /2y!$# /"y232! 41"{3' 3"!%Ý <0!‚ %1Ô"1# 31{3' 41"{3' /~ y23/#Ý <0!‚ í3! 3$3{3' !{3' ã"Ý <0!‚ 2í/ /{3' 41"{3' /~ 20"!Ý <0!‚ 0{" 24/{3' í/  1y2/21 /Ý"€#y2/#3x#/2y!$# '13//$}/~y3/¼’

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Theagenes here to speak, for I think that silence becomes a woman, and it is for a man to respond among men.’30 These examples may have highlighted the heroines’ ability to persistently out-manoeuvre their would be seducers, and yet they have also drawn attention to the apparent diversity of the male antagonists as a category. Previously assembled under the umbrella term ‘barbarian male’ we find genuine upper class foreigners such as Psammis and the Great King, next to bourgeois bandits like Thyamis, and Greek citizens like Thersandros. Barbarity, of course, cannot itself function as a stable category in a canon where texts may be authored by those living on the periphery of the Greek world.31 Instead of isolating barbarity as a significant classification, it might be more fruitful, in our examination of the male antagonists, to focus on those traits which are alien to the novel’s admittedly idiosyncratic version of correct masculine behaviours. In addition to the negative portrayal of sexual aggression we also discover a lack of full authorial endorsement for the traditional brand of heroic masculinity that elevates martial prowess. This may be clearly seen in Chariton’s novel where Dionysios is awarded the heroine as a prize for his bravery (7, 5). His glorious aristeia actually avails him nothing, since Aphrodite has already ensured Kallirhoe’s return to her first husband. For the mannered Achilles Tatius the undoubted courage of a Dionysios is replaced by the mindless aggression of a Thersandros32 while in Longos’ pastoral physical force descends to the level of farce. The Dorkon-wolf is attacked by dogs (1, ————— 30

31

32

Hld. Aith. 1, 21–22: ‘Mz!#1"!1014î3îî-1/{13!ƒ3ëݍ"{1x" !Ï/$/~z2|0"~0z"20"y2Ý’ See for example Briquel-Chatonnet 1992, 194 for a useful discussion of the representation of Phoenicians within the genre, containing the observation of a tension between two competing ideological strands. On the one hand the deployment of a set of well-worn clichés including an inclination towards luxury, debauchery and piracy seems to be needed to provide foreign flavour, and to induce a feeling of disorientation: allusion to known stereotypes may create the illusion of ‘reality’. On the other hand the Phoenicians are Hellenophones with enough affinities with the Greeks to ensure some possibility of identification for a Greek reader. For a discussion of the set of stereotypical characteristics that might safely be ascribed to foreign characters in literature of this period see Kuch 1989, 82. Although see Ach. Tat. 8, 17 for the approving account of Kallisthenes’ unproblematic transformation into model citizen: a transformation which entails bravery in martial exploits, in addition to the traditional manifestation of the superiority of the elite- euergetism.

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21) in his pursuit of Chloe, while her later abductor Lampis is beaten by the parasite Gnathon, himself a ridiculous figure (4, 29). It is significant that eloquence, as the outward expression of the education of the elite male remains a privileged literary site, and as such is possessed by the more positive of the male antagonists. For example, Dionysios provides an emotional yet carefully balanced speech in his suit against Mithridates (Chariton 5, 6) while Mithridates himself is capable of putting on a spectacular performance (5, 7). Similarly, Thersandros’ court-speech, while not endearing him to the reader, is an accomplished rhetorical display (Ach. Tat. 8, 8) demonstrating the author’s love of the narrative set-piece. While such skills are not privileged to the extent that they enable the antagonists to steal either the heroine or reader interest away from the protagonists, the neutral or positive coding this trait receives acts as a semi-reliable indicator of the extent to which the heroes subvert traditional definitions of masculinity. Given the emphasis placed on the heroines’ ability to persuade, the heroes’ lack of confidence in this sphere is striking. So Habrokomes is unable, at a very basic level to put together a convincing enough argument to persuade the pirates to take his paedagogus on board ship (Xen. Ephes. 1, 14). Daphnis, after attempting to construct a reasonable speech in his own defence when accused by the Methymneans, immediately undercuts any impact his words might have made, by bursting into tears (Longus 2, 16) in a scene reminiscent of Telemachos’ behaviour in Odyssey 2:80–81. Seemingly devoid of defensive strategies, their apparent passivity in the face of adversity may strike a discordant note in comparison with the heroines’ ingenuity. So, when Chaireas’ ship is captured we are told that he and Polycharmos begged to be sold to one master (Chariton 3, 7): indicative of a commendable sense of loyalty, but completely lacking in dignity. It is Kleitophon’s behaviour though, that perhaps provides the key to understanding the heroes’ seeming inferiority. His willingness to submit to the unreasonable and violent attacks of Thersandros (Ach. Tat. 5, 23, 6, 5, and 8, 1) may locate this element of novelistic heroism as a parody of the self-restraint expected of the upper class male.33 Narrative elements such as the protagonists’ extreme youth may

————— 33

On Ach. Tat. 5, 23 as parody see Durham 1938, 5 and Anderson 1982, 32 contra Rohde 1914, 511, and Merkelbach 1962, 152.

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render their behaviour more acceptable,34 yet I maintain that it is better understood as a deliberately playful sexual construct than as a failed attempt to depict a more traditional heroism. Understanding the heroes’ behaviour is vital to our reading of gender as a relational sign system. Both male and female protagonists subvert normative behavioural patterns. Novelistic femininity has appropriated one of the defining characteristics of Hellenic male culture in its confrontation with a more traditional brand of forceful masculinity. It would be tempting to read this, at some subliminal level as a veiled challenge to Imperial might and ambition. To suggest some programmatic transformation of the archetypal Roman into uncouth bandit is, of course, an untenable position, although it is possible that there could have been some transference of characteristics occurring in the shared imaginaire. Recovery of anything so vague as ‘attitudes’ to a particular racial grouping is of course difficult, although Forte’s 1972 collection of material relating to the different stances taken towards Roman rule remains useful. She claimed a strong tendency to conceive of the Romans as ‘… descendants of uncivilised nomads, murderers and fugitives who had sought asylum in primitive Rome…’(Forte 1972, 186). The genre’s somewhat ambiguous stance towards authority figures is also significant in this context.35 Even if we choose to remain sceptical about any direct equivalence, preferring to view the fictional generic world as a completely de-politicised entity, the heroines’ possession of an unusual degree of power, however informally exercised, still hints at a playful attitude to convention. In conclusion I wish to refer briefly to another narrative pattern which de-stabilises a favoured way of representing an ordered universe. As previously mentioned, marriage could often function as an emblem of the continuation of the social

————— 34

35

As youths around the age of the formal ephebia the inversion of normative sexual constructs may be perhaps explained by the notion of liminality and gender inversion in rites of passage. For a reading of the novel influenced by this theory see Dowden 1999, 224 following the insights of van Gennep 1960, and Vidal-Naquet 1986. Aberrant behaviour will always jar less when it occurs in the so-called liminal space, and yet this general theory cannot fully explain the novels’ strange mix of conventional and countercultural behaviours. Billault 1996, 121, in his discussion of enforcers of the law notes both the unreliability with which they wield their power, and their more positive qualities such as eloquence and honesty.

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order,36 a symbol routinely employed in Imperial iconography. So, a study of numismatics demonstrates that the wives and children of the Imperial family could function as symbols of legitimacy and prosperity.37 In a slightly different context the image of the dextrarum junctio could become displaced from the iconography of marriage, and re-deployed, as at the triumphal arch at Lepcis Magna, as an image of political union.38 I would suggest that the sexual asymmetry of novelistic marriage deliberately de-stabilises this imagery. Kallirhoe’s military advice to Chaireas,39 like Anthia’s erotic predominance40 can be seen as functioning in the same way as the heroines’ appropriation of rhetoric, and might be the cheeky response of the Greek ruling classes to the ultimate representation of order and Imperial superiority. The manner of novelistic consumption becomes pertinent here: rather than civic propaganda, this fictional form designed for private contemplation is perhaps better viewed, to borrow John Morgan’s phrase, as ever so slightly illicit.41 In place of the prudery of my title,42 the manner in which the heroines defend their honour is deliciously provocative.43

————— 36

37

38 39

40

41 42 43

For the image of marriage as the ultimate expression of concordia see Brown 1988, 16– 17, Veyne 1987, 165 and Perkins 1995, 48. Fullerton 1985, 482–483, focusing on the coinage of 13–12 BCE demonstrates how images of the princeps’ family form part of a unified scheme emphasising the peace and prosperity of Augustus’ rule. More generally on the inclusion of women in Imperial iconography to highlight values such as clemency and security see Lefkowitz 1983, 61 and Fantham 1994, 313. See Walker’s 1979 study. See Chariton 8, 2 where Kallirhoe restrains her impetuous husband from broadcasting the news of the Egyptian defeat, thus ensuring calm in the ranks, and a safe retreat. See for example the description of the couple’s wedding night in Xen. Ephes. 1, 9. Although it is Habrokomes who initiates contact, it is noteworthy that Anthia is depicted as kissing him passionately, and indulges in two declarations of love, to his one. Morgan 1995, 132. For Wiersma 1990, 119 Kallirhoe remains ‘… a paragon of prudishness.’ Please note that all translations of the Greek Novels in this paper have been taken directly from B. P. Reardon. 1989. Collected Ancient Greek Novels, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. The proper names of characters from the novels used therein sometimes differ slightly from those versions used in the main text, where I have generally preferred Hellenic spelling variants.

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Bibliography Alcock, S.E. 1993. Graecia Capta, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Anderson, G. 1982. Eros Sophistes: Ancient Novelists at Play, Chicago: Scholars Press. De Beauvoir, S. 1972. The Second Sex (Eng. Trans. H M Parshley), London: Penguin. Billault, A. 1996. ‘Characterisation in the Ancient Novel’ in: G. L. Schmeling (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World, Leiden, New York and Köln: Brill, 115–130. Bowie, E. 1994. ‘The Readership of Greek Novels in the Ancient World’ in: J. Tatum (ed.), The Search for the Ancient Novel, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 435–459. van Bremen, R. 1996. The Limits of Participation: Women and Civic Life in the Greek East in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods, Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben. Bremmer, J.N. 1996. ‘Magic, Martyrdom and Women’s Liberation in the Acts of Paul and Thecla’ in: J.N. Bremmer (ed.), The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla, Kampen: Kok Pharos Publishing House, 36–49. Bremmer, J.N. 1998. ‘The Novel and the Apocryphal Acts: Place, Time and Readership’, in: H. Hofmann, M. Zimmerman (eds.), Groningen Colloquia on the Novel 9, Groningen: Forsten, 157-180. Briquel-Chatonnet, F. 1992. ‘L’image des Phéniciens dans les romans grecs’ in: M.-F. Baslez, P. Hoffmann and M. Trédé (eds.), Le Monde du Roman Grec, Paris: Pr. de l’école normale supérieure, 189–197. Brown, P. 1988. The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, New York: Columbia University Press. Clark, G. 1998. ‘Bodies and Blood: Late Antique Debate on Martyrdom, Virginity and Resurrection’ in: D. Montserrat (ed.), Changing Bodies, Changing Meanings: Studies on the Human Body in Antiquity, London and New York: Routledge, 99– 115. Cooper, K. 1996. The Virgin and the Bride: Idealised Womanhood in Late Antiquity, Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press. Dodds, E.R. 1965. Pagans and Christians in an Age of Anxiety, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Doody, M.A. 1996. The True Story of the Novel, London: Fontana Press. Dowden, K. 1999. ‘Fluctuating Meanings: “Passage Rites” in Ritual, Myth, Odyssey and the Greek Romance’, Bucknell Review 43, 221-243. Durham, D.B. 1938. ‘Parody in Achilles Tatius’, CPh 33, 1–19. Egger, B. 1988. ‘Zu den Frauenrollen im griechischen Roman: Die Frau als Heldin und Leserin’, in: H. Hofmann (ed.), Groningen Colloquia on the Novel 1, Groningen: Forsten, 33–66. Egger, B. 1994. ‘Looking at Chariton’s Callirhoe’ in: J.R. Morgan and R. Stoneman (eds.), Greek Fiction: the Greek Novel in Context, London and New York: Routledge, 31–48. Elsom, H.E. 1992. ‘Callirhoe: Displaying the Phallic Woman’ in: A E. Richlin (ed.), Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, New York: Oxford University Press, 212–230.

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Fantham, E. et al. 1994. Women in the Classical World, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fetterly, J. 1978. ‘The Resisting Reader’: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction, Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press. Forte, B. 1972. Rome and the Romans as the Greeks saw them, Rome: American Academy in Rome. Foucault, M. 1985. The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality, Volume Two (Eng. Trans. Robert Hurley), Paris: Penguin. Foucault, M. 1984/1988. The Care of the Self: the History of Sexuality, Volume Three (Eng. Trans. Robert Hurley), New York: Penguin. Fullerton, M. D. 1985. ‘The Domus Augusti in the Imperial Iconography of 13–12BC’, AJA 89, 473–483. Fusillo, M. 1996. ‘Modern Critical Theories and the Ancient Novel’ in: G. Schmeling (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World, Leiden, New York and Köln: Brill, 277– 306. van Gennep, A. 1960. The Rites of Passage (Eng. trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee), London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Goldhill, S. 1995. Foucault’s Virginity: Ancient Erotic Fiction and the History of Sexuality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hägg, T. 1983. The Novel in Antiquity, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Hani, J. 1978. ‘Le Personnage de Chariclea dans les “Éthiopiques”: Incarnation de l’idéal moral et religieux d’une époque’, BAGB , 268–273. Higonnet, M. R. 1994. ‘New Cartographies, an Introduction’ in: M. R. Higonnet and J. Templeton (eds.). Reconfigured Spheres: Feminist Explorations of Literary Space, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1–19. Holzberg, N. 1995. The Ancient Novel: An Introduction, London: Routledge. Johne, R. 1987. ‘Dido und Charikleia. Zur Gestaltung der Griechischen Liebesroman’, Eirene 24, 21–33. Johne, R. 1989. ‘Zur Figurencharakteristik im antiken Roman’ in: H. Kuch (ed.), Der antike Roman, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 150–177. Johne, R. 1996. ‘Women in the Ancient Novel’ in: G. Schmeling (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World, Leiden, New York and Köln: Brill, 151–208. Konstan, D. 1994. Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kraemer, R.S. 1992. Her Share of the Blessings: Women’s Religions Among Pagans, Jews and Christians in the Greco-Roman World, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kuch, H. 1989. ‘Die “Barbaren” und der antike Roman’, Das Altertum 35, 80–86. Lefkowitz, M.R. 1983. ‘Influential Women’ in: A. Cameron and A. Kuhrt (eds.), Images of Women in Antiquity, London and Canberra: Routledge, 49–64. Lévi-Strauss, C. 1963. Structural Anthropology (Eng. Trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf), New York and London: Basic Books. Levin, D.N. 1977. ‘To Whom did the Ancient Novelists Address themselves?’, Rivista di Studi Classici 25, 18–29.

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MacAlister, S. 1996. Dreams and Suicides: The Greek Novel from Antiquity to the Byzantine Empire, London: Routledge. MacDonald, M.Y. 1996. Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion: The Power of the Hysterical Woman, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MacMullen, R. 1980. ‘Women in public in the Roman Empire’, Historia 29, 208–218. Merkelbach, R. 1962. Roman und Mysterium in der Antike, Munich and Berlin: Beck. Montague, H. 1992. ‘Sweet and Pleasant Passion: Female and Male Fantasy in Ancient Romance Novels’ in: A.E. Richlin (ed.), Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 231–249. Morgan, J.R. 1995. ‘The Greek Novel: Towards a sociology of production and reception’ in: A. Powell (ed.), The Greek World, London and New York: Routledge, 130–152. Økland, J. 1998 ‘“In publicum Procurrendi”: Women in the Public Space of Roman Greece’ in: L. L. Lovén and A. Strömberg (eds.), Aspects of Women in Antiquity: Proceedings of the First Nordic Symposium on Women’s Lives in Antiquity, Göteborg 12–15 June 1997, Jonsered: Paul Astroms Forlag, 127–141. Perkins, J. 1995. The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era, London and New York: Routledge. Rabinowitz, N. S. 1993. Anxiety Veiled: Euripides and the Traffic in Women, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Reardon, B.P. 1971. Courants Littéraires Grecs des IIe et IIIe siècles après J C, Paris: Belles Lettres. Reardon, B.P. 1982. ‘Theme, Structure and Narrative in Chariton’, YCS 27, 1–29. Rohde , E. 1914. Der griechische Roman und seine Vorläufer, Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel. Salisbury, J.E. 1997. Perpetua’s Passion: The Death and Memory of a Young Roman Woman, New York and London: Routledge. Sandy, G.N. 1982. Heliodorus, Boston: Twayne Publishers. Schmeling, G. (ed.), 1996. The Novel in the Ancient World, Leiden, New York and Köln. Scobie, A. 1973. More Essays on the Ancient Romance and its Heritage, Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain. Segal, C. 1984. ‘The Trials at the End of Achilles Tatius’ Cleitophon and Leucippe: Doublets and Complementaries’, SIFC 77 (3rd series), 83–91. Stephens, S.A. 1994. ‘Who Read Ancient Novels?’ in: J. Tatum (ed.), The Search for the Ancient Novel, Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 405–418. Swain, S. 1996. Hellenism and Empire, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Veyne, P. 1987. ‘The Roman Empire’ in: P. Veyne (ed.), A History of Private Life 1: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 5–254. Vidal-Naquet, P. 1986. The Black Hunter: Forms of Thought and Forms of Society in the Greek World, Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Walker, C. 1979. ‘The Dextrarum Junctio of Lepcis Magna in relationship to the iconography of marriage’, Antiquitiés Africaines 14, 271–283.

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Wiersma, S. 1990. ‘The Ancient Greek Novel and its Heroines: A Female Paradox’, Mnemosyne 43, 109–123. Winkler, J.J. 1990. The Constraints of Desire: the Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece, New York and London: Routledge. Witt, R.E. 1971. Isis in the Graeco-Roman World, London and Southampton: Thames and Hudson. Woolf, G. 1994. ‘Becoming Roman, Staying Greek: Culture, Identity and the Civilising Process in the Roman East’, PCPhS 40, 116–143. Zeitlin, F.I. 1996. Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Clitophon the Moichos: Achilles Tatius and the Trial Scene in the Greek Novel SAUNDRA SCHW ARTZ

Honolulu

The jailhouse seduction of Clitophon by Melite, two-thirds of the way into Achilles Tatius’ novel, Leucippe and Clitophon, has captured the attention of many scholars. This striking subversion of the generic conventions requiring the mutual fidelity of the leading couple has been explained as a sly parody, 1 as well as a piece of emotional realism.2 Michel Foucault, reading the novel in a serious vein, overlooked it as ‘an honorable, moral lapse.’3 This article considers the incident in the context of the trials in the final two books of the novel. For, by sleeping with Melite only after he has been accused of adultery, Clitophon becomes fully guilty of the crime par excellence of the Greek novels. This is no mere whimsy, thrown in by the author to catch the reader off guard, but is part of a sustained and sophisticated variation on an important topos in the Greek novels, the trial scene. ————— 1

2

3

Durham 1938, 11 writes, ‘His fall is further evidence for the parodic nature of this novel.’ Cresci 1978, 79 sees this episode as ‘intrisa di uno scetticism pungente, talora amaro, che constituisce il correttivo del tono moraleggiante, serio (e banale) che si afferma all fine del romanzo.’ Anderson 1982, 23–24 has called it simply ‘ridiculous,’ an example of Achilles Tatius’ subversive sense of humor. Likewise, Fusillo 1991, 100 interprets it mainly as an ‘ironic play on the conventions of the novel’. Goldhill 1995, 97 has noted that this ironic passage, in which ‘Cleitophon fails to keep an adequate distance from the lures of an argument … compromises the distance of the reader from the erotic scenario.’ Rattenbury 1926, 69–70 rationalizes it as a quid pro quo, a favor Clitophon owed Melite in return for winning back Leucippe. Rojas Álvarez 1989, 89-90 argues that Clitophon’s resistance to Melite’s overtures for so long was unrealistic, and adduces the ultimate consummation of the affair as evidence for Achilles Tatius’ uniquely realistic sensibility. Reardon 1994, 88, translating Clitophon’s statement ‘$/3"…!’ (Ach. Tat. 5,27,1) as ‘I felt as any man would’, suggests that Clitophon’s action is self-explanatory. Foucault 1988, 231.

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The inclusion of at least one trial in each of the extant Greek novels, as well as in the Latin novels of Petronius and Apuleius,4 attests to the appeal of this type scene, and indeed its centrality to the genre. The prevalence of such scenes reflects the importance of rhetoric in the literary culture of the Roman empire. The novelists, as well as their audience, had a taste for legal complexities—a taste informed by their rhetorical education. Chariton’s familiarity with the technicalities of the law has long been noted. 5 This is easily attributed to his occupation as hypographeus, or secretary to a rhetor.6 Achilles Tatius, on the other hand, has not received as much attention. Although the rhetorical qualities of his novel are patent, he has not been given the same sort of credit for using the law as plot material as Chariton.7 His Leucippe and Clitophon reflects an equally legalistic orientation—and indeed a virtuosity in the construction and elaboration of legal dilemma. This article has two parts. The first outlines the characteristics of the typical trial. Then, part two examines how the relationship of Clitophon and Melite sets the stage for the trials in Ephesus and how the charge of adultery ————— 4

5 6

7

There are thirteen identifiable trial scenes in the five extant Greek novels: the trial of Chaereas (Chariton 1,4–6), the trial of Theron (Chariton 3,4), the trial of Mithridates (Chariton 5,4–9), the case of Dionysius vs. Chaereas (Chariton 5,10–6,2), the trial of Habrocomes (X. Eph. 3,12–4,4), the trial of Daphnis (Longus 2,12–19), the trial of Melite and Clitophon (Ach. Tat. 7,7–16), the trial of the priest and others (Ach. Tat. 8,7–15), the trial of Cnemon (Hld. 1,9–14), the trial of Aristippus (Hld. 1,14–17; 2,8–9), the trial of Charicleia (Hld. 8,8–15), the trial of Hydaspes (Hld. 10,9–17), and the trial of Theagenes (Hld. 4,17–21; 10,34–38). For trials in the Latin novels, see Petr. 108–109 and Apul. Met. 10,6–12. Calderini 1913, Zimmermann 1957, Karabélias 1990, Scarcella 1990. Chariton 1,1,1: /"3' 4"!021ƒ# /"!$ 3!ã â}3!"!# Y!"/41ƒ# y!# "'3€  $"/!ƒ2/# 11! 0}2!/ 7KH *UHHN WH[W RI &KDULWRQ LV WDNHQ IURP*RROGI have deliberately left the term rhetor untranslated; the modern term ‘lawyer’ is misleading, and obscures the important Roman distinction between professional advocates and jurists. On the function of rhetores in the Roman legal system, see Crook 1995, 13, 37–46. The hypographeus was more than a notary; he also took moral responsibility for the documents he produced for his illiterate clients; see Youtie 1975. As hypographeus, Chariton may also have functioned as a legal assistant to Athenagoras; on the use of assistants by rhetores, see Cic. De Orat. 1,198 as well as Crook 1995, 149– 151. The late 13th century Byzantine scholiast Thomas Magister called Achilles Tatius a rhetor, perhaps an inference from his rhetorical style; see Vilborg 1955–62, 1:168 and 2:8; Rohde 1914, 473–474. On the reflection of progymnasmata in Achilles Tatius’ ecphrases, see Rommel 1923 and Bartsch 1989. Anderson 1997, 2294 characterizes Leucippe and Clitophon as ‘a text of which all but the first few pages is the recitation by a young man in love only just out of rhetorical school.’

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unravels in the two trials themselves. The trial scene is not just a vehicle for authorial ingenuity but, in Achilles Tatius’ hands, it shifts the moral balance within the adulterous triangle, and subtly subverts the valorization of marriage that lies at the core of the ideology of the Greek novels.

Typology of the Trial Scene The frequency of trials in the novels suggests that ancient audiences expected courtroom drama. Indeed, at the opening of his last book, Chariton lists trials among what is a virtual catalog of misadventures: &KDULWRQ  !X{3 Ä231/ /~ 0!$1/ /~ 0 /~ y% /~ !/"3{"2# /~ 1!# /~ '2# x $"'31# 0/!  3!ƒ3ë l/~y!y! There will be no more piracy or slavery or litigation or fighting or suicide or war or captivity; now there will be rightful love and lawful marriage. Although Chariton puts the trial, 0on the same level as other misfortunes (to which might be added storms, shipwrecks, false deaths, jealous rivals, and kidnappings), the trial is unique in its degree of complexity, as well as its flexibility. The trial scene is exceptionally well suited to keeping the plot of the novel pleasurably complicated. The procedures and institutions of the law provided ample material for the novelist to prolong his narrative and defer the anticipated happy ending. A trial may be a short synopsis briefly mentioned in passing, as in Ach. Tat. 2,34,6, where a minor character explains why he has been in exile). Alternately, it can be expanded to consume one-quarter or more of the entire narrative, as in the cases of the Babylonian trials in Chariton’s novel as well as the trials in Ephesus in Achilles Tatius. The semantic field of trial-related words was a particularly rich source for metaphors. For example, in Achilles Tatius, when Clitophon agonizes over whether to pursue his love for Leucippe or to follow through with an arranged marriage, he uses the metaphor of a contest between his father and Eros, with Clitophon himself acting as the judge. He imagines his predicament thus:

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Ach. Tat. 1,11,3: /~ {' z 2!~ 0y2/ y31" ö 30! $%' %/1…31"! /2/1 3€ 0/23} %231 13x 1í "13/ 13x$"#1}2'y31"/X3î/!/3î$" I want to rule in your favor, father, but I have a harsher opponent. He tortures the judge, appears in court with arrows, and influences the verdict with fire. If I decide against him, father, I will go up in flames.8 The concentration of legal imagery here and elsewhere in the Greek novels highlights the degree to which the life of the law—its discourses, practices, and habits of thought—infused the sensibility of the Greek novels, as characteristic of many other literary products of the highly rhetorical culture of the Greek-speaking elites of the Roman empire. In its ideal form, a trial is supposed to restore social order at a moment when disorder is threatened. On a purely functional level, a trial comes after a crime and before a punishment. In the ancient Greek novels, the suspense does not usually lie in solving mysteries of ‘who done it?’ but rather in seeing how the villains will be punished and the heroes vindicated. This reflects the basic ideals of what courtroom trials are supposed to do—that is, discover the truth and mete justice. The expectation is perfectly congruent with that of the ideal romances as a whole, as articulated by Photius in his synopsis of Antonius Diogenes’ novel: Phot. Bibl.Cod. 166 [112a]: *23 0z  /X3!Ô# /~ y23/ i#  3!ƒ3!#y2/231$1ƒ/20ƒ!3x"y2/%"2…3/3/Ý# zQ33€0}2/3y3$"y#4$1Ô0 Ä1<2y1y3'# 0 010'{/ /~ 01ƒ31"! Q3 !!‚# /3!$# ‚# 1y!$ 1!3/#0ƒ!$/"ö0/#01$2!y#0/2'{3/# In this story in particular, as in fictional works of its kind, there are two especially useful things to observe: first, that [the author] presents a wrongdoer, even if he appears to escape countless times, paying the penalty just the same; second, that he shows many guiltless people, though

————— 8

The Greek text of Achillus Tatius is taken from Vilborg 1955–62. My translation is more literal than Winkler’s, yet his rings nicely with the legalistic metaphors: ‘If I don’t give a verdict in favor of Eros, I’ll burn at the stake.’ See Winkler in Reardon 1989, 184. Other metaphorical uses of trial words can be found in Longus 1,12 and Hld. 2,25; 4,8.

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on the brink of great danger, being saved many times in defiance of expectations. 9 It is revealing that Photius defines the novel’s antagonist as 3€0}2/3y 3 ‘the one doing something unjust;’ the protagonists are therefore /3!$#, ‘the blameless ones.’ He correspondingly calls the resolution of the story—that is, when the villain meets his fate—as 0010'{/, ‘paying the penalty’. The vocabulary with which Photius distills the essence of a Greek novel (in this case, a lost one) reflects an underlying cognitive framework in which justice is the critical value. The trial scene is an effective and economical formula for fulfilling this expectation. The basic formula of the novelistic trial is straightforward. First comes the narrative of the crime, which can comprise its own subplot. An accusation is made, and the accused is summoned to court or arrested. A physical description of the courtroom serves as a segue to the trial scene proper. The centerpiece of the trial scene is a pair of speeches; as in an actual trial, the accusation comes first, then the defense. All this takes place before a crowd of spectators, who provide an emotional backdrop to the action. Much as a chorus in drama, the crowd serves to guide as well as amplify the reader’s response. Finally comes the verdict; if the accused is condemned, then his or her punishment serves as a dramatic finale to the trial scene. Yet, because the novels thrive on paradox, expectations are characteristically thwarted in the trials. In fact, the procedures of the courtroom often seem to subvert what the reader knows is the just ending. Usually, a surprising twist: extraneous to the courtroom procedures arises to complicate the expected outcome. More often than not, trials are abortive: rather, they tend to perpetuate social disorder, as the conflict shifts to another, more momentous sphere such as the battlefield or, with the intervention of supernatural forces, to a cosmic plane. Despite the prospect of closure implicit in the formula of the trial scene, the anticipated moment when order is restored eludes the judicial process. The formula is highly flexible. Any portion may be condensed or expanded, but the heart of the formula is the speeches. The trial scene is not only contained by the larger narrative, but it in turn contains the embedded subnarratives of the parties to the trial. The most important quality of the trial scenes is the variation between narrative and inset orations. It lends to the trial scenes an additional layer of complexity by contextualizing the ————— 9

Translation by G.N. Sandy in Reardon 1989, 782.

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speeches in the trial. Thus, the reader is empowered to assess the ‘truthfulness’ of competing accounts of a single event. Accordingly, trial scenes must be considered not in isolation, but as embedded in the larger narrative. This is what differentiates the novelistic trial scenes from declamations, to which they are often compared.10 Declamations are presented with only the most skeletal framework; the declaimer is free to flesh it out, and the audience is less concerned with reconstructing ‘truth’ than with appreciating rhetorical style. In contrast, the readers of the novels are given a privileged knowledge of events prior to the trial. They are able not only to gauge the truthfulness of opposing speeches, but also assess the efficacy of the process as a whole— that is, the possibility of arriving at the ‘truth’ at all within a courtroom.

The Trials in Ephesus in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon In the novels, crimes of passion are the rule.11 Whether the act is completed, threatened, or alleged matters little. While murder is a common crime, most novelistic trials ensue from adultery. In Chariton, the Babylonian trials are launched by Dionysius’ suspicion that Mithridates is trying to seduce Callirhoe. In Xenophon of Ephesus, Cyno murders her husband to get him out of the way so she can take Habrocomes as a lover; when her plan fails, she then launches an accusation against Habrocomes, who ends up in the court of the prefect of Egypt. In Heliodorus, Cnemon is tricked into inappropriately taking the role of the outraged cuckold, and ends up on trial for attempted patricide. At the end of that novel, Charicleia must refute the appearance that Persinna committed adultery in order to assert her claim that she is the child of Hydaspes. The ubiquity of these scenes of adultery serves to contrast with and thus underscore the protagonists’ fidelity to one another. The vilification of adultery is the necessary counterpart of the valorization of marriage; therefore, the trial of the moichos is the corollary of the dikaios gamos. In this respect, the trial scenes offer the perfect formula for an author to articulate, judge, and reinforce the core values of the ideal romance. ————— 10 11

Rohde 1914, 337–341 and Russell 1983, 38–39. The trial of Daphnis for negligence in Longus 2,12–19 is the exception which proves the rule: in this case, Daphnis is put on trial for allowing his goats to graze on the beach, where they ate the willow shoots with which the boats of the Methymnean youths were tied. It is a pedestrian case of property damage.

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The triangle of moicheia always has at its fulcrum a married woman. She is between two men: her husband and her lover—in Greek, the moichos. The initiator of the adultery, male or female, is inscribed as the villain. So, for example, in Xenophon of Ephesus, Habrocomes falls prey to the lust of his benefactor’s wife, Cyno, or ‘Bitch.’ The villain may also be the male seducer, such as Mithridates the satrap in Chariton’s novel. In general, the Greek novels portray the husband as basically sympathetic; however, Achilles Tatius inverts the conventional sympathies by telling the story from the point of view of an adulterer who is caught in the act. The cuckolded husband, on the other hand, is depicted as so hyperbolically violent that his very name, Thersander, ‘Wild Man’, is sufficient to distill his character. Thersander first enters the narrative when he surprises his wife, Melite, in the bedroom with her lover, Clitophon. The ancient audience of the novels would have immediately recognized the scenario of the ‘bedroom showdown’. It was a common motif in a variety of genres, including mime and declamation.12 It is the central issue in Lysias’ Against Eratosthenes, an oration that was much admired and imitated for its skillful use of narratio. Chariton invokes Lysias’ scenario in the first book of Chaereas and Callirhoe. There, Chaereas is tricked into believing that an elegantly dressed man is entering his house to seduce his new wife Callirhoe.13 In the mimes, the confrontation leads to slapstick; in the novels, it leads to a trial. In the imperial era, when adultery mimes came to be criticized for their corruptive influence, trial scenes became incorporated into the mime. 14 The Greek novels reflect a similar impulse to contain the dangerous influence of the adultery scene by setting it in the context of a trial. Thus, after Chaereas surprises Callirhoe in her darkened bedroom and delivers her an apparently fatal blow, he is put on trial for her murder. In Chariton’s novel as in others, the threat of social disorder triggered by a presumed act of adultery is held in check by the trial scene, the forum where the truth is revealed. It is this that Achilles Tatius subverts in his trials of Clitophon and Melite. ————— 12

13 14

On the adultery mime, see Reynolds 1946 and Kehoe 1984. Of particular relevance is Mignogna 1996, who identifies a number of specific parallels between the adultery mime and the Thersander-Melite section of Achilles Tatius’ novel. On adultery in Greek declamation, see Russell 1983, 33–35, 60–62; in Latin declamation, see Bonner 1949, 119– 122. The motif of the ‘homecoming husband’ in Apuleius’ novel is discussed by Lateiner 2000. Hammer 1922, 105–110. Reynolds 1946, 84.

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Achilles Tatius is using a well-worn formula when he has the final third of his novel revolve around a pair of trials. In the first (Ach. Tat. 7,7–7,16), Clitophon and Melite are accused of adultery by Thersander, Melite’s husband. Each of the two trials includes three speeches—making them, in effect, incomplete tetralogies—for a total of six full speeches by almost as many speakers. The prosecution’s speech is alluded to indirectly. The first speech presented in oratio recta is Clitophon’s defense; however, it paradoxically evolves into a self-accusation for the murder of Leucippe, thereby de facto becoming the speech for prosecution. This speech is followed by a defense of Clitophon by his friend and advocate Cleinias. Finally, Thersander delivers a speech in which he urges the immediate execution of Clitophon as a self-confessed murderer. The court decides for Thersander, but Clitophon’s execution is deferred so that he can be tortured for evidence in the trial of Melite for adultery. After an interval of intense plotting and counter-plotting during which the priest of Artemis stays Clitophon’s execution and Leucippe seeks refuge in the temple of Artemis and thus moots the murder charge, the court again convenes for a second trial. This subject of the second trial is vaguer: it is a generalized prosecution by the villain of the heroes and their friends. Thersander and his advocate Sopater make multiple charges against the protagonists: against Clitophon for defying the court’s sentence in the first trial; against the priest for assisting a convict and defiling the temple of Artemis; against Melite for adultery; and against Leucippe and her father for unspecified actions. Both of these trials include all of the typical elements of the novelistic trial scene—indeed, the account of these trials is the most expansive in the extant Greek novels, including the Babylonian trials in Chariton. In most novelistic trials, the reader’s sympathies lie with the defendant, who is usually one of the two main protagonists; however, in this case the villain appears to have a solid case against Clitophon. The reader knows that the hero is in fact guilty as charged. Logically, here the villain assumes the mantle of the Greek novels’ ideology: he defends lawful marriage against the insidious threat posed by the moichos. The dramatic conflict in the trial scene presupposes a familiarity with the way legal dilemmas are set up. Other critics have emphasized the superficiality of legal realia. Brigitte Egger reaches the conclusion, based mainly upon her study of Chariton, that the novelists were less concerned with maintain-

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ing a historically consistent image of legal realia than with cultivating a ‘hoary patriarchal fantasy’ of the ‘erotically powerful female upon whom all eyes are focussed.’15 Massimo Fusillo likewise characterizes the realia of the novels as a backdrop to the main thematic object, the love story.16 My argument is that habits of legalistic thought profoundly shaped the structure of the novels’ plots. This becomes apparent in the narrative of the characters’ actions and statements leading to the trial scene, where the subtle shadings of those actions move into the foreground and become subject to explicit debate. One example is the trial of Chaereas in the first book of Chariton’s novel, where the preliminary narrative of the circumstances surrounding Callirhoe’s apparent death allows the author to explore the issue of intention, and the question of whether or not a husband’s jealousy exculpates him. The multifaceted nature of a well-constructed legal dilemma is what makes such a fruitful generator of plot complexity. The trials in Achilles Tatius could likewise be recast as a rhetorical exercise where the problem (or, to use the technical rhetorical term, the stasis) might be set out as follows: ‘A man is presumed dead in a shipwreck. His widow remarries according to the law. The first husband survives and returns home and accuses the second husband of adultery.’ The problem, thus set forth, would have been characterized in rhetorical treatises as a stasis nomikê, a legal issue; an important part of rhetorical education was the construction of arguments about law. The case of Thersander versus Clitophon falls under a type of legal issue called antinomia, conflict of laws.17 It pits two principles against each other: the right of return, in Roman law called the postliminium, which granted certain rights to returning prisoners of war or victims of brigands to take possession of their property and reinstate legal relationships, versus the right of a lawful husband.18 Thus in the narrative leading up to the trial, it seems that the case will hinge on the precise nature of Clitophon’s liaison with Melite. Clitophon’s initial defense strategy is to claim that he was not a moichos, but the lawful husband of Melite (Ach. Tat. 6,5,4: /~ x" y""!$ 3î ë 1"{212/ | !%€# 1B/ Æ/ 0z 4/í#). ————— 15 16 17 18

Egger 1994, 273–274. Fusillo 1991, 57. Russell 1983, 40–41, 67–68. On postliminium, see Dig. 49,15; however, the lex Julia et Papia of Augustus placed limits on the right of a husband to recover his wife; see Dig. 49,15,8.

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However, the matter is not so simple. In the preceding narrative Achilles Tatius had taken great care to leave the validity of Melite and Clitophon’s ‘marriage’ open to question. In order to appreciate Achilles Tatius’ technique, it is important to emphasize that in the ancient world, marriage was enacted through a process of events, and not at one discrete moment.19 Throughout the course of book 5, Clitophon and Melite carry out a series of actions which, in sum, effectuate their marriage. Specifically, these are: betrothal, vows, formal marriage agreement, public wedding feasts, ceremonial entrance to the bridal chamber, and apparent cohabitation—all of which are historically attested practices in Greco-Roman Alexandria.20 Despite the appearance of legal marriage, at each step of the process a significant loophole is left open: namely, Clitophon’s deferral of the sexual act. The cumulative effect of these details is to create a genuine sense of ambiguity about whether or not the marriage is technically complete, prior to the formal accusation of adultery. According to all social criteria Clitophon and Melite are married: the only respect in which the marriage has not been formalized— that is, in its sexual aspect—was, according to Roman law, juristically insignificant in defining marriage. The principle was stated clearly by the thirdcentury Roman jurist Ulpian: nuptias non concubitus, sed consensus facit, ‘not intercourse, but agreement creates a marriage’ (Dig. 50,17,30). Thus the question remains open: Are they married, or are they not? The answer to this question does not matter until Leucippe and, more significantly, Thersander enter the picture. Thersander’s formal indictment of Clitophon for moicheia is foreshadowed by Leucippe’s confrontation with Clitophon. Disguised as a slave working on the estate of Melite in Ephesus, the heroine makes the natural inference that the newly returned mistress and her male companion (Clitophon) are in fact married. She writes a letter in which she castigates Clitophon for his infidelity. Upon reading her letter Clitophon makes a curious comment: he says that he feels like ‘an adulterer caught in the act.’ (Ach. Tat. 5,19,6 y$0z,"$"'4ö!C#!3€y!h101 m21" ö /X3!4…"ë !%€# /31{!#). At first glimpse, this might appear to be nothing more than a casual expression; however, Achilles Tatius was quite deliberate in making such an analogy. From a legal standpoint, Clitophon’s identification with a moichos is absurd: according to both Greek ————— 19 20

This distinction has most recently been emphasized by Patterson 1998, 112. On marriage in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, see Wolff 1939 and Vatin 1970. I plan to elaborate this argument further in a separate article.

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and Roman law, a man was only an adulterer if he had an affair with a woman married to another man. It was not technically moicheia if a husband cheated on his wife, and a fortiori if a groom-to-be cheated on his fiancée.21 Technically, Clitophon is an adulterer not with respect to Leucippe but with respect to Melite, as he (and the reader) will soon learn to everyone’s surprise. The device of Leucippe’s letter provides an opportunity for the author to foreground the discrepancy between Clitophon’s private perception of the marriage and the way it appears in public. Clitophon’s servant, the one who delivered the letter, reassures his master that he explained to Leucippe that Clitophon married ', ‘against his will’ or ‘accidentally’—another absurdity in light of Roman law, where consent was the criterion for legal marriage.22 In response, Clitophon writes a letter, an apologia, in which he insists that he imitated Leucippe’s virginity (Ach. Tat. 5,20,5 /}2Ä3|2} 1 /"1/ 1{!). He thus denies that his liaison with Melite is marriage at all on the grounds that it has not been sexually consummated. This excuse satisfies Leucippe. Subsequently, when Melite asks Leucippe to concoct an aphrodisiac to cure Clitophon’s impotence, the heroine is assured of the hero’s innocence (Ach. Tat. 5,22,5). That is the end of Leucippe’s accusation against Clitophon. His infidelity vis-à-vis Leucippe ceases to have any significance to the subsequent plot.23 The logic of the novel’s elevation of the sexual act conflicts with the law’s indifference to it as a criterion of marriage. This is not so in the case of adultery, the breach of marriage. In laws relating to adultery, as well as in the popular imagination, the decisive moment was when the husband caught the adulterer ‘ö/X3!4…"ë’—in the act itself.24 And this is where Achilles Tatius’ plot thickens. Thersander suddenly bursts into the bedroom, punches ————— 21

22

23

24

Cohen 1991, 98ff.; Treggiari 1991, 264 notes that ‘some philosophers and later the Christian theologian [tried] to make linguistic usage symmetrical,’ and cites August. Quaest. Exodi 71.4 (=Corpus Christianorum series latina xxxiii,104), where Augustine calls a married man who has sexual relations with a woman other than his wife a moe-chus. Ach. Tat. 5,20,2 „x"/X3Ç0'!2yi#'/X3|$/#For Roman law, mutual consent was required (Dig. 23,1,7). In Athenian law, the consent of the woman was not required; the consent of the groom, however, was required in the betrothal procedure known as ƒ. See Harrison 1968, 1:21. Later, when Clitophon recounts his adventures to Leucippe’s father, he glosses over the details of his sexual relationship with Melite, but does so without lying and with a sense of shame. See Ach. Tat. 8,5,2–3. For a comparison of this phrase as it appears in the law of theft, see Harris 1994.

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a stunned Clitophon, and calls him an adulterer (repeatedly) and confines him to a small room in the house.25 The reader knows that it only appears that Clitophon is Melite’s lover: the truth is that there has been no sexual act. Yet, this is precisely where Achilles Tatius once again subverts himself. The formula for the trial scene requires that the hero be falsely accused. And this is precisely the case—that is, until Melite, who now has given up all hope of marrying Clitophon, sneaks into the little room where he has been imprisoned and seduces him. Since Thersander’s existence is plainly clear, when Clitophon finally has sexual intercourse with Melite he does so, from a legal perspective, with a mens rea or …. This is his peripety. This single act sets in motion an exquisite dilemma. The reader knows the romantic hero is in fact not only morally culpable for breaking his promise of fidelity to the heroine (which seems to be beside the point), but is also technically guilty of the crime for which he had been, until that point, falsely accused. Clitophon lists a number of ameliorating factors—the force of Eros’ rhetoric, normal human reaction, fear of Eros’ wrath, hope for freedom and reunion with Leucippe, compassion for Melite’s sickness.26 In declamatory treatises, such excuses were classed as colores or %"…/3/: when the issue was one of quality, not of fact, the defendant would try to change the appearance (the ‘color’) of the action so as to lessen the appearance of wrongdoing.27 It is hard to tell whether any of these excuses would have exonerated him in an actual courtroom. In essence, Clitophon’s dilemma at the opening of the trial is this: if he plans to defend himself by arguing that he was married to Melite, then he will lose Leucippe. If he is convicted, then he will become a dishonored man, forbidden from marrying a respectable, freeborn woman.28 Either way he seems doomed to lose Leucippe. Despite this elaborate set-up—or perhaps, because of it—at the last minute Achilles Tatius once again subverts

————— 25

26 27 28

In the subsequent narrative, Clitophon is referred to as a moichos no less than twenty times: 5,23,1; 6,3,5; 6,5,1; 6,5,3; 6,9,1 [twice]; 6,9,2; 6,17,1; 6,17,3; 6,20,2; 6,21,2; 8,8,3; 8,8,10; 8,8,11; 8,8,13; 8,10,1; 8,10,3; 8,10,4; 8,10,5; 8,10,11. Ach. Tat. 5,27,1–2. Bonner 1949, 55–56. Under the lex Iulia, the penalties for adultery included confiscation of property, prohibition from giving oral testimony, loss of civic privileges, general infamia, relegatio to island, and exile. See McGinn 1998, 142–143.

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the trial for adultery by introducing a new plot twist: Clitophon’s cell mate tells him a specious story that Leucippe has been killed.29 With this, the moral balance of the trial is restored in the hero’s favor, as the type scene demands. Clitophon, now completely beside himself with grief, changes his strategy. Instead of a defense, he will confess to Leucippe’s murder, and implicate Melite as well, and thereby ‘leave [his] cursed life behind’ (Ach. Tat. 7,6,3). The effect of this change in course is that Clitophon’s guilt as a fully conscious adulterer is now eclipsed by the pathos of a grief so great that he can no longer bear living. Clitophon’s seemingly paradoxical strategy of suicide by selfcondemnation was in fact a commonplace in the novels. This is precisely the situation found in Chariton’s novel, in the trial of Chaereas for the murder of Callirhoe. In that trial, Chaereas begs the court to put him out of his misery and condemn him for Callirhoe’s murder: Chariton 1,5,4: 2${0z"»//€/~0/23"ë01…!31 "/%{Ýâ12#x"3Æ#/3!"/#M4!1‚#13"{3!#/X3î3!ã ]0/3!# 3~ 3Æ# !!/# /Y3!ã /3"21 "31"! /~ "í3!# 3|/3/0y!$2/&Æ4!011 Then something strange happened which had never before been done. After the accusation had been presented, the murderer, instead of defending himself during his allotted time accused himself more bitterly and was the first to cast a vote for condemnation. This type of defense—in effect, as D.A. Russell has so aptly put it, a form of “ostentatious euthanasia”—was also a commonplace in declamations: it was labelled the prosangelia in the rhetorical treatises.30 Achilles Tatius carefully lays the groundwork for this well-worn device. In book two, on the lovers’ voyage to Alexandria, one of their travelling companions, an Egyptian named Menelaus, explains that when he was tried for killing his lover, he made no defense but begged the jury for a death sentence instead (Ach. Tat. 2,34,6).31 The defendant’s paradoxical self-accusation upsets the normal stances of the two parties in the trial. In Chariton’s novel, Hermocrates—the leader of ————— 29 30 31

Ach. Tat. 7,1,3–5,4. See Russell 1983, 35-36 and 140. See also Charicleia in Hld. 8,9,7.

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Syracuse and, more significantly, the very father of the murder victim—acts as Chaereas’ advocate (Chariton 1,5,6 '"!"y3# 2$"21 /"{¹ "í3!# . Likewise, the expected order of speeches is altered in Clitophon’s trial. In the trial scene proper, Clitophon’s is the first speech presented in oratio recta. The previous speeches of Thersander and of Melite’s rhetores are mentioned in the scene-setting transition to the trial. Thersander arrays ‘no less than ten rhetores’ against him (Ach. Tat. 7,7,1 Æ!#â3"'!X% 333!0{/). Their speeches, as well as those of Melite’s advocates, are referred to as a generalized plural (Ach. Tat. 7,7,2 1~0z/ƒ2/3!{!31# /<3}2/#„!). The narrative framework on which the speeches hang creates the impression of a grandiose trial, with innumerable speakers. The entire courtroom is thrown into an uproar (Ach. Tat. 7,9,1 !"ƒ!$!!ã /3x 3€ 0/23}"! P3!#), but at the core of the trial scene is a pair of speeches: the first is for the prosecution, followed by the defense, as was the customary practice. Although Clitophon is technically the defendant, his speech, by virtue of its position in the narrative as well as its content, functions as the prosecution. According to the formula, it must be balanced by a defense: and so Clinias, Clitophon’s friend, begs the court to allow him to speak on the grounds that this is a ‘contest for a man’s life’ (Ach. Tat. 7,9,1 
!3/!1B12$%'"}2/31ݍ1"~x"&$%Æ#0"€#M…).32 Although he is Clitophon’s advocate, the point of his speech is to refute rather than support his friend. Paradoxically, he tries to save his friend’s life by demolishing his argument! Despite this, however, Clinias’ speech, as the second presented in oratio recta, clearly is intended to be the counterbalancing second half of a pair of set speeches. According to the formula of the defense by self-accusation, the jury is persuaded by the public display of the defendant’s pathos and either acquits him or gives him a lighter punishment, thereby thwarting the hero’s suicidal impulse. Chaereas is acquitted (Chariton 1,6,1), and Menelaus is sent into exile for three years (Ach. Tat. 2,34,6). In this light, we can see what is truly surprising about Clitophon’s trial: the jury, instead of pitying the bereft hero, actually finds him guilty. It gives him exactly the death sentence he longs for ————— 32

Harrison 1971, 2:158–159 notes that in the Attic orations, it seems that statements by advocates had to be delivered within the time allotted to the litigant by the water-clock. As a matter of courtesy, or perhaps as a general rule, the advocate had to request permission to speak. There are examples of such requests in the orators; Harrison cites Dem. 34,52; 59,14; Aeschin. 2,170; and Hyp. 2,20.

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and more—he is to be tortured for evidence when the court resumes the trial of Melite (Ach. Tat. 7,12,1). At this point, the trial scene is transformed into another type scene, that of the hero’s torture. Clitophon’s degradation is vividly carried out by his being fettered, stripped, and hung from ropes while an array of torture devices is prepared. As in the other scenes of torture in the Greek novels, the threatened torture is forestalled at the last moment when a priest of Artemis arrives with an embassy led by none other than Leucippe’s father (Ach. Tat. 7,12.3), thus bringing to a halt the uncomfortable scene of a hero’s complete social humiliation.33 By the end of the first trial, the adultery charge has been completely buried: the description of the jury at the end of the first trial makes this clear: Ach. Tat. 7,12,1: $0! 13î"!{0"ë3í0/23ít20z3!ã/2!ã {!$# /~ 3x# z 4!x# 0/1 0/# /3x 0z 3€ ! 2$!ƒ!$#  3í 1"/3{"' 1B%1 ![# …!/# y/1 3Æ# …21'# It was decided by the president of the judges—he was of the royal clan and he judged trials concerning homicide; according to the law he had councillors selected from among the elders, whom he took as arbiters in the investigation. The composition of the jury vaguely reflects real courts. The president’s royal lineage as well as the role he is assigned in homicide cases recall the Athenian archon basileus, the official who presided over the court of the Areopagus, the most famous of the Athenian homicide courts. Similarly, the jurors’ senior status accords with the court of the Areopagus.34 Clearly, it is ————— 33

34

The suspension of public business, including the hearing of trials, during religious festivals was common throughout Greek and Roman history. The locus classicus in Greek literature for the temporary suspension of public business during a religious festival is the postponement of Socrates’ execution until the return of the Delian theôria. Related is the Roman iustitium, a more ad hoc suspension of public business, which could be declared at any time by the senate or by a magistrate with imperium during the Republic and by the Roman emperor during the imperial period. See Kl. Pauly, s.v. ‘iustitium.’ cf. Chariton 5,3,11, where the first trial in Babylon is postponed for thirty days because of a religious festival; as well as Chariton 6,1,4, where the king postpones the second trial by declaring another sacred month of sacrifices. Vilborg 1962, 2:122. On the Athenian homicide court, see MacDowell, 1963, 33–38. Juries of ten elected dikastai presided by a proedros are attested in Alexandria; see Taubenschlag 1955, 484–485.

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the appropriate jury not for adultery, the original charge, but for murder, an unforeseen charge that arises only in the course of the trial for adultery. Here, consistency is subordinated to the demands of the narrative; the hyperverisimilar description of the court, with its agglutination of realisticsounding details, serves to cover up this shift. By the end of the first trial scene, the fact that a court convened for an adultery trial tries a murder case is nothing more than a minor inconsistency, easily glossed over by the melodramatic sweep of events. However, the case is not yet over and the adultery charge will come back to haunt Clitophon and Melite. In the Greek novels, it is typical for one trial to lead to another, grander than the first. In Chariton’s novel, Chaereas is acquitted, but the case of Callirhoe’s ‘murder’ is not solved until Theron is convicted in a second trial and punished for her kidnapping. Xenophon of Ephesus has his hero, Habrocomes, taken to the prefect three times for sentencing before he is absolved of blame in the murder of his former patron, Araxus. The Athenian saga of Cnemon in Heliodorus’ novel involves not only a trial for patricide, but also a plea for pardon and a revenge lawsuit lodged against Cnemon’s father by his wife’s relatives. In Achilles Tatius’ novel, the interval between the trials is marked by a series of challenges and counter-challenges for the torture of slaves, a common tactic in the Attic orators.35 Intertwined with the plot of the trial is the plot of Thersander’s pursuit of Leucippe, who eventually seeks asylum in the temple of Artemis. Sosthenes, the libidinous overseer of the estate and Thersander’s lackey, becomes embroiled in the intrigue. These details serve to obscure the glaring fact that by the opening of the second trial, the reappearance of Leucippe makes the murder charge moot and Clitophon’s execution superfluous. As a result, in the second trial the accusations are broader and there is a wider scope for pure invective. Ultimately, however, the trial returns to the crime that triggered it and the crime for which Clitophon might legitimately be found guilty: that is, adultery. The speeches of Thersander, the priest of Artemis, and Thersander’s advocate Sopater are more than showpieces of rhetoric.36 A chain of charges and counter-charges generates a legal paradox of mind-boggling complexity. Throughout the second trial, the alert reader remembers that Clitophon is ————— 35

36

On the use of the proklesis eis basanon as a rhetorical strategy, see the argument of Gagarin 1996. For a detailed rhetorical analysis of these speeches, see Schwartz 1998, 185–226.

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guilty: he did have sexual intercourse with Melite. As the exchange of charges of sexual misbehavior intensifies, Clitophon’s moral and legal position becomes more precarious. The case becomes like a game of tournament chess, where the first person to make a mistake gives the victory to the opponent. In this case, Thersander falls victim to his own cleverness. Sopater, Thersander’s advocate, ends an impassioned speech with a syllogism: Ach. Tat. 8,10,12: !X!ã1<z3{1}/ /3Æ#/<3/#Ý!X0z x"23M3|!%1//…!X0zY"13/y!#!X$%'0"/Ý 1< 0z M y!# 3î 3€ }/3/ Æ !X Å"13/ 3| /1Ô2/ 0/41"/3!#!$1Å231$3/ Therefore, if on the one hand he [Melite’s husband] were dead, she would be free of the charge, for no one exists to suffer the injury of adultery, and when a marriage lacks the husband, it cannot be insulted. But if on the other hand the marriage has not been annulled, because the husband is still alive, then a stranger corrupting the wife has poached on another man’s property. (trans. Winkler) This makes perfect sense. Sopater’s logic is consistent with the traditional definition of adultery: it is an injury to the husband's honor and his possession of his wife. Emboldened by his advocate’s cleverness, Thesander jumps up to issue yet another challenge, this time for a trial by ordeal. Thersander asks not whether Melite committed adultery with Clitophon, the proper question for this trial, but whether Melite committed adultery while Thersander was away from home (Ach. Tat. 8,11,2 1<|1!…11<#4"!03 3î01 3î {ë /"ö O 10}!$ %"!). To make it patently obvious, Achilles Tatius underscores this limiting clause—‘while Thersander was away’—twice in the account of how Melite accepted the challenge (Ach. Tat. 8,11,3 /"ö O 10}1 %"! M -{"2/0"!# and /ö O {1# /"). Melite readily agrees to the challenge. In the end, the only way out of this legal morass is a deus ex machina in the form of a pair of supernatural tests.38 Leucippe’s virginity test is a red ————— 37

38

The reading for 8,11,3/öO{1#/"Uepresents a correction made by Jacobs and endorsed by Vilborg of a corrupt passage in the manuscripts. See Vilborg 1955-62, 1:155 and 2:136. The pair of ordeals at the end of Achilles Tatius’ novel has been studied, but not in the context of the entire narrative of crime, trial, and punishment. Segal 1984 presents a structuralist reading of the dichotomy in female sexual roles in Achilles Tatius’ novel, a

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herring: it is the ordeal of Melite that represents the final resolution of the story. While the reader has little doubt that Leucippe is a virgin, Melite not only seems like an adulteress, but is in fact one. A legalistic technicality in the wording of the oath not only exonerates Melite, but enables Clitophon the moichos to get away scot-free with his crime and to live happily ever after with his virginal bride—a subtle, yet profound subversion of the genre’s sense of justice. In conclusion, the jailhouse tryst of Melite and Clitophon serves a significant purpose; it cannot be dismissed as merely a joke. Rather, it shifts the moral grounding of the trial scene, and reveals the complexity of Achilles Tatius’ narrative strategy. The litigants’ ‘brinksmanship’ exposes the depth of the novel’s roots in the law.39 The extraordinary skill with which Achilles Tatius develops and sustains the legal dilemma can only be fully appreciated in light of the generic formula of the trial scene. The depiction of law in the novels is heavily conditioned by the demands of the narrative. The trial scenes are not an uncomplicated reflection of the real world. The value of legal realia in illustrating the world of the novels becomes clear if we consider the ‘sharp, paradoxical, and litigious wit’ that D.A. Russell notes was a hallmark of Greek declamatory culture. 40 Steeped in that culture, the novelists were familiar with the procedures in the Attic orations; as part of the Greek civic elite, they would also have had experience with Roman law.41 Accordingly, they draw on both Athenian and Roman law not merely to decorate their plots, but to construct them. The resulting pastiche reveals more about mentalité than reality. But the mentalité is significant for our understanding of the history of the period: the production of the novels coincides with a time when law was in flux. Greek civic forms were being revived as Roman law was being extended. At the same time, the officials who administered these cities for the Roman emperors needed to control the wild and potentially unpredictable process of rendering decisions publicly before a civic audience, particularly —————

39

40 41

contrast which is highlighted in the ordeals of Leucippe and Melite at the end of the novel. A much more moralistic (and dated) interpretation of these ordeals may be found in Rattenbury 1926. On ‘brinksmanship’ as a feature of Achilles Tatius’ overall style, see Reardon 1988, 8788. Russell 1983, 39. The legal background of the declamations is examined by Bonner 1949, 84 ff. See also Bornecque 1902, Lanfranchi 1938, and Parks 1945.

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in cases of serious public import. The trend toward the spectacularization of punishments in the empire was shadowed by a corresponding movement of the trial process out of the public spotlight and safely indoors, where it could more easily be controlled by the imperial magistrates. 42 This left room for the free play of fantasy about the operation of public trials, informed by the memory of the polis of a Golden Age. The trials in the novels elevate private matters to the level of political issues, but the dilemmas leading to trials are as profound as they are playful. They reflect a heightened awareness of the tensions created when persons find themselves subject to overlapping legal systems. It is for this reason that the trials were regarded as an essential element of ancient fiction.

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On the effects of spectacle upon the administration of justice, see MacMullen 1986 and Coleman 1990.

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Goldhill, S. 1995. Foucault’s Virginity: Ancient Erotic Fiction and the History of Sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goold, G.P. (ed.) 1995. Chariton: Callirhoe, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Hammer, S. 1922. ‘De amatoriis Graecorum fabulis observationes’, in: Charisteria Casimiro de Morawski septuagenario oblata ab amicis, collegis, discipulis. Cracow: Societatis Philologiae Polonae auxilio Ministerii instructionis Publicae, 105– 110. Harris, E. M. 1994. “In the Act' or 'Red Handed'? Apagoge to the Eleven and the Furtum Manifestum’, in: G. Thür (ed.) Symposion 1993: Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte, Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 169–184. Harrison, A.R.W. 1968–1971. The Law of Athens, 2 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press. Karabélias, E. 1990. ‘Le roman de Chariton d’Aphrodisias et le droit: Renversements de situation et exploitation des ambiguïtés juridiques’, in: G. Nenci and G. Thür (edd.), Symposion 1988: Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte (Siena-Pisa, 6–8 Juni 1988), Cologne: Bohlau Verlag, 369–396. Kehoe, P.H. 1984. ‘The Adultery Mime Reconsidered’, in: D. F. Bright and E. S. Ramage (edd.), Classical Texts and their Traditions: Studies in honor of C. R. Trahman, Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 89–106. Lanfranchi, F. 1938. Il Diritto nei retori romani: Contributo alla storia dello sviluppo del diritto romano, Milan: Giuffrè. Lateiner, D. 2000. ‘Marriage and the Return of Spouses in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, CJ 95, 313–332. MacDowell, D.M. 1963. Athenian Homicide Law in the Age of the Orators, Manchester: Manchester University Press. MacMullen, R. 1986. ‘Judicial Savagery’, Chiron 16, 147–166. Reprinted in: MacMullen, R. 1990. Changes in the Roman Empire, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 204–217. McGinn, T.A. 1998. Prostitution, Sexuality and the Law in Ancient Rome, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mignogna, E. 1996. ‘Narrativa greca e mimo: il romanzo di Achille Tazio’, SIFC 3rd ser. 14 , 232–243. Parks, E.P. 1945. The Roman Rhetorical Schools as Preparation for the Courts Under the Early Empire, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press. Patterson, C. 1998. The Family in Greek History, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Rattenbury, R. M. 1926. ‘Chastity and Chastity Ordeals in Ancient Greek Romances’, Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, Literary and Historical Section, 59–71. Reardon, B. P. (ed.). 1989. Collected Ancient Greek Novels. Berkeley – Los Angeles: University of California Press. Reardon, B.P. 1994. ‘Achilles Tatius and Ego-Narrative’, in: J.R. Morgan and R. Stoneman (edd.), Greek Fiction: The Greek Novel in Context. London: Routledge, 80–96. Reynolds, R.W. 1946. ‘The Adultery Mime’, CQ 40, 77–84.

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Rohde, E. 1914. Der griechische Roman und seine Vorläufer, 3d edition, Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel. Reprint 1974, New York: Georg Olms. Rojas Álvarez, L. 1989. ‘Realismo erótico en Aquiles Tacio’, Nova Tellus 7, 81–90. Rommel, H. 1923. Die naturwissenschaftlich-paradoxographischen Exkurse bei Philostratos, Heliodoros und Achilleus Tatios, Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer. Russell, D.A. 1983. Greek Declamation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scarcella, A.M. 1990. ‘Nomos nel romanzo greco d’amore’, GIF 42, 243–266. Schwartz, S. 1998. Courtroom Scenes in the Ancient Greek Novels, Ph.D. diss., Columbia. Segal, C. 1984. ‘The Trials at the End of Achilles Tatius’ Clitophon and Leucippe: Doublets and Complementaries’, SIFC 2, 83–91. Taubenschlag, R. 1955. The Law of Greco-Roman Egypt in Light of the Papyri, 332 B.C. – 640 A.D. 2d ed. Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnisto Naukowe. Treggiari, S. 1991. Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges From the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian, Oxford University Press: Oxford. Vatin, C. 1970. Recherches sur le mariage et la condition de la femme mariée à l'époque hellénistique. Paris: E. de Boccard. Vilborg, E. 1955–62. Achilles Tatius: Leucippe and Clitophon, 2 vols, Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell. Wolff, H. J. 1939. Written and Unwritten Marriages in Hellenistic and Postclassical Roman Law. Haverford: American Philological Association. Youtie, H. C. 1975. ‘,ú.ý : The Social Impact of Illiteracy in GrecoRoman Egypt’, ZPE 17, 201–221. Zimmermann, F. 1957. ‘Kallirhoes Verkauf durch Theron: Eine juristisch-philologische Betrachtung zu Chariton’, in: Aus der byzantinischen Arbeit der Deutschen Demokratische Republik, Berliner byzantinistische Arbeiten 5–6, 72–81.

Religious Narratives and Religious Themes in the Novels of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus MARGARET EDSALL

New York

1. Introduction The prominence of religious themes in the Greek novels has elicited a variety of views about the relationship between the novel and religion:1 1) the novels are cult texts of mystery religions;2 2) particular cults indirectly influence the novels;3 3) the novels are religious in a more general sense;4 4) religious themes are a resource for narrative technique with no reference beyond the boundaries of fiction.5 Recently, Merkelbach and Bowersock have proposed that religious themes reflect the novel’s origin in religious narratives.6 Merkelbach concludes that religious themes reflect not only the novel’s symbolic meaning but also its origin in pagan aretalogies.7 Bowersock suggests that religious themes are inspired by Christian miracle narratives but the novel remains a “secular scripture.”8 Interestingly, each critic isolates a different type of religious narrative as the source of the novel’s origin but admits that other genres are at play. According to Fusillo, multiple hypotheses concerning literary influences may be plausibly advanced, since the novel seems to derive from the disintegration of previous literary forms.9 Thus, these conclusions raise a far different issue than they in fact address: ————— 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Morgan 1996. Kerenyi 1927; Merkelbach 1962. Altheim 1948; Weinreich 1962; Griffiths 1978; Edwards 1985. Beck 1996; Reardon 1969; Heiserman 1977; Hägg 1983. Winkler 1980; 1982; Morgan 1978; 1996. Merkelbach 1994; Bowersock 1994a. Symbolic meaning: Merkelbach 1962; Origin in pagan aretalogy: Merkelbach 1994, 290. Bowersock 1994a, 143 . Fusillo 1988, 17–18.

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the variety of voices in the genre and the relationship between the novel and religious narratives. Abandoning questions of origin, I hope to address this issue by looking at key passages discussed by these scholars in the context of religious themes in the early phase of the novel represented by Chariton and Xenophon of Ephesus and the later phase represented by Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius.

2. Religious Narratives Religious narratives which have precise contacts in the novels tend to be miracle stories of one kind or another. Merkelbach refers to aretalogies, both pagan and Christian.10 Bowersock refers to Christian works, such as the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the novel and hagiography.11 Although it is common to refer to different types of religious narratives using categories such as “epiphany reports,” “aretalogies,” or “miracle narratives,” the ancients seem not to have recognized them as distinct genres. 12 They did distinguish among different kinds of encounters with the gods: an unseen presence; a face to face encounter between god and man; visits of gods in unperceived disguises; the appearances of gods in dreams.13 These types of religious experience are well represented in literature and inscriptions. From Homer until the times of the Greek novelists, the details of such encounters follow a fixed pattern and the language used to describe them regularly reflects the language used in the epics.14 It is reasonable to assume a more complex relationship than direct borrowing, that a thought pattern associated with this type of religious phenomenon became crystallized in literature and inscriptions and that the resulting religious narrative patterns were occasionally enhanced by a return to Homeric language.15 At the same time, Homer and other writers used these narrative patterns for their own literary effects.16 ————— 10 11 12 13 14

15 16

Merkelbach 1994, 283–285. Bowersock 1994a, 141. Smith 1981, 174–99; Winkler 1985, 235–238. Lane Fox 1985, 127; Mussies 1980, 1–18. Lane Fox 1985, 110; I follow the generally accepted dates, e.g., as in Schmeling 1996: Chariton, mid-first century A.D. or earlier; Xenophon, probably second century A.D.; Longus, second to third century A.D.; Achilles Tatius, second half or third quarter of the second century A.D.; Heliodorus, between 350 and 375 A.D. Lane Fox 1985, 110. Lane Fox 1985, 107.

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Christians recognized that they shared with pagans these types of experience and their rich literary tradition. Thus, the typical thought patterns and their tell-tale narrative patterns may be observed in Christian writing as well.17 Such narrative patterns occur in the early phase of the novels but become more pronounced in the richer literary elaboration of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus, suggesting that references to religion are part of the novel’s literary development.18 For the purposes of this paper, I shall confine myself to examples of religious narratives commonly referred to as epiphany reports, aretalogies and martyrologies, which have precise contacts with the novels. Allusions to specific narrative patterns are rare. Instead, we find combinations of typical elements. For example, in Chariton and Heliodorus, several passages echo elements of epiphany reports such as the trademarks of specific deities, unusual beauty, luminous clothes and great height.19 In addition, the endings of the novels, particularly those of Xenophon, Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius, contain aretalogical elements such as the public recitation of miracles, acclamations, the amazement of a crowd of witnesses and confessions.20 Finally, in Heliodorus, a specific narrative pattern from a martyrology is echoed, along with typical elements of martyrology.21 These passages will be the point of departure for a discussion of the relationship between religious narratives and religious themes in the novels of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus.

3. The Early Phase of the Novels To evaluate the role of religious narratives in the more elaborate novels of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus, it is useful to survey the religious themes in the early phase of the novels represented by Chariton and Xenophon. In these authors religious themes cluster around the descriptions of the romantic heroines and the endings. In Chariton, religious narratives are rewritten to assimilate Callirhoe’s appearance to that of a goddess. At the beginning and throughout the novel, ————— 17 18

19 20 21

Lane Fox 1985, 109; 375–418; Versnel 1987, 42–55; Merkelbach 1994, 283–285. On the development from an early phase to a richer literary elaboration, see Kuch 1985, 3–19. Mussies 1980, 8; Dietrich 1983, 53–79. Kerenyi 1927; Merkelbach 1962; Pervo 1987, 107; Merkelbach 1994. Bowersock 1994a, 121–131.

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she resembles Aphrodite and those who see her react as if they are experiencing an epiphany.22 On her wedding day, she resembles Artemis, and the crowd is amazed and worships her.23 On another occasion, Chaereas’ sudden collapse upon seeing her image on a temple dedication in Aphrodisias is mistaken for a reaction to one of the many epiphanies of Aphrodite that occur in the area.24 Her resemblance to goddesses and people’s reactions recall typical elements of epiphany reports where the appearance of a deity is met with typical reactions such as amazement, proskunesis, and collapse.25 In these passages, typical elements of epiphany reports articulate the remarkable beauty of the romantic heroine. At the opening of all the extant novels except Longus, the heroine is compared to a goddess.26 Chariton develops this motif by repeatedly comparing Callirhoe to Aphrodite. The rewriting of the epiphany report also belongs to Chariton’s narrative technique. Throughout the novel, he relies on elements from historiography and epic to ennoble his story.27 In these passages, epiphany reports serve the same semantic function. They also contribute to the novel’s visual strategy.28 The references to epiphany not only invite the readers to gaze at Callirhoe, but also inform their responses to this gaze. The range of emotions associated with epiphany – amazement, falling on the knees in adoration and fainting – provides readers with an emotional lens through which to view her. So religious narratives are yet another intertext through which Callirhoe’s passive eroticism is constructed. In Xenophon’s novel, religious themes are more prominent. At the beginning of the novel, the narrator says that whenever the Ephesians used to see Anthia in the sacred enclosure, they would worship her as Artemis.29 So at her first appearance, the crowd gives an acclamation. Some are amazed and say that she is the goddess in person, others that she was made by the goddess in her own image. All pray and prostrate themselves. At the begin-

————— 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29

Chariton 1,1,1; 1,14,1; 2,2; 2,3 . Chariton 1,1,15. Chariton 3,6–8. Amazement: Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 84; 180–195; Worship: Homeric Hymn to Demeter 292–293; Collapse: Acts 25, 12–16. Chariton 1,1; Xenophon Ephes. 1,2; Achilles Tatius 1,4. Fusillo 1988; Fusillo 1989. Egger 1994, 37. Xenophon Ephes., 1,2,7.

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ning of their travels, Anthia and Habrocomes arrive in Rhodes.30 The Rhodians are amazed at their beauty. Some say it was a visitation of auspicious gods; some worship and adore them. Not only do the lovers seem divine but the crowd’s responses to their appearance mirror typical reactions to epiphany such as acclamation, amazement, prayer and worship. As in Chariton, elements of epiphany reports emphasize the beauty of the romantic heroine and inform readers’ responses. However, in Xenophon, they are amplified to include Habrocomes and events in the lives of the lovers. Elements of aretalogy are also used to shape events in the lovers’ lives. In Book 4, when Habrocomes is condemned to the pyre, he prays to the god of the Nile that he be spared, and the waters rise and put out the flames. The event amazes those present.31 When at last the lovers are reunited at the temple of Isis, the crowd gives an acclamation, hailing Isis as a great goddess.32 Upon their return to Ephesus, the lovers dedicate a picture or inscription (graphe) in honor of the goddess, commemorating all their sufferings and adventures.33 In these passages, elements of aretalogy cast pivotal events in the story as miracles: the rescue of Habrocomes from death and the final reunion of the lovers. Thus, these elements function in the same way as those drawn from epiphany reports: they contribute to Xenophon’s narrative strategy by ennobling the story and informing readers’ responses. While, in Chariton, Callirhoe says a prayer thanking Aphrodite for her return home and reunion with Chaereas, in Xenophon, the attribution of the lovers’ rescue to Artemis and the storage of their adventures in her temple characterize the entire novel as an aretalogy.34 The aretalogical ending, in which the reunion of the lovers is attributed to a god, serves a variety of semantic functions in the genre.35 In Chariton and Xenophon, the closing references to aretalogy serve to unravel the plot and ennoble the ending. Religious narratives in the early phase of the novel have straightforward semantic functions: they ennoble the story, inform readers’ responses and unravel the plot. While Chariton uses interlocking literary codes such as epic, historiography and religious narratives, Xenophon prefers religious ————— 30 31 32 33 34 35

Xenophon Ephes. 1,12,1–3. Xenophon Ephes. 4,2. Xenophon Ephes. 5,15,3–4. Xenophon Ephes. 5,15. Merkelbach 1994, 285. Chariton 8,8; Xenophon Ephes. 5,15; Achilles Tatius 8,9; Longus Prologue; Heliodorus 10,39; See Merkelbach 1962; Pervo 1987, 107.

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narratives to other literary codes. A more detailed analysis would show how he consistently uses temple dedications and aretalogical elements to structure his story. This abbreviated analysis of the role of religious narratives in Chariton and Xenophon demonstrates that religious narratives are already important building blocks in the early phase of the genre and that their use depends on the narrative techniques of individual authors.

4. Achilles Tatius In Achilles Tatius, religious narratives are concentrated at the end of the novel and, as in Xenophon, assimilate the ending to aretalogy: the reunion of the lovers is cast as a miracle. However, Achilles Tatius incorporates aretalogy as part of his ironic play on the rules of the genre. Near the end of the novel, the lovers are poised for disaster: Clitophon has been condemned to torture and death for Leucippe’s murder and Leucippe is being held as Thersander’s slave. Just as Clitophon is about to be tortured, the arrival of the Byzantine Embassy to Artemis postpones his punishment and Leucippe’s arrival at the temple as a slave seeking asylum proves that he is no murderer. Clinias and Sostratus tell the story to a crowd of witnesses, who bless the name of Artemis.36 The priest brings the lovers to stay with him at the temple and, that evening, Clitophon gives an account of their adventures 37 The crowd’s acclamation and Clitophon’s confession recall typical elements of aretalogy and characterize the lovers’ reunion as a miracle of Artemis. At this point, the ending of Achilles Tatius’ novel is assimilated to an aretalogy in the same way as Xenophon’s novel. However, the novel doesn’t end on this note. One of the elements of aretalogy hints that this ending is equivocal: Clitophon’s confession is not straightforward, but omits mention of his tryst with Melite to maintain his chastity. By alluding to a crack in the genre’s ideal of chastity, this confession becomes part of Achilles Tatius’ ironic play on the rules of the genre. Since it is also one of the elements that characterizes the lovers’ reunion as a miracle, it prepares readers for a crack in the novel’s aretalogical ending.

————— 36 37

Achilles Tatius 7,14; 7,16. Achilles Tatius 8,5.

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This crack widens during the trial scene that follows: each element of aretalogy is undercut in the speeches of Thersander, the priest and Sosthenes. Thersander complains that pimps have desecrated sacred embassies and whores have polluted sacred temples, accuses the priest of usurping Artemis’ power by offering asylum to Leucippe and freeing Clitophon from jail, insinuates that the priest did so to sleep with the lovers and complains that the temple of Artemis has become an adulterer’s home and a whore’s bedchamber. 38 The priest responds with a speech emulating the plays of Aristophanes that pokes fun at Thersander’s lechery. He questions the legitimacy of Thersander’s accusations against Clitophon and Leucippe, announcing that the great goddess Artemis has saved them both.39 Sosthenes reiterates some of Thersander’s points.40 Each element of the aretalogical ending is called into question. The crowd’s praise of Artemis is undermined by an invective against the priest and lovers. Artemis’ embassy and asylum, the interventions that saved the lovers, are now considered desecrated and polluted by them. Artemis’ saving miracle is recast as the libidinous priest’s usurpation of her power. Finally, the priest’s pronouncement of the miracle is strangely couched in an obscene comedy and Sosthenes’ speech completely contradicts it. Thus, the story of Artemis’ miraculous rescue of the lovers is revealed to be the story of their bawdy adventures with Artemis’ priest. Interestingly, these two versions of the ending correspond to the two types of aretalogy that seem to be implied in sources. Although aretalogy was never a genre with fixed rules of style and content, there were persons called aretalogi, “interpreters of miraculous events.” 41 At the same time, in Suetonius, Augustus entertains his company with musicians, actors, lowbrow jugglers from the circus and aretalogi and, in Juvenal, Ulysses’ role as narrator of his adventures to Alcinous is compared to the role of a lying aretalogus.42 In other words, some aretalogi were pious private practitioners who produced collections of miracle stories while others were performers who told entertaining stories after dinner and aretalogies were either accounts of a god’s deeds or entertaining tales.43 If we may adduce Manetho as ————— 38 39 40 41

42 43

Achilles Tatius 8,8. Achilles Tatius 8,9. Achilles Tatius 8,10–11. Reinach 1885, 257ff.; Crusius 1895, cols. 670–672; Aly 1935, cols. 13–15; Smith 1971, 179; Winkler 1985, 235–236. Suetonius, Life of Augustus 73; Juvenal 15,16. Smith 1971, 176; Winkler 1985, 236–238.

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further evidence, some aretalogi were “tellers of myth and shameful, nonsensical stories, leaders in mockery and scornful laughter, who have in their aretalogies all sorts of (deceitful) yarns.”44 It is even possible that some of these stories were parodies of aretalogies, such as are found in Petronius and Iolaus.45 The scornful humor in the speeches of Thersander, the priest of Artemis and Sosthenes resemble Manetho’s aretalogi. Thus, two types of aretalogy are rewritten into Achilles Tatius’ ending: the lovers rescue and reunion through Artemis’ intervention corresponds to the aretalogies written in praise of a deity, while the trial scene corresponds to the mocking aretalogies told for entertainment. By incorporating two types of aretalogy, Achilles Tatius ironically plays on the religious ending of the novel. The rescue and reunion of the lovers, at first ennobled by a serious aretalogy, is now undercut by a humorous aretalogy. This presents an ironical view of the genre’s aretalogical ending: the miracles that rescued the chaste lovers were in fact a cover for their sexcapades with a priest. Strikingly, this dissonance between serious and humorous aretalogy matches the dissonance between Homeric epic and Achilles Tatius’ parody of epic.46 Thus, the relationship of Achilles Tatius’ novel to religious narratives is similar to its relationship to Homeric epic: both are rewritten as part of his ironical pastiche of the novel.

5. Heliodorus In Heliodorus, religious narratives cluster around Charikleia’s portrayal, which is rich in details from religious life because of her transformation from the priestess of Delphic Artemis into the priestess of the Moon in Ethiopia. In particular, passages where she wears the outfit of her priesthood are replete with elements of epiphany reports and aretalogy. 5.1 The Opening Scene At the opening of the novel, the rewriting of typical elements of epiphany reports assimilates Charikleia’s appearance in the novel to the epiphany of a deity. The narrator describes through the eyes of bandits an as yet unidenti————— 44 45 46

Translation of Manetho Apotelesmaticorum 4.445–9 in Smith 1971, 176. Merkelbach 1994, 287 Fusillo 1989, 23–24.

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fied Charikleia, a girl of such indescribable beauty that she might be mistaken for a goddess.47 Wearing the outfit of her priesthood, she appears like Artemis. Her crown of laurel and her clanging weapons evoke Apollo’s descent from Olympus in the Iliad.48 Leaning over a corpse-like Theagenes, she recalls Isis mourning Osiris.49 Her comparison to a possessed priestess or a breathing statue also echoes epiphany reports, since Bacchic frenzy and animated statues were regarded as epiphanies.50 Other details in the description, such as her unusual beauty, luminous clothes and great height, are stereotyped elements of epiphany reports.51 The bandits’ reactions mirror typical reactions to epiphany.52 Their wonder and terror at her appearance parallel the amazement and fear of mortals familiar from Homer on.53 Their lack of certainty as to whether she is Artemis, Isis, a possessed priestess or a breathing statue reflects the ambiguity of epiphany reports, where mortals are never really sure what they are encountering.54 The skepticism of some, who question whether she is a goddess, represents yet another reaction and the narrator echoes this skepticism when he says that the bandits suspect that she is a living statue of a goddess because they are boorish. In many accounts of epiphany, certain types of people were considered more prone to these types of experience and their reports might be met with such skepticism. 55 In this passage, the repetition of different elements of epiphany emphasizes the beauty of the romantic heroine. The rewriting of the epiphany report is also an integral part of the narrative technique. This opening describes a puzzling scene that must be deciphered according to not only the laws of nature but also the rules of the genre.56 The narrator tells readers what the bandits saw, what they inferred, and what left them confused, and leaves it to them to solve the scene.57 The bandits’ display of incomplete cognition in————— 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

Heliodorus 1,2. Hom., Iliad,1,46–7. Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 357d9–11. Versnel 1987, 46–50. Mussies 1980, 8. Heliodorus 1,2; 1,7. Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 84; 180–95. Versnel 1987, 48. Lucian, Alexander 12,16; 38,14. Winkler 1982, 97–102. Winkler 1982, 97–102.

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volves readers in the game of reading the romance.58 The elements of the epiphany report, which must be read and interpreted and which provoke a variety of responses ranging from awe and terror to skepticism and aporia, provide the perfect structure for misleading readers as they come to learn that Charikleia is not a goddess, but a romantic heroine. 5.2 Escape from Bandits Later in the novel but chronologically before the opening scene, the rewriting of typical elements of epiphany reports assimilates Charikleia’s appearance to the contrived epiphany of a deity. Here, we learn why Charikleia was dressed as a priestess at the beginning of the novel.59 Kalasiris devised a strategem to keep Trachinos, a bandit chief, from forcing Charikleia to marry him. He asked Trachinos if Charikleia might use the bandit’s ship as a bridal chamber to add greater ceremony to the rite. Then he told Peloros, the bandit second-in-command, that Charikleia was in love with him and that if he saw her in her bridal chamber, he would see Artemis in person. Peloros saw her “with a crown of laurel on her head, refulgent in her gown of golden weave – she had dressed herself in her sacred robe from Delphi, to be either a mantle of victory or else a funeral shroud – everything around her was radiantly beautiful, creating the illusion of a nuptial bedroom.”60 He was consumed by passion and jealousy and started a fight among the bandits. Charikleia joined in by shooting arrows from the ship. The bandits had no idea what this mischief was and some even supposed that their wounds were divinely inflicted. Eventually all the combatants were killed except for Theagenes and Peloros, who fought one on one. Charikleia helped Theagenes by telling him to take courage and he gained strength from her voice. Finally, he killed Pelorus. This stratagem recalls contrived epiphanies such as that engineered by Pisistratus, who tricked the Athenians. He had a tall, beautiful woman named Phue outfitted in a suit of armor, mounted in a chariot, and driven into Athens. 61 Messengers preceded her and urged the people to welcome Pisistratus back because the goddess Athena herself had shown him extraordinary honor and was bringing him home to her own Acropolis. The people, convinced ————— 58 59 60 61

Winkler 1982, 97–102. Heliodorus 5,28–33 Morgan 1989, 469 Herodotus 1,60.

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that Phue was indeed the goddess, offered her prayers and received Pisistratus with open arms. Such contrived epiphanies occur elsewhere in historiography, where they are a war trick used to gain an upper hand in battle.62 Kalasiris plays a similar trick on the bandits by telling Charikleia to put on her outfit and Pelorus that if he looks at Charikleia, he will see Artemis. Like Phue, Charikleia dresses as a deity. Just as Pisistratus’ messengers broadcast the idea that Phue is Athena, so Kalasiris gives Pelorus the idea that Charikleia is Artemis. Like the Athenians, Pelorus is impressed by the “epiphany”. Her similarity to Artemis, her shining cloths and her aura recall stereotypical details of epiphany reports.63 Her appearance in battle, shooting arrows at the bandits and still wearing the outfit of her priesthood recalls Apollo’s epiphany in Book One of the Iliad evoked earlier in the novel.64 The bandits’ reactions recall the confusion of Homeric heroes who experience the intervention of a deity in battle but remain ignorant of the particular god.65 Her subsequent appearance beside Theagenes urging him on recalls Homeric epiphanies where deities instill confidence in their favourites.66 As in previous episodes, elements of epiphany are here used to draw attention to the beauty of the romantic heroine. However, the rewriting of the contrived epiphany of historiography adds a new twist: it is used to structure an exciting escape from bandits. Thus, the epiphany report contributes to yet another one of Heliodorus’ characteristic narrative strategies, namely his use of historiographic elements.67 Contrived epiphany is transposed into the world of romance to lend plausibility to the lovers’ battle escape from bandits. 5.3 The Miraculous Ending At the end of the novel, which Merkelbach has described as a long, elaborate aretalogy about the miraculous workings of the sun god, the rewriting of religious narratives has a variety of semantic functions.68 ————— 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Pritchett 1975. Mussies 1980, 8. Hom., Iliad 1,2,5. Dietrich 1983, 54. Dietrich 1983, 59. Morgan 1982. Merkelbach 1994, 290.

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Charikleia and Theagenes are about to be sacrificed and, since only virgins are acceptable victims, they must first undergo a chastity test by walking across a glowing hot grate. Only men and women who have never had a sexual experience can withstand the grate’s heat. When Theagenes steps on the grate and remains unharmed, everyone is astounded that so handsome a man has never experienced the gifts of Aphrodite.69 Before Charikleia steps on the grate, she puts on her Delphic robe.70 Her beauty also impresses the crowd: “A thrill of wonder ran through the crowd, who in unison made the heavens resound with their cry, wordless and unmeaning, but expressive of their astonishment.”71 In this passage, many of the same elements of epiphany as were used in Book 1 and 5 are again used to emphasize Charikleia’s beauty. Other details are drawn from aretalogy: the amazement and acclamation that are the typical responses of the crowd of witnesses. These details underline the chastity of the lovers, a paradigm that informs the corpus of the novels, and to characterize it as a miracle. Aretalogical elements are also an integral part of the narrative technique. The episode describes a common occurrence in the novel where the romantic heroine faces execution at the hands of bandits or, as in this case, at the hands of barbarians. In such scenes, religion is brought into play to reinforce the horror and melodrama.72 Since the lovers’ miraculous chastity approves them as sacrificial victims, the aretalogical elements reinforce the horror and melodrama of the scene. The hopelessness of the lovers’ predicament is further emphasized by the fact that the crowd’s only hope for their rescue is another miracle. Other miracles follow as, throughout the ending of the novel, aretalogical elements are multiplied. Charikleia jumps down from the grate and says that it is not lawful for her to be sacrificed because she is Ethiopian, not a foreigner. Hydaspes is amazed and does not believe her.73 She explains that he is her father, they resort to legal proceedings and she produces her recognition tokens. Persinna recognizes her in astonishment.74 Everyone present applauds and shouts; everyone is surprised, and even Hydaspes is convinced ————— 69 70 71

72 73 74

Heliodorus 10,9,1. Heliodorus 10,11,1 ff. Morgan 1989, 564. Winkler 1980, 174. Heliodorus 10,12,1. Heliodorus 10,13,1.

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and seized with amazement.75 The people raise a shout that reaches heaven.76 Hydaspes says that the gods, through their miraculous workings, have brought about the marvelous recognition of his daughter.77 Nevertheless, because she has been consecrated as a victim for Helios, he must sacrifice her anyway. The crowd of Ethiopians cries “Save the girl.”78 A series of acclamations follows.79 Hydaspes acknowledges the acclamations and does not sacrifice Charikleia. Next, about to be sacrificed, Theagenes leaves the altar to capture an escaped sacrificial bull.80 The narrator questions whether he does this out of courage or divine inspiration and Charikleia is bewildered. The crowd, however, responds with amazement and acclamation and demands that Theagenes wrestle with a huge Ethiopian athlete.81 When Theagenes is victorious, the crowd again responds with amazement and acclamation.82 At this juncture, it is not clear whether he will be exempted from sacrifice or not. Finally, Charikleia withdraws into a tent with her mother who wants to hear the story of her fate. Charikleia confesses that Theagenes is her spouse but that the two have remained chaste.83 Charikles appears and accuses Theagenes of abducting Charikleia and Theagenes confesses.84 Those in the crowd who understand him are astounded by what they see.85 Charikleia rushes from the tent and a happy ending follows. The people utter words of good omen and dance.86 Sisimithres demands that they recognize the miraculous workings of the gods and that they not only spare Theagenes, but also abolish human sacrifice.87 Hydaspes agrees and betroths the lovers. The people respond with shouts and applause.88 Throughout the ending, elements of aretalogy are repeated to raise and lower our expectations of the lovers’ rescue and reunion. During Charik————— 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

Heliodorus 10,15,1. Heliodorus 10,16,3. Heliodorus 10,16,6. Heliodorus 10,17,1. Heliodorus 10,17,1–2. Heliodorus 10,30,5. Heliodorus 10,30,5. Heliodorus 10,32,5. Heliodorus 10,18,3; 10,29,4; 10,33,4; 10,38,4. Heliodorus 10,36,1; 10,37,1. Heliodorus 10,35,2. Heliodorus 10,38,3. Heliodorus 10,39,3. Heliodorus 10,41,3.

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leia’s trial, these elements, previously used to heighten the inexorability of her plight as a sacrificial victim, are now rewritten to characterize her homecoming and rescue from being sacrificed as miracles. During Theagenes’ acts, they are also rewritten to emphasize the hopelessness of his situation by characterizing his feats as open to competing interpretations. While each of these acts is greeted with the crowd’s amazement and acclamation, it is not clear how to read them as signs. Although the crowd’s responses characterize them as miracles and we know that only a miracle can save Theagenes, the responses of the narrator and Charikleia leave us wondering: are they miracles or mere acts of courage? It is only when Charikleia confesses that it becomes clear that Theagenes will be saved. This confession adds another aretalogical element to the ending. Aretalogies couched in the form of confessions were customarily recited by candidates of mystery cults before they began their new lives as initiates.89 Charikleia’s confession, Hydaspes’ recitation of the miracle and the crowd’s responses of amazement and acclamation now unequivocally characterize Theagenes’ feats as miracles. They also assimilate the wedding to an initiation into a cult. This comparison is pressed further when the narrator says that the couple was escorted into the city to perform the more mystic parts of the ceremony.90 Thus, while aretalogical elements at first elaborate on different narrative segments whose relationships aren’t quite clear, by the end, the two stories of Theagenes and Charikleia are interwoven into one extended aretalogy about their progression towards marriage. Heliodorus’s references to religious narratives provides yet another variation of the aretalogical ending of the genre. By weaving together multiple elements of aretalogy into an extended pattern, Heliodorus assimilates his novel to an aretalogy and raises and lowers readers’ expectations for reunion. Finally, at the end of the novel, the function of aretalogy becomes clear: the narrative of the god’s saving miracle is the best structure to use to formalize the ending of an edifying love story.

————— 89 90

Merkelbach 1994, 286. Heliodorus 10,41.

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5.4 Escape from the Pyre It is in the context of these passages that rewrite religious narratives for different semantic functions that we can best understand Heliodorus’ rewriting of an episode from a Christian miracle narrative.91 In this passage, Charikleia is condemned to burn at the stake.92 First, she says a prayer, declaring her innocence and begging to die. “Then, she climbed onto the pyre and positioned herself at the very heart of the fire. There she stood for some time without taking any hurt. The flames flowed around her rather than licking against her; they caused her no harm but drew back wherever she moved toward them, serving merely to encircle her in splendor and present a vision of her standing in radiant beauty in a frame of light, like a bride in a chamber of flame.”.93 The city is in an uproar, her deliverance seems to show the hand of god. When she leaps down from the pyre, the city exclaims in joyful awe and invokes the god’s majesty. This passage recalls a scene from the account of Polycarp’s martyrdom (c. 150 AD) where he is condemned to be burned at the pyre. Instead of immediately doing him in, the flames form into a vault-like shape and surround him like a wall so that he is unharmed.94 While there are no direct verbal echoes, the flames’ behavior, which is taken as a divine intervention, is close enough to suggest that Heliodorus was familiar with this story. Other details such as Charikleia’s willingness to die and eagerness to mount the pyre more generally recall accounts of martyrs such as Agathonike, who throws herself willingly on the pyre.95 The crowd’s amazement and acclamation echo typical elements of martyrologies, which shared these characteristics with aretalogy.96 Strikingly, this narrative pattern functions in the same way as the elements of epiphany reports in the episode where Charikleia’s beauty is assimilated to that of a bride in her wedding chamber and her resemblance to Artemis is exploited to engineer an escape from bandits. Here, the narrative pattern from martyrology is rewritten to assimilate her beauty to that of a bride in a wedding chamber and structure her escape from barbarians. It is ————— 91 92 93 94 95 96

Bowersock 1994a, 141. Heliodorus 8,9. Morgan 1989, 526. Bowersock 1994a. Bowersock 1994b. Merkelbach 1994, 283–285.

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also part of Heliodorus’ complex narrative strategy. While Polycarp is done in, Charikleia survives. The use of the narrative pattern from martyrology is therefore similar to the use of the aretalogical pattern: it lowers and raises readers’ expectations that Charikleia will be saved. Thus, Heliodorus uses religious narratives for the same semantic functions, regardless of their original religious context. 5.5 Religious Narratives in Heliodorus Heliodorus uses religious narratives more extensively then previous novelists. When rewriting epiphany reports or aretalogies, he piles detail upon detail as part of his distinctive narrative strategy. Religious narratives are used not only to ennoble and structure his story, but also to involve readers in the game of reading a romance. These narratives, both pagan and Christian, are linked through their theme of miracles and usefulness in particular narrative situations. This interchangeability suggests that their choice depends on their narrative situations rather than their original religious context. Nevertheless, writing at a time when Christian forms of literature were proliferating, Heliodorus prefers pagan religious narratives to Christian, betraying nostalgia for polytheistic forms of religious expression. While these narratives are transposed into a world of everyday romance and love, there is no dissonance between their tone and Heliodorus’ novel: the relationship of his novel to religious narratives is similar to its relationship to epic: both are rewritten as part of his reinterpretation of the edifying love story.97

6. Conclusion These findings demonstrate an overall similarity in the novelists’ use of religious narratives. References to religion reflect the kaleidoscope historical context of the novel somewhat randomly: they are rewritten for different narrative ends and are therefore used in connection with their treatment of the erotic plot rather than out of any close engagement with the religious trends of their times. The theme of miracles common to these narratives is useful for ennobling and structuring the endings of the novels. Heliodorus’ and Achilles Tatius’ use of religious narratives mirror their use of other gen————— 97

Fusillo 1988, 23.

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res.98 Heliodorus transposes literary borrowings into a world dominated by domestic and erotic experience. Achilles Tatius transposes them into a world dominated by irony. Both Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius treat religious themes in distinctive manners: Heliodorus offers a nostalgic and idealistic vision of religion, connected with his edifying reinterpretation of the love story and Achilles Tatius offers an ironical view of religion connected with his “pastiche” of the love story. Neither are these narratives dominant voices in the earlier phase of the novels nor are they in the final phase, when their prominence is due to greater literary elaboration. That we cannot privilege these narratives over each other or any other genre indicates that questions about the origin of the novel must remain open. Therefore, it is unlikely that either aretalogy or Christian miracle narrative played a significant role in the development of the genre. On the other hand, the variety of voices explains why references to religious phenomena are inconsistent: different religious narratives are selected not out of any theological interest per se but as resources for the narrative techniques of individual authors. Thus, these references are not so coherent or pervasive as to support the contention that the novels are cult texts, are indirectly influenced by particular cults or are “religious” in a more general sense. At the same time, these findings reveal interesting interconnections among the different religious narratives favored by the novelists. Their interchangeability as building blocks suggests that the novelists did not discriminate between pagan and Christian forms. Nevertheless, the frequent and elaborate references to aretalogy and epiphany indicate that the impact of pagan narrative forms on the imaginations of the novelists was far greater than the impact of Christian literature. It is tempting to speculate that these religious themes in the novel have a reference beyond the boundaries of fiction. Perhaps this contrast between the attitudes of the novelists and Christian writers qualifies Bowersock’s conclusion that fiction expressed the nexus between polytheism and Christianity. While Christian writers were indebted to the rich narrative tradition of the Greek novel, Greek novelists self-consciously limited their references to Christian literary forms just as they avoided explicit reference to the Roman Empire. Thus, this increasingly nostalgic fiction was one way of guarding and preserving pagan religious traditions. ————— 98

Fusillo 1988; 1989.

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More specifically, religious themes in Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus provide us with a window on two moments in the history of mentalité. Although we have little information that is certain or undisputed about Achilles Tatius, the Suda article maintains that that he became a bishop and a Christian.99 His ironic play on the aretalogical ending betrays an ironic view of pagan cult that would be particularly appealing to Christian readers prepared to claim him as their own and even make a bishop of him. We are fortunate to have slightly more information about Heliodorus, if we are to accept Socrates Scholastikos’ statement that Heliodorus wrote the Aithiopika in his youth and later became the bishop of Tricca in Thessaly who enforced celibacy in his clergy.100 How are we to reconcile this biographical tradition with Heliodorus’ dense references to pagan religious narratives? Perhaps an important historical moment has been captured in fiction: the imagination of a pagan on the cusp of conversion to Christianity. Writing at a time when his hometown was rapidly becoming a center of Christianity, Heliodorus had a special interest in incorporating pagan religious themes into a genre that seemed to celebrate pagan religious beliefs and practices. 101 At the same time, he was becoming familiar with Christian works such as Philo’s Life of Moses and the martyrologies and did not resist the impulse to use them when they suited his narrative purposes.102 Finally, after writing the Aithiopika in reaction to the Christian works that were rapidly proliferating, Heliodorus became Christian, just as the Greek novel was claimed by the Christians as their own.103

Bibliography Altheim, F. 1948. Literatur und Gesellschaft im ausgehenden Altertum, vol. I. Halle: 13–47. Aly, W. 1935, ‘Zum Art. Aretalogoi.’ RE Supplementband 6, 13–15. Beck, R. 1996. ‘Mystery Religions, Aretalogy and the Ancient Novel,’ in: G. Schmeling, (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World. Leiden: E.J Brill, 131–150. Bowersock, G.W. 1994a. Fiction as History: Nero to Julian. Berkeley. Bowersock, G.W. 1994b. Martyrdom and Rome. Cambridge.

————— 99 100 101 102 103

Plepelits 1996, 387. Morgan 1996, 420. On Emesa as a center of Christianity in Helidorus’ times, see Morgan 1978. On Heliodorus’ familiarity with Philo’s Life of Moses, see Morgan 1978. Bowersock 1994a, 142.

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Crusius, F. 1895 ‘Aretalogoi,’ RE 2/1, 670–672. Dietrich, B.C. 1983. ‘Divine Epiphanies in Homer’, Numen 30, 53–79. Edwards, D.1985. ‘Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe: Religion and Politics Do Mix’, in: K.H. Richards (ed.), Society of Biblical Literature 1985 Seminar Papers 24. Atlanta, 175–181. Egger, B. 1994, `Looking at Chariton’s Callirhoe,’ in Morgan, J.R. and Stoneman, R. (eds.), Greek Fiction: The Greek Novel in Context. London Fusillo, M. 1988. ‘Textual Patterns and Narrative Situations in the Greek Novel,’ GCN 1, 17–31. Fusillo, M. 1989. Naissance du roman. Paris. Griffiths, J. G. 1978. ‘Xenophon of Ephesus on Isis and Alexandria’, in Boer M. de (ed.), Hommages a Maarten J. Vermaseren I. Leiden, 409–437. Hägg, T. 1983. The Novel in Antiquity, Oxford. Heiserman, A. 1977. The Novel Before the Novel. Chicago. Kerenyi, K. 1927. Die griechisch-orientalische Romanliteratur in religionsgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung. (Reprint, Darmstadt 1964) Tübingen. Kuch, H. 1985. “Gattungstheoretische Überlegungen zum antiken Roman,” Philologus 129, 3–19. Lane Fox, R.L. 1985. Pagans and Christians. New York. Merkelbach, R. 1962. Roman und Mysterium in der Antike. Munich. Merkelbach, R. 1994. ‘Novel and Aretalogy’, in J. Tatum (ed.), The Search for the Ancient Novel. Baltimore, 283–295. Morgan, J.R. 1978. A Commentary on Books 9 and 10 of Heliodorus’ Aithiopika. Diss. Oxford. Morgan, J.R. 1982. ‘History, Romance and Realism in the Aethiopika of Heliodoros’, Classical Antiquity 1, 221-265. Morgan, J.R. 1989. ‘An Ethiopian Story’, in Reardon, B.P. Collected Ancient Greek Novels. Berkeley, 349–588. Morgan, J.R. 1996. ‘Heliodorus,’ in: G. Schmeling (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World. Leiden, 417–456. Mussies, G. 1980.’Identification and Self-Identification of Gods’, in Broek, R. van den (ed.), Knowledge of God in the Graeco-Roman World. Leiden, 1–18. Pervo, R. 1987. Profit with Delight: The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles. Philadelphia. Pritchett, W.K. 1975. The Greek State At War. Part III Religion. Berkeley. Reardon, B.P. 1969. ‘The Greek Novel’, Phoenix 23, 218–236. Reinach, S. 1885. ‘Les aretalogues dans l’antiquité,’ Bulletin de correspondence Hellénique 9, 257ff. Schmeling, G. 1996 (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World. Leiden: E.J Brill. Smith, M. 1971. ‘Prolegomena to a Discussion of Aretalogies, Divine Men, the Gospels and Jesus,’ Journal of Biblical Literature 90, 174–199. Stark, I. 1989. ‘Religiöse Elemente im antiken Roman’, in: Kuch, H. (ed.), Der antike Roman: Untersuchungen zur literarischen Kommunikation und Gattungsgeschichte. Berlin, 135–149.

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Versnel, H.S. 1987. ‘What Did Ancient Man See When He Saw a God?: Some Reflections on Greco-Roman Epiphany’, in: D. van der Plas, (ed.), Effigies Dei. Leiden, 42–55. Weinreich, O. 1962. Der griechische Liebesroman. Zürich. Winkler, J. 1980. ‘Lollianus and the Desperadoes’, JHS 100, 155–181. Winkler, J. 1982. ‘The Mendacity of Kalasiris and the Narrative Strategy of Heliodorus’ Aithiopika’, YCS 27, 93–159. Winkler, J. 1985. Auctor & Actor: a Narratological Reading of Apuleius’ Golden Ass. Berkeley.

Il corpo nel romanzo di Achille Tazio PATRIZIA LIVIABELLA FURIANI

Perugia Dis manibus A.M. Scarcella

1. Il corpo e l’anima Nel romanzo di Achille Tazio il corpo umano è al centro degli interessi e delle emozioni degli uomini, in una collaborazione con l’anima che annulla ogni irriducibile opposizione polare. Il romanziere non sembra covare alcuna residua ostilità di ascendenza platonica (Phd. 67C–D) nei confronti del corpo, che per la sua vitalità si distingue dal cadavere, disimpegnato dal flusso vitale del mondo1. La morte estorce l’anima (&$%}), cioè la vita (3,23,3), al corpo, lasciando al cadavere soltanto l’aspetto umano. Anche questo peraltro si dilegua assieme con l’anima quando l’ultima antagonista dell’uomo infierisce sulla carne dilaniandola (1,13,3 s.). Le funzioni dell’anima e quelle fisiologiche sono unite da un legame inscindibile2 e la psyche collabora tenacemente con il corpo soprattutto negli affari di cuore. La bellezza, infatti, ‘attraverso gli occhi penetra nell’anima’ (1,4,4) e ‘scorrendo attraverso di essi giù fino all’anima (3|&$%}), procura una sorta di unione pur a distanza … simile a un’unione dei corpi perché è proprio un nuovo intreccio dei corpi’ (1,9,4 s.). In questo viluppo di anima e corpo gran peso ha peraltro la psyche, visto che il più bello degli organi corporei, la bocca, è tale perché ‘è organo della voce, e la voce riflesso dell’anima’ (2,8,2). Se pertanto è vero che ‘è con le labbra che ci baciamo’, è anche vero che proprio dall’anima ‘scaturisce la sorgente del piacere’ (4,8,3). ————— 1 2

Sui rapporti tra 2í/e&$%}in Omero e nella filosofia greca, Galimberti 1987, 23 ss. Perfino &$%} H 2í/ della pianta di palma riprendono insieme vigore dopo l’innesto nella palma maschio di un ramoscello di palma femmina (1,17,5).

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D’altra parte, quando l’anima soffre di ferite che affliggono più di quelle del corpo (1,6,4), comprese quelle d’amore (1,6,4; 1,6,6), è l’esercizio fisico ad alleviare le sofferenze psichiche (1,8,11). Le ferite dell’anima, inoltre, si palesano all’esterno attraverso il liquido riflesso fisiologico delle lacrime (7,4,5) o tramite lo spegnersi della parola (3,11,2). Le ‘tre onde dell’anima, vergogna, dolore e ira’ traggono anch’esse origine dalla parola, che, come un arco, indirizza le sue frecce contro l’anima, provocando ferite incruente (2,29,2 ss.). Il corpo umano non è dunque solo superficie, vernice esteriore, mero astuccio o involucro dell’anima, bensì motore e custode della vita, sebbene il mondo che esso abita tenda ad annientarne l’esuberanza e ad evidenziarne l’ambiguità.

2. Il corpo effimero trionfante Nel romanzo di Achille Tazio il corpo umano è al colmo della sua esuberante energia e della sua turgida bellezza solo nel rigoglio giovanile, quando i bollori della giovinezza sono perfino pericolosi per l’eccesso di vitalità (4,10,3). Esso trionfa nella seduzione e nell’esplosione sessuale (e.g. 1,4,2 ss.; 1,6,1; 1,9,6; 1,10,5 s.; 2,37,6 ss.; 2,38,3 ss.; 5,13,1 ss.), benché le relazioni erotiche restino più teorizzate che praticate, più fantasticate che godute nella realtà (e.g. 2,4,3 s.; 2,7,4 ss.; 2,10,3 s.; 2,23,4 ss.; 4,1,4 ). Insolente memento mori, lo smalto fragile della bellezza, che concede al corpo il massimo potere d’attrazione, è facilmente intaccato dal tempo (2,36,1); lo splendore naturalmente profumato del corpo maschile (2,38,3) si offusca perfino più rapidamente di quello delle carni femminili (2,37,1), manipolate con tinture, farmaci, profumi e unguenti artificiali (2,38,2). Eppure l’immaginario romanzesco censura la corruzione fisica prodotta dalla vecchiaia e indugia sulla decomposizione corporea procurata dalla morte, quasi che il corpo passi direttamente dall’enfasi fisica giovanile alla putrefazione terminale ignorando completamente il languore estenuato della vecchiaia.3

————— 3

Liviabella Furiani 1992; Santini 1995, la quale sottolinea l’‘estraneità della vecchiaia alla struttura e alla portata ideologica del romanzo di Achille Tazio, che ha nell’iniziazione adolescenziale all’amore la sua principale ragion d’essere’ (435).

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Sebbene la voce dell’omosessuale obietti che, poiché ‘desiderabile è sempre ciò che non produce sazietà ... anche la bellezza, quanto più è esigua nel tempo, tanto più ingigantisce nel desiderio che suscita’ (2,36,1), la leggiadria dei giovinetti è più che mai insidiosamente breve e marcescibile (2,35,4). Ovvia preda della crudeltà del tempo, la bellezza, sia maschile che femminile, è straziata anche dalla ferocia degli animali, reali (e.g.1,12,2; 1,14,2 s.; 3,8,1 ss.) e fantastici (3,7,6 ss.), attentatori simbolici della purezza delle carni virginali, quasi proterve nell’esibizione della loro seducente freschezza. Il corpo femminile, per la sua morbidezza e flessuosità (2,37,6 ss.), e quello maschile, per la sua naturale robustezza e resistenza (2,38,4 ss.), sono il luogo del desiderio e del rimpianto prima ancora che del piacere. I baci del giovinetto, difatti, non procurano sazietà (2,38,5) e la castimoniosa purezza della fanciulla, custodita da Artemide, differisce pervicacemente l’incontro sessuale (4,1,4), rimandato al momento del matrimonio, che, solo, potrà affrancare il corpo femminile da una verginità perfetta ma pericolosa, onorevole ma sterile (4,1,5 ss.). Il corpo martoriato dell’eromenos di Clinia, poi, non soddisfa più l’erastes disperato se non nella dolorosa nostalgia (1,13,1 ss.). Percorsa dai fantasmi della caducità del piacere e della morte, la sessualità è dunque interdetta, ma non opacizzata dalla quotidianità. Di converso, l’incontro sessuale, quando è cercato golosamente con la tenacia di chi pretende la vita, non può che restare, almeno nelle intenzioni di chi si limita a concederlo, un unicum medicamentoso per un’anima inferma (5,27,2).

3. L’enigma del corpo tra natura e cultura In Leucippe e Clitofonte il corpo umano è non solo dato naturale, ma anche, e forse più, prodotto della cultura e della società che esso abita.4 Al suggello inevitabile della naturalità s’accoppia la rappresentazione collettiva del corpo espressa dalla cultura del luogo e dell’epoca in cui esso si colloca, che lo informa di sé e lo riplasma, sottraendolo in parte alla natura. Stile di vita, etichetta, cultura, lingua comune liberano il corpo dell’uomo dalla sua individualità biologica5 e ne fanno un corpo socializzato, protagonista di eventi ————— 4 5

Bourdieu 1988, 164 ss. Magli 1988, 96 e 99.

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pubblici, senza peraltro raggelarlo nella funzione di oggetto totalmente artificiale.6 Così, mentre i gesti, che pure non sempre obbediscono a un codice universale, nel romanzo di Achille Tazio sembrerebbero facilmente decifrabili anche in contesti culturali diversi, quando l’ausilio della lingua comune vien meno (3,10,2) ovvero quando utilizzare la parola risulta impossibile (5,9,3),7 evidenti marchi corporei sottolineano l’alterità dei barbari e di coloro che appartengono a status sociali inferiori o degradati. La pelle nera dei Bucoli, di un nero non perfetto ma simile a quello di un Etiope bastardo, il loro corpo enorme e robusto, fornito di piedi minuti, le loro teste rasate (al pari dei lunghi capelli incolti: 3,12,1) significano una selvaggia terribilità. Il capo rasato di Leucippe-Lacena denota invece la perdita della libertà (5,17,3), che si desume anche dalle catene e dal corpo sudicio, miseramente vestito. Che l’hexis corporea nel suo insieme tradisca la nobiltà delle origini è piuttosto mero topos romanzesco.8 Perfino il disfacimento del corpo e la morte, che pure sono eventi biologici inequivocabilmente naturali, s’ammantano di una spessa patina culturale, quando si verificano o per la violenza del padrone sullo schiavo (e.g. 2,28,1; 5,17,3 s.; 6,20 s.) o per l’uccisione rituale di vittime sacrificali (e.g. 3,15,2 ss.) o per la violenza erotica di una società maschile —storica o mitica— che, nella sua prevaricazione del femminile, ora si limita all’assalto sessuale (Sostene: 6,18,6; 6,22,2; Tersandro: 6,18,4 ss.), ora giunge alla crudeltà inenarrabile del taglio della lingua (Tereo: 5,3,4; 5,5,4). Questa mutilazione, togliendo alla donna la parola, la costringe a reperire nuovi mezzi di comunicazione per far conoscere al mondo le storie femminili (5,3,5; 5,5,4 ————— 6

7 8

Wyke 1998, 2–11 propone un convincente approccio al tema del corpo nell’antichità in relazione alla differenza, anche di genere, e alle pratiche di potere di una società. La studiosa parla dei corpi antichi ‘as peculiarly privileged sites for the production, display, and regimentation of gender identity and gender differentials, and as a visible material locus for gender’s complex interactions with other claims to identity in the communities of the ancient world from fifth-century BCE Athens to third-century CE Roman Galilee. Layered in history, the ancient body is not given naturally but culturally. It is ... a semiotic system which its bearer can never fully master. Ancient bodies are, therefore, ‘parchments of gender’ ” (3). Preziosa risulta la bibliografia fornita. Pasquinelli 1988, 9 e 11 sottolinea come il corpo sia un prodotto culturale, che come tale varia da cultura a cultura, da epoca a epoca, senza che peraltro l’impronta della cultura ne cancelli il carattere naturale. Sul linguaggio del corpo in Achille Tazio, Liviabella Furiani 1998. Baslez 1990. I luoghi comuni dei romanzi greci d’amore sono stati analizzati in modo eccellente da Létoublon 1993.

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s.).9 La punizione (che è anche salvezza) subita dalle donne ree di aver imposto al padre l’orrida degustazione delle membra del figlio (5,5,7), consiste non a caso nella perdita del corpo umano (la cui irriducibile differenza dagli altri corpi ha contribuito a strutturare la soggettività dell’uomo ponendosi come principio di individuazione10) e nell’acquisizione, attraverso la metamorfosi, di un corpo animale (5,5,8 s.),11 nella perdita insomma di un’identità fisica che diventa smarrimento dell’identità psichica. Il primo e più importante anello di congiunzione tra mondo naturale e mondo culturale è il sesso, annidato nel corpo maschile e in quello femminile, naturalità ineffabile, artificiosità inevitabile, con cui l’individuo si confronta quotidianamente nella sua spinta irresistibile verso la procreazione biologica e spirituale. La mediazione tra natura e cultura offerta all’uomo dalla sessualità non si sviluppa peraltro in modo lineare, ma funziona, s’è detto, secondo meccanismi ambigui e perversi, in cui il gioco erotico si innesta provocatoriamente sulla crudezza del sesso.12 Serpeggia ovunque, nel romanzo di Achille Tazio, che pure è largamente aperto alle suggestioni della femminilità,13 l’arrogante esigenza maschile di addomesticare il corpo della donna14 (1,9,6) secondo un’antitesi maschiofemmina biologica e culturale insieme.15 L’inferiorità giuridico-sociale ————— 9 10 11 12

13

14 15

Faranda 1996, 27; Liviabella Furiani 1998, 97 ss. Magli 1988, 101. Sui miti di trasformazione, Forbes-Irving 1990. Sulla sessualità nell’ideologia greca e nel romanzo antico, Winkler 1989; Zeitlin 1994; Goldhill 1995. Liviabella Furiani 1989, 56–69; Johne 1996, 178, 187 ss., 199 ss. Egger 1994, 272, concludendo un’attenta indagine delle strutture matrimoniali nel romanzo greco cosiddetto ‘ideale’, sottolinea come ‘it is only the woman’s erotic radiance and emotional strength, aided at times by her cunning, that actually lend her “predominance,” power over others, primarily to manipulate the men who actually have authority’, mentre ‘socially and operationally, the women remain constrained’, cosicché ‘female power may be described best as informal or passive’. Wiersma 1990, 109 evidenzia ‘the paradoxical combination of modesty and prominence which is characteristic not only of the actions and behaviour of the heroines in the Greek novels but also of certain public roles upper-class women could play in Hellenistic society’. Nella comunicazione presentata a ICAN 2000 (si veda in questo volume, 73–92), Haynes 2000, combinando l’approccio antropologico col proprio orientamento storicistico, arriva a concludere che l’imperiosità di certe figure femminili dei romanzi potrebbe costituire la risposta delle ‘upper classes’ greche alla rappresentazione dell’ordine e della superiorità imperiali. Faranda 1996, passim. Al femminismo ‘costruzionista’ che considera la maggior parte delle differenze di genere, anche quelle relative al comportamento sessuale, come prodotti della cultura anzi-

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femminile affonda difatti le sue radici nell’ancestrale timore maschile del corpo muliebre, avvertito, tanto nell’offerta di sé (Melite)16 quanto nella ripulsa della sessualità (Leucippe), come una potenza inquietante e lacerante, troppo adusa a dare la vita per non essere anche profondamente lesiva della mascolinità. Il corpo femminile, in quanto alveo del mondo, addensa in sé il massimo dell’ambivalenza: in esso vita e morte si intrecciano inesorabilmente in un nodo mortifero e vitale insieme. Il corpo femminile, ancor più di quello maschile, è sempre in tensione e in movimento e perfino nel sonno ricompone una pace solo momentanea,17 perché spesso il sonno è turbato da incubi premonitori di corpi divisi in due (il sogno di Pantea: 1,3,4; 2,23,4 s.) o è delirio inarrestabile di vergine invasata dalla follia, scompostezza posturale e gestuale (il sonno malato di Leucippe: 4,15,1). Queste alterazioni psicofisiche non nascono peraltro da ‘una naturalità istintuale non ben dominata’,18 da una innata incapacità femminile di autocontrollo,19 come la cultura maschile vorrebbe far credere, poiché le donne, s’è detto, reclamano perfino il diritto di gestire il proprio corpo nella sessualità e nell’astensione da essa, bensì dalla incalzante urgenza maschile di predazione (il venefico filtro d’amore somministrato da Gorgia a Leucippe: 4,15,3). Uomini e sorte si accaniscono, martoriandolo e annichilendolo, sul corpo femminile, che è così recluso, rapito, violato, schiavizzato,

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16

17 18 19

ché della natura, si oppone in maniera drastica e provocatoria Paglia 1993. La studiosa, pervicacemente ostile alla ‘inammissibile dicotomia femminista di sesso e potere’ (51), fa del sesso ‘il punto di contatto fra l’uomo e la natura’ (6), del corpo della donna il luogo abitato per eccellenza dalla natura, ‘uno spazio sacro segreto’ in cui ‘la natura opera nel modo più oscuro e meccanico’ (31), e della donna ‘il temenos dei propri tenebrosi misteri’, un oggetto squisitamente sessuale, che altro non è se non ‘una forma rituale imposta alla natura’ (41). Sebbene il metodo volutamente ‘sensazionalista’ della Paglia approdi a risultati a mio avviso difficili da condividere integralmente, talune sue osservazioni inducono alla cautela nell’esclusione o nell’emarginazione delle realtà biologiche del corpo e della sessualità femminili. Recentemente Polaszek 1998 ha ricondotto la storia di Melite al motivo biblico della moglie di Potiphar, rivisitato attraverso la mediazione dei modelli greci (dalla Stenebea mitica alla Fedra euripidea). Un’indagine più ampia sull’argomento è reperibile in Grottanelli 1987. Il tema dell’amore illecito, e in particolare dell’incesto, anche nel romanzo greco, è stato ora affrontato da Rizzo Nervo 1998, 248 ss. Il sonno costituisce peraltro una ineguagliabile ‘medicina per tutte le malattie’ (4,10,3). Jervis 1988, 139. Capriglione 1990, 28: in particolare le donne, deboli e fragili, sono incapaci di resistere a Eros.

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mutilato, ucciso, squarciato, consumato nell’orrore indicibile del rito religioso antropofagico.20

4. Gli equivoci del corpo L’imponenza e la statuarietà fisica sono da Achille Tazio generalmente apprezzate (1,4,1; 1,4,5) al pari dell’aspetto nel suo complesso, soprattutto quando questo è sottolineato dall’abbigliamento (e.g. 1,1,7; 1,1,10 ss.: ‘la tunica risultava specchio del corpo’; 1,4,1; 6,1,3; 8,13,1) e dagli ornamenti (2,11,2 ss.). Ma la grandezza stessa delle membra può rivelarsi ambigua, come nel caso del corpo enorme e robusto dei Bucoli (3,9,2), che può incutere solo terrore. La diversità di hexis, di contegno, di presentazione del proprio corpo, di comportamento, trasformano quello che sembrerebbe un oggetto esclusivamente naturale in un prodotto culturale e sociale. Anche le diverse parti del corpo,21 con il loro linguaggio più vero in quanto incontrollabile, tradiscono stati d’animo ambigui e possono risultare oggetto di attenzioni opposte da parte del soggetto interagente. Così, il viso può essere tanto contemplato con amorosa perdizione (e.g. 1,6,1) quanto crudelmente sfregiato (7,14,3; 8,1,3; 8,4,1: Clitofonte è colpito da Sostene e da Tersandro). Gli occhi poi, così spesso avidi d’amore (e.g. 1,6,1; 1,6,6; 1,7,3; 1,9,4 ss.; 5,13,2 ss.; 6,7,1 ss.), sono altrettanto frequentemente gonfi di pianto (e.g. 5,25,6; 6,7,1 ss; 7,4,3 ss.; 7,9,2). Quanto alla bocca, che sappiamo essere il più bello degli organi corporei, ed è caratterizzata da labbra simili a petali di rosa (1,4,3; 2,1,3), è pronta ora a baciare (2,7,4 ss.; 2,9,2) ora a mordere coi denti (2,22,2), sia pure per trasporto erotico (2,37,6); mentre la lingua, così sfrenata nel bacio (2,37,9), può essere recisa affinché le sia ————— 20

21

Wyke 1998, 4: ‘Women’s bodies appear frequently as alienated, bodies for others, … contained, isolated, denigrated, even assaulted’. La studiosa sottolinea peraltro la necessità ‘to destabilize any simple binary division between masculinity and femininity and its association with hierarchical oppositions between domination and submission, penetration and receptivity, mind and body’. Talora parti del corpo o caratteristiche fisiche squisitamente umane, ma usate metaforicamente, aggiungono pimento a descrizioni geografiche (1,1,1: il fianco, 1$", e la bocca, 23/ del porto; 2,14,3: il collo, 3"y%!#, dell’isola) o naturalistiche (1,15,4: i riccioli, 23"$%!, dei grappoli; 2,1,2 s.: ‘la rosa è occhio, L4/#, dei fiori, rosso belletto, "ƒ/, del prato; come capelli ha foglie, !¼, profumate e i suoi petali sorridono, 1¼, al soffio di Zefiro; il suo calice è simile a una bocca). Topica è anche l’attribuzione di occhi all’anima (5,19,6 3Æ#&$%Æ#3xP/3/).

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impossibile narrare le sfrenatezze di un rapporto sessuale incestuoso (5,3,4; 5,5,4). Braccia, mani e dita che si intrecciano appassionatamente nella schermaglia amorosa (e.g. 2,4,3) e nell’abbraccio, erotico e amicale (e.g. 2,10,9; 5,8,2 s.; 5,13,1; 5,23,5), che si esibiscono in performances musicali (1,5,4), che si tendono nel saluto (e.g. 7,3,2), che con l’applauso comunicano sonoramente la loro approvazione (7,15,3), sono utilizzate, anche e forse più, per esprimere un’aggressività fisica che si traduce in ferite e morte (e.g. 3,3,3 ss.; 4,14,4 ss.; 8,1,3; 8,2,3 s.). L’attenzione del romanziere si rivolge pure ad altre sezioni del corpo: collo virginale stretto in un laccio suicida (2,30,2) o atrocemente sgozzato (5,7,9), mammelle (1,1,10 ss.; 5,3,6 s.), ombelico (1,1,10; 1,3,4), stomaco (2,2,5; 2,23,1), ventre (e.g. 2,23,5; 2,24,3; 4,10,4), anche gravido (5,16,6), fianchi (1,1,10), sesso (1,1,10; 2,23,5), misterioso strumento di piacere gelosamente custodito nei recessi del corpo, di cui peraltro si può accertare scientificamente o magicamente l’integrità (2,28,2 s.; 8,11,2; 8,12,1 ss.~8,14,2) e che nell’assalto della follia non si può evitare di mostrare assieme a zone corporee generalmente occultate (4,9,2). La palma dell’ambiguità spetta al sangue che, per lo più invisibile in quanto celato nel segreto del corpo, quando fuoriesce diventa improvvisamente visibile. Esso è l’emblema ambivalente della vita e della morte (8,1,3 ss.~8,2,3 s.), così simile al vino (2,2,4 s.) e alla tintura del murice (2,11,4). Altrettanto ambigue sono le alterazioni psichiche che si manifestano con il maggiore o minore afflusso di sangue al volto (1,4,3; 1,8,1; 1,10,4; 2,6,1; 3,7,3; 5,17,5; 5,19,1; 5,19,6; 7,3,4), esse che, a seconda delle situazioni, esprimono vergogna e stupore, angoscia e paura, passione e turbamento.22 Se visibile è il fegato di Prometeo che miracolosamente si riproduce (3,8,2), invisibile, come è ovvio, è il fegato in cui stranamente risiede l’amore (6,19,2). Nel regno dell’inquietante interiorità fisica sono ambigue, come ambiguo è il rito religioso di cui sono protagoniste,23 anche le viscere posticce estratte dal ventre di Leucippe (3,15,4; 3,21,2; 3,21,5); e quello stesso cuore, che ora per amore batte all’impazzata (e.g. 1,4,5; 5,27,1) al punto che, se non fosse ————— 22

23

Lateiner 1998, 175 s. (lo studio è eccellente e completo); Liviabella Furiani 1991, 523; 1998, 109 ss. Liviabella Furiani 1985, 31 s. (la teatralità con cui è allestito il rito depotenzia la carica di orrore insita in esso e lo svuota di ogni religiosità).

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legato alle viscere, si trascinerebbe verso il bacio (2,37,10), ora custodisce la voce di Eros (2,5,2) e ne subisce le ferite (2,7,6), ora è preda di sentimenti negativi quali l’ira (2,29,2). Ambigue sono anche le secrezioni fisiologiche e patologiche emesse attraverso gli occhi (e.g. 3,11,1 s.; 5,15,1 ss.; 6,7,1 ss.), la pelle (il sudore odoroso dei ragazzi: 2,38,3, e il pus delle ferite gonfie: 3,11,1) e gli orifizi corporei all’uopo forniti dalla natura (le deiezioni scatologiche, ancorché pretestuose: 5,7,1; 5,18,1, e il sangue catameniale, non certo astratto benché simulato: 4,7,7). L’insistito realismo24 degli escreti corporei, nobili o vili, che talora inducono il lettore al sorriso25 (gli improbabili fiotti di sangue che fuoriescono dal naso colpito di Clitofonte: 8,1,3), più spesso lo trasferiscono in un’atmosfera virtuale, le cui violenze e atrocità sono tanto stratificate e ricorrenti da risultare al contempo più e men che reali.

5. Il corpo teatro dell’umiliazione e del cambiamento Il corpo romanzesco è il teatro dell’umiliazione e dell’alterazione, oggetto di mortificazioni offese lacerazioni, talvolta irreparabili. La psyche, invece, benché non riesca a sottrarsi completamente al martirio (e.g. 1,6,3; 1,6,6; ————— 24

25

Ancora nell’ambito di un ambiguo realismo, i dolori del parto (h0Ô1#) costituiscono il pretesto per una violenta tirata misogina in cui le donne, pur di infliggere sofferenza all’uomo che le ha tradite, uccidono il frutto del loro ventre (5,7,7); e il parto di una primipara che trova da sé, senza aiuto alcuno, il modo per partorire è solo un termine di paragone per evocare la ‘prima gestazione d’amore’ di un giovinetto (1,10,1 s.). Il romanzo di Achille Tazio oscilla a mio avviso tra una seriosità più o meno marcata e uno humor generoso, senza mai approdare a un’invasiva comicità (ma Fusillo 1989, 109 ne sottolinea il carattere di ‘pastiche’ ludico, ‘ironica riflessione metaletteraria sul genere letterario’ e ancora Fusillo 1996, 285 lo sente, per il suo ‘ironical pastiche’, ‘closer to the comic tradition’ e Billault 1998 utilizza ripetutamente il termine ‘comico’). L’ottica dell’io narrante (su cui si confronti da ultimo Reardon 1994) imposta da Achille Tazio alla sua opera mi sembra già di per sé una spiegazione sufficiente dell’ambiguità del registro stilistico del Leucippe e Clitofonte. Billault 1998, 150 osserva giudiziosamente che un protagonista narratore, che è un osservatore più che una vittima delle proprie disavventure, non può essere preso sul serio. O meglio, direi, non può essere preso del tutto sul serio (il comico, precisa d’altronde Billault 1998, 158, ‘n’est pas constant’, ma ha una ‘présence intermittente’) e l’ambiguità del testo nasce proprio, secondo la mia opinione, dal contrasto tra la drammaticità delle vicende narrate e l’osservazione autoptica di Clitofonte, registrata con la puntigliosità disincantata di chi racconta a posteriori una vicenda a lieto fine.

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2,29,2; 3,17,4; 6,11,2; 7,1,1), tenta di resistere alle opposizioni esterne. L’anima femminile, in particolare, mentre dichiara il corpo pronto a subire ogni tortura (Leucippe: 6,21,1 ss.), immediatamente si riscatta dall’offesa, rivendicando l’integrità della propria libertà interiore. Neppure l’intrepida Melite nel corso della sua avventura con Clitofonte subisce un cedimento psichico irrimediabile, riuscendo a godere, sia pure per un’unica volta (ah, l’irripetibile primultimità del primo momento!), i favori sessuali dell’amato e arrendevole Clitofonte. Oggetto primo delle offese umane è dunque il corpo, su cui il romanziere indugia rappresentandolo prostrato, straziato da ferite che lo rendono irriconoscibile (Caricle: 1,13,2), deturpato da cicatrici ostentate con tale voluttà da diventare stigmate sociali (Clitofonte: 8,5,1). Soprattutto il corpo femminile, s’è visto, è esposto a ogni tipo di intemperanze. Recluso dalla madre, che intende proteggerne a ogni costo l’integrità (Leucippe: 2,19,2 ss.), è rapito, doppio inconsapevole incolore infelice, da un innamorato sconosciuto e presuntuoso (Calligone: 2,18,4).26 Violato e scomposto nell’assalto erotico (il corpo mitico di Filomela: 5,3,5), ora è stravolto da filtri magici (Leucippe: 4,9,1 ss.) ora è oggetto di tentato stupro (Leucippe: 5,17,4). Schiavizzato e deturpato fino a essere reso irriconoscibile (Leucippe-Lacena: 5,17,3 ss.), è maltrattato e torturato (Leucippe: 6,20,1 ss.). Subisce mutilazioni e metamorfosi mitiche (Procne e Filomela: 5,5,8 s.) e muore di una morte procurata e crudele, che stravolge le sembianze consuete, impedendo il riconoscimento del cadavere (la prostituta decapitata sulla nave dei pirati al posto di Leucippe: 5,7,4 ss.; 8,16,1 ss.). Quando il corpo, sia maschile che femminile, è così modificato, oppure è legato, imprigionato, imbrigliato (e.g. 3,8,1; 3,12,2; 3,16,3; 3,15,4; 3,22,2; 4,9,3 ss.; 4,10,5; 4,17,4; 5,7,4; 6,23,7), l’individuo continua ad avere l’inquietante consapevolezza di possedere, oltre che di essere, un corpo:27 ma, se sottoposto al proprio o all’altrui sguardo, o non si riconosce né è riconosciuto dagli altri, o di tale corpo non è più padrone, perché tutti (a dispetto della legge, che dovrebbe essere l’unica a consentirne la reclusione: 8,9,9) ————— 26 27

Segal 1984, 86; Liviabella Furiani 1989, 69. Pasquinelli 1988, 9. La studiosa, riferendo l’intuizione di Berger e Luckmann, sostiene: ‘l’uomo fa esperienza di sé come un’entità che non si identifica con il suo corpo ma che al contrario ha quel corpo a sua disposizione’; Jervis 1988, 145 osserva che solo ‘noi siamo in grado di sapere che abbiamo un corpo, mentre quasi tutti gli altri animali lo ignorano’.

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possono reclamarlo e impadronirsene o renderlo un oggetto instabile e precario perché facilmente modificabile. Anche il travestimento, che cambia il genere sessuale, colpisce il corpo del maschio camuffato da donna, umiliandone la virilità. L’imbarazzo della modificazione del corpo maschile ottenuta attraverso un peplo femminile che, nascondendogli il viso (6,1,2), rende Clitofonte somigliante a Melite, è accresciuto dalla affermazione della donna che le vesti femminili si addicono al corpo di Clitofonte più di quelle virili. Perfino nell’ambito immodificabile (almeno nella Grecità antica) delle differenze di genere, al dato squisitamente naturale si sovrappone la manipolazione sociale del corpo, che in tal modo acquista grazia e seduttività. La battuta affettuosa di Melite, non priva di ironia, ribadisce l’inermità di Clitofonte e insinua un dubbio insidioso sulla sua effettiva mascolinità. Il travestimento fisico, alterando il corpo, lo rende estraneo agli altri e ingenera inevitabili confusioni anche in chi quel corpo possiede. Il denominatore comune di queste umiliazioni fisiche è il cambiamento,28 ostinato e perverso, che altri intendono imporre a un corpo che si è sempre riconosciuto e sempre è stato riconosciuto nei suoi tratti originari e naturali. Le modificazioni provenienti da un mondo acculturato, anziché dalla natura stessa, moltiplicano la realtà umana in una stratificazione culturale che ne muta la fisionomia primitiva. Il cambiamento e le alterazioni del corpo operate dalla cultura, benché pericolose, risultano peraltro un’attrattiva in più in un mondo romanzesco più ricco e complesso di quello naturale. Essi, nel mentre attenuano la realtà prima, inventano una realtà seconda che si sovrappone a quella, più trita e banale, regalandole prospettive nuove ardite misteriose. Il romanzo di Achille Tazio è la testimonianza di una civiltà giunta all’apice delle sue potenzialità, ma ancora in lotta con problematiche umane, sociali e culturali irrisolte, che rimedia allo scandalo dei suoi conflitti interni con la creazione di una iperrealtà duttile e mobile, inquieta e sfuggente.

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Attorno ai temi del cambiamento, della modificazione, della transizione ruota l’interessante volume collettaneo di Montserrat 1998 (pregevole, in particolare, l’introduzione, 1–9). Wyke 1998, 5 osserva: ‘the gendered bodies of antiquity are always multivalent, always undergoing change, and always in a state of permanent contradiction. In that, precisely, lies their fascination’.

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6. La sfida del corpo fonte degli inganni Il corpo colpito, trafitto, ferito a morte (e.g. 3,4,4 ss.; 4,14,4 ss.) non si arrende tuttavia neppure alla morte e, come la Fenice (3,25,1 ss.), rinasce a nuova vita (5,26,4 ‘anche i morti tornano in vita’), perché falsificato e camuffato (3,21,2: il surrettizio ventre animalesco di Leucippe) da amici sinceri e creativi, capaci di miscelare con sapienza illusione e realtà (3,17,1 ss.), o è solo apparentemente profanato, squarciato, svuotato, assaporato dai briganti nell’orripilante rito cannibalico (3,15,4 ss.; 3,16,3 ss.). Neppure il corpo consegnato alla morte riesce dunque a conquistare una sua, pur prematura, quiete, perché o, smembrato, perde per sempre l’integrità fisica (la testa decollata della prostituta che Clitofonte crede Leucippe: 5,7,4) e resta diviso tra terra e mare (5,7,8) o perché, s’è detto, viene consumato in pasti allelofagici simulati o reali (3,15,5; 5,5,7), o anche perché inaspettatamente torna alla vita. Così Tersandro, creduto morto in un naufragio, rinasce del tutto intempestivo; così Leucippe per ben tre volte sperimenta una teatrale resurrezione (3,17,6 ss.; 5,18,1 ss.; 7,15,1~7,16,1 ss.), lasciando perplessi turbati sgomenti tutti coloro che conosce e ama e da cui è amata e conosciuta. Questi corpi romanzeschi, che tanto fortunosamente sfuggono alla morte, ricomposti, ricuciti e reinventati, starei per dire riciclati, continuano così a vivere in una sorta di vita seconda, ribelle alle convenzioni umane. 7. La sofferenza del corpo tra fiction e realtà storica In questo mondo fittizio e adulterato s’attorce un vortice di corpi fantomatici, che abitano una realtà troppo reale per essere del tutto autentica, parto di una fantasia che sembra delirare, di una fantasticheria sfrenata che dà origine a una realtà fluida magmatica iperreale. Eppure, a parer mio, i fantasmi generati dalla fantasia dell’Autore hanno colorito forza significato imprevedibili, perché, oltre ad attingere largamente alla tradizione letteraria e mitologica, affondano le loro radici e si nutrono di una realtà che, pur nella sua esasperazione, non è mai del tutto inventata e gratuita, ma riflette, dilatandola come uno specchio deformante, la vita tormentata e caotica del tempo dell’Autore.29 ————— 29

La liceità di sfruttare i romanzi greci come documenti storici e di vedere in essi lo specchio della mentalità e, almeno in parte, della vita quotidiana del tempo in cui essi furono

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È un universo, quello taziano, in bilico tra illusione e verità, tra concretezza e allucinazione. In esso protagonisti e comprimari stentano a trovare un’identità personale, anche e soprattutto corporea, perché il corpo nel suo insieme e le parti visibili e invisibili che lo compongono sono gravati dall’ambivalenza e dall’ambiguità. Questo universo romanzesco, realistico e visionario insieme, è, a mio avviso, il prodotto non casuale della duplicità e dell’ambiguità di un’epoca, nella quale amore e odio, amicizia e ostilità, erotismo e perversione, conformismo e trasgressione, ordine e disordine, razionalità e follia, humor e pathos, maschilismo e ‘femminismo’, solidarietà sociale e schiavismo,30 uni—————

30

concepiti è già stata ampiamente sottolineata. Basti qui citare, a mo’ d’esempio, Reardon 1969, 291 ss., 307; Scarcella 1993 (d), 185; Scarcella 1993 (c), 329 ss.; Canfora 1987, 9 ss.; Ruiz Montero 1989 ; Bowersock 1994. A proposito del romanzo di Achille Tazio, Billault 1998, 158 presenta l’opera come un riflesso della vita sociale dell’Alto Impero, dipinta dall’autore ‘aux couleurs de la confusion, du pragmatisme et du prosaïsme’, nella quale gli individui, più che godere della mitica Pax Romana, sono abbandonati a se stessi nelle contraddizioni della loro epoca (151), ‘an age of anxiety’, come ebbe a definirla Dodds 1970, 3, riprendendo un’espressione di W.H. Auden. A dire il vero, tanto la cronologia dell’Autore quanto quella degli avvenimenti narrati nel Leucippe e Clitofonte è largamente discussa. Ormai fugata, grazie alle fortunate scoperte papiracee (su cui Conca 1969; Plepelits 1996, 388 ss.) la tesi del Rohde, che faceva scivolare il romanzo al secolo V d.C., resta aperto il dibattito sugli anni del secolo II d.C. in cui visse Achille Tazio e sulla contemporaneità o meno degli avvenimenti narrati con il tempo dell’Autore. Basti qui ricordare gli ultimi contributi alla querelle. Plepelits 1996, 390 ritiene plausibile che il romanzo sia stato scritto durante gli anni del principato di Antonino Pio (138–161 d.C), mentre Anderson 1997, 2292, rifacendosi alla rivolta dei Boukoloi del 172 d.C., pensa agli anni immediatamente successivi a questo fatto storico (‘Septimius Severus’ siege of Byzantium could also given a topicality to the general background of this novel, with its interest in both Syria and Byzantium’). Plepelits 1996, 411, basandosi sulla datazione della guerra tracica di cui parla Achille Tazio (1,3,6; 2,24,3; 8,18,1), a suo avviso combattutta intorno al 45 d.C., e sull’apparizione della Fenice in Egitto nel 47 d.C., ritiene invece che l’anno più accreditato per situare gli eventi romanzeschi sia il 47 d.C. Sulla scorta del proemio, a me sembra ancora verisimile che il romanziere tratti avvenimenti a lui contemporanei, situabili sotto il principato di Marco Aurelio. Improbabile mi pare invece la datazione al 267 (teste la Vita Gallieni 13,6) che Manni 1991, 472 propone per la guerra tracica citata da Achille Tazio. Il romanzo documenta la presenza di una folla di schiavi (Scarcella 1996, 241 ss.), solo alcuni dei quali escono dall’anonimato o perché dotati di acume, intelligenza, sapidità o perché, al contrario, contraddistinti da codardia e crudeltà. Pressoché a tutti sono in ogni caso assegnati compiti delicati e importanti, come avveniva nella realtà quotidiana, da sempre e tanto più in età imperiale, quando la loro umanità fu valorizzata e il loro potere si accrebbe (Garnsey – Saller 1988, 145 ss.; Grimal 1993, 204 ss.). Il che non vuol dire che si auspicasse la scomparsa dell’istituzione della schiavitù in sé, per la quale bisognò aspettare diverse condizioni economiche e sociali e una diversa temperie culturale e spiri-

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versalismo ed etnocentrismo,31 costituiscono le costanti culturali di un mondo reale profondamente instabile, inquieto e perturbato. La sofferenza della carne è dunque spia e testimonianza non solo di una sofferenza individuale, ma anche di una condizione umana e sociale profondamente sofferente e angosciata. Questi corpi che oscillano mossi dal vento delle passioni e della tyche, così spesso ridotti a manichini senza vita, questi morti viventi che si aggirano tra vivi votati alla morte, questi fantasmi virtuali, questi personaggi romanzeschi, inturgiditi e ingigantiti, troppo tremebondi e troppo ardimentosi per essere pienamente reali, sono infatti i protagonisti di una realtà storica tormentata e insicura (le guerre,32 i briganti, i pirati, la barbarie dei sacrifici umani33), divisa e frammentata, lacerata e di—————

31

32

33

tuale (Finley 1981, 167 ss.; Whittaker 1990), ma sta semplicemente a significare la volontà imperiale di mitigare la durezza delle condizioni servili e di favorire l’affrancamento degli schiavi. Così ‘nella pratica Marco Aurelio ricorse perfino ad artifici giuridici per promuovere l’affrancamento delle persone’ (Grimal 1993, 207). Anche nel romanzo la presa di coscienza dei propri diritti da parte di questi esseri vilipesi è pressoché nulla, se si eccettua la coraggiosa dichiarazione di Leucippe-Lacena sulla possibilità, peraltro di ascendenza classica, che l’anima resti libera a dispetto della schiavitù fisica (6,22,4). L’apertura ellenistica delle frontiere in nome di una comune paideia greca, la concezione cosmopolitica stoica di una comunità di saggi sottoposta alla sola legge della ragione e, addirittura, la fiducia di una élite greco-romana, illuminata dalla dottrina stoica, nell’unità del genere umano, non più distinto in saggi e non saggi ma differenziato solo da un punto di vista etico (Baldry 1962, 190 ss.), non furono sufficienti a cancellare la diffidenza nei confronti dello straniero che aveva caratterizzato la cultura greca classica (Baslez 1984) e l’atavica opposizione grecità-barbarie (Hall 1989). L’ideologia di Achille Tazio riposa ancora su residui etnocentrici, sebbene il romanziere stesso e i protagonisti del romanzo siano stranieri rispetto alla grecità e addirittura barbari. L’immagine dei Fenici offerta dai romanzi greci è peraltro doppia, come è stato ben notato da BriquelChatonnet 1992. Da un lato essi sono totalmente ellenizzati, dall’altro i loro comportamenti, ‘luxe, débauche, piraterie et cérémonies barbares’, sono quelli attribuiti comunemente ai barbari, secondo uno dei più costanti luoghi comuni (194). Tra i più recenti contributi sul tema dello straniero e del barbaro nei romanzi greci mi piace qui ricordare Kuch 1989; Scarcella 1993 (a); Kuch 1996. Il regno di Marco Aurelio fu segnato da pericolose e sanguinose guerre in Occidente e in Oriente, in particolare da quella contro i Parti, nonché da rivolte e malcontento nelle provincie (Rostovzev 1953, 425 ss.; Garzetti 1976, 499 ss.; Grimal 1993, 137 ss.). I briganti e i pirati costituivano una piaga ricorrente nel mondo antico, che si aggravava con lo stato generale di guerra (Garzetti 1976, 499 ss.). In particolare la pirateria, che era stata debellata o contenuta nel periodo precedente, durante l’impero di Marco Aurelio si riacutizzò decisamente (Garzetti 1976, 499; contra Briquel-Chatonnet 1992, 191: ‘au moment de la composition des oeuvres qui nous sont parvenues [scil. i romanzi greci], la mer était sûre et la piraterie ne sévissait plus’. Secondo la studiosa i romanzieri, non

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laniata da opposizioni ancora irrisolte (liberi~schiavi; maschi~femmine; Greci~barbari), ma pur sempre cementata dall’amore e dall’amore per l’amore.

Bibliografia Garnaud, J.P. (ed.) 1991. Achille Tatius d’Alexandrie. Le roman de Leucippé et Clitophon, Paris. Vox, O. (ed.) 1987. Achille Tazio, Leucippe e Clitofonte, in: L. Canfora, (ed.), 17–210. O’ Sullivan, J.N. 1980. A Lexicon to Achilles Tatius, Berlin - New York. Conca, F. – De Carli, E. – Zanetto, G. 1983. Lessico dei romanzieri greci, I, Milano; 1989 II, Hildesheim – Zürich – New York. Beta, S. – De Carli, E. – Zanetto, G. 1993. Lessico dei romanzieri greci, III, Hildesheim – Zürich – New York; IV 1997, Hildesheim – Zürich – New York. Anderson, G. 1997. ‘Perspectives on Achilles Tatius’, ANRW II 34,3, 2278–2299. Baldry, H.C. 1962. ‘The Idea of the Unity of Mankind’, in: Grecs et Barbares. Entretiens sur l’antiquité classique VIII (Vandoeuvres – Genève 1961), Genève, 167– 195. Baslez, M.-F. 1984. L’étranger dans la Grèce antique, Paris. Baslez, M.-F. 1990.‘L’idée de noblesse dans les romans grecs’, DHA 16, 115–128. Bertrand, J.-M. 1988. ‘Les Boukôloi ou le monde à l’envers’, REA 90, 139–149. Billault, A. 1998. ‘Le comique d’Achille Tatius et les réalités de l’époque impériale’, in: M. Trédé – Ph. Hoffmann (ed.), Le rire des Anciens, Actes du colloque intern. Univ. de Rouen 1995, Paris, 143–158. Bourdieu, P. et al. (ed.) 1988. Il corpo tra natura e cultura, Roma: F. Angeli. Bourdieu, P. 1988. ‘Osservazioni provvisorie sulla percezione del corpo’, in: P. Bourdieu et al. (ed.), 163–179. Bowersock, G.W. 1994. Fiction as History. Nero to Julian, Berkeley - Los Angeles London.

————— avendo sotto gli occhi il modello dei pirati, ne utilizzavano l’immagine stereotipa fornita dalla letteratura). Quanto ai briganti, la presenza dei Boukoloi in Egitto nel periodo in cui scrive Achille Tazio e la loro rivolta nel 172 d.C. sono incontrovertibili dati storici (Str. 17,19,802, D. S.1,43, Dio. Cass. 73,6,1 s., 72,4,1; 77,4, Hist. Aug. Marc. 21, Avid. Cass. 6), anche se i dubbi restano per il barbarico sacrificio antropofagico menzionato da Dione Cassio, ed evocato da Achille Tazio e Lolliano (sulla cui interpretazione, Szepessy 1978; Henrichs 1972; Henrichs 1981; Bertrand 1988; Scarcella 1993, 88 ss.; Winkler 1980; Liviabella Furiani 1985, 25 ss.; Anderson 1997, 2291 s.; Hughes 1999, 298 ss.). Ringrazio i solerti e solleciti organizzatori di ICAN 2000, i colleghi e gli amici tutti, che con i loro commenti e osservazioni mi hanno fornito ulteriori spunti di riflessione. Un commosso grato ricordo dedico ad A.M. Scarcella, che agli studi sul romanzo greco volle generosamente iniziarmi.

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Briquel-Chatonnet, F. 1992, ‘L’image des Phéniciens dans les romans grecs’, in: M.-F. Baslez - Ph. Hoffmann, - M. Trédé (ed.), Le monde du roman grec. Actes du colloque Ecole normale supérieure (Paris 1987), Paris, 189–197. Canfora, L. (ed.) 1987. Storie d’amore antiche. Leucippe e Clitofonte, Dafni e Cloe, Anzia e Abrocome, Bari. Capriglione, J.C. 1990. La passione amorosa nella città ‘senza’ donne. Etica e prassi politica, Napoli. Conca, F. 1969. ‘I papiri di Achille Tazio’, RIL 103, 649–677. Dodds, E.R. 1970 (1965). Pagani e cristiani in un’epoca d’angoscia. Aspetti dell’esperienza religiosa da Marco Aurelio a Costantino, tr. it., Firenze. DuBois, P. 1990 (1988). Il corpo come metafora. Rappresentazioni della donna nella Grecia antica, tr. it., Roma-Bari. Egger, B. 1994. ‘Women and Marriage in the Greek Novels: The Boundaries of Romance’, in: J. Tatum (ed.), 260–280. Faranda, L. 1996. Dimore del corpo. Profili dell’identità femminile nella Grecia classica, Roma. Finley, M.I. 1981 (1980). Schiavitù antica e ideologie moderne, Roma - Bari. Forbes-Irving, P. 1990. Metamorphosis in Greek Myths, Oxford. Fusillo, M. 1996. ‘Modern Critical Theories and the Ancient Novel’, in: G. Schmeling (ed.), 277–305. Fusillo, M. 1989. Il romanzo greco. Polifonia ed eros, Venezia. Galimberti, U. 1987, Il corpo, Milano. Garnsey, P. – Saller, R. 1988 (1987). Storia sociale dell’impero romano, tr. it., RomaBari. Garzetti, A. 1976 (1960). From Tiberius to the Antonines. A History of the Roman Empire AD 14–192, tr. ingl., London. Goldhill, S. 1995. Foucault’s Virginity: Ancient Erotic Fiction and the History of Sexuality, Cambridge. Grant, M. 1994. The Antonines: The Roman Empire in Transition, London. Griffiths, T.G. 1948. ‘Human Sacrifices in Egypt: the Classical Evidence’, ASAE 48, 409–423. Grimal, P. 1993 (1991). Marco Aurelio, tr. it., Milano. Grottanelli, C. (1987). ‘The Ancient Novel and Biblical Narrative’, QUCC N.S. 27, 7– 34. Hall, E. 1989. Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self–Definition through Tragedy, Oxford. Haynes, K. 2000. ‘Power of the Prude: Configurations of the Feminine in the Greek Novel’, in: M. Zimmerman – S. Panayotakis – W. Keulen (ed.). ICAN 2000: The Ancient Novel in Context. Abstracts of the Papers to be Read at the Third International Conference on the Ancient Novel to be held at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands 25–30 July 2000, Groningen, 43–44 (now in this volume, 73– 92). Henrichs, A.H. 1981 ‘Human Sacrifice in Greek Religion: Three Case Studies’, in: J. Rudhardt – O. Reverdin (ed.), Le sacrifice dans l’antiquité, Genève, 195–235. Henrichs, A.H. (ed.) 1972. Die Phoinikika des Lollianos. Fragmente eines neuen griechischen Romans, Bonn.

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Hughes, D.D. 1999 (1991). I sacrifici umani nell’antica Grecia, tr. it., Roma. Jervis, G. 1988. Corpo e psicologia, in P. Bourdieu et al. (ed.), 137–147. Johne, R. 1996. ‘Women in the Ancient Novel’, in: G. Schmeling (ed.), 151–207. Kuch, H. 1989. ‘Die ‘Barbaren’ und der antike Roman’, Altertum 35, 80–86. Kuch, H. 1996. ‘A Study on the Margin of the Ancient Novel: “Barbarians” and others’, in: G. Schmeling (ed.), 209–220. Lateiner, D. 1998. ‘Blushes and Pallor in Ancient Fictions’, Helios 25, 163–189. Létoublon, F. 1993. Les lieux communs du roman. Stéréotypes grecs d’aventure et d’amour, Leiden - New York - Köln. Liviabella Furiani, P. 1989. Di donna in donna. Elementi “femministi” nel romanzo greco d’amore, in P. Liviabella Furiani – A.M. Scarcella (ed.), 43–106. Liviabella Furiani, P. 1998. ‘“Pepli parlanti” e “voci mute”: la comunicazione non verbale nel romanzo di Achille Tazio’, in: L. Rossetti – O. Bellini (ed.), Retorica e verità. Le insidie della comunicazione, Quaderni dell’Istituto di Filosofia dell’Università di Perugia (QIFP) 13, 97–149. Liviabella Furiani, P. 1985. ‘Religione e letteratura nel ‘racconto’ di sacrifici umani presso i romanzieri greci d’amore’, in: Filosofia della natura e pensiero religioso, Quaderni dell’Istituto di Filosofia dell’Università di Perugia (QIFP) 3, 25–40. Liviabella Furiani, P. 1992. ‘I vecchi e la vecchiaia nei romanzi greci d’amore’, in: L. Rossetti – O. Bellini (ed.), Mente ed esistenza, Quaderni dell’Istituto di Filosofia dell’Università di Perugia (QIFP) 11, 87–119. Liviabella Furiani, P. – Scarcella, A.M. (ed.) 1989. Piccolo Mondo Antico. Appunti sulle donne, gli amori, i costumi, il mondo reale nel romanzo antico, Napoli. Magli, P. 1988. Il doppio gioco del corpo, in: P. Bourdieu et al. (ed.), 94–108. Manni, E. 1991. ‘Bisanzio, l’Egitto e le ‘guerre’ narrate da Achille Tazio’, in: Studi di filologia classica in onore di Giusto Monaco I, Palermo, 471–474. Montserrat, D. (ed.) 1998. Changing Bodies, Changing Meanings: Studies on the Human Body in Antiquity, London - New York. Paglia, C. 1993 (1990). Sexual Personae. Arte e decadenza da Nefertiti a Emily Dickinson, tr. it., Torino. Pasquinelli, C. 1988. ‘Le ambiguità del corpo’, in: P. Bourdieu et al., 9–13. Plepelits, K. 1996. ‘Achilles Tatius’, in: G. Schmeling (ed.), 387–416. Polaszek, E. 1998. ‘The Motif of Potiphar’s Wife in the Ancient Greek Romances: Xenophon of Ephesus, Achilles Tatius, and Heliodorus’, Classica Cracoviensia 4, 173–182. Reardon, B.P. 1994. ‘Achilles Tatius and Ego-narrative’, in: J.R. Morgan – R. Stoneman (ed.), Greek Fiction. The Greek Novel in Context, London – New York, 80– 96. Reardon, B.P. 1971. Courants littéraires grecs des IIe et III e siècles après J.C, Paris. Reardon, B.P. 1969. ‘The Greek Novel’, Phoenix 23, 291–301. Rizzo Nervo, F. 1998. “Incidit in amorem filiae suae’. Rappresentazioni del rapporto incestuoso dal mito alla letteratura greca medievale’, in: S. Pricoco (ed.), L’Eros Difficile. Amore e sessualità nell’antico cristianesimo, Soveria Mannelli (Catanzaro), 239–280.

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Rostovzev, M. 1953 (1926). Storia economica e sociale dell’impero romano, tr. it., Firenze. Ruiz Montero, C. 1989. ‘Caritón de Afrodisias y el mundo real’, in: P. Liviabella Furiani – A.M. Scarcella (ed.), 107–150. Santini, L. 1995. ‘Il romanzo greco d’amore’, in. U. Mattioli (ed.), Senectus. La vecchiaia nel mondo classico, I, Bologna, 425–446. Scarcella, A.M. (a) 1993. ‘Fremde und Barbaren im griechischen Liebesroman’, in: A.M. Scarcella, 103–108. Scarcella, A.M. (b) 1993. ‘Metastasi narratologica del dato storico nel romanzo erotico greco’, in: A.M. Scarcella, 77–102. Scarcella, A.M. 1993. Romanzo e romanzieri. Note di narratologia greca, Napoli. Scarcella, A.M. (c) 1993. ‘Les structures socio-économiques du roman de Xénophon d’Éphèse’, in: A.M Scarcella, 185–197. Scarcella, A.M. (d) 1993. ‘Testimonianze della crisi di un’età nel romanzo di Eliodoro’, in: A.M. Scarcella, 329–356. Scarcella, A.M. 1996. ‘The Social and Economic Structures of the Ancient Novels’, in: G. Schmeling (ed.), 221–276. Schmeling, G. (ed.) 1996. The Novel in the Ancient World, Leiden - New York - Köln. Segal, C. 1984. ‘The Trials at the End of Achilles Tatius’ Clitophon and Leucippe. Doublets and Complementaries’, SIFC 77, 83–91. Szepessy, T. 1978. ‘Zur Interpretation eines neu entdeckten griechischen Romans’ AAntHung 26, 29–36. Tatum, J. (ed.) 1994. The Search for the Ancient Novel, Baltimore - London. Whittaker, C.R. 1990. ‘I porci di Circe: dalla schiavitù alla servitù della gleba nel basso Impero romano’, in: M.I. Finley (ed.) 1990 (1987), La schiavitù nel mondo antico, Roma - Bari,131–186. Wiersma, S. 1990. ‘The Ancient Greek Novel and Its Heroines: A Female Paradox’, Mnemosyne 63, 109–123. Winkler, J.J. 1980. ‘Lollianos and the Desperadoes’, JHS 100, 155–181. Winkler, J.J. 1989. ‘The Education of Chloe: Hidden Injuries of Sex’, in: J.J. Winkler (ed.), Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece, New York, 101–126. Wyke, M. (ed.) 1998. Parchments of Gender. Deciphering the Bodies of Antiquity, Oxford. Zeitlin, F. 1994. ‘Gardens of Desire in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe: Nature, Art, and Imitation’, in: J. Tatum (ed.), 148–170.

Longus in the Mir Istkusstva: Léon Bakst, Maurice Ravel and Marc Chagall EDMUND P . CUEVA

Cincinnati

In the introduction to George Moore’s translation of Daphnis and Chloe, the publisher, George Braziller, writes: When it was suggested to Chagall that he illustrate the fable of “Daphnis and Chloe” he began his preparation by making two trips to Greece. And it is the very essence of the Greek landscape that was absorbed by the artist and then recreated on pages drenched in blue, shimmering with the sunniest yellow, shadowed in palest mauve. (Preface) Before Marc Chagall was commissioned to create the lithographs that accompany the 1961 Tériade volume,1 the artist had been asked in 1958 to design the scenery for an Opéra de Paris performance of Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé – a background which Franz Meyer in his monumental work, Marc Chagall: Life and Work, writes as having origins in both Chagall’s “theatrical experiments in Russia” and “the impact of Greece.” 2 Meyer states in addition that just as the painter had traveled to Palestine before creating his Bible illustrations, in the same manner Chagall went to Delphi and Poros in 1952, and Poros and Nauplia in 1954, where he “stood spellbound before the great masterpieces of the Archaic sculptors and felt the profundity and joy of the Greek world with all his heart and soul.”3 Jean-Paul Crespelle in his 1969 biography of Chagall and Sidney Alexander in his 1978 profile ————— 1

2 3

The book was originally published for Tériade’s French edition in Paris in 1961 and republished in English in New York in 1977. Meyer 1961, 574. Meyer 1961, 547.

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of the artist both concur with Meyer’s statement.4 In none of his own recollections does Chagall state that this is so. Chagall’s Russian training and experience, moreover, have been for the greater part been ignored in the creation of the paintings of Longus’ novel, as is evidenced by the most recent biography by Monica Bohm-Duchen, who comments as follows on these trips and the 1958 production: Although Chagall produced a number of sketches directly inspired by the landscapes and monuments of that country, the main artistic outcome of these visits was the series of coloured lithographs on the theme of Daphnis and Chloë, commissioned by Tériade in 1952 and published in 1961. In 1958 the Paris Opéra would commission him to produce the sets and costumes for Ravel’s ballet of the same name. This ballet had been originally commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev in 1907, if the notation made by Ravel in his autobiographical sketch is accurate,5 or 1909, if one of Ravel’s biographers, Victor I. Seroff, is correct.6 Whatever the date, the play was first presented by the Ballet Russe in 1912,7 and garnered for Ravel the “reputation as one of France’s leading composers.”8 The scenery from the 1912 production, however, had been designed by Léon Bakst, which in Chagall’s opinion “adhered far too closely to the classicist image of Greece, which suited neither Longus nor Ravel.”9 A brief biography for each of the men involved in the musical and artistic interpretation of Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe is here supplied in order to put these great men in some historical context. Leon Bakst was born to a middle class Jewish family in Belarus. He was educated in St. Petersburg at the Imperial Academy of Arts but was expelled after painting a too realistic Pietà. He wanted to be an illustrator but changed his mind when he met Aleksandr Benois, with whom he traveled throughout Europe. In 1898, to————— 4 5 6

7 8 9

Crespelle 1970, 256; Alexander 1978, 452–453. See “An Autobiographical Sketch by Maurice Ravel” in Orenstein 1990, 31 and 36 n.22. Seroff 1970, 148–149 argues for the later date as more acceptable because Ravel’s libretto was probably composed “after Ravel saw the Russian Ballet and Nijinksy …. [I]t is evident from Ravel’s score of the ballet that Nijinsky had inspired many passages in Daphnis et Chloë.” Orenstein 1975, 9 and 48. Orenstein1975, 48. Meyer 1961, 550.

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gether with Benois and Sergei Diaghilev, he founded the group World of Art (Mir Iskusstva). In 1906 he became a teacher in the Elizaveta Zvantseva art school where, among other students, he taught Chagall. Bakst’s greatest achievements are related to the theater: he debuted with the stage design for the Hermitage and Aleksandrinskii theaters in St. Petersburg in 1902–1903, and in 1906 he went to Paris where he designed stage sets and costumes for Diaghilev’s newly formed ballet company, the Ballet Russe. Bakst acquired international renown with his sets and costumes, which conveyed a flavor of the idyllic and distant past.10 Maurice Ravel was an eclectic artist who displayed his skills in operas, in ballet productions, and in orchestral, vocal, chamber and piano music. Ravel wrote two operas, the first a comédie-musicale, The Spanish Clock, and the second, with a libretto by Colette, the imaginative The Child and the Enchantments. Ravel composed his ballet Daphnis et Chloé in response to a request from the Russian impresario Diaghilev. The work, a symphonie choréographique, is based on the novel of Longus. Marc Chagall was born on July 7, 1887, in Vitebsk, Belorussia. Chagall began his studies in Vitebsk, then moved to St. Petersburg, hoping that his art would find approval there – he failed his first art examination. In 1907 Chagall applied and was accepted to the school of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in St. Petersburg, but, disenchanted with the school, he transferred to Zeidenberg’s private art school and later to Zvantseva’s School, where he studied with Bakst. After the Revolution Chagall was active as an art educator, and in 1919 became a founder, director, and the most popular teacher at the Vitebsk Academy. However, because he wanted the school to express all points of view on art, he was ousted by the Malevich faction (Suprematists) and left Vitebsk for Moscow. In Moscow, Chagall worked at the Kamernyi State Jewish Theater and with the Habimah Theater. The sources of his inspiration are found in his childhood, the life of a provincial city of Vitebsk and its Jewish community, the Scriptures, Russian folk art and icon painting, and I suggest, in his association with Bakst and the Mir Iskusstva. Although Chagall was probably thoroughly enthralled by Greece, he must have been introduced to Longus’ novel by his former teacher Léon Bakst while a student at the Zvantseva School in St. Petersburg. Bakst by ————— 10

For a more complete biography consult Kennedy 1976, 277–300, and Bowlt 1982, 216– 232.

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this time had been a key member of the Mir Iskusstva, which was the “center of the Russian modern movement.”11 Indeed Bakst was at the height of his fame when Chagall made his acquaintance. They were student and teacher for the year and a half that Chagall studied at the Zvantseva school. Although the teacher and student did not completely get along, because Bakst thought that Chagall’s talent was limited, nevertheless Chagall “appreciated Bakst’s stress on free color, united to optical reality.”12 On this relationship Crespelle writes: …Bakst did reinforce Chagall’s innate sense of the importance of color as opposed to line, a concept which would divide him from most of the painters influence by Cubism. The characteristic qualities of his painting had appeared: a disdain for realism, the dreamlike atmosphere, folk themes, shimmering colors….13 It was Bakst who not only helped form Chagall’s conception of art14 and of Longus’ novel, but, as mentioned, he was also the person who had initially designed the scenery for Ravel’s 1912 production. How do Longus, Bakst, Chagall and the Mir Istkusstva all tie in? The answer is found in the Mir Istkusstva artistic phenomenon and Bakst’s vision of art, which in turn influenced Chagall in his depictions of the ancient novel. The accepted paradigm of influence of Longus on the works of Ravel and Chagall should be as follows. Bakst read J. Amyot’s 1559 French translation of Longus’ novel and considered it the example par excellence of the kind of literature and art that epitomized the Mir Istkusstva’s ars gratia artis motto.15 The World of Art condemned any moralistic utilitarian view of art, and placed heavy emphasis on symbolism, historical novels and religious ————— 11

12 13 14

15

Alexander 1978, 93. This artistic movement had three phases: 1898–1906 (from its founding–the journal–to the end of publication), 1910–1924 (art shows under said name), 1921 and 1927 (art shows in Paris). The aims of this society were to accelerate the evolution of Russian art, to establish a vehicle through which the miriskusniki (the members of this circle) could bring about this acceleration (the art shows and the founding of the Ballet Russe), and to document this development in a journal (the Mir Iskusstva). Alexander 1978, 94. Crespelle 1970, 78. In Alexander’s (1978, 156) discussion of Chagall’s Golgotha the following observation is made: “This is the crucifixion not as Calvary but as a Russian ballet staged by Diaghilev and Bakst.” Alexander 1978, 88–89.

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mysticism.16 Although “there is no explicit evidence”17 that Chagall had been affected by this agitation, it must be agreed that Bakst, one of the founders of the movement, must have had some influence on his student. Up until this time the Russian view of art had been a realist one and consequently preferred Russian reality to Grecian Arcadia, focused on social troubles, perceived art as a narrative sequence, and emphasized social theme in a social context.18 This view of art clashed with the Mir Iskusstva’s view which had a greater concern for manner than content. Its predominant interests were with the intrinsic elements of art rather than with its social allegiance or importance, and elected form over content, style over nature. It is no wonder that the miriskusniki chose Daphnis and Chloe as their model – for them, as for Longus, art was something too ethereal, too mobile to be anchored to the realities of life. Bakst’s selection of this ancient novel illustrated the Mir Iskusstva’s new artistic code of the rediscovery and appreciation of an ancient culture. It looked back to classical Greece, popular myth, and the primordial state of man. As mentioned previously, during a brief but important period of time at the Zvantseva Chagall had been a student of Bakst, who had already sketched decorative panels depicting moments from Longus’ narrative (e.g., plates V and VIII in Levinson). Moreover, Bakst had been the first person in “the world …to try to work out a stage and a conventional plastic language” of ancient Greece that was in accord not only “with our modern conception of ancient art,”19 but also as close as possible to the ancient originals.20 Indeed, while in Russia Bakst had made it a point to include in his art and in his teaching “the forms and images of ancient drawing depicted on Attic vases, bas-reliefs, and sculpture” that would later surface in his and Mikhail Fokine’s classical designs for the 1912 production of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé.21 Serge Lifar, the biographer of the impresario Diaghilev, comments as follows on this Greek stage setting: …it would be the greatest injustice to Diaghilev, Benois and Bakst to contend that this erudition was Fokine’s alone, and not that also of these ————— 16 17 18 19 20 21

Alexander 1978, 88–89. Alexander 1978, 90. The following information on Russian art is from Bowlt 1982 and Kennedy 1976. Levinson 1971, 99–100. Levinson 1971, 89. Seroff 1970, 156.

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others. It is possible to believe, for instance, that Fokine alone created …Daphnis et Chloé, when it was Bakst who reconstructed each pose from works of art of the period…22 The aesthetics of the Mir Istkusstva circle and Bakst’s fascination with and loyalty to ancient Greece23 demonstrate that there were factors other than the trips to Greece that influenced Chagall’s selection and treatment of Longus. Before Serge Diaghilev’s request that he compose the music for Fokine’s libretto based on Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, Ravel knew little of this ancient novel.24 The composer admits this in a letter written to Michel D. Calvocoressi on May 3, 1910, part of which reads as follows: In Daphnis, what are the exact names of (1) the very obliging lady (Lycea, I think); (2) the old shepherd who brought up one of the two kids (something like Lammon)? Still to the companion of Ganymede: I’m incapable of recalling (neurasthenia) the name of Pan’s pipe. Which other instrument, played in the orchestra by an E sharp clarinet, might a shepherd be holding? (No, not the old shepherd, a different one.)25 Ravel, in fact, had no special attraction to Greek subjects. Calvocoressi, a close friend of the composer, comments on the misconception that Ravel had a special attraction to Greece: The two facts that the Greek songs were Ravel’s first venture in the harmonization of folk-tunes, and that one of the most important works is a ballet on a Greek subject, have given rise – though not very generally, it is true – to the idea that Greek subjects may have had some special attraction for him. There is absolutely no foundation for this idea. Daphnis et Chloé, like the Greek folk-songs, owes its existence to purely accidental circumstances, and Ravel did not think of the subject himself. He had studied nether Greek nor Latin; all his acquaintance with the classics and with foreign authors he owed to French translations, and I am sure that ————— 22 23 24 25

Lifar 1940, 141. Levinson 1971, 102, 107–108. Chailley 1969; Orenstein 1975, 215 n. 8. Orenstein 1990, 116.

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often the French flavour conferred by these translations played a part in his enjoyment of them.26 It is assumed that he was familiar with Amyot’s translation27 and perhaps he was acquainted with the artistic illustrations of the novel by Pierre Bonnard28 and Aristide Maillol.29 It has also been speculated that Ravel may have been inspired more by Stéphane Mallarmé’s L’Après-Midi d’un Faune than by Longus in his scoring of the ballet.30 It was mere “coincidence,” however, that Longus became the subject of one of Ravel’s most spectacular creations: it had been offered to him as a project by Diaghilev, the impresario of the Ballet Russe.31 The composer, moreover, differed completely from Bakst and Fokine, the set designer and choreographer for the 1912 performance, in his interpretation of ancient Greece.32 Bakst visualized the ballet developed against the background of archaic Greece, while Ravel pictured a “vast musical fresco, concerning itself less with archaic fidelity, than with fidelity to the Greece of my dreams, which in many ways resembled that imagined and depicted by the French artists of the end of the eighteenth century.” Fokine’s choreography did not suit Ravel. He demanded constant changes, and Fokine and Bakst in their turn asked him to compromise – leading to a not too harmonious result.33 Ravel wanted to filter Longus through the depictions of the late eighteenth century,34 while Bakst and Fokine wanted to approximate as accurately as possible the “pagan scenes depicted on ancient Greek vases and friezes.”35 ————— 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35

Nichols 1987,185–87. Calvocoressi 1934, 78–79. Pérez Gutiérrez 1987, 260; Watkins 1994, 73. Cowling and Mundy 1990, 148. Pérez Gutiérrez 1987, 253–55; Hyman 1998, 74–75. Seroff 1970, 142–143. Cf. Larner 117: “Faced with a concept which did not suit him, he had had to persist with adapting Fokine’s archaeological image of second-century Lesbos until it became compatible, as he said, with ‘the Greece of my dreams, which is not unlike that imagined and depicted by French artists at the end of the eighteenth century.’ Even if Bakst would not adapt his authentic-Greek vision for the sets and costumes – and, in fact, he did not – Ravel needed to be able to imagine a setting he could identify with. More important, by taking Daphnis and Chloe out of their authentic background and displacing them into a neo-classical landscape by some such artist as Jacques-Louis David, he was separating Longus’s goatherd and shepherdess from their pagan sexuality.” Seroff 1970, 152–153. Orenstein 1975, 60–61; Nichols 1997, 7. Larner 1996, 115; see also Fokine 71–73.

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It is clear that Ravel did not choose the subject, nor even like it; this dislike may have stemmed from the striking sexual content of the novel.36 In the end, however, Bakst’s views triumphed and the scenery and costumes of the ballet “were inspired by a more realistic vision of Greece that the French neo-Classical Greece which Ravel had in mind.”37 The 1912 ballet, however, after some negative reaction by critics, was admired even by those who differed with Ravel. Fokine “loved the score” from the first time he heard it,38 and Jean Cocteau noted that the ballet was “the archetype of those works which belong to no school; one of those works that land in our hearts like a meteorite, from a planet whose laws will remain for ever mysterious and beyond our understanding.”39 In conclusion, George Braziller was only partly right in finding the inspiration for Chagall’s paintings in his trips to Greece. The influence of the Mir Iskusstva, previous ballet designs, Bakst’s own representations of moments from the novel narrative, and Chagall’s tutelage under and association with Bakst must be noted as more forceful inspirations in the depictions of Longus’ novel. Ravel, moreover, had little, if any, influence on the paintings and stage designs.

Bibliography Alexander, Sidney. 1978. Marc Chagall. A Biography. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Bohm-Duchen, Monica. 1998. Chagall. London: Phaidon Press Limited. Bowlt, John E. 1982. The Silver Age: Russian Art of the Early Twentieth Century and the “World of Art” Group. Newtonville, Massachusetts: Oriental Research Partners. Calvocoressi, M. D. 1934. Music and Ballet. London: Faber and Faber Limited. Chailley, Jacques. 1969. “Une premiere version inconnue de Daphnis et Chloe de Maurice Ravel.” In Mélanges d’histoire littéraire (XVIe–XVIIe siècle), 371–375. Paris: Editions A.-G. Nizet. Cowling, Elizabeth and Jennifer Mundy. 1990. On Classic Ground. Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910–1930. London: Tate Gallery Publications. Crespelle, Jean-Paul. 1970. Chagall. Translated by Benita Eisler. New York: CowardMcCann, Inc.

————— 36 37 38 39

Larner 1996, 115–117. Larner 1996, 131. Nichols 1987, 43. Nichols 1977, 84.

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Fokine, Mikhail. 1961. Fokine. Memoirs of a Ballet Master. Translated by Vitale Fokine. Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company. Hyman, Timothy. 1998. Bonnard. London: Thames and Hudson. Kennedy, Janet Elspeth. 1976. “The Mir Iskusstva Group and Russian Art 1898– 1912.” Diss. Columbia University. Larner, Gerald. 1996. Maurice Ravel. London: Phaidon Press Limited. Levinson, André. 1971. Bakst. The Story of the Artist’s Life. New York: Benjamin Blom. Lifar, Serge. 1940. Serge Diaghilev. His Life, His Work, His Legend. An Intimate Biography. New York: Da Capo Press. Meyer, Franz. 1961. Marc Chagall. Life and Work. New York and Cologne: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers. Nichols, Roger. 1987. Ravel Remembered. New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company. —. 1977. Ravel. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. Orenstein, Arbie. 1990. A Ravel Reader: Correspondence, Articles, Interviews. New York: Columbia University Press. —. 1975. Ravel. Man and Musician. New York and London: Columbia University Press. Pérez Gutiérrez, Mariano. 1987. La Estetica Musical de Ravel. Madrid: Editorial Alpuerto, S. A. Seroff, Victor I. 1970. Maurice Ravel. Freeport, New York: Books For Libraries Press. Watkins, Nicholas. 1994. Bonnard. London: Phaidon Press Limited.

The Cinematic Nature of the Opening Scene of Heliodoros’ Aithiopika MARTIN M . W INKLER

Fairfax, Virginia

I. Heliodoros’ Opening and Cinematic Technique The Aithiopika of the Greek novelist Heliodoros of Emesa, written around 360 A.D., is the last in a series of surviving ancient Greek novels combining romance, adventure, and mystery. Heliodoros’ Ethiopian Story excels over all its predecessors with an extremely clever plot of almost fiendish complexity. Heliodoros puts his readers in medias res, then returns to his opening scene exactly halfway through the text; he also provides two first-person narratives embedded in an otherwise authorially told story. Given such a narrative structure, it is not surprising that Heliodoros should present us with a prime example of mystery fiction. He is the first author in the Western tradition to employ a wily and not always trustworthy detective, Kalasiris, who gives us a detailed account of his search for a missing person.1 This missing person is the Ethiopian princess Charikleia, who had been exposed at birth by her mother, the queen. When she grew up, Charikleia became the priestess of Apollo at Delphi. One year, at the Pythian Games, a young man called Theagenes falls in love with her, as she does with him. They elope together with Kalasiris, who had found Charikleia, and eventually, after a number of adventures both preceding and following Kalasiris’ death, they reach Ethiopia, where Charikleia is recognized and acknowledged as the daughter of the king and queen, marries Theagenes, and lives with him happily ever after. ————— 1

On him see J. J. Winkler 1982. On Heliodoros’ novel as a mystery cf. Morgan 1994. Cf. further Haight 1950. The locus classicus on ancient mystery fiction is the 1935 lecture “Aristotle on Detective Fiction” by Dorothy Sayers, in Sayers 1947, 222–236.

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But none of this is my subject. Instead I will concentrate on the novel’s most famous scene, its opening. Heliodoros begins his story at daybreak near the mouth of the Nile. A gang of bandits are coming over the top of a hill and stumble upon a strange scene. They discover a ship at anchor, loaded with cargo and without a soul on board—an ancient Marie Celeste, as it were. On the beach they see the aftermath of a feast which has turned into a massacre, with corpses and half-dead people lying along the beach. When they come closer, the bandits notice among the carnage a beautiful maiden, at her feet a handsome young man so seriously wounded as to be near death. These, of course, will soon turn out to be Charikleia and Theagenes, the lovers and our heroes. This opening is designed in such a way as to arouse our curiosity by showing us a fascinating mystery. But what twentieth-century readers who come to Heliodoros for the first time may not have expected is that the opening of this ancient text appears almost exactly like the transcript—the ‘novelization,’ as it is often called today—of a scene in a mystery film or thriller. I will address the cinematic quality of Heliodoros’ opening scene by adapting it into a film script and then compare Heliodoros’ highly visual opening with the opening shots of two famous cinematic mysteries, both created by master directors in complete command of their medium. Their narrative purpose is the same as Heliodoros’: to draw the audience irresistibly into the story. But unlike Heliodoros’ romantic adventure story, these films are nightmarish thrillers which suck their unsuspecting and helpless viewers into a dark world of crime, corruption, and abnormal psychology. Both, appropriately, are milestones of film noir: Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil (1958) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Finally, to round off my discussion of Heliodoros and cinema, I will examine the novel’s midway return to its opening as an analogy to a flashback in film. In doing so I do not, of course, claim any conscious influence of Heliodoros on the filmmakers or any imitation of his text in their films; in fact, their writers and directors are unlikely ever to have heard of this Greek author. Rather, I intend the similarities in the ancient literary and modern visual modes of storytelling to illustrate that certain key strategies to unfold a mystery or adventure plot were and are fundamental to the genre then and now.2 My claim that Heliodoros’ opening is inherently cinematic may be substantiated by a long tradition of visual storytelling in literature. Looking back ————— 2

In general see on this Cawelti 1976.

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on literary history from the vantage point of the twenty-first century, we can easily see that literature has always used techniques comparable to those employed in the cinema. A case in point is the 1944 essay in which Sergei Eisenstein, one of the pioneers of film in both practice and theory, has conclusively demonstrated the affinity of the nineteenth-century novel to early film.3 Moreover, the perspective on cinematic style on the part of two of the greatest mystery and adventure storytellers in the history of film is directly applicable to Heliodoros’ literary mode of presentation. As early as 1936 Alfred Hitchcock described his approach to cinema as follows: I played about with ‘technique’ in those early days [the 1920s and early 1930s]....I have stopped all that today....Nowadays I want the cutting and continuity to be as inconspicuous as possible, and all I am concerned with is to get the characters developed and the story clearly told without any directorial idiosyncrasies.4 Parallel to his words are the following observations by Howard Hawks, made in 1962: I don’t like tricks....most of the time my camera stays on eye level now. Once in a while, I’ll move the camera as if a man were walking and seeing something. And it pulls back or it moves in for emphasis when you don’t want to make a cut. But, outside of that, I just use the simplest camera in the world.5 Action director John Sturges concurs: The perfect camera technique is one the audience doesn’t even know is existing. The whole idea is, they become so engrossed in what’s going on, they don’t even know they’re looking at a movie. It’s happening. That on most films you try to do....you do things that by themselves have

————— 3

4 5

Eisenstein 1949; cf. further Eisenstein 1942. In general see Fell 1986, 1–86, with additional references. For an application of Eisenstein’s principles to classical literature see Mench 2001 and Newman 2001. Hitchcock 1936, quoted from Gottlieb 1995, 247. Quoted from Bogdanovich 1998, 262.

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visual interest, but mostly you try to do it in a way that’s so called for that you’re not even aware of it [as a member of the audience].6

II. Heliodoros’ Opening: The Screenplay I now turn to demonstrating in detail the visual quality of Heliodoros’ opening scene, as if for a film whose credits might read: ‘Written for the Screen and Directed by Heliodoros.’7 In my translation of the individual details which he reveals to us one after the other into a film’s continuity script, I juxtapose to the text directions for filming and editing. I use the most recent English translation of the Aithiopika, giving page and line references for all quotations.8 For reasons of economy I do not include detailed descriptions of static moments or of costumes (cf. on these my comments in Section III), nor do I include any of the sparse dialogue which Heliodoros gives his heroes. I present my adaptation of the opening scene with as little technical detail as possible. Individual shots, numbered 1–8, are indicated in boldface. Shots 1 and 4 are further subdivided into segments. Such segmentation occurs here only to make a shot of some duration clearer to a reader; the shots themselves are continuous and involve no editing. All editing—i.e. cutting from shot to shot—is specifically identified, also in boldface. Camera movements are either lateral (‘pans’) or vertical (‘tilts’). The following abbreviations will serve as cinematic shorthand: ELS = extreme long shot LS = long shot ————— 6

7

8

Quoted from the director’s audio commentary on the Criterion Collection laserdisc edition of his 1954 film Bad Day at Black Rock (Santa Monica: Voyager, 1991). Cf. Stephenson and Phelps 1989, 28: ‘Not only are many technical effects in a film extremely subtle, despite their contribution to the total impact, but part of a director’s job is to ensure that they do not beg for attention, but affect the spectator even though he remains unconscious of their presence. In most cases technique is, and should be, invisible.’ The first to observe the cinematic nature of the opening scene was Otto Weinreich in his 1950 ‘Nachwort’ to a German translation of the novel; he expanded this afterword in Weinreich 1962, reprinted in part in Gärtner 1984, 408–431. Weinreich was followed by Hägg 1983, 55, among others. Bühler 1976 provides a more detailed but still rudimentary cinematic appreciation of Heliodoros’ opening. Morgan 1989. In the text below, the numbers in square brackets refer to page 353, line 1 through page 354, line 39 (= Aith. 1,1–2a). Morgan 1996 gives a detailed introduction to the novel.

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MLS = medium long shot MS = medium shot MCU = medium close-up CU = close-up POV = point of view REV = reverse-angle shot A close-up is a shot of an actor whose head or head and shoulders fill the screen, or it shows us a close view of an object. A medium shot reveals an actor’s whole body, e.g. standing up. Long shots display actors or scenes from a distance. All of these are flexible and admit numerous variations and intermediate camera positions, such as ELS, MLS, or MCU.

AETH. 1,1–2a as a continuity script 1. TEXT: ‘The smile of daybreak was just beginning to brighten the sky, the sunlight to catch the hilltops, when a group of men in brigand gear peered over the mountain that overlooks the place where the Nile flows into the sea....They stood there for a moment...’ [353.1–5] 1.1. EXTERIOR, DAY. Dawn. Nile landscape near the sea coast. ELS or LS (depending on specific location), eye-level or slightly higher: Group of brigands approaches and walks past camera (LS to MS); camera PANS to keep them in view and then (LS) FOLLOWS behind them as they ascend a hill where they stop. TEXT: ‘...scanning the expanse of sea beneath them: first they gazed out over the ocean, but as there was nothing sailing there that held out hope of spoil and plunder, their eyes were drawn to the beach nearby.’ [353.5–7] 1.2. Camera (LS) RISES above bandits’ heads or shoulders (medium high-angle shot) and reveals (bandits’ POV in ELS) the sea and the mouth of the Nile; camera PANS over horizon and empty sea (ELS), then TILTS down closer to shore (LS).

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TEXT: ‘This is what they saw: a merchant ship was riding there, moored by her stern, empty of crew but laden with freight. This much could be surmised even from a distance, for the weight of her cargo forced the water up to the third line of boards on the ship’s side.’ [353.8–11] 1.3. LS from bandits’ POV, ctd.: camera reveals merchant ship at anchor, loaded but without crew; camera MOVES in for a closer look at the ship (ZOOM into MLS). TEXT: ‘But the beach!—’ [353.11] 1.4. MLS from bandits’ POV, ctd.: camera TILTS further down and momentarily STOPS to reveal the scene on the beach: aftermath of a massacre. TEXT: ‘a mass of newly slain bodies...’ [353.11–12] 1.5. Camera MOVES closer (MLS to MS). TEXT: ‘...some of them quite dead, others half-alive and still twitching, testimony that the fighting had only just ended....Amongst the carnage were the miserable remains of festivities....In that small space the deity had contrived an infinitely varied spectacle, defiling wine with blood and unleashing war at the party, combining wining and dying, pouring of drink and spilling of blood, and staging this tragic show for the Egyptian bandits.’ [353.12–13 and 353.23–354.5] 1.6. Camera PANS along the massacre scene, showing details in CU: people lying about dead or dying (twitching); they have obviously been attacked during a banquet, as tables with food, tables overturned or held as weapons by some of the corpses indicate [this information at 353.13– 23]. CUT TO

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2. TEXT: ‘They stood on the mountainside like the audience in a theater, unable to comprehend the scene...’ [354.6–12] REV (MCU): Reaction of bandits staring at the aftermath. CUT TO 3. TEXT: ‘So they cast themselves in the role of victors and set off down the hillside. They had reached a point a short distance from the ship and the bodies when they found themselves confronted by a sight even more inexplicable than what they had seen before.’ [354.12–16] REV (from the beach uphill): MCU of bandits rejoicing [laughter and brief exclamations to indicate their anticipation of booty]: they begin to walk (camera now MOVING back into MLS), then run downhill toward camera, which MOVES out of their way and PANS 180 degrees (still MLS) to follow them as they approach the beach where they all suddenly come to a halt; camera pan STOPS. CUT TO 4. TEXT: ‘On a rock sat a girl, a creature of such indescribable beauty that one might have taken her for a goddess. Despite her great distress at her plight, she had an air of courage and nobility.’ [354.16–19] 4.1. MLS, bandits’ POV: young woman, armed [this information from 4.2, below], sitting on rock among the dead and dying, with young man, severely wounded, lying at her feet on the ground [this information from 4.3, below]. TEXT [key words indicating the direction of the observers’ gaze in italics]: ‘On her head she wore a crown of laurel; from her shoulders hung a quiver; her left arm leant on her bow, the hand hanging relaxed at the wrist. She

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rested the elbow of her other arm on her right thigh, cradling her cheek in her fingers. Her head was bowed...’ [354.19–22] 4.2. Camera (still bandits’ POV) MOVES into ECU of young woman’s bowed head, then (all in ECU) TILTS down from her head along left side of her body, across and up the other side back to her head. Camera now MOVES around her into MCU to follow her gaze and reveal what she sees. TEXT: ‘...and she gazed steadily at a young man lying at her feet...’ [354.22–29; description of Theagenes omitted here, since on film it is only a briefly held static shot.] 4.3. MCU of young man, wounded, lying at her feet. He, in turn, is looking up into her eyes [this information from 354.27–29]. CUT. 5.–6. TEXT: Dialogue between Theagenes [354.30–33] and Charikleia [354.34– 36], here omitted. 5. MCU of man’s face. He is speaking. 6. REV (MCU) of woman’s face. She is speaking. CUT TO 7. TEXT: ‘As she spoke, she leapt up from the rock.’ [354.37] MLS: Woman leaping up suddenly. CUT. 8. TEXT: ‘Thunderstruck with wonder and terror at the sight, the bandits on the hillside scattered and dived for cover in the undergrowth.’ [354.37–39]

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REV (MCU to MLS from woman’s POV) of bandits’ reaction: scared by her sudden movement, they run off and hide.

III. Comments on the Screenplay Now for some comments on the preceding. Heliodoros’ opening, a panoramic view from a raised vantage point, finds numerous parallels in the history of Western literature. Two examples from the nineteenth-century British novel, whose cinematic quality scholars have noted, appear in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped and Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge (both 1886).9 A comparison of the passages, considerably briefer than Heliodoros’, will throw the ancient author’s artistry in greater relief. To indicate the cinematic nature of the two modern passages I have italicized their key words or phrases, including those indicating the transitions from panoramic overview (extreme LS, LS) to detailed view (MCU, CU) and, in the case of Hardy’s text, back out to LS. First Stevenson, the opening of Chapter 2: On the afternoon of the second day, coming to the top of a hill, I saw all the country fall away before me down to the sea; and in the midst of this descent, on a long ridge, the city of Edinburgh smoking like a kiln. There was a flag upon the castle, and ships moving or lying anchored in the firth; both of which for as far away as they were, I could distinguish clearly. The viewer’s eye zooms in to the very center of the picture, the castle flag, then moves further on to the harbor in the distance beyond. Vivid as it is in its brevity, the passage is outdone by the moment in Chapter 4 of The Mayor of Casterbridge, in which Hardy describes Susan Henchard’s and her daughter Elizabeth-Jane’s view of the town: ————— 9

Cf. Fell 1986, 61 (on Stevenson) and 65–66 (on Hardy); he comments on Hardy’s rationalizing the long shot of Casterbridge in the mention of the soaring birds especially well. On Hardy’s text as cinema cf. O’Connor 1956, 245–246, quoted by Fell, ibid. Readers will notice the hint at painting (‘rectangular frame’) and the extraordinary vividness of the colors in Hardy’s description, which reinforce the shot’s cinematic beauty. John Schlesinger’s 1967 film version of Far From the Madding Crowd does full justice to the latter aspect of Hardy’s art. His phrase ‘the level eye of humanity’ relates Hardy to Howard Hawks; cf. the quotation from Hawks given above.

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It was on a Friday evening, near the middle of September, and just before dusk, that they reached the summit of a hill within a mile of the place they sought....The spot commanded a full view of the town and its environs.... To birds of a more soaring kind Casterbridge must have appeared on this fine evening as a mosaic-work of subdued reds, browns, greys, and crystals, held together by a rectangular frame of deep green. To the level eye of humanity it stood as an indistinct mass behind a dense stockade of limes and chestnuts, set in the midst of miles of rotund down and concave field. The mass became gradually dissected by the vision into towers, gables, chimneys, and casements, the highest glazings shining bleared and bloodshot with the coppery fire they caught from the belt of sunlit cloud in the west. From the centre of each side of this tree-bound square ran avenues east, west, and south into the wide expanse of corn-land and coomb to the distance of a mile or so. Even closer to Heliodoros than this scene is one in Hardy’s earlier novel Far From the Madding Crowd (1874), whose setting and wording parallel, at least to a certain degree, Heliodoros’ opening. In Chapter 47, entitled ‘Adventures by the Shore,’ Sergeant Troy ascends a hill and overlooks the sea; his gaze proceeds along virtually identical lines of vision as did the Egyptian bandits’: Troy toiled up the road....At last he reached the summit, and a wide and novel prospect burst upon him with an effect almost like that of the Pacific upon Balboa’s gaze. The broad steely sea...stretched the whole width of his front and round to the right, where...the sun bristled down on it....Nothing moved in sky, land, or sea, except a frill of milkwhite foam along the nearer angles of the shores, shreds of which licked the contiguous stones like tongues. He descended.... Over 1500 years before Stevenson and Hardy, Heliodoros had created and sustained a comparable scene, but at far greater length. More importantly, it is fully integrated into the plot and is not simply an instance of virtuoso pictorialism. Readers know that Heliodoros was aware of the visual nature of

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his scene because at the very outset he directs their attention to it, employing words and phrases such as ‘spectacle’ and ‘staging this tragic show’ and comparing the bandits to an ‘audience in a theater’ (all quoted above).10 The words underlined in the text for Shot 4.2 clearly show us both the direction of the brigands’ gaze when their eyes glide over Charikleia and their undivided attention; this is the literary equivalent for a combination of a film director tilting and panning his camera in close-up. This moment is as implicitly cinematic as anything in literature could be. Moreover, the detailed description of what the aftermath of the banquet on the beach looks like— this is the text for Shot 1.6, quoted in excerpts—provides such precise information that it could serve as the basis for a blueprint or sketch according to which a film’s set decorator and his crew could build and dress the entire set and costume the extras. We can compare this to the practice of storyboarding which many directors employ, most famously Alfred Hitchcock, whose general practice since the 1950s was to have completed all his creative work before beginning the actual filming. Even the dialogue between Charikleia and Theagenes, uncomplicated as it is, could be kept virtually unchanged. More specifically, however, Heliodoros’ opening is the literary equivalent of a kind of sequence which appears regularly in mystery films when someone comes upon the scene of a crime. Corpses and clues are scattered about, and neither the observer on screen nor the viewer in the theater can understand anything yet. In cinematic mysteries such an observer is usually a policeman or the detective rather than, as in our case, a gang of outlaws. When the Egyptian bandits piece some of the evidence together for a partial explanation, as Heliodoros describes them as doing (cf. text for Shot 1.3), they resemble fictional detectives. Even more importantly, they resemble film audiences shown a similar setting and carrying out the same mental exercise—after all, such scenes are staged primarily for the viewers’ benefit to increase their sense of mystery and suspense. Only much later, usually at the end of the narrative, can all the loose threads be pulled together and explained. But initially the clues must not present a coherent picture; the scene has to remain mysterious to all observers both inside and outside the narrative. Nevertheless, viewers and readers ought to be well-informed about the scene both as a whole and in its details; otherwise they would feel cheated ————— 10

On this aspect see, among others, Walden 1894; Paulsen 1992, 21–41; Morgan 1996, 437.

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later because vital information has been withheld. (Short or incompetently presented mysteries, such as installments of television crime series, often work according to this principle, and the solution is likely to induce groans in viewers.) Competent mystery authors take pains to familiarize their audiences with key locations for the solution of a mystery, often including even charts or diagrams in their texts—a regular feature of the golden age of the detective story in the 1920s and 1930s. Careful film directors, too, who want to create suspense built on characters and their environment rather than merely aiming for sudden shocks, e.g. with explosions or special effects, show us the exact surroundings of mystery scenes or of action sequences in great detail. Recent examples are the pool hall in Brian de Palma’s Carlito’s Way (1993) and the diner in Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential (1997). A major example in a film set in Greco-Roman antiquity, although not a mystery, occurs with the detailed overview of the racetrack in William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959). Wyler intentionally added the charioteers’ parade before the race because he wanted to ensure his audience’s close familiarity with the set not only to enhance their anticipation but also to increase their suspense during the large-scale and spectacular action sequence which followed.11 Now on to Welles’s and Hitchcock’s films.

IV. Touch of Evil and Psycho Touch of Evil is rightly famous for the intricate crane shot which opens the film and lasts for three minutes and twenty seconds without a single cut or dissolve.12 Except for the absence of editing, the film’s opening is analogous to what Heliodoros’ opening would have been in a film, as my adaptation, with only little editing and fluid camera movement, has shown. In fact, a ————— 11 12

On this cf. Herman 1995, 402. A description of the scene as part of the film’s continuity script appears in Comito 1995, 49–52; see ibid. 8–10 and 260–262 (critical descriptions) and 10 and 263 (diagrams) by the editor and by film scholar Stephen Heath. The filming is described in an interview with actor Charlton Heston (ibid., 216–217).—Touch of Evil was taken away from Welles by the studio and released with cuts, changes, and additional scenes added against Welles’s intention. (Cf. below.) Welles’s version was restored in 1998 according to a detailed memorandum he had written in 1957. For excerpts see Welles and Bogdanovich 1998, 491–504; its full text is on the digital video disc of the restored film, released by Universal Studios in 2000.

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director wishing to be Wellesian could even film Heliodoros’ opening entirely without cuts if he treated the text slightly more freely than I did above. The opening shot of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1997) and the continuous shot which moves around a film studio in Robert Altman’s The Player (1992) leave no doubt that Heliodoros’ opening would present no technical problem at all for an adaptation without editing. Each of the films just mentioned imitates and pays homage to Welles’s virtuosity. Welles introduces us to a tawdry town which straddles the border between the U.S. and Mexico and to two of his three protagonists. (The third one, to whom the film’s title makes oblique reference, will soon appear.) The two are the Mexican ‘Mike’ Vargas, a drug fighter for the Mexican government, who has just concluded a major case, and his American wife Susan; the two are on their honeymoon. We follow them as they are crossing the border to the U.S. During their walk a car passes them and shortly after explodes, killing an American businessman and the strip-tease dancer who is with him. Welles creates suspense in this shot by first showing us the bomb being activated and placed in the car trunk and by following the car’s journey from the Mexican parking lot through the checkpoint to the American side. As was the case with Heliodoros, Welles’s opening may be said to embody, in nuce, the nature and essence of the mystery about to unfold. Indeed, Welles intended nothing less. As he stated many years later: ‘the whole story was in that opening shot.’ He went on to point out its significance: The directors I admire the most are the least technical ones....I think great shots should conceal themselves a little bit. But that, by its nature, had to show it [a director’s technique], because it told the plot. There was no way of not doing a kind of virtuoso shot that announced itself. But I prefer the ones that don’t, that conceal themselves.13 These words remind us of the quotations from Hitchcock, Hawks, and Sturges which I gave earlier. Heliodoros’ visual technique is equally unobtrusive; indeed, we can best discern the full extent of its intricate simplicity, to put it in an apparent but nevertheless appropriate oxymoron, when we look at it in cinematic terms. In subordinating their style to the narrative, both ————— 13

Both quotations are from Welles and Bogdanovich 1998, 308–309; see ibid., 297–301, on the film’s themes of corruption and betrayal and on its moral meaning. On Welles’s approach to technique see also ibid., 318 (“hide the mechanics”).

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Welles and Heliodoros are in complete agreement with one of the bestknown fundamental ancient perspectives on artistic creativity, the concept that ars est celare artem: true skill lies in the artist’s very hiding of his technique, rather than in calling attention to it. Ovid pays his Pygmalion’s art the highest compliment in the phrase ars adeo latet arte sua (‘so much is his art hidden by his art’; Met. 10,252). Hitchcock’s words about technique being ‘as inconspicuous as possible’ is a modern restatement of Horace and Ovid. Welles, even in what now looks to us to be an obvious case of cinematic fireworks, has managed to hide his virtuosity underneath the action which we observe; the continuous camera movement and the absence of all editing are often lost on film audiences watching the scene for the first time. From the first moment on, we are absorbed in the narrative events themselves, as Welles wants us to be. The constantly moving camera, the snippets of background noise, and the sparse exposition dialogue all form a non-stop assault on our eyes, ears, and minds with their intricate and incessantly changing visual and aural points of orientation; they demonstrate the very constancy of flux—another appropriate oxymoron—which noir thrillers require, both in their visual style and to uphold the element of suspense in their plots. In such a world little if anything ever turns out to be what it originally had appeared to be. The objection might be raised that the style of Welles’s opening is too elaborate to be considered an analogy to the less intricate but visually equally effective opening in Heliodoros—an objection which I will address shortly. Still, the narrative function of both is identical, as we have seen. A consideration of the opening of Hitchcock’s Psycho will reinforce my argument for such parallelism. There is indeed every reason to consider the opening scenes of these two films together; they share thematically significant features. Hitchcock originally wanted to outdo Welles with ‘the longest dolly shot ever attempted by helicopter’—a ‘four-mile scene,’ which proved technically impossible.14 While they are the sole creative artists in their respective films, both Welles and Hitchcock had to be able to rely on accomplished technicians to carry out their vision. In our case the cinematographer of Psy————— 14

Quoted from Rebello 1990, 80. Twelve years later, Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972) opened with a long helicopter shot surveying London, traveling above and along the Thames, and finally focusing on a small crowd of people on the bank shortly before a corpse is discovered floating down the river. The shot, which contains one dissolve, lasts for two minutes and thirty-four seconds.

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cho, John L. Russell, had been the camera operator on Touch of Evil. Russell and his crew were chiefly responsible for the fact that Welles’s vision of his opening could actually be put on film.15 The composite opening shot of Psycho after the film’s credits lasts 59 seconds. The camera, panning right, shows us the skyline of Phoenix, Arizona, in extreme long-shot, then, via a zoom, hesitatingly singles out a particular building by going from its lateral pan into a close-up of one of the building’s windows, even creeping through this window into a darkened room and now again panning right. This last pan reveals two lovers after an erotic encounter in their hotel room: Marion Crane and Sam Loomis. The remainder of the scene explains their plight and serves as exposition to the plot: they can only see each other occasionally; on this day Marion even had to give up her lunch hour to be together with Sam. While their dialogue gives us the necessary background information—Marion’s motivation to embezzle a large sum of money—the earlier visuals have already determined the atmosphere and tone of the whole film. In the words of Robin Wood: Arbitrary place, date, and time, and now an apparently arbitrary window: the effect is of random selection: this could be any place, any date, any time, any room: it could be us. The forward track into darkness inaugurates the progress of perhaps the most terrifying film ever made: we are to be taken forward and downward into the darkness of ourselves. Psycho begins with the normal and draws us steadily deeper and deeper into the abnormal; it opens by making us aware of time, and ends (except for the releasing final image) with a situation in which time (i.e., development) has ceased to exist.16

————— 15

16

Welles has said about the importance of Russell and his crew: ‘I had a great camera operator—one of the last great ones....And we had a marvelous key grip...he’s the man who steadies that arm [of the camera crane] on its truck marks, and he’s as important as the operator. And if he hasn’t got a marvelous touch and absolutely sure grasp of what he’s doing, you’re lost’ (Welles and Bogdanovich 1998, 308).—The fact that, among other connections between the two films, the roles of Susan Vargas and Marion Crane are played by the same actress (Janet Leigh) is telling but not relevant to my argument. Leaming 1986, 516 and 519, discusses further analogies between the films. Wood 1991, 142–143; cf. also ibid., 211–213, on the opening’s documentary-like realism.

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Hitchcock achieves his goal of completely involving the viewerin his dark story by putting him in the position of a voyeur: throughout the film, his gaze will continue to intrude on the secrets of the main characters. Psycho, not least because of its opening, has rightly become a textbook example for the power of cinema to turn audiences into Peeping Toms.17 But it is technically impossible even for the virtuosity of a Hitchcock to survey the downtown of a large city and to steal inside the room of one of its buildings in one single camera take. His solution to the problem of moving the camera over such an impossibly far distance without breaking the viewer’s spell is most ingenious, as well as being an instance of simplicity itself. Hitchcock identifies for us place and time, the latter down to the minute, by means of intertitles which reinforce our sense of becoming intimately and inextricably involved in the film’s nightmarish plot. But these titles disguise three dissolves, which in turn disguise the different camera set-ups Hitchcock needed for the panoramic view of Phoenix and the hotel up to the moment when he focuses the viewer’s attention on a particular window.18 A somewhat awkward cut then signals the transition from location filming to the studio forty seconds after the opening; this cut occurs in the close-up of the window before the camera enters the room.19 Except for this one unavoidable cut, the opening of Psycho is intended to deceive the viewer into believing that everything is continuous. It does so quite successfully, because no viewer is likely to notice that the window on the screen is really two windows, one on a real building and one on a studio set. The opening’s cinematic technique is artfully disguised—cf. Hitchcock’s words quoted earlier—and can be fully discovered only through careful and repeated viewing of the opening on videotape or disc. This cleverly created continuity in turn parallels the whole first part of the film, which, despite the changes in settings from city to country, highway, and finally to a lonely and deserted motel, gives us a seamless and uninterrupted narrative. The film’s first half, until the search for the now dead and missing Marion begins the long and ————— 17

18

19

Hitchcock himself said so to François Truffaut; see Truffaut 1984, 266. In general see on this Rothman 1982; he examines the opening of Psycho at 250–255. The dissolves occur, respectively, after 11, 23, and 34 seconds from the shot’s beginning under the information PHOENIX, ARIZONA; FRIDAY, DECEMBER THE ELEVENTH; and TWO FORTY-THREE P.M. The next cut shows us Marion’s uneaten lunch, an image prepared for one second earlier when Sam begins to say to Marion: ‘You never did eat your lunch, did you?’ These are the first words of dialogue in the film.

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equally terrifying dénouement of the story, is one of the best illustrations of how effectively the old Aristotelian unities of time, place, and action can be applied to a modern medium. As Heliodoros had done in a longer opening scene and Welles in his yet longer one, Hitchcock, too, hides his technique for the sake of compelling and irresistible storytelling. Through his largely unobtrusive use of technique, the principle that ars est celare artem applies to Alfred Hitchcock’s cinema even more than to the cinema of Orson Welles.

V. Ancient Rhetoric and Cinematic Style Heliodoros’ novel is famous not only for its intricate plot but also for its author’s highly accomplished style. Heliodoros wrote under the influence of the Second Sophistic, as scholars have come to call it, in which the style of a literary presentation, orally or in writing, is at least as important as its substance. That the manner of presenting an argument or a story is as important as its content is, of course, an insight which authors have followed since the time of Homer. Ancient rhetorical theory was familiar with the concept of enargeia, vividness of presentation. (‘Energy’ derives from enargeia.) The literal meaning of evidentia, the Latin equivalent of enargeia, explains this vividness as the author’s intention to bring his material out (e-) before his listeners or readers and to enable them to see (vide-) it in their mind’s eye.20 A fundamental strategy to achieve enargeia is to make one’s audiences eyewitnesses of what is being described; Cicero calls this ‘an almost visual presentation of events as if practically going on’ at the moment at which it is being mentioned.21 The author, of course, is the first of such eyewitnesses: his powers of imagination conjure up a scene to himself, and when he puts it into words, he must draw his audience’s imagination into the scene as well. Direct speech and, even more, detailed descriptions are required tools for the author. Long sentences convey these details, including minutiae.22 Cicero best summarizes the power and effect of enargeia in almost cinematic terms: ————— 20

21

22

Lausberg 1990, 399–407, gives a systematic overview of evidentia, with extensive quotations from ancient sources. See in particular Quint. 4,2,63–64, 6,2,32–33, and 8,3,61–70. Quint. 9,2,40. The quotation is from Cic., De Or. 3,53,202 (Rackham 1942, 161). Cf. also Cic., Or. 139. Lausberg 1990, 403, with Quint. 8,3,63–65. On minutiae cf. Quint. 8,3,70.

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It is this department of oratory which almost sets the facts before the eyes—for it is the sense of sight that is most appealed to, although it is nevertheless possible for the rest of the senses and also most of all the mind itself to be affected….The one helps us to understand what is said, but the other makes us feel that we actually see it before our eyes.23 According to Quintilian, it is a great achievement to present one’s topics clearly (clare) and in such a way that they appear to be seen (ut cerni videantur) or shown to the mind’s eye (oculis mentis ostendi).24 It is evident that such highly visually oriented strategies of successful presentation are fully applicable to film—indeed more so, because a film director puts his material immediately and literally before his audience’s eyes. From the perspective of classical rhetoric, we may now better be able to appreciate the baroque nature of Welles’s opening shot in Touch of Evil: it is an example of enargeia in the classical as well as in the general sense (‘energetic’). In terms of style, the film is fully comparable to Heliodoros’ novel, whose literary nature J. R. Morgan summarizes as follows: The style is florid and artificial, but exuberant and alive, employed with a zest and love of words and the games that can be played with them. The vocabulary is wide and highly nuanced.25 This succinct description could well be a summary of Welles’s cinematic style, his filmic ‘vocabulary.’ If we consider the sentence of a text to be analogous to an individual shot in a film, we may yet again compare both works from a Heliodoran perspective: ‘The formal patterns within sentences can often become quite complex,’ Morgan has observed. He concludes: ‘taken at its own terms it is a richly nuanced prose of great exuberance and emotional effect, whose devices combine with the author’s characteristic narrative technique to produce an experience of immediacy and involvement with the action.’26

————— 23 24 25 26

Cic., Part. Or. 20 (Rackham 1942, 327). Quint. 8,3,62. Morgan 1989, 351 (introduction to his translation). Morgan 1996, 455 and 456.

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Here now is Morgan’s characterization of Heliodoros’ opening and its connections to the gradual unraveling of the initial mystery in the course of the novel: The opening paragraph alerts us…to another feature of the novel. The narrator knows what the scene on the beach means, but he is not telling. The reader is compelled to share the ignorance of the bandits; their eyes are our eyes. So throughout the novel the narrator stays very much in the background. The truth emerges dramatically from the characters, and their learning is our learning. This quality in its turn entails another of the Aithiopika’s greatest delights: its sheer convolution and intricacy….As connections emerge, seemingly of their own accord, over long spans of text…, we are invited to admire the virtuoso skill of the selfconcealing author who has engineered the whole complex mechanism.27 This, too, fully applies to Welles; we have only to make minor adjustments in regard to setting and characters involved and to exchange the literary terms in the quotations (‘paragraph,’ ‘novel,’ ‘reader,’ ‘words’) for cinematic ones (‘scene,’ ‘film,’ ‘viewer,’ ‘images’). Heliodoros’ rhetorical and stylistic flourishes heighten his readers’ powers to imagine the scene presented verbally and increase their emotional ties to the story’s mystery and to its protagonists. The sinuous camera movement in Welles’s opening serves the same purpose. Just as a casual reader may pay no heed to Heliodoros’ phrasing, beginning with the seductive ‘smile of daybreak,’ the casual viewer of Welles’s film does not notice how Welles shows him what he sees. In both cases, the style remains partially hidden and affects its audiences only subliminally. By contrast, the deceptive artlessness of Hitchcock’s opening is balanced by a highly emotional dimension which is instrumental to produce apprehension and suspense in the viewer. This is the music, famously played by strings only. The score is the chief rhetorical aspect of the opening of Psycho, if less so than in Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). Overall, then, there is a direct stylistic parallel between our ancient novel and Psycho, too. In Heliodoros, we find the simplicity in the plot of the opening scene complemented by verbal fireworks; in Hitchcock, the simplicity of what we see on the screen is complemented by what we hear at the same time. In both works, ————— 27

Morgan 1989, 350 (introduction to his translation).

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the two sides round off each other to make for one perfect whole; anything added or subtracted would only destroy this balance. For the release of Touch of Evil, the studio altered Welles’ version of the opening in two ways, entirely against his wishes: it superimposed a credit sequence on most of the tracking shot and added a jazzy soundtrack. From the point of view just discussed, however, this aural ‘rhetoric’ is out of place: it utterly detracts the viewer from the scene’s visual quality. Ironically, the only artistic justification for the soundtrack can be that the credits have almost completely ruined all the elegance in Welles’s virtuosity and turned the opening into a visually boring beginning to the film, thereby turning it into no more than a standard ‘B movie’ thriller. (The studio even marketed Touch of Evil as such.) By contrast, in his own opening Welles had aimed at an almost documentary-like atmosphere, without credits and with natural background sound. The realism which he achieves makes the seamy black-andwhite world into which he draws us much more authentic and for that reason more terrifying.

VI. Flashbacks There is one additional cinematic parallel to Heliodoros’ opening scene which is important. The second part of Kalasiris’ story (Aeth. 5,17–33) contains a detailed recapitulation of the opening scene from an entirely different point of view at 5,33. We now learn that there had been another observer, the ‘detective’ Kalasiris himself, who had been watching the bandits watching the aftermath of the massacre. Heliodoros prepares his readers for this return to the opening by a first indication at 5,27 that he will now take us back to the narrative’s beginning for the long-awaited explanation of its mystery. We may compare this technique with the identical purpose of flashbacks in cinema, correcting what we have seen earlier and revealing what had ‘really’ happened. (I exclude from my present consideration those flashbacks which merely fill in a gap in the narrative, another of their primary functions.) The flashback, often with a voice-over narration from the perspective of the person giving us the information contained in the flashback, makes a character or characters live through an earlier part of the plot again, and in this way a viewer witnesses a dramatic re-enactment. As scholars have observed, the first-person stories which Knemon, a secondary hero who eventually turns into a ‘bad guy,’ and in particular Kalasiris tell their listeners in the Aithio-

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pika are just such detailed re-enactments rather than merely factual summaries of necessary information. In mysteries, both in texts and on film, the flashback technique is a ubiquitous part of the dénouement, when the detective takes his listeners through the case and then reveals the guilty party. A representative example is Sidney Lumet’s film of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express (1974).28 Related to the use of cinematic flashbacks just described is the recapitulation of a particular narrative moment from multiple points of view. The director, as it were, turns back the narrative clock not once but several times. A well-known literary example is Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim; the most famous instance in cinema is Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950), itself the inspiration of several other films, of which Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) is an American example. Both of these films in turn are the models for the same thing happening, if on a less complex level, in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994) and Jackie Brown (1997), followed by Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight (1998). Rashomon is a philosophical murder mystery, while the others are thrillers.29 As Kurosawa’s example shows, the technique of using flashbacks for narrative complexity and temporal dislocation is not at all restricted to the cinema of the West; as Heliodoros’ example shows, it is certainly not restricted to modern modes of storytelling, either. Two well-known examples of flashbacks from a perspective which contradicts a scene shown earlier occur in John Ford’s Western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1961) and in Hitchcock’s mystery Stage Fright (1950). In Ford’s film, which has a framing narrative set in the modern West, the flashback revealing the truth about the outlaw Valance’s death occurs within the long flashback which tells the film’s story about order and civilization coming to the Western frontier. In a comparable manner, Kalasiris’ story of his earlier adventures occurs as a lengthy insert into the novel’s main narrative; its climax is the revelation of what had caused that massacre ————— 28 29

Cf. the director’s own description at Lumet 1996, 78–79. One of the most involving and elegant cases of a film unfolding the true meaning of its opening only at the end is David Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945). Although it is not a mystery film, its flashback structure is an object lesson in the mystery storyteller’s fundamental task of successfully withholding important information at the beginning and gradually revealing it in the course of the narrative. As uninvolved and uninformed observers, we are first shown the scene only on the surface level of social proprieties being observed; when we return to it again, we are shown, and now feel, its complex emotional and psychological undercurrents.

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whose aftermath the Egyptian bandits had witnessed.30 Hitchcock’s Stage Fright is remarkable for a particularly shrewd and, at the time of its making, unique use of flashback in a mystery plot: to the audience’s surprise, the evidence given in the opening flashback by one of the suspects in a murder case turns out to have been a deliberate lie.31 The hostile reaction of some contemporary critics to this plot twist seems to indicate that, in their opinion, Hitchcock violated an unwritten rule of cinematic storytelling—that a flashback must reveal the truth, must tell ‘what really happened’: as if such a rule had ever existed.32 The one compelling rule for creative artists at any time and in any narrative medium is to tell their story in the most effective way. How they achieve this is left to their creativity. In the Western tradition, the close ties between literature and the visual arts were an integral part of ancient thought about literature and painting. The Greeks held poetry to be painting which talks, while painting was silent poetry, as Simonides of Keos had put it.33 Centuries later the Roman poet Horace summarized this idea in his Art of Poetry in its most famous and influential restatement: ut pictura poesis (Ars Poetica 361). I have here at————— 30

31

32

33

Narrative structures involving more complex flashbacks may occur in cinema as well, both in mainstream Hollywood films (e.g. in John Brahm’s The Locket [1946]) and in modern, especially French and Japanese, films of the 1950s and later. A well-known example, with different levels of flashbacks and flash-forwards, is Alain Resnais’s Mon Oncle d’Amérique (1980). See in general Turim 1989, who discusses the connections of flashbacks to literature, primarily modern, at 210–226. Aronson 2001, 105–183, devotes four chapters to detailed examinations of various uses of the flashback and analyzes several examples. On equivalents of, or parallels to, cinematic flashbacks and flash-forwards in Heliodoros cf. Futre Pinheiro 1998, 3148–3173. On this see Rohmer and Chabrol 1979, 105, and the perceptive comments at Wood 1991, 81. Turim 1989, 165–168, provides a detailed discussion. Hitchcock’s invention of the lying flashback, greatly expanded, reappears in Bryan Singer’s mystery thriller The Usual Suspects (1995), where it structures the entire plot and leads to a clever dénouement. Hitchcock to Truffaut: ‘Strangely enough, in movies, people never object if a man is shown telling a lie. And it’s also acceptable, when a character tells a story about the past, for the flashback to show it as if it were taking place in the present. So why is it that we can’t tell a lie through a flashback?’ (Truffaut 1984, 189). But Hitchcock had by this time come to believe that the lying flashback was a dramatic mistake (Truffaut, ibid.). Plut., Mor. 346F–347C (in his treatise ‘On the Fame of the Athenians’); cf. Mor. 17F– 18A (in ‘How to Study Poetry’). See further Pl., Phaedr. 275D and Rep. 595A–608B; Ar., Poet. 1447A8–1448A18, 1450A24–28, and 1450A37–1450B3; Vitruv. 5,6,9; Philostratus the Elder, Imagines 1,1–2, and Philostratus the Younger, proem to his Imagines. These are only the most prominent references.

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tempted to expand this concept to include within its compass two temporally distant but narratively related ways of storytelling which flourished after Horace, the ancient novel and modern cinema. To put my perspective on novel and film in classical terms I close by expanding Horace’s phrase: movens ut pictura poesis Heliodori.

Works Cited Aronson, L. 2001. Screenwriting Updated: New (and Conventional) Ways of Writing for the Screen. Los Angeles: Silman-James. Bogdanovich, P. 1998. Who the Devil Made It. Conversations with Legendary Film Directors. New York: Ballantine. Bühler, W. 1976. ‘Das Element des Visuellen in der Eingangsszene von Heliodors Aithiopika’, Wiener Studien 89, 177–185. Cawelti, J. G. 1976. Adventure, Mystery, and Romance. Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. Chicago – London: University of Chicago Press. Comito, T. (ed.). 1995. Touch of Evil. Orson Welles, Director. New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press. Fourth ed. Eisenstein, S. M. 1942. ‘Word and Image’, in: The Film Sense, Jay Leyda (ed. and tr.). New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1–65. Eisenstein, S. M. 1949. ‘Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today’, in: Film Form. Essays in Film Theory, Jay Leyda (ed. and tr.). New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 195–255. Fell, J. L. 1986. Film and the Narrative Tradition. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press. 2nd ed. Futre Pinheiro, Marília P. 1998. ‘Time and Narrative Technique in Heliodorus’ ‘Aethiopica’ ’, ANRW II,4,4, 3148–3173. Gärtner, H. (ed.). 1984. Beiträge zum griechischen Liebesroman. Hildesheim: Olms. Hägg, T. 1983. The Novel in Antiquity. Berkeley – Los Angeles: University of California Press. Haight, E. H. 1950. ‘Ancient Greek Romances and Modern Mystery Stories’, CJ 46, 5–10 and 45. Herman, J. 1995. A Talent for Trouble. The Life of Hollywood’s Most Acclaimed Director, William Wyler. New York: Putnam. Hitchcock, A. 1936. ‘Close Your Eyes and Visualize!’ Stage (July, 1936), 52–53. Rpt. in: S. Gottlieb (ed.), Hitchcock on Hitchcock. Selected Writings and Interviews. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press, 246–249. Lausberg, H. 1990. Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik. Eine Grundlegung der Literaturwissenschaft. Stuttgart: Steiner. 3rd ed. Leaming, B. 1986. Orson Welles: A Biography. New York: Penguin. Lumet, S. 1996. Making Movies. New York: Vintage. Mench, F. 2001. ‘Film Sense in the Aeneid’, in: M. M. Winkler 2001, 219–232.

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Morgan, J. R. (tr.). 1989. ‘Heliodoros. An Ethiopian Story’, in: B. P. Reardon (ed.), Collected Ancient Greek Novels. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press, 353–588. Morgan, J. R. 1994. ‘The Aithiopika of Heliodoros. Narrative as Riddle’, in: Morgan, J. R., and R. Stoneman (eds.), Greek Fiction. The Greek Novel in Context. London – New York: Routledge, 97–113. Morgan, J. R. 1996. ‘Heliodoros’, in: G. Schmeling (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World. Leiden – New York – Cologne: Brill, 417–456. Newman, J. K. 2001. ‘Ancient Poetics and Eisenstein’s Films’, in: M. M. Winkler 2001, 193–218. O’Connor, F. 1956. The Mirror in the Roadway. A Study of the Modern Novel. New York: Knopf. Paulsen, T. 1992. Inszenierung des Schicksals. Tragödie und Komödie im Roman des Heliodor. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag. Rackham, H. (tr.). 1942. Cicero, vol. 4 (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Rebello, S. 1990. Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. New York: Dembner. Rohmer, E., and C. Chabrol. 1979. Hitchcock. The First Forty-Four Films. Stanley Hochman (tr.), New York: Ungar. Rothman, W. 1982. Hitchcock—The Murderous Gaze. Cambridge, Mass. – London: Harvard University Press. Sayers, D. L. 1947. Unpopular Opinions: Twenty-One Essays. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Stephenson, R., and G. Phelps. 1989. The Cinema as Art. London: Penguin. 2nd ed. Truffaut, F., with the collaboration of H. G. Scott. 1984. Hitchcock. New York: Simon and Schuster. 2nd. ed. Turim, M. 1989. Flashbacks in Film. Memory and History. New York – London: Routledge. Walden, J. W. H. 1894. ‘Stage Terms in Heliodorus’s Aethiopica’, HSCP 5, 1–43. Weinreich, O. (ed.). 1962. Der griechische Liebesroman. Zurich: Artemis. Welles, O., and P. Bogdanovich. 1998. This Is Orson Welles, J. Rosenbaum (ed.). New York: Da Capo. 2nd. ed. Winkler, J. J. 1982. ‘The Mendacity of Kalasiris and the Narrative Strategy of Heliodoros’ Aithiopika’, YCS 27, 93–158. Winkler, M. M. (ed.). 2001. Classical Myth and Culture in the Cinema. New York: Oxford University Press. Wood, R. 1991. Hitchcock’s Films Revisited. London – Boston: Faber and Faber.

Keeping Apuleius In The Picture A dialogue between Buñuel’s Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Metamorphoses of Apuleius PAULA JAMES

Open University UK

Summary This article explores common motifs and narrative strategies which appear in the work of the second century CE Latin author, Apuleius, and the twentieth century Spanish film director Luis Buñuel. The use of narration to delay nutrition is a vital starting point for the comparative analysis. The focus of both these ‘texts’ makes them appropriate (though in some senses arbitrary) anchors in what could eventually and fruitfully develop into a wide-ranging discussion: i.e. the extent and significance of culinary metaphors in literary and cinematic narratives within a broad cultural spectrum. Uses and abuses of food and food consumption in both Apuleius and Buñuel intensify the bizarre atmospheres of the stories. By means of diversionary and supernatural tales my chosen storytellers encourage their audiences to embrace credulity and to question the reality of appearances and consequently they subvert faith in the real world. In their hands magic and the surreal is an experimental strategy for producing a deeper insight into custom and society, not so much a message as an experience for the reader and the viewer, and one which shakes complacency about the solidity of social structures and physical forms.

Introduction (trailer) Nihil impossibile arbitror sed utcumque fata decreverint, ita cuncta mortalibus provenire. nam et mihi et tibi et cunctis hominibus multa usu venire mira et paene infecta, quae tamen ignaro relata fidem perdant. (Apuleius’ hero, Lucius, Met.1.20)

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‘ “Well,” I said, “I consider nothing to be impossible. However the fates decide, that is the way everything turns out for mortal men. I and you and all human beings actually experience many strange and almost unparallelled events which are disbelieved when reported to someone who is ignorant of them.” ’1 ‘All this compulsion to “understand” everything fills me with horror. I love the unexpected more and more the older I get, even though little by little I’ve retired from the world.’2 The composition and content of Buñuel’s acclaimed 1972 film, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (henceforward, DCB), will be compared with major themes in the Latin novel of Apuleius, popularly known as The Golden Ass (henceforward Metamorphoses). Apuleius’ work, our one complete extant Roman novel, continues to be discussed and reinterpreted for its philosophy, its narratology, and its treatment of magic and religion within the mainframe story and within the secondary episodes which underpin its construction. In Apuleius’ novel a young man with all the advantages arrives on business in Thessaly, a region renowned for witchcraft and the supernatural. He already has an appetite for novelty and encouraged by the stories he hears and the things he sees, he soon becomes embroiled in dangerous magical phenomena. Lucius gains access to his hostess’s magical ‘laboratory’ and through a dreadful mistake he is turned into an ass. It is from this viewpoint, the man concealed in the form of beast, that the rest of the story is told. It continues to be a multiple narrative and a number of intriguing episodes are reported by the ass at first and second hand. Eventually, the goddess Isis rescues Lucius from his suffering and the last book of the novel deals with his conversion, both physical and spiritual. Buñuel’s film is less easy to summarise in terms of narrative line. It has a highly episodic structure and seems to celebrate diversion in both senses of the word. The six characters in search of a dinner are wealthy, educated and unlikely on the face of it to suffer deprivation. Yet they are constantly frustrated in their attempts to eat together and strange occurrences and bizarre ————— 1 2

Translations of Apuleius are taken from A.J. Hanson’s Loeb edition of 1989. L Buñuel, Mi Último Suspiro (memorias) Paris 1982, translated by Abigail Israel, Vintage Books, New York 1985, 175–176.

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narratives force them to postpone the polite bourgeois ritual of the dinner party. During the course of the film various sinister undercurrents occur which highlight the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie and the superficiality of their social niceties is put into sharp relief. The six main players form a corrupt and smug circle and manage to stay on the sidelines of the stories they hear. When they suffer, it is invariably in the context of dreams, as if their punishment can only take place in a parallel universe. It rapidly becomes problematic for the viewer to distinguish between nightmares and actuality. An added nuance is the fact that in their apparently waking state, the characters find full consummation eludes them. The inability to perform an everyday function, such as eating, is a feature of dreamtime, where the dreamer suffers physical paralyses; actions have no realisation nor any effectiveness.

Up close and personal A comparative study of two texts so far apart chronologically and culturally and which are expressed through entirely distinct media is at first sight eccentric. The impulse to do this (which may or may not serve as a justification) was as follows. I first saw DCB not at the cinema at the time of its release but on television in the late 1980s. It is true that watching film on television does violence to its physical ratios and distorts many of the techniques designed for effect on the big screen. On the other hand, an element of intimacy can be imported into the small scale medium so that a television viewer does perhaps ‘read’ a film of this type, rather than ‘experience’ it.3 As the film progressed I was struck by certain similarities with the Apuleian novel on which I was working at the time, principally the way in which ————— 3

‘Movies have a hypnotic power, too. Just watch people leaving a movie theatre; they’re usually silent, their heads droop, they have that absentminded look on their faces, unlike audiences at plays, bullfights or sports events, where they show much more energy and animation. This kind of cinematographic hypnosis is no doubt due to the darkness of the theatre and to the rapidly changing scenes, lights and camera movements, which weaken the spectator’s critical intelligence and exercise over him a kind of fascination. Sometimes, watching a movie is a bit like being raped.’ My Last Sigh, 69. It should be said that auditorium lighting is much more intrusive since Buñuel made this comment and that the cinema experience tends to be less communal, psychologically speaking, since the resurgence of the medium.

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the Buñuelian characters were forced to substitute consumption of stories for the enjoyment of a proper meal. Heath’s article (1983) on narration and nutrition in Apuleius seemed a particularly apposite one, for, in his exposition, Heath demonstrates the importance of the motif for the narrative structure of the Latin novel.4 It was but a small step to consider exploring the possibility of the transference of other motifs in Apuleius and Buñuel. Once on this road, the issue of tools of analysis particular to the two media had to be considered and whether the transference of techniques of criticism was possible or indeed desirable.5 Buñuel’s Catholic education undoubtedly exposed him to the Classics and a number of Classical motifs. There is no evidence that Buñuel was directly influenced by Apuleius’ novel but the director was certainly steeped in Spanish narrative traditions which borrowed heavily from Classical predecessors. His trilogy of films The Milky Way, The Phantom of Liberty and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, ‘feature an experimental episodic structure based on the picaresque novel.’ (Kinder 1999, 22). Vidal (1999, 61) demonstrates that the digressive structure of this genre intrigued Buñuel and that he found this approach liberating when working with cinematic conventions. ‘I know I am digressing; but, as with all Spanish picaresques, digression seems to be my natural way of telling a story.’ (My Last Sigh, 166) Buñuel’s unorthodox approach to cinematic narrative is a leitmotif of the most recent collection of essays focusing on the last of the trilogy but with constant reference to the director’s general output.6 The rest of this article is so peppered with critical perspectives on both Apuleius and Buñuel which could apply to the strategies of either that I shall partly rest my case by dint of these examples. However, a few general obser————— 4

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J.R. Heath, ‘Narration and Nutrition in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses.’, Ramus 11 (1982), 55–77. I hope Buñuel would not have objected to being portrayed albeit circuitously, as classically derivative. He was fond of quoting Eugenio d’Ors, a philosopher friend from Catalonia, and apostle of the Baroque, who used to say: ‘What does not grow out of tradition, is plagiarism.’ Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, M. Kinder ed, Cambridge University Press: Film Handbook Series 1999. I have drawn upon the contributions of Vidal, Fuentes, Catlett, Wu and D’Lugo. I am also indebted to Catherine Dey whose Ph.D, then in progress, alerted me to Buñuel’s Levinasian philosophy of the cinema and how this informed the director’s constant desire to shock the audience in all his films, to force viewers to question personal notions of permanency. I look forward to seeing Catherine Dey’s research published.

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vations about narrative fluidity will be valuable to set the scene. Both Buñuel and Apuleius can be viewed from a postmodernist perspective, especially where they employ the blurring of the real and the surreal, (and the banal and the extraordinary), incongruous juxtapositions of distinct generic characteristics, random motivations of episodes, and narrative loose ends. Fuentes (1999, 94) places D.C.B. within the Barthesian vortex where the death of the author is a sine qua non of the narrative strategy: ‘indeed we find a film that corresponds to the Barthesian definition of a text as a multidimensional space in which a variety of texts blend and clash, a tissue of quotations drawn, not from a single all-powerful auteur, but from innumerable centers of culture.’7 How far do Buñuel and Apuleius have the entertainment of their audience uppermost in their minds when producing their products for consumption? In the prologue to the Metamorphoses, Apuleius promises his reader enjoyment, but only if s/he keeps on critical alert. Lector intende: laetaberis. ‘Pay attention, reader, and you will find delight.’ (Met.1.1) With both our cultural ‘case studies’, the viewer/reader enjoyment seems to come with strings attached. Many arrows are shot into our complacencies about narratives (Rosenbaum, 1972, 3) but this does not mean the experience is unfathomable. In fact the new structure is deceptively coherent because we the audience help to make it so. The commercial and also the artistic effectiveness of Hitchcock as far as the director was concerned was his adherence to the principle of making films for audiences. A key phrase of Buñuel’s devotees is avec plaisir, to characterize the master at work, but the enjoyment is intensified if the satiric nuances are recognised and appreciation takes place on more than one level. In interviews Buñuel suggests that he does as he pleases, resiting the avec plaisir motif in the pose of the selfish creator who possesses a studied indifference to the judgement of his audience (or expects them to shift for themselves in the ————— 7

Death of the director, so to speak, is, like the death of the author, a critical illusion. Buñuel is renowned for his noticeably tight control and careful composition of sequences, however much the manipulation is disguised. Apuleius is equally skilled at scene-setting and visualisation for the reader, and even writes an ostensibly autobiographical prologue. His intervention in the text as auctor does not resolve the identity of that auctor! For the challenges and complexities of the Apuleian opening see A. Kahane, A. Laird, edd. A Companion to the Prologue of Apuleius. Oxford 2001.

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matter of meaning.) Buñuel believed that ‘the cinema seems to have been invented to express the life of the subconscious, the roots of which penetrate so deeply. Yet it is almost never used to do this.’8 The reality is, or so his critics believe, that he demands a great deal from his viewers but simultaneously rewards them if they make an effort. On the other hand, we shall see how mischievously he cuts the ground from under our feet by insisting his films are without symbolism.

Doing what comes supernaturally Buñuel’s primary artistic aim was always to free the viewer from the prosaic imperatives of reality, to move away from the same hackneyed drama to the liberating world of poetry. Such pronouncements were the keynote of his address to the Mexican University in 1953 and preserved for the record in Mellen, 1978. He is renowned for his ability to surprise with the supernatural, to send his cinema audience on ‘the nocturnal journey into the unconscious’ Like Apuleius he invites his audience to accept the juxtaposition of the real and supernatural world, demonstrating their interchangeability and evoking André Breton’s programmatic statement that ‘the most admirable thing about the fantastic is that the fantastic does not exist – everything is real.’ (Mellen 1978, 109) Reviewers of Buñuel’s DCB, a product of his last years of film-making, were in general agreement that it marked the culmination of his cinematic art of the surreal. In it ‘he welds together an assortment of his favourite themes, images and parlour tricks into a discourse which is essentially new’.9 For a minority of critics it is less successful; it comes across to Simon and Samuels10 ————— 8

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Buñuel in his address to the university of Mexico, 1953, quoted in J. Mellen, ed. The World of Buñuel, New York & Oxford 1978, 107. J. Rosenbaum, ‘Interruption as Style: Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie’ Sight & Sound Winter 1972–1973, 1–4, (p. 3). For an interesting treatment of Apuleius’ comparable ‘irritation’ as stimulation principle, see K. Sallmann, ‘Irritation als produktionsasthetisches Prinzip in den Metamorphosen des Apuleius’, in: H. Hofmann, ed., Groningen Colloquia on the Novel Vol 1, Groningen (1988), 81–102. C.T. Samuels, ‘Tampering with Reality’, in The World of Buñuel, ed by J. Mellen, (Oxford & New York 1978), 368–373. For an uncompromising condemnation of the film, see J. Simon, ‘Why is the Coeatus always Interruptus?’, 363–368, in the same collection. Even for an aficionado of the film it has ‘no more than a fleeting semblance of customary storytelling’ but is ‘arbitrarily composed of segments.’ G. Gow, ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’ in Films And Filming (March 1973), 45.

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as an incoherent rehash of worn out refrains where Buñuel self-indulgently parodies his own preoccupations with the structures and rituals of bourgeois life in a series of unconnected vignettes. Clearly Samuels is not sympathetic to such cinematic excesses. Buñuel and the surrealists were fond of ‘juxtaposing objects on canvas in such a way that the viewer experienced feelings of absurdity, horror, wonder, pleasure, laughter or rage. B’s film doesn’t deserve to be called surrealistic because its dislocation of reality isn’t dictated by theme but by narrative opportunism. (Samuels 1978, 373.) Similarly, Apuleius is highly adept at creating moods of disturbance by altering the expected direction of a narrative and by introducing secondary stories which do not at first sight cohere into any recognisable pattern. There are both literary and film critics who have problems with narrative swerves, whatever the artistic medium in question. The observation that ‘la vie moderne est faite de ruptures’ seems to have been translated to the screen by Buñuel to serve as a recurring ideological statement about the fallibility and fragility of bourgeois norms and institutions. It has been called ‘interruption as style’. (Rosenbaum 1972) This also seems an appropriate characterisation of Apuleius’ novel which diverts the reader into other stories, told by a variety of narrators at regular intervals. Whatever kind of manipulation is going on between artist and ‘public’, Buñuel and Apuleius are both narrative teases. It is frequently the case that commentators on the two artistic creations under scrutiny come up with analyses that are usefully interchangeable, in Rosenbaum’s words (ibid): ‘a structuralist analysis of an author’s schematic cannot remain content with single antinomies but must cope with the existence of mosaics, many themes intertwining yet constantly transforming themselves by lending aspects to one another’. This summary of Buñuel is equally applicable to the technique of Apuleius. A closer study of both Buñuel’s and Apuleius’ narrative approach does reveal a sequentiality that is based on Rosenbaum’s ‘constantly changing permutations of the same basic elements or particles’.11 Buñuel and Apuleius could both be judged as self-indulgent artists who simply cannot resist a good scene and will halt the narrative for the sake of an elegant fable, frequently one with a satirical edge. However careful ‘readers’ of these two artists find a unity of themes, or a mosaic of motifs which link the ————— 11

Quoted and exemplifed by R .Durgnat in ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’, The World of Luis Buñuel (1977), 373–396, (p.383).

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stories to the main agenda. Most of the work produced on Apuleius in recent years accepts that the interpolated narratives illuminate the major preoccupations of the novel by shifting the reader’s perspective; ‘welding together an assortment of his favourite themes ... in a discourse which is essentially new’ could also describe Apuleius’ technique. Intimately connected with this question of narrative and programmatic unity is the function of repetition. In an interview on The South Bank Show in 1993, Jean-Claude Carrière, the collaborator on the screenplay of several Buñuel films, including DCB, suggested that for Buñuel repetition was an end in itself; it was the purpose of the film. Nevertheless, as with Apuleius, critics tend to seek and find underlying connections of a philosophical nature so that the works take on a coherence in content not merely in form.

Feasting and Fasting – Dictates of appetite in Apuleius From the outset of the Apuleian novel, the hero Lucius finds himself dining on anecdotes rather than food. Although he suggests that both he and his horse have been refreshed and sustained by Aristomenes’ absorbing story of witchcraft on the way to Hypata, the dictates of his stomach cannot be denied forever. He is disappointed and frustrated in his attempts to eat at Milo’s house and goes to bed on the first night non cibo gravatus, cenatus solis fabulis, ‘ not overloaded with food but having dined on stories alone.’ (Met.1.26). Lucius’ first night as an ass is also a hungry one; he is doomed to failure in his search for roses, the food which will reverse his metamorphosis, and only with divine intervention finally swallows this antidote at the festival of Isis. He is received into the priesthood of the goddess after a ritual fasting. The focus on food and appetite in the broader sense, reinforced by the vocabulary of hunger and thirst in the novel, frequently involves the distortion of eating patterns and the perversion of the proper rituals associated with eating. The nightmare world he encounters in Hypata has been counterposed to the ritually correct, restorative and spiritually sustaining haven of Isis. The novel opens with strange stories of choking on cheese bread, magic tricks involving the gullet and a dead man dining on cheese (in the Aristomenes story). In Book 2, there are witches who bite off the nose and ears of the unfortunate Thelyphron, mistaking him for the corpse he is guarding. Lucius’ ongoing relationship with Fotis exploits a long literary tradition that comically cross-references feeding, fasting and fornication. Both the tragedy of Charite,

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a fellow prisoner of the ass, Lucius, and the Cupid and Psyche story, a major and lengthy interpolated narrative told to the young girl, Charite and which the ass overhears in the robbers’ cave, contain significant episodes in which appetite operates on a number of levels. In Book 8 of the Metamorphoses, a voracious serpent masquerading as an old man in distress feeds off the flesh of a young man. (19–21). Psyche’s sisters had portrayed Cupid as just such a monster in disguise waiting for her full gestation before he devoured her.12 In the same sequence of episodes the ass recounts a story of a bailiff who was unable to control his sexual appetite and was punished by a lingering death. Ants left only his white bones after they had feasted off his honey smeared limbs. (There is a similarly sadistic punishment, the torture of a student rigged to an electrically charged piano which emits a swarm of cockroaches, in DCB.) Lucius the ass’s next owners are bogus priests who mutilate (take bites out of) their own flesh in a frenzy of feigned religious fervour. At Met 8.29, they abduct a lusty young country lad for nefarious purposes. Although they appear to be satisfying a sexual appetite, Dowden suggests an intriguing hidden agenda of cannibalism in this scene.13 What promises to be a slap up meal with a member of the local aristocracy who has been hospitably treated by Lucius the ass’s current master turns out to be an obscenely polluted banquet when the host commits an ostentatious and bloody suicide with the cheese knife.(9.38) This follows a tragic messenger tale of the slaughter of his three sons, a story, it has been noted, significant for culinary metaphors and one which functions as a further substitution of words for food. Lucius and his master are denied their meal by the traumatic turn of events. (Heath 1982, 71– 72) Allusive and elusive games with the audience cannot, on their own, constitute any meaningful comparison between Buñuel and Apuleius. The nightmare and displacement to which DCB and the Metamorphoses give primary focus are two major linking themes but these general leitmotifs would work on a level of meaningless dialectic if it were not for the preoccupation with ‘narra————— 12

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The robbers’ plan for punishing Charite (6.31) has been interpreted as a baroque moment which serves as mise en abyme for the structure of the novel, a satura stuffed with strange but tasty titbits. See E Gowers, The Loaded Table, Oxford 1993, 112, also 32–49 for a discussion on the complexity of literary food metaphors. K. Dowden, ‘The Unity of Apuleius’ Eighth Book & the Danger of Beasts’, in: H. Hofmann, ed., Groningen Colloquia on the Novel Vol. 5, Groningen (1993), 91–110, (p.106).

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tion and nutrition’ which forms such an important momentum for both these texts. Both Buñuel and Apuleius introduce tales of the unexpected, as literally unexpected tales, in the most unlikely of circumstances. The joke played on the group of friends in the Buñuel film is the interruption of the dinner party and the constant substitution of stories for meals, a distortion of the function of the entertaining tale to accompany or punctuate the feast. The interrelation between narration and nutrition has been expounded as a major thematic unifier in Apuleius.14

Imperatives of hunger in Buñuel Buñuel’s preoccupation with twentieth century rituals of eating is manifest in a number of his films.15 Viridiana is famous for a feast scene of down and outs in the grand house. They arrange themselves for the camera (posing simultaneously for the director and the snapshot within the film) in a parody of Da Vinci’s Last Supper. In Buñuel’s Phantom of Liberty a portmanteau scene involves members of the polite society sitting round the table on individual toilets for social defecation. Eating is done in private cubicles marked occupé on the doors. Ironically Apuleius’ hero finds as an ass that ostentatious, sometimes spectacularly public, defecation saves him from beatings and destruction on more than one occasion. (Met.4.3, 7.28). However, his eating in bestial form of human delicacies is for him an inappropriate, secret and shameful activity. (Met.4.22–23, 10.13–14)16 ————— 14

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More than one commentator has found the fish episode in Met. Book 1 sinister as well as silly. It leaves the reader bewildered and disturbed. Heath (1983, 57–58) points out that the scene is more than the ‘half silly, half spectral distortion of ordinary, average occurrences in human life’, as Auerbach would have it (and which, by the way, would make it an ideal sequence for Buñuel.) Rather, it is part of the pattern, eating and abstinence, the primary emblems of Lucius’ journey and quest.’ The eating trope is not merely a displacement of erotic desire, but the quotidian bodily function arbitrarily selected for social sanction, a carnal pleasure (in contrast to sex or excretion) than can be communally satisfied in polite company. Its compulsive repetition in The Discreet Charm makes us look both backward and forward within Buñuel’s body of work to realize the full resonance of the trope and its subversive connotations.’ Kinder, 17 Visser describes the cultural norms of eating in some Nigerian tribes where ‘eating requires that kind of euphemism which in our society is reserved for sex or excretion. The

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The film Exterminating Angel traps the high society guests within the drawing room at the end of the meal. The inability of the party to cross a threshold suggests the supernatural prolongation of a genteel convention but this liminal taboo seems to be a purely psychological one. Since all but one of the serving staff have sensed danger instinctively and left the house some time earlier, the confinement of the bourgeoisie functions as a siege in which the rich are held hostage: ‘a society trapped within itself, paralysed, inert and decomposing, elegant clothes and manners falling away, and the fragrance of perfumed bodies transformed into the sickly stench of the rotting corpse.’17 Once again, defecation is drawn attention to; the unfortunate guests resort to using the closets behind elegant and decorated panels for their private functions and at the same time hallucinating about spectacular and living landscapes within these walls. It is part of Buñuel’s scrutiny of the human condition and his parody upon social pretensions to subject his characters to a ‘what if’ school of dislocation. This experimentation with biological functions which conventionally demonstrate the civilised side of an organised and hierarchical society was described by Carrière as an ‘anthropological approach to self’ but Buñuel prefers the term ‘entomological’. The ‘absurd insect dance’ which takes place in DCB as the bourgeoisie pursue their meal is part of his continual parody of eating rituals, the potlach of polite society.18 The six main players of DCB have lost their ‘biological integrity’, subordinating themselves to social ritual and unable to break out of patterns of convention. By placing them in a world of distortion and disorientation with carnivalesque reversals of norms Buñuel highlights what is ‘tragically derisory’ and incongruous in their limited bourgeois response which seeks to preserve everyday norms, to redirect the strange interruptions into something resem————— 17

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male eats in private within his hut.’ M. Visser, The Rituals of Dinner:The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities and Meaning of Table Manners, Toronto 1992, 276. G. Edwards, The Discreet Art of Luis Buñuel London - Boston 1982, 272–273. Apuleius’ novel contains episodes which seem to subvert civilised norms of worship and sacrificial festival. Isis either sets all this right or suffers from the satiric prefiguring her properly conducted rituals have undergone. See J.J. Winkler, Auctor & Actor: a narratological reading of Apuleius’s Golden Ass. Berkeley - Los Angeles 1985, and T.D. McCreight, ‘Sacrificial Ritual in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, in: H. Hofmann, ed., Groningen Colloquia on the Novel Vol. 5, Groningen (1993), 31–62. For dinner parties as residual rituals of social solidarity and identity, see Durgnat 1977, 374. This article is indebted to his reading of the Buñuel film in general.

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bling the appearance of bourgeois reality.19 Buñuel produces the bizarre and visualises the impulses of the unconscious to shatter the optimism of the bourgeois world and to encourage his audience to question the permanency of the prevailing order. He acknowledges his debt to Engels who saw the revolutionary novelist’s task as ultimately destabilising belief in the status quo. The eternal quest of Buñuel’s bourgeoisie is punctuated by occasional shots of these characters walking along a deserted country road; almost suggestive of a pointless immortality, a kind of ‘outward bound’ between life and death existence. This has been called an illogically repeated motif, but has also inspired profounder interpretations, that it ‘creates a sense of the characters’ suspension in space and time, of their universality and also of their bewilderment and isolation.’20 For Jonathan Rosenbaum it is ‘an image suggesting the continuation both of their class and of the picaresque tradition that propels them ever forward.’ (Rosenbaum 1972, 2) This could be Buñuel having fun with a Bergmanesque progress across the landscape but as a visual refrain it is intriguing and the endless journey completes the film as a very ambiguous last word. Apuleius has also been suspected of making subversive statements about the stability of appearances and using the activities of Blind Fortuna to highlight the shifting sands of reality and power. Even with the advent of Isis as personal saviour, there are more ways than one of reading the comforting finale of the Metamorphoses. Isis seems to have made sense of a random universe. There is, however, at least one interpretation of this apparently spiritually satisfying resolution which concludes that Lucius has been left suspended in time. Leaving the hero walking boldly and baldly round the streets of Rome is an imperfect ending in more ways than one.21 ————— 19

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See Gow 1973, 45: ‘Like a metaphysical reproach, each meal is destined to be forestalled, sometimes not to begin, sometimes to be interrupted while in progress, by disconcerting incidents which the bourgeoisie will always do their best to meet with a show of polite good manners.’ Edwards 1982, 263. The suggestion that it is shallow cinematic intertextuality, an autohommage comes from Simon 1978, 366. Winkler’s wry joke about the use of the imperfect tense probably subjects the Latin to a rather modern wordplay but he is not alone in finding Lucius’s celebration of conspicuousness rather ironic: non obumbrato vel obtecto calvitio, sed quoquoversus obvio, gaudens obibam. ‘I did not disguise or cover up my bald head but joyfully displayed it wherever I was going.’ (11.30). But Winkler has not had the last word! Danielle van Mal-Maeder has reconstructed an Onos style finale for the Apuleius’ novel which resolves more than the issue of Lucius’ incompleted action in the past. See her Lector in-

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Buñuel’s ‘Interrupting Angel’ The opening scene of the film has the ambassador of Miranda (the name of the Hispanic American country should immediately arouse suspicions), the Thévénots and Florence arriving for dinner at the Sénéchals. It is worth reprising this episode in detail as it sets the pattern for the whole film, encompassing the range of material and moods the director is to draw upon throughout. This first misunderstanding is based upon an embarassment related to Buñuel and Carrière by the producer Serge Silberman who had actually forgotten issuing a dinner invitation and was out when the guests arrived. This ‘petit mal entendu’, Thévénot’s expression, expands to fill the film so that the powerful ritual of eating as a symbol of normality, a showpiece of civilised bonding for the bourgeois friends, never materialises. Later, it emerges that the men of the party are in fact united in the criminal activity of drug dealing; the association is exposed as corrupt and venal. From that point of view the prevention of a ritual which would reinforce the air of respectablility looks like divine justice. The irony of DCB lies in the internal dynamic of the group; they are bonded together in drug dealing, corruption and the support of tyranny operating beneath a masquerade of good taste.22 Ever resourceful the five friends head for a restaurant recommended by Thévénot but the place is under new management and in some disarray. As the party attempt to order with all the correct niceties of the proper procedure distraught women go to and fro. This meal is sabotaged by the presence of a corpse, the manager laid out in the next room. The men are keen to carry on regardless but the women are put off by the inappropriateness of such circumstances for eating. Coping with death at a feast has a further classical provenance, of course, and the Trimalchio of Petronius’ Satyricon could be conjured up as a comic and Satyr-like presence at this scene. ————— 22

tende:laetaberis’ in: H. Hofmann & M. Zimmerman, eds., Groningen Colloquia on the Novel Vol. 8, Groningen (1997), 7–118. The enforced fast which bonds the bourgeoisie together suggests that a punitive Lent lurks beneath the surface of the film. The characters make moral pronouncements while indulging in all kinds of corruption, so their carnival appetites are exposed in spite of their Lenten poses. Apuleius’ hero, Lucius, is also quick to pass judgements but he, too, is not happy with abstinence from food or sex, at least not until the end of the novel when he willingly becomes a Lenten figure. For a relevant discussion of the culinary concerns in the battle between Carnival and Lent, see M. Bristol, Carnival and Theatre: Plebeian Culture and the Structure of Authority in Renaissance England, New York 1985, 197– 213.

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On reflection or second viewing this scene reveals a number of clues which lead us to the surprise end. The candles are funereally large for a dinner table and the restaurant has the general aura of the undertaker’s parlour. There is a subtext, too, of cannibalism with the body of the manager laid out on the slab as if he is the joint of meat for the customers’ approval. The ill-omened feast has its own varied classical tradition. This sets the tone for the film since comicality and incongruity are intertwined with the presence of death, an inevitability which the six main characters seek to camouflage with elegance and charm. The characters try hard to preserve everyday norms in the face of sudden interruptions, even to reshape the bizarre events and redirect them into something resembling convention but this is a persistently carnivalesque world where the grotesque and unexpected have free play and in which the spontaneous and socially unacceptable can unpredictably affect the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie itself. There are points in the film where the abnormal is initiated by the players. Their very next attempt to eat together is a case in point. The lunch is sabotaged by the unrestrained erotic appetite which seizes the Sénéchals at an inconvenient moment and causes the postponement of the second prearranged meal. The five guests have arrived for lunch the following day, once again at the Sénéchals. This scene is a repetition in composition of the night-visit. The host and hostess, overcome with passion as they dressed for the meal, are by now climbing out the window to find consummation in the bushes, (the husband, ever conscious of propriety, was worried that the guests would overhear Mme Sénéchal’s ecstatic cries from the bedroom above, but this is a strange stratagem for avoiding exposure!) The guests eventually become nervous at the inexplicable disappearance of their hosts perhaps wondering if their drug-dealing has been found out and arrest is imminent. (An arrest does take place later in the film but there is an unexpected release and certainly no retribution.) In the meantime the Ambassador and the Thévénot family discuss the correct procedure for drinks and attempt to humiliate the plebeian chauffeur by offering him a martini. This he downs in one with no savouring and finesse. However, the joke is on the bourgeoisie since the Sénéchals have abandoned the proper rituals in pursuit of passion, also gratifying appetite without any lingering foreplay. This underscores the observation that ‘Buñuel endows the set-pieces of bourgeois life, from the ordering of meals to the choosing of wines, with all

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the pomp and ceremonious cliché of religious rites’. (Edwards 1982, 254). The comedy is heightened when these rituals are undercut by the indecorous behaviour of any one of the group. Florence, Mme Thévénot’s younger sister throws up in the bushes as they depart. A bishop arrives and wishes to take the position of gardener with the Sénéchals, just to complete the Saturnalian and carnivalesque ambience of the whole episode, although allowing himself to be mistaken for a gardener in the first place has its own Christian resonances of recognition scenes after the resurrection. There follows a third invitation to dine. Thévénot delivers this to the ambassador and interrupts his own wife’s illicit visit to his house. Thévénot does not suspect that his wife and the ambassador are about to have sex and that the dinner invitation he delivers to them has frustrated their sexual appetites. The ambassador ludicrously and against the odds tries to finish what has been started and satisfy desire by inviting Mme Thévénot into his chamber to view his ‘sursiks’ (as transliterated in English subtitles but written by reviewers as ‘sourciques’). The blinkered husband has no more idea what a sursik is than the ambassador himself but he obligingly goes to wait outside Although Buñuel’s inspiration for this joke probably came from its history in Spanish picaresque, this recalls the episode in Apuleius where the foolish cuckold assists in the adultery of his wife. In Apuleius Book 9, 5–7 there is a comical interlude concerning infidelity and the deception of an impoverished workman. He scrubs out a tub for a bogus buyer while his wife, draped over the lid, is ‘polished off’ by her lover. To add to the farce in the film, Fernando Rey’s ambassador does not pull the quick coupling off. Here he reprises his roles from Viridiana and That Obscure Object of Desire where he is continually sexually side-tracked.23 Mme Thévénot refuses to go beyond coquette and he does not satisfy his sexual appetite.

The Function of Lepidae Fabulae (elegant stories) in Apuleius and Buñuel After two abortive attempts to have a meal together, the women of Buñuel’s charming company meet for tea in a stylish restaurant. There is no chance of refreshment (the establishment has mysteriously run out of every beverage) ————— 23

Dawson points out that the actors are, in part, playing comic versions of roles from other films throughout. (Jan Dawson’s review in Monthly Film Bulletin, February 1973, 24– 25.)

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but they are politely forced to digest a strange story of murder and the supernatural (with a distinctly Oedipal flavour) related by a young soldier, who comes over unsolicited to their table. This is not the only arbitrarily introduced narration and narrator. When all six friends attempt an evening meal at the Sénéchals again, a company of soldiers arrive (Sénéchal has agreed to billet them but dates seem to be in dispute once more). No sooner has the food been stretched around the expanded number of guests than the soldiers are called away to manoeuvres. Are we surprised when they pause to listen to the young sergeant tell his dream? This echoes the restaurant story with ghostly mother and a street beyond the grave; the presence of death is persistent at the meals of the polite and hungry bourgeoisie. Buñuel introduces such interludes in a way which evokes the strangely signposted lepidae fabulae within the narrative structure of the Apuleius novel. In the Metamophoses there is no shortage of entertaining stories for the ass and his reader to graze upon even if meals are interrupted or substituted by sudden narratives, a feature given focussed and thorough treatment by Heath. The introduction of lepidae fabulae in Buñuel’s films have the added dimension of his continuing satiric dialogue with the Catholic Church. Stories, generally autobiographical which his characters quite freely share with strangers mimic the cathartic therapy of the confessional; crimes and passions are graphically revealed to while away a journey and entertain one’s fellow travellers. (This occurs in That Obscure Object of Desire.) In regard to DCB Wu 1999, 119 perceptively comments: ‘For a film “without a story” The Discreet Charm in many ways is actually an excess of story – everyone, from a lonely lieutenant in a tea room to the commissioner of the police department, has a narrative to tell.’ Part of the playing against/within the narrative in the Discreet Charm is the suturing of the spectator into these stories, but then deferring any conclusion.’ Unlike Lucius in the novel of Apuleius, the main characters of the film do not seem insatiably hungry for the stories, let alone their resolution nor are they, apparently, thirsty for novelty. Part of their discreet charm consists in their barely articulated irritation at constant interruptions and abortive attempts to ritualise their association. They always listen politely and at certain points in the film it looks as though their patience is about to be rewarded. As the soldiers leave, the colonel of the company offers his hosts and their friends an invitation to dinner to compensate for the disruption. The camera rapidly cuts to them in the street of

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the colonel’s house, as if to ‘seize the time’ before the next meal can escape them. This dinner party proves to be a humiliation comparable to the terrible mock trial Lucius undergoes in honour of Risus. This is the episode in Book 3 of Apuleius when the hero, who believes he has foiled an attempt at robbery on the house of his host, is tricked into giving an elaborate and colourful defence of his actions. (He is charged with the murder of three innocent and well-born young men.) The corpses turn out to be wine skins and Lucius is mortified to find himself the centre of a carnival performance. In DCB, the group of friends are subjected to a piece of theatre and transformed into actors on a stage. Perhaps this is partly another ploy to remind the cinema audience that the six players are actually six players, performers who, in the real world, would, as professionals, rise to such a challenge. However, in the fiction of the film they are all nonplussed and do not read the signs of the setup. When they enter the colonel’s house they encounter a number of theatrical props. The elaborately laid but darkly lit table with coca cola masquerading as whisky and a rubber chicken suggests that nothing is for real. As soon as the already disconcerted guests are seated around the table there is an opening of the curtains and they are on stage. They flee from the prompter and the irate audience for once unable to rise to the occasion, unable to utter their lines.24 It perhaps deliberately highlights the stylised and stilted conversation that characterises their actual gatherings in the rest of the film, where a good deal of play-acting conceals the true nature of their various interconnections.25 However, if Buñuel’s players are to be disorientated, his audience is never far behind. Sénéchal wakes up from the dream in some consternation and he and his wife make their way to the dinner which turns out to be a wellattended cocktail party. This too is theatrical in conception; the prop of the Napoleonic hat is in evidence here and there is a stage-managed provocation of the Ambassador of Miranda. He turns on the host and shoots him but it is Thévénot who now awakes and explains to Madame Thévénot that he ————— 24

25

Vidal 1999, 65–66 believes that the provenance of the prompt line is crucial to an understanding of the film’s motivation. Don Juan Tenorio, the 19th century play by Spanish Romantic, José Zorilla, was a favourite of Buñuel’s and the fact that it was traditionally performed on the Day of the Dead adds a further dimension to the parallel already drawn with Risus and the festival context. See Durgnat’s perceptive exposition of this scene, 1977, 388–390, also Edwards 1982, 261–263.

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dreamed that Sénéchal dreamed they were on stage and then he dreamed in his own right that the colonel had been killed. The confusion between actor and auctor, performer and author, at this point puts a question mark over the identity of Thévénot, portrayed and played as the most understated of the group; it also exploits the visual medium to suggest multiple levels of narration. For the bourgeoisie subsequent attempts to eat fare no better. The sudden arrest of all the friends (bar the bishop) at the fourth dinner party at the Sénéchals involves another grim and ghostly story which turns out to be the policeman’s dream; inexplicably the group are released but their last supper has them machine-gunned down by a group of masked men. The Ambassador has slid under the table and is seen surreptitiously sneaking a slice of lamb from the plate. As the machine-gun goes off in his face, he wakes up from what turns out to be yet another dream. Speedily recovered, he performs a kind of reflex action in going straight to the fridge for a plate of lamb. The final shot in the film shows the familiar group walking quite purposefully and jauntily now along the deserted road. It would seem they are indestructable. Alternatively we are witnessing their festive uncrowning, which is perhaps closest to Buñuel’s original conception. However, he staged it in such a way as ‘to conserve the image as it is, in its innocence, in order not to elicit a symbolic interpretation, so that it could not be said: this is the end of the bourgeoisie, this is a society which does not know where it’s going.’26

Loose Ends Every dinner of the bourgeoisie seems to have turned into a feast of fools and the last communal meal ends in slaughter, even if this is the projection of the Mirandan ambassador’s paranoia to create the final nightmare. The strange revelations which appear throughout the film are designed to expose the kind of violent realities upon which the insulated bourgeois world is predicated. ————— 26

As quoted in Kinder 1999, 184, where Kovacs concludes it is a surrealist image because of its specific meaninglessness and general impact. Given the deliberate allusions throughout DCB to parts played by the main actors in other films (noted in this article), in other words the ‘intertextual’ jokiness and the subsequent shattering of theatrical illusions for the knowing spectator (the ‘movie buff’), I am surprised that no-one has interpreted the walking scenes as a reinforcement of this defictionalisation. The six actors are not necessarily meant to be ‘in character’ in these shots but openly ‘themselves’, the strolling players of the cinema world and the true heirs of commedia del arte.

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Earlier in the film, the ambassador blithely shoots at the apparently innocent young street seller, announcing she is a terrorist and he is her target. The fact that he keeps his loaded pistol in a tureen must say something ominous about any feast of which he is to be a part. There are other brief and baffling sequences in the film; the promise of an interpolated tale from an old peasant woman which is never told, the old woman being played by the actress Muni ‘who became a kind of mascot or mouthpiece for Buñuel’ (Vidal 1999,71). This perhaps proves that Buñuel was able to pass over a story about the hatred of Jesus Christ, for so it is signposted, thereby demonstrating that he had more than one level of unpredictability up his sleeve. In the scene with the billeted soldiers, there is no time to tell another dream about a train because the interruption is itself interrupted. The bishop brings his own dimension of the bizarre to the proceedings. Later in the film he is summoned by the peasant woman to minister the last rites to a gardener. The bishop recognises the dying man as his parents’ employee. The man confesses to poisoning these same employers many years before. The gardener bishop absolves the man of his crime, and then blasts him with a shotgun. For Rosenbaum (1972, 4) this suggests that Catholicism far from being the natural opponent of surrealism is the ultimate expression of it. This observation evokes a further correspondence with Apuleius. His presentation of Isis as the definitive symbol of the supernatural, in spite of all the negative images of witchcraft the book brings forward, could also be described as the ultimate expression of the ‘paranormal’.27

The Loaded Symbol The focus on food and drink throughout Apuleius and Buñuel demonstrates the infinitely varied menu of motifs fasting and feasting can provide for an artist of the surreal. Florence forms the centre of a cosmic tableau in the scene with the martinis. (Durgnat 1977, 393–394). At the final supper she reads the star signs of the ambassador introducing the kind of astronomic/gastronomic ————— 27

Isis is revealed as Seeing Fortuna at the end of the novel and is thus counterposed to a Blind Fortune which has victimised Lucius throughout. Blindness is also a symbol which recurs in Buñuel, initially because of the cinema experience when the lights go down: ‘Surrealism must approach the world, as Breton put it, with “eyes closed” ’. I Walker, ‘Buñuel’s Half Century’, Sight & Sound, (Winter, 1977–78), 3–5.

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moment found at the loaded table of Trimalchio28 (the narrative ‘party piece’ of Petronius’ Satyricon) and elsewhere in ancient literature, a reminder of the universal fates concealed in the vital and edible organs of the animal hostia. It is at this final dinner party that the total miscalculation of the maid’s age by her employers occurs, giving a final satiric twist to the time sequence of the film and perhaps alerting us to the unreality of the whole exchange. For Durgnat 1977, 393 this suggests that the maid functions as a temporal jolt. Just how long has the bourgeoisie been waiting for their meal? This episode will prove to be a dream but not before our perceptions of the passing of time have been manipulated once again. Obviously the disturbance of conventional continuity is underpinned by the device of the journey suspended in time and could be a homage to the Jean Luc Godard pronouncement that every film has a beginning, middle and end but not necessarily in that order. Merging illusion and reality is also a way of playing with audience perceptions and forcing them to wonder where they are in relation to the narrative progress of the story. The recurrence of themes in all their infinite variety is easy enough to identify. Buñuel’s film can be linked to Apuleius’ novel by its perceptions of piety and vengeance, sexuality and bestiality, distorted rituals and journeys beyond the grave. As far as message and meaning are concerned both Apuleius and Buñuel achieve a level of mystification critics continue to discuss. Few would accuse Buñuel, a characteristically economical director with firm control of his composition and players, of shoddy workmanship;29 Apuleius, on the other hand, has been charged with a narrative which shows the joins. It is interesting to speculate on the success of Metamorphoses on screen, should such a challenge ever find a taker.30 The conversion of narrative refrains to ————— 28

29

30

See again Gowers 1993, where the metaphor of eating is explored in relation to artistic production, amongst other rich registers. ‘It was long hard work, particularly because it was crucial to maintain a sufficient degree of realism in the midst of the delirium. The script went through five different versions while we tried to combine realism – the situation had to be familiar and develop logically – and the accumulation of strange, but not fantastical, obstacles. Once again, dreams helped, particularly the notion of a dream within a dream.’ Buñuel, My Last Sigh, 247. Helen Elsom has discussed this in ‘Apuleius at the Movies’, in: H. Hofmann, ed., Groningen Colloquia on the Novel Vol. 2, Groningen (1989), 141–150. She favoured Pasolini as a director for Apuleius; the author of this article can only lament the passing of Powell and Pressburger whose films had such imaginative power. The picaresque nature of the novel would no doubt have appealed to Orson Welles. For a present day combination of the off beat and the brooding, perhaps Martin Scorsese, also a devotee of Powell and

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visual ones might make the thematic unity of the novel more accessible and absolve the author of censure on the grounds of ‘shoddy composition, leaving his reader slogging through a spate of entertaining tales into dead ends, false expectations and jarring inconsistencies.’ (Heath 1982, 69). In contrast, then, it seems that the very nature of the cinema medium can guarantee the success of comic disorientation as a structural tool. The surreal on screen can receive a grudging and sometimes bewildered accolade: ‘The nature and extent of Buñuel’s interruptions guarantee the virtual absence of continuous plot. But we remain transfixed as though we were watching one: the sustained charm and glamour of the six characters fool us, much as they fool themselves. Their myths, behaviour and appearance – a seductive and illusory surface – carry us (and them) through the film with a sense of unbroken continuity and logic, a consistency that the rest of the universe and nature itself seems to rail against helplessly.’ (Rosenbaum 1972, 3). Buñuel uses both the surreal and absurd to illustrate his approach to the totality of real life and to reinstate the supernatural as a sphere of equal value amongst multiple realities. Behind the camera and able to exercise ‘the muscle of imagination’, he resembles the Apuleian god of Laughter, a ‘Puck mocking the brief usurpers of Olympus’.31 Buñuel has found profounder philosophical analyses of his films and their symbols amusing. His inspiration for Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie was the mix-up, related by Serge Silberman, but, in relation to the film’s overall concept, he was perfectly capable of sustaining the tone and deliberately undercutting his own artistic integrity. To illustrate, he mischievously declared that he was delighted that the film had allowed him to advertise his favourite recipe for martinis.32 One is almost mesmerically drawn back to the enigmatic prologue of Apuleius’ novel in which all kinds of expectations are perhaps flippantly inculcated in the reader. Apuleius also inspires profounder interpretations than the ————— 31

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Pressburger. Peter Greenaway has been proposed but a filmization of the Apuleian novel would need some cinematic movement as well as artistic composition. J. Robertson’s interesting interpretation of Risus in ‘A Greek Carnival’, JHS 39 (1919), 110–115. My Last Sigh, 247. Kinder 1999, 5, relates the story that Buñuel and Dali distributed a leaflet at the premiere in Paris of Un Chien Andalou. This proclaimed: ‘NOTHING in this film SYMBOLIZES ANYTHING. The only method of investigation of the symbols would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis.’ Pauline Kael in her ‘Saintliness’ (Mellen 1978, 270) also observes that ‘Buñuel shoots a story simply and directly, to make the points he wants to make, though if he fails to make them, or doesn’t make them clearly, he doesn’t seem to give a damn.’

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author’s agenda actually spells out. Critics tend to locate the themes and motifs of his work within a consistent philosophical framework, and one which is in harmony with what we know of his life and preoccupations. Apuleius’ construct and expectation of a lector scrupulosus, a careful reader, is judged as one who enters fully into the spirit of the intellectual game and rejoices into the learned allusions the novel provides, and who participates in an intertextuality which ranges over literary sensibility, religious life and the history of thought in the ancient world. However, this is hard work and Heath deftly observes that the Metamorphoses, both in particular details and in the larger problems of interpretation, frequently leaves the reader bemused. We come away on a number of occasions, ‘as Lucius and other characters do, with no sustenance.’ Fed on free floating narratives we face the main menu with frustrated appetites. Buñuel and Apuleius tempt us to return to the artistic ‘feast for a second helping – but it is with a different strategy for filling our plate.’ (Heath, 1982, 71). Both the film and the novel demand second, third, multiple viewings. It would seem that audiences of such works only lose by limiting themselves to a one-off passive consumption.33 Heath’s metaphor neatly connects the reader and viewer with Buñuel’s fictions on screen and Apuleius’ primary narrator, Lucius. Buñuel’s characters never give up on their forage for food. The hunger which can be a momentum for the single picaro on his journey through society, also propels the bourgeois collective along their endless and timeless road.34 Lucius finds sustenance with the goddess of Isis but learns when to fast and feast appropriately. We contemplate the hero at the very end elected to the college of Pastophori, literally ‘bread carriers’, and we might assume that Apuleius’ hero will never go hungry again. However, if Mal-Maeder (1997) were to be proved right Lucius, ————— 33

34

For a complex and intriguing discussion of the presence of food in the novel as genre see Margaret Anne Doody, The True Story of the Novel, Toronto 1997, 427–431. Doody expands upon Barthes’ essay of the 1950s, ‘Cuisine Ornamentale’ and points out, 428, that ‘the Novel is always suspicious, if comically suspicious, of food that is too visually wrought up.’ One wonders how much of the banquet Trimalchio’s guests actually consume as opposed to admire as art objects. Doody suggests that once food is translated into an art object or dream-image and is denied as food to the fictional characters, they become less substantial and less individuated. Just how do our six bourgeois survive the fictional duration of the film without eating? This association, hunger and the picaro in Buñuel, is drawn out by C. Rebolledo, ‘Buñuel and the Picaresque Novel’ in The World of Buñuel (139–148). ‘Throughout all picaresque works we find hunger as the motivating force.’ (148)

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like his cinematic soul mates, would be destined for another journey towards further frustrations.

Bibliography L. Buñuel, My Last Sigh (Mi Ultimo Suspiro: memorias, Paris 1982). transl. Abigail Israel, New York 1985. J.R.M. Catlett, ‘Buñuel the Realist: Variations of a Dream, in: M. Kinder, ed. (1999), 41–59. M. D’Lugo, ‘Buñuel in the Cathedral of Culture: Reterritorialising the Film Auteur’, in: M. Kinder, ed. (1999), 101–110. R. Durgnat, The World of Luis Buñuel, Berkeley 1977. G. Edwards, The Discreet Art of Luis Buñuel, London - Boston 1982. V. Fuentes, ‘The Discreet Charm of the Postmodern: Negotiating the Great Divide with the Ultimate Modernist, Luis Buñuel’, in: M. Kinder, ed. (1999), 82–100. G. Gow, ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’, Films and Filming (March 1973), 45. J.R. Heath, ‘Narration and Nutrition in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, Ramus 11 (1982), 55–77. M. Kinder, ed., Luis Buñuel’s Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Cambridge 1999. M. Kinder, ‘The Nomadic Discourse of Luis Buñuel: A Rambling Overview’, in: M. Kinder, ed. (1999), 1–30. D. van Mal - Maeder, ‘Lector intende: laetaberis. The enigma of the last book of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, in: H. Hofmann & M. Zimmerman, eds., Groningen Colloquia on the Novel Vol. 8, Groningen (1997), 87–118. J. Mellen, ed. The World of Buñuel, New York - Oxford, 1978. J. Rosenbaum, ‘Interruption as Style: Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie’, in Sight & Sound, (Winter 1972–73), 1–4. A.S. Vidal, ‘A Cultural Background to The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’, in: M. Kinder, ed. (1999), 60–81. H.H. Wu, ‘Unravelling Entanglements of Sex, Narrative, Sound and Gender: The Discreet Charm of Belle de Jour, in: M. Kinder, ed. (1999), 111–140.

Quis ille Asinus aureus? The Metamorphoses of Apuleius’ Title A . P . BITEL

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Introduction Since the early history of its transmission, not one, but two different titles, have been attested for Apuleius’ story of Lucius’ extraordinary adventures: Metamorphoses and Asinus aureus.1 This raises two separate, but related types of question: what was the original title which designated Apuleius’ text, and what might that title mean? While both received titles have had their respective champions, recent scholarship has suggested that the original title may have been double; and that it may have referred either to the long ears, or to the Sethian aspect, of the asinine protagonist. This paper first surveys and extends these lines of enquiry, and then throws several new interpretative balls into the air, arguing for chromatic, monetary, metallurgical, and entomological readings of the title. These readings are as much a response to Apuleius’ text as to his title; for it is the text which dramatises and makes sense of its otherwise enigmatic title, even as the title directs the reader’s attention to certain motifs in the text which might otherwise have seemed less significant. In tracing the different semantic relationships that develop between title and text, I shall demonstrate that the meaning of Apuleius’ title is as riddlingly elusive and infuriatingly multiple as the identity of the prologue’s ego (quis ille?).

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A recent account of the traditional alternative titles can be found at Münstermann 1995, 47–56; cf. Winkler 1985, 292–321; Scobie 1975, 47–9; Robertson-Vallette 1940, xxiii– xxv. I have not yet seen Grilli 2000.

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Part 1: The Background of the Title Metamorphoses The subscriptions of Sallustius, the earliest attested editor of Apuleius, refer to the text by the title Metamorphoses.2 In his subscription to the ninth book, Sallustius states that he revised the text in two separate stages, and obligingly names the consuls contemporary with his revisions. Since these consul pairs can be positively dated to the years 395 and 397 C.E. respectively, Sallustius’ testimony shows that the title Metamorphoses was in currency at least by the end of the fourth century C.E.. Metamorphoses makes good sense as Apuleius’ title for several reasons. Firstly, it acknowledges the pedigree of Apuleius’ fabula Graecanica (Apul. Met. 1,1,6), as Metamorphoses also seems to be the title of the lost Greek source for the story of Lucius.3 Secondly, Apuleius’ prologue explicitly advertises metamorphoses, literally ‘changes in form’, as the subject of the work to follow (Apul. Met. 1,1,2 figuras…conversas…). The prologue also carefully qualifies and expands its promise to include varieties of metamorphosis which are not so literal: for example, there will be alterations in men’s fortunes (fortunas...conversas), and even shifts of ‘voice’ (Apul. Met. 1,1,6 haec...ipsa vocis immutatio). Transformations of such a purely metaphorical nature have already featured in Ovid’s homonymous work, and so are entirely consistent with the range of expectations evoked by the title Metamorphoses.4 Thirdly, Apuleius’ narrative lives up to the prologue’s promise, as it features metamorphoses, both literal and metaphorical, aplenty.5 Thus Metamorphoses, the title preserved by Sallustius, seems appropriate to Apuleius’ shifty tales. ————— 2

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4

5

Sallustius' subscriptions are preserved in the principal manuscript for Apuleius' text, Laurentianus 68,2 (i.e. F). See Pecere 1984. The title of the lost Greek source text is attested as Metamorphoses both in the subscripts of its extant epitome, Lucius or Ass (Vaticanus 90, tenth century C.E.), and in the booklists of the patriarch Photius (Bibl. Codices 129 and 166,111b, ninth century C.E.). The relationship between the Greek Metamorphoses, its epitome Lucius sive Asinus, and Apuleius’ ass-tale, is discussed in detail by Mason 1994. On the broad referential compass of Ovid’s title Metamorphoses, referring as much to the work’s ‘functional principle’ as to its ‘actual subject’, see Galinsky 1975, 1–14 & 42–70. For the close similarities between Ovid’s and Apuleius’ wide-ranging use of ‘metamorphoses’ as a theme, see Krabbe 1989, 37–73. The physical transformations of Lucius and of others are catalogued by Perry 1923, 235– 238; Robertson-Vallette (1940) xxiv–v; and, most fully, Tatum 1972, 308. For less literal types of metamorphosis in Apuleius, see Tatum 1972, 308–9; Münstermann 1995, 49– 50; Krabbe 1989, 38–43; Finkelpearl 1998, 22 & 107. Furthermore, the very process of

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Part 2: The Background of the Title Asinus aureus While Apuleius’ African compatriot Augustine betrays no knowledge of the title Metamorphoses, he asserts clearly that the title Asinus aureus, or ‘Golden Ass’, was given to the text by Apuleius himself: “...Apuleius, in the books which he inscribed with the title ‘the Golden Ass’ (in libris quos Asini Aurei titulo inscripsit), either indicated or invented how he himself came to take a potion and turn into an ass while retaining his human intellect.” August. C.D. 18,18 Augustine’s testimony is published around 413–426 C.E, but given Apuleius’ celebrity in Africa, Winkler is surely right to suppose that ‘Augustine presumably knew Apuleius’s writings throughout his life’.6 Given that Augustine was born in 354 C.E., it would seem that Asinus aureus, the title familiar to him, enjoyed currency in the late fourth century C.E., existing more or less alongside the alternative title known to Sallustius. On this evidence, it is impossible to tell which of the titles, Metamorphoses or Asinus aureus, had chronological priority. The title Asinus aureus is also appropriate to Apuleius’ text, although its significance is not so immediately obvious as that of Metamorphoses. The word asinus, taken in isolation, makes good sense as part of the title. In the first place, it indicates Apuleius’ generic affiliation to other texts with ass-titles or ass-characters.7 For example, six of Phaedrus’ early first century C.E. verse translations of ‘Aesop’ feature the word asinus in their transmitted titles (Phaed. 1,11 Asinus et leo venantes; 1,15 Asinus ad senem pastorem; 1,21 Leo senex, aper, taurus et asinus; 1,29 Asinus inridens aprum; 4,1 Asinus et Galli; 5,4 Asinus et porcelli hordeum);8 Apuleius, like Phaedrus, translates Greek fiction into Latin; and in their prologues, both Phaedrus and Apuleius charac-

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translation, so essential to Apuleius’ text, is also characterised by the prologue as a species of metamorphosis (Apul. Met. 1,1,6 haec...ipsa vocis immutatio). Winkler 1985, 294. Freeman 1945, 34 observes that Greek fables, anecdotes and proverbs feature asses more than any other animals. These titles are preserved by the ninth century C.E. Codex Pithoeanus (or P), which is the best manuscript for Phaedrus.

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terise their tales as fabulae, and address a lector.9 There is a lost Atellan farce by Pomponius entitled Asina (‘She-ass’), whose title and two extant fragments suggest that it, like Apuleius’ text, featured an ass, or possibly even a human turned into an ass, as a main character.10 Plautus names a play Asinaria [sc. fabula]; it has been convincingly argued that the speaker in the prologue of Apuleius’ fabula is modelled closely on Plautine prologi (who include the prologus of the Asinaria itself).11 A satire by Varro is entitled öô!# ƒ"/# (‘An ass [sc. listening to] a lyre’); Winkler suggests that ‘the Varronian project of philosophy cum comedy for the masses may be the most important model for Apuleius’s own work.’12 So Apuleius’ ass-title advertises the generic influence of all these texts. More obviously, an ass-title is appropriate to a tale whose protagonist turns into an ass. Presumably it is for this reason that the extant Greek epitome of Apuleius’ principal source is entitled !ƒ!# . P!# (‘Lucius or Ass’).13 It should further be noted that in Latin, as in English (but not in Greek, importantly), the word for ass can also denote a fool (see OLD s.v. asinus 2). Apuleius’ Lucius, literally an ass for much of the narrative, is also metaphorically an ass for all of the narrative, so that the inclusion of the word asinus in Apuleius’ title is doubly pointed as an introduction to his Latinised protagonist. The addition of the epithet aureus to the title is far more problematic. Certainly texts or utterances with a monumental or spiritual quality are sometimes

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References in prologues to fabulae: Apul. Met. 1,1,1; 1,1,6; Phaed. 1 Prol. 7; 2 Prol. 2; 3 Prol. 33, 36; 4 Prol. 10; 5 Prol. 10. Addresses in prologues to lector: Apul. Met. 1,1,6 lector intende: laetaberis; Phaed. 2 Prol. 11 ...bonas in partes, lector, accipias velim...; cf. 3 Prol. 31 ...quem [sc. librum] si leges, laetabor. For the two surviving fragments of Pomponius’ Asina, see Ribbeck 1962, 226. The addressee of fr.1 (the titular she-ass?) cannot speak, but may still learn to listen (atque auscultare disce, si nescis loqui); similarly Lucius-the-ass cannot speak (Apul. Met. 3,25,1f.), but is better able to listen (Apul. Met. 3,24,5; 9,15,6; 6,32,3). Fr. 2 is a firstperson narrative of past experience at a mill-stone (exilui de nocte ad molam fullonis festinatim); cf. Lucius-the-ass’ past experiences at a mill-stone, also narrated in the first person (Apul. Met. 7,15,3; 7,15,5; 7,17,1; 9,11,1f.; 9,22,1). On the influence of Plautine prologi on Apuleius, see Smith 1972, 516–520; Winkler 1985, 200–203; Dowden 2001, 134-6. Winkler 1985, 296. Varro’s title derives from a proverbial expression (Parœmiographi Graeci 1:291–92; cf. LSJ s.v. P!# I.1), which probably derives in turn from an ‘Aesopic’ fable (Phaed. Perotti's Appendix 14, preserved without title). The epitome’s title is first attested by Phot. Bibl. Codex 129, from the ninth century C.E..

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designated as ‘golden’;14 but these are not adequate parallels for Apuleius’ title, where aureus is used merely to designate an asinus, which is not normally so described.15 Heraclitus’ statement that ‘asses would choose rubbish over gold’ (Heraclit. D–K B 9) confirms just how paradoxical is the pairing of an ass with gold. Apuleius’ striking combination of noun and adjective confronts readers with a curious riddle: what is a golden ass, and what can it mean?16 Indeed, the famous question in the prologue, quis ille? (Apul. Met. 1,1,3), with its masculine deictic, can be understood to register precisely the enigmatic nature of the (masculine) title: ‘Who [or ‘what’] is that [sc. “golden ass”]?’. An ego-figure in the prologue responds to this question obliquely with some autobiographical information (Apul. Met. 1,1,3–6) and a lengthy narrative in the first person (Apul;. Met. 1,2,1–end). This implies both that the first person is identifiable with the title, and that the entire narrative which follows might somehow serve as a solution to the title’s riddle. There is a two-way process involved here: the title foreshadows the asinine adventures of Lucius, and his adventures in turn promise to explain the title’s mysterious golden sheen.

Part 3: A double title? It is of course possible that Apuleius’ original title might have been a combination of the two transmitted titles.17 This allows a neat explanation of how the variant traditions emerged in the first place: Sallustius and Augustine all avoided the cumbersomeness of the original double title by selectively abbreviating it. Certainly by the late fifth century C.E., Fulgentius refers to Apuleius’ text as either Metamorphoses (myth. 3,6; serm. ant. 36) or Asinus aureus (serm. ant. 17; 40) with apparent indifference. One might compare the common practice amongst modern scholars of abbreviating the title(s) even further, to Met., G.A., or A.A.. ————— 14

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Robertson-Vallette 1940, xxiv cites the %"$2»$ of Pythagoras and the aurea dicta of Epicurus (Lucr. 3.12f.); Winkler 1985, 298–9 n.16 gives a more comprehensive list of examples. For this point, cf. Winkler 1985, 299 ‘the oxymoronic joining of the least valuable (asinus) with the most valuable (aureus)’; Münstermann 1995, 51–52. Winkler 1985, 300-305 argues that for first time readers, a titular combination of ass and gold would suggest vague associations ‘of folktales, magic, and that curious area of suspect knowledge that later came to be known as alchemy’ (301). Cf. Winkler 1985, 295–298, following a hint from Scobie 1975, 49.

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Winkler regards Varro’s Menippeae as ‘the most telling model’ for a double title in Apuleius.18 This may be correct, but requires some qualification. In a careful analysis of all the evidence for Varro’s alternative titles, Astbury reaches two conclusions: a) satires are given a second title only by ‘Varro i’, which is one (of three) Varronian collections used by Nonius Marcellus (our chief source for the Menippeae); b) the most satisfactory explanation of this is ‘that Varro did not add the sub-titles, but that they were added later by some reader or scribe of the particular group of satires in Nonius’ Varro i collection.’19 It follows from Astbury’s arguments that second titles were added to the satires in Varro i sometime between the date of Varro’s original publication (c. first century B.C.E.) and Nonius’ citations of them (c. fourth century C.E.).20 It is therefore not certain that Varro’s double titles yet existed to serve as a model for Apuleius, who wrote his text sometime in the latter half of the second century C.E.. If, however, some of the Menippeae were known to Apuleius from an edition featuring double titles (as they were later known to his fellow African Nonius Marcellus), then Varro’s influence on Apuleius might have extended to the double form of his title. Even if one is sceptical about Varro’s satires, there are at least three other models for double titles. The first, also mentioned by Winkler in passing, is Thrasyllus’ arrangement of the texts of Plato in the first century C.E..21 Diogenes Laertius writes: “The titles which [Thrasyllus] uses for each of the works are double, one derived from the name (P!/ , the other from the subject ("»/).” D.L. 3,57

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Winkler 1985, 295. Astbury 1977, 180. The argument that the double titles may not be original to Varro was first suggested by Riese 1864-7, 479–488. Winkler responds to Riese’s arguments (Winkler 1985, 295 n.4): ‘in any case the Greek 1"-titles were known and used by Aulus Gellius (Noct. Att. 6,16: M. Varro in satura quam 1"~ 012y3' inscripsit) and therefore would be known to Apuleius’ audience.’ However, Astbury 1977, 178 is surely right in suggesting that Aulus Gellius’ testimony is merely evidence for a satire with a single Greek title (1"~ 012y3'). Therefore this does not, contra Winkler, constitute firm evidence that the double titles emerged before Apuleius wrote his text. Winkler 1985, 294 & 295 n.4.

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The two titles ascribed to Apuleius conform readily to Thrasyllus’ prescriptions: Metamorphoses is the ‘subject’, Asinus aureus is the ‘name’.22 One might reasonably expect Apuleius, a ‘Platonicus philosophus’ (Apul. Apol. 10,6), to be familiar with the work of Thrasyllus. More particularly, there is an important figure in Apuleius’ eighth book called Thrasyllus (Apul. Met. 8,1,5). Given that the narrator presents him as entirely un-Platonic in his behaviour and character, it seems likely that his name is antiphrastic;23 Apuleius has already used a similar joke at Apul. Met. 1,6,1, where another un-Platonic character is named, of all things, Socrates. Thus Apuleius’ use of the name Thrasyllus might in itself be evidence of his acquaintance with Thrasyllus’ edition of Plato, double titles and all. A third model for double-titles is the Lucianic corpus.24 The first mention of Lucianic titles is made by the ninth century C.E. patriarch Photius;25 and the first extant codices for the Lucianic corpus date from the beginning of the tenth century C.E.. With such late testimonies, one cannot of course be absolutely certain that the transmitted titles are original, but there is no evidence to suggest that they are not. In any case, Lucian is contemporary with Apuleius, and his comic prose fiction has many affinities with Apuleius’; and twenty-six of the texts from the Lucianic corpus are transmitted with double titles. The fourth model for a double-title is Plautus. The prologus of Plautus often cites the original title of his Greek source alongside his new Latin title.26 The prologue of Asinaria is a typical example: ————— 22

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Thrasyllus’ list of double titles illustrates that the word P!/(‘name’) encompasses not only proper nouns (e.g. D.L. 3,58 ‘Phaedo or about the soul’) but also common nouns (e.g. D.L. 3,58‘the sophist or about being’). Asinus is a common noun denoting the protagonist, Lucius. Later Apuleius suggests an alternative, etymological significance for Thrasyllus’ name, deriving it from the Greek thrasy-, meaning ‘bold’ (Apul. Met. 8,8,1 Sed Thrasyllus, praeceps alioquin et de ipso nomine temerarius...). By ‘Lucianic corpus’, I mean the eighty four titles listed at Macleod 1972, I v–viii. This is not to suggest that all these texts are in fact written by Lucian himself; Macleod 1972, I x questions the authenticity of fifteen of them. Phot. Bibl. Codex 128 mentions ‘Phalaris’, ‘Dialogues of the dead’, ‘Dialogues of the courtesans’; 129 ‘Lucius or ass’; 166‘True stories’ Plautus varies in his practice of renaming his Greek models. Some of his new Latin titles are direct translations of the original Greek titles (e.g. Pl. Cas. 30f Clerumenoe > Sortientes); other titles involve an associative shift from the Greek (e.g. Pl. Trin. 18f Thensaurus > Trinummus; Pl. As. 10f Onagos > Asinaria); most pertinent to Apuleius’ alternative titles, however, is a third category, where the connection between the original Greek title and Plautus’ new Latin title is at first mysterious (e.g. Pl. Poen. 53f Carche-

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“Now I shall say the reason why I have come out here and just what I wanted: it was so that you would know the name (nomen) of this play;...this play has the name Onagos in Greek; Demophilus has written it, Maccus translates it into foreign speech; he wishes it to be Asinaria.” Pl. As. 6f. The double-nomen reflects Plautus’ translation of the Greek play (fabula) into Latin (which is characterised, ironically, as the foreign language). Plautus’ play retains its old Greek name, but receives an additional Latin name, like a foreigner who has become naturalised in Rome.27 Apuleius’ prologue also features a new immigrant to Rome (Apul. Met. 1,1,4 in urbe Latia advena studiorum Quiritium), to whom the language of the forum is alien (1,1,5 exotici ac forensis sermonis rudis locutor). Only a change of language (vocis immutatio) allows him to tell his own fabula, which is ‘Greekish’ (1,1,6 Graecanica). Like Plautus’ double names, the double title reconstructed for Apuleius would evidently combine the original Greek name of his text (Metamorphoses) with a new Latin name (Asinus aureus). This still leaves open the question of what form Apuleius’ double title might have taken. Winkler, in keeping with his adoption of Varro as Apuleius’ chief model, champions the bilingual Asinus aureus: 1"~ 13/!"4…21' i.e. ‘golden ass: concerning metamorphoses’).28 Twenty of the transmitted double titles of Varro are similarly bilingual (e.g. Desultorius: 1"~ 3!ã "y41, ‘horseplay: concerning writing’). A monolingual variation on this seems possible, since in the post-Ovidian era metamorphoses has become an accepted loan word. This would yield Asinus aureus: de metamorphosesin (i.e. ‘golden ass: concerning metamorphoses’).29 Thirteen of Varro’s transmitted double-titles are monolingual, i.e. completely Greek (e.g. 2//%/: 1"~ 3ƒ4!$ ‘shadow-boxing: concerning delusion’). A third variation on this involves the insertion of a disjunctive between the first title and the second, thematic title, yielding Asinus aureus sive de metamorphosesin (i.e. ‘golden ass or concerning metamorphoses’). This pattern is found in twenty-seven of Thra————— 27

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donius > Patruus; Pl. Vid. prologue [fragmentary] Schedia > Vidularia; cf. Ter. Ph. 24f Epidicazomenos > Phormio). See Solin 1996, 1025 ‘When enfranchised, new citizens normally retained their individual name as their cognomen. They were free to choose their praenomen and nomen...’. Winkler 1985, 295 For the propriety of this transliterated Greek dative ending, cf. Quint. Inst. 4,1,77 ut Ovidius lascivire in Metamorphosesin solet.

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syllus’ double titles for Plato (e.g. D.L. 3,58, ‘Euthyphron or concerning holiness’), and seven of the double titles in the Lucianic corpus (e.g. öúy%/"2# . 1"~ $/2' ‘Anacharsis or concerning gymnastic schools’).30 Yet another possible form for a double title has two nominatives separated by a disjunctive, i.e. Asinus aureus sive metamorphoses (i.e. ‘golden ass or metamorphoses’).31 This is parallelled by eighteen of the double titles in the Lucianic corpus (e.g. !Ô! . 1X%/ ‘ship or prayers’),32 one double title attested for a satire by Varro (Dolium aut seria, ‘jar or serious matters’), and seven of Thrasyllus’' double titles for Plato (e.g. D.L. 3,59 "'3/"/# . 2!423/, ‘Protagoras or sophists’; there is even a triple title attested at D.L. 3,60: öý!~# . $31"€# 2ƒ!!# . 42!4!#, ‘Epinomis or nocturnal gathering or philosopher’). One final possibility is that the two transmitted titles of Apuleius’ text were originally one single title composed of nominative and genitive noun phrases, Metamorphoses asini aurei (i.e. ‘metamorphoses of a golden ass’). This too has parallels in Varro (e.g. the Greek 3/4| 1!$, ‘tomb of Menippus’ and the Latin armorum iudicium, ‘judgement of arms’), Lucian (e.g. $/# …! ‘eulogy of a fly’ ü…/3!# !# ‘life of Demonax’) and Thrasyllus (D.L. 3, !!/ '"y3!$#, ‘defence of Socrates’). More importantly, it seems to have a parallel in the principal Greek source for Apuleius’ ass-tale. The earliest witness to this text, Photius, refers to it as ‘metamorphoses of Lucius of Patrae’ or ‘metamorphoses of Lucius’;33 evidently Photius was reading an inscription featuring the word ‘metamorphoses’ alongside the name Lucius of Patrae (in the genitive). This is deliciously ambiguous: the genitive could denote the author, as is conventional in titular inscriptions (i.e. ‘“metamorphoses” written by Lucius of Patrae’); but it might equally refer to a subject (i.e. ‘“metamorphoses undergone by Lucius of ————— 30

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From the Lucianic corpus, öú$„.1"~13/!"4…21'(‘halcyon or about metamorphoses’), is particularly tantalising as a model for Apuleius’ title; this book, however, is unlikely to be by Lucian himself (see Macleod 1972, I x), so it is difficult to know whether the book, let alone its title, pre-dates Apuleius’ own publication. When Winkler 1985, 296 writes ‘A double title consisting of two nominatives in different languages would, I think, be unparalleled’, he evidently overlooks the fact that, after Ovid, the transliterated metamorphoses is accepted as a loanword by Latin. As has been seen, the epitome of Apuleius’ principal Greek source also has a double title !ƒ!#.P!# (i.e. ‘Lucius or ass). On the question of whether Lucian himself wrote this epitome, see Mason 1994, 1677–1681. Phot. Bibl. Codex 129; Codex 166.111b cf. the subscript on [Lucianus] Asin. in Vaticanus 90 (‘metamorphoses of Lucius’).

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Patrae”’).34 The revelation that the Greek text’s protagonist is indeed called Lucius of Patrae would bring this ambiguity into sharp focus. The title ‘metamorphoses of Lucius of Patrae’, it turns out, advertises precisely (but unexpectedly) the transformations of Lucius of Patrae, not only from man to ass, but also from (apparent) author to fictive protagonist. It seems possible that Apuleius has adapted the title of his Greek source, so that ‘metamorphoses of Lucius of Patrae’ becomes ‘metamorphoses of ass of gold’. The first term, Metamorphoses, is merely transliterated. The second term, asini, is a more complicated transformation of the original ‘Lucius’: Apuleius’ Lucius will, like his prototype, be metamorphosed temporarily into a ‘donkey’; but he is also permanently a fool (which asinus can also mean, unlike the Greek word for ‘donkey’, onos). Of course, the genitive in Apuleius’ title, like that in his source’s title, would be provocatively ambiguous: just as the Greek Metamorphoses purported to be written by its protagonist, ‘Lucius of Patrae’, Apuleius’ Metamorphoses purports to be written by an ‘ass’.35 Furthermore, asini might, at least at first, be read as the genitive of the gentile name Asinius, raising the question of who he is (quis ille?). As only the praenomen (Lucius) of Apuleius’ protagonist is ever made explicit in the text, it always remains possible that Asinius is Lucius’ nomen gentilicum.36 This possibility is recalled near the end of the text (Apul. Met. 11,27,7), where Lucius comments explicitly on the relevance to his own metamorphosis (reformatio mea) of the name Asinius (belonging to an Isiac priest whom Lucius encounters).37 So if the original title of Apuleius’ text were indeed Metamorphoses Asini Aurei, it might herald the transformation not only of a man into an asinus, but also of a man called (Lucius) Asinius into Lucius-the-asinus. Three possibile options for Apuleius’ title have now been investigated: Metamorphoses, or Asinus aureus, or a combination of both. If one were forced to choose between the two received titles, Asinus aureus should be ————— 34

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Cf. Mason 1994, 1669: ‘we must assume that Photios read a text of ‘Metamorphoseis’ in which “Lukios of Patrae” appeared to be the name of both author and narrator.’ Apuleius flirts with the possibility of an ass-scribe at Apul. Met. 6,25,1. See the excellent discussion of Winkler 1985, 44–45. At [Lucianus] Asin. 55, Lucius’ ‘other two names’ (!x0ƒ!L/3/) are also notoriously suppressed. If it is correct to identify the author Apuleius with the Ostian houseowner L. Apuleius Marcellus, then the Isiac priest called Asinius Marcellus (Apul. Met. 11,27,7) is apparently named after an influential Ostian patron and neighbour of Apuleius, Q. Asinius Marcellus; see Coarelli 1989, Beck 2000. In this case, the title might also involve a commemorative tribute to Apuleius’ neighbour (‘golden Asinius’).

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retained as the lectio difficilior. Any half-competent editor could easily supply the title Metamorphoses simply by reading Apuleius’ prologue, or by knowing the title of Apuleius’ main Greek source. It will, on the other hand, be amply demonstrated that Asinus aureus, while certainly meaningful, is obscure, ludic and paradoxical; and so it is more easily ascribed to the author’s playful wit than to a subsequent editor’s casual reconstruction.38 To my mind, putting both titles together is the most economical option, as it makes good sense of the double tradition; and, of the many possible permutations for a double title, Metamorphoses asini aurei is especially attractive, since its combination of nominative and dependent genitive finds precedent in the title of Apuleius’ principal Greek source, ‘the Metamorphoses of Lucius of Patrae’. Yet no matter whether one opts for a double title or for Asinus aureus alone, the titular phrase asinus aureus is inextricably associated with transformations; for even if the word metamorphoses is not an integral part of the title, transformations and the meaning of asinus aureus (quis ille?) are both thematised in the prologue. Indeed the phrase asinus aureus, like so many other things in Apuleius’ text, will be subjected to a series of transformations, lending it different, often unexpected significances. The rest of this paper is concerned with pursuing these significances.

Part 4: ‘Long-eared ass’ At the end of a stimulating paper on the thematic importance of ears and hearing to Apuleius’ work, James ‘mischievously’ proposes emending Augustine’s asinus aureus to asinus auritus, ‘long-eared ass’.39 James’ emendation neatly obviates any difficulties engendered by the epithet aureus, and furnishes a perfectly appropriate title for Apuleius’ text; it is also palaeographically plausible: Aug. C.D. 18,18 ASINIAURITITITULO could easily have been subsequently miscopied as ASINIAUREITITULO by haplography. Yet this emendation comes with problems of its own: for it seems unlikely that all subsequent editors of Apuleius should have adopted a difficult title (asinus aureus) based on a misreading of (or even by) Augustine, in preference to an easily under————— 38

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Pace Vallette in Robertson-Vallette 1940, xxiv, who argues for the reverse, on the grounds that Asinus aureus is ‘une désignation simple, claire et populaire’ (!?) whereas Metamorphoses is ‘vague et d'une propriété discutable’ (!!??). James 1991, 168f..

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stood title (James’ asinus auritus) inscribed, according to the theory, on the already existing editions of Apuleius’ text. Apuleius’ prologue, however, with all its insistence upon ‘offences’ to language and ‘shiftiness of voice’ (Apul. Met. 1,1,5–6), primes readers to expect a certain linguistic slipperiness. In such an unstable verbal environment, it becomes possible, without any need for James’ emendation, to perceive a pun on ‘ears’ in the titular asinus aureus. The Latin words for ‘ears’ (aures) and for ‘golden’ (aureus) are very similar in both their orthography and pronunciation. Thus although the plural noun aureae (‘reins’) is formally indistinguishable from the adjective aureae (‘golden’, feminine plural), the late second century C.E. scholar Festus defines and etymologises it in terms of aures (‘ears’): “Aureae is what they used to call the reins by which the ears (aures) of horses are secured.” Paul. Fest. p.27M40 In Apuleius’ text, an association between the titular aureus and ears is immediately suggested by the reference to aures in its very first sentence (Apul. Met. 1,1,1). Thereafter, considerable attention is paid to the ears of Lucius (the ass of the title): his human ears (Apul. Met. 1,20,6); their transformation into the ears of an ass (3,24,5); his asinine ears (6,32,3; 7,13,3; 7,18,3; 9,4,2; 9,15,6; 9,16,1);41 and their transformation back into those of a human (11,13,5). This emphasis on Lucius-the-ass’ ears invites readers to reinterpret the titular asinus aureus as an ‘“ear-y” ass’. After all, the word aureus can be described, just like Lucius’ transformed ears, as ‘aures with extravagant additions’ (Apul. Met. 3,24,5 aures immodicis…auctibus) or as ‘aures made abnormal’ (11,13,5 aures enormes). This aural pun, aptly enough, involves a metamorphosis of the expected meaning of Asinus aureus.

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Cf. Paul. Fest. 8M s.v. aureax. Festus (or indeed his Augustan source, Verrius Flaccus) distinguishes aureae from the (better attested) oreae, which he defines as reins attached to the os, or ‘mouth’ (Fest. p.182M; Paul. Fest. p.8M s.v. aureax, 183M). In fact, aureae and oreae may be alternative spellings of the same word; for the confusion of au and (long) o in Latin, see Allen 1965, 60-1, and indeed Paul. Fest. p.183M. Other quadrupeds’ ears are mentioned at Apul. Met. 1,2,3; 2,4,4; 3,26,7; 4,5,2 (another ass); 4,19,5 (dogs are described as auritos); 7,16,4. For further miscellaneous references to ears in the text, see 1,3,2; 2,2,6; 2,24,3; 2,30,5; 2,30,6; 2,30,9; 3,16,2; 5,3,5; 5,4,1; 5,5,1; 5,8,1; 5,28,6; 6,9,1; 8,6,4; 8,9,4; 9,14,1; 9,19,3; 10,15,6; 10,28,3; 11,9,6; 11,23,5.

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Part 5: Sethian readings of Asinus aureus Several Apuleian scholars have interpreted the title Asinus aureus as heralding cryptically the work’s surprising Isiac conclusion. The god Seth (or Typhon), who is the enemy of Isis and Osiris, is standardly figured as an ass in the Greco-Roman age. Thus asinus aureus can, in the light of the text’s dénouement, be reinterpreted as ‘Seth aureus’. There are then two different explanations of the meaning of aureus in this new Sethian context. The first is provided by Martin (1970), who suggests that it translates the Greek terms pyrrhos and pyrrhochrus, which Plutarch uses to describe the colour of Seth/Typhon.42 Winkler, for one, objects that ‘the brilliant yellow hue denoted by aureus’ is incompatible with the ‘dry desert red’ of pyrrhos;43 but Winkler overlooks the testimony of Aristotle, who states that gold is like fire (pyr) insofar as both are xanthos and pyrrhos.44 This assertion both acknowledges the etymology of pyrrhos (‘fiery’, from pyr), and plainly attests the propriety of describing gold as pyrrhos (as well as xanthos; cf. Pi. O. 7,49). The association between the colour of gold and of fire is also in evidence in Latin, where aureus can describe fire;45 and Apuleius himself describes gold as having a ‘flaming brilliance’ (Apul. Met. 9,19,1 auri...splendor flammeus).46 Thus it appears, contra Winkler, that aureus is a perfectly acceptable Latin term for Seth/Typhon’s Greek epithet, pyrrhos (literally ‘fiery’); the co-extension of the two terms is confirmed by a pun in Hor. Carm. 1,5, where Pyrrha (whose name transliterates the feminine of the Greek pyrrhos) is believed by her boyfriend to be ‘golden’ (1,5,9 aurea). In this light it makes good sense that an ass should be described as aureus, with particular reference to its colour, given that the overlapping Greek colour term pyrrhos is often used to describe animals (see LSJ s.v. $""# 3). The second Sethian explanation of aureus is developed by Winkler from Hani.47 This complicated reading of the title involves an interlinguistic pun in ————— 42 43 44

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Plu. Moralia 362E, 363A. Winkler 1985, 298. Arist. Metaph. 1054b13; for the proximity of pyrrhos to xanthos, cf. Gal. Mixt. 9,599K and Pl. Ti. 68C. For aureus describing flames or fire, Martin 1970, 349 cites Mart. 14,61 and Catul. 61,98–9. One might add Var. L. 7,83, Tiberianus fr. 5, and especially Lucr. 6,205 color aureus ignis (‘golden colour of fire’). Cited by Martin 1970, 350. Winkler 1985, 312–315; Hani 1973, 276.

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both Latin and Egyptian. The principal city of Seth’s worship is named in Egyptian Nbt, ‘Gold City’ (i.e. Ombos); accordingly in Egyptian mythology Seth is commonly given the epithet Nbty, ‘of Gold City’. Since Nbty also means ‘golden’ (from nb, ‘gold’), ‘Seth Nbty’ means both ‘Seth of Gold City’ and ‘Golden Seth’. Thus aureus can be understood to translate Seth’s epithet nbty.48 According to these interrelated ‘Egyptianising’ interpretations of Asinus aureus, Apuleius’ title encodes (for those in the know) not only the protagonist’s transformation into an ass, but also into the asinine embodiment of ‘golden’ Seth, the arch enemy of the goddess Isis with whom Lucius is ultimately reconciled in Book Eleven.

Part 6: A golden(-haired) ass It has already been seen that aureus can be used as a term denoting colour.49 The only internal evidence of Lucius’ colour is Byrrhena’s description of his hair as flavus (Apul. Met. 2,2,9 flavum et inadfectatum capillitium). Given the conventional synecdoche in Latin whereby persons with flavus hair can themselves be described as flavus or flava,50 Lucius himself can properly be designated flavus. This description might even be imagined to extend to Lucius after he has been transformed into an ass.51 The condition of Lucius’ hair is the first change mentioned in the account of both his metamorphosis into an ass and his subsequent anamorphosis into human form;52 yet there is no indication that the colour of his hair has also changed. Animals certainly can be flavus:53 one especially pertinent example is found in Ovid’s description of the centaur Chiron, half man, half horse, where it is specifically his latter, equine half which is flavus (Ov. Fast. 5,379f.). That flavus can be used to describe the ————— 48

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A similar (mis)translation of Seth’s Egyptian epithet may also underlie Plutarch’s designation of him as pyrrhos (Plu. Moralia 362E, 363A). See above, Part 5; see also Gel. 2,26,5. See e.g. Catul. 64,98; 68,130; Verg. G. 4,339; Hor. C. 2,4,14; 3,9,19; 4,4,4; Ov. Am. 1,1,7f.; 1,13,2; 1,15,35; 2,4,39; 3,7,23; Ov. Met. 3,617; 9,715. Cf. the use of ‘blonde’ in English. For the retention of colour after metamorphosis, see e.g. Ov. Met. 1,236-237; 1,743; 9,320-321; 11,404-405; 14,555. Apul. Met. 3,24,4; 11,13,3; cf. also 10,15,3 for changes in the ‘lustre’ (nitor) of Lucius’ hair. E.g. Col. 8,2,9 (a rooster’s hackle); Stat. Theb. 4,154f. (lions’ skins), Silv. 1,2,226 (fawnskin); Cassius Felix 5 (fox hair).

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colour of animal as well as human hair is confirmed by the second appearance of the word in Apuleius’ text: when Photis tries to deceive her mistress Pamphile, the hairs from goatskins (utres caprini) which she substitutes for the hairs of a Boeotian man are ‘flavus-coloured and therefore just like that young Boeotian’ (Apul. Met. 3,17,2 capillos…flavos ac per hoc illi Boeotio iuveni consimiles). It therefore seems that Lucius, both as (foolish) human and as ass, might properly be described as asinus flavus. This is only a slight transformation of Apuleius’ title, since the use of flavus as an exact synonym of aureus is well attested.54 The equivalence of flavus to the colour of gold is foregrounded by the third use of the term in Apuleius’ text: a tuft of golden fleece (called coma, or ‘hair’, at Apul. Met. 6,11,6) which Psyche fetches for Venus is expressly described as ‘soft flavus-coloured gold’ (6,13,1 flaventis auri mollities). And just as gold can be described as flavus-coloured, hair can be described as ‘golden’;55 thus Cupid is said to have hair with a ‘golden sheen’ (Apul. Met. 5,30,6 comas…aureo nitore..; cf. 5,22,4); and Lucius’ eulogy on hair singles out its ‘pleasing colour and brilliant sheen’ which is at times ‘flashing with gold’ (Apul. Met. 2,9,1f. capillis color gratus et nitor splendidus illucet…nunc aurum coruscans…). So, Lucius, the ass of the title, who has flavus-coloured hair, might be described as aureus.56 It is the colour of Lucius’ hair (and perhaps also his bristles) which brings meaning to the titular phrase Asinus aureus.57 This reading suggests that the text’s title, or nomen, is derived from a quadruped (asinus) and its colour (aureus). An incident late in the text dramatises precisely how a quadruped’s colour can prove interchangeable with a ————— 54

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Flavus is used, e.g., to describe the colour of gold itself (Verg. A. 1,592-593); of gold coins (Mart. 14,12,1f.; note especially 12,65,6, where flavus is used substantively to replace aureus, ‘gold coin’); and of the hair of Pyrrha (Hor. Carm. 1,5,4), whose very name is a Greek colour term which can describe gold (see above, Part 5), and who is herself described as aurea (Hor. Carm. 1,5,9), For aureus used of hair, see e.g. Ov. Am. 1,4,9-10; Ov. Met. 12,395-396; and note the compound auricomus (Verg. A. 6,141; V.Fl. 4,92; Sil. 3,608). Lucius Verus, who was Marcus Aurelius’ coemperor 161-169 C.E. (during Apuleius’ lifetime), and whose name, significantly for Apuleius’ text, means ‘the Real Lucius’, also apparently had hair with a flavus/aureus connection. According to the historian Julius Capitolinus, Lucius Verus ‘is said to have taken such great care of his flavus-coloured hair, that he would sprinkle shavings of gold (aurum) on his head, in order that his brightened hair might seem all the more flavus’ (SHA Verus 10,7); I am indebted to Eric Varner for this reference. For the general significance of hair as a motif in the Golden Ass, see Englert-Long 1973.

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nomen: Lucius is perplexed by a dream promising the return of a slave ‘Candidus by name’ (Apul. Met. 11,20,1 nomine Candidum), especially since he is quite certain that he has never had a slave with such a name (11,20,2). The solution to this onomastic riddle soon emerges: the slave named Candidus turns out to be Lucius’ horse, which is candidus, or ‘white’, in colour (11,20,7 equum…colore candidum). In fact the horse’s white colour has been known all along: right at the beginning of the narrative it was designated as ‘all white’ (Apul. Met. 1,2,2 equo indigena peralbo), and it was later casually described (or even possibly named) as candidus (7,2,1). Thus the horse’s colour has given rise to its nomen (Candidus) in Lucius’ riddling dream. Similarly, it is the colour of Lucius-the-ass’ hair, said to be flavus early in the text (Apul. Met. 2,2,9), which helps to explain his nomen (asinus aureus), presented as a riddle in the text’s title.58

Part 7: Antiphrastic advertisement for an un-golden ass Is there an asinus in Apuleius’ text which is ever, in any straightforward material sense, ‘golden’? James complains that there are only four passages in the entire text where the ass-protagonist is directly associated with gold:59 1) Charite promises to adorn Lucius with golden medallions (Apul. Met. 6,28,6); 2) Lucius is laden with treasure, including gold, seized from the robbers (Apul. Met. 7,13,6; 3) a stolen golden goblet is found, which Lucius has been inadvertently carrying on his back (Apul. Met. 9,10,1; cf. 9,9,5);60 ————— 58

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The name of Achilles’ immortal horse Xanthos (Hom. Il. 16,149) is expressly connected by Eustathius (ad Il. 1,197) with the xanthos colour of its hair; and the colour xanthos, like pyrrhos and flavus, conforms to the colour of gold (see above, Part 5). Thus Xanthos from Homer is Apuleius’ prime literary model for a quadruped named after the ‘golden’ colour of its hair. Lucius also inherits from Homer’s Xanthos his ability (unusual for a quadruped) to show a tearful expression (Apul. Met. 11,1,4 lacrimoso vultu; cf. Hom. Il. 17,427 and 437-440). James 1991, 169. As it happens, onos, the Greek word for ‘ass’, is also used to mean ‘goblet’: see Ar. V. 616-7; Posid. fr.2 (FgrHist iii,225); cf. PA 14,28,1-2 (with Buffière 1970, 174 n.10). So it seems that Apuleius’ references here to a ‘golden goblet’ (Apul. Met. 9,9,5 aureum cantharum; 9,10,1 aureum...cantharum) might involve a riddling evocation (and transformation) of the titular ‘golden ass(-goblet)’. His description of another ‘golden goblet’ as ‘carefully polished’ (10,16,19 lautum diligenter ecce illum aureum cantharum) might re-

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4) Thiasus decks out Lucius with valuable trappings, including golden disks, for a triumphant return to Corinth (Apul. Met. 10,18,4). James’ claim is that these examples are too few, and too vague, to justify acceptance of the title Asinus aureus. They do not, as it were, fit the bill. Yet the very conspicuousness with which the protagonist fails to be golden can equally be regarded as a reason to retain Asinus aureus.61 Apuleius’ work constantly keeps in play the initial expectation of its title and yet at the same time assiduously frustrates that very expectation.62 There are many passages in the text which teasingly draw special attention both to the title Asinus aureus and to Lucius’ failure to live up to it. In Book Three, for example, the magistrates of Hypata offer to honour Lucius with a commemorative statue: “‘And the whole city...has decreed that your likeness be set up in bronze (in aere staret imago tua).’” Apul. Met. 3,11,5 This decree to make an imago of Lucius recalls, and promises to fulfil, the prologue’s advertisement of men transformed into other imagines (Apul. Met. 1,1,2). Yet the title’s promise of gold is markedly frustrated, as the magistrates are expressly proposing to represent the form of Lucius (the titular ass) in bronze. Thus, the asinus aureus announced by the title has here been downgraded to an asinus aereus. This is precisely a transformation of the expected ‘golden ass’. Of course monetary transactions in the Roman empire are measured in metal: 250 (copper) asses = 100 (copper alloy) sestertii = 25 (silver) denarii = 1 (golden) aureus.63 Thus the ‘gold’ in Apuleius’ title might allude to financial ————— 61

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fer as much to the literary refinement of the ‘Golden Ass’, as it does to the rinsed sheen of the golden vessel. Cf. Genette 1997, 82f. On the type of thematic title which ‘functions by antiphrasis, or irony, either because the title formas an antithesis to the work...or because the title displays a provocative absence of thematic relevance...The non-relevance also may be only apparent...’. A similar titular flirtation is to be found in Lucian’s narrative entitled ‘True stories’. For while its historical form continuously evokes the meaning of its title, its patently fictitious content exposes the inappropriateness of its title. This is an amusing, and thoroughly acceptable, incongruity. Apuleius himself apparently had a keen interest in the history of monetary conversions: (Prisc. in G.L. 2,250f.) ‘Apuleius says in the Epitome: “But at that time a sestertius was

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transaction;64 and episodes in the text which involve monetary exchange have the potential to explain the title Asinus aureus, because any ‘ass’ can be said to be ‘golden’ if its price is at least an aureus.65 One such episode, in which the title Asinus aureus at first seems to be played out in terms of monetary value, but is then repeatedly disappointed, comes long before Lucius himself has metamorphosed into asinine form. At Apul. Met. 1,24,3f Lucius sees some fish on sale for 100 sestertii. The price is striking, both because it is the first explicit price found in the text, and because it amounts to exactly one aureus, corresponding to the value quoted in the title. The type of fish on sale for an aureus is not specified in the text, but as it happens, there is a common fish known to the ancients as an ‘ass’: the Greeks named it simply onos, ‘ass’ (LSJ s.v. P!# II), while the Romans called it asellus, the diminutive of asinus (OLD s.v. asellus 3).66 Apuleius, who wrote books on fish in both Greek (Apol. 36,8; 37,4; 38,1–4) and Latin (Apol. 38,5–9), and who took special pride in his ability to find Latin translations for the Greek names of fish (Apol. 38,5–9), was certainly familiar with the fish called ‘ass’ (Apol. 40,11 aselli piscis). So readers who are eager to identify the puzzling ‘golden ass’ of Apuleius’ title might well imagine (at least momentarily) that the fish on sale for an aureus at Apul. Met. 1,24,3f is an ‘ass’. For Apuleius appears to be exploiting the possibility that an ‘ass’ can be a type of fish:67 the scene in which a fish is sold for exactly one aureus dangles before the reader a possible solution to the riddling title.68 Lucius, however, in keeping with his status as a business————— 64

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worth a dipondium and a half as, a quinarius was worth five asses, and a denarius was worth ten asses.”’ Similarly, four of Varro's Menippeae have titles which refer to monetary value and financial exchange: i) Magnum Talentum; ii) Sexagessis (‘Worth sixty copper halfpennies’); iii) Octogessis [1"~!2y3'@ (‘Worth eighty copper halfpennies [On coinages]’); iv) Sardi venales (‘Sardinians for sale’); cf. Plautus Trinummus. While aureus does not usually denote ‘worth an aureus’, in a monetary context it can certainly carry that connotation: note especially the opening pitch of Plin. Ep. 2,20,1: ‘Have your as ready and you’ll get a story worth gold (auream fabulam)...’, which plays on the contrast between as and aureus. For a detailed account of the fish called onos/asellus, see Thompson 1947, 182–183. The ambiguity whereby onos/asellus can refer to both a donkey and a type of fish is also exploited by Petr. 24,7 (see Sullivan 1968, 225) and by a Greek ‘ass’ riddle (PA 14,28, with Buffière 1970, 47-48 and 174). It is perhaps relevant to Apuleius’ Asinus aureus that Plin. Nat. 9.58 lists alongside the fish asellus another fish called aurata (so-named for its golden colour; see Fest. p.182M, Paul. Fest. p.183M, s.v. orata). For that matter, Aus. Mos. 120f mentions a type of fish

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man (Apul. Met. 1,2,1), quickly haggles the price of the fish down to twenty denarii. Thus just at the moment where Apuleius’ mysterious title seems about to be realised in the text, his foolish protagonist rejects its ‘golden’ price, cheapening, so to speak, the value promised by his own text’s title. In the sequel to this episode, when Lucius’ old schoolfriend Pythias, now an officious market inspector in Hypata, hears the price which Lucius has paid for his fish, he marches back to the fishmonger and berates him: “‘So now...you do not even spare my friends or indeed any visitors, in that you mark up worthless fish at such high prices (tam magnis pretiis pisces frivolos indicatis)…’” Apul. Met. 1,25,3 Pythias’ words here are applicable as much to Apuleius himself as to the fishmonger (note the second plural endings). Just as the fishmonger advertises fish, Apuleius advertises Asinus (which can be a type of fish, onos/asellus). Just as the fishmonger is accused of attaching an artificially high price to his fish which is not reflected by the quality of the product itself, Apuleius prices his Asinus with the value aureus. Thus Pythias’ words can be taken as humorously reflexive, alluding to the false gleam of gold in Apuleius’ title. In any case, the possibility that Asinus aureus might be explained as ‘golden fish’ ends up being nothing more than a red herring. Once Lucius has been literally transformed into an ass, he becomes a commodity himself. Each time he is passed from one master to another, he is assigned a different monetary value. Thus as the ass-protagonist’s price shifts, his progress towards becoming, as it were, ‘golden’ (i.e. towards becoming worth no less than an aureus), can be accurately gauged: a) Apul. Met. 8,23,6a professional auctioneer expresses his readiness to give Lucius away for nothing. b) Apul. Met. 8,24,3: the auctioneer talks up Lucius’ worth and (8,25,6) sells him to the priest Philebus for 17 denarii (c. two thirds of an aureus). c) Apul. Met. 9,10,5 the miller buys Lucius ‘for seven nummi more than Philebus had previously paid for me’. The word nummi is ambiguous: it could

————— called Lucius (see Thompson 1947, 151–152); Apuleius’ protagonist is first explicitly named Lucius in the course of the fish episode (Apul. Met. 1,24,6).

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refer either to sestertii or to denarii.69 If the former, Lucius has progressed to 75 sestertii (three quarters of an aureus); if the latter, he has progressed to a staggering 24 denarii. On this reading, Lucius-the-ass is but a single denarius short of being worth an aureus, and so tantalisingly close, but not quite close enough, to fulfilling the promise of his title. This is that rare phenomenon, an accounting joke. d) Apul. Met. 9,31,3: a gardener buys Lucius for fifty nummi. Given the emphasis on the gardener’s excessive poverty (9,31,3; 9,32,3–4) this must surely mean 50 sestertii (half an aureus). e) Apul. Met. 10,13,2: we are told rather emphatically that although Lucius cost the soldier absolutely nothing (sine pretio), he is sold on to Thiasus’ slaves for 11 denarii (under half an aureus). f) Apul. Met. 10,17,1: Thiasus purchases Lucius from his slaves for four times what they paid (servis suis emptoribus meis iubet quadruplum restitui pretium); this is 44 denarii (nearly two aurei). It is only near the end of his adventures, in this last transaction, that Lucius-the-ass brings the golden price promised by the title.70 Yet under the ownership of Thiasus, when Lucius’ monetary value has reached its highest point, his moral value plummets to its lowest point: he becomes a prostitute to the Corinthian matron, and is assigned to perform a public act of sex with a convicted mass murderer, before at last fleeing to the salvation of a goddess. So the ‘golden’ value of the ass, when it is finally attained, is immediately called into question and found somewhat wanting. Indeed, the title’s promise of an ass which is golden in value proves to be, for the most part, nothing more than the seductive hook of an author with something to sell: a deliberately hyped advertisement of dodgy goods worth less than their stated price.71

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Hijmans et al. 1985, 220 interprets nummi here as denarii, with references; Hijmans et al. 1995, 270 reinterprets nummi here as sestertii, with different references. The jury is still out. In fact there are two further values, this time unspecified, which attach to Lucius: the curious pay Lucius’ overseer ‘not inconsiderable’ sums to see the ass’ antics (Apul. Met. 10,19,1 non mediocri quaestui; 10,19,2 non parvas summulas); and finally the Corinthian matron pays the overseer ‘large’ sums for the opportunity of intercourse with the ass (10,19,4 grandi...praemio; 10,23,1 mercedes amplissimas). In both these cases, the specific prices involved remain a mystery. Cf. the smooth patter employed by the professional auctioneer to sell his worthless ass at Apul. Met. 8,24,3f..

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Part 8: ‘Gold debased with bronze’ Besides its function as an adjective, the masculine of aureus can be a substantive: an aureus (sc. nummus, ‘coin’) is a Roman coin, minted from gold. Seeing that elsewhere in Apuleuis’ text aureus is often used substantively to denote this gold coin, it is worthwhile considering what the title might signify if its masculine aureus is likewise a substantive.72 This would necessitate reading asinus as an adjective. Apuleius’ prologue prompts the reader to expect verbal shiftiness and deviation from linguistic norms (Apul. Met. 1,1,5–6), so one need not feel too concerned that there is in fact no adjective asinus attested in Latin.73 If aureus is construed as a substantive, then it evokes the most valuable coin in Roman currency; in this monetary context, asinus can readily be construed as an adjective formed from as, the word for a humble copper coin whose worthlessness was proverbial (see OLD s.v. as 2).74 This ‘coined’ adjective would mean something like ‘made of a bronze penny’. Thus the paradoxical asinus aureus would denote a gold coin that is debased with bronze, or counterfeit. Three factors make such a reading of the title pertinent to the overall text. The first is that the Latin word family used to denote debased or counterfeit metals and coins (adulter-) also denotes sexual adultery, which is a central motif of Apuleius’ text. Apuleius employs adulter-words almost exclusively to refer to his characters’ sexual infidelities;75 but three exceptions highlight the word’s alternative meaning ‘counterfeit’, thus associating adulter-cognates with the title’s punning announcement of debased metals:

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Aureus is used substantively by Apuleius at Apul. Met. 2,22,5; 2,26,5; 7,4,2; 7,8,2; 9,18,4; 10,9,3; 10,12,4; aureus is conjoined to the noun nummus at 4,8,2; 9,19,4. The noun asinus is modified with an adverb, as though it were an adjective, at Apul. Met. 7,21,1 (nimis asinum); 10,13,7 (tam...vere asinus); see Hijmans et al. 1981, 216 ad loc.; Zimmerman 2000, 209 ad loc.. In Latin, -inus is a productive adjectival suffix (cf., e.g., asin-inus). Compounds formed from as have a double ‘s’ (assiforanus, assipondium), so that one might expect assinus rather than asinus; but Ahl 1985, 57 states as one of his principles of punning in Latin: ‘The fact that one word has a doubled consonant and the other only a single consonant does not prevent wordplay’. Adulter- words used in the text to denote sexual infidelity: Apul. Met. 2,27,5; 2,29,5; 6,13,3; 6,22,4; 6,23,2; 7,16,3; 7,22,2; 8,3,1; 9,4,4; 9,5,2; 9,5,6; 9,7,5; 9,7,6; 9,15,4; 9,21,2; 9,22,3; 9,22,5; 9,22,6; 9,23,2; 9,24,1; 9,27,2; 9,27,4; 9,28,3; 9,28,4; 9,31,1; 10,22,4.

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1) At Apul. Met. 4,16,2 robbers trick Demochares ‘with that “adulterated” letter’ (cum litteris illis adulterinis). In context adulterinus clearly means ‘counterfeit’ (cf. 4,16,1 litteras adfingimus, ‘we make up a letter’).76 2) At Apul. Met. 6,13,3 Venus declares: nec me praeterit huius quoque facti auctor adulterinus. Kenney rightly detects an ambiguity in these words, which he says can mean both ‘I know who is the licentious agent behind this deed too’ (where adulterinus denotes infidelity) or ‘It does not escape me that the doer of this deed too is not the real one’ (where adulterinus denotes counterfeit).77 3) Most telling, however, are the words uttered by the cunning doctor of Book Ten: ne forte aliquis...istorum quos offers aureorum nequam vel adulter repperiatur... Apul. Met. 10,9,3 “lest any of those golden coins which you offer should be found worthless or counterfeit...”. Here the doctor uses aureus substantively to mean ‘gold coin’, and describes this gold coin with adjectives meaning ‘counterfeit’ or ‘debased’. This is a studied reflection of the titular Asinus aureus in its transfigured sense ‘gold coin debased with bronze’; indeed, it directs the reader towards just such an interpretation of the title. Furthermore, by using the word adulter to denote monetary debasement, this passage (which comes in a tale concerned with sexual adultery) subtly shifts the terms of the title: Asinus aureus has come to signify not only a ‘gold coin debased with bronze’, but also adulterium more generally. Given the thematic prominence of adultery in this text, it is only appropriate that it should be advertised in the title. It need hardly be added that adulterium, as its etymology suggests (ad + alter, ‘to’ + ‘other’), is itself a variety of metamorphosis.78 ————— 76

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This can be read as a metaliterary reference to Apuleius’ own written text (litterae), which is itself ‘adulterous’ in three respects: 1) it is fictive (‘counterfeit’, like the thieves’ letters); 2) it includes many tales of adultery; 3) its title, Asinus aureus, alludes punningly to adulterium. Kenney 1990, 208 ad loc.. In context Venus is stating her awareness of Cupid’s hand in Psyche’s successes; but the phrase facti auctor adulterinus can also be understood to refer to Apuleius himself, the overall auctor who counterfeits what happens in the story. See e.g. Ov. Fast. 1,373 ille (sc. Proteus) sua faciem transformis adulterat arte.

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A second reason for reading Asinus aureus as ‘gold coin debased with bronze’ is that counterfeit coinage can be used as a metaphor for fiction. Thus Lucian advises historians to avoid writing ‘outright fiction’ (3€ !0Ç $í01#) in their texts, on the grounds that critical readers of history “examine each expression like money-changers ("$"/!í#), rejecting at once what is counterfeit (/"/1!{/), but accepting what is approved and legal tender, correctly minted (3x0//~$!//~ "Æ3€3ƒ!)…” Lucianus Hist. Conscr. 10 So Apuleius’ title, when construed as referring to a counterfeit gold coin, is a ‘brazen’ advertisement of the ‘debased’ fiction to come. Caveat emptor. The third reason for reading Asinus aureus as ‘the debasement of gold with bronze’, like the second, involves a metaphor for fiction. There was a highly valued alloy of gold, silver and bronze known as ‘Corinthian bronze’ (aes Corinthium). The production of genuine Corinthian bronze ceased with the sack of Corinth in 146 B.C.E.;79 yet by Apuleius’ time a number of myths about the treasured alloy and its origins had seized the popular imagination. In one such myth, transmitted by Pliny (Plin. Nat. 34,6, this amalgam of metals emerged by accident in the conflagration which followed the capture of Corinth. In Petronius’ Satyrica, the character Trimalchio tells a humorously garbled version of this myth: “When Troy was captured, Hannibal, a crafty man and a great trickster, heaped up all the statues, bronze and golden and silver, onto the one pyre and set fire to them; they unified into a hotchpotch of bronze. So craftsmen took pieces out of this lump and made bowls and plates and statuettes. That’s how Corinthian bronzes were produced, from the whole lot joined together, neither one kind nor the other.” Petr. 50,5–6 This is an extraordinarily reflexive passage:80 the origins of Corinthian bronze, described as a confused amalgam of disparate elements, are presented in a speech which is itself a confused amalgam of disparate elements; and Trimalchio’s speech appears in a text which is in its turn a confused amalgam of dis————— 79 80

See Emanuele 1989 Cf. Connors 1998, 21: ‘this story of Corinthian bronze has a programmatic or metapoetic significance’.

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parate elements. If the title Asinus aureus is interpreted as denoting a bronze/gold amalgam, Apuleius might be following Petronius in using a prized metal alloy as a powerful metaphor for the heterogeneous, syncretic nature of his prose fiction, where myth and history, the high and the low, the valuable and the frivolous, all amalgamate into something precious and ingenious. How appropriate, then, that Lucius-the-ass should finally achieve his miraculous reintegration and conversion in, of all places, Corinth – the city where gold and bronze were transformed into a perfect unity.

Part 9: The entomological subtext (‘insects in chrysallis’) The important rôle and unifying significance of insects in Apuleius’ text have not been properly recognised. In this last section I shall trace the complex network of references to insects (the entomological subtext), and then consider what further light they cast on the metamorphoses of Psyche and of Lucius, and on the interpretation of Apuleius’ title. Several of Apuleius’ characters are endowed with names which have entomological associations. The first such character encountered in the text is the witch Pamphile, who has two connections with the insect world. The first is her name:81 both Aristotle and Pliny, in their discussion of the metamorphic stages of the silk-moth, describe how the worms’ cocoons can be unravelled and rewoven into silk;82 they ascribe the invention of this process to the daughter of Plateas of Cos, who is called Pamphile. There is a ludic correspondence between Apuleius’ and Aristotle’s respective Pamphiles: for just as Apuleius’ witch can magically transform human appearance into the guise of animals, her namesake famously dressed humans in a fabric woven from insects. The second association of Apuleius’ Pamphile with insects is opened up by the fact that her husband is called Milo: for, according to Iamblichus, the wife of (another) Milo, the famous athlete of Croton, was called Myia, which

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For other Pamphiles, without entomological associations, who may also have influenced Apuleius’ choice of the name, see Bitel 2000, 68 n.171. Arist. HA 551b Plin. Nat. 11.76. Silk clothing features in Apuleius’ text at Apul. Met. 4,8,2 vestisque serica et intextae filis aureis; 4,31,7 serico tegmine; 6,28,6 sinu serico; 8,27,1 bombycinis iniecti; 8,27,3 serico...amiculo; 10,34,4 veste serica; 11,8,2 serica veste.

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is Greek for a ‘fly’; 83 and elsewhere in Apuleius’ text it is revealed that Thessalian witches (like Milo’s wife) can take on the form of ‘birds, and in turn dogs and mice and – what is more – even flies’ (Apul. Met. 2,22,3). The famous tale which spans the three central books of Apuleius’ text is dominated by a rather less obscure insect-character. This tale’s protagonist is called Psyche, which is of course the Greek word for ‘soul’;84 but it is also Greek for the insect ‘butterfly’. 85 Indeed, Schlam shows that from as early as the fifth century B.C.E. Psyche was being portrayed in the plastic arts with the wings of a butterfly.86 By the time Apuleius wrote his work, the iconography of Psyche as a girl with butterfly wings had become completely conventionalised, so that Apuleius’ readers would be culturally predisposed to associate Psyche with the insect which shared her name in Greek. The characters with the most obvious entomological associations of all both appear in the same adultery tale in Book Nine. The tale is introduced by its narrator with the question: “‘Do you know a certain Barbarus, an alderman of our town, whom the people call Scorpio because of the fierceness of his character?’” Apul. Met. 9,17,1 Apart from the priest Asinius Marcellus (Apul. Met. 11,27,7), Barbarus is the only human character in Apuleius’ text to be endowed with more than one name;87 and his nickname, Scorpio, is lent great emphasis because it is not

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Iamb. VP 267; Pythagoras was the father of this Myia (Clem.Al. Strom. 4,19,121; Porph. VP 3; Lucianus Musc.Enc; Suid. s.v. Theano and Myia), no doubt naming her after an insect because of his theories of metempsychosis. For the relevance of Pythagorean metempsychosis to the theme of metamorphosis, see Ov. Met. 15,60-478. Apuleius also refers respectfully to Pythagoras in his final book (Apul. Met. 11,1,4 divinus ille Pythagoras). Kenney 1990, 16 lists several appearances in the text of etymological puns which underline the derivation of Psyche from ‘soul’, marking the tale as an allegory of the soul: Apul. Met. 5,6,7; 5,6,9 ; 5,13,4. Psyche = ‘butterfly’: Arist. HA 551a14; 551a24; Thphr. HP 2,4,4; Plu. Moralia 636C; cf. Beavis 1988, 121f.. Schlam, 1992, 90–1. Tlepolemus merely pretends to have a different name at Apul. Met. 7,5,6. Divine characters, who should be distinguished from human characters, go by many different names (6,4,1f.; 11,2,1f.; 11,5,1f.).

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merely stated, but also explained.88 Here Apuleius explicitly informs his readers that Scorpio is a redende Name, derived from the proverbially aggressive scorpion. Of course, according to ancient taxonomy, scorpions are insects.89 Several lines later it is revealed that Barbarus/Scorpio’s slave is called Myrmex (Apul. Met. 9,17,3); this name is the Greek for ‘ant’, another insect.90 The presence in the text of four characters who are linked by name to insects (including the central figure Psyche) suggests that entomology may be something of a leitmotif – a system of signification deeply encoded within Apuleius’ text. To appreciate the range of meaningful associations which this entomological subtext brings to Apuleius’ text and its title, it will first be necessary to consider ancient theories of insects and their generation. Aristotle describes the life-cycle of insects in his work de Generatione Animalium:  “Insects first produce a larva; the larva develops and becomes egg-like (for what is called a ‘chrysallis’ is in effect an egg); then from this an animal is born which, in its third metamorphic stage, has achieved the perfection of its birth ( 3Ç 3"3Ä 13/!Ç /€ 3€ 3Æ# 1{21'# 3{!#).” Arist. GA 733b12f Aristotle clearly thinks that there are three distinct stages in the generation of insects.91 In a subsequent, more detailed discussion of insects, Aristotle says that the second stage is clearly observable (0Æ!) in the case of bees, wasps

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Apuleius appears to delight in (multiple) explanations of nicknames. In the Apologia, he cites and explains two separate nicknames for Aemilianus: ‘Mezentius’ (Apul. Apol. 56,7) and ‘Charon’ (Apul. Apol. 23,7; 56,7). The latter nickname is explained as alluding not only to the undeserved legacies which Aemilianus has gained from the many deaths of his relatives, but also to his frightful visage and temperament. Arist. HA 555af and Plin. Nat. 11,86f & 11,100 include scorpions in their treatment of insects. Though renowned for his faithfulness (Apul. Met. 9,17,3), Myrmex becomes the perfidious pimp of his master’s wife. This radical metamorphosis of Myrmex’s character is brought about by the seductive gleam of ‘gold coins’, or aurei (9,18,4–19,4) – as advertised by the title. Hijmans 1978, 111 and n.32 rightly draws attention to the association of Myrmex’s name with the mythical myrmex chrysorychos (‘gold-digging ant’) of Hdt. 3,102 et al.; for which, see Beavis 1988, 209f. Cf. Arist. GA 759a3 3"1Æ(‘thrice-born’); GA 758b27. Modern entomology identifies these three stages as larva, pupa and imago respectively; while these terms derive from Latin, they are not so used in the ancient world.

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and caterpillars (Arist. GA 758b19);92 but nonetheless he states that in theory this tripartite life-cycle holds true for all insects without exception (Arist. GA 758b6f.; cf. HA 551a26f.). The transitions of insects from one life phase to the next are described either as births ({12#/12//3"1Æ) or, more importantly, as metamorphoses.93 Several considerations make this entomological theory highly relevant to a reading of Apuleius’ text. First, it has already been argued that Apuleius’ text most probably had a double title, part of which concerns metamorphoses. Apuleius’ prologue then picks up this theme and takes it further, expressly promising metamorphoses which will have three distinct stages: Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Figuras fortunasque hominum | in alias imagines conversas | et in se rursum...refectas Apul. Met. 1,1,2 “People’s figures and fortunes | transformed into other images | and returned again to themselves”

The life-cycle of insects, as has been seen, provides an observable model not only for metamorphoses in general, but for tripartite metamorphoses in particular. The third stage of an insect’s cycle is not in fact the same as the first, so that an insect does not, strictly speaking, return to itself (in se rursum). Nor, however, are Apuleius’ characters restored to exactly the same status as they had at the beginning: Psyche is not returned to her homeland and her parents as the virgin she was, but is instead immortalised in heaven, becoming a wife and a mother (Apul. Met. 6,23,5–24,4); and Lucius is not, in the end, a businessman travelling through Greece, as he was at the beginning (Apul. Met. 1,2,1), but an Isiac priest settled in Rome (Apul. Met. 11,30,4–5). Insects, it seems, offer a more precise model for the tripartite metamorphoses in the text than the simpler tripartite process outlined in the text’s prologue. Entomology also furnishes a context for understanding the ‘ass’ of Apuleius’ title. There are several insects which go by the name ‘ass’ in the ancient ————— 92

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Similarly Ovid states that the transformation of larvae into woven cocoons and thence into butterflies is ‘a thing subject to observation’ (Ov. Met. 15, 373 res observata). Insects are metamorphic: Arist. GA 733b16 13/!}; GA 758b14 3€Q!13/y1, ‘total tranformation’; HA 553a10 13/!/; HA 551b13  Ú1  0z 2~ 13/y1 3/ƒ3/# 3x# !"4x# y2/#, ‘in six months it goes through all these changes in shape’; Plin. Nat. 11,120 mutationes et in alias figuras transitus; Ov. Met. 15,373–4 agrestes tineae...ferali mutant cum papilione figuram.

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world. For example, the Greek word for ‘ass’, onos, and its diminutive, oniscos, is used to refer to a kind of pill bug. Most of the references to this insect are preserved in technical or medical texts,94 but one telling exception suggests that usage of the word was not restricted to specialists: a fragment from the tragedian Sophocles uses the ‘ass’-insect as the vehicle of a simile: “rolled up like a pea-like ‘ass’” [= ‘pill-woodlouse’; cf. Hsch. and Phot. S. Fr. 363 s.v. P!# <22"!#.] This insect is also known to writers in Latin. Pliny preserves the Greek diminutive in a Latinised form, oniscus (Plin. Nat. 29,136; 30,53; 30,68); and later glossarists and medical writers use the Latin diminutive asellus to refer to the same creature.95 It seems plausible that Apuleius’ titular asinus might allude to this insect. A second insect called ‘ass’ is described by Dioscorides: “The locust called ‘asiracus’ or ‘ass’ (2"/!#.P!#) is wingless and large-limbed when fresh. When it has been dried out, it benefits those who have been stung badly by scorpions if it is taken with wine. It is used to excess by the Libyans around Leptis.” Diosc. 2,57 While this locust is only mentioned in medical texts, it would have been particularly familiar to Africans like Apuleius, as it was evidently common in many regions of North Africa. Dioscorides speaks of its use amongst the Libyans, and Galen (12,366K locates the same ‘asiracus’ in the areas around Egypt († 3!Ô# /3ö ú@$3! %'"!#). This insect is another possible candidate for Apuleius’ titular asinus. The metamorphoses of insects are regarded as teleological: a gradual passage towards perfection. Aristotle says:

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Onosis used at Thphr. fr. 185 (Wimmer); Thphr. HP 4,3,6 (citing the Libyans, Apuleius’ neighbours, as his source); Galen 13,111K, 13,113K; the Cyranides (p.271; Diosc. 2,35; Paulus of Aegina 7,3. oniscos is used at Galen 12,366K, 12,634K; Corpus Glossarum 2,24,1; 2,24,4; 3,400,64; 3,439,72. See Beavis 1988, 14–15. Asellus: Corpus Glossarum 2,24,1; 2,24,4; 3,400,64; 3,439,72; Cass.Fel. p.44; Theodorus Prisc. Eup. 2.44; Cael.Aur. Chron. 1,119; 1,129. See Beavis 1988, 14.

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“...the creature emerges, as though from an egg, perfected at its third birth (3112z ~ 3Æ# 3"3# 1{21'#).”  Arist. GA 758b2796 Perhaps the best external indication that an insect has completed its metamorphoses and achieved ‘perfection’ is its development of wings and the ability to fly. Aristotle’s and Pliny’s descriptions of different insects make it clear that, for those insects which do indeed develop wings, the power of flight comes only in the final stage of metamorphosis.97 It is therefore striking that the metamorphic careers of many of Apuleius’ characters are similarly motivated by a desire to grow wings for flight. The witch Pamphile intends to use magical transformation so that she can fly to her lover: “Photis indicates...that her mistress [Pamphile]...will feather herself into a bird and fly down like that to the object of her desire.” Apul.Met. 3,21,1 Shortly afterwards Lucius watches Pamphile do precisely that: “Pamphile turns into an owl...; soon she is raised aloft and flies out of the house on full wing.” Apul. Met. 3,21,6 Lucius’ own disastrous metamorphosis is set in motion by his aspirations to fly like Pamphile. He tells his lover Photis that he wishes to become for her a ‘Cupid with wings’ (Apul. Met. 3,22,5 Cupido pinnatus). Photis asks if she will ever see him again here once he has been ‘made winged’ (Apul. Met. 3,22,6 alitem factum). When Lucius uses the wrong ointment, his accidental transformation into an ass is in part described negatively as a failure to grow wings:

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Cf. GA 733b16, cited above. For insects flying in the final stage of their development, see e.g. Arist. GA 758b27; Arist. HA 551a24; HA 551b20; HA 551b25f.; HA 552a8; HA 552a20; HA 552b20; HA 554a29; HA 557b24; HA 557b27; Plin. Nat. 11,48; Nat. 11,92; Nat. 11,; Nat. 11,101–104. Exceptions prove the rule : the king bee, unlike all other bees, is born with wings, bypassing the larval stage (Plin. Nat. 11,48 rex…neque vermiculus sed statim penniger; cf. Arist. HA 554a26-27) ; and some wasps can also bypass the larval stage, with some even flying at birth (Plin. Nat. 11,71 fetus ipse inaequalis et varius, alius evolat, alius in nympha, alius in vermiculo; cf. Arist. HA 555a2f.).

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“And by now with successive exertions I poised my arms and tried to make gestures in the manner of a bird like her [i.e. Pamphile]: but there were neither feathers nor wings anywhere (nec ullae plumulae nec usquam pinnulae)... I saw that I was not a bird, but an ass...” Apul. Met. 3,24,3–25,1; cf. 9.15.6 All this emphasis on Lucius’ impulse to grow wings reflects the typical teleology of insect metamorphoses. Lucius’ failure to grow wings, on the other hand, reflects the life cycle of the two ‘ass’ insects to which Apuleius’ title may allude. For the pill-bug is only called ‘ass’ when it is in its initial, larval form, and so lacks wings;98 and the African locust called ‘ass’ is described by Dioscorides (2,57) as ‘wingless’ (31"!#).99 As an ass, Lucius attains ‘wings’ only in the figurative sense that his (land)speed is often compared to the flight of the winged horse Pegasus. Thus he is taunted for no longer outdoing ‘the winged speed of Pegasus’ (Apul. Met. 6,30,5); after fleeing a bear at top speed (7,24,5), he likens himself implicitly to Pegasus by calling his rescuer Bellerophon (7,26,3); having just outrun a horse in his blind terror (8,16,3), Lucius imagines that Pegasus’ ascent to heaven was similarly inspired by fear; finally, at the anteludia of Isis, an ass is likened to Pegasus, but the comparison is exposed as a mere joke (11,8,4 diceres Pegasum, tamen rideres...), since in fact the ass walks, and its wings are merely fake attachments (11,8,4 asinum pinnis adglutinatis adambulantem). Nonetheless, when Lucius is finally restored to human form he does achieve a sort of (wingless) perfection through his initiations into the rites of Isis. These initiations are repeatedly called teleta (Apul. Met. 11,22,8; 11,24,5; 11,26,4; 11,27,3; 11,29,1; 11,30,1). This is a Greek word, borrowed here for the very first time into Latin; it means ‘initiation’, but is derived from the Greek tel- family of words, denoting ‘finality’ or ‘perfection’ (cf. ‘teleology’), which Aristotle uses to decribe the final stage in the insect’s life-cycle.100 In the end, it is not through the attainment of wings, ————— 98

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Photius (s.v. P!# <22"!#) states that the ‘ass’ pill-bug is a ‘larval creature’ (î!2'í01#). Pliny (Nat. 11,100 observes that there are some insects which lack wings (quaedam insecta carent pinnis); and Aristotle (GA 758b27 contrasts winged insects (3x31"'3x) with those that walk (3x1y). Arist. GA 733b16 (telos) and 758b27 (epitelesthen), both cited above. The derivation of the Greek telete, ‘initiation’, from the tel- family is observed by the Stoic Chrysippus: (EM 751,16f.) “Chrysippus says that it is with with good reason that discourses about divine matters are called ‘initiations’ (3113y#/teletas); for these discourses should be

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but through initiation into religious ritual, that Lucius achieves his final form and is able to reach for the heavens. Another insect-character who fails in an attempt to fly is Psyche. When her divine lover Cupid flies off, Psyche tries to follow him: “The god...flew off. But as he was rising, Psyche at once grasped his right leg with both her hands – she was a piteous appendage of his soaring flight and a trailing attendance of dangling companionship through the cloudy realms – at last, exhausted, she fell to the ground.” Apul. Met. 5,23,6–24,1 It is universally accepted that the fall of Psyche is intertextual with a passage in Plato’s Phaedrus on metempsychosis: “...a soul (psyche)...which has been unable to follow God fails to see, and when she has suffered some mischance and been filled with forgetfulness and evil, she grows heavy, and when she has grown heavy she sheds her wings and falls to earth...” Pl. Phdr. 248C Plato uses the word psyche to mean ‘soul’; but it seems clear that he also exploits the associations of its second meaning, ‘butterfly’, to shape his allegory. Plato’s psychae go through life-phases (each of which lasts a thousand years); and the good souls of philosophers develop wings in the third stage of their life-cycle:  “These [sc. psychae], in their third period of a thousand years, if they have chosen this sort of life three times in a row, thus grow wings and leave in their three-thousandth year.” Pl. Phdr. 249A

————— taught last (teletaious), after all other lessons, when the soul (psyche) has support and strength and is able to maintain silence before the profane…”. Similarly, it is only at the end of Lucius’ reported experiences, in the final book, that Lucius undergoes his teletae, and that Apuleius’ text becomes overtly what Chrysippus calls a ‘discourse about divine matters’. For possible connections between the teachings of Chrysippus (whose name means ‘Golden Horse’) and Apuleius’ ‘Golden ass’, see Bitel 2000, 38-57 (esp. 53f.).

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Similarly the life-cycle of butterflies is in three stages, culminating in the development of wings.101 In Plato’s allegory, however, the psyche’s acquisition of wings allows it not merely to fly, but to ascend to the heavens and join the ranks of the gods: “The natural function of the wing is to soar up and carry that which is heavy to where the race of the gods lives.” Pl. Phdr. 246D Apuleius, I would suggest, follows Plato in using the model of the butterfly’s life-cycle as part of his allegorisation of Psyche. At first Apuleius’ Psyche, like Plato’s flawed psyche, is unable to fly up with her divine lover; but by the end of Psyche’s tale, she is allowed to enter heaven and indeed to become a god herself: “...and at once [Jupiter] instructed Mercury that Psyche should be snatched up and brought to heaven. Offering her a cup of ambrosia, he said ‘Take it, Psyche, and be immortal.’” Apul. Met. 6,23,5 Just before her apotheosis, Psyche makes a journey to the Underworld (Apul. Met. 6,20,1–5), and upon her return is afflicted by a sleep which renders her immobile: “an infernal and truly Stygian sleep...attacked Psyche and a thick cloud of slumber washed over all her limbs...And she lay motionless (immobilis), nothing but a sleeping corpse.” Apul. Met. 6,21,1–2 In their discussion of insects, Aristotle and others are at pains to stress that insects harden in the period immediately preceding their third and final lifestage, and, like Psyche here, they become motionless.102 We have already seen that Aristotle characterises insects’ metamorphoses as multiple births. Similarly Psyche’s transition to an immortal life amongst the gods is heralded by a figured rebirth: her revival from a living death. ————— 101

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For the tripartite life-cycle of butterflies, see Arist. HA 551a13f.; Thphr. HP 2,4,4; Plin. Nat. 11,112; Plu. Moralia 636C; cf. Ov. Met. 15,372-374. Immobility before emergence of perfect form of insect: Arist. GA 758b17; GA 758b25; GA 758b31 [on butterflies]; GA 759a4; Arist. HA 551a18 [on butterflies]; Plin. Nat. 11,112 [on butterflies] fit immobilis.

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In fact, Aristotle says that insects undergo three births (Arist. GA 759a3 3"1Æ). So indeed does Apuleius’ Psyche. Her first birth is by her parents, mentioned in the first line of her tale (Apul. Met. 4,28,1). Her third birth is the death followed by apotheosis just discussed. Her second, intermediate birth takes place when she enters a new phase of life with her mysterious fiancé. From the moment an inauspicious oracle has enjoined Psyche to marry (Apul. Met. 4,33,3f.), her impending wedding is figured as a death. A brief representative quote will suffice to demonstrate this: “…when the ceremonial preparations for this funereal marriage had been completed amidst the utmost grief, the living corpse was led from the house with the entire populace in train, and it was not nuptials which tearful Psyche was attending, but her own funeral.” Apul. Met. 4,34,1 During her first night with her husband, Psyche’s predicted death is realised in an unexpected manner. For her attendants, we are told, ‘took care of the new bride’s slain virginity’ (Apul. Met. 5,4,4 ...novam nuptam interfectae virginitatis curant). Her transition from virgin to bride is figured as a murder, but also as a rebirth: Psyche has now become a nupta. Nupta translates into Latin the Greek nymphe (lit. ‘bride’), which is the term used for the second, intermediate stage in the life-cycle of bees and wasps.103 A different term, chrysallis, exists specifically for the intermediate life-phase of butterflies (psychae) and moths.104 There is no indigenous equivalent in Latin for the Greek chrysallis (Pliny merely transliterates the Greek term; Plin. Nat. 11,112; 11,117.); but as chrysallis clearly derives from the Greek word for ‘gold’, chrysos, one might expect to find a reference to gold (aur-) in any attempt at a Latin translation of chrysallis.105 Apuleius, I believe, offers a Latin version of the chrysallis of a butterfly (psyche) when he describes Psyche’s new bridal residence as a ————— 103

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For the entomological ‘bride’, see Arist. GA 758b33; HA 551b1f.; HA 555a2f.; Pliny Latinises the Greek term as nympha: Plin. Nat. 11,49; Nat. 11,71. For the term chrysallis, see Thphr. HP 2,4,4 “from a caterpillar is born a chrysallis, then from this a psyche [butterfly].”); cf. Arist. HA 551a13f.; HA; GA 733b15; GA 758b29f.. Arist. HA 551a20 and Plin. Nat. 11,112 both say that the chrysallis has a hard shell, from which the butterfly ultimately escapes. Compare the English use of ‘aurelia’ as a synonym of chrysalis; ‘aurelia’ derives from the Italian feminine form of aurelio, ‘golden’ (which in turn derives from the Latin aurum, ‘gold’); see The Oxford English Dictionary, Second edition, Oxford 1989 s.v. ‘aurelia’.

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‘golden house’ (Apul. Met. 5,8,1 domus aurea).106 This house, into which Psyche moves from the house of her parents (stage 1), and from which she eventually moves to heaven (stage 3), is described in terms which recall the midlife, chrysalid period of a butterfly. Thus Apuleius has structured his allegory of Psyche around the tripartite life-cycle of the insect which shares her name.107 Like Psyche, the protagonist Lucius undergoes metamorphoses in three identifiable stages. First he is a businessman, secondly (and for the longest part of the text) he is an ass, and finally in the eleventh book, he is ‘reborn’ (11,16,4 renatus) and ‘restored to the daylight from the land of the dead’ (11,18,2 diurnum reducemque ab inferis), becoming an initiate in the teleta of the goddess Isis. It has already been seen that the words asinus and metamorphoses from the title have entomological associations. It seems possible that the word aureus might also gain meaning from the insect world. ‘Golden’ could allude to the chrysalid status possessed by Lucius as he wanders the earth in an ass’ skin, trapped midway between his past human life and his dreams of flight into the heavens. This entomological subtext, enshrined in the title and suggested at various points in the text, provides a paradigm from the observable world for the fictive metamorphoses of Lucius and other characters.

Conclusion So what is that ‘golden ass’? It is always open for readers to privilege one or several of the readings found here over the others (or indeed to find still more interpretations). Umberto Eco commends titles which serve to ‘muddle the ————— 106 107

The phrase also recalls the riches of Nero’s so-called ‘golden house’. There also seem to be correspondences between the life of Charite (the narratee of the tale of Psyche) and the phases of insects. Robbers snatch Charite away from her parents and home on the night she is due to enter her ‘nymphal’ stage (Apul. Met. 4,26,5 votisque nuptialibus...destinatus...ad nuptias; 4,26,6 mundo nuptiali; 4,26,8 dispectae disturbataeque nuptiae). When Tlepolemus, disguised as a bandit, comes to help Charite escape from her confinement, he promises the robbers that he will transform their house into a golden one (Apul. Met. 7,8,3 lapideam istam domum vestram facturus auream). This ‘golden house’ may again allude to the ‘chrysallis’ phase of a butterfly, foreshadowing Charite’s impending escape to the world beyond the robber’s cave.

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reader’s ideas, not regiment them’.108 The titular readings presented here may seem muddled in their variety, even contradictory; yet this very multiplicity of interpretations available for the title makes the title itself a fitting signifier for Apuleius’ complex and polysemic text, with its ever-changing ego (quis ille?).109

Bibliography AAGA: Aspects of Apuleius' Golden Ass, ed. B.L. Hijmans Jr.-R.Th. van der Paardt, Groningen 1978. Ahl, F. 1985. Metaformations: Soundplay and wordplay in Ovid and other classical poets, Ithaca, New York. Allen, W.S. 1965 Vox Latina: a guide to the pronunciation of Classical Latin, Cambridge. Astbury, R. 1977. ‘Varroniana’, RhM 120, 173–184. Beavis, I.C. 1988. Insects and other invertebrates in Classical antiquity, Exeter. Beck, R. 2000. ‘Apuleius the novelist, Apuleius the Ostian householder and the Mithraeum of the seven spheres: further exporations of an hypothesis of Filippo Coarelli’, in: S.G. Wilson-M. Desjardins (edd.) Text and artifact in the religions of Mediterranean Antiquity – essays in honour of Peter Richardson. Studies in Christianity and Judaism 9, Ontario, 551–567. Bitel, A.P. 2000. Quis ille?: alter egos in Apuleius’ Golden Ass, Diss., Oxford. Buffière, F. 1970 Anthologie Grecque première partie: Anthologie Palatine Tome XII (Livres XIII–XV), Paris. Coarelli, F. 1989. ‘Apuleio a Ostia?’, DArch 6, 27–42. Connors, C.M. 1998. Petronius the poet: verse and literary tradition in the Satyricon, Cambridge. Dowden, K. 2001. ‘Prologic, predecessors and prohibitions’, in: A. Kahane–A. Laird (edd.), A companion to the prologue of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Oxford, 123– 136. Eco, U. 1985. Reflections on the Name of the Rose (tr. W.Weaver), London. Emanuele, D. 1989. ‘Aes Corinthium: Fact, Fiction, and Fake’, Phoenix 43, 347–58. Englert, J.–Long, T. 1973. ‘Functions of hair in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, CJ 68, 236–239.

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Eco 1985, 3; similarly Pliny admires the ‘marvellous felicity’ of the Greeks’ titles, even though they fail to describe straightforwardly the content of the books which they advertise (Plin. Nat. Pr. 24). I am grateful to Raymond Astbury, Ewen Bowie, Peter Brown, Stephen Harrison, Paula James, Robert Maltby, Regine May, Stelios Panagiotakis, Charles Weiss, Michael Winterbottom, Maaike Zimmerman and two anonymous members of the editorial board of GCN, all of whom have provided helpful comments; and most of all to Kerstin Hoge, sine qua nihil.

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Finkelpearl, E.D. 1998. Metamorphosis of language in Apuleius: a study of allusion in the novel, Michigan. Freeman, K. 1945. ‘Vincent, or the Donkey’, G&R 14, 33–41. Galinsky, G.K. 1975. Ovid’s Metamorphoses: an Introduction to the Basic Aspects, Oxford. Genette, G. 1997. Paratexts: thresholds of interpretation (tr. J.E. Lewin), Cambridge. Grilli, A. 2000. ‘Titolo e struttura interna del romanzo d’Apuleio’, A&R 45, 121–134. Hani, J. 1973. ‘L'Âne d'Or d'Apulée et l'Égypte’, RPh 47, 274–80. Hijmans Jr., B.L. 1978 ‘Significant Names and Their Function in Apuleius' Metamorphoses’, in: B.L. Hijmans, R.Th. van der Paardt (edd.), Aspects of Apuleius’ Golden Ass, Groningen, 107–122. Hijmans Jr., B.L. – van der Paardt, R.Th. – Schmidt, V. – Westendorp Boerma, R.E.H. –Westerbrink, A.G. (edd.) 1981. Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius – Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses Books VI 25–32 and VII. Text, Introduction and Commentary, Groningen. Hijmans Jr., B.L. – van der Paardt, R.Th. – Schmidt, V. – Settels, C.B.J. – Wesseling, B. – Westendorp Boerma, R.E.H. (edd.) 1985. Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius – Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses Book VIII . Text, Introduction and Commentary, Groningen. Hijmans Jr., B.L. – van der Paardt, R.Th. – Schmidt, V. – Wesseling, B. – Zimmerman, M. (edd.) 1995. Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius – Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses Book IX. Text, Introduction and Commentary, Groningen. James, P. 1991. ‘Fool's Gold...Renaming the Ass’, in: H. Hofmann, ed., Groningen Colloquia on the Novel Vol. 4, Groningen, 155–171. Kenney, E.J. 1990. Apuleius – Cupid & Psyche, Cambridge. Krabbe, J.K. 1989. The Metamorphoses of Apuleius, New York. Macleod, M.D. 1972. Luciani Opera (3 vols), Oxford. Martin, R. 1970. ‘Le Sens de l'expression ‘Asinus aureus’ et la signification du Roman apuléien’, REL 48, 332–354. Mason, H.J. 1994. ‘Greek and Latin Versions of the Ass-Story’, in: ANRW 2.34.2, 1665–1707. Münstermann, H. 1995. Apuleius: Metamorphosen literarischer Vorlagen: Untersuchung dreier Episoden des Romans unter Berücksichtigung der Philosophie und Theologie des Apuleius, Stuttgart. Pecere, O. 1984. ‘Esemplari con subscriptiones e tradizione dei testi latini: L'Apuleio Laur. 68.2’, in: C. Questa (ed.), Atti del convegno “Il libro e il testo”, Urbino, 111–137. Perry, B.E. 1923. ‘The Significance of the Title in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, CPh 18, 229–38. Ribbeck, O. 1962 Scaenicae Romanorum Poesis Fragmenta II – Comicorum Fragmenta. Second Edition. Hildesheim. Riese, A. 1864–7. ‘Die Doppeltitel varronischer Satiren’, in: Symbola philologorum Bonnensium in honorem Friderici Ritschelli collecta, 479–88. Robertson, D.R. (ed.) – Vallette, P. (trans.) 1940–45. Apulée: Les Métamorphoses (3 vols), Paris.

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Schlam, C.C. 1992. The Metamorphoses of Apuleius – On Making an Ass of Oneself, Chapel Hill. Scobie, A. 1975. Apuleius Metamorphoses (Asinus Aureus) I – A Commentary, Meisenheim Smith, W.S. 1972. ‘The Narrative Voice in Apuleius' Metamorphoses’, TAPhA 103, 513–534. Solin, H. 1996. ‘Names, personal, Roman’, in: S. Hornblower, A. Spawforth (edd.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Third edition), Oxford 1024–1026. Sullivan, J.P. 1968. The ‘Satyricon’ of Petronius – a literary study, London. Tatum, J. 1972. ‘Apuleius and Metamorphosis’, AJPh 93, 306–313. Thompson, D’A.W. 1947. A Glossary of Greek Fishes, London. Winkler, J.J. 1985. Auctor and Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius' Golden Ass, Berkeley. Zimmerman, M. 2000. Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius – Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses Book X. Text, Introduction and Commentary, Groningen.

Apuleius, Aelius Aristides and Religious Autobiography S . J . HARRISON

Oxford

Summary This paper argues that Lucius’ narrative of religious conversion in Metamorphoses 11 uses and parodies in its detailed comic presentation of a personal religious testament the similar but seriously presented narrative of Aelius Aristides’ Sacred Tales. In the familiar tradition of sophistic attacks on rivals, Apuleius is targeting a famous contemporary intellectual and his selfimportant self-presentation as a specially privileged religious figure. Since the Sacred Tales were published at some point between A.D. 171 and A.D. 176, this relationship between the two texts would give a late date for the Metamorphoses.

I

Apuleius and Aristides – some general connections

In his Personal Religion Among the Greeks, André-Jean Festugière famously brought together the eleventh book of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and the Sacred Tales of Aelius Aristides as joint evidence for the presentation of genuine religious experience and for an increased interest in personal spirituality in the Roman Empire of the second century A.D.1 However, here as in so many other aspects of the interpretation of the Metamorphoses, Winkler’s Actor and Auctor has given us food for thought; it is difficult after Winkler to take the account of Lucius’ religious experiences in the Isis-cult in Book 11 as a genu-

————— 1

Festugière 1954, 85–104

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inely straight and ‘sincere’ presentation of religious experience.2 Nancy Shumate has recently attempted to reconcile a reading of Lucius as someone undergoing a genuine set of religious experiences, an existential crisis followed by the security of conversion, with Winkler’s ambiguous interpretation of Book 11;3 but as I have argued in my review of this interesting book4 her emphasis on the importance of religious experience is in the end at odds with her commitment to Winkler’s ambiguous interpretation, and does not allow enough to humorous and satirical elements in Book 11. What I aim to do in this paper5 is to argue a view of Metamorphoses 11 which is fundamentally influenced by Winkler but which is even more sceptical and satirical, and to connect this with a possible relationship between Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and Aristides’ Sacred Tales; as we will see, such a relationship would have tangible consequences for the notorious problem of the dating of the Metamorphoses. First, some brief background on Aristides and the Sacred Tales.6 Aristides was born in Mysia in 117. After study in Athens and Rome, he began a career as a rhetorical performer in the Greek East, but in 144 after a visit to Italy was struck down by the first of a series of illnesses that seriously affected his literary career and led to him spending long periods during the rest of his life at the health resort and sanctuary of the Asklepeion at Pergamum. He lived otherwise in Smyrna and managed to continue a copious writing career, together with rhetorical performances at the chief sophistic centres of Asia and occasional visits to Rome, before retiring in the 170’s to his estate at Laneion in Mysia, dying after 180. Perhaps the most interesting of the more than fifty extant works attributed to Aristides are the Sacred Tales (Hieroi Logoi), Orations 47–52 in the standard numeration of Keil. These six books (in effect five, since only the opening lines of the sixth are preserved), which plainly make up a unitary whole, contain a sort of diary of physical and spiritual health, a detailed catalogue of Aristides’ illnesses and his consequent experiences at the ————— 2

3 4 5

6

Winkler 1985, 204–50. For the ‘sincere’ or ‘straight’ use of Metamorphoses 11 as evidence for conversion-experience and the Isis-cult cf. Nock 1933, 138–55 and Turcan 1996, 111–6. Shumate 1996. Harrison 1997. This view is now outlined in summary form in Harrison 2000, 250–2; the current publication should be taken as replacing the ‘Harrison 2000’ cited there (p.250 n.183), which did not in fact appear in the form given there owing to the cessation of GCN. My information is here taken from Behr 1968 and 1994.

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Asklepeion. It is an extraordinarily self-important and self-absorbed narrative: as we shall soon see, its chief themes are the constant visitations and instructions experienced by Aristides from the god Asclepius and other divinities, and the positive effect of such divine help and support on Aristides’ literary career. The Sacred Tales were certainly published after 170 A.D, possibly in 170– 1 A.D., the date given by Charles Behr,7 though Charles Weiss has recently argued that they are likely to date to 175–6.8 The crucial piece of evidence is the identity of the Salvius mentioned at Or.48,9 as 3!ããYy3!$‘the present consul’. Behr has twice emended this passage, most recently by reading 1C#3íYy3', ‘one of the consulars’, and interprets the reference as being to L.Salvius Julianus, the consul of 148 A.D (PIR S 103).9 Weiss argues for keeping the transmitted text and identifying Aristides’ Salvius with the consul of 175, P. Salvius Julianus (PIR S 104), possibly the son of the consul of 148.10 This would give a firm terminus post quem for the Sacred Tales of 175, and the mention of a serving consul in a literary work would be a common type of compliment11 as well as an explicit indication of date. Weiss has also argued that the Sacred Tales were intended to be presented to Marcus Aurelius and Commodus on their imperial tour of the Greek East in 175–6, during which they met Aristides at Smyrna in spring 176 (cf. Philostratus VS 2,10), and that the constant element of self-promotion in the work reflects Aristides’ candidacy for the post of rhetorical tutor to the young Commodus.12 This remains speculative, but a terminus post quem of 175 for the Sacred Tales seems not unlikely. ————— 7 8

9

10 11

12

In both Behr 1968 and 1994. Weiss 1998, 37–46. In this dissertation Weiss juxtaposes rather than compares the conversion narratives of Lucius and Aristides, and though he floats in his conclusion (163–5) the possibility that Apuleius knew Aristides (citing Harrison 1996), he is equally happy to suggest that conversion is a generic experience of sophists, citing the cases of Isaeus (Philostratus VS 2,20) and Dio Chrysostom. See the discussion at Behr 1994, 1155–63. His strongest argument is that the crucial reference occurs in a vision dated to 144 A.D. and that the consul of 175 would have been a young boy then, but such a thing would not be impossible, as Weiss 1998, 38 n.55 argues. Weiss 1998, 38–9; the date is also favoured by Bowersock 1969, 79–80. Cf. Vergil Ecl.4.3 silvae sint consule dignae (Pollio in 40 B.C.), Horace Odes 1.4 (Sestius in 23 B.C. – cf. Nisbet and Hubbard 1970, xxxvi) and the likely dating of the publication of Velleius Paterculus’ history to the consular year (A.D. 30) of its dedicatee, M. Vinicius – cf. Woodman 1977, 127. Weiss 1998, 37–46.

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My argument here is that Apuleius knew and used the Sacred Tales in his account of Lucius’ religious experience in Metamorphoses 11. This entails that the Metamorphoses was written later than 171 and possibly later than 175 A.D. I am amongst the many modern scholars who would in any case incline towards a late date for the Metamorphoses; I hold that the Metamorphoses is certainly after the Apologia and consciously alludes to its events several times,13 and that its general sophistication suggests a late date in Apuleius’ career; and though we have no other clear evidence that Apuleius survived into the 170’s, he would have only had to have reached the age of fifty to see the publication of the Sacred Tales even as late as 175, and might well have lived into (and written the Metamorphoses during) the reign of Commodus (180–92). In order to suggest a relationship between the two texts, a motive must be supplied. Apuleius, I would argue, is parodying Aristides’ self-important and bizarre narrative of religious experience. The two are rough contemporaries – Aristides being born in 117, as we have already seen, and Apuleius in the mid120’s.14 And though they came from very different parts of the Mediterranean world, they are likely to have met in Athens or the sophistic centres of the Greek East; there is no reason why Apuleius should not have visited Pergamum or Smyrna in his extensive travels in the 140’s and early 150’s, which seem to have included some visits to Asia Minor.15 Despite his health problems, Philostratus’ enthusiastic appreciation of him in his Lives of the Sophists (2.9) confirms that there is some truth to Aristides’ assertion of his own supreme status as a rhetorical performer, and it is difficult to think that Apuleius had not encountered him at least in reputation. Their circles of acquaintance may have connected at at least one point: as Champlin has ingeniously argued, the Julius Perseus who participates in Apuleius’ performance in Carthage at Florida 18,39, probably delivered in the late 160’s, described as a man who has done some public service, is likely to be identical with the T. Julius Perseus commemorated in an inscription set up by the praetor Sex. Iulius ————— 13

14 15

Cf. Harrison 2000, 9–10, and e.g. van der Paardt 1971, 89 and 91, Kenney 1990, 203. For a brief summary of some arguments on the dating of the Metamorphoses see Walsh 1970, 249–51. For a summary of the evidence see Sandy 1997, 3 and Harrison 2000, 3. Cf. Apologia 23,1 longa peregrinatione; Florida 15,4 implies a visit to Samos, De Mundo XVII, 327 a visit to Phrygian Hierapolis, assuming that the De Mundo is an authentic Apuleian work (for the arguments see Marchetta 1991 and Harrison 2000, 174– 80).

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Maior Antoninus Pythodorus in the Asclepeion at Pergamum.16 The dedicator of this inscription is in turn likely to be identical with the Pythodorus whose son appears in one of Aristides’ many visions in the Sacred Tales (Or.47,35); the father is by implication known to Aristides. The likelihood that Apuleius knew Aristides at least by reputation, and the possibility that the two were at least indirectly linked by acquaintance, gives us a motive for the satirical allusions to the Sacred Tales. In the Metamorphoses, a work written for a wide and Rome-centred audience,17 it does not seem at all unlikely that Apuleius might have given his readership some indirect parody of an extraordinary and famous text recently published by an international sophistic superstar. That the parody is indirect might be attributed again to the readership; a Roman and Western readership might not be particularly interested in Greek sophists and their detailed doings. The strongest general counter-argument which can be made against allusions to the Sacred Tales in Metamorphoses 11 is that Aristides’ obsession with his physical health, which is so fundamental to the whole character of the Sacred Tales, is not anywhere picked up in Apuleius’ novel; this might seem an obvious target, and an obvious way of drawing attention to the text of Aristides. But perhaps the satire was intended to be oblique, as in the attack on the baker’s wife in Metamorphoses 9, whose monotheism is so vague that scholars have long disputed whether Judaism or Christianity is alluded to.18 There is also the problem that Lucius’ story is essentially a conversion-narrative, while Aristides presents himself as someone with continuous access to the divine rather than being granted a single life-changing religious experience and its consequences. But the fundamental link between the two, as we shall see, is that Aristides claims that his work is a personal testament of his privileged encounters with the divine, just as the narrator Lucius does in Metamorphoses 11.

II Detailed connections between the Sacred Tales and Metamorphoses 11 Fundamental to any satirical allusion to the Sacred Tales in Met.11 is the character of the protagonist and narrator Lucius. My argument requires that the ————— 16 17

18

Cf. Champlin 1980, 155 n.70. For the Roman colour of the Met. and its readership see Dowden 1994 (though I do not agree with his early dating of the work). Met.9, 14: 213.19–23. I am inclined towards Christianity: for a recent advocation of this view see Schmidt 1997.

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general self-characterisation of Lucius should be a plausible version of the self-characterisation of Aristides. Lucius has two basic features which link him with Aristides: he is in some sense an intellectual with a divinely-supported literary career, and he chronicles with detail and naïve enthusiasm his own experience within a religious cult. We shall consider these two aspects separately, though as we shall see they are firmly connected in both narratives. I will conclude by pointing to what I believe is a particularly telling detailed satirical allusion. In general, it is important to see the gullible and naïve narrator Lucius, so easily taken in by apparent religious experience, as a satirical comment on the sweeping and self-confident assertions of Aristides, likewise retelling his religious experiences in considerable detail, but questioning nothing of these bizarre incidents or his reactions to them. The gullible and inexperienced youth is a telling Apuleian comment on the self-important and selfaggrandising narrative of the middle-aged sophistic superstar. Aristides, it is suggested, may have been deluded in precisely the manner of Lucius. II.1 The sophistic status and careers of Lucius and Aristides High social status is one of many features Lucius shares with Aristides and indeed with most Greek sophists of the first and second centuries AD; as Ewen Bowie has argued,19 these men came almost entirely from the prosperous élites of Greek cities in the Roman Empire. Hugh Mason has convincingly shown20 that Lucius is an élite Greek, almost certainly with Roman citizenship (note his praenomen, the only name we hear of) and able to speak Latin, from a socially elevated background in the important Greek city of Corinth (upgraded in Roman terms from the less important Patras of the Greek Metamorphoses). This background is more or less identical with that of Aristides: a Roman citizen, evidently from an élite background (a highly-educated landowner of considerable wealth), and linked with a famous Greek city (Smyrna). Lucius also has intellectual status.21 Like his Greek original as seen through the Onos, he is also often credited in the novel with the literary and oratorical skills typical of sophists. In Book 11 in particular, he is rebuked for not living up to his high learning by the priest Mithras at 11,15,1 (nec tibi natales ac ne dignitas quidem, vel ipsa, qua flores, usquam doctrina profuit), and ————— 19 20 21

Bowie 1982. Mason 1983, to which much of the following is indebted. See Harrison 2000, 215–20.

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comments on his own learning in oratory at 11,30,4 (studiorum meorum laboriosa doctrina). There are also two well-known passages where future literary glory of some kind is apparently foretold for Lucius: at 2,12,5 he himself reports a Chaldaean prophet at Corinth as predicting that nunc enim gloriam satis floridam, nunc historiam magnam et incredundam fabulam et libros me futurum, a passage to which we shall return, while at 11,27,9 the priest Asinius Marcellus reports to Lucius a vision he experienced of the god Osiris concerning the future intellectual glory of the ‘man from Madauros’ (Madaurensem), apparently taken by Lucius to refer to Lucius himself: nam et illi (Lucius?) studiorum gloriam et ipsi (Asinius) grande compendium sua (Osiris’) comparari providentia.22 There is no doubt, indeed, that Lucius has a high level of rhetorical skill. He can produce a persuasive and brilliantly inventive forensic oration of Ciceronian character23 when required to at the mock trial in Book 3 (3,4–3,7), showing a level of improvisation which Aristides himself would have envied (Philostratus tells us specifically (VS 2,9) that Aristides was no good at improvisation), and can turn easily to earning money in the Roman law-courts (11,28.6). Though Aristides rejected the title ‘sophist’ himself and expressed some contempt of the class (cf. e.g. Or. 34, Or. 51,39),24 there seems little doubt that he is to be classified as a sophist in the sense of ‘professional rhetorical performer’.25 The Sacred Tales, especially the fourth and fifth (Or. 50 and 51), make constant allusions to what is evidently a sophistic career – for example 50,8, where Aristides makes a comeback tour of declamatory performances in the Greek cities of Asia. Stress is naturally laid on the success of his oratorical career through the help of Asclepius and other gods; in particular, Or. 50,14– 70 contains a retrospective account of divine help in rhetoric and poetry over a ten-year period, including personal visions of literary greats such as Plato, Lysias and Sophocles. Even the tactics used to defeat sophistic rivals, the normal business of competitive professional life in such circles,26 are ascribed to divine help: at Or. 51,30–34 Aristides recounts with barely concealed glee the success of his tactic in holding a performance in the Council Chamber in ————— 22 23 24 25

26

For a fuller discussion of the referential complexities here cf. Harrison 2000, 228–31. See the evidence gathered in Harrison 2000, 224 n.77. For a full discussion of Aristides’ attitude to the term ‘sophist’ cf. Behr 1994, 1163–77. On the problems of defining the term ‘sophist’ in this era see the helpful article of Stanton (1973). For professional rivalries and quarrels in the Second Sophistic see Bowersock 1969, 89– 100, Anderson 1986, 43–50, 64–6, Anderson 1993, 35–9, Schmitz 1997, 110–33.

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Smyrna, packed with auditors, scheduled simultaneously with a performance by his unnamed rival, held in the larger Odeion but attended by only seventeen individuals. In general, there are multiple incidents of divine career support which are conveniently summed up by Aristides himself at Or. 51,36:27: ‘But it is necessary to try to make clear all of my oratorical career that pertains to the god and, as far as I can, to omit nothing of it. For it would be strange if both I and others would recount whatever cure he gave to my body even at home, but would pass by in silence those things which at the same time raised up my body, strengthened my soul and increased the glory of my oratory’. Lucius’ oratorical career in Metamorphoses 11 is rather more prosaic, being a career of forensic advocacy forced upon him by the undignified need to earn money. Nevertheless, it, like that of Aristides, is supported by divine power. At Met.11,30,2 the naïve Lucius reflects to himself that his devotion to the god Osiris was well worth its considerable financial cost, since he was able through the god’s help to earn the necessary funds through advocacy: nec hercules laborum me sumptuumque quidquam tamen paenituit, quid ni? liberali deum providentia iam stipendiis forensibus bellule fotum, ‘nor, by Hercules, did I feel any regret for my efforts and expenses. Why should I, nicely cherished as I was by by earnings in the courts, through the foresight of the gods?’ Here, I would argue, we can see a low-life version of Aristides’ glittering rhetorical career – everyday speaking in the law-courts instead of glamorous public declamation, motivated by the need to eat and pay for religious initiation rather than the spur of fame and reputation. The lowering of tone is thoroughly appropriate to the novelistic genre, but also makes fun of Aristides’ sweeping claims of divine support. II.2 Two varieties of religious experience. As I noted at the beginning of this paper, critics have long seen a resemblance between the religious experience of Aristides in the Sacred Tales and that of Lucius in Metamorphoses 11, and this resemblance has been taken as arguing for a common real interest in personal spirituality in both authors. I have already argued that such a ‘sincere’ reading is not appropriate for Lucius, and inferred that part of the function of Lucius’ cult-experience as narrated in the novel is to allude to and poke fun at the cult-experience of Aristides. For both characters, their religious experience is centered on a single cult and an intense ————— 27

Translation by Behr 1986.

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loyalty to it as thanks for personal salvation – Lucius and the cult of Isis/Osiris, Aristides and the cult of Asclepius. The two cults were actually related in practice, with Hygieia, ‘Health’, being one of Isis’s divine forms (though not in fact mentioned as such in Apuleius’ list at Met.11,5,2-3.28 For both Aristides and Lucius, this profession of devoted service partly takes the form of loyalty to a particular religious locale: as Aristides himself says (Or. 50,104) , ‘I have never stopped being a worshipper in the precinct of the temples in the shrine of Asclepius’,29 referring to the Asclepeion of Pergamum. For Apuleian readers this inevitably recalls the false ending of Book 11 at Met.11,26,3, where Lucius devotes himself to the shrine of Isis on the Campus Martius.30 nec ullum tam praecipuum mihi exinde studium fuit quam cotidie supplicare summo numini reginae Isidis, quae de templi situ sumpto nomine Campensis summa cum veneratione propitiatur. eram cultor denique adsiduus, fani quidem advena, religionis autem indigena. ‘nor did I have any especial desire from then on except to pray every day to the supreme divine power of Queen Isis, who is propitiated with the greatest reverence under the title of ‘Campensis’, taken from the location of her temple. In short I was an ever-present worshipper, a stranger to the shrine, but a native to the cult’. Just as we expect this to be the end of the novel, so we expect this devotion to be a lifelong loyalty, as suggested earlier in the book; but in fact it is another god, if a related one, Osiris, whom Lucius ends up serving for life only a few pages later. Again, we may have a deliberate undermining of the grand and portentous claims of Aristides. Another interesting parallel between the two texts is the matter of initiation. The cult of Asclepius at the Pergamene Asclepeion was not a mysterycult with formal initiation, though it shared the element of incubation with the Isis-cult and had some esoteric features, and Aristides can compare an experience at another shrine of Asclepius in Mysia to an initiation-ritual (Or. 50,7): ‘it was all not only like an initiation into a mystery, since the rituals were so ————— 28 29 30

Burkert 1987, 15. Translation of Behr 1986. On false endings in Met.11 see Winkler 1985, 215–223.

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divine and strange, but there was also coincidentally something marvellous and unaccustomed. For at the same time there was gladness, and joy, and a contentment of spirit and body’.31 This mysterious joy is picked up in Lucius’ account of the aftermath of his first mystery-initiation at 11,24,5 (paucis dehinc ibidem commoratus diebus inexplicabili voluptate simulacri divini perfruebar, ‘then, staying a few days in that same place, I continually enjoyed the inexplicable pleasure of [gazing at] the divine image’), and in the joy of his service to Osiris in the closing words of the novel (11,30,5 munia … gaudens obibam, ‘I went about my duties with rejoicing’), but these joys are of course tempered for the reader by thoughts of Lucius’ gullibility: the ecstatic devotee may be the victim of manipulation by the cult. Again we find a potential undermining of the serious religious experience of Aristides. Aristides does in fact describe an initiation-experience in the Sacred Tales, though it is not connected with Asclepius. At Or. 49,48 he appears to undergo an initiation into the cult of Sarapis, often viewed as the Hellenised form of Osiris:32 ‘But that which appeared later contained something much more frightening than these things, in which there were ladders, which delimited the region above and below the earth, and the power of the gods on each side, and there were other things, which caused a wonderful feeling of terror, and cannot perhaps be told to all, with the result that I gladly beheld the tokens. The summary point was about the power of the god, that both without conveyance and without bodies Sarapis is able to carry men wherever he wishes. Such was the initiation, and not easily recognised, I rose’.33 This description shares a number of key features with Lucius’ description of his first Isis-initiation (Met.11,23,7): accessi confinium mortis et calcato Proserpinae limine…vidi solem candido coruscantem lumine, deos inferos et deos superos accessi coram et adoravi de proximo. Ecce tibi rettuli, quae, quamvis audita, ignores tamen necesse est.

————— 31 32

33

Translation by Behr 1986. Though Sarapis/Serapis is strictly a combination of Osiris and the bull-god Apis (Plutarch De Os.et Is. 29, 362c); this Apuleian ‘correction’ may (characteristically) be a piece of rhetorical one-upmanship rather than based on meticulous antiquarian scholarship. Translation by Behr 1986.

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‘I reached the boundary of death and trod on the threshold of Proserpina … I saw the sun which flashes with bright light, and reached the gods above and the gods below, worshipping them from close proximity. Look, I have told you things which, though you have heard them, you must nevertheless know nothing of’ Both narrators describe an out-of-body experience, involving intense contact with the gods below and above the earth and esoteric elements not to be communicated to the profane. Aristides states explicitly that his is an intense, lifechanging experience; though the same is not openly claimed by Lucius in his retailing of the initation, it is clear that this is the case from his later speech of thanks to the goddess (11,25,1-6) and his subsequent career as a devotee. Aristides’ experience is also linked with Sarapis, the popular Hellenised ‘equivalent’ of Osiris.34 If there is an echo here, Apuleius in Lucius’ initiationexperience with Isis then recalls the initiation-experience of Aristides with Osiris/Sarapis, the god into whose cult Lucius is eventually going to be initiated. This would be a clever allusion. There may also be an element of learned one-upmanship here. Apuleius in Met.11 chooses consistently to present the truly Egyptian Osiris rather than the ‘bastardised’ Hellenic Sarapis, perhaps ‘correcting’ Aristides;35 this mild piece of learning is consistent with other elements in Book 11 which show detailed knowledge of Egyptian cult, whether or not Apuleius himself was in fact a initiate of Isiac religion.36 The crucial point is a self-promoting display of esoteric knowledge on the author’s part, allied perhaps with a mild rebuke of Aristides: the true connoisseur of Egyptian religion will of course use the Egyptian names for its gods. There are also many minor parallels between the two narratives of religious devotion to a single deity. Both narrators tell of their constant obedience to instructions given by gods and their representatives in predictive dreams and visions, which are very frequent occurrences in both texts (there are several dozen of these experienced by Aristides in the Sacred Tales, and some nine experienced by Lucius in Metamorphoses 11); the types and details of ————— 34 35 36

With the caveat of n.32 above. And perhaps also Plutarch’s De Osiride et Iside ? The commentary of Griffiths 1975 makes it clear that Met.11 shows considerable learning in Isiac religion. Apuleius was certainly initiated into some Greek cults (Apol.55,8); whether he was also an Isiac initiate is unclear, though the knowledge shown in Met.11 might suggest that he was. This, of course, need in no way entail that Met.11 is ‘sincere’ or ‘autobiographical’.

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these visions are often similar, though this is perhaps only natural in two cults where divine commands derived from incubation were a common feature.37 At Or. 49,21–2 a predictive dream of Aristides is confirmed by an official of the cult when encountered in the temple: this is clearly parallel to Met.11.27, where Lucius’ predictive dream is confirmed by his meeting with the priest Asinius Marcellus in the temple. Likewise, the sudden command of Isis to Lucius to travel to Rome (Met.11,26,1) is matched by several occasions when Aristides receives equally abrupt divine instructions to make a journey (Or. 51,1, 51,17).38 More generally, both narrators comment explicitly on the frequency of their divine dream-visions. In the programmatic opening of the first of the Sacred Tales, Aristides points to his nightly visions from Asclepius (Or. 47,3): ‘For each of our days, as well as our nights, has a story, if someone who was present at them wished either to record the events or to narrate the providence of the god, wherein he revealed some things openly in his own presence and others by the sending of dreams’.39 Likewise, as he waits for his first initiation, Lucius too is constantly in receipt of dreams from Isis (Met.11,19,2 nec fuit nox una vel quies aliqua visu deae monituque ieiuna). Lucius’ frequent visions, and his slavish obedience to them, even when such obedience looks utterly naïve and gullible and leads to financial exploitation and poverty, can be plausibly read as a satirical comment on the self-important religious experience of Aristides; the Apuleian text suggests that the life of a divine devotee may be less impressive and less genuinely religious than in the grand and selfpromoting presentation of Aristides. II.3 The case of Diophanes: a specific allusion? I conclude with perhaps the most specific example of Apuleian allusion to the Sacred Tales. In the first of the Sacred Tales (Or. 47,46–9) Aristides recounts one of his many self-congratulatory visions; he dreams that he is staying in the Imperial palace in Rome, and that the two emperors Marcus and Verus helped him with his career and complimented him on his rhetorical achievements. He then has another dream which reinforces these imperial honours (47,49): ‘I dreamed that an acquaintance, named Diophanes, spoke to me of these ex————— 37 38

39

Cf. Cox Miller 1994, 110–11. Both narrators also claim that they are unable to express the majesty of the god with whom they are connected – cf. Met.11,3,3 and Or. 48,8, 48.49. Translation by Behr 1986.

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ceedingly great honours, as if he were present and witnessed them’.40 Here, then, we have a character named Diophanes confirming the literary distinction of Aristides and his consequent fame. I would argue that the Metamorphoses contains a satirical imitation of this incident. At Met.2,12,5 Lucius, in conversation with his host Milo in Hypata, tells of the prophet Diophanes, who predicted that Lucius’ journey to Thessaly would lead to his future fame as the subject of an extraordinary literary narrative in several books: Mihi denique proventum huius peregrinationis inquirenti multa respondit et oppido mira et satis varia; nunc enim gloriam satis floridam, nunc historiam magnam et incredundam fabulam et libros me futurum. ‘When I enquired about the outcome of these travels he gave me a long answer, which was both quite extraordinary and somewhat diverse: for now my glory would fairly flourish, now I would become a great story, an incredible tale, the subject of books’. As Warren Smith has noted, this is clearly a metaliterary reference to Lucius’ appearance as the protagonist of the work the reader is currently engaged in, the Metamorphoses itself.41 These two passages evidently have in common the theme of a character named Diophanes who confirms the narrator’s literary distinction, though in the case of the Apuleian passage the distinction belongs to the future and not the present. This is enough to suggest an allusion. The differences between the two passages are also instructive. In Aristides the words of Diophanes are to be taken as confirmation of Aristides’ own vision, as a ratifying element immediately supporting his self-important dream. In Apuleius, on the other hand, Diophanes’ apparent prophetic authority, confirming Lucius’ literary importance, is immediately thrown into question by a comic narrative twist. Lucius’ host, Milo, at once claims that he too has encountered Diophanes, and that the latter was so poor a prophet that he was unable to predict his own misfortunes, though he claimed to be able to predict the misfortunes of others (2,13–14). Though Diophanes’ prediction about Lucius is in some sense fulfilled by the act of the reader in reading this passage, we can see that Diophanes’ function of confirming the narrator’s literary status is amusingly complicated by Apu————— 40 41

Translation by Behr 1986. See especially Smith 1972, 532–3, Penwill 1990, 216–7, Harrison 2000, 231–2.

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leius; this is not merely a simple confirmation of the narrator’s literary glory. More significantly, we may indeed wonder how much glory is reflected on Lucius, rather than Apuleius, by the text of the Metamorphoses: is Lucius really glorified by a narrative which relates his youthful foolishness and religious gullibility ? The suggestion may be that Aristides, like Lucius, though he aims to bring glory on himself through his literary narrative, in fact only exposes his own foolishness and self-importance, a natural reaction to reading the Sacred Tales. In this specific example, as in the whole interface between the Metamorphoses and the Sacred Tales, we see two interlinked aspects of this intertextual relationship: Apuleius pokes satirical fun at the grandiose personal and religious claims of Aristides, and does so in an entertaining and debunking manner which thoroughly suits his different literary genre.42

Bibliography Anderson, G., Philostratus, London 1986. Anderson, G. The Second Sophistic, London 1993. Behr, C.A. Aristides and the Sacred Tales, Amsterdam 1968. Behr, C.A. P. Aelius Aristides: The Complete Works II, Leiden 1986. Behr, C.A. ‘Studies on the Biography of Aelius Aristides’, ANRW II.34.2 (1994), 1140–1223. Boyle, A.J. The Imperial Muse II: Flavian Epicist to Claudian, Bendigo, Vic. 1990. Bowersock, G. W. Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire, Oxford 1969. Bowie, E.L. ‘The Importance of Sophists’, YCS 27 (1982), 29–59. Burkert, W. Ancient Mystery Cults, Cambridge, Ma., 1987. Champlin, E. Fronto and Antonine Rome, Cambridge, Ma. 1980. Cox Miller, P. Dreams in Late Antiquity, Princeton, NJ 1994. Dowden, K. ‘The Roman Audience of the Golden Ass’, in Tatum 1994, 419–34. Festugière, A-J. Personal religion among the Greeks, Berkeley 1954. Griffiths, J.G. Apuleius of Madauros: the Isis-Book (Metamorphoses, Book XI), Leiden 1975. Harrison, S.J. ‘Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, in Schmeling 1996, 491–516. Harrison, S.J. review of Shumate 1996, Petronian Society Newsletter 27 (1997), 11– 13. Harrison, S.J. Apuleius: A Latin Sophist, Oxford 2000. Kenney, E.J. Apuleius: Cupid and Psyche, Cambridge 1990.

————— 42

An earlier version of this paper was given at a symposium at Groningen in June 1998 and at Royal Holloway, London in May 1998. I am grateful to Maaike Zimmerman and Susanna Morton Braund for their kind invitations to speak, to Charles Weiss for helpful discussion and for kindly supplying me with a copy of his doctoral dissertation, and to the referees for GCN for their useful comments.

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Marchetta, A. L’autenticità apuleiana del De Mundo, Rome 1991. Mason, H.J. Greek Terms for Roman Institutions, Toronto 1974. Mason, H.J. ‘The Distinction of Lucius in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, Phoenix 37 (1983) 135–43. Nisbet, R.G.M. and Hubbard, M. A Commentary on Horace’s Odes: Book 1, Oxford 1970. Nock, A.D. Conversion, Oxford 1933. Penwill, J.L. ‘Ambages Reciprocae: Reviewing Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, in Boyle 1990, 211–35. Sandy, G.A. The Greek World Of Apuleius, Leiden 1997. Schmidt, V.L. ‘Reaktionen auf das Christentum in den Metamorphosen des Apuleius’, VChr 51 (1997) 51–71. Schmitz, T. Bildung und Macht : zur sozialen und politischen Funktion der zweiten Sophistik in der griechischen Welt der Kaiserzeit [Zetemata 97], Munich 1997. Schmeling, G.L. ed. The Novel in the Ancient World [Mnemosyne Suppl. 159], Leiden 1996. Smith, W. S. ‘The Narrative Voice in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, TAPA 103 (1972) 513–34. Shumate, N.C. Crisis and Conversion in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Ann Arbor, 1996. Stanton, G.R. ‘Sophists and Philosophers: Problems of Classification’, AJP 94 (1973) 350–64. Tatum, J. ed. The Search for the Ancient Novel, Baltimore 1994. Turcan, R. The Cults of the Roman Empire, Oxford 1996. Van der Paardt, R.Th. Apuleius Metamorphoses III, Amsterdam 1971. Walsh, P.G. The Roman Novel, Cambridge 1970. Weiss, C.G. Literary Turns: The Representation of Conversion in Aelius Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi and Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Diss. Yale 1998. Winkler, J.J. Auctor & Actor: a narratological reading of Apuleius’ Golden Ass, Berkeley 1985. Woodman, A.J. Velleius Paterculus: The Tiberian Narrative (2.94–131), Cambridge 1977.

Between Fiction and Reality: Robbers in Apuleius’ Golden Ass W ERNER RIESS

Heidelberg

Introduction Up to the present day the relationship between fictionality and reality is controversial above all in the context of antiquity, where there is still a lack of clarity concerning the ancient understanding of fiction as such in relation to the obvious use of genuinely fictional narrative structures by ancient authors. The relevance of this question for historical purposes is particularly important, since the main object of historical and philological criticism of texts is the judging of literary sources with respect to their historical authenticity. Especially in the case of the ancient novel this question has not yet been studied in any depth at all. So far historians, who are above all interested in “historians”, have perceived and evaluated them all too infrequently as sources of social history.1 Philologists shy away even nowadays from the difficulty of approaching a literary work of art from a historical perspective.2 New research developments have made it highly desirable that one combines historical and philological approaches. An example of this is the history of crime, which has established itself in the last 20 years as a fruitful extension of standard social history especially in the realm of studies in early modern ————— 1

2

There are exceptions such as Grosso 1954; Veyne 1961; Gérard 1976; Warren 1976; Fröhlke 1977; Scarcella 1977; Millar 1981; Morgan 1982; Pouilloux 1983; Futre Pinheiro 1988; Galsterer 1989; Jones 1991; Cauderlier 1992; Hahn 1992; Hopkins 1993; Pouilloux 1993 and Scarcella 1996. Described thus for example by Colin 1965, 96: Déroutés par la grammaire, étonnés par le style et la fantaisie, choqués par la lubricité, trompés par la bouffonnerie, l’invraisemblance et le surnaturel, les pauvres latinistes n’ont guère su dégager les observations précises de l’étudiant à Athènes, du voyageur en Phrygie et des sources milésiennes – dans les réalités de la vie.

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history, and cries out to be applied to studies in the ancient world. Since the state of our sources for this historical period is so desolate – we are lacking the inquisitional records and the reports of torture proceedings which we possess from early modern times – we must draw upon and give serious consideration to every piece of information no matter how small it is. In Latin literature the most vivid and detailed descriptions of robbers’ lives are found in the novel The Golden Ass, written by the North African Latin author Apuleius of Madauros around 150 A.D. In order to carry out a study on the robber scenes in the ancient novel from this point of view, a number of methodological considerations have to be taken into account. Our knowledge of the relation between fictionality and reality in the ancient world has to be confronted and combined with the results of modern fictionality studies. On the basis of a concrete example – we choose here the question concerning the use of violence – we attempt to reconstruct a broad range of proven background information, which can provide us with the foil required in order to compare the data Apuleius himself delivers with our understanding of historical authenticity. Whereas the data Apuleius provides can be attained with the help of text analysis, the historical background information can, however, only be attained by methods of cultural crosscomparison and of the sociology of deviant behaviour. The careful use of the historical study of crime in early modern Europe and the sociology of deviant behaviour3 delivers some structural knowledge of how human society works. This will shed some illuminating light on the obscure conditions of antiquity. Exactly like antiquity early modern times represent a pre-modern, agricultural epoch; therefore the basic structures are comparable. But in contrast to antiquity, we are much better informed about early modern Europe, because we have immeasurably more sources at our disposition. Transferring the findings of these two neighbouring disciplines to antiquity is the cultural cross-comparison we need in order to compare history and the novel. The result of this paper, which is a better insight into how Apuleius deals with reality and fictionality in his novel, should offer us a view about the meaning of and reason for the robber scenes in the Metamorphoses and thus provide us with a stepping stone to a better understanding of the difficult Book 11 of the Metamorphoses. ————— 3

Lamnek 61996 offers a detailed introduction.

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History in Fiction Since the 70s of the 20th century the literary, linguistic, and philosophical discussion concerning the nature of fictional writing is for the most part no longer in a state of flux, so that a review of it is possible. Theories involving the search for semantic indicators for fictional use of language4 joined forces with pragmatic theories in linguistics, which are derived from Searle’s studies. His assumption was that fictional discourse consists of pretended assertions5 and this became a landmark for subsequent studies. Reference to the as-if-structure of the so-called inszenierter Diskurs6 is to be found in German literature on the subject since Warning’s work. In a contract of fictionality it is made clear to the reader that what is said in the following makes no claim to truth. The reader, who knows how to understand the relevant signals, can allow himself to take part in a game with the greatest of enjoyment. Thus fictionality is not an ontological category, but a special mode of communication.7 The relationship between a literary work of art and non-literary reality has likewise been the object of markedly differing theories, which are heavily indebted to contemporary fashions. It was only in the 18th and 19th centuries that a conception of art, in which art was perceived as being isolated from any kind of reality at all, became dominant. In the wake of the late enlightenment literary studies in the 19th century were pervaded by a positivism, which was often bound to partly misunderstood ideals of research in the field of the natural sciences. If this theoretical approach laid so much weight upon the study of the biographies of the authors and their times, in which the works were created, then one can note the development of a countermovement at the beginning of the 20th century, in which Formalism8 and ————— 4 5

6 7 8

Gabriel 1979, 247ff.; Hamburger 41994, 56ff. Searle 1975, 324f. Searle 1969 and Austin 21989 grounded the fundamental principles of Pragmatics. There have been many attempts to explain the phenomenon of fictionality in terms of Pragmatics: Gale 1971; Coleman 1973; Gabriel 1975; Searle 1975. Wildekamp – van Montfoort – van Ruiswijk 1980; Fricke 1982; Gabriel 1983, 546 operate as mediators between the semantic and pragmatic approaches. Warning 1983. Anderegg 21977; Iser 21979, 277; Riess 2001, 349f. According to the definition of Döhl 21990, 159 Formalism is a Russian school of literary science, c. 1915–1930, which regards the use of extra-textual factors as unsuitable for the interpretation of literary texts and thus postulates a radical distinction between literature and life.

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American New Criticism9 found their place. They regard art as existing in its own sphere with its very own laws. This isolation of a work of art from social reality was popular above all in times, in which a sociopolitical reflection upon literary works of art would have been disconcerting. Even Adorno demanded the autonomy of works of art, albeit, to make it, for example, all the more difficult for future totalitarian regimes to instrumentalise them ideologically. Thus it became the communis opinio that a fictional text should not be seen as referring to reality. According to these theories the basic semantic rules of reference and denotation were not applicable, 10 the text presented only a pseudo-referential use of language, that is it refers not to things outside itself, but simply to itself (autoreferentiality). Yet even the most radical exponents of the autonomy theory cannot avoid allowing any text reference to reality. A text is not simply true or false, but possibly exists in some vague sphere. Searle realised the existence of this problem and makes the penetrating distinction between fictional discourse and a work of fiction,11 which does not need as a whole to consist of fictional discourse, but can by all means contain well known and empirically verifiable aspects. Genette aligns himself with Searle and emphasises that there can be not only real details in a fictional text, but indeed extensive “islands of nonfictionality”.12 These statements are of inestimable value for historians, because they make the old search for “Realia” in all genres of genuinely literary texts methodologically allowable. Iser, who is critical of the autonomy theory, has demonstrated in a terminology which is current to this very day, that the act of fabrication always calls up reality beyond the text. The process of selection takes elements of reality out of their original context and sets them in different surroundings, thus it contextualises them in a different manner. Taken by themselves these elements are not fictional, but in as much as they lose their specific purpose in the system from which they originate, and are put in a different context, they no longer make reference directly to an object, they do this rather in an indirect manner. ————— 9

10 11 12

According to the definition given by Schweikle 21990, 326 New Criticism sees its method of interpretation in close reading while neglecting historical and biographical facts. This method is regarded by this school of thought as the best way of handling works of art, which are considered as autonomous entities. Bußmann 1983, 86; 428 offers definitions of both terms. Searle 1975, 332. Genette 1992, 59f.

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It is crucial that the creative author makes use not only of various elements taken from reality, but that he also draws from other texts. Empirical and literary elements are moulded together into a new system, that is they are combined to produce a literary work of art, a process which Iser calls combination. Selection and combination contribute to the vagueness of the fictional text, which is something different from reality and is in a position to call up varied associations. These can hardly be put into words and cannot be referred directly to reality and yet make continuous reference to the outside world and play with it and with the experiences of the reader, who for his part gains new experiences by reading the text. If Iser’s theory leaves us with the impression that an author is bound to reality as well as to other texts, then Aleida Assmann expands the act of fabrication by adding a crucial third component, that of addition. Naturally every artist is free to add anything fictitious just as he pleases and as far as his fantasy carries him. However one desires to approach the complex phenomenon terminologically, there appear to be at least three ways for fictional texts to make reference to reality. The text refers as a whole to reality or there are “islands of non-fictionality” according to Searle and Genette or empirical and textual elements are combined in a new way and enriched with differing grades of fantasy. For a historian it might simply be a matter of finding the “islands of non-fictionality” with the help of the above described method of cultural cross-comparison and the application of sociology, or rather to study the selection and combination of elements of reality with elements from other texts. Philological findings with respect to the intertextuality of the Metamorphoses have allowed us in the meantime to gain insight into the selection of textual passages from other works of literature. Whatever cannot be made out, may be ascribed to the fantasy of the sophist, that is his “addition”. It is at this stage, however, that the next problem arises. What understanding, or more cautiously formulated, what awareness did antiquity have of fictionality? We are undoubtedly confronted with this phenomenon and not only in the context of the so-called ancient novel. How did Apuleius deal with it in the particular case of the Metamorphoses and to what end did he use fictional patterns of writing? To what extent is the portrayal of his robbers affected? These questions are of particular relevance, because they are also crucial for our assessment of genuinely historiographical sources. It is surely the case that the distinction between fictional and historical storytel-

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ling was unclear, although there was apparently a differentiation between fiction and history. The following observations point in this direction: 1. With the help of the term sermo Milesius Apuleius indicates clearly to the reader the existence of a contract of fictionality, which he is about to enter into with him. The story teller is not concerned with historically verifiable claims, but with the sheer desire to fabulate: At ego tibi sermone isto Milesio varias fabulas conseram, auresque tuas benivolas lepido susurro permulceam, modo si papyrum Aegyptiam argutia Nilotici calami inscriptam non spreveris inspicere, figuras fortunasque hominum in alias imagines conversas et in se rursum mutuo nexu refectas ut mireris.13 ‘But I would like to tie together different sorts of tales for you in that Milesian style of yours, and to caress your ears into approval with a pretty whisper, if only you will not begrudge looking at Egyptian papyrus inscribed with the sharpness of a reed from the Nile, so that you may be amazed at men’s forms and fortunes transformed into other shapes and then restored again in an interwoven knot’. 2. Ancient rhetoric distinguishes three genera narrationum according to their truth content, the fabula, which is neither true nor probable (myth, tragedy), the historia, which relates real events, res gestae/verae, and in the midst of these two is the sphere of argumentum (res fictae) – in Greek to diegema plasmatikon – consisting of tales, which are not true, but at least probable. According to standard research opinion the ancient novel, for which antiquity developed no consistent terminology, is included in this category.14 There are however, border zones, in which justifiable doubt can arise as to whether these divisions were always regarded so precisely. In the border ————— 13

14

Apul. Met. 1,1. All quotations of Apuleius are taken from Apuleius, Metamorphoses, edited and translated by J. Arthur Hanson in two volumes, Cambridge/MA 1989. Cic. Inv. 1,27; Rhet. Her. 1,13; Isid. Orig. 1,44,5; Macr. Somn. 1,2,7–8. This categorisation is of course only typical in an ideal way. Categories were not standardised in literary theories of antiquity and the Middle Ages. Hose 1996 was able to state that the tripartite categorisation first appeared about 90 BC in Rome, at a time when the Greek dichotomy of truth – lie (aletheia – pseudos) was extended by the addition of the category of plasma.

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zone between novel and historiography, that is in fictional biography (the Alexander romance), in fictional autobiography (pseudo-Clemens), in the socalled epistolary novels and in the eye-witness accounts of Troy15 an understanding of the purpose of literature can be observed, which is diametrically opposed to ours. Whereas the modern historian would like to distinguish between fictionality and reality, the ancient reader showed a marked lack of interest in such categorisation. Indeed rhetoric, which has handed down the basic concepts mentioned above, makes it very difficult for the ancient audience to distinguish between res fictae and res factae. It demanded the same compositional patterns for all texts, which an author had to use, if he wanted to present his product in an attractive form. The realism of depiction, that is the obligation to the principles of mimesis,16 was the basic requirement in order that a text might be perceived as successful. For this very reason it is likely that the novels strive to present realistic depictions. Sociohistorical details are without doubt present and may give the social historian more information about the world of the authors than historiography, which, while making claims to historicity, confined itself only to great political persons and events.

The Historical Background In the domain of crime and robbery, possible aspects in the Metamorphoses, which are worth being compared from a social historian’s and a philologist’s point of view, are the causes of robbery, the gang structures, the criminal methods, violent behaviour and the reaction of society confronted with these phenomena of crime (measures of prosecution and integration). 17 Here, I would like to concentrate on violent behaviour to demonstrate the way in ————— 15 16

17

Holzberg 1995 pays particular attention to the fringe novels. One must differentiate between two types of mimesis in the times of Apuleius: Plat. Pol. 595a–606d understands one sort as an imitation of nature (cf. Koller 1954; Kardaun 1993). While Plato from the starting point of orality comes to a negative judgement, Aristotle discerns the cathartic powers of mimesis on the psyche of the reader or the audience and thus forms not only a more positive picture of literary writing, but also offers at the same time the first theory and legitimation of fictionality (cf. Rösler 1980, 308ff.). In the Hellenistic period mimesis refers more and more to the imitatio of literary models (cf. Flashar 1978; Fuhrmann 21992; Cizek 1994, 11ff.). Auerbach 81988 uses the term in the book with precisely this title in the sense of the interpretation of reality in literary texts. For a comprehensive treatment see now Riess 2001, 45–236.

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which we can use neighbouring disciplines and the method of cultural crosscomparison to compare fiction to facts. The use of violence was amazingly similar in ancient and in early modern times. We have two types of sources at our disposal: literary sources and the papyri, which are the only ancient sources, which have come down to us in a relatively continuous form. The analysis of 155 papyri containing records of criminal offences reported to the authorities by victims can be structured according to a matrix which defines categories for various characteristics of the crimes such as size of the group or gang, violence or not, murder, the job of the victim and of the delinquent and so on.18 This matrix can be evaluated according to the methods established by the history of crime. Numerous phenomena can be investigated, depending on which parameters are combined. The results fully correspond to the situation in early modern times: Whereas the number of thefts was 104, there were only 33 cases of robbery, in only three cases was murder committed as well. The papyri investigated included only six cases of street robbery, but these were carried out very brutally. The victims were beaten up, but most of them survived. Interestingly enough, most victims knew the delinquents because they came from the same social group – either from their village, neighborhood or even from their relatives. According to the proverb “opportunity makes the thief” people stole whenever there was a chance to do so. This is typical of societies characterized by poverty. Only 12 out of 94 group-related crimes can be classified as gang crimes, which were committed by unknown criminals using a high degree of brutality. The 82 other group-related cases were obviously committed by temporary robber groups who had spontaneously joined forces for a single coup, while still being socially integrated villagers. This supports the thesis that criminal gangs consisting of highly aggressive social outcasts played only a minor role in the criminal cases of antiquity, although they existed of course. The probability of being beaten up by one’s neighbor or of property being stolen by a close acquaintance was much higher than becoming the victim of a gang or even being killed by a robber.

————— 18

The so-called robbery and theft petitions have been presented a number of times in tabulated form: Lukaszewicz 1983; most recently and with the most parameters Riess 2001, 377–395.

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Less than 1/3 of the 155 property offenses involved the use of violence. Although in the culture of pre-modern times violence was more readily used than today,19 criminals tried to avoid violence for fear of prosecution, exactly like the delinquents of early modern times. Besides these reflections on proportions, it is also important to consider in which contexts apart from property offences violence and force were used. Anthropological research shows that the use of violence in pre-modern times is only irregular at first glance. In reality, pre-modern societies had unwritten rules which made the use of force acceptable in certain situtions, or even called for it. The social code of behaviour worked according to a fixed escalation scheme and people had to follow these rules, otherwise they would not only have to confront the sanctions of the authorities, but would also lose their acceptance within their own village community. For instance, it was a must to defend material goods or symbolic values, such as honour (lat. honos, gr. time). Honour was of vital importance; if a person’s honour was offended, i.e. when somebody lost his face, normal modes of communication were put aside, and the immediate reaction of the offended person was often to beat the insulter in order to defend his honour. If the person who had been insulted, did not react, it was felt that this was a tacit admission of his wrongdoing. This fixed behaviour is not only true for the early modern times,20 but is also very well documented in the papyri, where insults (hybris, logopoioumenos pros autous) were often followed by fights.21 Both in antiquity and in early modern times conflicts between villages, between competing families, during festivities and in inns often led to escalation and violence. Some inns even had a bad reputation and are characterized in the Digests as loci inhonesti.22

————— 19 20 21

22

Elias 51978, vol. II 312f.; 317ff.; 326ff.; 336; 353ff.; 369ff.; 444f. Rummel 1993, 87f.; 92; 95; 110; 113; Frank 1995, 193; 333–348. P. Lille II 24 = P. Enteux 79 (219/218 B.C.); P. Oxy. XIX 2234 (31 A.D.); P. Ryl. II 141 (37 A.D.); P. Ryl. II 150 (40 A.D.); P. Mich. V 228 (47 A.D.); P. Mich. V 229 (48 A.D.); P. Mich. V 230 (48 A.D.); P. Oxy. II 324 (50 A.D.); BGU I 36 = BGU II 436 (98–117 A.D.); P. Tebt. II 331 (126–132 A.D.); SB VI 9458 (2. Hälfte 2. Jh.); P. Oxy Hels. 23 (212 A.D.); P. Oxy. XXXIII 2672 (218 A.D.). Cf. Preisigke 1927, Sp. 631; Dahlmann 1968; Rupprecht 1991, 143f.; Rupprecht 1993; Hobson 1993, 201. Dig. 4,8,21,11 (Ulpian).

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The Use of Violence in the Metamorphoses Even on first acquaintance with Apuleius’ novel “The Golden Ass”, it is noticeable that a wide range of information about crime is to be found. Tlepolemus wants to rescue his fiancé Charite who has been kidnapped by the robbers. To this end, he dresses as a robber, adopts the name of Haemus and tries to infiltrate the robber gang – today we would call him an under-cover agent. In the famous speech Haemus delivers to the robbers, he praises himself in stilted diction, explaining that he fulfils what he considers to be the ideal profile of a robber. We should analyze this part as a classic example of a situation chosen for a rhetorical exercise and therefore be very careful: The robbers are so impressed that they at once make him their gang leader right after this panegyric, which shows us that Haemus’ bombastic exaggerations not only fulfil the robbers’ expectations, but even exceed them. Obviously he embodies the robbers’ values better than they do themselves: Apul. Met. 7,5,4-6: “Havete”, inquit “fortissimi deo Marti clientes mihique iam fidi commilitones, et virum magnanimae vivacitatis volentem volentes accipite, libentius vulnera corpore excipientem quam aurum manu suscipientem, ipsaque morte, quam formidant alii, meliorem. Nec me putetis egenum vel abiectum, neve de pannulis istis virtutes meas aestimetis. Nam praefui validissimae manui totamque prorsus devastavi Macedoniam. Ego sum praedo famosus Haemus ille Thracius, cuius totae provinciae nomen horrescunt, patre Therone aeque latrone incluto prognatus, humano sanguine nutritus interque ipsos manipulos factionis educatus heres et aemulus virtutis paternae. ‘“Hail, brave servants of Mars and now my trusty fellow-soldiers! Receive a willing recruit willingly. You see before you a man of heroic vigour, who more gladly accepts wounds on his body than gold in his hand, and who is superior to death itself, which others fear. And do not think me destitute or an outcast; do not judge my virtues from these rags. I was in command of a strong and mighty band and laid waste the whole of Macedonia. I am the famous brigand, Haemus the Thracian, at whose name every province trembles. My father was Theron, also a renowned

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robber; I was nursed on human blood and raised among the squadrons of our troop as heir and rival to my father’s valour’. At first glance, Apuleius seems to exaggerate this aspect of the robbers’ way of life, compared to the reality we can deduce from the historical sources. Nonetheless, Apuleius follows a certain pattern of writing from which we can indeed draw conclusions about the conditions in his time. We just have to understand his literary practice. His robbers are ready to use violence and they do so on many occasions.23 But since Apuleius was not a member of the underworld, he omitted many facets of the subject and its conditions. So it is our task to put his textual patterns into the context of Roman society: As in all pre-modern societies, violence was the order of the day. Tax collectors often used force.24 Fights and brawls in inns and during village festivities were common.25 There were, however, as we have shown, important limits: Only few people were killed and normally you had to obey to the general rules which regulated every-day life in the little villages. At least at first glance the situation in Apuleius is totally different. Social reality is certainly distorted to a remarkable extent, because the novel abounds in murder and bloodshed. Sex and crime, we can deduce, were also very popular in ancient times. But it is precisely the most brutal scenes in his novel, which are also the most fictitious ones. The bloody scenes, for instance when Alkimus is thrown out of the window26 or when Thrasyleon is killed while disguised as a bear,27 are deliberate and above all recognizable exaggerations formed according to literary models with the purpose of bringing action and slapstick scenes into the novel and thus making it more excit————— 23

24

25

26 27

Apul. Met. 1,15,2–3; 2,14,3; 2,18,3; 2,32,2–6; 3,5–6; 4,7,2–3 (verbal violence); 4,9,4– 4,12,1; 4,18,3–7; 4,26,7–8; 6,25,2; 6,30,6–7; 6,31,1–2; 7,4,3–6; 7,5–7,6,1; 7,7–7,9,1. Philo, Spec. Leg. 3,159f.; Fl. Jos. BJ 2,8,1; AJ 18,1,1; further instances in MacMullen 1987, 748f.; Isaac 1990, 282ff.; Krause 1996, 189–202. The connection between tax collection and village crime is examined by Riess 2001, 55; 82; 124f.; 132f.; 199; 266; 300; 380; 388. Attested for example in PSI III 172 (2. Jh. A.D.); P. Cair. Isidor 75 (316 A.D.); P. Alex. Giss. 3 (201/202 A.D.); P. Oxy. XVI 1853 (6./7. Jh. A.D.); further source material in Kleberg 1963; McMullen 1966, 167f.; Sperber 1970, 262; Davies 1973, 212; pertinent descriptions from the early modern period in Castan 1980, 202–212; Frank 1995, 246ff.; on the use of violence in taverns or at festivals cf. in summarised form Riess 2001, 136– 138. Apul. Met. 4,12,2–9. Ibid. 4,18–21.

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ing to read. These scenes are so exaggerated that the readers will certainly have noticed the contrast to reality which was much less violent. Apuleius, therefore, does not really overestimate the actual violence potential among robbers. So for the attentive reader reality – less spectacular as it was – remained visible in the background in spite of the action-effects.

The Function of Fiction in Apuleius and the Robbers’ Role in the Novel Before we can make enquiries about the purpose of the robbers in the Metamorphoses, we must remind ourselves of the functions, which the phenomenon of fictionality fulfils in this novel. Fictionality is, however, a systematic as well as a historical phenomenon, which can always be understood as something slightly different dependent upon culture and era. There are nevertheless certain timeless aspects of fictionality, such as the fact that the suspended claim to truth allows alternative forms of perception and thought, which are not only affirmative acting as a guarantee of political stability,28 but can be relevant in terms of critique of the times and of society, too. The robbers in the Metamorphoses are assuredly fictional to a large extent, as we have seen. What is their role within the novel? Let us first recall the traditional function of bandits in Greek novels. The authors used them as structural elements. Their only function in the novel was to increase suspense, bring about peripeties, changes in fortune, and serve as a transition to the next chain of actions. They fulfil these functions in the Golden Ass as well, of course. But as a result of adding the Isis book the whole novel develops a completely different purpose from that of the Greek epitome of the Onos. This is all the more true for the second reader, as he is in a position to recognise anticipations at a very early stage while reading the text for a second time.29 Thus new functions are attributed to the robbers, so that they become completely different from those of the Greek model. With his manner of fictional story telling in book 11 the narrator Lucius offers not only an alternative to the picaresque action of the Greek model but also an unconventional reinter————— 28

29

One need only consider the Latin panegyrics or Molières Le Tartuffe, in which Louis XIV intervenes at the end as a deus ex machina , in order to give the plot a positive turn at its end. Winkler 1985 introduced the category of the second reader.

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pretation of the tribulations of the times. This alternative mode of contemplation regards misery as an unavoidable evil, which must be suffered first, in order to attain redemption, in which at least the narrator of the tale of the ass apparently believes, even though the redemption is treated in an ironical way and as such is seen as a problem, a point to which we shall have to return. The robbers embody aspects of this path of suffering, one might indeed call them chiffres, in a similar way to the witches and wolves we meet along the wayside. Consequently, Apuleius had much more in mind than the Greek author when he integrated robbers in his Metamorphoses. And for this reason Apuleius wanted to make the robbers appear as authentic as possible. This thesis may be corroborated for three reasons. Discussing them we have to keep in mind that there is a decisive difference between Apuleius’ and his audience’s claim to truth and our interests and conceptions of truth. The three reasons are: the function of the ass’s mask, i.e. the play with satire, secondly the pseudo-religious and philosophical message of the novel, and thirdly the game with the pseudo-autobiographical perspective. It is first of all the main theme, the story of the Ass, which makes it more than likely that Apuleius wanted his robbers to be perceived as realistic. For the first time in ancient literature, an outside perspective is so consequently used to cast a critical view on contemporary society. In this respect, Apuleius is a precursor of Montesquieu's “Lettres Persanes”, written in 1721, where a fictitious Persian visiting France writes letters to his friend back home in Persia expressing his bewilderment about the brutal conditions prevailing in the absolutistic French state. This approach of a fictitious outside observer unmasking morally questionable social standards by looking at society with detachment is often resorted to under suppressive regimes. In this case the author wants to make his readers think critically about their own society by using the means of satire. As in a caricature, this literary approach, however, only works, if the readers recognize the real world behind the satire. Since Apuleius uses a similar effect, his novel must contain a sufficient degree of reality. The sufferings Lucius encounters along his way had to be plausible, otherwise the redeeming power of Isis at the actor-level in the 11th book would have appeared incredible, which would have been contrary to Apuleius’ objectives. A carnevalesque reading could of course simply deny the pedagogic intentions of the satire and insist that one can indeed laugh at all the inaccu-

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racies in the text. A counter argument is that at least at the actor-level one cannot laugh at all times. At the Risus festival, the most striking carnevalesque scene, Lucius is not at all in the mood for laughing. On top of this the world in the text is not always topsy turvy as in the carnevalesque world. Members of the lower classes are often helplessly at the mercy of the privileged.30 It is of course possible that upper class readers could still be amused, but the picaresque nature of the first ten books is so strongly affected by the Isis book, that their content can be understood as being quite blasphemous in relation to Isis. It is a particularly masterly stroke of the author that even the “decarnevalisation” in book 11 is itself treated in an ironic manner. Thus if one does not believe in a serious dimension, one cannot, however, deny the possibility that at least at the narrator’s level, as in the case of the pseudoautobiographical level, satirical elements are played with. A satirical reading can therefore be treated on equal terms as a carnevalesque one. The seriousness of the religious and philosophical message of the novel is highly controversial. The re-metamorphosis of the donkey into the human being Lucius and finally into the alleged author, the poor man from Madauros, is so problematic that it does not allow a thoroughly consistent interpretation. Far beyond the commonplace that author and narrator are never one and the same, the interplay with various masks is typical of display oratory of the Second Sophistic: At the actor-level Lucius remains naive and trusting, beneath the surface, however, the irony of the author figure is clearly recognisable. In order to be able to gauge the religious seriousness of the Metamorphoses, the controversial unity of the work is of prime importance. The few scholars, who even today see a deep rift between books 1–10 and the eleventh book, deny to a large extent that there is a deeper meaning to the novel.31 The proponents of unity are not unanimous. While some believe in a genuine religious message,32 the majority of these scholars regard it as impossible to come to a coherent result concerning this point. Winkler was the first to come out strongly against there being a religious slant in the Isis book, which he saw as full of adventures as the 10 preceding books. In ————— 30

31 32

Apul. Met. 8,22,5–7 (a member of the lower classes is devoured by ants); 9,35,2–9,38,10 (a poor farmer and his family are wiped out by the neighbouring large landowner); 9,42,4 (an innocent gardener who does not have Roman citizenship is crucified by the Romans). Bernhard 1927; Lesky 1941; Helm 21956; Perry 1967; in toned down form Sandy 1994. Kerényi 1927; Nock 1933; Festugière 1954; Merkelbach 1962; Wlosok 1969; Münstermann 1995, who continues in the Merkelbach tradition; more subtle and differentiated Scobie 1973; Tatum 1979; Hooper 1985; James 1987; Shumate 1996.

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his opinion these uninterrupted adventures are the basis of unity.33 Doubts about the level of truth in the religious scenes arise above all because of the avaricious priests, who insist upon one expensive initiation after another for Lucius.34 Likewise suspicious is the bald head, which Lucius has to take upon himself, in order to be initiated into the various cults. Baldness was not only a sign of servitude in antiquity, but also of lecherousness. The selfcharacterisation in Apol. 4.6, in which Apuleius makes reference to his shaggy and unkempt hair, makes it clear that lack of hair should not be understood autobiographically.35 According to Harrison Platonism simply serves Apuleius as a means of parodying the serious religious texts of the Greeks and making an ostentatious show of his knowledge of the cults and mysteries as is typical of the showy manner of the Second Sophistic.36 If, however, ambivalence is a characteristic of the first 10 books, then it is all the more a defining feature of book 11. Lucius promotes Isis and her cult, however ironically it is portrayed, and the author-figure introduces himself into the action, even if only in a playful manner. One could of course be a lawyer and a priest at the same time, just as inaccuracies concerning the rites of the Isis cult are not in any way surprising in view of our poor knowledge. The high costs can be taken as motif-repetition,37 baldness may be understood as a particular expression of asceticism.38 The thrice initiated Lucius is to be contrasted with the fooled and ill-starred Lukios of the Greek version, who fares in no way better than his Latin counterpart.39 The path which leads from misery is at least for the narrator the changing of one’s ways and conversion to Isis. Lucius apparently had to complete the journey along his path of suffering, before he could gain a dubious glimpse of the divine.

————— 33 34

35

36 37 38 39

Winkler 1985. Cf. Fredouille 1975, 12f.; Winkler 1985, 217f.; Fick-Michel 1991, 101f.; Shumate 1996, 325f.; van Mal-Maeder 1997, 100ff. Further serious reservations concerning a genuinely serious religious message are the otherwise unattested equation of Isis with Fortuna, who is furthermore qualified by the epithet videns, which is not attested in this combination, as well as the fact that Lucius is priest and lawyer at one and the same time, and that there is a lack of clarity in the masquerade, which precedes the Isis procession. Cf. Riess 2001, 332. Harrison, 1996, 514f.; 1999, xxxviii; 2000 (in this volume of AN 1, 2000-2001), 250-264. Van der Paardt 1996, 72. Ibid. 74–76. Ibid. 77.

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As the mixture of frivolity and seriousness in the Latin version can not be explained logically, it must have a special sense. There is nothing comparable in the Greek “Onos” which was written as pure entertainment and which Apuleius had used as the basis of his novel. This tells us that Apuleius’ own intentions can be detected in the very passages which deviate so strikingly from the Greek text and which make seem his novel so incongruous. The contrasts stand for a very special view of the world. As a philosophus platonicus, Apuleius believed that the world is characterized by a fundamental dualism comprising both good and evil forces. And as a faithful follower of Plato, he wants to show this dualistic world in all its facets and contrasts as a whole, as an entity which he depicts in a condensed form. Apuleius portrays the world in all its vicissitudes in just the way that life produces its ups and downs. The duplex sensus of Platonic philosophy, in other words, ambiguity as one of the most characteristic features of Apuleius’ style, can also be applied to the presentation of robbers as bearers of meaning. On the one hand, they fulfil the traditional narrative functions as pointed out above, on the other hand, they have also been attributed a semantic function as symbols of the dangers, vicissitudes and dark sides of the world, showing how much it needs redemption. This additional and deeper, allegorical meaning distinguishes Apuleius’ robbers sharply from the robbers in the Greek novels. A purely burlesque or edifying way of writing which would maybe meet our aesthetic expectations much better, would for Apuleius probably have been a crude distortion of the truth, to which he felt so devoted as a philosophus Platonicus.40 It is remarkable that it is precisely this truth which Apuleius perceives and presents in a very selective manner. In the novel the robbers commit almost only serious crimes, although in reality less serious crimes were more frequent. Furthermore the robbers are not integrated into the fringes of society as the criminals were in reality, but are shunted off to a locus horridus, which is made up out of citations from other texts.41 Even if the picaresque interludes only have a serious function on the surface, it is obvious that the description of robbers also serves this superior, serious aim to which the action is heading for at the actor-level. In its religious character the narrator recommends this transcendent goal of seeking redemption as a viable alternative to remaining stuck in the banality and ————— 40 41

Riess 2001, 334f. Ibid. 299; 303; 336.

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trouble of everyday life. So we can deduce that the evil forces in his novel, represented by witches, wolves and robbers, are meant to be authentic and make sense. In order to make the various metamorphoses into a donkey and the initiation more believable, they are anchored by the play with the autobiographical level, which remains controversial to this very day. The famous naming of the Madaurensis at the end of the novel42 is in no way the only autobiographical clue in the text. Alongside the highly complex introduction, where Lucius points to his intellectual affiliation with Plutarch,43 there are above all two allusions to literary fame at the beginning and at the end of the novel,44 which can only refer to the author himself. Of course the playful nature of these two allusions should at no stage be misunderstood. From the point of view of the author’s use of fictionality the autograph at the end of the novel cannot be overestimated. The novel appears to metamorphose itself into a fictional autobiography with a high claim to truth, which puts the fictionality contract at the beginning of the novel into stark perspective. This claim to truth and credibility at the actor-level can only be conveyed in a believable fashion, if a sufficient extent of empiricism is to be found in the text. The masterful play with fictionality and reality along with the apparatus of authentication of the pseudo-autobiographical references, which for their part point the versed reader to the path of fictionality, lends a relatively historical authenticity to the reports. From an ironical distance the initiation experience in all the facets of its problematic nature is thus portrayed in a highly reflected manner. In order to give to the play with redemption its fascinating and contradictory as well as realistic effect on the reader, Apuleius had to stamp not only an autobiographical claim on the plot, but also had to portray the world in the text in a reasonably realistic way. Had Apuleius deviated too far from reality, he would have failed in his prime intention of convincing his readers of the real, ————— 42 43

44

Apul. Met. 11,27,9. Münstermann 1995, 57–93 offers the most detailed interpretation of the introductory allusion to Plutarch. Apul Met. 2,12,5: nunc enim gloriam satis floridam, nunc historiam magnam et incredundam fabulam et libros me futurum (‘on the one hand my reputation will really flourish, but on the other I will become a long story, an unbelievable tale, a book in several volumes’); ibid. 11,27,9: nam et illi studiorum gloriam [...] (‘the man would acquire fame for his studies’).

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redeeming power of Isis at the actor-level. The robbers are amongst the elements, which have to convey realistic features. When they do not do this in the text as far as we can see, the reason for this may be the author’s lack of knowledge or different intentions on his part. In all probability both he as well as his audience regarded the robber stories with the exception of a few exaggerations as quite credible. The thesis that Apuleius wanted to create his robbers as realistically as possible, enables us now to analyze in a more detailed way the literary practice of an author of the Second Sophistic. He selects facts which can be observed in everyday life (selection), and combines them with elements represented in other works (combination), then he adds imagination and exaggeration (addition) and with them assembles a literary work of art, in which the robbers fulfil the functions as described above. This artful picture of life is only similar to reality and as far as crime is concerned condenses reality to a certain extent.45 Apuleius’ ingeniousness is to let reality shine through fiction, to refine reality by adding fiction, and to assign additional semantic meanings to the characters of his novel including the robbers. In the particular case of the Metamorphoses the systematic phenomenon of fictionality serves the purpose of portraying the problematic retreat from this world into one of religious intimacy, one of inner security.

Further Perspectives Is Apuleius a typical representative of the elites of Roman society? Before we can answer this question, we need to consider briefly his social background. His father was a duumvir, approximately the equivalent of a mayor in our times. In Roman society, this function was not very prestigious. Sociology has found out that social ascent makes most people particularly fervent supporters and conservative defenders of the basic values represented by the class to which they have gained access – a typical example is Cicero. It is ————— 45

By the accumulation of raids, which were relatively rare in sociohistorical reality, the phenomenon of robbers is dramatised. This is in accordance with the general tendency of embellishment in the Metamorphoses. The exaggerations did not necessarily contribute to a loss of authenticity – in marked contrast to the aesthetic perceptions of modern times – but could apparently be perceived by a contemporary audience as legitimate emphasis.

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therefore safe to assume that Apuleius, who gained access to the Roman literary elite by means of his talent, fully identifies himself with the ideological values, views and moral codes of the Roman upper classes. Therefore, it would have been unthinkable for him to express sympathy or even pity with the robbers in his novel, which he wrote for Rome, the centre of power.46 So his picture of the robbers as elements outside society, representing the evil side of life, deserving defeat and ridicule, is symptomatic of the view which the upper classes of ancient Rome had about the robbers. Thanks to the Metamorphoses we are now able to grasp not only the mentality of one single author, but due to his representative position of the major part of Roman elites. We come full circle hermeneutically. The findings resulting from the text are in astonishing accordance with the historic data. This makes the novel “The Golden Ass” a source worth evaluating for the purposes of historical criminology. Literary science has already given up the former distinction between purely historical and purely fictional works, having proven that both modes of literary speaking contain elements from one another.47 Small wonder then that the Metamorphoses can indeed be used as a historical source for analyzing aspects of robbery in antiquity. It would be a worthwhile endeavor to transfer this methodology to the works of other authors of antiquity. We could thus establish a matrix and scientifically establish, how far ancient fiction in general confirms, or contradicts, historical findings and how far these findings from the Metamorphoses are in line with the picture of reality painted by other ancient authors, historians and novelists alike.48

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48

Dowden 1994, 422 emphasizes that the Metamorphoses were written for Rome. White 1978; Ricœur 1983; 1984; 1985. A survey of research pertaining to Apuleius is available in Riess 2001, 366–374. This is the longer version of the lecture held at ICAN 2000 under the title: “The Robbers in Apuleius between fiction and reality”. It is based upon the main theses of my PhD thesis, which portrays the relationship between fictionality and reality in general and in particular with respect to the robber scenes in Apuleius. I would like to thank Maaike Zimmerman for permission to speak at the Congress and the Advisory Board of AN for the invitation to publish my contribution in the first fascicle of this journal. I owe many thanks to Dr. James M.S. Cowey for his help in translating this article.

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Kardaun, M. 1993. Der Mimesisbegriff in der griechischen Antike. Neubetrachtung eines umstrittenen Begriffs als Ansatz zu einer neuen Interpretation der platonischen Kunstauffassung, Amsterdam – New York u.a. Kerényi, K. 1927. Die griechisch-orientalische Romanliteratur in religionsgeschichtlicher Bedeutung, Tübingen 1927. Repr. Darmstadt 21962. Kleberg, T. 1963. In den Wirtshäusern und Weinstuben des antiken Rom, Berlin. Koller, H. 1954. Die Mimesis in der Antike. Nachahmung, Darstellung, Ausdruck, Bern. Krause, J.-U. 1996. Gefängnisse im Römischen Reich, Stuttgart. Lamnek, S. 61996. Theorien abweichenden Verhaltens, München. Lesky, A. 1941. ‘Apuleius von Madaura und Lukios von Patrai’, Hermes 76, 43–74. Lukaszewicz, A. 1983. ‘Petition Concerning a Theft. P. Berol 7306’, JJP 19, 107–119. MacMullen, R. 1966. Enemies of the Roman Order. Treason, Unrest and Alienation in the Empire, Cambridge/Mass. Repr. London 1992. MacMullen, R. 1987. ‘Tax-pressure in the Roman Empire’, Latomus 46, 737–754. Mal-Maeder, D. van. 1997. ‘Lector, intende: laetaberis. The enigma of the last book of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, in: H. Hofmann – M. Zimmerman (ed.), Groningen Colloquia on the Novel VIII, Groningen, 87–118. Merkelbach, R. 1962. Roman und Mysterium in der Antike, München – Berlin. Millar F. 1981. ‘The world of the Golden Ass’, JRS 71, 63–75. Repr. in: S. J. Harrison (ed.). 1999. Oxford Readings in the Roman Novel, Oxford, 247–268. Morgan, J.R. 1982. ‘History, romance and realism in the Aithiopika of Heliodoros’, ClAnt 1, 221–265. Münstermann, H. 1995. Apuleius. Metamorphosen literarischer Vorlagen. Untersuchungen dreier Episoden des Romans unter Berücksichtigung der Philosophie und Theologie des Apuleius, Stuttgart-Leipzig. Nock, A.D. 1933. Conversion. The old and the new in religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo, Oxford. Repr. London 1963. Paardt, R.Th. van der. 1996. ‘Hoe ge(s)laagd is het slot van Apuleius’ Metamorphosen?’ Lampas 29, 1, 67–79. Perry, B.E. 1967. The Ancient Romances: A Literary and Historical Account of Their Origins, Berkely – Los Angeles. Pouilloux, J. 1983. ‘Delphes dans les Ethiopiques d’Héliodore: la Réalité dans la Fiction’, JS 259–286. Pouilloux, J. 1993. ‘Roman Grec et Réalité: un Episode Delphique des Ethiopiques d’Héliodore’, in: H. Walter (ed.), Hommage à Lucien Lerat II, Paris, 691–703. Preisigke, F. 1927. ‘Hybris’, Wörterbuch der griechischen Papyrusurkunden II, Berlin, Sp. 631. Ricœur, P. 1983. Temps et récit, Paris. Ricœur, P. 1984. La configuration dans le récit de fiction, Paris. Ricœur, P. 1985. Le Temps raconté, Paris. Riess, W. 2001. Apuleius und die Räuber. Ein Beitrag zur historischen Kriminalitätsforschung, Stuttgart. Rösler, W. 1980. ‘Die Entdeckung der Fiktionalität in der Antike’, Poetica 12, 283– 319.

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Rummel, W. 1993. ‘Verletzung von Körper, Ehre und Eigentum. Varianten im Umgang mit Gewalt in Dörfern des 17. Jh.’, in: A. Blauert – G. Schwerhoff (ed.), Mit den Waffen des Justiz. Zur Kriminalitätsgeschichte des Spätmittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, Frankfurt/M., 86–114. Rupprecht, H.-A. 1991. ‘Straftaten und Rechtsschutz nach den griechischen Papyri der ptolemäischen Zeit (mit Erwiderung von R. S. Bagnall)’, in: M. Gagarin (ed.), Symposion 1990. Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte (Pacific Grove, California, 24.–26. Sept. 1990), Köln-Wien, 139–148. Rupprecht, H.-A. 1993. ‘Hybris. Anmerkungen zu einem Delikt in den Papyri der ptolemäischen und römischen Zeit’, in: St. Buchholz – P. Mikat – D. Werkmüller (ed.), Überlieferung, Bewahrung und Gestaltung in der rechtsgeschichtlichen Forschung, Paderborn – München, 269–275. Sandy, G.N. 1994. ‘Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and the Ancient Novel’, ANRW II 34, 2, 1511–1574. Scarcella, A.M. 1977. ‘Les structures socio-économiques du Roman de Xénophon d’Ephèse’, REG 90, 249–262. Scarcella, A.M. 1996. ‘The Social and Economic Structures of the Ancient Novels’, in: G. Schmeling (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World, Leiden – New York – Köln, 221–276. Schweikle, G. 21990. ‘New Criticism’, Metzler Literaturlexikon, Stuttgart, 326. Scobie, A. 1973. ‘The Structure and Unity of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, in: A. Scobie, More Essays on the Ancient Romance and ist heritage, Meisenheim/Glan, 64– 83. Searle, J.R. 1969. Speech acts, New York (dt. Sprechakte, Frankfurt/M. 1971). Searle, J.R. 1975. ‘The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse’, New Literary History 6, 319–332. Shumate, N.J. 1996. Crisis and Conversion in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Ann Arbor/Mich. Sperber, D. 1970. ‘On Pubs and Policemen in Roman Palestine’, ZDMG 120, 257– 263. Tatum, J. 1979. Apuleius and the Golden Ass, Ithaca – London. Veyne, P. 1961. ‘Vie de Trimalcion’, Ann. ESC 16, 213–247. Warning, R. 1983. ‘Der inszenierte Diskurs. Bemerkungen zur pragmatischen Relation der Fiktion’, in: W. Iser – D. Henrich (ed.), Funktionen des Fiktiven, München, 183–206. Warren, K.D. 1976. Illusion and reality in the Satyricon, Diss. Nashville. White, H. 1978. Tropics of Discourse. Essays in Cultural Criticism, Baltimore/Md. – London. Wildekamp, A. – Montfort, I. van – Ruiswijk, N. van. 1980. ‘Fictionality and Convention’, Poetics 9, 547–567. Winkler, J.J. 1985. Auctor and Actor. A Narratological Reading of Apuleius’ “Golden Ass”, Berkely. Wlosok, A. 1969. ‘Zur Einheit der Metamorphosen des Apuleius’, Philologus 113, 68–84. Repr. engl. 1999. ‘On the Unity of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, in: S. J. Harrison (ed.), Oxford Readings in the Roman Novel, Oxford, 142–156.

History into fiction: the metamorphoses of the Mithras myths ROGER BECK

Toronto

Dedicated to Reinhold Merkelbach, whose explorations of ancient narrative and the mystery cults have always seemed to me profoundly well oriented, even when I would not follow the same path in detail. This article is neither about a particular ancient novel nor about the genre of the ancient novel in general. But it is about story-telling in the ancient world, and about the metamorphosis which stories undergo when they pass through the crucible of religious invention. Its subject, then, is narrative fiction — narrative fiction as the construction of sacred myth and of myth’s dramatic counterpart, ritual performance. The fictions I shall explore are the myths and rituals of the Mithras cult. Some of these fictions, I shall argue, are elaborations of events and fantasies of the Neronian age: on the one hand, events in both Italy and the orient centred on the visit of Tiridates of Armenia to Rome in 66; on the other hand, the heliomania of the times, a solar enthusiasm focused on, and in some measure orchestrated by, the emperor himself. What I am not offering is an explanation of Mithraism and its origins. In the first place, our subject is story and the metamorphosis of story, not religion. In the second place, I would not presume to ‘explain’ Mithraism, or any other religion for that matter, by Euhemeristic reduction to a set of historical or pseudo-historical antecedents. In speaking of the ‘invention’ of Mithraism and of its ‘fictions’, moreover, I intend no disrespect. I would use the same terms for Christianity (in which I happen to believe). By ‘invention’ I mean, in the literal sense, the discovery by its founders of the religion’s fundamental truths; and by ‘fictions’ I mean the stories and the ritual performances in which those truths were expressed. I do not imply that the Mithraists wilfully

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or naively misconstrued recent history. Stories from the recent past, I shall suggest, furnished Mithraism not with the substance of its mysteries, but with some of the themes, incident and coloration of its myths and rites. As a first example of the transformation of narrative in the crucible of religion, let me offer what has already been proposed for the journey of Tiridates to Italy within the Christian story. Tiridates travelled overland in great pomp and at huge public expense, fêted by the cities through which he passed (Dio 63,1–2). Now Tiridates was a magus, he was accompanied by other magi, and the the land journey itself was dictated by religious scruple: as good Zoroastrians they would not pollute the element of water with their bodily discharges.1 It was thus a notable ‘journey of the magi’, and, as Albrecht Dieterich pointed out long ago (1902), nicely positioned chronologically to serve as the matrix for that other tale of magi on the move, the familiar Nativity story in the second chapter of Matthew’s gospel. Fiction migrates through religion along a two-way road. The flow of narrative traffic in the other direction, from the fictions of religion to the fictions of secular literature, has been plotted, most recently and most brilliantly, by Glen Bowersock. In Fiction as History (1994), Bowersock describes a burst of inventiveness, starting in Nero’s reign, which engendered new forms of literature, principally the prose romance. These works are full of marvels, one of which is the Scheintod, the tale of the ‘apparent death’ of one of the characters, usually the heroine. ‘The question we must now ask’, says Bowersock (1994: 119), ‘is whether from a historical point of view we would be justified in explaining the extraordinary growth in fictional writing, and its characteristic and concomitant fascination with resurrection, as some kind of reflection of the remarkable stories that were coming out of Palestine precisely in the middle of the first century A.D.’ Another daring suggestion is that we read not only Achilles Tatius’ story of the origin of wine (2,2–3) but also the last extant episode of Petronius’ Satyrica (141), the story of Eumolpus’ cannibalistic will, as plays upon the Christian rite of the eucharist and the myth of its institution (Bowersock 1994: 125–138). With the Satyrica we are back in the Neronian age itself.

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These magi were of course the genuine priestly article, not — pace Pliny (NH 30,14–17), our source for the story — mere magicians. Tiridates’ ‘priestly’ status (sacerdotium) is also indicated by Tacitus (Ann. 15,24).

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This alchemy of stories is rich, strange, and rapid, and it seems to operate with a peculiar intensity in the latter half of the first century A.D. One of its products, I suggest, was the myth of Mithras, specifically the stories involving Mithras and the Sun. I shall start with the output as we find it in Mithraic myth and ritual, returning in due course to the postulated input from the history of the Neronian age. The output is first apprehended visually. As is well known, verbal accounts of the Mithras stories are lost, but a rich monumental art, with many narrative scenes, survives. Neither the input nor the output is in itself particularly contentious or ambiguous. The events in question and people’s reactions to them are reasonably well documented by the historians Tacitus (Ann. 15,24–31), Suetonius (Nero 13), and Dio (63,1–7), and by the elder Pliny (NH 30,16–17); and the Mithraic scenes are mostly shown in multiple exemplars and are relatively easy to decipher at the literal level.2 What is at issue, then, is solely the postulated connection, which is a causal one: that certain Mithraic scenes are as they are because certain anterior historical events, and the construction placed on them by contemporaries, were as they were. As everyone knows, Mithras caught and sacrificed a bull. On the hide of the slaughtered bull Mithras, together with the Sun god, held a banquet. This banquet is the second most important scene in Mithraic art, after the socalled ‘tauroctony’; indeed, the two scenes are sometimes sculpted on opposite sides of the same reversible relief, as is the case with this example from Fiano Romano, now in the Louvre (see below). It was to replicate this banquet of the gods in ritual that the Mithraists held their cult meal, reclining on the side benches which are such a distinctive feature of all extant mithraea.

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Because the disposition of the scenes on the monuments varies, the order of the episodes in the story of Mithras cannot be reconstructed definitively (Beck 1990). Indeed, there was probably no canonical order. For recent explications by leading authorities in the main line of Mithraic scholarship, see Turcan 2000, 45–61, 95–98; Clauss 1990, 71–110.

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Fig. 1. The banquet of Mithras and Sol: reverse of a relief from Fiano Romano (V641,3 Musée du Louvre; photo: Chuzeville)

One of Mithraism’s notorious paradoxes is that although Mithras is himself Sol Invictus, the ‘Unconquered Sun’,4 he and Sol appear in the banquet scene as separate persons feasting together. Moreover, the two share several other adventures. In another scene, Mithras ascends behind Sol in the latter’s chariot (scene ‘X’).5 Then there are scenes in which the two gods are shown entering into a compact of sorts, either as equals with a handshake (scene ‘W’), or as liege lord and vassal (scene ‘S’). In the latter, Sol kneels before Mithras who brandishes some object aloft.6 There is also a scene, less frequent, of the two gods at an altar with pieces of meat on a spit or spits

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V = Vermaseren 1956–60. Recently, M. Weiss (1998) has advanced a theory that Mithras and the Sun are always distinct persons in the Mysteries. On this hypothesis, the formula Deus Sol Invictus Mithras refers to the two gods (the Sun God and Unconquered Mithras) in parataxis. Since we are here concerned with the mythic adventures of the two gods, it is unnecessary to make the traditional case for their unity in other contexts. Letters refer to Richard Gordon’s catalogue of the peripheral scenes on the ‘Rhine-type’ and ‘Raetian-type’ monuments (1980). Interpreted either as a Persian cap or the haunch of the bull. On the alternatives, see Beck 1987, 310–311.

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(scene ‘U’). All these scenes are well exemplified on the monuments here reproduced as figures 2 and 3. The first monument (fig. 2, V1430) is the upper part of the right-hand border of a lost tauroctony from Virunum in Noricum: the third, fourth and fifth scenes from the top are, respectively, ‘X’ (Mithras in Sol’s chariot), ‘W’ (the iunctio dextrarum), and ‘S’ (Sol kneels to Mithras). The second monument (fig. 3, V1584) is an altar from Poetovio in Pannonia: it displays on its front a conflation of scenes ‘W’ and ‘U’ (the hand-shake over an altar with a spit of meat).7 Fig. 2. Scenes from the Mithras myth: fragment of a relief from Virunum (V1430, Landesmuseum für Kärnten, Klagenfurt; photo: U.P. Schwarz)

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Also a raven swooping down to peck at the meat.

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Fig. 3. Scenes from the Mithras myth: altar from Poetovio (V. 1584, Ptuj, Mithraeum III; photo: Pokrajinski Muzej, Ptuj)

Mithras’ weapon in the bull-killing is a knife or short sword. But for reasons which will soon be apparent, we should note his other weapon, the bow and arrow. As one might expect of a Persian god, Mithras is a formidable archer.8 On the left side of the Poetovio altar (fig. 3, above) his bow, his quiver, and his short sword are displayed together. On the right side the socalled ‘water miracle’9 (scene ‘O’) is shown. This scene, in which Mithras wields his bow to elicit water from a rock (normally for a pair of suppliants), is a fairly common one. In the Virumum fragment (fig. 2, above) it is the sixth down from the top. Two scenes of Mithraic ritual are also germane, for they show the activities of the two gods Mithras and Sol replicated in ritual by their earthly surrogates, the two most senior officers in the cult’s sevenfold hierarchy of grades, namely the Father (Pater) and Sun-Runner (Heliodromus). We have already noted that the feast of Mithras and Sol was replicated sacramentally in the initiates’ own banquet. Until recently this was the only Mithraic ceremony of mimesis known to us. Now, however, a pottery vessel from a mithraeum in Mainz has revealed two other such rites, each involving one of the two senior officers. The two rituals are displayed in separate scenes moulded

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9

See esp. the hunt scene in the frescos of the Dura mithraeum, where Mithras appears as a mounted archer (V52); likewise on side A of the Dieburg relief (V1247). The term is modern.

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in relief on either side of this vessel.10 Since its pottery type was discontinued by about 125,11 the vessel is one of Mithraism’s earliest documents. Rituals do not spring up overnight, so the practices shown were likely in place in the early years of the second century. If I am right, they postdate the historical events to which they allude by a mere half century or so. In the scene on one side of the vessel (scene A, fig. 4, below), the Father of the Mithraic community, clad like Mithras in Persian dress, imitates the god’s archery in a rite of initiation by drawing his bow at the naked initiand (with the mystagogue as the third figure behind).12 Fig. 4. Mainz vessel, scene A: ‘the archery of the Father’ (photo: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Rheinland-Pfalz)

The scene on the other side of the vessel (scene B, fig. 5, below) shows the Sun-Runner in procession; he is the third figure in the file of four, and he is escorted by three other cult members, the one who immediately precedes him bearing a lowered wand and the one who follows a raised wand;13 an ————— 10

11

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The vessel was discovered in 1976 and published by H. G. Horn in 1994. See also Merkelbach 1995. I offer an ampler explication in Beck 2000. The pottery is dated by V. Rupp (1987: 54–9) to the first quarter of the first century. I am told that a somewhat later date, c. 120–40, is now under consideration. Compositionally, as was pointed out by Horn (1994: 25–28, Abb. 25–26), the scene is very similar to the frescos of initiation in the Capua Mithraeum (Vermaseren 1971: Plates 21–28). The wand-bearers play the roles of the esoteric minor deities Cautes and Cautopates, whose function is to symbolize oppositional pairs. On the monuments their regular attributes are torches, one raised (Cautes) and the other lowered (Cautpates). See Beck 2000: 156–157.

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initiate in breastplate, probably of the ‘Soldier’ (Miles) grade, leads the procession. Fig. 5. Mainz vessel, scene B: ‘the procession of the Sun-Runner’ (photo: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Rheinland-Pfalz)

That the principal figure is indeed the Sun-Runner, imitating Sol (just as the Father imitates Mithras), is apparent from his attributes: the whip, with which the Sun manages his team of horses, and the rayed solar crown. The latter does not appear well in profile and is indicated only by the single spike at the top of the head.14 The intent of this ritual procession is less obvious than the intent of the Father’s ritual archery, and it would serve no purpose to discuss it here,15 for the esoteric ‘meaning’ would be a distraction. What concerns us instead is what we see on the surface, the performance alone as event or ‘happening’: a cult dignitary, with appropriate escort and accoutrements,16 parades in imitation of the Sun god.

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15 16

The best representation of the Sun-Runner’s rayed crown is found in the panel for the grade in the floor mosaic of the Felicissimus Mithraeum in Ostia (V299): the attributes of each of the seven grades are displayed in a sequence of frames running, ladder-like, the length of the aisle. The Felicissimus crown is obviously a stage prop (it has strings for tying beneath the wearer’s chin), which drives home the point that performance in imitation of the Sun complemented telling stories about him in the medium of visual art. I discuss the ritual’s intent fully in Beck 2000: 154–167. The Sun-Runner’s escort alludes not only to the esoteric (see above, n.13) but also to the exoteric, the accompaniment of a Roman magistrate by his lictors (see Beck 2000: 165– 166).

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Through these scenes of myth and ritual there runs a common thread, the deeds and interaction of two sharply differentiated characters. The contrast is conveyed by garb. Mithras and his human counterpart, the cult Father, bespeak the Persian and, for a Roman, the exotic; Sol, in heroic nudity (not of course replicated by his human agent, the Heliodromus) and with expected attributes, signals the familar home culture. A distinction, then, between ‘us’ and ‘them’; but a distinction without hostility or confrontation. Quite the contrary: feasting together, harmony; yet not parity either; for in one of the scenes Sol kneels to Mithras and is in some manner invested or commissioned by him. This much for output. For input, we return to the story, the historical story, of Tiridates’ journey to Rome to receive his kingdom and his crown at the hands of Nero. I shall touch later on the ethos of these events and on the personalities of the protagonists. Two incidents, however, require immediate mention, for they are what brings Mithras and Mithraism squarely into the picture. First, at the coronation, Tiridates hailed Nero with the carefully prearranged formula: ‘I have come to you, my god, to kneel to you as I do to Mithras too’ (proskynêsôn se hôs kai ton Mithran, Dio 63,5,2). Secondly, at some time during this state visit, Tiridates, who was himself a magus and had brought other magi with him, ‘initiated’ Nero into ‘magian feasts’ (magicis etiam cenis eum initiaverat, Pliny NH 30,6,17).17 May we, then, relate in some way the various Mithraic scenes of investiture, compact and allegiance to the homage and coronation of Tiridates? Likewise, the banquet scene to the ‘magian feasts’ into which Nero initiated Tiridates? In fact, scholars have long done so. In 1933, in one of his most thoughtful and elegant articles, Franz Cumont argued that what I have termed input and output are indeed related. But the relationship postulated by Cumont was not direct and causal. Since Mithraism for Cumont was an outgrowth of Mazdaism, incubated long before among the so-called ‘Magusaeans’, the Iranian diaspora in Anatolia, he assumed instead that the cult had already adopted Iranian and Mazdaist concepts of sovereignty and its conferral. Tiridates’ coronation conformed to the same pattern because Tiridates, too, was an Iranian and a Mazdaist. The coronation story and the Mithraic scenes resonate with each other because they are traceable to the same source in Mazdaism, not because the latter were generated out of the former. The same applies to the banquets. For Cumont the ‘magian feast’ of Nero and Tiridates ————— 17

See above, n. 1.

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was necessarily cognate to the Mithraic cult meal since both were manifestations of what at root was the same Mazdayasnian religion. The Cumontian scenario would be hard to dispute, were the Mithraic myths and rites demonstrably in place in Roman Mithraism at the time of Tiridates’ visit. But they are not; there is in fact no evidence for them, or indeed for any element of the Mysteries, prior to the 90’s, a generation later.18 Consequently, a more plausible, yet more exciting, scenario may be entertained: that the scenes of myth and ritual were constructions on what happened in those years, fictions created therefrom; they were its ideological children, not its ideological cousins.19 What was it about the events and ethos of those times that could trigger a metamorphosis into the stories of a new religion? Space precludes rehearsing in full the accounts of Tacitus (Ann. 15,24–31), Dio (63,1–7), and Suetonius (Nero 13), so I shall highlight instead a few salient features. Consider first the scale and pageantry of events, their huge geographical sweep. The prelude to the climactic event of the coronation was Tiridates’ sumptuous progress through the cities of the empire, the magian journey which quite possibly, as we have already noted, spun off into the Christian myth. This in turn was preceded two years before by a massive display of arms in the East, not in the customary destruction of battle, but in a splendid parade of the pride of the Roman legions and the Parthian cavalry as accompaniment to the negotiations for Tiridates’ coming investiture (Tac. Ann. 15,29). It was an occasion, most unusually, of mutual respect between Rome and Parthia, between ‘us’ and ‘them’, expressed notably in the Roman general Corbulo’s diplomatic courtesy and Tiridates’ lively interest in things Roman (Tac. Ann. 15,30). Tacitus (ibid.) gives us some examples of the questions which Tiridates put to his Roman host at a banquet. In a curious coincidence, one of them concerns the very practice which we see in the Fiano Romano Mithraic banquet scene (above, fig. 1). ‘Why’, asked Tiridates, ‘do you light the altar in front of the augurale by setting a torch to its base (subdita face)?’ That is precisely the action performed by one of the torchbearers in the Mithraic scene, though it occurs there in a mythical/magical world in which the fire is set at (elicited from?) the altar’s base not by a torch but by a caduceus, and the firing of the altar is no longer constrained by physical realism: a stone ————— 18 19

On the earliest evidence, see Beck 1998: 118–119. For a scenario of the founding of Mithraism in the Flavian age, see Beck 1998.

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structure appears to replace the presumed wooden original.20 Mere coincidence? Or could it be that a story about a question asked at a banquet in honour of a Persian prince given by the lieutenant of a would-be solar avatar — the point about Nero will be made below — has somehow, in the alchemy of religious formation, metamorphosed into a detail in a charter myth about a banquet shared by two gods, one Persian, the other occidental and solar, replicated performatively in a cult meal presided over by a ‘Father’ in ‘Persian’ regalia and a so-styled ‘Sun-Runner’? Whatever the case with the detail, the more general causal relationship may well stand: that the story, true or false, of the actual banquet in the actual world played some part in the generation of both the mythic banquet and the performative cult meal. The ‘magian feasts’ of Tiridates and Nero two years later may not have been the sole item of historic input. My postulate in all this, I emphasize again, is that in newly minted religions, of which Mithraism and Christianity are the prime examples in the Roman empire of the first century,21 stories about actions in our real world generate and give colour to stories about actions, both mythic and ceremonial, in the larger other world to which the religions offer access. The historicity of stories set in the actual world of specific time and place (Corbulo feasted Tiridates, Tiridates initiated Nero into ‘magian feasts’, Jesus feasted his disciples shortly before his execution ‘under Pontius Pilate’) concerns me as a student of history and of the history of religions in particular, but not as a student of narrative. In the present context, then, we do not need to ask ‘did these events happen?’ but rather ‘were these stories told?’ and, more precisely, ‘were they current when the cult myths and rituals were generated?’ The stories from the 60’s postulated here for Mithraism were certainly told: how else could they have survived in the sources? That they were current in the Flavian age, when Mithraism, in my view, was founded, is for the most part equally self-evident, although of course this or that detail might be an embellishment of our immediate source. ————— 20

21

We do not know the ‘historic’ answer to Tiridates’ question, for Tacitus does not record it; presumably, it would have been obvious to his Roman readers. In the mythic scene, the reason why the torchbearer ignites the altar base with a caduceus must of course be esoteric to the Mysteries; for an answer, see Turcan 1986. Here, however, our concern is not with ‘meaning’ but with surface changes to the telling or showing of an event. From a different point of view, both Mithraism and Christianity are also very old religions, the latter a continuation of Judaism, the former a blended development of GraecoRoman paganism and Iranian Mazdaism.

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Let us consider next the aura surrounding the main players on our mid60’s stage: first, Corbulo as the chivalrous paradigm of Roman honour and practical effectiveness;22 next, Tiridates, magus and prince, exceptionally pro-Roman, ‘in the bloom’, as Dio reports (63,2,1), ‘of age, beauty, lineage, and intelligence’. Thirdly, Nero: not of course the degenerate tyrant of the classical historians and the fearful Roman élite; rather, the Nero of public image, of popular imagination, of self-construction — in a word, Nero the showman. Qualis artifex! — and his greatest creation his own heroic self. The acid test of such inventions is their resistance to death. Nero is one of those very few whose celebrity, or notoriety, is so vivid and stupendous that it challenges the very fact of their own demise. Surely he can’t be dead? He will return! Scheintod again. Historically, Neronian pretenders did indeed emerge from time to time — in the East, significantly (Suet. Nero 57; Tac. Hist. 1,2; 2,8–9); and on the supernatural plane a wild Christian visionary, John of the Book of Revelation, scripted Nero into his apocalypse in the guise of the Satanic beast.23 Of Nero’s showmanship, we should notice particularly its solar spin. Two incidents reveal how Nero was equated with the Sun god, specifically with the Sun as charioteer. On the so-called ‘Golden Day’ during Tiridates’ visit, the purple awning protecting the theatre audience from the sun ‘was embroidered’, so Dio reports (63.6.2), ‘with a figure of Nero driving a chariot, with golden stars gleaming all around’. Secondly, in another context, the aftermath of the great fire and the punishment of the supposed Christian arsonists, Nero paraded among the people dressed as a charioteer (Tac. Ann. 15,44). This too was in mimesis of the Sun, representing the triumph of divine over criminal fire. It is, I suspect, the historical precedent for the Mithraic procession of the Heliodromus, now known to us from the Mainz vessel (scene B: above, fig. 5).24

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24

Admittedly, as seen through the Tacitean lens (Ann. 15,25–31). Rev. 13. Nero or — better still from my perspective — an imagined Nero redivivus is the favoured candidate for the beast whose ‘number’ is 666 (13:18; Duling and Perrin 1994: 454–455, 458). J.W. van Henten’s scepticism concerning Nero redivivus is germane only to the Sibylline Oracles (Van Henten 2000). I am grateful to Jan Bremmer for alerting me to this article during ICAN 2000. I argue the case in Beck 2000: 166–167.

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It is hard to think of a time more conducive, in retrospect, to the emergence in Rome of so-styled Mysteries of the Persians, or of historical events and players more likely to metamorphose into stories about and rituals commemorating the adventures and relationship of a Persian god and a Sun god, stories and rites of a shared banquet,25 stories of a shared ride in the solar chariot, stories of treaty and investiture. The only surprise is the inversion of precedence. In the historical story the would-be solar avatar is the superior of the Parthian prince. In the cult myth and the cult economy the Persian God rules supreme. There is, however, a curious precedent for the Mithraic dyarchy with Sol as junior partner in the situation which pertained when Nero, while on tour in Greece, left Rome and Italy in charge of a certain freedman. The freedman’s name was Helios; ‘and so,’ says Dio (63,12,2), ‘the Roman empire served two autocrats, Nero and Helios’ — or, if one prefers, ‘... Nero and the Sun’. And what, lastly, of the god’s archery, mimed by the cult Father, as seen in scene A of the Mainz ritual vessel (above, fig. 4)? For that we might turn to a strange and overlooked episode in Dio’s account of Tiridates’ stay in Italy. At Puteoli Nero, through his freedman Patrobius, gave gladiatorial games at which Tiridates, in a show of honour to the latter, ‘shot at wild beasts from his elevated seat and, if one can believe it, transfixed and killed two bulls with a single arrow’ (Dio 63,3,2). This is not, I emphasize, the origin or the prototype of the Mithraic bull-killing. Mithras kills with a knife, not with an arrow; more important, this ‘historical’ story simply cannot carry singlehandedly, as cause to effect, the freight for that most central mythic act in the Mysteries. Nevertheless, I do suggest that the episode, or, more precisely, the report of it and the image of a Parthian prince shooting bulls from his seat of honour (ek tês hedras), contributed in some manner both to the

————— 25

There is an irony here. Historically, the ‘magian feasts’ of 66 were a failure. Pliny tells us that Nero found his initiation ineffective and so repudiated it. For Pliny of course this was all about magic, not Mazdaism, since in substance as well as etymologically he construed ‘magian’ as ‘magical’. However, that it was really with things ‘magian’ that Nero lost patience is suggested by the story in Suetonius (Nero 56) that he once urinated on a statue of Atargatis, the Syrian goddess. Nero’s gestures, though bizarre, were seldom pointless. Let us allow that Atargatis is here a stand-in for Iranian Anahita, the goddess of the element of water. It is hard to imagine a more dramatic and blasphemous reversal of Tiridates’ ‘magian’ scruples against polluting that element by bodily discharge on a sea voyage to Italy.

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(separate) stories of Mithras as bull-killer and as archer and to the ritual practice of seated archery by Mithras’ surrogate, the cult Father.26 Even as we have it in Dio, the story is highly charged and already so far into the world of the extraordinary that it challenges credibility (ei ge tôi piston). Here was a Parthian exercising Parthian skills, not at the margins of empire where Parthian archery symbolized alien menace, but as honoured guest in the empire’s heartland and at one of its prime ideological foci, the presidential box at the games. There was no more potent place for the generation of authoritative images; nor, one might conjecture, could there have been an image more potent for nascent Mithraism than that of a ‘Persian’ prince, the celebrity of the moment, killing bulls with his astounding archery in that (literally) ‘spectacular’ context. Myth, as Kathleen Coleman (1990) has demonstrated, was the performative idiom of the Roman arena, where executions, to quote from her evocative title, were ‘fatal charades ... staged as mythological enactments’.27 From those games at Puteoli, I suggest, new myths were generated. They were generated out of the staging of the archetypal (to a Roman) image of the ‘Parthian Bowman’ in a context which vividly and violently reversed its moral charge from negative to positive. Let us suppose, then, that Tiridates-as-archer in the actual world evolved into Mithras-as-archer in the mythic world and into the Mithraic Father-asarcher in the ritual world. Now traffic between the actual world and the worlds of myth and ritual flows in both directions. In fact, while the transmutation of history (or ‘history’) into myth and ritual is both rare and elusive, the reverse process is both commonplace and readily demonstrable. But it is only so in the obvious and perhaps trivial sense that myths are brought into the actual world every time the story is enacted in theatrical or in ritual performance. Among those re-enactments, however, are certain remarkable instances when, in a deliberate fiction, the mythic world is elided into the actual world and ‘myth’ really does becomes ‘history’. A mythic narrative is then recognizable in an historical event precisely because the event was programmed and played out as such. The myth of Mithras-as-archer, I suggest, re-enters the actual world in just such an event. ————— 26

27

Cult doctrine, in due course, was to assign Mithras his ‘proper seat’ (oikeian kathedran) in the heavens, specifically ‘at the equinoxes ... on the [celestial] equator’ (Porphyry De antro nympharum 24). For the gruesome juxtaposition of mythic performance and criminal punishment, see the imaginary but entirely realistic programme of theatrical entertainments in Apuleius Met. 10,29–35.

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The new ‘hero’ of our archery story is the emperor Commodus, and the venue is once again the arena — but not only the arena. Commodus’ feats in the arena are of course notorious, as is his personation of Hercules there and elsewhere (Edmundson 2001). But Commodus, as Edmundson documents, personated other gods, and the arena was not the sole venue of his creative performances. The Historia Augusta (SHA Comm. 9) tells us that ‘he polluted the rites of Mithras, when something is said or done there fictitiously for a show of terror, with a real homicide’ (sacra Mithriaca homicidio vero polluit cum illic aliquid ad speciem timoris vel dici vel fingi soleat). The figure of the Father as bowman on the Mainz vessel now reveals dramatically the means by which mimetic action designed for terror in Mithraic initiation could be perverted into ‘actual homicide’. In the same passage we are told that Commodus also had some cripples dressed up as anguipede giants (by swathing them in bandages from the knees down) and that he ‘finished them off with arrows’. Here the location is presumably the arena. Now the battle with the anguipede giants is part of the Mithras myth, quite often represented among the side scenes.28 However, it is there performed not by Mithras but by Jupiter, whose weapon is of course not the bow but the thunderbolt. To add to the complications, the story of disguising and massacring the cripples as anguipedes is also related by Dio (72,20 (Xiphilinus)), who sets it explicitly in the arena but with Commodus in the role of Hercules and his weapon the club, not the bow. Either, then, Commodus himself mixed and matched his roles or else the stories did precisely that on his behalf. From a narrative perspective it matters little which. The point is that Commodus or stories about Commodus relocated the archery of Mithras and of the Mithraic Father from the worlds of myth and ritual and re-actualized them in our ‘real’ world of space and time. Thus, fiction back into history — or ‘history’. In conclusion, I return to the time when the stories of the Neronian age, in my scenario, underwent their sea change into the stories of Mithraism; specifically, to that passage in the epic of the Flavian age which carries our only testimony both to the story and to the image of the bull-killing Mithras in all of high classical literature, Statius Thebaid 1.720–721.29 The reference ————— 28 29

Gordon 1980: scene ‘B’. The composition of the Thebaid predates virtually all extant iconic representations of the bull-killing. Statius’ allusion is thus one of the very earliest testimonies to both image and story. See Gordon 1978: 161–164.

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comes at and as the climax of Adrastus’ appeal to Apollo in various manifestations, the last of which is Mithras: ... seu Persei sub rupibus antri indignata sequi torquentem cornua Mithram. (... or Mithras beneath the crags of the Persian cave twisting the horns loath to follow.) Notoriously, if one has in mind the standard image of the tauroctony, this is a misdescription, for Mithras normally grasps the bull’s muzzle; he does not ‘twist’ its horns. Consider, however, solely the climactic hemistych: torquentem cornua Mithram. Given that cornu/-ua torquere (to ‘twist horn’) is a not uncommon poetic periphrasis for drawing a bow,30 what would a Roman audience hear in that phrase, ‘horn-twisting Mithras’, and what might a Campanian poet, who at the time of Tiridates’ fabulous feat of bullslaying Parthian archery at Puteoli was in his teens or twenties, intend by it? Literally, of course, the ‘horns’ have been so modified in advance that the image of Mithras grasping the horns of an actual animal is inescapable. But that Statius is also playing with the connotations of ‘horn twisting’ as archery seems to me highly probable, especially when the ultimate referent beyond Mithras, Phoebus Apollo, is himself an archer god. It is not even necessary to suppose autopsy on Statius’ part; only that rumour reached him of a princely Persian bowman ‘twisting horn’ for the enthusiastic spectators at Puteoli and that the story worked on his poetic imagination, just as it worked on the mythopoeic imaginations of those who constructed the stories and rituals of Mithraism.31

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ThLL s. cornu, II,3,c; III,5,e. This article was first presented as a paper to the International Conference on the Ancient Novel (ICAN 2000) at Groningen on July 27, 2000. I wish to thank Maaike Zimmerman and her colleagues for providing such a stimulating forum and, not least, that rarity in such ventures, a lecture venue where the visuals could be displayed to perfection!

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Bibliography Beck, R.L. 1987. ‘Merkelbach’s Mithras’, Phoenix 41, 296–316. Beck, R.L. 1990. ‘Telling the story: the limits of narrative in the visual representations of the myth of Mithras’, abstract in: J. Tatum and G.M. Vernazza (eds), The Ancient Novel: Classical Paradigms and Modern Perspectives, Hanover NH, 106. Beck, R.L. 1998. ‘The Mysteries of Mithras: a new account of their genesis,” JRS 88, 115–128. Beck, R.L. 2000. ‘Ritual, myth, doctrine and initiation in the Mysteries of Mithras: New evidence from a cult vessel’, JRS.90, 145–180. Bowersock, G.W. 1994. Fiction as History: Nero to Julian, Berkeley: University of California Press. Clauss, M. 1990. Mithras: Kult und Mysterien, Munich: Beck. Translated (2000) by R.L. Gordon as The Roman Cult of Mithras: the God and his Mysteries, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Coleman, C. 1990. ‘Fatal charades: Roman executions staged as mythological enactments’, JRS 80, 44–73. Cumont, F. 1933. ‘L’iniziazione di Nerone da parte di Tiridate d’Armenia’, Rivista di filologia 11, 145–154. Dieterich, A. 1902. ‘Die Weisen aus dem Morgenlande’, Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 3, 1–14. Duling, D.C., and N. Perrin. 1994. The New Testament: Proclamation and Parainesis, Myth and History, 3rd ed., Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace. Edmundson, J. 2001. ‘Commodus in the arena: myth, tradition and contemporary spectacle’, paper presented at the meeting of the American Philological Association, January 2001. Gordon, R.L. 1978. ‘The date and significance of CIMRM 593 (British Museum Townley Collection)’, Journal of Mithraic Studies 2, 148–174. Reprinted as [chapter] VII in Gordon, Image and Value in the Graeco-Roman World: Studies in Mithraism and Religious Art, Aldershot: Variorum, 1996. Gordon, R.L. 1980. ‘Panelled complications’, Journal of Mithraic Studies 3, 200–227. Reprinted as [chapter] IX in Image and Value (see preceding entry). Horn, H.G. 1994. ‘Das Mainzer Mithrasgefäß’, Mainzer Archäologische Zeitschrift 1, 45–80. Merkelbach, R. 1995. ‘Das Mainzer Mithrasgefäß’, ZPE 108, 1–6. Rupp, V. 1987. Wetterauer Ware: Eine römische Keramik im Rhein-Main-Gebiet, Schriften des Frankfurter Museums für Vor- und Frühgeschichte 10. Turcan, R. 1986. ‘Feu et sang: à propos d’un relief mithriaque’, CRAI 1986, 217–31. Turcan, R. 2000. Mithra et le mithriacisme, 2nd ed. revised, Paris: Belles Lettres. Van Henten, J.W. 2000. ‘Nero redivivus demolished: the coherence of the Nero traditions in the Sibylline Oracles’, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 21, 3– 17. V+number: see next entry. Vermaseren, M.J. 1956–60. Corpus Inscriptionum et Monumentorum Religionis Mithriacae, 2 vols, The Hague: Nijhoff.

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Vermaseren, M.J. 1971. Mithriaca I: the Mithraeum at S. Maria Capua Vetere. Leiden: Brill. Weiss, M. 1998 ‘Mithras, der Nachthimmel: Eine Dekodierung der römischen Mithras-Kultbilder mit Hilfe des Awesta’, Traditio 53, 1–36.

La réception du Roman d’Alexandre à Byzance CORINNE JOUANNO

Paris

Il est d’usage, lorsqu’on parle du Roman d’Alexandre, de le présenter comme un best-seller de la littérature médiévale.1 Dans le domaine grec, la vingtaine de manuscrits que nous possédons de l’œuvre du Pseudo-Callisthène pourrait toutefois paraître assez mince, comparée aux cent quatre-vingt huit exemplaires de l’Iliade recensés par T.W. Allen,2 pour ne rien dire des plus de cinq mille codices contenant tout ou partie du Nouveau Testament.3 Mais ce groupe de manuscrits, dont la production s’échelonne du XIème au XVIème siècle, représente cinq recensions différentes, /, , , 1 et 4 élaborées sans doute (sauf peut-être la dernière) entre le IIIème et le VIIIème siècle – preuve de la vitalité de la tradition pseudo-callisthénienne dans le monde grec, une vitalité que confirme, à partir du XIIIème ou XIVème siècle, l’apparition d’une nouvelle vague d’adaptations en langue vulgaire dont il ne sera pas question dans cet article, car elles sortent pour la plupart du cadre chronologique de la littéra————— 1

2 3

4

Le Roman a été traduit en près de trente-cinq langues et on en connaît plus de deux cents versions, d’après Kytzler, B. 1997, ‘Fiktionale Prosa’, in: Engels, L.J. – Hofmann, H. (éd.), Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft IV, Spätantike, Wiesbaden : Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, 472–476 (473). D’après Mazon, P. 1967, Introduction à l’Iliade, Paris: CUF, 7. Cf. Metzger, B.M. 1981, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible. An Introduction to Greek Palaeography, NY-Oxford: Oxford University Press, 54. Éd.: Kroll, W. 1926, Historia Alexandri Magni. Volumen I. Recensio vetusta, Berlin : Weidmann (/); Bergson, L. 1965, Der griechische Alexanderroman. Rezension , Stockholm-Göteborg-Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell; van Thiel, H. 1983, Leben und Taten Alexanders von Makedonien. Der griechische Alexanderroman nach der Handschrift L, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft; id., 1959, Die Rezension des PseudoKallisthenes, Bonn R. Habelt Verlag; Trumpf, J. 1974, Anonymi byzantini. Vita Alexandri Regis Macedonum, Stuttgart: Teubner (1); von Lauenstein, U. 1962 – Engelmann, H. 1963 – Parthe, F. 1969, Der griechische Alexanderroman. Rezensio ,, 3 vol., Meisenheim am Glan: Verlag Anton Hain.

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ture byzantine.5 On notera aussi que parmi les manuscrits du Roman d’Alexandre proto-byzantin, trois comportent non pas le récit dans son intégralité, mais des excerpta6 – détails remarquables, apophtegmes, maximes ou descriptions – ce qui est un nouveau signe de l’intérêt prêté par les Byzantins au texte du Pseudo-Callisthène, assez apprécié pour qu’on ait jugé bon d’en tirer des extraits choisis. L’ouvrage était lu en province et dans la capitale. On sait qu’au milieu du Xème siècle, sous le règne de Constantin Porphyrogénète (913–959), il circulait à Constantinople, où l’archiprêtre Léon, envoyé en ambassade par le duc de Naples Jean III, en fit une copie, qu’il traduisit en latin à son retour en Italie.7 Peut-être même le Roman avait-il à cette époque frayé sa voie dans le milieu de la cour impériale, puisque l’on trouve mention d’une Vie d’Alexandre anonyme dans la table des matières du codex Lipsiensis Rep. i 17 (Bibl. Urb. 28), principal témoin du Livre des Cérémonies de Constantin Porphyrogénète, copié sans doute dans un scriptorium impérial, quelques années après la mort de l’empereur.8 De la diffusion du Roman d’Alexandre en province, nous avons un témoignage très précisément daté d’avril 1059, le testament d’Eustathe Boïlas, un notable d’origine cappadocienne établi dans la région d’Édesse:9 le texte du Pseudo-Callisthène figure en effet sous le titre d’Alexandre parmi les quatre-vingts ouvrages de la bibliothèque de Boïlas, où il voisine avec divers textes religieux ou édifiants (Évangiles, recueils de sentences), avec une chronographie, une Vie d’Ésope, le roman d’Achille Tatius ————— 5

6

7

8

9

Sur ces adaptations récentes, on se reportera à la mise au point de Moennig, U. 1992, Die spätbyzantinische Rezension *  des Alexanderromans, Köln: Romiosini, Neograeca Medii Aevi 6. Par. suppl. gr. 690, XIème s. (extraits tirés de la fin de la recension ): cf. Rochefort, G. 1950, ‘Une anthologie grecque du XIème siècle: le Par. suppl. gr. 690’, Scriptorium 4, 3–17; Vat. gr. 1700, XIVème s.: cf. Ballaira, G. 1965, ‘Frammenti inediti della perduta recenzione del Romanzo di Alessandro’, BollClass 13, 27–59; Par. suppl. gr. 689, XVème s.: cf. Trumpf, J. 1965, ‘Eine unbekannte Sammlung von Auszügen aus dem griechischen Alexanderroman’, C&M 26, 83–100. Cf. Pfister, F. 1913, Der Alexanderroman des Archipresbyters Leo, Heidelberg: C. Winter, 5–8. Cf. Irigoin, J. 1959, ‘Pour une étude des centres de copie byzantins’, Scriptorium 13/2, 177–209 (179); Haldon, J. 1990, Constantine Porphyrogenitus. Three Treatises on Imperial Military Expeditions, Vienne: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, CFHB 28, 37–38. Cf. Lemerle, P. 1977, Cinq études sur le XIème siècle byzantin, Paris: Éd. du CNRS, Le monde byzantin, 15–63. L’auteur souligne la forte saveur provinciale du testament, où rien n’évoque Constantinople. Mention d’Alexandros à la l. 160 du document (p. 25).

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et un manuel d’onirocritie. Le Roman figure aussi dans l’inventaire des livres du monastère du Très-Miséricordieux, fondé à Constantinople par Michel Attaliatès (ca 1020/30 – ap. 1079); le texte du Pseudo-Callisthène est mentionné non parmi les donations du fondateur lui-même, mais parmi celles du préposite Jean, grammatikos du précédent, dans une liste datant, semble-t-il, de l’année 1084; cité aux côtés d’ouvrages religieux (Jean Chrysostome, vies de saints), ‘Alexandre’ figurait dans un manuscrit contenant également la synopse du Saint Évangile, et d’autres pièces de nature indéterminée.10 Le texte du Pseudo-Callisthène faisait donc, apparemment, partie des ‘lectures standardisées’ de l’époque.11 Des témoignages iconographiques confirment la popularité du Roman, moins nombreux toutefois, et surtout moins variés qu’on aurait pu s’y attendre. Le plus ancien date de la fin du IVème siècle, et se trouve donc être postérieur de seulement cent ou cent cinquante ans à la date de composition présumée de la plus ancienne recension : il s’agit d’une mosaïque ornant le sol de la villa de Soueidié, à Baalbek (ancienne Héliopolis)12 – propriété d’un riche notable appelé Patrikios, qu’une inscription présente comme le ‘digne émule en sagesse d’Eudoxios, le philosophe disciple de Platon’, et qui se vante de garder des ‘pensées dignes de la piété des ancêtres’: il s’agissait donc d’un païen féru de philosophie néo-platonicienne, appartenant sans doute à cette aristocratie d’Héliopolis qui tint tête au christianisme, et peut-être les scènes du Roman représentées dans sa villa13 avaient-elles la même signification militante que les images d’Alexandre figurant sur les contorniates émis à la même époque par les aristocrates romains, défenseurs obstinés de la tradition païenne.14 Sur ————— 10

11

12

13

14

Éd.-trad.: Gautier, P. 1981, ‘La diataxis de Michel Attaliate’, REB 39, 5–143 (94–95). Sur ce texte, voir aussi Lemerle, P. 1977, Cinq études sur le XIe siècle byzantin (op. cit. n. 9), 65–112. Cf. Odorico, P. 2001, ‘La circulation des livres en Italie du Sud (Xe–XIe siècle). Une originalité ?’, in L’ellenismo italiota dal VII al XII secolo. Alla memoria di Nikos Panagiotakis, Atene: Fondazione nazionale ellenica delle ricerche, Istituto di ricerche bizantine, Convegno internazionale 8, 67–82 (74–77). Cf. Chéhab, M. 1958, ‘Mosaïques du Liban. 5. Villa de Soueidié – Baalbeck’, Bull. du Musée de Beyrouth 14, 29–52; Ross, D.J.A. 1963, ‘Olympias and the Serpent’, JWI 26, 1–21. Les vastes dimensions de l’édifice laissent penser qu’il a pu servir de lieu de réunion, destiné à une secte philosophique ou religieuse, et donc plus ou moins analogue à la Maison des Chrétiens à Doura-Europos: cf. Chéhab, 31 (op. cit. n. 12). Cf. Alföldi, A. 1942–1943, Die Kontorniaten. Ein verkanntes Propagandamittel der stadt-römischen heidnischen Aristokratie in ihrem Kampfe gegen das christliche Kaisertum, Budapest: Maggyar numizmatikai Tarsulat; Cracco Ruggini, L. 1965, ‘Sulla

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cette mosaïque sont illustrés quatre épisodes du Roman: 1) la fuite de Nectanébo hors d’Égypte;15 2) le banquet au cours duquel le pharaon-magicien se transforme en serpent pour persuader Philippe qu’Alexandre est bien né des œuvres d’une divinité anguiforme;16 3) la naissance d’Alexandr;17 4) son éducation, sous la férule d’Aristote.18 Ces quatre scènes proviennent, semble-t-il, d’un cycle de miniatures destiné à illustrer dans son intégralité le texte du Pseudo-Callisthène. De ce cycle iconographique, on retrouve trace dans un manuscrit enluminé des Cynégétiques d’Oppien, le codex Marcianus Graecus 479, réalisé au XIème siècle :19 trois scènes y sont en effet consacrées au domptage de Bucéphale, et la représentation du cheval derrière des grilles de fer assure qu’il s’agit bien d’images initialement destinées à illustrer la version romanesque de l’épisode, où Bucéphale, qui dans la tradition historique se contentait d’être ombrageux, est devenu anthropophage!20 Une provenance analogue semble pouvoir être assignée à quatre scènes figurant sur des fragments de poteries, en lesquels A.Xyngopoulos a identifié des représentations du meurtre de Nectanébo et du combat d’Alexandre contre le roi indien Poros:21 l’exemple le plus ancien (XIème/XIIème s.) serait, d’après Xyngopoulos, conforme au cycle traditionnel, tandis que les trois autres (XIIIème– XIVème s.) témoignent des influences byzantines ou orientales qui se sont exercées au fil du temps sur l’iconographie du Roman d’Alexandre – influences qu’attestent également les manuscrits enluminés des traductions

—————

15 16 17 18 19

20 21

cristianizzazione della cultura pagana: il mito greco e latino di Alessandro dall’ eta antonina al medioevo’, Athenaeum 43, 3–80 (12–14): l’auteur souligne la faveur de la légende d’Alexandre auprès des nostalgiques du passé et de la culture antique. Ps. Call. 1, 3. Ps. Call. 1, 10. Ps. Call. 1, 13. Ps. Call. 1, 16. Cf. Weitzmann, K. 1947, Illustrations in Roll and Codex, Princeton: Princeton University Press, Studies in Manuscript Illumination 2, 145–146 et fig. 133–134; id., 1951, Greek Mythology in Byzantine Art, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 102–106, 186–188 et fig. 108–109; Ross, D.J.A. 1989, ‘A Funny Name for a Horse: Bucephalus in Antiquity and the Middle Ages’, Bien dire et bien aprandre 7, 51–76 (69 sq.). Cf. Ps. Call. 1, 13: Philippe ordonne que l’on enferme Bucéphale dans une cage de fer. Xyngopoulos, A. 1937, ‘/"/23y213!ã$23!"}/3!3!ã1 y0"!$~ $/3í 1'’, œ"%/!!  ª41"‡, 192–202; id., 1938, ‘S {/ { /0"!3Ç$/3Ç1!"/4¹’, EEBS 14, 267–276. Cf. Ps. Call. 1, 14 et 3, 4.

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arménienne et serbe.22 Toutes les autres images byzantines inspirées du Pseudo-Callisthène illustrent un seul et même épisode, l’ascension d’Alexandre – épisode inconnu des plus anciennes recensions du Roman (/ et ) et qui, quoiqu’il ait sans doute circulé à titre autonome dès le IIIème ou IVème siècle,23 n’est peut-être entré que beaucoup plus tard dans la tradition pseudo-callisthénienne : on le trouve dans le texte L, version atypique de la recension , dans les divers témoins de la recension , souvent fort proche du texte L, et dans le manuscrit C, exemplaire contaminé de la recension 24 Je n’insisterai pas sur ces images d’ascension, abondamment étudiées par C. Settis Frugoni, V. Schmidt et N.Trahoulia.25 Si elles sont nombreuses (près d’une trentaine d’exemples répertoriés) et figurent sur des média variés (étoffes, sculptures, coupes, coffrets, couronnes, anneaux...), leur production date pour l’essentiel de la période médio-byzantine (Xème–XIIème s.), et elles ont pour caractéristique la plus habituelle une dimension triomphale: le voyage aérien d’Alexandre est en effet étroitement associé au thème de l’exaltation impériale – d’où la présence de cette image, où Alexandre est représenté en empereur byzantin, sur des couronnes et sur divers objets commandités par les souverains de ————— 22

23

24 25

Cf. Ross, D.J.A. 1988, Alexander Historiatus: A Guide to Medieval Illustrated Alexander Literature, 2nd ed., Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum Verlag, 6–7 et 85. Pour le domaine arménien, voir aussi Macler, F. 1928, L’enluminure arménienne profane, Paris: Librairie orientaliste P. Geuthner, 21 sq.; Dournovo, L.A. 1960, Miniatures arméniennes, Paris: Éditions du cercle d’art, 182–183; pour le domaine serbe, cf. Grabar, A. 1928, Recherches sur les influences orientales dans l’art balkanique, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, Publications de la faculté de lettres de Strasbourg, Fascicule 43, 108–133 et pl. XII–XVI (à utiliser avec précaution, en raison du caractère obsolète des indications relatives à la tradition textuelle du Roman). L’ascension d’Alexandre est mentionnée dans le Talmud de Jérusalem par un rabbin du IVème siècle, Rabbi Yôna: ‘Alexandre le Macédonien voulut s’élancer dans les airs: il monta, monta, jusqu’à ce qu’il vît le monde comme une boule et la mer comme un chaudron’ (Aboda Zara, 3, 1, trad. Schwab, M. 1889, Paris: Maisonneuve et Ch. Leclerc, vol. 11, p. 208). Ps. Call. 2, 41. Cf. Settis Frugoni, C. 1978, Historia Alexandri elevati per griphos ad aerem. Origine, iconografia e fortuna di un tema, Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo, Studi storici, Fasc. 80–82 ; Schmidt, V.M. 1995, A Legend and Its Image: The Aerial Flight of Alexander the Great in Medieval Art, Groningen: E. Forsten, Mediaevalia Groningana 17; Trahoulia, N. 1999, The Venice Alexander Romance, Hellenic Institute Codex Gr. 5: A Study of Alexander the Great as an Imperial Paradigm in Byzantine Art and Literature, Ann Arbor : UMI, 162–215 et 227–235.

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Byzance.26 Si les témoignages littéraires de la fortune du Roman à Byzance sont plus variés, ils sont en nombre relativement limité, quoi qu’on ait pu dire de l’influence énorme exercée par le Pseudo-Callisthène sur les auteurs de la Grèce médiévale. Il semble bien, en effet, que cette influence proprement littéraire ait été surévaluée, et que l’on ait trop souvent voulu reconnaître des imitations du Roman là où le rapprochement ne s’imposait pas. Prétendre que Constantin Porphyrogénète s’inspire de l’épisode du séjour d’Alexandre chez la reine Candace pour peindre la rencontre de son aïeul Basile et de la veuve Daniélis, sous prétexte que la riche Péloponnésienne offre au futur fondateur de la dynastie macédonienne, sur le point de repartir dans la capitale, présents monnayés, riches vêtements et esclaves, comme Candace à Alexandre, peut paraître assez hasardeux, étant donné le caractère extrêmement courant de ce type de présents.27 Et dans le Poème didactique anonyme (fin XIIIème / début XIVème s.) édité par D. Sophianos, le passage où l’empereur Michel (figure fictive) scandalise son entourage en s’inclinant devant deux moines de piètre apparence ne doit sans doute rien à l’influence du Pseudo-Callisthène, contrairement aux affirmations du chercheur grec:28 ce n’est pas l’épisode pseudocallisthénien du séjour d’Alexandre à Jérusalem, où le Conquérant se prosterne certes devant les prêtres juifs, mais sans choquer aucunement les gens de son escorte,29 qui a inspiré le poète anonyme, et sans doute pas davantage la version originelle de la rencontre jérusalémite, telle qu’elle figurait chez Flavius ————— 26

27

28

29

Il arrive aussi que l’ascension d’Alexandre, qui dans ses versions écrites était dépourvue de toute dimension proprement religieuse, prenne dans ses expressions imagées une nouvelle valeur spirituelle, d’où sa présence sur des étoffes sacrées, au porche des églises, ou sur un panaghion, médaillon à l’usage des prêtres orthodoxes : elle y voisine avec Jonas avalé par la baleine, avec les Sept Dormants d’Éphèse, divers saints militaires, ou même avec l’Agnus Dei. Vita Basilii, éd. Bekker, I. 1838, Theoph. Cont., Bonn, p. 226–228: cf. Ps. Call., 1, 43, 5– 6. Rapprochement proposé par Anagnostakis, E. 1989, ‘ !1120!3ü/0/Ý "!4!"1 /1"!ƒ !$  $!/23y 23!%1/’ in: Angelidi, C.G. (éd.), ÿ /1"
'
23!û$ý3!, "/3ý3!$úz01!‡2$!2!$
ÿ3"!û$/3  ý"1$ , Athènes: 375–390. Hypothèse reprise par Trahoulia, 22–23 (op. cit. n. 25). Sophianos, D.Z. 1996, ‘'ƒ!${0!3!,!00/3€23%!ƒ"/öt0ö/< ’, Thesaurismata 26, 43–67 (50–51): le chercheur grec fonde sa comparaison sur une adaptation moderne du Roman, où l’épisode pseudo-callisthénien est contaminé d’emprunts à Flavius Josèphe ("% ü!$2!$ ƒ""!$ 3!ã -133/!ã 1846, û!‡ "ý 1‡ / /3!" /3/ 3!g 1ý!$ œ1 ý0"!$ 3!g /10!‡ 2$1"/21‡ ¤ 3q ”"%/' «
'2$"/4ÿ'/¤ 1‡1À‡31!1, Athènes: non vidi). Cf. Ps. Call., 1, 20 et , 2, 24.

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Josèphe, car dans les Antiquités, les hommages rendus par le Macédonien aux Juifs scandalisent effectivement ses proches, mais assurément pas à cause de la triste apparence des prêtres, dont l’équipage somptueux est décrit avec un grand luxe de détails;30 la source du Poème didactique est ailleurs, dans un texte sans nul rapport avec Alexandre, la Vie de Barlaam et Joasaph, où figure un apologue de contenu tout à fait similaire à celui du texte anonyme.31 Il faut bien avouer toutefois qu’en ces questions d’influences, il n’est pas toujours facile d’arriver à des certitudes, et que la tâche est particulièrement délicate dans le cas précis du Pseudo-Callisthène, car si les références à Alexandre abondent dans les textes byzantins, elles sont souvent trop vagues pour que l’on puisse en déterminer la source, et attestent tout au plus la popularité persistante du Conquérant, sans fournir aucune indication ni sur la réception du Roman, ni sur celle des historiens d’Alexandre. L’existence de divers épisodes communs au Pseudo-Callisthène et à la tradition historique contribue d’ailleurs à brouiller les pistes, d’autant que les auteurs médiévaux sont généralement plus enclins à celer qu’à afficher leurs sources: seules les allusions à des passages spécifiques au Roman peuvent nous permettre de cerner la postérité littéraire du Pseudo-Callisthène, et les exemples que j’ai pu trouver au cours de recherches pourtant étendues n’excèdent pas la douzaine. Le plus ancien remonte peut-être au IVème siècle : il n’est pas impossible, en effet, qu’un écho du Roman d’Alexandre figure dans le passage de l’Antiochikos de Libanios consacré à la fondation d’Antioche.32 Séleucos aurait, selon Libanios, été guidé par l’aigle de Zeus jusqu’à l’emplacement de la cité future: venu interrompre le sacrifice que le roi était en train de célébrer à Antigoneia, l’oiseau aurait transporté les cuisses de la victime à l’endroit choisi par les dieux – de même que l’Alexandre du Pseudo-Callisthène est conduit sur le site du futur Sarapeion, dont il est censé être le fondateur, par un aigle ————— 30 31

32

Flav. Jos., AJ 11, 8. Barlaam 6, 41–42 (apologue n° 1), éd. Woodward, G.R. – Mattingly, M.A 1914, Cambridge, Mass. – London: Loeb (réimpr. 1983). Or. 11, 72–77, éd. Foerster, R. 1903, Libanii opera, vol. 1, fasc. 2, Leipzig: Teubner, 437–535 (réimpr. Leipzig, 1963). Texte traduit et brièvement commenté par Lagarcherie, O. 1995, ‘Antioche et l’héritage d’Alexandre’, in: Létoublon, F., La ruche grecque et l’empire de Rome, Grenoble: Publications de l’université des langues et lettres de Grenoble 66, 239–252. Voir aussi Fatouros, G. – Krischer, T. 1992, Libanios, Antiochikos (Or. 11). Zur heidnischen Renaissance in der Spätantike, Wien-Berlin: Turia & Kant, 105 sq.; Saliou, C. 1999–2000, ‘Les fondations d’Antioche dans l’Antiochikos (Oratio 11) de Libanios’, Aram 11/2, 357–388.

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intervenu dans des conditions analogues.33 Certes, il s’agit là d’un type de légende de fondation fort répandu,34 et le parallélisme même des deux histoires d’Alexandrie et d’Antioche incite à y voir des créations de l’époque hellénistique, fruit de la propagande dynastique des Lagides et des Séleucides, et de leur concurrence acharnée pour la suprématie, mais peut-être la lecture du PseudoCallisthène a-t-elle amené Libanios à réactiver ce motif ancien : la mention insistante d’Alexandre dans les précédents chapitres de l’Antiochikos, où le Conquérant est donné pour le pré-fondateur d’Antioche – un pré-fondateur dont Séleucos n’aurait fait que mener à terme les projets inaboutis35 – s’il ne s’agit pas d’une autre légende promue par les Séleucides, mais d’une innovation de Libanios,36 tient peut-être à l’influence exercée sur l’imagination du rhéteur par le Roman d’Alexandre, qui devait circuler en Syrie à l’époque où fut prononcé l’éloge d’Antioche, en 356, comme le suggèrent les mosaïques de la villa de Soueidié: et à coup sûr, Libanios, païen convaincu qui, dans son Antiochikos, s’attache à démontrer le caractère grec de la cité et l’étroitesse de ses liens avec les dieux du paganisme, avait les mêmes raisons que Patrikios, le propriétaire de la villa, pour s’intéresser à Alexandre et au Roman qui en glorifiait la mémoire. Mais les Chrétiens ne tardèrent pas à s’approprier la figure du Conquérant. L’un des plus anciens témoins de cette entreprise de récupération d’un héros païen au service du christianisme nous est fourni par la Controverse religieuse ————— 33 34

35

36

Antiochikos, § 85–88: cf. Ps. Call. 1, 33. Outre les légendes d’Alexandrie et d’Antioche, C. Saliou cite en exemple les récits de fondation de Cardie (époque archaïque et classique), Byzance (fin IIème s. ap. JC), Séleucie de Piérie, Apamée et Laodicée (VIème s.)... : ‘Les fondations d’Antioche’ (op. cit. n. 32). Libanios insiste sur le désir qu’avait Alexandre de fonder une cité sur le site de la future Antioche, ‘parce qu’il y avait trouvé un lieu apte à contenir sa magnificence’ (§ 74) – désir contrarié par le souci de ne pas apporter de retard à l’expédition guerrière: le roi se serait donc contenté d’édifier un sanctuaire en l’honneur de Zeus Bottiaios, ‘signe du dessein qu’il avait d’adopter notre pays pour patrie au lieu de la sienne propre, au terme de ses conquêtes’ (§ 76). Séleucos, seul digne héritier du Conquérant, se serait chargé de réaliser à sa place l’œuvre de fondation: ‘Il tint lieu d’Alexandre à notre cité’, dit Libanios (§ 77). On retrouve la même légende de fondation dans la lettre 1189, où figure une allusion à Alexandre, fils de Philippe, ‘qui a jeté les fondements de la cité’ – éd. Foerster, R. 1922, Libanii Opera, vol. XI, Leipzig: Teubner, p. 275 (réimpr. 1963, Hildesheim: Olms) ; trad. Cabouret, B. 2000, Libanios. Lettres aux hommes de son temps, Pari : Les Belles Lettres, La Roue à Livres, p. 163 (nº 73). C. Saliou, au terme de l’étude approfondie qu’elle a consacrée à tout ce passage, considère les deux solutions comme également possibles: ‘Les fondations d’Antioche’ (op. cit. n. 32).

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à la cour des Sassanides.37 Dans cet écrit de polémique-fiction, où chrétiens et païens s’affrontent en présence d’un imaginaire roi de Perse dénommé Arrinatos, figure un long passage tiré des Histoires chrétiennes de Philippe de Sidè, contemporain et ami de Jean Chrysostome (ca 344/354 – 407): il s’agit d’oracles grecs, que les chrétiens de la Controverse versent au débat afin de montrer que les païens eux-mêmes ont à leur insu pressenti la vérité du message évangélique. Or ces oracles doivent beaucoup au texte du PseudoCallisthène: dans le très romanesque contexte où ils sont censés avoir été rendus aux Achéens apparaissent plusieurs personnages dont les noms rappellent ceux de figures pseudo-callisthéniennes, Cassandre, Attale ou Philippe, et surtout l’on trouve remployées dans les prophéties elles-mêmes d’évidentes bribes du Roman – présage de l’œuf au serpent, oracle rendu au stratège Stasagoras par la prêtresse de Platées, propos d’Ammon annonçant à Alexandre l’épiphanie de Sarapis.38 Conçues avec une ambiguïté voulue, les prophéties de la Controverse peuvent indifféremment désigner Alexandre ou le Christ, Olympias ou Marie, et un parallèle se trouve ainsi établi entre le Conquérant et le Messie, présentés l’un et l’autre comme des figures salvatrices à vocation universelle: Alexandre est, en quelque sorte, transformé en précurseur du Christ.39 Si l’influence du Roman est moins flagrante dans le reste de la Controverse, il semble bien que l’auteur de l’ouvrage (que ses visées apologé————— 37

38

39

Éd. Bratke, E. 1899, Das sogenannte Religionsgespräch am Hofe der Sassaniden, Leipzig: Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, n.f. 4/3. Sur ce texte, voir aussi les remarques de Straub, J. 1963, Heidnische Geschichtsapologetik in der christlichen Spätantike, Untersuchungen über Zeit und Tendenz der Historia Augusta, Bonn: R. Habelt, 134–135 et 173. Cf. Bratke, 6 (op. cit. n. 37): l’oracle de Delphes annonce aux Achéens que ‘Philippe, fils d’Olympias, natif de Pella’ [alias Alexandre, sans doute ainsi nommé en raison de son amour pour Bucéphale] se rendant en Haute Asie, fera le tour du monde et frappera les hommes ‘d’un bras tout-puissant’ // cf. Ps. Call. 1, 11 et 1, 15 ; Bratke, 7: les Achéens étant entrés dans le temple d’Athéna au moment où l’on tissait un vêtement sacré et où l’on y appliquait du fil de pourpre, la prêtresse s’indigne et leur reproche de s’être présentés au mauvais moment, dans leur précipitation et leur inconséquence // cf. Ps. Call. 2, 1 Bratke, 8: la même prêtresse annonce aux Achéens qu’ ‘un jeune homme, rejeton agissant d’une couche mêlée, bénéficiant de l’invincible impulsion de la balance d’un dieu invincible, fera le tour du monde sans fin comme il ferait le tour d’un œuf, soumettant tous les hommes de sa lance’ // cf. Ps. Call. 1, 11; 1, 30 et 33. Qu’Alexandre ait également été ressenti comme un rival du Christ, en raison de la dévotion superstitieuse dont était entourée sa prestigieuse figure, nous est attesté par l’œuvre de Jean Chrysostome: cf. le long passage de la vingt-sixième homélie sur la Deuxième épître aux Corinthiens où sont opposés le renom périssable du Macédonien et la gloire immortelle du Christ (PG 61, col. 580–582).

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tiques suggèrent de situer à une époque assez proche de Philippe de Sidè, et sans doute avant la fin du Vème siècle40) ait lui aussi connu et utilisé le texte du Pseudo-Callisthène, auquel il paraît avoir emprunté notamment quelques détails de sa description du merveilleux temple d’Héra – temple où Cyrus apprend que la déesse «a conçu en son sein»,41 nouvel exemple de prescience païenne des vérités chrétiennes. Mise au service de l’Église orthodoxe par l’auteur de la Controverse, la légende d'Alexandre a aussi été, purement et simplement, christianisée, comme le montrent les Excerpta latina Barbari, traduction latine d’une chronique alexandrine composée sans doute dans le courant du Vème siècle.42 Dans ce texte, en effet, Alexandre est dépeint en instrument de Dieu, comme il le sera dans toutes les chroniques byzantines ultérieures. Les emprunts de la source grecque des Excerpta latina au récit du Pseudo-Callisthène étaient apparemment considérables : sont évoquées la fuite de Nectanébo en Macédoine, l’extension de la domination d’Alexandre sur l’Occident, et notamment sur Rome, une version du Testament du Conquérant très semblable à celle figurant dans la plus ancienne recension du Pseudo-Callisthène, et un bilan sur l’existence d’Alexandre analogue à celui dressé dans le Roman (années de vie,43 nombre des peuples soumis, liste des cités fondées). L’œuvre du PseudoCallisthène est utilisée pour source au même titre que les écrits des historiens – comme elle le sera dans la plupart des chroniques ultérieures : de fait, la littérature chronographique est sans doute le domaine byzantin où l’influence du Roman d’Alexandre a été le plus profonde et le plus remarquable.44 Notons ————— 40

41

42 43

44

Si l’élément hellénique était encore puissant à Byzance dans le courant du Vème siècle, à partir du siècle suivant la proportion de population païenne diminua considérablement. Bratke, 11 et 14 (op. cit. n. 37): cf. Ps. Call. 3, 28 (description du palais de Cyrus : oiseau parlant et lyre automatique). Il est possible aussi que les tours de magie prêtés au Perse Orikatos s’inspirent de ceux accomplis par Nectanébo dans le Roman (Bratke, 24–25 // cf. Ps. Call. 1, 1–2 et 8); d’autre part, la liste des peuples vassaux d’Arrinatos rappelle beaucoup celle des peuples soumis au pouvoir de Darius chez le Pseudo-Callisthène (Bratke, 38 // cf. Ps. Call. 2, 7). Sur la question des liens entre la Controverse et le Roman, voir Bratke, 166, 179, 221, 228–229, 245 Éd. Frick, C. 1892, Chronica minora, I, Leipzig, p. 185–371: Teubner. Alexandre est crédité de trente-six années de vie, comme dans les excerpta de la recension *0(Vat. gr. 1700), et non de trente, trente-deux ou trente-trois ans, comme dans les autres versions du Roman. Cf. Gleixner, H.J. 1961, Das Alexanderbild der Byzantiner, München: W. & J.M. Salzer, 32–45; Jouanno, C. 1996, ‘L’image d’Alexandre le Conquérant chez les chroniqueurs byzantins’, in Byzantium. Identity, Image, Influence, 19th International Congress of By-

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toutefois qu’il n’est pas toujours aisé de faire la part des emprunts directs et indirects. Des échos du Pseudo-Callisthène figurent chez Malalas, Jean d’Antioche, dans la Chronique Pascale, chez Georges le Syncelle, Georges le Moine, chez Kédrénos, Michel Glycas et Joël.45 Si Malalas semble avoir puisé directement au texte du Pseudo-Callisthène, auquel il emprunte une large partie de son chapitre sur Alexandre,46 l’histoire de sa naissance égyptienne, le récit de la fondation d’Alexandrie et du Sarapeion, l’épisode de la visite à Troie et le sacrifice au tombeau d’Achille,47 le séjour chez la reine Candace et le portrait physique d’un héros atypique, aux yeux de couleur différente (31"4/!), l’essentiel du matériau pseudo-callisthénien présent chez Georges le Moine48 provient de Malalas, et non directement du Roman, et Georges le Moine lui-même a servi de source à Michel Glycas49 et à Joël.50 L’auteur de la Chronique Pascale51 et Georges le Syncelle52 paraissent avoir emprunté à la Chronique alexandrine la mention de la fuite de Nectanébo en Macédoine,53 et c’est peut-être à Jean d’Antioche54 plutôt qu’au Roman que l’auteur de la Souda55 et Kédrénos56 ont puisé leur description du séjour d’Alexandre chez Candace57 – l’un des épisodes pseudo-callisthéniens le plus ————— 45

46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53 54

55 56 57

zantine Studies (University of Copenhagen, 18–24 August, 1996), Abstracts, n° 7322; texte intégral à paraître dans Kentron (Université de Caen). Zonaras est un des rares chroniqueurs byzantins à avoir totalement négligé le Roman au bénéfice de sources réputées plus sérieuses: son chapitre sur Alexandre est un epitomê de la biographie de Plutarque, que complètent un bref emprunt à Arrien et un extrait des Antiquités juives de Flavius Josèphe (éd. Pinder, M. 1841, Bonn, I, p. 329–355). Éd. Thurn, I. 2000, Berlin: W. de Gruyter, CFHB 35, p. 144–148. Le récit de Malalas est ici particulièrement précieux pour l’histoire du texte du PseudoCallisthène, car le manuscrit A et la traduction arménienne sont lacunaires en ce passage : le témoignage du chroniqueur byzantin montre que l’épisode troyen devait avoir dans l’original grec une physionomie assez voisine de celle qu’il possède dans la traduction latine de Julius Valère (1, 42, l. 1442–1485, éd. Rossellini, M. 1993, Iulius Valerius. Res Gestae Alexandri Macedonis, Leipzig: Teubner). Éd. de Boor, C. 1904, Leipzig: Teubner, I, p. 25–39 (réimpr. 1978). Éd. Bekker, I. 1836, Bonn, p. 267–271. Éd. Bekker, I. 1837, Bonn, p. 7 et 23. Éd. Dindorf, L. 1832, Bonn, I, p. 319, 321–322, 390, 495. Éd. Mosshammer, A.A. 1984, Leipzig: Teubner, p. 306–308, 312–319. Dans aucun des trois textes il n’est question d’intrigue amoureuse avec Olympias. Éd. Müller, C. 1885, Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, IV, Paris: Firmin Didot, p. 555 (n° 41–42). Éd. Adler, A. 1971, Stuttgart, I, p. 101–103, art. { /0"!. Éd. Bekker, I. 1838, Bonn, I, p. 264–272. Dans aucun des trois textes il n’est question d’idylle, et de mariage, entre Alexandre et Candace, comme c’est le cas chez Malalas et ses dérivés.

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souvent évoqués par les chroniqueurs, avec le ‘roman’ de Nectanébo. On pourrait donc être tenté de penser que seuls les chroniqueurs les plus anciens avaient lu le Pseudo-Callisthène, les auteurs plus récents se contentant de recopier les notices de leurs prédécesseurs. Le cas de Georges le Moine incite toutefois à nuancer ce jugement: tout d’abord parce que dans le récit qu’il trace des aventures de Nectanébo figurent quelques éléments étrangers au texte de Malalas, dont il s’inspire – éléments qu’une connaissance directe du Roman lui a peut-être suggéré d’ajouter, ainsi l’accent mis sur les pratiques magiques de l’ancien pharaon.58 D’autre part, une référence à Nectanébo dans la partie finale de la Chronique, où Georges le Moine fait figure de source indépendante, confirme l’impression que le texte du Roman devait lui être familier, ainsi qu’à ses lecteurs: évoquant l’élection du patriarche iconoclaste Jean le Grammairien et son entente avec l’empereur Théophile (829–842), adversaire acharné des images, notre chroniqueur, iconophile, comme il se doit, traite le nouveau patriarche de magicien qui s’entretient avec les démons et pratique la lécanomancie (à l’instar de Nectanébo dans les premiers chapitres du Roman), et il qualifie l’empereur lui-même de ‘second Nectanébo’, que la complicité de Jean le Grammairien transforme en parfait instrument du diable.59 On retrouve la même utilisation polémique du matériau pseudocallisthénien dans la Lettre à l’empereur Théophile,60 adaptation d’une lettre, sans doute elle-même apocryphe, censée avoir été envoyée au souverain iconoclaste, pendant le concile de 836, par les trois patriarches orientaux Christophe d’Alexandrie, Job d’Antioche et Basile de Jérusalem, pour plaider la cause des images. Dans cet écrit, généralement daté du IXème siècle,61 la mort de ————— 58

59 60

61

Op. cit. n. 48, I, p. 25: arrivé en Macédoine, Nectanébo se fait connaître de Philippe et d’Olympias ‘en produisant des apparitions, en se livrant à des tours de magie égyptiens et en prédisant l’avenir’ (4/3/2/ 3x /~ /1/ ú<$3/x 01ƒ1!). Ces détails, qui ne figurent pas dans le texte de Malalas, ont leur pendant approximatif dans le Roman (1, 3–4). Op. cit. n. 48, II, p. 798. Éd. Gauer, H. 1994, Texte zum byzantinischen Bilderstreit. Der Synodalbrief der drei Patriarchen des Ostens von 836 und seine Verwandlung in sieben Jahrhunderten, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, Studien und Texte zur Byzantinistik 1. Le texte aurait été composé avant la restauration du culte des images en 843, d’après Gero, S. 1973, Byzantine Iconoclasm during the reign of Leo III, Louvain: CSCO, vol. 346, t. 41, 4 et 72; dans la seconde moitié du IXème s., d’après Speck, K. 1990, Ich bin’s nicht. Kaiser Konstantin ist es gewesen. Die Legenden vom Einfluss des Teufels, des Juden und des Moslems auf den Ikonoklasmus, Bonn: R. Habelt, Poikila Byzantina 10, 252 et 498. S’opposant à cette datation haute, Gauer situe au XIIème siècle la première rédac-

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l’empereur Michel I Rangabé (811–813), fervent défenseur des images, et l’avènement de Léon V l’iconoclaste (813–820) sont annoncés par un présage tout droit tiré du Pseudo-Callisthène, la naissance d’un enfant monstrueux qui, dans le Roman, préfigurait la mort du Conquérant.62 De même, la rencontre du nouvel empereur et de l’ermite iconoclaste Sabbatios, prétendu inspirateur de la politique religieuse de Léon V, est évoquée à travers une citation littérale de la plus ancienne recension du Pseudo-Callisthène: l’auteur compare cette entrevue, censée avoir eu lieu de nuit, en des lieux souterrains, à la descente d’Alexandre dans les grottes des dieux et à son entretien avec Sarapis.63 Non qu’Alexandre et Sarapis fassent figure d’emblèmes païens, à qui Léon V et Sabbatios seraient assimilés dans un esprit de dénigrement: l’auteur de la Lettre semble au contraire avoir mentionné l’épisode pseudo-callisthénien tout exprès pour faire ressortir, par contraste, l’impiété de l’empereur byzantin et de son âme damnée; car le tour pris par la consultation est bien différent dans les deux textes: dans le Roman, quand Alexandre demande combien d’années lui restent à vivre, Sarapis refuse de répondre, arguant du fait qu’un homme averti du terme de son existence est comme un mort vivant, et l’épisode se clôt sur cette leçon de sagesse, tandis que l’ermite impie de la Lettre à Théophile pousse le basileus au crime, en lui promettant trente-deux ans de règne, s’il fait disparaître tout souvenir des icônes.64 Quoique la figure d’Alexandre ne soit guère présente dans le domaine hagiographique, deux vies de saints montrent cependant que même les hagiographes furent parfois sensibles au mythe du Conquérant, au point de prêter à —————

62 63

64

tion de l’Epistola dans laquelle, pour des raisons d’ordre stylistique, il voit l’œuvre d’un lettré constantinopolitain (op. cit. n. 60: p. LXXXIII). Hypothèse contestée par M.F. Auzépy, qui reproche à Gauer de faire fi de la pertinence historique: ‘On ne voit guère pourquoi on aurait pris la peine d’écrire un pamphlet anti-iconoclaste aussi virulent au XIIème s.’ (1997, La Vie d’Étienne le Jeune par Étienne le Diacre, Aldershot: Variorum Ashgate, Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Monographs 3, p. 60, n. 20). Éd. Gauer, p. 104–105 (op. cit. n. 60): cf. Ps. Call., 3, 30. Éd. Gauer, p. 108–109 (op. cit. n. 60): cf. Ps. Call., 3, 24. Comme la chronique de Malalas pour l’épisode troyen (cf. n. 47), la Lettre à l’empereur Théophile est ici très précieuse pour l’histoire du texte du Roman, car le manuscrit A présente justement une lacune en ce passage: la Lettre atteste que, dans l’original grec, Sarapis apparaissait bien à Alexandre comme il le fait dans les versions latine et arménienne (cf. Pfister, F. – Riedinger, U. 1955, ‘Ein Zitat aus dem Alexanderroman des Ps. Kallisthenes in einer untergeschobenen Schrift des Johannes von Damaskos’, BZ 48, 86–88). Dans les témoins grecs ultérieurs du Roman d’Alexandre, on ne retrouve pas cet épisode d’épiphanie. Cf. Gero, S. 1992, ‘The Alexander Legend in Byzantium: Some Literary Gleanings’, DOP 46, 83–87 (83–85).

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leurs héros des aventures inspirées des voyages de l’Alexandre pseudocallisthénien aux confins du monde :65 il s’agit de la Vie de Zosime qui, dans sa forme actuelle, date apparemment du Vème ou VIème siècle,66 et de la Vie de Macaire, composée à la fin du VIème ou au début du VIIème siècle.67 L’ermite Zosime dans le premier texte, les trois moines Théophile, Serge et Hygin dans le second texte, sont habités du désir de partir pour l’Extrême Orient: Zosime veut se rendre au séjour des Réchabites, ces Justes juifs établis par Dieu aux marges de l’oikoumène, où ils mènent une vie de pureté, en harmonie avec la nature, comme les Gymnosophistes du Roman, auxquels ils sont visiblement identifiés;68 les trois moines de la Vie de Macaire nourrissent le désir plus profane de savoir ‘où finit le ciel’, pareils au héros de la recension , qui souhaite atteindre ‘la limite de la terre’.69 Divers épisodes du voyage des saints hommes rappellent les pérégrinations d’Alexandre en pays mythiques. Zosime traverse une région horrifique, infestée de monstres et de serpents, et rencontre un fleuve immense dont le nom, Eumélès, ressemble étrangement à celui du fidèle Eumèlos, qui accompagne Alexandre jusqu’au fleuve Stranga, dans l’épisode de la visite incognito chez Darius.70 Plus romancée, la Vie de Macaire décrit longuement les contrées fabuleuses traversées par les trois moines, dans leur route jusqu’au séjour de Macaire, le saint ‘bienheureux’ (/y"!) établi à l’orée du Paradis: sont évoqués, comme dans le Roman, des hordes de Cynocéphales,71 une montagne sans soleil qui rappelle le pays des ténèbres de la recension 72 une source dite ‘immortelle’, avatar de la fameuse source de vie manquée par le héros du Pseudo-Callisthène,73 et sur————— 65

66

67

68

69 70 71 72 73

Cf. Gero, S. 1992, 85–87 (op. cit. n. 64); Angelidi, C.G. 1989, ‘&!"!~ /~  !!!~ 0"! t /<  = 13/!"4…21 3 3/ 0'3} 4}2’, in ÿ /1"
'
23!û$ý3!, 675–685 (spéc. 683–685 : op. cit. n. 27). Éd. Charlesworth, J.H. 1982, The History of the Rechabites, vol. I, The Greek Recension, Chico, California: T& T 17, Pseudepigrapha Series 10. Éd. Vassiliev, A. 1893, Anecdota graeca byzantina. Pars prior, Moscou: Universitas Caesarea, 135–165. Sur ce texte, voir aussi Pfister, F. 1912, ‘Episoden des Alexanderromans in christlichen Texten’, Theologische Literaturzeitung 18, 572–573; id., 1959, ‘Studien zur Sagengeographie’, SO 35, 5–39 (20–21). Pour sa description des Réchabites, l’hagiographe a sans doute puisé directement au De gentibus Indiae & Bragmanibus de Palladius, et non aux chapitres du Pseudo-Callisthène qui eux-mêmes en dérivent. VMac., p. 135–136 // Ps. Call. , 2, 37. VZos., p. 20–21 // Ps. Call. A, 3, 17 (monstres et serpents); A–, 2, 14 (fleuve Stranga). VMac., p. 139 // Ps. Call. A–, 3, 28; , 2, 33 1, 28. VMac., p. 140 // Ps. Call. , 2, 39 sq.; 1, 32. VMac., p. 147 // Ps. Call. , 2, 40; 1, 32, 4.

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tout un arc édifié par Alexandre et pourvu d’une inscription invitant les passants à prendre la route de gauche.74 Ce lieu-repère, souvenir très direct d’un épisode du Roman d’Alexandre figurant dans le texte L et dans les divers témoins de la recension 75 confirme l’importance jouée par le modèle pseudocallisthénien dans la Vie de Macaire, transposition hagiographique des voyages du héros romanesque aux marges du monde. Si l’ascension d’Alexandre a donné lieu à nombre de représentations figurées, on ne trouve pourtant aucun écho assuré de cet épisode dans la littérature byzantine: certains panégyriques impériaux du XIIème siècle y font peut-être allusion de manière implicite, mais le motif de l’ascension était depuis si longtemps implanté dans l’idéologie monarchique que l’on ne saurait sans témérité attribuer à l’influence du Pseudo-Callisthène les images d’empereurs prêts à prendre leur envol que l’on rencontre chez divers thuriféraires de la dynastie des Comnènes.76 Qu’en cette époque où le mythe d’Alexandre fut largement exploité comme modèle politique, le Roman du Pseudo-Callisthène ait bénéficié d’une faveur accrue semble néanmoins assuré. Pour la première fois, en effet, l’œuvre est ouvertement mise à contribution, non par des auteurs populaires, comme c’était le cas dans les exemples précédemment mentionnés,77 ————— 74

75

76

77

VMac., p. 142: ‘Cet arc, c’est Alexandre, roi des Macédoniens, qui l’a édifié, ayant poursuivi le Perse depuis Carthage jusqu’en ces lieux, comme une bête fauve. Ici se trouve la zone de ténèbres qu’il a traversée. Celui qui veut y pénétrer, qu’il marche toujours vers la gauche’. L–, 2, 41: Alexandre fait construire un arc à l’endroit qu’il imagine être ‘la fin de la terre’, et il y fait graver l’inscription ‘Vous qui avez résolu d’entrer dans le pays des Bienheureux, prenez à votre droite pour ne pas aller à votre perte’. L’hagiographe s’est, semble-t-il, amusé à inverser le sens de l’inscription. Dans la recension 1, il est aussi question d’un arc, construit par le héros pour franchir un ravin, mais l’inscription qui y est apposée est dénuée de tout caractère injonctif, elle se contente de commémorer le passage du Conquérant: ‘Ayant pénétré jusqu’ici, Alexandre a fait édifier un arc, sur lequel il a traversé avec toute son armée, voulant atteindre l’extrémité de la terre si, comme il l’espère, la Providence y consent’ (32, 2). Cf. notamment la description anonyme ‘des tournois de notre puissant et saint seigneur et roi’ (sans doute Manuel I) éditée par Lampros, S.P. 1908, ‘*4"/2 3í $!!3/"í 3!ã "/3/!ã /~ !$ -í /X{3!$ /~ /2{'’, ÿ!‡ «!
'5, 3–18 (p. 17, l. 27–31): le vêtement de l’empereur est orné de griffons dont la présence indique que l’empereur ‘est plein d’élévation et se meut dans les hauteurs’ (/<{"!/~13y"2!). Texte cité par Trahoulia, 202–203 (op. cit. n. 25). Abstraction faite de Libanios, dont l’Antiochikos constitue un cas-limite, non seulement parce que l’influence du Pseudo-Callisthène y demeure hypothétique, mais parce que, par sa date même, ce texte relève plus de la littérature tardo-antique que de la littérature by-

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mais par des représentants de la littérature savante, Jean Tzetzès (ap. 1100 – ap. 1180/1185) et Nicéphore Basilakès (1115 – ca 1180).78 Alors que les lettrés des siècles passés, s’ils connaissaient sans doute l’œuvre du PseudoCallisthène, s’étaient bien gardés de citer ou même d’imiter ce produit de la Muse populaire, Tzetzès et Basilakès non seulement s’inspirent du texte du Roman, mais en citent nommément l’auteur sous l’appellation usurpée de Callisthène. Encore les Chiliades de Jean Tzetzès pourraient-elles passer pour un produit littéraire quelque peu bâtard, car dans ce recueil d’anecdotes, composé en langue puriste, Tzetzès use du vers politique, médium traditionnel de la poésie vernaculaire. En revanche, les deux emprunts de Basilakès à l’œuvre du Pseudo-Callisthène figurent dans des textes où l’influence des modèles classiques était de rigueur – dans un recueil de progymnasmata et dans un panégyrique impérial destiné à la récitation publique : citer ainsi le Roman d’Alexandre, dans un texte à destination scolaire et dans un discours officiel, fait donc figure de micro-révolution littéraire. Tzetzès et Basilakès ont en commun d’avoir privilégié dans le texte du Pseudo-Callisthène des épisodes à composante historique. Sur les sept allusions au Roman insérées dans les Chiliades,79 trois ont trait à l’épisode de la prise de Thèbes,80 une au domptage de ————— 78

79 80

zantine. Quant à la Controverse et à la Lettre des trois patriarches, elles appartiennent au registre intermédiaire de la littérature théologique. À ces deux auteurs on pourrait être tenté d’adjoindre Euthyme Malakès qui, dans le discours qu’il adressa à Manuel Comnène à l’occasion de la venue du sultan Kilidj Arslan à Constantinople en 1161, semble parfois s’inspirer du Pseudo-Callisthène, notamment lorsqu’il évoque les vœux formés par Darius mourant pour que nul autre ne devienne roi de l’Asie, sinon Alexandre (cf. Ps. Call. 2, 20), ou fait référence aux tours aériennes édifiées par le Conquérant pour commémorer ses exploits (on pense aux ƒ"! d’Alexandrie mentionnées en 1, 24, 1): éd. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, A. 1903, Noctes Petropolitanae, St Pétersbourg (réimpr. 1976, Leipzig: Zentral Antiquariat der deutschen demokratischen Republik), Or. 6, § 9 et 1; pour l’attribution de ce texte à Euthyme Malakès, voir Darrouzès, J. 1965, ‘Notes sur Euthyme Tornikès, Euthyme Malakès et Georges Tornikès’, REB 23, 148–167 (155–163). On notera toutefois qu’à la différence de Tzetzès ou Basilakès, Malakès ne cite nullement ‘Callisthène’, que l’idée d’une passation de pouvoir symbolique entre Darius et Alexandre n’est pas inconnue de la tradition historique et pourrait remonter à Clitarque (cf. QC 5, 12, 5; Just. 11, 15, 12; et surtout Plut., Fort. Al. 2, 6 = Mor. 338 f, qui est peut-être la source de notre texte), qu’enfin les ‘tours’ du rhéteur byzantin ne sont sans doute autres que les autels dressés par le Conquérant sur les bords de l’Hyphase (cf. Diod. 17, 95, 1; Plut. 62, 8; Arr. 5, 29, 1–2, qui déclare les autels en question ‘hauts comme les plus hautes tours’). Éd. Leone, P.A. 1968, Ioannis Tzetzae Historiae, Napoli: Libreria scientifica. Chil. 1, 13; 7, 13; 10, 368. Comme l’auteur de la plus ancienne version du Roman, Tzetzès évoque la construction de Thèbes au son de la lyre d’Amphion et sa destruction au

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Bucéphale,81 une autre à la mort de Darius et au châtiment de ses meurtriers ;82 seule la référence au séjour chez Candace ‘de Méroé’ n’a aucune base historique.83 Tzetzès se plaît d’ailleurs à mêler éléments empruntés au PseudoCallisthène et aux historiens d’Alexandre, comme le montre le portrait qu’il nous livre du Conquérant: il le décrit en effet avec des yeux de couleur différente (31"4/!), comme le héros du Roman,84 et le cou incliné sur le côté (31"!3"y%!), comme l’Alexandre de Plutarque.85 Traitant lui aussi de la prise de Thèbes, Basilakès s’est, comme Tzetzès, inspiré de la version pseudo-callisthénienne de cet épisode historique, et il a fait des plaintes du flûtiste Ismênias, contraint par Alexandre à accompagner de son instrument la destruction de la cité, un sujet d’éthopée pathétique.86 Quant au second épisode romanesque exploité par le rhéteur, il est emprunté au récit de la guerre contre Darius: célébrant les victoires remportées par l’empereur Jean II en Cilicie et en Syrie (1138),87 Basilakès tire en effet du riche tribut offert au basileus par l’émir Aboul Asakis une interprétation plus mirifique que ne le —————

81

82

83

84

85 86

87

son de la flûte d’Ismênias (cf. A, 1, 46, 11); il fait également référence à l’histoire de l’athlète Clitomaque, en l’honneur duquel Alexandre aurait accepté de rebâtir la cité (cf. A, 1, 47) – détails inconnus de la tradition historique. On trouve toutefois mention, dans trois épigrammes d’époque romaine (AP 9, 216, 250 et 253: dbt Ier s. ap. JC) de la construction de Thèbes au son de la lyre et de sa destruction au son de la flûte – mais sans référence au personnage d’Ismênias. Chil. 1, 28: cf. Ps. Call. 1, 13 (toutes recensions). C’est le motif du cheval anthropophage qui atteste l’origine pseudo-callisthénienne de la notice de Tzetzès. Chil. 1, 89–91: cf. Ps. Call. 2, 21 (toutes recensions). C’est ici le motif de la crucifixion qui démarque la version pseudo-callisthénienne de la tradition historique. Chil. 1, 102–111: cf. Ps. Call. 3, 19 sq. (toutes recensions; le nom de Méroé ne figure toutefois que dans A). Chil. 11, 368: cf. Ps. Call. 1, 13 (toutes recensions). La même particularité physique est mentionnée chez Malalas, Georges le Moine et Michel Glycas, d’après le PseudoCallisthène. La remarque de Tzetzès, ‘La chose est connue de tous’ ("$1Ô3/»2), ne nous offre donc aucune information assurée sur la circulation du texte du Roman luimême; elle atteste seulement le vaste écho qu’ont rencontré parmi le public byzantin un certain nombre des innovations du Pseudo-Callisthène, relayées par des genres littéraires aussi populaires que les chroniques universelles. La mention de l’hétérophtalmie d’Alexandre se retrouve chez Tzetzès dans la lettre 76 (éd. Leone, P.A.M. 1972, Leipzig: Teubner, 112). Plut., Alex. 4, 2 Fort. Al. 2, 2 = Mor. 335 b. Éd. Pignani, A. 1983, Niceforo Basilace. Progimnasmi e monodie, Napoli: Bibliopolis, Byzantina et Neo-hellenica Neapolitana 10, 217–221 (texte n° 24). In Ioannem Comnenum imperatorem oratio, éd. Maisano, R. 1977, Niceforo Basilace. Gli encomi per l’imperatore e per il patriarca, Napoli: Byzantina et Neo-hellenica Neapolitana 5.

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faisait le Pseudo-Callisthène des trois présents dérisoires, fouet, balle et cassette, envoyés par Darius au ‘gamin’ Alexandre et transformés par ce dernier en présages de domination universelle: ‘Tes dons, remarque Basilakès en prenant à parti l’auteur du Roman, ceux de ton Macédonien, c’est un Perse qui les offrait, par dérision et moquerie, un Barbare; les miens, c’est un Barbare, mais suppliant, tout en larmes et apeuré’.88 Les emprunts de Tzetzès et de Basilakès au Pseudo-Callisthène pouvaient paraître signer l’entrée officielle du Roman d’Alexandre dans le panthéon littéraire grec. Mais la tentative de ces deux auteurs semble n’avoir guère eu de suite : à l’exception d’une brève allusion aux lamentations du flûtiste Ismênias dans une monodie composée par un certain Léon Mégistos (ca 1140 – ca 1210)89 – qui peut-être s’inspire de l’éthopée de Basilakès, fort célèbre en son temps,90 et non directement du Roman – je n’ai trouvé aucun autre emprunt au Pseudo-Callisthène dans les œuvres postérieures en langue savante, notamment dans les lettres et discours des érudits du XIVème siècle, où abondent pourtant les références à Alexandre; les modèles exploités sont toujours, pour autant qu’ils soient identifiables, des représentants de la tradition ‘classique’, historique (Diodore ou Arrien),91 rhétorique (Dion de Pruse)92 ou anecdotique (Plutarque ou Lucien).93 En revanche, on note la présence de souvenirs du ————— 88

89

90

91

92

93

Éd. Maisano, § 32 (op. cit. n. 87): cf. Ps. Call. 1, 36–38 (toutes recensions, sauf 1, où les trois présents sont différents). Monodie sur la mort du Mégas Etaireiarchês Georges Paléologue (ca 1168):
/~i~ 1 y0"!$ D2/ !X ~ 31%¹ -í ö ~ /3/3…21 1"/í 3| 3!㠁!$/"1/"!/ (éd. Sideras, A. 1991, Unedierte byzantinische Grabreden, Thessalonique : /"/3"3}
/22x"y/3/5, 220, l. 16–18). Cf. Garzya, A. 1970, ‘Un lettré byzantin du XIIème siècle: Nicéphore Basilakès’, Revue des études sud-est européennes 8, 611–621 (spéc. p. 619); repris dans Garzya, A. 1974, Storia e interpretazione di testi bizantini. Saggi e ricerche, London: Variorum Reprints. Sont ainsi fréquemment évoqués l’histoire du nœud gordien, le meurtre de Cleitos, ou encore la générosité d’Alexandre à l’égard de Poros. Les deux premiers épisodes manquent dans le Roman, et Poros est tué en duel par le héros du Pseudo-Callisthène. De Dion de Pruse (Or. 1, 1–2) provient la référence au flûtiste Timothée entraînant de son jeu Alexandre au combat: elle figure chez nombre d’historiens et rhéteurs byzantins (cf. par exemple Anne Comnène, Alexiade, préf. 4, 1; 9, 5, 1; Nicétas Choniatès, Or. 7 et Or. 14, éd. van Dieten, I.A. 1973, Berlin : W. de Gruyter, CFHB 3, p. 54 et 130). L’histoire de l’architecte qui voulait sculpter le mont Athos à l’image d’Alexandre (cf. Plut., Alex. 72; Al. Fort. 2, 2 = Mor. 335 c-e; Lucien, Quom. hist. conscr. 12) a elle aussi fait souche chez divers auteurs byzantins: cf. Tzetzès, Ep. 76 (loc. cit. n. 84) ; Eusth. Thess., Comm. ad Il. 14, 229, éd. van der Valk, M. 1979, vol. 3, Leyde: E.J. Brill, 624; Manuel II, Epitaphios, éd. Chrysostomidès, J. 1985, Thessalonique : Societas Studiorum Byzantinorum Thessalonicae, CFHB 36, 213.

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Pseudo-Callisthène dans plusieurs versions de l’épopée Digénis Akritas94 si la version de Grottaferrata (XIIème siècle) ne contient qu’un petit nombre de références au Roman d’Alexandre, dont les plus ostensibles figurent à l’intérieur d’une ekphrasis de mosaïque représentant divers exploits pseudocallisthéniens du Conquérant95 – passage imité au XIVème siècle par Méliténiote dans son poème allégorique À la Sagesse,96 et dans lequel est mentionné l’incontournable séjour chez Candace –, le texte Z, de deux ou trois siècles postérieur, prête à Digénis quelques aventures nouvelles sans doute inspirées de celles de l’Alexandre romanesque – travestissement,97 altercation avec un cuisinier qui paraît être l’avatar du fameux cuisinier voleur d’eau de vie dont parlent le texte L et la recension 98 enfin, il est question d’une pierre précieuse éclairant le palais de l’Akrite, à l’instar de la pierre découverte par Alexandre dans le ventre d’un poisson et utilisée par lui en guise de lanterne.99 Sans doute le motif de la pierre-lanterne était-il aussi célèbre à Byzance que

————— 94

95

96

97

98 99

L’influence du Roman sur l’épopée byzantine a souvent été surévaluée, notamment par Veloudis, G. 1965, Der neugriechische Alexander. Tradition in Bewahrung und Wandel, München: Institut für Byzantinistik und neugriechische Philologie der Universität München, Miscellanea Byzantina Monacensia 8, 265–269. Abus justement souligné par Moennig, U. 1993, ‘Digenes = Alexander ? The Relationship between Digenes Akrites and the Byzantine Alexander Romance in their Different Versions’, in: Beaton, R. – Ricks, D. (éd.), Digenes Akrites. New Approaches to Byzantine Heroic Poetry, London: Aldershot Variorum, Center for Hellenic Studies, King’s College London, Publications 2, 103–115. DA 7, 90–94 (victoire sur Darius, visite chez Candace, séjour chez les Brahmanes, rencontre avec les Amazones): éd. Odorico, P. 1995, Digenis Akritas, Poema anonimo bizantino, Florence: Giunti. Examen des autres rencontres possibles entre DA et le Roman chez Jouanno, C. 1998, Digénis Akritas, le héros byzantin des frontières. Une épopée byzantine, Turnhout: Brepols, Témoins de notre histoire, 99–103. Éd. Miller, M. 1858, Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la BN, Paris, t. 19 / 2, p. 1– 138. Texte Z, v. 1677–1701, éd. Trapp, E. 1971, Digenes Akrites: Synoptische Ausgabe der ältesten Versionen, Wien: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wiener Byzantinische Studien 8. Texte Z, v. 2280–2288: cf. Ps. Call., texte L, 2, 41. Texte Z, v. 3859–3860: cf. 1, 33, 2 = , 2, 42. Dans , il est bien question d’une pierre précieuse utilisée en guise de lampe, mais elle n’appartient pas à Alexandre: elle figure au nombre des merveilles du sanctuaire de Dionysos à Lysos (3, 28). Dans , une pierre analogue est mentionnée dans la description du palais de Candace (éd. van Thiel, p. 64). La plus ancienne recension du Roman (/) ignore en revanche le motif de la pierrelanterne.

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dans le monde oriental,100 puisque l’auteur anonyme du Poème didactique mentionné précédemment parle lui aussi de la ‘pierre d’Alexandre’,101 sans prendre la peine de préciser davantage, supposant visiblement cette pierre aussi familière à son public que pouvait l’être la prétendue hétérophtalmie du Conquérant. De l’étude des différents textes où le Roman a laissé sa trace se dégagent, me semble-t-il, deux enseignements principaux: le premier a trait au caractère extrêmement cloisonné de la production littéraire byzantine; à de rares exceptions près, l’influence du Pseudo-Callisthène, auteur populaire, est restée étroitement cantonnée au domaine de la littérature vulgaire,102 et seule l’alexandrolâtrie du XIIème siècle explique peut-être la transgression de ce qui fait figure de tabou littéraire. Le deuxième enseignement est relatif à la postérité des différentes branches du Roman d’Alexandre: le spectre des recensions sollicitées est vaste. La Chronique alexandrine, Malalas, l’auteur anonyme de la Lettre à l’empereur Théophile, Basilakès, Tzetzès empruntent leur matériau à un témoin de la recension /; les Vies de Zosime et de Macaire, le texte Z de Digénis, le Poème didactique puisent à une tradition plus récente, , , 1 ou 103 Se trouve ainsi partiellement démentie l’idée couramment exprimée selon ————— 100

101

102

103

En Orient, les pierres précieuses jouent un grand rôle dans les légendes relatives à Alexandre, quoique l’on n’y retrouve pas l’équivalent de l’épisode raconté en 1t : dans les versions arabes du voyage au pays des ténèbres, ce sont des pierres-lanternes qui tiennent la place des juments-guides de la tradition grecque (cf. Friedländer, I. 1913, Die Chadhirlegende und der Alexanderroman, eine sagengeschichtliche und literarhistorische Untersuchung, Leipzig: Teubner, 177, 187, 207...). Op. cit. n. 28. Pour apprendre à ses courtisans à ne pas se fier aux apparences, l’empereur Michel fait préparer deux coffrets, l’un richement orné, mais rempli de viandes avariées et autres excréments, l’autre enduit de poix, mais recélant toutes sortes de merveilles – anecdote tout droit tirée de la Vie de Barlaam et Joasaph (6, 42–44 : apologue n° 2), à ceci près que, dans le poème didactique, le coffret d’apparence repoussante contient, entre autres trésors, ‘la pierre précieuse d’Alexandre’ (v. 336), qu’ignorait l’auteur de Barlaam. W.J. Aerts et G.A.A. Kortekaas observent le même phénomène à propos des Révélations du Pseudo-Méthode, cet autre best-seller médiéval, que ne cite aucun historien officiel, ni même aucun chroniqueur à l’exception de Michel Glycas (1998, Die Apokalypse des Pseudo-Methodius. Die ältesten griechischen und lateinischen Übersetzungen, Louvain: CSCO, vol. 569, t. 97, p. 17). Cette répartition pourrait bien n’être pas le fruit du hasard : aux raisons chronologiques (l’auteur de la Chronique alexandrine ou Malalas n’avaient peut-être encore accès qu’à la recension /) ont pu se superposer des raisons d’ordre linguistique ; des érudits comme Basilakès ou Tzetzès devaient tout naturellement privilégier une version semi-lettrée

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laquelle la recension  et ses dérivés auraient quasiment évincé à Byzance la plus ancienne version du Roman: si nous ne possédons qu’un seul témoin grec de cette recension, les citations ou imitations précédemment évoquées nous assurent que le texte continua à être lu des Byzantins du Vème au XIIème siècle. C’est aussi de la recension /, ou d’une version étroitement dérivée, que proviennent les excerpta évoqués au début de cet article; d’elle que sont tirés un certain nombre d’épisodes d’1 qui, dans la première des réécritures protobyzantines du Pseudo-Callisthène, la recension , avaient été évacués;104 enfin, on retrouve des passages interpolés d’/ dans l’un des témoins de la recension  (P), dans le manuscrit C (recension ), qui peut-être s’inspire de P,105 et dans certaines adaptations de la fin de la période byzantine, comme le texte du codex Marcianus Graecus 408, copié en 1388.106 Il semblerait d’autre part que la recension , qui fait figure de parent pauvre dans les études sur le PseudoCallisthène grec, puisqu’elle n’est même pas éditée dans son intégralité, ait rencontré une assez large audience et mériterait d’être examinée de plus près – d’autant qu’elle paraît avoir essaimé aussi hors de Grèce: on note en effet entre ce texte et la première des nombreuses réécritures de la traduction latine de Léon l’Archiprêtre, la recension interpolée J1, d’étonnantes convergences dont l’explication nous échappe.107 ————— 104

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comme l’est le texte A, alors que les auteurs populaires se sont tournés vers des réécritures au style plus simple et au niveau de langue plus bas, comme ou . De la recension /proviennent notamment le récit de l’assemblée d’Athènes (A, 2, 2–5 // 1, 12, 1–3), l’épisode de l’île mystérieuse (A, 3, 17, 3–7 // 1, 30, 2–3), celui de la stèle de Sésonchosis (A, 3, 17, 17 // 1, 27, 2), l’évocation de la tentative de suicide d’Alexandre (A, 3, 32, 4–7 // 1, 44, 5). Ces interpolations figurent en 3, 21 (description du palais de Candace : évocation des statues des dieux barbares, mention du fleuve pareil au Pactole) ; 3, 24 (épisode des grottes des dieux : apparition de Sarapis).... Sur les liens étroits existant entre le cod. Bodleianus misc. 283 (P) et le Par. Suppl. Gr. 113 (C), voir H. van Thiel, Die Rezension , 17–18 (op. cit. n. 4). Éd. Reichmann, S. 1963, Das byzantinische Alexandergedicht nach dem codex Marcianus 408, Meisenheim am Glan : BKPh 13. Est notamment tirée de la recension /toute la fin du livre I et le début du livre II, qui traitent des affaires de la Grèce (A, 1, 45 – 2, 6). Ces convergences apparaissent essentiellement dans l’épisode des arbres du Soleil et de la Lune: cf. , 3, 17, éd. van Thiel, p. 37–39 // J 1, éd. Hilka, A. – Steffens, K. 1979, Historia Alexandri Magni (Historia de Preliis), Rezension J 1, Meisenheim am Glan: Verlag Anton Hain, chap. 106. Sur l’énigme que constituent les relations de ces deux textes, voir Merkelbach, R. 1954, Die Quellen des griechischen Alexanderromans, 1ère éd., München: Verlag G.H. Beck, Zetemata, Monographien zur klassischen Altertumswissenschaft 9, 153 sq. et 163 sq.; id., 1977, Die Quellen, 2ème éd., ibid., 194–198.

‘True Histories’ and ‘Old Wives’ Tales’: Renaissance Humanism and the ‘Rise of the Novel’ ROBERT H . F . CARVER

Durham

1. (Hi)stories of the Novel Over the past forty years, the prose fiction of the ancient world has experienced not merely a renascence, but a metamorphosis. Yet the flood of books, articles, and international conferences that has swept it from the margins to the centre of academic discourse has also served to normalize and legitimate that oxymoronic (and potentially still contentious) term, ‘Ancient Novel’. It may have been inevitable (in the English-speaking tradition, at least) that ‘Ancient Novel’ should have supplanted earlier labels such as ‘Romances’, particularly given the vested interest that most of us have in linking our own fields of research to the dominant literary mode of the modern world. But the appearance of a new journal entitled Ancient Narrative is especially welcome since, by relieving us of some of the teleological bias – the sense of modern novel as end-point – inherent in the label ‘Ancient Novel’, it may help us to determine more precisely the relationship (whether genetic or generic) between ancient and modern fictions. Traditional (English) accounts of ‘The Rise of the Novel’ (Watt 1957, McKeon 1987) virtually ignored ancient prose fiction, choosing to see the novel as an eighteenth- (or, at best, a seventeenth-)century phenomenon, the product of the spread of Protestantism and an emergent (and literate) bourgeoisie. Watt functions today as a respected point of departure for most specialists in the novel, but his basic assumptions remain deeply entrenched in English studies generally. Indeed, objections have been voiced as recently as 1990 to attempts to extend or ‘diffuse the definition of the novel’: ‘The question of beginnings … is easily blurred into pedantry, triviality, and the stalking of game that has been chosen for the chase. Making all prose fiction,

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from all ages and places, into the novel is not a serious way of dealing with either formal or historical issues’ (Hunter 1990, 7). As though picking up Hunter’s gauntlet, Margaret Anne Doody has given us The True Story of the Novel which seeks to establish the place of the ‘ancient plasmata’ in ‘the bloodline of Western fiction’ (Doody 1997, 172). It has been justly praised for its ‘verve and wit’ (Kermode 1997) and it is hard to think of many recent works that display such an imaginative sweep, so cornucopian an enthusiasm for fictions of all kinds. Anyone who has contemplated ‘the evolution of the Novel’ will have a sense of the enormity of Doody’s undertaking. The Modern Novel, it might be argued, is a bastard child in a dysfunctional family, the product of so much generic fornication and multi-generational incest that any ‘bloodlines’ are lost in a sea of miscegenation. Doody has two main solutions to these genealogical problems. The first is to collapse distinctions into identities, severing the Gordian knot of the origins of fiction with a single slice of the pen: ‘Romance and the Novel are one’ (Doody 1997, 15). The second is to appropriate some of the techniques of fiction itself. One senses, even from the cover, that The True Story of the Novel plays ambivalently both within and against the Academic Establishment. In its first incarnation, it sported the credentials of a respected University Press (Rutgers, 1996), but it was quickly taken up by a commercial publisher (HarperCollins 1997) and repackaged, so that it now looks less like a forbidding scholarly monograph than an historical novel (or, indeed, romance), the title chiselled into the mock-marble of a dust-jacket bordered by an acanthus frieze inspired by the Temple of Isis at Pompeii. These traces of the ludic and the fabulous inscribed on the book’s surface – as if to say, ‘Here is an academic work that dares to be popular’ – are mirrored within the text itself. In the third and final section (‘Tropes of the Novel’), Doody gathers us up into a kind of Merkelbachian fantasia, in which the whole of the Novel – ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and modern – participates in the mystery cult of the Mother Goddess. And she concludes with ‘a vision or mock vision of our Goddess of the Novel’ based on the Isiac epiphany in Book 11 of The Golden Ass: ‘She is obviously a Madonna of the Future, even though she has a shepherdess’ crook in her left hand, and about her gigantic right foot a little donkey plays perpetually’ (Doody 1997, 484).

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Critics who have condemned this kind of critical writing as ‘mockscholarly and self-engrossed’ (Deluna 1997, 993) may have missed the Lucianic play within the title: Doody’s True Story is also a Vera historia; and passages such as her ‘mock vision’ – clearly indented and delineated from the body of the main argument – represent a legitimate reclaiming of the discursive latitude of the Menippean tradition. One might argue, too, that it is impossible to present a ‘history of the Novel’ without shaping it into some kind of narrative; and the particular muthos (the ‘plot’ or ‘myth’) of the Novel which she adopts allows her to make connections and provide insights that a more conventional narrative would perhaps not permit. But Doody challenges traditional notions of academic veracity in more fundamental ways. She has been attacked for making ‘no distinction between historical fact and aesthetic myth .... If we want to make art-myths in the manner of Nietzsche and Wagner, well and good: but let us be frank about it, rather than disguising them as (dis)provable intellectual history’ (Hawes 1997, 20). Here is the crux of the problem: The True Story of the Novel is a treasury of illuminating analysis, suggestive collocation, and imaginative synthesis, and its central assertion of the inter-relatedness of ancient and modern fiction is (in its broad terms) clearly correct. The weakness lies in the middle section (‘The Influence of the Ancient Novel’) which seeks to bridge the gap between the two. There are far too many occasions, in this section, where Doody’s statements are demonstrably wrong,1 or (perhaps more worrying still) where complex arguments are constructed on the bases of unsubstantiated assertion or unwarranted inference. Part Two is full of dangerous elisions that cannot be excused by invoking Lucianic licence.2 Doody, for ex————— 1

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Doody, for example, perpetuates the old myth (Carver 1999, 258–259) about Boccaccio’s rôle in the recovery of F (Laur. 68.2): ‘We know that he obtained an important manuscript of Apuleius’ works, the Monte Cassinus Codex … Boccaccio took it to Florence’. And she presents a very garbled account of Boccaccio’s autograph copy of Apuleius (L1, Laur. 54.32): ‘In the fourteenth century it was suggested that a manuscript of Apuleius, likewise found in Florence, could have been transcribed by Boccaccio himself’ (Doody 1997, 204). Doody (1997, 172) makes it clear that before we reach Part III (where ‘the reader and I will be released from all the bondage to history as chronology, and will be free to play with the tropes of fiction’) she intends ‘to establish the humble but basic connection’ between ‘Novels of Antiquity and Novels of Modernity’. Indeed, she wants her reader to be ‘truly convinced that ancient novels have played an important part in Western fiction from the Middle Ages through the Age of Reason.’

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ample, concludes a discussion of Marie de France’s late twelfth-century Lais by observing that ‘The fiercely comic adultery story in Equitan, with its climax of the murderous boiling bath, is reminiscent of the adultery stories in Apuleius.’ This looks promising: there are certainly intriguing structural affinities between Marie’s verse adaptations of what appears to be Celtic (Breton) story-matter and the Milesian tales familiar to us from Apuleius and Petronius.3 The treatments of adultery in Equitan and The Golden Ass are not, in fact, close enough to be decisive (the moralistic end of Marie’s adulterers – ‘hoist by their own petard’ – seems, for instance, distinctly unApuleian) and it remains to be determined whether such morphological similarities are the product of filiation (a genetic relationship) or merely instances of ‘parallel evolution’ (to borrow a term from the Darwinists) in which homologous narrative structures spontaneously develop in separate communities exposed to similar conditions (in this case, infidelity). Doody, however, raises none of these issues, moving, instead, straight from her (implied) hypothesis of influence (‘reminiscent’) to her conclusion, without any intervening demonstration of proof: ‘The great European stockpot of stories is now fully available’ (Doody 1997, 187). This image of the stockpot – with its beguiling, but misleading, suggestions of the plenitude and accessibility of early fictions – is used to fatten up some very slender claims. Here are just two (in relation to the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries): ‘Chrétien presumably did not read Heliodorus – at least not unmediated; he seems to have been influenced, however, by works with Heliodorus in their background’. ‘It is almost harder to believe that Boccaccio did not know Heliodorus (in some form) than that he did’ (Doody 1997, 190, 201). Doody is able (in a single sentence) to combine unsubstantiated assertion (‘It is impossible not to believe that among the works Boccaccio came into contact with in some manner were some of the Greek prose fictions’) with a self-affirming defeatism (‘– though we shall never know which ones’) (Doody 1997, 201) which obviates the need to engage in the kind of empirical research (tracing manuscript circulation, sifting library catalogues, collating allusions etc.) that might help to clarify the issue. And the same strategic ————— 3

A similar problem is posed by the thirteenth-century fabliaux, the structure of which is often tantalizingly close to that of the inset tales in Apuleius – stories of adulteries concealed and uncovered. Yet there is, to date, no clear evidence that they were influenced by The Golden Ass.

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combination of elision and conflation appears in the claim that ‘In Fiammetta Boccaccio does not eliminate the figures of the Greek novel, which he flourished so outrageously in Filocolo’ (202) – the unproved case of Greek influence in Filocolo is used to bolster an even weaker claim in the later romance. Doody’s refusal to see borders (between West and East, between Latin and Greek, between Christian and Islamic) as impermeable barriers is (potentially) very salutary, but her unwillingness to discriminate – to accept or construct hierarchies for the transmission and availability of ancient fictions in the Middle Ages and Renaissance – can be seen here to be deleterious. If ‘Truth’, at the micro level of verifiable fact and rational argument, is a principal casualty in Doody’s quest for a grand narrative, it is not the only one. Doody is commendably candid about her concern to emphasize ‘continuities’ over ‘discontinuity’ (xviii; cf. 9 and 164); but her opening assertion that the Novel in the West ‘has a continual history of about two thousand years’ (1) cannot go unchallenged. In fact, the ‘history of the Novel’ is less of a continuum than a succession of lacunae, hiatuses, false starts, deadends, reinventions and, above all, quite dramatic oscillations in attitudes towards fiction. Take the early Middle Ages: is it merely chance that what appears to be another Latin novel, Apuleius’ Hermagoras, is lost, while the pseudoApuleian Herbarium survives? That Apuleius’ philosophical works are separated from the rest of the corpus and travel north to be taken up by the Carolingian revival, while the Metamorphoses and the declamatory works fester in the south? Or that, during this same period, a major dismemberment of Petronius’ Satyrica takes place? These examples might suggest that readers (and scribes) in the eighth and ninth centuries were looking for memorable quotations, edifying sententiae, models of good style, or philological curiosities, rather than a connected plot. Even when the section of Petronius that we value most highly today – the Cena Trimalchionis – was discovered in the 1420s, it was promptly lost again for nearly 250 years (Carver 1999, 255– 256). Doody’s commitment to the notion of continuity obscures the remarkable shift that takes place in the West’s attitude towards fictional narrative from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. And while she makes good use of the editions and translations of the ancient novels that appeared during the

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Renaissance, she underplays the vital contribution of Humanist debates over the status of fiction.4

2. Cervantes’ Canon: The Humanist Case against Romances A useful retrospect on these arguments is provided by Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), himself a vital mediator between early and modern fictions.5 After Don Quixote’s return home from his first adventure (slumped ignominiously on the back of an ass), the curate, the barber, the housekeeper, and the niece decide to cure him of his madness by burning his books while he is asleep (1,6). The niece, concerned at the pernicious effect of these volumes on her uncle, is keen to burn everything. But the curate, whose hostility towards romances is in part a product of his own susceptibility to such fictional entertainments, attempts to distinguish between what should be burned, what treasured, what censored, and what reserved for later judgement. That ambivalence is symptomatic of the complex negotiations that take place within Don Quixote between earlier forms of fictions. The curate appears to be a responsible man and an astute critic, but as the Inquisition of the Library proceeds, he becomes exhausted by the task of sifting and discriminating between the various types and qualities of fiction before him and proposes that the rest of the volumes should be condemned unread. As it happens, his earlier distinctions prove to be purely academic, since the housekeeper takes matters into her own hands during the night and burns all of her master’s books regardless (1,7). One might choose to draw a parallel with modern critical debates. If there is something Quixotic about Doody’s tendency to subsume the ‘reality’ of literary history into her own vision of the Novel, we could see the Anglo-American practice of the Wattian school as an example of over-zealous housekeeping: Watt himself chose ————— 4

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Doody makes brief references to Humanist attacks on fiction, quoting, for example, William Tyndale’s dismissal (Obedience of a Christian Man, 1528) of ‘fables of loue and wantonnes and ribauldry, as filthy as hart can thinke’, and asserting (pace Lewis 1954, 229) that this ‘is not the inevitable attitude [sc. to medieval story] of the humanist per se’ (Doody 1997, 229). Her statement (241) that Amyot in 1547 ‘belongs to an age in which it is becoming necessary to defend the fictional’ overlooks the earlier history of Humanist opposition to story. Doody makes use of Ascham and Cinthio but does not mention Macrobius, Boiardo, Erasmus, Vives, Scaliger, Tasso, or Pinciano. It is not uncommon in literature departments to hear Don Quixote described as ‘the first novel’ or (with a slight concession) ‘the first modern novel’.

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to adopt ‘a working definition’ of the novel that was ‘sufficiently narrow to exclude previous types of narrative’ (Watt 1957, 9). The intervention of the canon (el canónigo) of Toledo towards the end of Part One (ch. 47) provides a more general discussion of the limitations of contemporary fiction. He begins with a moral / political objection, considering ‘books of chivalry to be mischievous to the State’ (perjudiciales en la república): ‘this sort of writing and composition is of the same species as the fables they call the Milesian, nonsensical tales that aim solely at giving amusement and not instruction, exactly the opposite of the apologue fables [e.g. Aesop’s] which amuse and instruct at the same time.’6 Moral objections, however, quickly give way to aesthetic ones: how can such works succeed in their ‘chief object’ (el deleitar, ‘amusement’) ‘when they are so full of such monstrous nonsense’ (yendo llenos de tantos y tan desaforados disparates)? The canon’s Aristotelian-Horatian bias becomes clear as he elaborates the theme: ‘the enjoyment of the mind’ (el deleite que en el alma) depends on the perception of beauty and harmony (rather than ugliness and disproportion), on ‘verisimilitude and truth to nature’ (la verisimilitud y de la imitación),7 and on unity of action (‘I have never yet seen any book of chivalry that puts together a connected plot complete in all its members [un cuerpo de fábula entero con todos sus miembros], so that the middle agrees with the beginning, and the end with the beginning and middle’). And he concludes the attack with a set of charges which (typically of Humanist criticism) blends the aesthetic with the moral: Fuera desto, son en el estilo duros; en las hazañas, increíbles; en los amores, lascivos; en las cortesías, mal mirados; largos en las batallas, necios en las razones, disparatados en los viajes, y, finalmente, ajenos de todo discreto artificio, y por esto dignos de ser desterrados de la república cristiana, como a gente inútil. (Cervantes, Part 1, ch. 47, 568) ————— 6

7

Y, según a mí me parece, este género de escritura y composición cae debajo de aquel de las fábulas que llaman milesias, que son cuentos disparatados, que atienden solamente a deleitar, y no a enseñar; al contrario de lo que hacen las fábulas apólogas, que deleitan y enseñan juntamente (Cervantes, Part 1, ch. 47, 566) … tanto la mentira es mejor cuanto más parece verdadera, y tanto más agrada cuanto tiene más de lo dudoso y posible (‘fiction is all the better the more it looks like truth, and gives the more pleasure the more probability and possibility there is about it’) (Cervantes, Part 1, ch. 47, 567).

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(And besides all this they are harsh in their style, incredible in their achievements, licentious in their amours, uncouth in their courtly speeches, prolix in their battles, silly in their arguments, absurd in their travels, and, in short, wanting in everything like intelligent art; for which reason they deserve to be banished from the Christian commonwealth as a worthless breed.) (Ormsby 1885, vol. 2, 332) The canon’s talk of banishing works of fiction is not the idle Platonic gesture it might seem. In 1514, the greatest of the Spanish Humanists, Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540), had described the usurpation of the philosophers’ domain by ‘some worthless poetasters, like the Trojan pig, stuffed with old wives’ tales [referti anilibus fabellis]’. He calls upon the buried philosophers to take action: Why do you not evict these petty poets and insipid men [istos poetistas et vanos homines] from your dwelling place and govern with peace and justice this noble republic of yours, free from impurity, flourishing, undefiled and unpolluted by human scum? … How true I find that saying of Plato to be … that republics would be blessed if they were ruled by philosophers … If only his authority or that of the divine Socrates were now in force, who expelled Homer and these lying poets from the city as corrupters of public morals … (Vives, In suum Christi Triumphum praelectio, quae dicitur Veritas fucata) (Matheeussen 1987, 80–81) In 1529, Vives named names, condemning, as being designed merely to ‘stimulate pleasures’, the works of certain poets, as well as the fables of Milesius, as that of the Golden Ass, and in a manner all Lucian’s works, and many others which are written in the vulgar tongue as of Tristan, Launcelot, Ogier, Amadís, and of Arthur the which were written and made by such as were idle and knew nothing. The books do hurt both man and woman, for they make them wily and crafty, they kindle and stir up covetousness, inflame anger and all beastly and filthy desire. (Vives, The Office and Duetie of an Husband, trans. Thomas Paynell, London, c. 1558, fol. O7r–v) (Ife 1985, 14)

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voluptates titillant pleraque Poetarum opera, et Milesiae fabulae, ut Asinus Apuleji, et fere Luciani omnia, quales crebrae sunt in linguis vernaculis scriptae Tristani, Lanciloti, Ogerii, Amadisii, Arturi, et his similes; qui libri omnes ab otiosis hominibus, et chartarum abundantibus, per ignorantiam meliorum sunt conscripti: hi non feminis modo, verum etiam viris officiunt, quemadmodum ea omnia, quibus nutus iste noster ad pejora detruditur, ut quibus armatur astutia, accenditur habendi sitis, inflammatur ira, aut cujuscunque rei turpis atque illicita cupiditas. (Vives, De officio mariti, Bruges, 1529) (Ife 1985, 177) For Vives, these sorts of fictions pollute both home and state. In 1531, such sentiments were translated into action: a decree was passed forbidding the export to the Indies of ‘romances’ such as the Amadís because they were deemed to be unsuitable reading matter for the Indians. This ban was extended in 1543 to cover romances que traten de materias profanas y fabulosas e historias fingidas, and in 1555 an attempt was made (in a petition) to apply it to the whole of the Spanish peninsular (Ife 1985, 16). This last attempt was unsuccessful, but the tendency to disparage both chivalric romances and the Milesian Tales and novelle with which they were closely associated was a common feature of the Northern Renaissance. 8 There is a marked congruence between the views of Vives (the Spanish Catholic) and Roger Ascham (the English Protestant). Ascham’s attack on fiction in The Scholemaster (published in 1570, two years after his death) emerges from a general indictment of Italy as ‘Circes Court’, a place of licentiousness and enchantments from which English travellers return transformed: ‘And so, beyng Mules and Horses before they went, returned verie Swyne and asses home agayne: yet euerie where verie Foxes with suttle and busie heades; and where they may, verie wolves, with cruell malicious hartes’ (Ascham 228). Ascham responds to the flood of Boccaccio-inspired novelle that threatens to engulf his isle. Things were bad enough before the

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The immediate source for the canon’s identification of the romances with Milesian tales is generally taken to be Alonso López Pinciano’s Philosophía antigua poética (Madrid, 1596), 2,8 and 2,12 (Eisenberg 1982, 11). A slightly earlier instance is to be found in Filosofia secreta donde debaxo de Historias fabulozas se contiene mucha doctrina provechosa (Madrid, 1585; facsimile 1995) by Juan Pérez de Moya (c. 1513–96).

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Reformation when vernacular literature was dominated by Arthurian romances: In our forefathers tyme, whan Papistrie, as a standyng poole, couered and ouerflowed all England, fewe bookes were read in our tong, sauyng certaine bookes of Cheualrie ... [231] ... for example, Morte Arthure: the whole pleasure of which booke standeth in two speciall poyntes, in open mans slaughter, and bold bawdrye: In which booke those be counted the noblest Knightes, that do kill most men without any quarell, and commit fowlest aduoulteries by sutlest shiftes: …. This is good stuffe, for wise men to laughe at, or honest men to take pleasure at. Yet I know, when Gods Bible was banished the Court, and Morte Arthure receiued into the Princes chamber (Ascham, 230–231). But these romances – produced, ‘as some say ... by idle Monkes, or wanton Chanons’ (231) – pose far less danger to young persons than the ‘bawdie bookes’ that ‘sutle and secrete Papistes at home’ have caused ‘to be translated out of the Italian tonge’ (230): And yet ten Morte Arthures do not the tenth part so much harme, as one of these bookes, made in Italie, and translated in England. They open, not fond and common wayes to vice, but such subtle, cunnyng, new, and diuerse shiftes, to cary yong willes to vanitie, and yong wittes to mischief, to teach old bawdes new schole poyntes, as the simple head of an English man is not hable to inuent, nor neuer was hard of in England before, yea when Papistrie ouerflowed all. Suffer these bookes to be read, and they shall soone displace all bookes of godly learnyng. (Ascham, 231). We should note how the ‘novelty’ of the novella – the artful contrivance of the plot which uses tricks and twists to achieve its (often erotic) narrative end – is here read by Ascham in moral terms: with their ‘subtle, cunnyng, new, and diuerse shiftes’ such works corrupt both the appetites (‘willes’) and intellects (‘wittes’) of the young. As a consequence, ‘our Englishe men Italianated’ ‘make more accounte ... of a tale in Bocace, than a storie of the Bible’ (232).

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3. Humanist Fictions (I): The Satirical Impulse 3.1. Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More Hostility towards Catholic Europe and the fictions that it had spawned would continue to be expressed in Protestant England until the end of the sixteenth century (and beyond). In the respublica litterarum at large, however, there was considerable variation in attitudes towards fiction. In Chapter 5 (De historia) of his Declamatio de incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum atque artium (1530), Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim lumps together (as fabulosae historiae) Lucian, Apuleius, and the Arthurian romances, condemning them as fabulosa ac simul inerudita deliramenta poetarum, comoediis ac fabulis fabulosiora (‘fabulous and, at the same time unlearned absurdities of the poets, more fabulous than comedies and fables’) (fol. E. 4v). Agrippa’s dismissal of fabulosae historiae involves an elaboration (or distortion) of an earlier attack on medieval romances made by Desiderius Erasmus. In his Institutio principis christiani (‘The Education of a Christian Prince’, 1516), Erasmus condemns the continuing vogue (permultos videmus … delectari) for ‘stories of Arthur, Lancelot and the rest’ which are ‘not only abounding in tyranny, but also utterly unlearned, foolish, and old-womanish’ (non solum tyrannicis, verum etiam prorsus ineruditis, stultis & anilibus). Erasmus, however, adds a significant coda: ‘It would be more profitable [for the young prince] to invest [his] hours in comedies or the fables of the poets than in absurdities of this kind’ (consultius sit in comoediis aut poetarum fabulis horas collocare, quam in eiusmodi deliramentis). (Erasmus, Opera omnia, IV-1, pp. 179-80; Lewis 1954, 28; Adams 1959–60, 41). Erasmus was instinctively more generous than many of his peers in his view of the possibilities of fiction. And he shared with Thomas More a particular regard for the satirical fictions of Lucian. Their translations of a selection of Lucian’s dialogues were published in 1506, an expanded collection appearing in 1514. The two Humanists showed how the snarling, Cynical spirit of Lucian could be muzzled and the irreligious ‘scoffer’ made to exemplify the most successful (Horatian) mix of edification and delectation, profit and delight. In the prefatory letter to Luciani somnium siue gallus, Erasmus writes:

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Omne tulit punctum (vt scripsit Flaccus) qui miscuit vtile dulci. Quod quidem aut nemo mea sententia aut noster hic Lucianus est assecutus. (Luciani ... opuscula, 1506, fol. xviv) (‘He has won every vote’ (as Horace said) ‘who has mixed the useful with the sweet.’ In my opinion, indeed, if Lucian hasn’t attained this, no one has.) More echoes the sentiment: Si quisque fuit vnquam vir doctissime: qui Horatianum præceptum impleuerit: voluptatemque cum vtilitate coniunxerit: hoc ego certe Lucianum in primis puto præstitisse. (Luciani ... opuscula, 1506, sig. AAar) (If ever there was any one, Most Learned Sir, who satisfied the Horatian injunction and joined pleasure with usefulness, then I certainly think that, in this, Lucian particularly excelled.) Erasmus and More may have failed to imbue any lasting love of Lucian in their younger friend, Vives (who went on to dismiss the satirist as ‘an ass, decked out and puffed up with the pomp of words, but utterly devoid of substance’);9 but their contribution to literature in making Lucian available in Latin can hardly be over-estimated. Erasmus’ attitude towards Apuleius was somewhat more ambivalent. The first authorized edition of the De copia appeared in Paris in 1512. Dedicated to John Colet and his new school, St Paul’s, it became one of the most famous and popular educational treatises of the sixteenth century. At the beginning of the De copia (1,9), Erasmus holds up Apuleius as a model of the rich style, to be observed and emulated: Praecipuam autem vtilitatem adferet, si bonos auctores nocturna diurnaque manu versabimus, potissimum hos, qui copia dicendi praecelluerunt: cuiusmodi sunt Cicero, A. Gellius, Apuleius, atque in his vigilantibus oculis figuras omneis obseruemus, obseruatas memoria reconda————— 9

Vives, De disciplinis, Part 2, book 3, ch. 7: Asinus est, verborum apparatu instructus ac tumens, rerum inanis prorsus (Noreña 1970, 179).

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mus, reconditas imitemur, crebraque vsurpatione consuescamus habere in promptu. (Erasmus, Opera omnia, I-6, p. 34) (But it will be of especial advantage if, night and day, we turn over in our hand the good authors, most of all, those who excel in the copiousness of their speech – of such a kind are Cicero, Aulus Gellius, and Apuleius. And with ever-wakeful eyes, we should observe all their figures of speech; having observed them we should store them in the memory; having stored them, we should imitate them; and, by frequent employment, we should become accustomed to having them at the ready.) Erasmus’ injunction to thumb Cicero, Aulus Gellius, and Apuleius ‘night and day’ is nicely edged – Erasmus is himself imitating a passage in the Ars poetica (268–269) where Horace criticizes the unmusical verses of Ennius and enjoins his readers to ‘turn over the Greek models in your hand by night, turn them over by day’ (vos exemplaria Graeca | nocturna versate manu, versate diurna). It is a neat irony that the Horatian formula should be employed in endorsing two such un-Horatian writers as Gellius and Apuleius, Gellius (an affecter of archaism) being an avowed admirer of Ennius. The coupling of the ‘Father of Eloquence’ with the exemplars of ‘degenerate Latinity’ is nevertheless remarkable, especially in a text-book designed for the use of impressionable pupils in a model school designed by a highminded educationalist like Dean Colet. In Book II of the De copia, Erasmus twice praises Apuleius’ description of Hippias in the Florida and cites, as an imitative model in his chapter on place-description (Loci descriptio), the palace in Book V of The Golden Ass (Regia Psyches apud Apuleium).10 And both Lucian and Apuleius furnish examples to illustrate his account of ‘Fictional Narratives’ (De fictis narrationibus): Porro, quae risus causa finguntur, quo longius absunt a vero, hoc magis demulcent animos, modo ne sint anicularum similia deliramentis, et eruditis allusionibus doctas etiam aures capere possint. Quo de genere sunt Luciani Verae narrationes, et ad huius exemplum effictus Asinus Apulei, praeterea Icaromenippus, et reliqua Luciani pleraque (Erasmus, Opera omnia, I-6, p. 257) ————— 10

Opera omnia I-6, 198, 208 (Hippias), 214 (Psyche’s Palace).

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(But those works which are devised for the sake of amusement allure minds the more, the further they are from the truth, provided that they do not resemble the absurdities of little old women, and that they are also able to capture learned ears with their erudite allusions. Of this type are the True History of Lucian and the Ass of Apuleius (fashioned on Lucian’s model) as well as the Icaromenippus and a great many of the other works of Lucian.) Erasmus appears to be undercutting his own distinction when he separates Apuleius from the anicularum deliramenta, given the fact that the narratrix of ‘Cupid and Psyche’ is described as a delira ... anicula, ‘a silly little old woman’ (A.A. 6,25). Yet comparison with the passage from the Institutio principis christiani cited above would suggest that the deliramenta he envisages here are the ‘unlearned’ chivalric romances. Erasmus shows no inclination to read allegorical significance into The Golden Ass, or derive from it moral or spiritual edification: the fictions are there to amuse (risus causa), the intellectual component being the interplay between the ingenious author who garlands his narrative fancies with ‘erudite allusions’ and the educated readers who delight in their ability to recognize and appreciate those allusions. We should note, too, that Erasmus (unlike Cervantes’ Aristotelian canon) has no expectation of verisimilitude – narratives which blur the boundary between Truth and Fiction might offend his Platonist instincts. The work for which he is most famous today – The Praise of Folly (Moriae Encomium) first published in 1511 – acknowledges (in the preface) both Lucian’s and Apuleius’ Ass as satirical precedents; but while Erasmus manages to elaborate such rhetorical tropes as prosopopoeia far beyond the usual confines of pseudo-doxology (so that Folly threatens to become not merely a didactic tool but an autonomous ‘character’), there is very little about the work that could be called ‘novelistic.’ The closest he comes to such a use of fiction is perhaps in ‘The Shipwreck’ (Naufragium), one of the best known of Erasmus’ Colloquia (1518), those delightfully dramatized dialogues whose influence can still be seen in Cervantes’ Novelas ejemplares (1613). More’s Lucianicity in Utopia is of a more sober and controlled kind than that of The Praise of Folly – indeed, the work presents itself, without any element of the fantastic, as an accurate record (a ‘true history’) of Hythlodaeus’

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description of a distant country. The Utopians’ rational decision to limit their own losses in warfare by means of mercenaries, secret agents, and assassinations (2,204-211) has long been seen as an undermining of the martial ideals of chivalric romance (Lewis 1954, 29). The requirement that parties contemplating marriage should see one another naked before entering into the contract may be read, similarly, as a subversion of the erotic-aesthetic idealizations that characterize romance of all kinds.11 But unlike comparable fictions from the eighteenth century (Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Voltaire’s Candide, Johnson’s Rasselas, to name the most obvious examples), there is no attempt to create characters or construct a narrative within the landscape of Utopia.12 Indeed, both More and Erasmus are typical of Northern Humanists in their subordination of fiction to didactic (or merely epideictic) ends. If Humanists have a preferred mode of fiction, it takes the form of satire (whether called Varronian, Menippean, Lucianic, or Erasmian). 3.2. Vives, Veritas fucata The range of such works is enormous, even extending to satirical fictions about Fiction itself. One of the most entertaining of these is a dialogue entitled Veritas fucata, sive de licentia poetica, quantum Poetis liceat a Veritate abscedere (‘Truth Falsified, or Concerning Poetic Licence: To what Extent Poets are Permitted to Depart from the Truth’), composed (curiously enough) by Vives himself in 1522 or 1523. Veritas fucata is learned, playful, and actually rather more amusing than many of the so-called ‘novels’ that emerge in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries. The opposing kingdoms of Truth and Falsity have called a truce and Falsity sends a delegation to persuade Truth to submit to them, since she cannot survive unsupported by fiction. The delegation is led by Homer and Hesiod, with Apuleius and Lucian as the two footsoldiers (ille [sc. Homerus] quidem Hesiodo comitatus & duobus a pedibus Luciano atque Appuleio iter ingressus est, sig. Bivr).13 As they are going along, Lucian remarks that he was once turned ————— 11 12

13

More, 2,189. Logan et al. point to the precedent in Plato’s Laws (VI. 771E-772A). Characterization is the monopoly of the narrative frame. One might, at most, see an affinity between Lucius, the (still-)credulous Isiac initiate, and Hythlodaeus (‘Dispenser of Nonsense’), the describer and endorser of all things Utopian. DeSmet 1996, 118-123, discusses the appearance of Lucian and Apuleius in two Menippean satires by Nicolas Rigault, Asinus sive de Scaturigine Onocrenes (1596) and Funus parasiticum (1599).

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into an ass. Apuleius is delighted to hear this since he himself has been ‘changed into an ass by a great many people, above all by Martianus Capella, Sulpicius Apollinaris, Battista Pio, and Filippo Beroaldo.’ On arrival, Plato and Homer swap insults until the latter becomes anxious at the news that Socrates is on the warpath, with his ‘nets and needles’. While they are waiting on Truth’s answer, Varro and Ausonius become argumentative, and in order to jolly the party along (Ad exhilarandum conuiuium, sig. Ciir), Apuleius ‘said something about his Ass’ while ‘Lucian expounded his True (Hi)stories which neither he nor anyone else either saw or heard or will believe’ (Lucianus suas veras narrationes exposuit. quas nec ipse, nec alius, quisquis vel vidit vel audiuit, vel credet, sig. Ciir). Truth, meanwhile, stays up all night, turning these matters over in her mind. She shudders at the thought of being dressed up in counterfeit colours (fucata), but acknowledges that she will have to make some concessions if she is to have any impact on the obstinate minds of men. So she decides that the orders of Falsity should be accepted, but with certain conditions: Fiction is neither to be accepted nor rejected completely (fucum in totum nec admitti nec reiici). Homer is summoned and ordered to take back to the kingdom of Falsity ten conditions (usefully summarized by Nelson 1973, 46–47). The Ninth Condition provides a carefully delimited place for Milesian Tales: anyone who freely chooses to be a devotee (assectari) of Falsity and turns his back on morality and utility (nec ad mores aut vitae vsum deflexerit, sig. C[iii]v), may be given Milesian Citizenship and go and live in voluptuousness with Apuleius, Lucian, and Clodius Albinus. The Second Condition declares that ‘The historically confused period before the institution of the Olympic games (that is, four hundred years after the destruction of Troy and thirty years before the foundation of Rome) is a field free for embellishment, as long as a nucleus of truth is retained.’ And the Fourth Condition permits ‘A mixture of truth and invention ... in the relation of things that happened before the Olympic games which are known to be fabulous and are presented as such’ (Nelson 1973, 46, 47). One of the obvious objections of Humanists to medieval romances was that the ‘history’ that they presented as ‘true’ conflicted with recoverable historical ‘fact’. Vives here defines the ‘historically confused period’ as a licensed space for invention. The Greek romances are obviously not set during this remote period, but their very lack of insistent historical or political detail may have been to their ultimate advantage as far as the Humanists were concerned.

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The whole of Vives’ dialogue, of course, is so highly ironic that one cannot put too much store by these concessions and it is perhaps significant that the Veritas fucata (1522 / 1523) was generally not included in the major editions of Vives’ works – he may have felt (with the benefit of hindsight) that he had already compromised himself enough. But we need not see any irony in the Seventh Condition which specifies (on pain of being ‘expelled from the schools and academies without honour’, Condition 10) that ‘In the exposition of arts and learning ... no deviation from Truth is permitted save for the use of metaphor’ (Nelson 1973, 47).

4. Humanist Fictions (II): The Cornucopian Impulse One can easily assemble a list of negative reasons which retarded the emergence of a ‘Humanist novel’: Platonic, Patristic, and Macrobian suspicions about poetic feigning in general and aniles fabulae in particular; neoClassical disdain for the language, structure, and (perceived) breaches of decorum of medieval romance; and moral objections to its subject-matter (bellicosity and lasciviousness). But there were positive reasons as well: the vast majority of Humanists preferred to use fiction for other purposes. The view of literature espoused by Renaissance literary theorists is (in the best sense of the word) utilitarian: delectare, docere, movere. It is not enough for works to teach by delighting; they should also aim to move the reader to imitate the models they provide in style, thought, and action. At the lowest level, apologists will defend fictions as being legitimate forms of recreation, designed to refresh the mind worn out by weightier concerns (e.g. Poggio’s preface to his Latin translation of Lucian’s Onos); at the highest level, they will resort to the subtle arsenal (built up since Late Antiquity) of allegoresis (e.g. the interpretation of Isis / Ceres that Guillaume Michel appends to his 1522 translation of The Golden Ass). But the most common Humanist approach to works of fiction is to regard them as quarries for words, phrases, places, tropes, and types – as encyclopaedias of moral and literary exempla. When Humanists do engage in extended works of imaginative fiction, it is remarkable (given the richness of materials available to them) how little concern they often show for narrative. Sannazaro’s Arcadia (begun 1480s, published 1504) is almost devoid of anything that modern readers would consider to constitute a plot – the prose passages serve as trellises to support

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(and display) the verse eclogues – yet it ‘went through more than one hundred editions’ and has been described as ‘one of the most successful novels ever written’ (Kidwell 1993, 2). The plot of John Lyly’s Euphues: The Anatomy of Wyt (1578) – which launched the Euphuistic revolution in Elizabethan prose and earned the accolade of the ‘earliest English novel’ (Bond 1902, viii) by spawning a host of imitative romances – could be summarized in two sentences, but as a rhetorical showcase – a manual of delectable instruction – it proved enormously popular. If these are ‘novels’, they are novels without narrative. This phenomenon is perhaps less surprising given an intellectual mindset in which even someone like Richard Stanyhurst (1547– 1618), who goes to the effort of translating the first four books of Vergil’s epic (1582), is able to refer to the literal story of the Aeneid as a mere ‘Canterbury tale’ (Lewis 1954, 28) 4.1. François Rabelais It may seem slightly perverse to cite Rabelais as a prime example of ‘Humanist Fiction’ given his express disavowal (‘To the Reader’, xxix) of any edifying purpose (‘... it brings forth to you no birth / Of any value, but in point of mirth’). But the Lives, Heroic Deeds & Sayings of Gargantua and his Son, Pantagruel (1532–1552, 1564) is not some freak eruption of individual creative genius. The plenitude that it exhibits (aptly described as ‘cornucopian’, Cave 1979) is achieved through its voracity, its impulse to swallow all other types of discourse (particularly Humanist ones) and then regurgitate them in altered form. It is a satura in the original sense of the word – a medley or hodge-podge, a farrago of (often barely) mixed ingredients: ‘true history’ topos (the genealogy of Gargantua has been found in a ‘great brazen tomb’ underneath a flagon: ‘a fat, great, gray, pretty, small, mouldy little pamphlet, smelling stronger, but no better than roses ... yet so worne with the long tract of time that scarcely could three letters together be there perfectly discerned’, Gargantua, ch. 1, 3); chivalric romance (burlesqued in Rabelais’ accounts of the incredible deeds of the giants); Classical epic (mock-epic catalogues, such as the ‘Names of the Noble and Valiant Cooks who went into the Sow’, Quart Livre, ch. 40, 771–772); Aesopic apologue (e.g. the Fable of the Horse and the Ass, Cinquiesme Livre, ch. 8); Erasmian pseudodoxology (Panurge’s praise of debts, Tiers Livre, chs 3–4); Morian Utopia (Tiers Livre, ch. 1); and so on.

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There are vast stretches of the work, however, which contain no narrative at all, but are, instead, enactments of the rhetorical trope of amplificatio: the principle of lexical multiplicity which Erasmus promulgated in De copia as a means of enhancing discourse, has hypertrophied into an end in itself.14 The constitution of Rabelais’ discourse does, it is true, change over time. In the first two books, much of the narrative impetus is provided by Rabelais’ parody of the classical paideia in the accounts of the education of the two giants. The introduction of the lovable rogue, Panurge (Pantagruel, ch. 9), seems to offer a new narrative dynamic to the work, particularly when he relates ‘the manner how he escaped out of the hands of the Turks’ (Pantagruel, ch. 14, 251). But the bulk of the Tiers Livre is taken up with dialectic (the debate over marriage) and it is only with the sea-voyage of the Quart Livre that we even glimpse the outlines of a plot. It would be tempting to read the suggestion that Rabelais, in this section, ‘is trying his hand at comic romance’ (Coleman 1971, 119) in the light of the fact that the Quart Livre finds Pantagruel ‘taking a Nap, slumbering and nodding on the QuarterDeck, by the Cuddy, with an Heliodorus in his hand, for still ’twas his custom to sleep better by Book than by Heart’ (ch. 63, 839).15 The contribution of Heliodorus to Rabelais’ discourse seems as limited, however, as that of Apuleius who figures in the Land of Satin in the posthumously-published and possibly spurious Cinquiesme Livre: J’y vy la peau de l’asne d’or d’Apulée (‘I saw the Skin of Apuleius’s golden Ass’, ch. 30, 974). Rabelais’ obvious master in the exposition of the ludicrous and the fantastic is Lucian; if one wished to add an ‘Ancient Novelist’ as a significant influence, it would have to be Petronius (minus his Cena). For while Rabelais, by extending the limits of Menippean satire, opens up new possibilities for the literary artist wanting to explore ‘the human condition’ in all its aspects, he provides none of the narrative structure that will be necessary for the emergence of a recognizable novel. Not only is the reader’s ‘belief’ ‘necessarily suspended’ in ‘this most consciously fictional of all works’, but the principle of ‘fragmentation’ intrinsic to Rabelais’ ‘wil————— 14

15

It is interesting, given the grotesque images of parturition in the early chapters of Gargantua (1534), that Rabelais should have written to Erasmus from Lyons in November 1532, expressing a sense of filial gratitude: ‘Father have I called you, nay mother I would name you …’. Quoted in Coleman 1971, 18–19. Pantagruel tenant un Heliodore Grec en main sus un transpontin au bout des escoutilles sommeilloit. Telle estoit sa coustume, que trop mieulx par livre dormoit que par coeur. Cf. Doody 1997, 235, 248.

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fully deviant discourse’ ‘repeatedly blocks the reader’s attempts to constitute a story or meaning according to habitual rules of reading’ (Cave 1979, 181, 186, 205). And this, of course, is as Rabelais intended it. He had at his disposal a panoply of models for prose fiction, but while it may be true that ‘Allusions to and plays on novels cluster’ in the last three books (Doody 1997, 248), Rabelais consistently chooses to pursue a direction other than the novelistic. One can easily draw a line from Rabelais, through Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), to Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–1767) and see these as different manifestations of the Menippean impulse. Indeed, these works remind us that the great achievements of nineteenth-century ‘realism’ in the Novel came at a price: in some respects, the scope of fictional discourse actually shrank during this period, and works such as James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) might be regarded as recovering some of the cornucopian qualities of Renaissance fiction.

5. Romance Redeemed None of the examples of Humanist fiction that we have discussed to date, however, will explain the appearance of works such as Montemayor’s Diana, Sidney’s Arcadia, and Cervantes’ Don Quixote and the Persiles which stand as the Renaissance’s great bridges to the modern novel. Nor (despite its evident popularity) will the Italian novella – the fourteenthcentury product of the convergence of Apuleian Milesian tale and thirteenthcentury French fabliau. Short by nature, tightly constructed, and driving, with remarkable discursive economy towards a narrative climax, the Boccaccian novella is more easily adapted to the stage (e.g. Shakespeare’s All Well’s That Ends Well), than expanded to fill the ample structure of a modern novel.16 We cannot simply appeal, either, to ‘the picaresque’ as the begetter of the realist novel. Rabelais’ wily Panurge can be read, it is true, as a protopicaro; and La Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) provided Spain with ‘an anti-heroic reaction to all the gesta, chivalric novels and pastoral romances’ (Coleman 1971, 152). The links between The Golden Ass and Lazarillo have ————— 16

The novella does, however, come to play an important part in later works as intercalated narrative. The Felismena story in Montemayor’s Diana is taken from Bandello.

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long been noted. Bakhtin (writing in the late 1930s) discerned structural affinities between servant and ass which would prove to be essential ingredients in his history of ‘the Novel’: Lazarillo and Lucius ‘share the same chronotope’ (time-space relation) as ‘privileged witnesses’ to their masters’ goings-on (Bakhtin 1981, 125). It has also been argued that the anonymous author of Lazarillo found, in Diego López de Cortegana’s translation of Apuleius’ fiction, son premier modèle et sa source directe d’inspiration (Villanova 1979, 268). But if Lazarillo ‘creates a new way of writing fiction’ (Coleman 1971, 152), the ‘new way’ does not appear to have gained any followers until the appearance of Mateo Alemán’s Guzmán de Alfarache (1599). This is the area in which Doody’s failure to explore discontinuities or to discriminate between genres proves most costly. The taxonomic fiat whereby Doody abolishes the (admittedly often complacent) distinction between ‘Novel’ and ‘Romance’ (15) allows us to build useful connections, but where, for example, does it leave Epic, which is linked so intimately to both Romance and Novel?17 Doody asserts, ‘However much epic quotation may be taken aboard, the Novel [147] never succumbs to the epic’ (146–147). The great contribution, however, that the sixteenth century made to ‘the Novel’ was to redeem the discredited form of medieval romance by elevating its new incarnations to the status of epic. The chivalric romances available to a Renaissance reader were not a homogeneous mass. Twelfth-century France had witnessed an unprecedented efflorescence of imaginative literature, which included both chansons de geste (most famously, The Song of Roland) and – a more sophisticated (and more novelistic) form – Arthurian Romances (as provided by the likes of Chrétien de Troyes). Throughout the thirteenth century, the Arthurian matter was reworked in prose cycles; and in the Iberian peninsular during the fourteenth-century it spawned a philoprogenitive form of sub- or neo-Arthurian literature, the Amadís de Gaula. This was revised, reshaped, and restyled in the fifteenth century by Rodríguez de Montalvo (Eisenberg 1982, 30), and printed at the beginning of the sixteenth century (1508), soon finding its way

————— 17

Given the trend in recent criticism to collapse the distinction between Romance and Epic (Burrow 1993), one could make a case for subsuming all of these terms – Epic, Romance, and Novel – into some earlier notion of epos in its widest sense of ‘narrative discourse’.

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to Italy (where Torquato Tasso’s father, Bernardo, began an adaptation of it), and into France (where it was endlessly elaborated from 1540 onwards). Amadisian prose-romance was enormously popular and (in Montalvo’s version, at least) was sometimes exempted from the critics’ general censure of libros del caballerías (Forcione 1970, 67, 83). Cervantes’ curate, for example, decides to save the original Amadís de Gaula, as being the first of its kind, but condemns to the flames its endless progeny of imitations and continuations.18 In Italy, however, the status of romance was far more enhanced by the production of two major works of verse fiction which (like The Golden Ass and Don Quixote) revolve around the fortunes of a hero who has been in some way transformed (in Orlando’s case, by the madness induced by love). Conte Matteo Maria Boiardo (1441–1494) was not only the first person to translate The Golden Ass; he also helped to revolutionize Renaissance romance by combining the Rolandian material (the paladins of Charlemagne) with the Arthurian in his Orlando innamorato (1476, 1483, 1495).19 The Orlando innamorato was left unfinished at Boiardo’s death, but Ludovico Ariosto’s ‘continuation’, the Orlando furioso (1516), proved an enormous success and was robustly defended by critics such as Giraldi Cinthio. Cinthio has to work hard to justify Ariosto’s multiple plotting in the face of (neo)Aristotelian notions of Unity of Action (the narrator’s ‘Now as I should do wrong to keep you ever attending to the same story’, Orlando furioso, 8,21, is indicative of his general approach); but the whole thrust of the Discorso intorno al comporre dei romanzi (1549 / 1554) is to show how the contemporary ‘mode of composing Romances’ (as practised by Ariosto and, less perfectly, by Boiardo) ‘has for us taken the place of the heroic poems of the Greeks and the Latins’ (Snuggs 1968, 6).20 The special status of these two ‘epic romances’ (to use Burrow’s term) is acknowledged in Don Quixote when the curate declares (Part 1, ch. 6) that ————— 18

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Sidney is responding to the massively expanded French version when he observes: ‘I have known men that even with reading Amadis de Gaule (which God knoweth wanteth much of a perfect poesy) have found their hearts moved to the exercise of courtesy, liberality, and especially courage’ (Defence, 92). Doody (1997, 238) rightly points to the success of collections of exempla culled from the French Amadis. On the traces of Apuleian influence in Orlando innamorato, see Cavallo 1993. There is nothing egalitarian, however, about this view of romance. Cinthio observes (contemptuously) that the subject of Orlando is so common that even ‘slippermakers’ are composing works about him. The treatment of the subject is all.

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some romances are to be spared burning (condemned merely to perpetual banishment) because they were sources for Matteo Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato, while Ariosto’s Orlando furioso is to be saved in Italian, but burned in translation. Boiardo appears to be an exception to the curate’s general principle that romantic procreation is degenerative.

6. Heliodorus It is in the context of this epicizing elevation of particular romances that the reception of Heliodorus needs to be viewed. The editio princeps of the Aethiopica had appeared in 1534, Amyot’s French version in 1547. Doody (1997, 232–246) provides a rich reading of the various Renaissance editions and translations, observing, for example, the eirenic emphasis of Warschewiczki’s dedication (to the King of Poland) of his Latin translation (1552) and the favourable contrast that Thomas Underdowne makes in 1577 between Heliodorus and ‘the stories of Arthur and Amadís which “accompt violente murder ... manhode”’ (Doody 1997, 237, 242). But while Doody alerts us, very interestingly, to Martinus Crusius’ praise of Heliodorus in 1584 for ‘creating a kind of “Tragicomedy”’ (Doody 1997, 246), she overlooks, or chooses to ignore, the far more influential criticism of Julius Caesar Scaliger and Alonso López Pinciano, both of whom identify the Aethiopica with epic. In his Poetices libri septem (Lyon, 1561, 144), Scaliger advises the aspiring epic poet to read the Aethiopica ‘with the utmost care’ (accuratissimè) and ‘set it before his eyes as his best model’; while in his Philosophia antigua poetica (Madrid, 1596, 262), Pinciano equates Heliodorus with Vergil and Homer (Forcione 1970; Hägg 1983, 1, 200; Carver 1997, 212– 213). Amplitude without prolixity; narrative multiplicity without formlessness; love-interest without undue lasciviousness: these were some of the ways in which the Aethiopica was able to satisfy the appetites of romance readers (and writers) while also meeting the approval of eminent Humanists. And its capacity to appeal to Catholics and Protestants alike is evident from its influence upon such writers as Torquato Tasso (Stephens 1994) and Sir Philip Sidney. Sidney’s debt to Heliodorus, Achilles Tatius, and Apuleius has been dealt with at length elsewhere (e.g. Carver 1997). But the climax of the discussion of libros del caballerías in Don Quixote, where the canon suddenly

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changes tack and opens up the possibility of romance being elevated to epic, would serve as an excellent description of Sidney’s own project in the New Arcadia, left unfinished at his death in 1586. In spite of all that he has said ‘in condemnation of these books’, the canon found one good thing (una cosa buena) in them, and that was the opportunity they afforded to a gifted intellect for displaying itself; for they presented a wide and spacious field over which the pen might range freely, describing shipwrecks, tempests, combats, battles, portraying a valiant captain with all the qualifications …; now picturing some sad tragic incident (un lamentable y trágico suceso), now some joyful and unexpected event; here a beauteous lady, virtuous, wise, and modest; there a Christian knight, brave and gentle; here a lawless, barbarous braggart; there a courteous prince, gallant and gracious; setting forth the devotion and loyalty of vassals, the greatness and generosity of nobles. ‘Or again,’ said he, ‘the author may show himself to be an astronomer, or a skilled cosmographer, or musician, or one versed in affairs of state, and sometimes he will have a chance of coming forward as a magician if he likes. He can set forth the craftiness of Ulysses, the piety of Æneas, the valour of Achilles, the misfortunes of Hector, the treachery of Sinon, the friendship of Euryalus, the generosity of Alexander, the boldness of Cæsar, the clemency and truth of Trajan, the fidelity of Zopyrus, the wisdom of Cato,21 and in short all the faculties that serve to make an illustrious man perfect, now uniting them in one individual, again distributing them among many; and if this be done with charm of style and ingenious invention, aiming at the truth as much as possible, he will assuredly weave a web of bright and varied threads (una tela de varios y hermosos lazos tejida) that, when finished, will display such perfection and beauty that it will attain the worthiest object any writing can seek, which, as I said before, is to give instruction and pleasure combined; for the unrestricted range (la escritura desatada) of these books enables the author to show his powers, epic, lyric, tragic, or comic, and all the moods the sweet and winning arts of poesy and oratory are capable of; for the epic may be ————— 21

Cf. Sidney’s list of exemplary figures (Defence): ‘See whether wisdom and temperance in Ulysses and Diomedes, valour in Achilles, friendship in Nisus and Euryalus, even to an ignorant man carry not an apparent shining’. Sidney alludes to Zopyrus two pages further on.

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written in prose just as well as in verse’ (la épica también puede escrebirse en prosa como en verso)’ (Ormsby 1885, 1, 333-334; Cervantes, Part 1, ch. 47, 568-569) Almost all of the Renaissance Humanists’ concerns about fiction come together in this passage. We note the stress on the epideictic, encyclopaedic, and exemplary potential of the form; the neo-Aristotelian bias towards verisimilitude; the Horatian concern with combining the dulce with the utile (Sidney’s ‘delightful teaching’); and the (not original) assertion that ‘the epic may be written in prose’ (Sidney himself regarded the Aethiopica – and, we can infer, his revised Arcadia – as ‘an absolute heroical poem’, Defence 81).22 Cervantes’ own engagement with ancient fiction is too large a subject for the present study, though we might note, in passing, that however pure his proclaimed intentions, the genius of Cervantes’ writing lies in its heterogeneity. The author’s declared aim in Don Quixote is to destroy the influence of the libros del caballerías, but the work actually appropriates the form of romance to its own ends. Indeed, this account of an incurably curious man who has been metamorphosed, not by magic, but by the influence of fictions, gathers other modes into it as it progresses (‘true history’, picaresque, intercalated novella, and so on) to form a cornucopian discourse which, in its fusion of high and low registers, is novelistic (one might even say, Milesian), rather than Menippean. When Cervantes turned to write the Persiles y Sigismunda, he wanted, famously, to competir con Heliodoro (prologue to the Novelas ejemplares, 1613), though even as he fulfils the programme outlined by the canon in the earlier work, the influence of Apuleius is felt (Riley 1962, 207; Wilson 1994, 88–100). From Sidney, Cervantes, and the Renaissance world of Heliodorean epic-romance, it is a relatively easy leap to the eighteenth-century ‘Novel’ privileged by Watt and his followers.23 Samuel Richardson salutes The Arcadia by giving the name of Sidney’s heroine to his own in Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) and reveals his extensive debt to Heliodorus in ————— 22

23

Another weakness in Doody’s model of the Novel is her privileging of prose (e.g. 1997, 10, 16). The Renaissance critics are generally much less concerned with this distinction. The third person of Watt’s Trinity, Daniel Defoe, has a rather different genealogy: Moll Flanders (1722) belongs (loosely) with the picaresque. If Robinson Crusoe (1719) has any Classical forbear, then it is surely the Odyssey with its prototype of the Homo economicus.

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Clarissa (Doody 1994). Henry Fielding burlesques Richardson in Shamela (1741), but attempts a more subtle form of parody in Joseph Andrews (1742) which not only declares that it is ‘written in Imitation of the Manner of Cervantes, Author of Don Quixote’ (title page), but also asserts itself (in the Preface) as ‘A comic Epic-Poem in Prose’. It would be temerarious to suggest that Renaissance responses to ancient prose fiction and medieval romance defined the achievement of the eighteenth-century Novel; but they certainly opened a path to it. Without the transformations and accommodations that occurred during the sixteenth century in the intellectual culture’s attitude towards prose narrative, the Story of the Novel would have been very different indeed. 24

Bibliography of Works Cited Primary Agrippa von Nettesheim, Heinrich Cornelius 1530. Declamatio de incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum atque artium, Antwerp: I. Grapheus. Ascham, Roger. The Scholemaster (1570) in Roger Ascham: English Works, ed. W.A. Wright, Cambridge: CUP, 1904. Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. Don Quijote de la Mancha I, ed. J.B. Avalle-Arce, Madrid: Alhambra, 1979. Erasmus. Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1969–. Lucian, 1506. Luciani viri quam disertissimi complura opuscula longe festiuissima ab Erasmo Roterodamo & Thoma moro interpretibus optimis in latinorum linguam traducta, [Paris:] Ascensianus. Matheeussen, C., C. Fantazzi, and E. George (ed. and trans.) 1987. Juan Luis Vives: Early Writings, Leiden: E.J. Brill. More, Thomas. Utopia: Latin Text and English Translation, ed. G.M. Logan, R.M. Adams, and C.H. Miller, Cambridge: CUP, 1995. Ormsby, J. (trans.) 1885. The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, 4 vols, London: Smith, Elder & Co. Pinciano, Alonso López 1596. Philosophía antigua poética, Madrid: Thomas Iunti. Rabelais. Lives, Heroic Deeds & Sayings of Gargantua and his Son, Pantagruel, trans. Sir Thomas Urquhart and Peter le Motteux, London: Chatto and Windus (n.d.). Scaliger, Julius Caesar 1561. Poetices libri septem, Lyon: Antoine Vincent.

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The assistance of the University of Durham Staff Travel Fund and the Arts and Humanities Research Board is gratefully acknowledged.

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Sidney, Sir Philip. A Defence of Poetry, in Miscellaneous Prose of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. K. Duncan-Jones and J. van Dorsten, Oxford: Clarendon, 1973. Snuggs, H.L. (trans.) 1968. Giraldi Cinthio On Romances: Being a Translation of the Discorso intorno al comporre dei romanzi, Lexington: University of Kentucky P. Vives, Juan Luis 1523. Ioannis Lodovici Vivis Valentini Veritas fucata, sive de licentia poetica, quantum poetis liceat a veritate abscedere, Louvain: Theodornecus Martinus Alostensis.

Secondary Adams, R.P. 1959–60. ‘Bold Bawdry and Open Manslaughter: The English New Humanist Attack on Medieval Romance’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 23.1, 33– 48. Bakhtin, M.M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin, ed. M. Holquist, trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist, Austin: University of Texas P. Bond, R.W. (ed.) 1902. The Complete Works of John Lyly, vol. I, Oxford: Clarendon. Burrow, C. 1993. Epic Romance: Homer to Milton, Oxford: Clarendon. Carver, R.H.F. 1997. ‘“Sugared Invention” or “Mongrel Tragi-comedy”: Sir Philip Sidney and the Ancient Novel’, Groningen Colloquia on the Novel, 8, 197–226. Carver, R.H.F. 1999. ‘The Rediscovery of the Latin Novels’, in H. Hofmann (ed.), Latin Fiction: The Latin Novel in Context, London – New York: Routledge, 253– 268. Cavallo, J.A. 1993. Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato: An Ethics of Desire. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickenson UP. Cave, T. 1979. The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance, Oxford: Clarendon. Coleman, D.G. 1971. Rabelais: A Critical Study in Prose Fiction, Cambridge: CUP. Deluna, D.N. 1997. Review of Doody 1997, MLN 112, 990–993. De Smet, I. 1996. Menippean Satire and the Republic of Letters, 1581–1655, Geneva: Librairie Droz. Doody, M.A. 1994. ‘Heliodorus Rewritten: Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa and Frances Burney’s Wanderer’ in Tatum 1994, 117–131. Doody, M.A. 1997. The True Story of the Novel, London: HarperCollins. First published New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1996. Eisenberg, D. 1982. Romances of Chivalry in the Spanish Golden Age, Newark: Cuesta. Forcione, A.K. 1970. Cervantes, Aristotle, and the Persiles, Princeton: Princeton UP. Hägg T. 1983. The Novel in Antiquity, Oxford: Blackwell. Hawes, J. 1997. ‘Stinging Wasps proves painful’: Review of Doody 1997, The Times Higher Educational Supplement, 21 March, 20. Hunter, J.P. 1990. Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century Fiction, New York: Norton. Ife, B.W. 1985. Reading and Fiction in Golden-Age Spain: A Platonist Critique and Some Picaresque Replies, Cambridge: CUP. Kermode, F. 1996. Review of Doody 1996, London Review of Books, 1 August, 14.

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Kidwell, C. 1993. Sannazaro and Arcadia, London: Duckworth. Lewis, C.S. 1954. English Literature of the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama, Oxford: Clarendon. McKeon, M. 1987. The Origins of the English Novel, 1600–1742, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Nelson, W. 1973. Fact or Fiction: The Dilemma of the Renaissance Storyteller, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Noreña, C.G. 1970. Juan Luis Vives, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Riley, E.C. 1962. Cervantes’ Theory of the Novel, Oxford: Clarendon. Stephens, W. 1994. ‘Tasso’s Heliodorus and the World of Romance’, in Tatum 1994, 67–87. Tatum, J. (ed.) 1994. The Search for the Ancient Novel, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Villanova, A. 1979. ‘L’Ane d’Ôr d’Apulée, source et modele du Lazarillo de Tormes’ in Augustín Redondo, ed., L’Humanisme dans les lettres espagnoles: XIXe Colloque international d’Études humanistes, Tours, 5–17 juillet 1976, Paris: Urin, 267– 285. Watt, I. 1957. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, London: Chatto & Windus. Wilson, D. de A. 1994. ‘Homage to Apuleius: Cervantes’ Avenging Psyche’, in Tatum 1994, 88–100.

The Reception and Use of Petronius: Petronian Pseudepigraphy and Imitation HUGH MCELROY

Washington, DC

Petronius has, in many ways, survived his suicide nearly two thousand years ago. And, although the remains of his work are in tatters,1 both the text and its author have had a generative effect on writers, poets, scandalmongers, would-be pornographers, composers, and others who have created something new in and between the extant fragments of text and biography. The broadest modern acquaintance with Petronius and the Satyrica perhaps comes through Fellini’s 1969 film Fellini Satyricon, which interprets many episodes of the Satyrica (with some inserted portrayals of scenes from Apuleius’ Metamorphoses adapted to the characters of the Satyrica) with no attempt to defragment, as it were, the text as we have it. Perhaps, in the last thirty years, interpretations or appropriations of the text and its title (or at least part of the film’s title, Satyricon) actually have more to do with a familiarity with the film than with its sources. But even before Fellini had popularized the novel in the mass media of the twentieth century, acquaintance with Petronius was, if not so widespread, far from unheard of and probably no less detailed at various points in history. John of Salisbury and at least one other person in medieval England (the author of the medieval Petronian collection discussed below) were known to have access to manuscripts of some of the novel, and indeed to the Cena Trimalchionis. Others elsewhere in Europe had access to different

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1

For what of the Satyrica is known to have been available in the Middle Ages see Reeve 1983, 288–289. Sullivan suggests a total length for the novel of 400,000 words of which we have about 31,000 words (Sullivan 1968, 36). For an overview of Sullivan’s and others’ reconstructions of the extent of the text, see Harrison 1999, xvii–xviii.

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manuscripts as well.2 His influence on men of letters in seventeenth century England has been well demonstrated by Stuckey in her 1972 article ‘Petronius the ‘Ancient’: his reputation and influence in seventeenth century England.’3 Among those she discusses, some illustrious some obscure, are Ben Jonson, Robert Burton, and Sir Thomas Browne. Petronius was, at the time, considered suitable educational material, being ‘listed as one of the regular schoolbooks of James I.’4 Since the composition of the Satyrica people have known or at least have believed they have known who Petronius was and what he wrote. This presumed knowledge has led to appropriations of both name and text and to adaptations and outright forgeries of the text since the twelfth century at least, and right up to the end of the twentieth. As I have mentioned, later adaptations, such as Hernandez Satyricon, a comic book story featuring a comically surreal take on typical science fiction themes with a final twist in which all the characters in the long-running Love and Rockets series switch sexes, apparently spontaneously,5 seem to mirror the impression the viewer gets from Fellini’s film, which presents the text as even more disjointed and bizarre than it actually is.6 The emphasis is on the surface aspects of the film, rather than on the content of film or text.7 Others who have forged parts of the text clearly must in some way make a very strong connection with the original text, if not necessarily with the author. Authors who have written under the name of Petronius, however, may draw heavily both on the text and on Petronius’ biographical tradition. Some uses of both text and author have simply to do with the idea of Petronius as an erotic writer. And some, such as the oil-drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico which bears his name, are completely incomprehensible.8 Petronian imita—————


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4 5 6 7

Reeve 1983, 288–289; Colker 1975, 182. For John of Salisbury's use of Petronius see Martin 1968. Stuckey 1972, 145–153. ibid. 149 n.28. Hernandez 1997. For a view of the Satyrica as anarchic see Zeitlin 1999, 1–49. Although there are obvious cases of gender reversal in the casting of Fellini’s film and one could argue that the homoerotic parody of the ideal Greek novel found in the Satyrica constitutes a certain degree of gender reversal, there seems little justification for considering these examples responsible for more than a very small degree of influence on the comic book. http://www.texaco.com/shared/pr/2000pr/pr7_21b.html. The reference could, of course, be to St. Petronius or another person of the same name. I have not been able to discover the connection and the public relations division of Texaco has not been able to illuminate the matter.

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tions whose literary debt can be clearly established are not few, however. In addition to those discussed more fully below, in this century the best known is possibly Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Originally titled Trimalchio, the character of Gatsby is modeled on the namesake of the earlier title. Fitzgerald took the view that the Satyrica, or at least the Cena Trimalchionis, was a moralizing work and imitated that and other aspects of it. He may not have read it in the original, but shakiness in Latin…did not keep the mature Fitzgerald from seeing in Trimalchio the symbol of a sick society. So the method (detailed reporting of décor and incident), the aim (social satire), and the experience (progressive disillusion) of Petronius and Fitzgerald are so similar that the parallel between the nouveau riche excess of Long Island under Harding and of Capua – or was it Puteoli – under Nero turns out to be striking, and that between authors more striking still.9 Others have used specific episodes in their work. The Widow of Ephesus story, in particular, has had something of a life of its own. At least three complete adaptations have been made, and more are imbedded in other works. George Chapman’s The Widdowes Teares, Walter Charleton’s The Ephesian Matron, and Christopher Fry’s A Phoenix Too Frequent are all based on the story.10 The last, Fry’s play, beyond bearing the singularly amusing dedication ‘To My Wife,’ gives a note saying that ‘the story was got from Jeremy Taylor who had it from Petronius.’11 The extant text of the Satyrica and the name and identity of its author often have been both used and abused in the years since its composition. Forgers have tried to fill the voids between the extant fragments, often producing work incompatible with the original and completely unconvincing as the work of Petronius. Others with various degrees of understanding of various aspects of both the work and the biographical tradition have taken on the name to write works ranging from the scurrilous to the highly moralizing (though this latter usually by way of contrast with racy content). Schmeling —————


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MacKendrick 1950, 308. Shakiness in Latin, however, did not afflict one of Petronius' other great admirers among modern authors, T.S. Eliot; see Schmeling and Rebman 1975. Chapman 1612; Charleton 1659; Fry 1985. Fry 1985, 49 and 51. For further information on the Nachleben of Petronius, including musical and theatrical examples, see Schmeling 1996, particularly pp. 487-490.

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makes the acute observation that ‘in the 2,000 years since his death Petronius has developed, as it were, a second persona, one unattached to the Satyrica: he is the ancient author of pornography.’12 He is also the ultimate decadent and aesthete, being known for his laziness and having been employed by Nero as Arbiter Elegantiae (“Arbiter of Elegance,” Tac. Annales 16,18,2).13 And at times his name and his work have been dangerous, or at least socially unacceptable, things to have associated with one’s own. C.K. Scott Moncrieff, in his ‘An Open Letter to A Young Gentleman,’ found in the 1914 Abbey Classics edition of Burnaby’s 1694 translation of the Satyrica (which includes the Nodotian forgeries, which are discussed below) tells the imaginary young gentleman that he is, being post-Victorian, free to declare his appreciation of the work, implying that in earlier times one might not admit to having read it at all.14 And Petronius’ reputation has attached itself to various people for reasons unconnected with literature or scholarship.15 Works which claim to be by Petronius need not be written with the intention of deceiving readers into believing them to have been composed by Nero’s Arbiter Elegantiae. It is unclear even whether some of the so-called forgeries were composed with that intention. Some of them, by fact of the period that they describe or in which they claim to take place, could not be accused of deceiving anyone. However all of them must necessarily attempt to be ‘Petronian’ in some way or another. How each goes about this is largely conditioned by the author’s perception of Petronius and usually the Satyrica as well. I say ‘usually’ because the biographical tradition often seems a key factor in the motivation to compose. There are widely varying combinations of ideas about Petronius that reveal themselves from imitation to imitation. As variable, but significantly dependent on these ideas, is the degree to which a forger or imitator succeeds in making his work Petronian. —————




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Schmeling 1999, 23. For Tacitus’ account of Petronius see Rankin 1965, 233–245. The Satyricon of T. Petronius Arbiter Burnaby’s Translation. 1694. With an Introduction by C.K. Scott Moncrieff Ornamented by Martin Travers, 1914, ix–xvi. Moncrieff makes the very interesting suggestion that the Satyrica finds a parallel in the Victorian ‘School Story,’ xii. In Boroughs’ article on the ‘Wilde’ translation of Petronius, he can not resist connecting Stephen Gaselee’s personal library of erotica with the subject. Boroughs 1995, 43 n. 19. Sullivan sums up the situation nicely: ‘the scabrous nature of some of the episodes made a scholarly interest in the work eccentric or suspect.’ Sullivan 1967, 71. For reasons presumably quite different, Dorothy L. Sayers describes her fictional sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey in his Eton days as ‘athlete, scholar, arbiter elegantiarum.’ Sayers 1970, 442.

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Some may have been drawing on an idea of Petronius and his work which is no longer widely held, or may have possessed a different text (or a translation of a different text) from those used today. A Petronian imitation which might have been wholly plausible in the twelfth, seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, or earlier twentieth century, may seem improbable now to scholars and casual readers alike. By the same token, some of the imitators seem occasionally to have taken note of aspects of Petronius’ work which are discussed in more recent scholarship.16 It is essentially easier to evaluate the motivations and Petronian aspects of text which claims to be written by the Petronius of the Satyrica than it is to make the same judgements about a clearly derivative/imitative text. A forgery will stand or fall based on them. Grafton’s criteria for successful forgery are useful here. The forger ‘must give his text the appearance – the linguistic appearance as a text and the physical appearance as a document – of something from a period dramatically earlier than and different from his own.’ He must also ‘explain where his document came from and reveal how it fits into the jigsaw puzzle of other surviving documents that makes up his own period’s record of an authoritative or attractive period in the past.’ Finally he needs to give his work an air of conviction and reality, a sense of authenticity. Just as a man applying for a substantial loan will enter his bank with shined shoes, pressed pants, and a vest with white piping on its edges, so the serious forgery must go out to meet the world with the extra confidence provided by a general air of solidity and prosperity, and must distract the world from the worn spots and defects that might arouse alarm and suspicion.17 Pseudepigraphy is by no means confined to Petronius or authors like him. Many classical authors, due to accidents of transmission, were easy names to which to attach spurious work. Reputation and influence have often been determining reasons for the misattributions, for example ‘after Terence’s death, when few new plays appeared, some of the plays of Plautus were revived on the stage, often in modernized versions, and many suppositious —————


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17

For a general overview of scholarly opinions on Petronius and the Satyrica see Harrison 1999, xvi–xxvi. Grafton 1990, 49–50.

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plays were foisted upon his name because of its renewed prestige.’18 In the case of Ovid the ban on his poetry after his exile meant that ‘without the authority naturally attendant upon a corpus of genuine works accepted and catalogued in the state libraries, Ovid’s poems may easily have drawn spurious additions to themselves.’19 The combination of reputation and state of survival, each a determining factor in the two cases just mentioned, both contribute to a number of Petronian imitations. His reputation, as moralist, scandalmonger, aesthete, critic, satirist, or pornographer, and the skeletal state of his work, fleshed out occasionally by such things as the rediscovery of the Cena Trimalchionis,20 provide both motivation and means for anyone wishing to try their hand at writing as ‘Petronius.’ A medieval author, writing in the twelfth or thirteenth century,21 apparently combining Petronius’ title of Arbiter with judicial motifs in the Satyrica, created in his time a Petronian text mixing verse and prose and consisting of a number of short tales which depict poor behavior and its punishment. Adultery is a common theme, being central to four of these fourteen sketches, and a general description of the wantonness of women may be taken as a closely allied fifth. The haughtiness and ignorance of the wealthy, and their eventual comeuppance, form the basis of another four, while theft is important to two, for one of which it provides the premise of the story. The author is clearly familiar with Petronius and had access to the Cena Trimalchionis at a time when that particular part of the text was virtually unknown.22 Indeed it is this familiarity with Petronius which seems to dictate for him both form and subject matter. The text is, like the Satyrica, prosimetric. Hexameter verses and elegiac couplets are intermingled with the prose of the body of the stories. The content, as can be judged by the overview above, shows an alliance with the social and legal transgressions found in almost every part of the Satyrica. There is a good deal of linguistic reliance on Petronius in his medieval literary descendant as well.23 Further, certain episodes are lifted directly from the Satyrica or their affinities with related epi—————



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Clift 1945, 10. ibid. 129. For a mention of Greek pseudepigraphy in similar circumstances see Dover 1968, 4n.3. For other classical and later examples see Grafton 1990. The MS Tragurensis, discovered in 1650. See Reeve 1983, 296. My examination of this Petronius Redivivus relies heavily on Connors’ overview of the text’s connection with the Satyrica. Connors 1999. Colker 1975, 182. For which see Colker 1975, 183–184, and Connors 1999, passim.

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sodes pointed out unambiguously. The sewing of stolen money into clothing, referred to in the Satyrica (13,2–3), though not actually accomplished in the extant text, is picked up in Petronius Redivivus 5,33, where a dishonest servant digs up the hidden money of his merchant employers and sews it into his clothing to conceal his theft. A story about an adulterous wife describes her in the opening lines as ‘pulcram noteque pudicie matronam.’(1,1). The obvious model is the tale of the Widow of Ephesus in the Satyrica which begins at 111,1 ‘matrona quaedam Ephesi tam notae erat pudicitiae’ (‘There once was a lady of Ephesus so famous for her fidelity’) 24 And, indeed, a central part of the later adaptation involves corpses (here of the wife and her lover) on public display (1,12), a clear adaptation from Petronius (112,8) where a crucified body is replaced with that of the mourning widow’s husband. It is in this later author’s handling and emphasis that his particular slant on the interpretation of Petronius is clear. Connors argues that ‘a previously unacknowledged aspect of the medieval collection’s imitative relationship to the Satyrica is its playful representation of ‘judgment’ in legal or extra-legal context.’ This ‘results from what the medieval author knew of the author of the Satyrica.’25 The identification of Petronius as ‘Arbiter’ without knowledge of what he was arbiter of26 led the author to see the Satyrica in light of its characters’ relationship with the law. Encolpius’ brushes with the law, the dispute over the pallium (cloak or blanket) in the forum, and the legal language of non-legal situations, which is evident in the Quartilla episode and in the rivalry of Encolpius and Ascyltos over Giton. The Widow of Ephesus provides even more legal language, and, as we have seen, was clearly an influence on the medieval author.27 He had, due to the tastes which dictated the transmission of Petronius, the ‘sentiments and verses more open to a —————


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26

Colker views this as part of the evidence for the argument that the author knew Petronius directly from manuscripts and not from excerpts, noting that ‘‘Matrona tam notae erat pudicitiae’ would hardly have excited a grammarian.’ Colker 1975, 184. The translations of passages from the Satyrica are those of J.P. Sullivan in the 1986 edition of his Penguin Classics translation. Connors 1999, 65. Manuscripts of Tacitus’ Annales, which would indicate to the author that Petronius was Arbiter Elegantiae, were as or more scarce than those of Petronius. Although there is some evidence of a second tradition, only one manuscript of Annales 11–16 is certainly known and this was in Italy. See Winterbottom 1983, 407–409. For a more detailed enumeration of the legal motifs in the Satyrica and Petronius Redivivus see Connors 1999.

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moralizing interpretation’ and used them, rather than in the cause of ‘Petronian lawlessness’ to produce a ‘new text about the exercise of judgment which is at least somewhat more likely to reinforce social norms.’28 While the medieval ‘Petronius’ may have been impressed with what he saw as the moralizing tendencies of the Satyrica, it was not necessarily so for later appropriators of the text. Petronius’ reputation for pornography, or at least smut, is much more the emphasis in, for example, the forgery of Marchena (early nineteenth century).29 The forgery connected to François Nodot (late seventeenth century, first published 1691), though almost certainly not composed by him,30 while filling in erotic episodes perhaps more than is necessary, is tamer. While Marchena only forged a single fragment meant to supplement one of the bawdier sections of the text, the Nodotian fragments claim to restore the work to completeness. It is entirely possible that their original author intended them only as an enjoyable supplement to a frustratingly damaged text, in which case they fall under two categories of appropriation. In one sense they are an innocent reading-aid, designed to allow the reader to move from fragment to fragment without the abrupt changes of scene and situation, which confuse the story as it stands in the extant text.31 But in another, when they were edited and published they were presented as genuine. It is not clear who exactly is the culprit in this falsification. Nodot almost certainly did not compose the fragments, but it is unclear whether he knew that what he was editing and planning to publish was fake.32 The fragments, which range in length from a single word or name (fr. 17 in ch. 94,1: ‘Eumolpus’) in a few to the longest, fr. 6, which is nearly 200 lines long in Laes’ text,33 tend only to fill in the missing plot, with few of the —————



28




30




31





32

29

33

Connors 1999, 69. I have not been able to examine Marchena’s text, which can be found in Smarius 1996. However, according to Laes, it was produced with the intention of ‘linking the chapters 24 and 25’(Laes 1998, 358), i.e. expanding the Quartilla episode, one of the most sexually explicit sections of the text. The most likely candidate is Pierre Linage. (Laes 1998, 364–365). For a fuller account of the history of the fragments see Stolz 1987. Which is how translators well into this century have often justified the inclusion of the Nodotian fragments, despite their clear inauthenticity, in their translations. See Laes 1998, 359. Both the Nodotian and Marchena's forgeries can be found in English translation in W.C. Firebaugh, trans., The Satyricon, New York: Boni & Liveright, 1922. Laes 1998, 364–365. It should be noted, by way of comparison, that the length of each line of Laes’ text is substantially greater than that of a line in Müller’s 1995 Teubner edition.

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thematic similarities at least attempted by the medieval Petronius. ‘No humour occurs, no funny, interesting, or unexpected facts are mentioned.’34 So Laes’ impression of the non-Petronian qualities of the content. The longest fragment, fr. 6, bears some examination, because it provides the largest sample, as it were, for analyzing the fragment. The fragment fills in the gap between Ascyltos’ discovery of Encolpius in bed with Giton in Sat. 11 and the trio’s arrival in the market and attempt to sell the stolen pallium at the opening of Sat. 12. The episode described begins with Ascyltos reminding Encolpius of the group’s poverty and suggesting a trip to the countryside: ‘Tu, inquit, Encolpi, deliciis sepultus, non cogitas nos pecuniam deficere et quae supersunt nullius esse pretii? In aestivis temporibus urbs sterilis est, rus erit fortunatus: eamus ad amicos’ (‘‘And you, Encolpius,’ began he, ‘are so wrapt in Pleasures, you little consider how short our Money grows, and what we have left will turn to no account: there’s nothing to be got in Town this Summertime, we shall have better luck in the country; let’s visit our friends.’’).35 What follows is an outing to the villa of Lycurgus, who, it is explained, takes them in because of his former affair with Ascyltos. Here the erotic entanglements which are mentioned, but left more or less unexplained on Lichas’ ship later in the genuine Satyrica as the root of Lichas and Tryphaena’s anger at Encolpius and Giton, are played out confusingly enough to make the reader wonder whether this bridge between the real fragments has made the work easier to read at all. ‘Quas in hoc loco gratissimo voluptates hausimus, nulla vox comprehendere potest’ (‘The Delight we receiv’d in this place was more than can be exprest’: 6,12–13) indeed. In brief: Tryphaena and Encolpius pair off immediately, but Lichas, jealous because she was ‘vetus amor illius’ (‘his old Amour’: 6,17–18), seeks reparation for Encolpius’ claim on his former lover by pursuing Encolpius himself. This trio, accompanied by Giton, departs for Lichas’ house, each believing that his or her pursuits will be somehow easier there. Ascyltos remains behind as Lycurgus has renewed his claim on him. Tryphaena and Giton pair off on the journey leaving Encolpius to Lichas, whose advances he resists less fervently. In attempting to —————



34 35

Laes 1998, 401. Unless otherwise noted, translations of the Nodotian forgeries are those in the 1914 Abbey Classics edition of Burnaby’s translation. Although they stray to varying degrees from a strictly literal interpretation, they give a sense of another period’s style of translating ‘Petronius,’ in itself an interesting consideration when discussing reception.

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please Encolpius with new diversions (‘Lycas, mihi placere cupidus, quotidie nova excogitabat oblectamenta,’ ‘Lycas, studying to please me, found me every day some new Diversion,’ 6,43), he succeeds perhaps beyond his expectations, and to his disadvantage, by introducing Encolpius to Doris, ‘ejus formosa uxor’ (‘his lovely wife,’ my translation) (6,44). They, of course, hit it off famously. By now, Tryphaena has exhausted Giton and tries to return to Encolpius who is unwilling to renew their affair. Disappointed, she betrays his and Doris’ ‘furtivos amores’(6,58) to Lichas, who is enraged. Unsurprisingly Encolpius and Giton choose this time to leave. After stealing the mantle and sistrum of a statuette of Isis found in a shipwrecked boat, they reunite with Ascyltos at Lycurgus’ villa. Lichas and Tryphaena pursue them and they are eventually betrayed to the pair by Lycurgus. Ascyltos rescues them from a makeshift prison and they flee, after burgling the house, of course. Making their way further into the country, they steal some gold in an inn and sew it into a tunic, and make off with a pallium as well. They split up, Encolpius loses the tunic, and their journey into the city begins at 12,1 in the genuine text of the Satyrica. Much in this summary will sound familiar to readers of the Satyrica. The fragment does essentially accomplish the aim of connecting two contextually distant fragments of the original text. Its full explanation of the entanglements of Encolpius, Giton, and Ascyltos with Lichas, Doris, Tryphaena, and Lycurgus, is perhaps unnecessarily long and involved. Perhaps it represents the forger’s desire to read or write a racier episode into the Satyrica. Nonetheless the fragment is, in its own way, fairly sophisticated in that it uses two separate episodes to bridge a single gap and manages to account for several things alluded to, but not fully explained in the text. The erotic escapades at Lycurgus and Lichas’ houses provide the necessary antecedent for Lichas and Tryphaena’s anger and pursuit of Encolpius and Giton, which we hear about first in Sat. 100. Indeed the plundering of the statue of Isis is also mentioned later in the text (Sat. 114,5). Likewise the episode of the gold sewn into the tunic and the stolen pallium appear in the genuine Satyrica. The fragment not only conforms to information and details mentioned later, both immediately after its location and quite distant in the dramatic time from it, but attempts to explain them as well. This is in itself fairly effective. At a bare minimum something that is presented as ‘the complete Satyrica’ needs to account for quite a few ‘loose ends.’

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However, despite its commendable attempts at comprehensiveness the forgery failed to be accepted as genuine. Grafton states as one of the criteria for successful forgery the need to give the fake text the appearance, linguistic and otherwise, of a text produced in a period earlier than his own.36 In this case it must also appear to be a text by a specific author. The author of the Nodotian fragments fails at these tasks in a number of ways. Linguistic anachronisms and non-Petronian usage and construction are abundant in the fragments. In the commentary on fr. 6, Laes points out at least 20 anachronistic words or usages, Gallicisms, non-Petronian words and constructions, and examples of poor-quality Latin of a sort which is not accounted for by imitation of Petronius’ variation of the style and type of Latin used by different characters. Important among these errors and inconsistencies is the use in 6,8 of the word castellum. ‘Nodot uses it for the French word château’ when the appropriate word in first century Latin would be villa: ‘Castellum’ is in antiquity only used in a military context.’37 One could perhaps suggest that the anachronisms and errors crept into the text through a later ‘corrector’ or careless scribe. But Laes is right to point out the huge quantity ‘of errors that occur in a text that is not extensive at all.’38 The Nodotian fragments are only about 4000 words long, and the density of linguistic inconsistencies is significant. Indeed the total length of the Satyrica with the Nodotian fragments is only about 35,000 words, a figure not consistent with any modern theory about the total length of the work.39 There are also social anachronisms in the text which betray it as a forgery. The flight of Encolpius and Giton in fr. 6 is undetected by anyone until Doris and Tryphaena wake up. As Encolpius explains, this is because ‘nos…ad earum ornamentum matutinum quotidie urbanissime assidebamus’ (‘for we daily attended their levy, and waited on them while they were dressing’: 6,80–81). This explanation rings false as a product of first century Rome ‘since it reminds us of the French court, where the ladies were used to making their toilets every morning assisted by men.’40 The treatment of the homoeroticism in the Satyrica by the author of the forgery is considerably —————


36







37 38 39 40

Grafton 1990, 49. The story of the ‘discovery’ of these fragments, another necessary component of a forgery in Grafton’s analysis, is as hopelessly implausible as the text (Laes 1998, 361). Laes 1998, 387 n.1,8. ibid. 397. See n. 1 above. Stolz 1987, 16 cited in Laes 1998, 388 n. 1,81.

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less comfortable than that of Petronius, and, whatever it may say about the relative attitudes toward homosexuality of first century Rome and seventeenth century France, is also something of a warning of inauthenticity. The very modernity of the Nodotian fragments, their firm placement in the seventeenth century, proves their undoing as a forgery. They also lack the authority, one of Grafton’s other criteria, that other imitators gain by focusing on one or more aspects of Petronius’ work or reported life and using them as a starting point or a guide. The lack of credibility as a Petronius imitation these forgeries display is due to the author limiting their content to filler and their linguistic imitation to some admirable Petronian turns of phrase and the occasional Petronian hapax. Works that are simply ‘Petronian’ or claim to be written by a ‘Petronius’ without pretending to be the Satyrica have a greater freedom in their interpretation. They need not be so precise in imitating the author, and may in fact have nothing whatsoever to do with the specific content of his work. As long as they employ some aspect of his work or his biographical tradition that will satisfy their audience, they will appear ‘Petronian.’ Even further, morally and chronologically, from the medieval Petronius is the 1966 ‘guide book’ New York Unexpurgated: An Amoral Guide for the Jaded, Tired, Evil, Non-Conforming, Corrupt, Condemned and the Curious – Humans and Otherwise – to Under Underground Manhattan. The author is given only as Petronius. Perhaps the title, apart from being a mouthful, is explanation enough as to which aspect of Petronius’ work and reputation is being adopted for the book. Along with the title, which contains a number of words that often come up in discussion of Petronius’ work and his involvement in Nero’s court, the chapter headings on the contents page in part read like a checklist of the more low-life, or merely sexual, themes of the Satyrica. The list includes: ‘5 The New York hooker;’ ‘6 The fag world;’ ‘7 The dirty old man;’ ‘8 Women on the prowl;’ ‘9 Staring, peeping, spying.’ These are followed by perhaps less relevant but still relatable topics as ‘11 The New York orgy,’ ‘12 New York in the wee hours,’ and ‘13 Evils of the city.’ It is tempting to think that this may have been intentional. Only two years later, the major large-scale study of Petronius produced at the time, Sullivan’s The Satyricon of Petronius, sees scopophilia as central to the work,41 and thus has some thematic alliance with chapter 9, about ‘staring, peeping, spying.’ Eumolpus provides a ‘dirty old man’ for chapter 7. The —————


41

Sullivan 1968, 238–250.

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homoeroticism of the Satyrica is probably some justification for the inclusion of chapter 6, and chapters 5 and 8 certainly agree with Sullivan’s view that the work is populated by many examples of ‘the libidinous and aggressive female.’42 The purpose of the work, to provide a guide to earthly pleasures in a big city, a modern Rome, is certainly compatible with the biographical tradition, and the book’s tone seems to derive from some idea as to what a modern Petronius might write about and how in 1966. The first few sentences establish the tone as well as any. While perhaps not up to Petronius’ literary standards, they give clues as to some possible motivations for adopting his name: Yesterday’s hot spot is tomorrow’s well of loneliness; today’s hangover is tomorrow’s shuttered gaiety and the next Miss Teen America’s virginity is anyone’s guess! Everything’s moving too fast! Any place, program, person, vogue or thing which we depict here may be nothing but a tired legend by the time you seek it out! Being fashionable or the latest fad is a jinx to people and places alike!’43 Crass, certainly. But despite containing a jarring deluge of exclamation marks, the immediate impression is that of someone trying to convey a sense of jaded decadence and of the mutability of fashion. This is hardly out of place for a book claiming to be written by a person called Petronius. The book, in its own way, sets out to guide the reader through the worldly pleasures of what was in 1966 considered ‘low-life’ New York. It plays Arbiter Elegantiae to the reader’s jaded and uninformed Nero. Each chapter contains a brief summary of the social background and conventions of the area of life it describes. Thus the first chapter, ‘New York mating habits,’ provides some information on New Yorkers’ propensity for ‘making out,’ followed by sections headed ‘A visitor’s chance of scoring,’ ‘New York girls – briefly,’ ‘Make out tips, skams [sic], pitches,’ and ‘Essential information.’ Other sections, such as Chapter 2 ‘The New York Bar-hangouts,’ provide listings for various establishments catering to the desires of the visitor for whatever it is the particular chapter is discussing. Along the way it manages to send up every identifiable social group it can. —————



42 43

ibid. 119. New York Unexpurgated, 3.

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It should be said at this point that I am not suggesting that the author of this book necessarily had detailed scholarly familiarity with the Satyrica or with the biographical tradition about Petronius. I am more than happy to allow that many of the affinities with Petronius this book displays may be little more than coincidence. Its publishers, Matrix House ltd. of New York, seem to have specialized in pulpy, low-grade ‘exposés’ of various sexual practices considered deviant at the time. The only other books published by the company about which I have been able to find any information fall into this category. The titles Eros and Evil: the Sexual Psychopathology of Witchcraft, Forbidden Sexual Behavior and Morality: An Objective Reexamination of Perverse Sex Practices in Different Cultures, and Sex Crimes in History: Evolving Concepts of Sadism, Lus-Murder, and Necrophilia from Ancient to Modern Times, all of which were also published in 1966, represent the bulk of what I have been able to discover in library and internet searches. The pseudo-scholarly pretensions these titles display suggest that the author of New York Unexpurgated was probably not above doing some ‘research’ and I would suggest that he probably had a passing acquaintance with the Satyrica and perhaps with the Tacitean account of Petronius, but this would be difficult to prove. I would also suggest that the accounts given in the book of behavior and locations are largely fictitious. The specific pleasures to which, as I have mentioned, the 1966 Petronius proposes to be a guide, which include casual sex of all varieties, drug use, and late-night drinking, probably take their cue from the low-life narrative of the Satyrica, as well as its emphasis on sexual themes. Indeed the emphasis on homosexual relationships found in Petronius is echoed here. Chapter 6 ‘The fag world,’ is not only longer than most, but its content spills out into the other chapters. Its tone is a good deal more hostile and sarcastic than that of the Satyrica on the subject. While Petronius certainly does not idealize homosexual love in the Satyrica in the way that the authors of the ideal Greek novels idealize heterosexual love in their works,44 he does not present it, in itself, as something to lampoon. This Petronius is, while presenting a facade of knowing familiarity with the gay world of 1960’s New York, quite different. But this sarcastic commentary on the author’s perceptions of gay relationships opens up consideration of another side to his perceptions of Petronius. It is clear, given his mocking tone, which is not reserved solely for this chapter, that he perceives Petronius as a social satirist and particu—————


44

For which see Konstan 1994.

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larly an aesthetic critic. The whole book is a platform to make snide comments about various aspects of New York life and the people who live it. The following listing is typical and displays an interesting feature of the book and one which may be an imitation of the fragmentary nature of the text of the Satyrica, the frequent use of ellipsis, which often connects two apparently unrelated statements: Edward’s[sic], 132 e. 61st, TE 8–9605. Original home of the Ivy League loser; calamitous congregate of young-to-fading-to-dead executives; and executive lushes of every type; black sheep residuals (paid almost adequate allowance by family to stay away); heavy shift even after 1:00 until closing. Equally strange diverse staff girls…over 25…occasional highbrow fight; creative contingents among others, heavier with dates on week ends and conventional workers at cocktail hours…earlier for dinner…all ages…Dick Edwards congenial but tough proprietor…. Reminiscent of a perpetual office party that went haywire and never intends to pull out.45 Where the genuine Petronius was to some extent a social satirist, his primary concern was with aesthetics. As Sullivan puts it, Petronius ‘is not interested in morality in the larger sense, but only in art.’46 The author of NYU has picked up on the aesthetic end of social criticism, but replaced the higherbrow aspects of the Satyrica with a discussion that is completely low-brow. The criticism may be an attempt to be perceived as high-brow, but the result is a Petronian imitation which focuses solely on low-life content discussed in low-life terms. Of Petronian imitations, perhaps the most comprehensive and selfconsciously imitative is the Memoirs of the Present Countess of Derby written under the name Petronius Arbiter and appearing in several editions in 1797.47 It purports to correct the errors of other accounts of the life of Eliza-

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45

New York Unexpurgated, 30.

46

Sullivan 1967, 75. Memoirs of the Present Countess of Derby, Late Miss Farren, 1797. The author is suspected to be John Williamson (Scriptor Veritatis (pseud.). The Testimony of Truth to Exalted Merit in Refutation of Scandalous Libel, 1797, 6). Williamson’s other satires, including Advice to Officers of the British Army, are similar in style to the Memoirs.

47

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beth Farren (though it does not say what these accounts are48), a popular actress of the late eighteenth century who married the twelfth Earl of Derby, and to provide a definitive single account in place of these contradictory ones. It is essentially a complete libel, attacking Farren’s past, her virtue, and her reputation, as well as that of her father and a few other names of the day.49 But its slanderous nature, as well as the author’s own pseudonymous comments, gives a good deal of insight into how the author perceived Petronius. The author explicitly points out the affinity of his work with that of Petronius and, despite contrasting his identity with that of his model, draws some motivation from the biographical tradition surrounding him. This is perhaps best illustrated by the dedication at the beginning of the book: LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,50 MY great Ancestor and Name-sake, Petronius Arbiter, though he called his Book a Satire, yet comprehended in it a loose Sketch of the Biography of very many of the most celebrated Characters of his Time. The present Publication, in some respects, resembles his ‘Satyricon;’ as it relates some part of the Follies of the Age. In many respects, however, it materially differs: for Petronius wrote in the de-bauched and wicked Reign of a Nero, while I write under the mild and beneficent reign of GEORGE THE THIRD; and my Ancestor enjoyed all the luxuries of a Palace while I starved in a Garret. But the difference of our condition is no argument against the truth of what either of us may say: For my own —————


48




49




50

It seems to allude to the Testimony of Truth to Exalted Merit published in the same year as a refutation of the Memoirs as it mentions the ‘various and zealous endeavours that have been made to suppress’ the earlier editions of the pamphlet (Memoirs, 5). This is perhaps ‘Petronius’ parodying the ‘virtuous woman’ novels of the early part of the century as Fielding parodied Richardson’s Pamela (1741) in Shamela (1741). This would certainly be compatible with the notion of the Satyrica as a low-life, homoerotic parody of the ideal, heterosexual, genre of Greek novels, for which see Konstan 1994, 113–125. In quoting the text of the Memoirs I reproduce the author’s jarring (to modern readers) use of capitalization and italics in order to convey his particular emphasis. I will, in general, use his typography the first time I cite a given passage but revert to modern convention in subsequent quotations when the particular emphasis is neither relevant nor necessary.

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part, I can solemnly declare, that all I relate is ‘NAKED, UNBLUSHING TRUTH.’ Before I committed my Book to the World, I thought of a Dedication, and had at one time determined to dedicate it to the COURT; but when I considered that I only related TRUTH, I was convinced I should not be a welcome guest there. I then determined to dedicate it to the Earl of DERBY; but being informed his lordship was not much disposed to encourage Literary Merit, I gave up that determination also; and despairing of making a few Guineas by dedicating it to anyone, the first Edition was sent forth without any Dedication. Since the Publication, I have experienced the disadvantage of a want of proper Patronage, by the various and zealous endeavours that have been made to suppress it. But determined that Truth should not be driven from the Field, and sensible that all of you must feel a wish to know a real History of the Life of so conspicuous a Character as the Countess of DERBY, to YOU the following Memoirs are dedicated, by, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN Your most Faithful Servant PETRONIUS ARBITER From my Garret.51 Here, there are a number of allusions to Petronius. Beginning with the biographical details, it is clear that, as with the Medieval Petronius, the author knows that Petronius was called Arbiter but seems to take it as a name, rather than a title. It is possible, however, that he believes himself in some way to be contributing to the taste of society by ‘exposing’ someone he presents as a vulgar social climber. It seems likely that he was familiar, perhaps indirectly, with the account of Petronius given in Tacitus (Annales 16,18– 20), though this is impossible to prove, not least because of the inclusion of ‘Arbiter’ in his pseudonym.52 Furthermore, despite his allusion to Petronius’ —————



51 52

Memoirs, 4–5. It would be a mistake to attach too much importance to this, however, as both Latin texts and translations of the Satyrica up to the late eighteenth century and after included ‘Arbi-

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inclusion in Nero’s court circle, ‘all the luxuries of a palace’ as he puts it, the later exclusion from and persecution by Nero and a rival within that court, Tigellinus, is clearly taken as mutual motivation for both the Satyrica, and the Memoirs. He seems here to be conflating what he sees as the socialsatirical aspects of the Satyrica (which he explicitly states he believes to be a satire) and the mention in Tacitus of the account which Petronius drew up before his death of all of Nero’s sexual partners (Tac. Annales 16,19,3). He clearly sees the Satyrica, particularly the Cena, as parodying Nero (considering it to be ‘a loose sketch of the biography of very many of the most celebrated characters of his time’) but also sees his purpose as exposing the ‘unknown’ faults of a public figure. It is perhaps a possibility that he believed both the novel and the list of Nero’s partners to be related works. Nonetheless he also sees a more general social observation at work in Petronius when he refers to it relating ‘some part of the follies of the age.’ It is also significant that he, of all the Petronian imitators (apart from the forgers, whose aims are necessarily different), takes the most pains within his text to give the reader some explicit indication of how his work is Petronian by stating these affinities openly. Already in this opening section one finds some affinity with the content of the Satyrica itself. In the second half of his dedication the author takes on a further role found in the novel, that of Eumolpus. His bemoaning of the rejection of truth and ‘literary merit’ echo those of the unappreciated poet. And, of course, since he (albeit in jest) includes one of the people who comes under criticism in his work as someone he had in mind as a patron, the Earl of Derby himself, his work is just as unwelcome to members of his audience as that of Eumolpus. At his appearance in the pinacotheca (picture gallery) and his introduction to Encolpius the unsuccessful poet voices similar complaints. The complaint is amusing as well as relevant: ‘ego’ inquit ‘poeta sum et spero non humillimi spiritus, si modo coronis aliquid credendus est, quas etiam ad imperitos deferre gratia solet. ‘quare ergo’ inquis ‘tam male vestitus es?’ propter hoc ipsum. amor ingenii neminem umquam divitem fecit,’(‘‘I am a poet,’ he said, ‘and a poet of no mean ability, I like to think, at least if poetry prizes are to be trusted when favouritism confers them even on mediocrity. ‘Why,’ you ask, ‘are you so badly dressed then?’ ————— ter’ as part of the author’s name for which see Schmeling-Stuckey 1977, 57–71 and 80– 85.

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For this one reason – concern for the intellect never made anyone rich,’: Sat. 83, 8–9). Even though the author of the Memoirs identifies the Satyrica as ‘satire,’ it is clear that he does not totally intend his own work, at least in the way in which it relates the life of Farren, to operate strictly within that genre. Despite this, though, he shows even greater affinities with Petronius than he perhaps intended. The Memoirs is essentially a work of fiction, of that there is little doubt. While the glowing praise heaped upon Farren by the Testimony of Truth to Exalted Merit and her most recent biographer53 is perhaps excessively fulsome at points, there is little reason to believe that the woman was quite as uncouth or calculating as ‘Petronius’ claims. Thus, although it is fictional, and although it makes social observations and judgements about specific people as well as general groups, its claims of truthfulness keep it from being satirical in the way that, for example, the Cena Trimalchionis is. There is no guise of fiction (rather the fiction is disguised) which might elevate this from slander to satire. However, the type of person Farren is portrayed as is quite similar to the type of person portrayed in the aforementioned Cena and some of the same socio-critical motivation must have applied to give both Petronii their subject matter. Since a good deal of what he seems to draw from Petronius seems to be from the Cena, one might conclude that he was primarily familiar with that part of the text. Farren was an actress who, though apparently of common, but not low, birth and past, became a member of the nobility through marriage. Trimalchio and the other freedmen of the Satyrica were born slaves and rose to a social position higher than that to which they were born and an economic position which would have been enviable even to most free-born Romans. Both categories of people, upwardly mobile actresses and upwardly mobile freedmen, were recognizable social groups who in some way upset the traditional social order of their societies and were open to attack because of their backgrounds.54 What ‘Petronius’ says about Farren’s background is damning. Dismissing both the claims of other accounts that she was ‘allied to Families of the first respectability in Ireland’ and ‘that the first exertions of her industry were employed in trundling a mop as a house-maid to a tradesman in Bath,’ he starts on a moderate note. He says, ‘from her Ancestors Miss FARREN, —————


53




54

Bloxam 1988. Bloxam, however, confirms with independent sources many of the positive assertions made on behalf of Farren by the Testimony. See D’Arms 1981, Ch.6: 121–48 and Crouch 1997, 58–78.

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in our opinion (to use the language of the Historian of the Roman Empire) ‘derives neither glory nor shame;’ though perhaps the fastidious pride of the Countess may blush for the meanness of the origin of the Player.’ 55 After the barbed comment at the end of that assessment he begins what amounts to a full frontal attack on Farren’s father, which not only labels him as a drunk, but emphasizes all the seedy and unpleasant aspects of the life of a traveling actor in the eighteenth century, presumably to make the ‘meanness’ of Farren’s origin more prominent in the reader’s mind. The tone is faux-tactful, close to praeteritio, and sarcastically sympathetic. Describing Mr. Farren’s change of career from apothecary to actor, he says ‘an Engagement in a regular Company, with a fixed Salary, however small it might be, was a new life to Mr. FARREN; and his sense of his happiness was so great, that it shewed[sic] itself in his copious libations at the shrine of Bacchus.’ Apparently ‘he, for the most part, however, contrived to walk on soberly in the first act, though he generally staggered off drunk in the fifth.’56 Of the conditions of life for his acting company he mentions in a note that ‘the wretchedness of an Itinerant Corps in Ireland, can hardly be conceived from what we see in this Country.’57 It was into this life, the author alleges, that the young Farren was born. In fact, her father was not entirely unsuccessful but on his death, Elizabeth and the rest of the family took acting work to support themselves, but not in a traveling company. She ultimately experienced great success and eventually rose to the height of fame on the London stage, where she caught the eye of the Earl of Derby.58 She also helped with some amateur theatricals, which were fashionable in the stately homes of the day, including those of the Duke of Richmond.59 The author of course has some choice comments about this. Referring to the private dramas which she supervised at Richmond House, he says ‘her Ladyship was appointed to preside over the Stage Business, an employment for which she expressed great fondness, as it afforded her an opportunity of being introduced to many of the first Nobility in the Kingdom.’ As a result,

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55 56 57 58 59

Memoirs, 7–8. ibid. 9. ibid. 9n. Bloxam 1988. ibid. 80.

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she began to be noticed, and even caressed, by a very long list of Fashionables; a circumstance which seemed at all times to have been her greatest ambition. She took a house in Green-street, Grosvenor-square, and endeavouring to forget the mean condition of trudging from town to town with the Drum, set up her Carriage, and changed the homely fare of a Shoulder of Mutton in a brown dish for the luxuries of an elegant table.60 The emphasis on food in this last passage is hardly the only recollection in the Memoirs of the social climbing and culinary ambition of Trimalchio and his freedmen friends. The obvious objection raised in both works is to the social ambition of their subjects. As I mentioned before, both Farren and Trimalchio belonged to recognizable social groups thought to be ‘making their way to the top.’ Crouch gives examples of several actresses of the eighteenth century who married into the nobility, had aristocratic lovers or patrons, or were simply often in the company of aristocrats, including Elizabeth Farren and Lavinia Fenton, 61 who is mentioned in this connection at the beginning of the Memoirs and was lampooned even more viciously elsewhere.62 Similarly, in the first century AD, freedmen were a group who were making the transition from low to higher status. Like Trimalchio, who inherited his former master’s money and multiplied his fortune by shipping goods to Rome and then withdrew to his landed estates, where self-sufficiency allowed him to live the life of a Roman gentleman (Petr. 75.10–77)…many ex-slaves rose to prominence by this route during the first century AD, and our upper-class literary authorities provide ample evidence of the frictions that resulted from their rapid ascension into the upper levels of imperial society.63 In neither case, that of Farren nor that of Trimalchio, is the simple transgression of social class boundaries necessarily the main issue. Certainly this change of status is enough to irritate the upper classes to a certain extent, but it is obviously not the whole cause of the resentment, nor the target of the —————





60 61 62 63

Memoirs, 22–23. Crouch 1997. Memoirs, 7. Bodel 1999, 41–42. See also D’Arms 1981.

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criticism. Both Petronius and his imitator single out to different degrees the vulgarity each of their subjects retains after his or her change of status. Part of this aspect of the literary parody of the Satyrica is modeled on Plato’s Symposium.64 The speeches of the freedmen in this banquet substitute for those in Plato’s symposium but instead of being serious are ‘the drunken, down-to-earth maunderings of semi-literate ex-slaves, whose intensely selfcentered monologues betray the limits of their intellectual horizons.’65 Only once in the Memoirs is Farren’s manner of speaking mentioned, but when it is, it is a striking and pointed comment on her ability to assimilate into the upper echelons of society: amidst a bevy of high illustrious Dames, she was particularly singled out for the notice of Royalty, and HER MAJESTY conversed with her for some time in the Circle. But here her Ladyship’s conversation, like Lenitive’s in the Prize ‘smelt of the shop,’ in spite of all her efforts to prevent it.66 Like Encolpius faced with Trimalchio and company, the genuinely upperclass members of society are able to recognize Farren’s pretensions to their station for what they are. In both works, nobody who has any entitlements to upper-class culture or cultivation is fooled by the attempts of these social upstarts to fit into the social spheres to which they are alleged to pretend. It is interesting that both social climbers are, to different degrees of explicitness, said to have been in favor with their respective benefactors because of an erotic relationship. Trimalchio himself tells his guests that he was his master’s sexual favourite (and his mistress’ as well) after an argument with Fortunata over one of his boys. He says ‘tamen ad delicias [femina] ipsimi [domini] annos quattuordecim fui. nec turpe est quod dominus iubet. ego tamen et ipsimae [dominae] satis faciebam,’ (‘Still, for fourteen years I was the old boy’s fancy. And there’s nothing wrong if the boss wants it. But I did all right by the old girl too,’: Sat. 75,11). Farren as we have seen, was alleged to have been ‘caressed’ by certain notables.67 The —————





64 65 66 67

See Cameron 1969, 367–370. Bodel 1999, 40. Memoirs, 29. Presumably the author meant ‘caressed’ to carry both metaphorical and literal significance.

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nature of Farren’s relationship with the Earl was somewhat unusual even if it was not so scandalous as the Memoirs suggest. Derby was married when he made her acquaintance and he and Farren were for all intents and purposes a couple for eighteen years, rarely to be seen apart from one another. Most sources agree that for this period, before the death of his wife, the relationship was not sexual.68 Furthermore it was not he who had abandoned his wife but rather she who was having a similar, actually adulterous, affair with another man. Derby would not divorce his wife and thus could not marry Farren until his wife’s death.69 An incident related by the Memoirs relating to this situation is striking, if not solely in connection with it: In a Shoreditch Workhouse there was for a long series of years a Pauper who professed to have studied the Stars, and to tell the Decrees of Fate. This Lunatic or Enthusiast has, we believe, been visited by thousands, who wished to know the good or ill that awaited them. Often has the Lover hastened to know whether his Mistress would ever bless his arms; the Gambler to know on what card to stake his Fortune; the Speculator to be told whether his Schemes of Wealth would be successful; and the giddy Girl, who had longed for Grandeur, to inquire whether her golden Dreams would be realized. To this Prophet went her Ladyship; and, we have heard, he gratified her ambition, by telling her that the Coronet which Fate had suspended over her, would some time fall on her head.70 This gives the reader a taste of the same combination of immorality and impatience which are staple components of the inserted tale of the Widow of Ephesus, as well as a whiff of the supernatural, perhaps nodding to the ghost stories told during the Cena. The Widow of Ephesus is also evoked by the scathing criticism the author levels at Lord Derby’s son who, in the short interval between his mother’s death and his father’s marriage to Farren, escorted the actress to and from her engagements when the Earl was unavailable. As with the Widow, pious mourning is considered to be interrupted for —————


68





69 70

One wonders when there might have been an opportunity for anything improper as Farren’s mother was a constant chaperone whenever the couple was seen together. (Bloxam 1988, passim). The Memoirs refers to the Earl throughout as ‘the lusty EARL’ (Memoirs, passim). Bloxam 1988, 42–43. Memoirs, 25. This suggests Trimalchio’s interest in astrology in the Cena, displayed prominently in the astrological dish at Sat. 39.

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more earthly matters.71 There is just enough of the bizarre and sordid as well to remind the reader of the cures for impotence inflicted on Encolpius by Proselenus and Oenothea (Sat. 131, 134–138). Indeed, the subject of impotence is raised as well; it is the topic which the Memoirs keep to the end, in the ‘Post Script Extraordinary!!!’: IN the preceding part of our Book we have conducted the Countess of DERBY from her Birth to the period of her alliance with the high blood of the STANLEYS. There we had determined to pause, and leave her to enjoy the Honours she had arrived at. The chaste delights of the connubial state, we thought, opened prospects of Bliss to the new married Pair; but, Gentle Reader, (woud’st thou believe it?) the Lovers, on the Evening of their marriage, set off for the Oaks where, alas! they found not in the joys of Love and Solitude, enough to make them forget the dissipations of the Town:-after two days, they returned to Grosvenor-square; and, though eighteen years had passed in Courtship, for the first Month they could not find their way to the Hymeneal Bed before Four o’Clock each Morning!!! In which of the illustrious Couple could this conduct originate? Surely Common Report, in almost every instance a Liar, did not tell Truth, when she talked of his lordship being in certain respects /0$/3!# [sic], or, in the Phraseology of the Platonic Philosophy, wanting ‘Capacities and Energies’ for the Prime bliss of the Married State!72 Although one would hardly argue for the impotence of ‘the lusty Earl’ as a theme throughout the work (it is only mentioned here), its mention is possibly connected with the Satyrica in that there were no grounds whatsoever at any stage for suggesting impotence or sterility on his part. He had already had children (though one of them was suspected of being fathered by his wife’s lover73), albeit nearly twenty years earlier. It is possible, though difficult to confirm because of the uncertainty of the publication date of the edition of the Memoirs containing the postscript, that the author did not know that within a few months of the marriage, Farren was expecting her first child by the Earl and gave birth ‘in March 1798, ten months after marrying —————


71





72 73

Memoirs, 26–27. There is also a hint here that the young man’s relationship with Farren was romantic. ibid. 31. Bloxam 1988, 43.

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Lord Derby.’74 If he did know of her pregnancy, or if the post-script was written after the birth of the child, the reference to impotence might have come from his knowledge of Petronius. On the other hand casting aspersions on a man’s virility is not, and has never been, an uncommon means of attack, and this may be simple coincidence. Given the general affinity of the Memoirs with the Satyrica, however, it seems reasonable to think it may have been a deliberate appropriation. In another instance the attribution of authorship is not the appropriation of Petronius’ name by the author, but rather that of a translator of Petronius by the publisher. The translation of the Satyrica attributed to Oscar Wilde is an interesting parallel example, which, especially through its direct link with Petronius, perhaps clarifies a bit further the issues surrounding Petronian imitation. In this case, however, there is something of a double-cross. Wilde’s name is lent to Petronius because of his reputation for homosexuality, while Petronius is reverse-identified with Wilde because of the misattribution. This is perhaps the ultimate example of Petronius’ reputation being attached to someone and, symmetrically, that person’s reputation being attached to Petronius. The translation was originally published in 1902 by Charles Carrington, ‘the major supplier of pornography to Britain’ at the time.’75 The titles of some of Carrington’s publications at the time bear a striking resemblance to the sort of thing Matrix House (publisher of New York Unexpurgated) was publishing in 1966. They include ‘Human Gorillas: A Study of the Ravishment of Women by Count Roscaud; Musk, Hashish, and Blood by Hector France; Miss Dorothy Morton (described as ‘The most wonderful Romance of Flagellation in existence’)’76 and others in a similar vein. It is of course tantalizing for admirers of either author to think that Wilde translated the Satyrica. In many ways, what Tacitus says about Petronius provides a character sketch remarkably like the popular image of Wilde. Both are seen as aesthetes, in life and literature, and both were, in different ways, and to varying degrees, brought to premature deaths. Both men, according to tradition, died cleverly, Petronius chatting lightly while opening and binding his slit veins (Tac. Annales 16,19), Wilde allegedly producing some of his finest, and least verifiable, one-liners (‘I am dying above my —————




74 75 76

ibid. 179. Boroughs 1995, 13. ibid.

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means’). Wilde too was an author who made an easy target for frauds and misattributions. Like Petronius, whose name it seems can be adopted for any piece of social satire, low-life narrative, or pornography that an imitator wishes to write, so Wilde’s name has been attributed to many homoerotic works not by him.77 He, like Petronius, is open to forgery and appropriation, and in the years after his death the two were associated by reputation in the translation attributed to him. The reputation of each caused something of a double-misattribution although the material at the source of the misattribution was, in fact, Petronius. It is sometimes difficult to sort out what of Petronius is to be found in his imitators. There have been, over time, so many differing scholarly and popular opinions of both the man and his work, that the resulting confusion, to which the fragmentary state of the Satyrica contributes significantly, occasionally seems inescapable. He has been to various people pornographer and moralist, jaded aesthete and keen literary critic Arrowsmith perceives this difficulty keenly, saying that the classics, simply because they are classics, are particularly susceptible to distortion and stultification. They constantly serve, after all, extraliterary purposes, and these other, ‘cultural’ uses of the classic frequently interfere with critical judgment, preventing the reassessment, or even the assessment of the work.78 This is the very quality Stuckey makes central to her argument, that Petronius as an ‘ancient’ had quite a different reputation in the seventeenth century from what one might expect given the content of his work. It is possible for the Satyrica to exist in the eyes of one scholar, as Arrowsmith, as ‘a fundamentally serious and even moral work,’79 and for Petronius to be for another ‘not interested in morality in the larger sense, but only in art.’80 Likewise for the author of the Petronius Redivivus Petronius was a legalminded moralist, while for Marchena and the author of the Nodotian forgeries his work constituted light erotic fiction. The eighteenth-century —————


77






78 79 80

These include Bloxam, John Francis. The Priest and the Acolyte. (1894) and Wilde, Oscar, and others. Teleny. (London, 1999). Arrowsmith 1966, 305. ibid. 305. Sullivan 1967, 75.

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‘Petronius’ viewed him as a slanderous satirist and small-time dissident. As Connors has demonstrated, examination of imitations can shed light on the imitated text, as the Petronius Redivivus illuminates legal motifs in the Satyrica.81 But the examination of imitations is worthy in and of itself. An interesting parallel to Grafton’s argument that the development of a scholarly critical repertoire was helped a good deal by the need to determine what texts were forged, is the ability of archaeologists and antiquities experts not only to determine whether a given object is fake, but to be able to apply the same techniques to know which fakes are products of the same workshop.82 The attitudes to Petronius of different imitators at different times are revealed by inspection of the work, and can perhaps give some indication of more general attitudes of their times. To conclude with the words of G.W. Bowersock in his foreword to Mary Beard’s biography (which is also, for all intents and purposes, an apparatus criticus of her, as well as others’, biographical process) of Jane Harrison: ‘works that reflect antiquity also inevitably reveal their authors and their own age…Antiquity can reveal us just as much as it is revealed by us.’83

Texts Petronius. Satyricon Reliquiae, Konrad Müller (ed.), Stuttgart: Teubner, 1995. Tacitus. Annales, Heinz Heubner (ed.), Stuttgart: Teubner, 1983.

Bibliography Anonymous. Eros and Evil. The Sexual Psychopathology of Witchcraft, New York: Matrix House, 1966. Anonymous. Forbidden Sexual Behavior and Morality. An Objective Reexamination of Perverse Sex Practices in Different Cultures, New York: Matrix House, 1966. Arrowsmith, W. 1966. ‘Luxury and Death in the Satyricon,’ Arion 5, 304–331. Bagnani, G. 1960. ‘On Fakes and Forgeries,’ Phoenix 14, 228–244 .

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81 82 83

Connors 1999. Bagnani 1960, 229. Bowersock 2000, vii–viii. I would like to thank my teachers Alexander Sens of Georgetown University and Peter Parsons of Christ Church, Oxford for the initial leads and the guidance that led me to this subject. S.J. Harrison of Corpus Christi, Oxford provided invaluable assistance in seeing this paper through to its present form.

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Bloxam, S. 1988. Walpole’s Queen of Comedy. Privately Published. Bodel, J. 1999. ‘The Cena Trimalchionis,’ in: H. Hofmann (ed.), Latin Fiction. The Latin Novel in Context, London: Routledge, 38–51. Boroughs, R. 1995. ‘Oscar Wilde’s Translation of Petronius: The Story of a Literary Hoax,’ English Literature in Transition: 1880–1920 38, 9–49. Bowersock, G.W. 2000. Foreword, in: Beard, M. The Invention of Jane Harrison, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, vii–x. Cameron, A. 1969. ‘Petronius and Plato,’ Classical Quarterly 19, 367–70. Charleton, W. The Ephesian Matron, London, 1659. Chapman, G. The Widdowes Teares, London, 1612. Clift, E.H. 1945. Latin Pseudepigrapha. A Study in Literary Attributions, Baltimore: J.H. Furst. Colker, M. 1975. Analecta Dublinensia. Three Medieval Latin Texts in the Library of Trinity College Dublin, Cambridge: The Mediaeval Academy of America. Connors, C. 1999. ‘Rereading the Arbiter: Arbitrium and verse in the Satyrica and in Petronius Redivivus,’ in: H. Hofmann (ed.), Latin Fiction. The Latin Novel in Context, New York: Routledge, 64–77. Crouch, K. 1997. ‘The Public Life of Actresses: prostitutes or Ladies?’ in: H. Barker and E. Chalus (eds.) Gender in Eighteenth-Century England. Roles, Representations, and Responsibilities, London: Longman, 58–78. D’Arms, J.H. 1981. Commerce and Social Standing in Ancient Rome, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Dover, K.J. 1968. Lysias and the Corpus Lysiacum, Berkeley: University of California Press. Fry, C. A Phoenix Too Frequent, in: Selected Plays, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Grafton, A. 1990. Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Harrison, S.J. 1999. Introduction, in: S.J. Harrison (ed.). Oxford Readings in the Roman Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, xi–xxxix. Hernandez, G., J., and M. 1997. Hernandez Satyricon. A Love & Rockets Collection, Seattle: Fantagraphics Books. Konstan, D. 1994. Sexual Symmetry. Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Laes, C. 1998. ‘Forging Petronius: François Nodot and the Fake Petronian Fragments,’ Humanistica Lovaniensa 47, 358–402. MacKendrick, P.G. 1950. ‘The Great Gatsby and Trimalchio,’ Classical Journal 45, 307–314. Martin, J. 1968. John of Salisbury and the Classics, Diss. Cambridge. Masters, R.E.L. 1966. Sex Crimes in History. Evolving Concepts of Sadism, LusMurder, and Necrophilia from Ancient to Modern Times, New York: Matrix House. Petronius (pseud.) 1966. New York Unexpurgated. An Amoral Guide for the Jaded, Tired, Evil, Non-conforming, Corrupt, Condemned and the Curious – Humans and Otherwise – to Under Underground Manhattan, New York: Matrix House.

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Petronius Arbiter (pseud.) 1797. Memoirs of the Present Countess of Derby, Late Miss Farren, 5th ed. London: H.D. Symonds. Rankin, H.D 1965. ‘On Tacitus’ Biography of Petronius,’ Classica et Mediaevalia 26, 233–245. Reeve, M. D. 1983. ‘Petronius,’ in: L.D. Reynolds (ed.). Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics, Oxford: Clarendon, 295–300. The Satyricon of T. Petronius Arbiter Burnaby’s Translation. 1694. With an Introduction by C.K. Scott Moncrieff Ornamented by Martin Travers, London: the Abbey Classics, 1914. Sayers, D.L. Gaudy Night. London: New English Library, 1970. Schmeling, G. 1996. 'The Satyrica of Petronius,' in The Novel in the Ancient World, Leiden: Brill, 1996, 457-490. Schmeling, G. 1999. ‘Petronius and the Satyrica,’ in: H. Hofmann (ed.), Latin Fiction. The Latin Novel in Context, New York: Routledge, 23–37. Schmeling, G.L. and Rebman, D.R. 1975. 'T.S. Eliot and Petronius,' Comparative Literature 12, 393-410. Schmeling, G.L. and Stuckey, J.H. 1977. A Bibliography of Petronius, Leiden: Brill. Scriptor Veritatis (pseud.) 1797. The Testimony of Truth to Exalted Merit in Refutation of Scandalous Libel, London: George Cawthorn. Smarius, A. 1996. Pseudo-Petronius. Het ‘Fragmentum Petronii’ van José Marchena, Diss. Amsterdam. Stolz, W. 1987. Petrons Satyricon und François Nodot. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte literarischer Fälschungen, Stuttgart: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur. Stuckey, J.H. 1972. ‘Petronius the ‘Ancient’: His Reputation and Influence in Seventeenth Century England,’ Rivista di Studi Classici 20, 145–53. Sullivan, J.P. 1967. ‘Petronius: Artist or Moralist,’ Arion 6, 71–88. Sullivan, J.P. 1968. The Satyricon of Petronius. A Literary Study, London: Faber. Williamson, J. 1783. Advice to Officers of the British Army, London: W. Richardson. Winterbottom, M. 1983. ‘Tacitus,’ in: L.D. Reynolds (ed.). Texts and Transmission. A Survey of the Latin Classics, Oxford: Clarendon, 406–11. Zeitlin, F.I. 1999. ‘Petronius as Paradox: Anarchy and Artistic Integrity,’ in: S.J. Harrison (ed.), Oxford Readings in the Roman Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1–49.

A Short Note on Ancient Jewish Narrative WOUT VAN BEKKUM

University of Groningen

The fundamentals of ancient Jewish narrative are evident in the Hebrew Bible, the parade example for the construction and development of early Jewish storywriting and -telling which for the sake of convenience is at best defined as part of the Jewish literature that was mostly written during the Second Temple Period (538 BCE – 70 CE). The available evidence immediately presents the problem in determining an exact date and a historical setting of the relevant sources. Generally, the narrative writings of the Jews do not admit of easy classification and definition. There are many ambiguities with regard to the proper contents of ancient Jewish stories and their occasional functioning as imitations or expansions of the biblical text, their division into thematical categories, the traditionality of their motifs, and the complexity of their form. Nowadays there is much discussion about the authorial and redactional intentions of the biblical account itself, and recent studies have stressed the ideological motivations underlying the biblical material. Nevertheless, one is easily tempted to reach to defining criteria of ancient Jewish narrative from literary examination of biblical texts. However, the Hebrew Bible was not exclusively used for religious exegesis citing and expounding verses and passages from the canonical books. The apocryphal and pseudepigraphal stories were written without direct reference to the canonical text or without the recourse to biblical style. In many cases these narratives have a point of departure in the biblical text, but the stories are developed to bring out different emphases and new motifs. Therefore, the literary peculiarities of later fiction deserve to be treated in their own right. Much of the early Hellenistic period in Palestine during the years 332–167 BCE does not offer direct sources. In his Antiquities Josephus proves that as a historian he too depends upon accounts of a legendary and novelistic nature for the description of this period. Here we touch upon one of the most intricate

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problems of ancient Jewish narrative: its historicity or rather pseudohistoricity. Dividing Jewish stories by their historical or non-historical context will lead to great difficulty because of the high degree of fictionalization of any actual or historical detail. The theological concern of the narrators cannot be ruled out and often dominates the presentation of historical events, for example, the Greek-written book of 2 Maccabees is a work that can be defined as a theological reflection on history which also preserves some valuable historical data. In general terms, Jewish stories from the Second Temple Period demonstrate a complex combination of two basic elements, narrative and theological, obscuring a straightforward way of defining the concept of historiography and genre in Judaism. The complexity of this matter belongs to the broader discussion about language and culture: our modern scientific attitude is to stick modern labels to ancient societies and cultures, thereby simplifying the ancient ‘sense of history’ or ‘literary sense’. In the Jewish case, we can find that historical meaning never so much resided in generic labels including hymnology and liturgy nor in any specific textual mode. Narratives produce intertextual meaning as a result of the creation of new relationships between existing stories and the invention of new motifs and ideas imbedded in ancient or newly created stories. When KLVWRUL means ‘rational research’, Jewish exegetical tradition has produced in the process of midrash (literally ‘search’) a characteristic approach by a range of interpretive modes towards the search for existing and new notions of the sacrosanct biblical story. The orally transmitted narrative and legislative material, written down during the first centuries CE in what is now known as standard rabbinic works like the Midrashim and the Talmudim, deals essentially with facts of Jewish life and is coined in Hebrew aggadah (literally, ‘story’) and halakhah (literally, the ‘ongoing’ prescript or commandment). The Aggadah as the totality of rabbinic tale was considered by rabbinic and medieval Judaism as a true part of the revelation to the people of Israel of the Torah or Pentateuch, in itself a series of five biblical books in which the narrative and legislative components are strongly interwoven. Granting the afore-mentioned problems, uncertainties and ambiguities, one has to treat all this literature within a historical framework. In Judaic studies usually the dates of the Second Temple Period are accepted for the late biblical and post-biblical writings. For the inclusion of the formative period of rabbinic Judaism one has to set a concluding date at the end of Late Antiquity until the Arab conquest early seventh century. There is no lack of narrative material in

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Hebrew and other languages such as Aramaic and Greek, and still much research has to be done by gathering and examining a wide range of stories and versions of stories that were widespread among the Jews living in the Diaspora. The corpus of Jewish narrative fiction includes the noncanonical literature of postbiblical Judaism (Greek and Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses, Qumran texts, Josephus, Philo and other Jewish-Hellenistic literature) and of rabbinic Judaism (aggadic traditions from the extensive Midrash literature, the Mishnah, and the Talmudim of Babylonia and Palestine). The distribution of this literature into genres or subgenres and periods or schools, and the application of any literary criterium for its aesthetical and rhetorical values and purposes are dependent on modern judgments. Rabbinic narrative tradition has received enormous attention by modern scholarship, and much has been accomplished, especially in the field of aggadic folklore and folktale. The main point is that a broad acquaintance with the dynamics of narrative fiction in Judaism and in other Semitic cultures will enrich all the researchers in these and related disciplines. As a first step, a bibliographic database of sourcematerial and relevant secondary literature will directly prove to be of considerable value. The characteristics of ancient Jewish stories can best be identified by toying with their affinities to a catalogue of themes and motifs, linguistic and generic features, story patterns and intentions. Crucial for the evaluation of ancient Jewish narrative is to understand it as a literary and multidimensional art-form, and it may well be that the insights gained thereof will prove to be useful to all those who are involved in the Ancient Narrative Project.

Reviews S . FRANGOULIDIS : Roles and Performances in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses.

Pp. VIII + 197. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2001. Paperback, DM 56,00. ISBN 3–476–45284–0. Reviewed by Regine May, Manchester Stavros Frangoulidis, hereafter F., is well-known to scholars on the ancient novel, and has published widely on theatricality and performance in Apuleius, and several sections of this book are revised versions of articles that have appeared elsewhere.1 An analysis of the story of Cupid and Psyche has already appeared in another monograph.2 This new book wholly dedicated to performances and role plays in Apuleius is the outcome of a long-standing interest in performance theory as applied to this particular novel. Given that only a few Latin passages are translated, the book seems not to be directed at a general audience. F. begins with a very short overview of other scholars’ analyses of theatrical elements in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, and then changes to his own particular approach, which is not in the strict sense related to theatricality or even intertext with the dramatic genres, but based on semiotic-structuralist theory, concentrating on the “perspective of “roles” and “performances” on the discourse level” (p. 1). Underlying the whole study is the argument that the constant shifting of the roles played by the novel’s major characters is a result and indication of the novel’s key theme of metamorphosis. An element of his structuralistic ————— 1

2

The sections “From Friend to Unwitting Enemy: Aristomenes’ Tale of Socrates” (pp. 16– 35), “A Faithful Wife’s Revenge: The Servant’s Tale of Charite” (pp. 82–103), “The Ass as a Helper? The Ass’ Tale of the Miller’s Wife” (pp. 105–119) and “”Theater” and “Spectacle”: The Robber’s Tale of Trasyleon” (pp. 129–147) appeared respectively in CJ 95 (1999), 375–391, AJP 120 (1999), 601–619, Scholia 9 (2000), 66–78, Drama 8 (1999), 113–135. As an appendix in Handlung und Nebenhandlung: Theater, Metatheater und Gattungsbewusstsein in der roemischen Komoedie. Stuttgart: Metzler 1997.

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approach, too, is the identification of roles complementing each other, either by offering striking parallels, or by portraying the complete opposite. His concept of “roles” and “performances” is based on his own adaptation of a semiotic-structuralistic theory, Greimas’ actantial model, which he uses as a basic outline for his analysis.3 He accordingly focusses, as in his former publications, on characters playing “roles” in the story, either by transformations proper (as of Lucius into an ass) or by assuming disguises in order to deceive other characters. This book can thus perhaps be seen as a companion volume to Handlung und Nebenhandlung, in which F. analyses roles and performances in select Plautine comedies. In this second book his use of Greimas is however more explicitly noted as a starting point. Accordingly, F. offers a short introduction to Greimas’ theory, which though developed for the analysis of narrative, is also occasionally used to analyse drama. Greimas as a structuralistic semiotician offers a model in which all narrative plots may be analysed in their deep structure as the interaction between six different “actants”, characters within the narrative holding specific functions, namely the “sender”, the “receiver”, the “helper”, the “opponent” as well as the “object” or “subject”. The same character may be successively cast as several actants, changing with his role in the plot. F. applies this method by placing each character of the Metamorphoses as one of the six actants of the Greimasian model, and then seeing how their interaction changes, once their roles develop in the course of the narrative. In this context he gives his own definition of “role” as the “distinct features which the narrative endows the actors/characters with at any given point in the novel’s discourse” (p. 5), and “performance” as the “actions undertaken by the actors/characters in order to achieve the object of their goals/values.” (p. 7). A “role” can thus add meaning to the narrative, because a character acting out a certain role succumbs to certain expectations connected to that particular role. A “performance” is thus constituted of the actions a character performs whilst taking over a certain role. He also spends some time (p. 5ff.) on adapting Greimas’ jargon into his own. Basically he uses “plan” for any case in which actors are not playing a role, but act in their own self, whilst “plot or “scheme” is used by him for any actor disguising themselves or adapting a different persona from their own. ————— 3

A.J. GREIMAS: Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method. Translated by D. MCDOWELL, R. SCHLEIFER and A.A. VELIE. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.

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The reason for this toning-down of theory is F.’ hope that more “comprehensible” formulae prevent an overtheoretisation of his volume, which he tries to avoid. On the other hand, it creates some confusion about his terminology, and perhaps a more rigid adherence to technical terms would have prevented the occasional merging of theatrical terminology with his own theoretical terms, as e.g. when (p. 7) he argues that Thelyphron takes up another “role” (in Frangoulidis’ sense) by putting a “patch or “mask” on his nose, and thus conceals his deformed face.” Similarly, there is some confusion of the application of theatrical language with structuralistic terminology, e.g. when F. argues that, during the Festival of Laughter, “from a theatrical perspective, the representation of wineskins as valiant men may be interpreted as yet another mask or role”. (p. 52). Greimas uses equivalences in order to get at the deep structure of narrative, but F. (as he himself states, p. 9) is not interested in this. Instead he concentrates on “instances in which both Lucius and other [sic!] secondary characters in the novel act out roles assigned to them by the narrative.” (p. 9). In this case, the question arises why the author introduces a tool and then declines to use it. Greimas, interested in how narratives are similar on the level of deep structure, has to use his elaborate model in order to find the structural similarities. F. stops on the surface of the model. The interpretation thus remains on the surface, and perhaps F. would have got more out of his topic if he had taken the plunge and analysed the deep structure of the novel itself, too. This somewhat complex construction is then readily applied to some of the inset tales of the Metamorphoses. There is some justification in adapting a model of deception and role-playing when working on a novel which relies heavily on the tension provided by a character who is not at all what he seems, i.e. a human in the shape of an ass, and F. is certainly right in seeing disguises and similar plot lines in some inset tales, which also rely on deception. F. focusses in particular on the following episodes: Aristomenes’ Tale of Socrates (I.1), Thelyphron’s Tale of Thelyphron (I.2), and the Festival of Laughter (I.3) are classed together as “Unwittingly Successful Performances”, since all three cases offer stories involving witchcraft, and the “performances” of the three major characters are triggered by witchcraft. The following chapter concentrates on some stories of the Charite-complex, by analysing the Tale of Plotina (III.1) and the Servant’s Tale of Charite (II.2), both grouped together as “fatally successful performances”. The third chapter concentrates on “unsuccessful performances”, as in the Ass’ Tale of the Miller’s Wife

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(III.1), and the Tale of the Stepmother (II.2). Chapter four, on “man and animal”, concentrates on the Robber’s Tale of Thrasyleon and the events in the Theatre of Corinth in book 10. The final chapter (V) concentrates on Lucius’ Isiac initiation. F.’ distinction into “unintentional” and “intentional” performances – the former include the Tale of Aristomenes, the Tale of Thelyphron and the Laughter Festival, the latter form the majority of the disguised performances, e.g. Tlepolemus’ pretending to be Haimon or Charite’s deceiving Thrasyllus – is quite helpful. However, from his definition it is not quite clear what he understands by “successful” or “failing” performances, and his view of the ending of the novel, namely that ultimately all performances fail except Lucius’ as an Isiac devotee in book 11, would have profited greatly from a clarification of this particular point. For instance, there is a difference between Aristomenes’ ill-fated attempt to save his friend Socrates and Charite’s revenge exacted on the murderer of her husband. Both are however classified as “successful”. Since F. is following a structuralistic-taxonomic model, the bulk of his text consists of pointing out parallels between characters or their actions (“performances”). The section on the pantomime in book 10, for example, elucidates contrasts between the ass and Paris: both, he argues, are “betrothed”, but whilst the handsome Paris goes through with his marriage, the ugly ass refuses to “marry” the mass murderess. Some of his assumptions, however, e.g. that the pantomime re-enacts a marriage ceremonial, or that (p. 155) “The unexpected appearance of both boys and girls dancing the pyrrhic can be explained by the metaphoric association of the theme of love with war”, could have done with some backing up, since it is not clear whether these are his own observations, and whence he derives them, or even in which way they support his actantial analysis. A similar problem is attached to his analysis of the Festival of Laughter, which he analyses (in many respects interestingly) as a contrast to book 11. The Festival of Laughter reduces Lucius to tears, and should be contrasted with the eternal joy offered by Isis. F. argues against the ‘communis opinio’ of the festival as a scapegoat ritual (p. 51). In his point of view it becomes an integration ritual, where all participants engage in role-playing, with the difference between the characters being that Lucius plays his role unwittingly, whilst the other participants are aware of their role-playing. In this bare form, this seems unconvincing.

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Some applications of Greimas’ model are very interesting, such as the analysis of Aristomenes as the auctor of the plan to escape from Meroe. This turns Meroe into the opponent, Socrates into the receiver, the goal or object is to escape from her, and Aristomenes is at the same time the helper figure (p. 22). This kind of structure in Greimas is however only the starting point, not the result of the analysis. Greimas tries to find the underlying structure of narratives, and ways in which these basic characters or actants form their actions in reaction to each other. F. does not take this step. He contents himself with re-shifting the actantial model whenever the situation within the narrative changes. Thus, after the witches enter the room in which Aristomenes and Socrates sleep, F. reshuffles the actors (p. 24): “In the second situation all actors or characters assume new positions in the actantial structure: Meroe occupies the double position of the subject and reviewer, her object being to exact revenge on Socrates. Aristomenes could perhaps be regarded as filling the position of the opponent, yet his repeated use of verbs of seeing, video (1.12), aspexi (1.13), underlines his passive role, as he does nothing to prevent the witches from performing their sacrifice of the sleeping Socrates. This passivity is also reminiscent of the role Socrates originally intended to assume as spectator of the gladiatorial games. Meroe foreshadows Aristomenes’ subsequent replacement of Panthia in the role of helper, as she assigns him the role of burying Socrates when he dies.” Or further down: “On a broader level, Socrates’ slaughter may be read as the symbolic “butchering” of Aristomenes’ plan to save his friend.” – F. has an affinity for formulae, and, despite his hopes, a tendency to be too theoretical without offering an underlying interpretation. A structuralistic-taxonomic approach has some advantages, but the criticism which can be offered of this particular school, namely that it is too rigid in trying to polarise everything into a system of opposites, to find either absolute parallels or stark contrasts, may also be applied to F.’ approach. Some of the contrasts or parallels he finds are indeed striking, but others can appear decidedly forced. He often seems too deeply entangled in his schematic outline of a story, e.g. when he analyses Aristomenes’ burying of his friend Socrates’ body: “Under normal circumstances this would be considered one of the most pious acts of friendship, yet we know that Meroe spared Aristomenes’ love precisely so that he could perform this task (1.13). It can therefore be argued that he is

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merely acting out his role as the witches’ helper or Socrates’ opponent in the continuation of her revenge” (p. 33). Furthermore, some of his analyses seem to misrepresent the text in a significant way, e.g. p. 13 “The ass’ fear of the wild beasts in the arena leads to his refusal to have sex with the convict and explains the ensuing secret exit from the theater.” The same statement is repeated almost verbatim several times in chapter IV.2 (pp. 147–162). Apuleius however offers two further and perhaps more important reasons (10.34 at ego praeter pudorem obeundi publice concubitus, praeter contagium scelestae pollutaequae feminae, metu etiam mortis maxime cruciabar), and Lucius’ exit, though unobserved by the unwary keeper, is not “secret” (paulatim furtivum pedem proferens portam, quae proxima est, potitus iam cursu me celerrimo proripio). Besides, to understand the ass’ refusal to sleep with the murderess as an espousal of celibacy and rejection of the prototype of Paris (thus F. p. 160 and 165) could be seen as a strange interpretation of Lucius’ motives. The whole point of the Metamorphoses is that everybody is constantly shifting roles, and the adaptation of Greimas’ scheme to Lucius, as long as it only consists of identifying each character with one of the six actants, offers little progress in interpretation and reads more like a plot summary, e.g. (p. 6): “Lucius first appears in the role of traveler going to Thessaly on business, but is subsequently transformed into an ass, as a result of his unbounded interest in magic and his pursuit of slavish pleasures. His transformation into an animal through magic constitutes a new role assigned to him by the narrative. This differs considerably from subsequent roles, such as playing the miller’s human helper, which Lucius willingly assumes in the course of his asinine adventures (Book 9). The protagonist’s restoration to human form suggests the assumption of yet another role, as Lucius is entirely different from his earlier animal form. He then acts out the role of neophyte, as a priest first of Isis and later of her brother/consort Osiris. When the latter elects Lucius to the college of pastophori, his promotion within the clerical hierarchy may also be seen as a variation on his role as a simple priest. In this role as pastophor, Lucius exercizes both his religious and civic duties, proudly displaying his baldness and therefore making clear his role as an Isiac priest.” Greimas reduces all characters to one of six actants, and it is obvious from this passage that F., perhaps due to his reluctance to become over-technical, does not follow his model to the last degree. – Is the “role of the neophyte” that of the “sender” or the “receiver” in actantial terms?

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On the other hand, the structuralistic approach offers some considerable advantages. F.’ analysis is pointing out parallel elements and plotlines in the story. His analysis underlines the elaborate web of relations that Apuleius manages to draw from one story to the other, or the relationship between the portrayal of some characters either by setting them into parallels or contrasts with each other, offering some good insights into Apuleius’ methods in holding the plot together. This is the book’s strength. Nice for example is the parallel he draws between Meroe and the robbers, or the interpretation of Lucius’ repeated initiations as indicating his constant rebirth as an Isiac in contrast to the stress on death in the preceding 10 books (p. 163f.). Also the contrasting of the Festival of Laughter, where Lucius alone was ridiculed, with his status as an Isis priest, where he is integrated into a society, which as a whole group may be subject to ridicule (p. 174), enhances our understanding of the unity of the novel. The same goes for the main underlying concept, that the Metamorphoses consists of many tales of deception, many of which are written with the idea of complementing each other. F. draws attention to the ubiquitous element of disguise and deceit in the novel, and the fact that most disguises result in disaster, and work against the intention of the disguised. The underlying structure of the Golden Ass is metamorphosis, change of roles, and the recognition of this forms the strength of the book.

Abstracts Representing Time in Ancient Fiction BRACHT BRANHAM

It has been over forty years since Ian Watt argued in his persuasive and influential book that the novel was a cultural creation of the emerging English middle classes and that its salient formal feature was a new, more rigorous kind of realism — “formal realism.” By now his thesis has been repeatedly criticized on both logical and empirical grounds, but it still provides the most common point of reference for discussions of the origins of the novel. Watt’s claim that the novel is as uniquely English, at least in its origins, as it is distinctively modern in its methods still underlies the most ambitious attempts to revise or replace his account. Later refinements on Watt’s thesis have traced the novel back to other literary sources and areas of culture such as journalism or an assortment of popular and ephemeral forms (L.J. Davis, J.P. Hunter, W. B. Warner) or grounded his account more thoroughly in the evolution of pre-eighteenth century culture and society (M. McKeon). Even those scholars (like Reed and McKeon) who have acknowledged the inconvenient fact of novelistic fiction written in other languages in earlier centuries have balked at the idea that such fiction appears before the time of Cervantes. Now M.A. Doody has come along and cut the Gordian knot of origins by annulling the fundamental distinction between novelistic and other forms of fiction such as romance. With that old can of worms out of the way the history of the novel stretches right back to Chariton. What I would like to do here is to sketch an alternative Bakhtinian account of the genre that will do justice to the insights underlying the theses of both Watt and his critics, namely, that 1) something novel emerged in the fiction of the eighteenth century duly reflected in a new terminology (novel vs. romance) but that 2) these texts were far from being as unprecedented as the English department thesis suggests, since novelistic forms of fiction had appeared at least twice before, not only in Renaissance Spain but also in the Roman empire. While the varieties of fiction that appeared in the 18th

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century have become canonical examples of the genre of the novel in English, they do have a genealogy that can be traced back to antiquity, which illuminates what is distinctive about the novel as a form of discourse as well as what is and isn’t distinctively modern about it. As part of this genealogy, the ancient examples of novelistic fiction (e.g., Apuleius and Petronius) can be systematically or generically distinguished from the heroic romances written in Greek. In other words, novelistic fiction has been invented more than once and, while its earliest examples are still intimately related to romance and other pre-novelistic and oral forms of storytelling, they also provide interesting precedents for what have usually been considered some of the modern and early modern novel’s distinguishing features—such as contemporaneity and certain kinds of realism.

‘ … largely fictions …’ JAAP - JAN FLINTERMAN Among the extant works of Aelius Aristides, there are three texts (orr. 2–4) that answer the attack by Plato’s Socrates, in the Gorgias, on oratory and on the four leading statesmen of fifth-century Athens. This paper focuses on the constant harping on the fictional nature of Plato’s dialogues in these socalled Platonic orations, a portion of the argument that is epitomized in the characterization of the dialogues as ‘largely fictions’ (or. 3,586). The paper tries to locate Aristides’ observations on this issue within the tradition of anti-Platonic polemic, to determine their relationship to theorizing on the dialogue form among early-imperial Platonists, and to elucidate the functions of this line of reasoning in Aristides’ apologetic strategy. It argues that, for Aristides, identifying the dialogues as fictional compositions amounts to exposing the dialogue form as a pretence. In addition to clearing the way for his own apologetic project and to alerting his audience to the persuasive force of Plato’s use of the dialogue form, Aristides thus sharpens the contrast between his own way of handling the dispute with Plato and the philosopher’s polemical methods.

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Rhetoric and Irony in Chariton KONSTANTIN DOULAMIS

In the Greek novels there seem to be some straightforward connections between the style of the novels and contemporary rhetorical teaching, which have not yet been explored. The aim of this paper is to show how a comparison between examples of amatory rhetoric from the Greek novels and contemporary rhetorical treatises can help modern readers in their interpretation, by determining the style and tone of erotic discourse in the novels in a way that does not just rely on modern, subjective responses. The analysis focuses on a monologue from Chariton (namely Callirhoe’s lament, 3,10,4–8). By correlating the style-markers of the passage with those in rhetorical treatises of the period (mainly Demetrius, On Style, and also Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Demosthenes), the article aims to address the question of whether this passage was intended to be taken seriously or ironically, thus seeking to provide a contemporary basis for determining the tone of the erotic speech-making in Chariton. The paper concludes by discussing the likely readership and reception of Callirhoe.

Power of the Prude KATHARINE HAYNES

This paper functions as an attempt to explain the prominence of the heroines in the texts of the five canonical Greek Novels of Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesos, Achilles Tatius, Longos and Heliodoros. This paper utilises the anthropological notion of ‘woman as sign’ to postulate the use of the heroines as symbols of the cultural integrity and superiority of the Greek elites under the Roman Empire. Comparanda such as early Christian texts are introduced to establish the novelistic heroines’ conventionality, and the manner in which they act to confirm male subjectivity. Their interactions with figures such as the barbarian male demonstrate their countercultural tendencies as they appropriate eloquence, the defining characteristic of Hellenic male culture, in order to preserve their chastity. Their asymmetrical relationship with the deliberately more passive heroes acts to destabilise the image of marriage as symbol of political stability; an image routinely deployed in Imperial iconography. Rather than prudery, their behaviour is

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better coded as the subliminally provocative response of the Greek elites to Roman ‘domination’. Clitophon the Moichos SAUNDRA SCHW ARTZ

The rhetorical qualities of Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon are often noted; this article argues that the novel exhibits an equally legalistic orientation. The trials in Ephesus that dominate the novel’s final two books are a sustained variation on the trial scene, an important topos in the Greek novels. The ambiguous relationship of Clitophon and Melite sets in motion a complex legal dilemma. The narrative framework in which the trial scenes are embedded allows the reader to assess the ‘truthfulness’ of the inset speeches and the efficacy of the law.

Religious Narratives and Religious Themes in the Novels of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus MARGARET EDSALL

References to religious narratives in the Greek novel elucidate the relationship between the novel and religion. Analyses show that Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus treat religious themes differently. Heliodorus offers a nostalgic view of religion, connected with his edifying reinterpretation of the love story, and Achilles Tatius offers an ironical view, connected with his “pastiche.” Perhaps religious themes go beyond the boundaries of fiction and reassert paganism in a Christianizing world. Ironically, Achilles Tatius’ treatment appealed to Christians. On the other hand, Heliodorus’ treatment reveals the mind of a pagan about to convert: after writing in reaction to Christianity, Heliodorus became Christian.

Il corpo nel romanzo di Achille Tazio PATRIZIA LIVIABELLA FURIANI

Questo lavoro intende mostrare come il romanzo di Achille Tazio, oltre ad attingere alle fonti letterarie e mitologiche di cui si nutre l’immaginario auto-

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riale e collettivo d'età ellenistico-imperiale, affondi le sue radici nella realtà storica, tormentata e insicura, lacerata da opposizioni irrisolte (i liberi~gli schiavi; i maschi~le femmine; i Greci~i barbari), del tempo in cui visse l’Autore. Esso, utilizzando una prospettiva socio-antropologica, prende in esame il tema del corpo, che viene analizzato nelle sue ambiguità, prima fra tutte la collocazione tra natura e cultura. Il denominatore comune delle modificazioni subite dal corpo è infatti il cambiamento imposto ad esso dalla cultura. Questo cambiamento conferisce un’attrattiva in più al mondo romanzesco, in quanto consente la sovrapposizione a una realtà prima, trita e banale, di una realtà seconda ribelle alle convenzioni umane, parto di una fantasia che sembra delirare, ma che in effetti si nutre della realtà storica, innovatrice e perplessa, del tempo in cui visse Achille Tazio.

Longus in the Mir Istkusstva EDMUND P . CUEVA In 1958 Marc Chagall was asked to design the scenery for a performance of Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, which had been originally presented by the Ballet Russe in 1912. It is believed that Chagall had received the inspiration for his Opéra de Paris production and for the “color-drenched” illustrations of Tériade's Daphnis et Chloé from his trips to Greece with his wife Madame Valentina. I argue in this paper that although Chagall was thoroughly enthralled by Greece, he nevertheless had been introduced to Longus’ novel by his former teacher Léon Bakst while a student at the Svanseva School in St. Petersburg. It was Bakst, moreover, who not only helped form Chagall’s conception of art and of the novel, but he was also the person who had initially designed the scenery for Ravel’s 1912 production. Ravel, in fact, had no special attraction to Greek subjects. It is assumed that he was familiar with Amyot’s translation and that he was acquainted with the artistic illustrations of the novel by Pierre Bonnard and Aristide Maillol. It has also been speculated that Ravel may have been inspired more by Stéphane Mallarmé’s L’Après-Midi d’un Faune than by Longus in his scoring of the ballet. It was mere “coincidence” that Longus became the subject of one of Ravel’s most spectacular creations; it had been offered to him as a project by Serge Diaghilev, the impresario of the Ballet Russe.

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The Cinematic Nature of the Opening Scene of Heliodoros’ Aithiopika MARTIN M . W INKLER This paper presents a new approach to Heliodoros’ Aithiopika. To demonstrate the cinematic nature of the novel’s opening, its first part translates Heliod. 1,1–2 into a film script and discusses the text in analogy to modern mystery films and thrillers. It then turns to the opening scenes of two famous films, Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil (1958) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). In a close examination of the three opening scenes’ content and style, the paper aims to show that Heliodoros, Welles, and Hitchcock all share a fundamentally similar approach to drawing their audiences into an irresistible mystery. A final part argues that the different account of the opening scene given in Book Five of the Aithiopika is analogous to the function of flashbacks in film.

Keeping Apuleius In The Picture PAULA JAMES

This article explores common motifs and narrative strategies which appear in the work of the second century CE Latin author, Apuleius, and the twentieth century Spanish film director Luis Buñuel. The use of narration to delay nutrition is a vital starting point for the comparative analysis. The focus of both these ‘texts’ makes them appropriate (though in some senses arbitrary) anchors in what could eventually and fruitfully develop into a wide-ranging discussion: i.e. the extent and significance of culinary metaphors in literary and cinematic narratives within a broad cultural spectrum. Uses and abuses of food and food consumption in both Apuleius and Buñuel intensify the bizarre atmospheres of the stories. By means of diversionary and supernatural tales my chosen storytellers encourage their audiences to embrace credulity and to question the reality of appearances and consequently they subvert faith in the real world. In their hands magic and the surreal is an experimental strategy for producing a deeper insight into custom and society, not so much a message as an experience for the reader and the viewer, and one which shakes complacency about the solidity of social structures and physical forms.

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Quis ille Asinus aureus? A . P . BITEL Since the early history of its transmission, not one, but two different titles, have been attested for Apuleius’ story of Lucius’ extraordinary adventures: Metamorphoses and Asinus aureus. This raises two separate, but related types of question: what was the original title which designated Apuleius’ text, and what might that title mean? While both received titles have had their respective champions, recent scholarship has suggested that the original title may have been double; and that it may have referred either to the long ears, or to the Sethian aspect, of the asinine protagonist. This paper first surveys and extends these lines of enquiry, and then throws several new interpretative balls into the air, arguing for chromatic, monetary, metallurgical, and entomological readings of the title. These readings are as much a response to Apuleius’ text as to his title; for it is the text which dramatises and makes sense of its otherwise enigmatic title, even as the title directs the reader’s attention to certain motifs in the text which might otherwise have seemed less significant. In tracing the different semantic relationships that develop between title and text, I shall demonstrate that the meaning of Apuleius’ title is as riddlingly elusive and infuriatingly multiple as the identity of the prologue’s ego (quis ille?).

Apuleius, Aelius Aristides and Religious Autobiography S.J. HARRISON This paper argues that Lucius’ narrative of religious conversion in Metamorphoses 11 uses and parodies in its detailed comic presentation of a personal religious testament the similar but seriously presented narrative of Aelius Aristides’ Sacred Tales. In the familiar tradition of sophistic attacks on rivals, Apuleius is targeting a famous contemporary intellectual and his selfimportant self-presentation as a specially privileged religious figure. Since the Sacred Tales were published at some point between A.D. 171 and A.D. 176, this relationship between the two texts would give a late date for the Metamorphoses.

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Between Fiction and Reality WERNER RIESS

The paper tries to assess the historical authenticity of scenes of violence, caused by robbers, in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. In order to find out how reliable these fictional scenes are, the method of cultural cross comparison is used to draw a historical tableau with which Apuleius’ text can be compared. It is in the very passages where the Golden Ass differs most strikingly from reality where Apuleius’ own intentions can be detected. Considerations concerning the phenomenon of fictionality, as practised in ancient times, lead to the conclusion that the robbers do not only fulfil their traditional narrative functions. They have been attributed additional semantic and allegorical meanings: As symbols of danger and the dark side of the world, they show, at least at the actor-level, how much the world needs redemption.

History into fiction ROGER BECK

The article explores the creation of certain ‘fictions’ within the cult of Mithras during its formative years in the late first century CE. These fictions include both mythic narratives about the god and their replication in ritual performance. The article argues that, in part, these fictions were generated out of historical (or pseudo-historical) stories and fantasies of the Neronian age, in particular (1) stories of events in both Italy and the orient culminating in the coronation of Tiridates of Armenia by Nero in Rome, and (2) the heliomania of the times, focused on, and in some measure orchestrated by, the emperor himself.

La réception du Roman d’Alexandre à Byzance CORINNE JOUANNO

Pseudo-Callisthenes’ popularity is testified by a rich and complex textual tradition. A complete cycle of illustrations was probably attached to the Romance at an early date; nevertheless, the ascension episode was the only one to give rise to extensive iconographic exploitation. Pseudo-Callisthenes’

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literary influence was more many-sided, although it has often been overestimated: quotations and imitations appear in works which, if of a very different character, belong nearly all to popular literature: fictional narrative, lives of saints, chronicles – where the Pseudo-Callisthenes was particularly influential, in a direct or indirect way. By studying these testimonia, we better grasp how much popular each branch of the Romance was, and it appears that the oldest recension (a) was not almost completely supplanted by subsequent rewritings, as often alleged.

‘True Histories’ and ‘Old Wives’ Tales’ ROBERT H . F . CARVER Taking Margaret Anne Doody’s The True Story of the Novel as its point of departure, the article argues that it is only by discriminating between different manifestations of fiction – by exploring discontinuities as well as continuities – that we can hope to disentangle the genealogy of the Novel. Following an examination of Renaissance diatribes against medieval romance and Milesian tales with a survey of the Menippean, encyclopaedic, and epideictic fictions that the Humanists favoured, it concludes that one of the main impetuses in the development of the modern Novel was the recovery and promotion of Heliodorus’ Aethiopica which allowed romance to be redeemed as prose-epic.

The Reception and Use of Petronius HUGH MCELROY

Petronius’ suicide nearly two thousand years ago does not seem to have killed his literary career. In the last thousand years forgeries purporting to be the lost portions of the Satyrica have been published and discredited. In addition to works purporting to be by the author of the Satyrica numerous works whose authors use the name Petronius or themes from his work to slander, moralize, satirize, or scandalize have been published each using some, often more than one, aspect of Petronius’ life and work as inspiration and motivation. From the twelfth-century Petronius Redivivus and the libelous Memoirs of the Present Countess of Derby of 1797 to the 1966

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guide to ‘low-life’ New York, New York Unexpurgated, all of the imitations and forgeries explicitly or implicitly show their debt to Petronius through choice of subject matter and emphasis. This article examines how each imitation or forgery, whether convincing as the work of Nero's Arbiter Elegantiae or not, attempts to be ‘Petronian’ and on what criteria some of them stand or fall.

Indices Index locorum∗ Achilles Tatius 1,11, 3 96 5,19, 6 102 6,16, 4–6 77 6,21, 1–2 84 7, 7–16 100 Aelius Aristides Or. 2, 14 45 Or. 2, 262 41 Or. 2, 72 38 Or. 3, 568 37 Or. 3, 616 45 Or. 3, 348–351 42 Or. 4, 22f. 37 Or. 4, 6 38 Or. 47, 46–49 256 Apuleius flor. 18, 39 248 met. 1, 1, 4 215 met. 1, 6, 1 214 met. 1, 24, 3 225 met. 2, 12, 5 257; 276 met. 3, 11, 5 224 met. 3, 25, 1 211 met. 4, 16, 2 229 met. 6, 13, 3 229 met. 6, 25, 1 217 met. 6, 28, 6 223 met. 7, 5, 4–6 269 met. 7, 13, 6 223 met. 7, 15, 3 211 met. 8, 8, 1 214 met. 9, 10, 1 223

met. 10, 18, 4 224 met. 11, 27, 7 217 met. 11, 27, 9 276 met. 11, 30, 5 196 Augustinus civ. 18, 18 210 Barlaam et Joasaph 6, 41–42 307 Chariton 1, 14, 9 77 3, 10, 4–8 57 5, 6, 7–5, 7, 10 66 5, 7, 10 65 6, 5, 6 83 8, 1, 4 95 Cicero Part. Or. 20 178 Heliodorus 5, 33 180 Kalligone PSI 981, 35ff. 83 Libanius Or. 11, 72–77 307 Longus 4, 14, 1 83 Petronius 50, 5–6 230 Philostratus Ep. 73 39 Photius Bibl. Cod. 166 [112a] 96 Plautus Asin. 6 f. 215

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This index offers only a selection of passages discussed.

400

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Vulg. Ephes. 5, 28–29 78

Statius Theb. 1, 720 f. 298 Tacitus ann. 15, 24–31 292

General index Achilles Tatius 9 appearance and social status in – 137 body and soul in – 134 emphasis on youth 135 illusion and reality 145 narrative strategy 110 nature and culture in – 136 religious themes in – 119 seriousness and comedy in – 142 adultery in Ancient Greek novel 98 adultery laws 103 adultery mimes 99 Aelius Aristides dating of Hieroi Logoi 247 the “Platonic orations” 33 Aggadah 380 Agrippa von Nettesheim, H.C. 332 Albinus 49 Alexander, S. 152; 155 Alexandre l’ascension d’- 305 allegoresis 338 Allen, T.W. 301 allusion 257 Alvares, J. 56 Amadís de Gaula 342 Amyot, J. 155 Ancient Greek novel chastity in – 76 eloquence in – 83 heroes’ behaviour in – 87 heroine and barbarian male in – 82 legal realia in – 100; 110 ancient Jewish narrative

(pseudo-)historicity 380 the corpus 381 Anderson, G. 67 anti-Platonic polemic 33; 47 in Athenaeus 48 Apuleius 2; 9; 20 ‘entomological subtext’ of the Met. 231 autobiographical elements in the Met. 276 book 11 of the Met. 220; 245; 249; 271; 273 carnevalesque scenes in the Met. 272 dating of the Met. 248 double title of his novel 208; 212 Erasmus on – 333 function of the robbers in the Met. 272 in the Middle Ages 326 philosophus platonicus 275 reality & fictionality in the Met. 261 Risus festival 201 violence in the Met. 266; 269 aretalogi 120 aretalogies 116 Ariosto Orlando furioso 343 Arrowsmith, W. 375 ars est celare artem 174; 177 Ascham, Roger 330 Asclepius 253 Asinus aureus meaning(s) of – 212; 218 title of Apuleius’ novel See also Apuleius

I NDI CES

ass-tales 210 Astbury, R. 213 audience as “Peeping Tom” 176 different types of – for Chariton 69 expectation 96. See also reader expectations thwarted 97 intended – of Ancient Greek novel See also reader role of –, in Buñuel and Apuleius 189 Roman - of Apuleius’ Met. 249; 278 suspense 172; 179 Bakhtin, M.M. 3–30; 342 Ballet Russe 153 Barber, B. 33 Bartsch, S. 56 Baslez, M.-F. 137 Behr, C.A. 35; 247 Bildungsroman 19 Billault, A. 18; 55; 142; 146 Bodel, J. 370 Bohm-Duchen, M. 153 Boiardo Orlando innamorato 343 Boroughs, R. 374 Bowersock, G.W. 29; 114; 146; 284; 376 Bowie, E.L. 63; 69; 250 Brancacci, A. 34 Bühler, W. 164 Buñuel and Spanish picaresque novel 188 eating trope in – 194 Exterminating Angel 195 parody in – 195 The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie 186 The Milky Way 188 The Phantom of Liberty 188; 194 the surreal in – 190 Viridiana 194 Canfora, L. 146 Carnival 201

401

carnivalization 27 Carver, R.H.F. 344 Cave, T. 339; 341 Cervantes, Miguel de 327; 345 Champlin, E. 248 Chariton religious themes in – 117 Clark, G. 80 Cocteau, J. 159 Coleman, D.G. 340 Coleman, K. 296 Commodus 297 Connors, C.M. 230; 356; 376 Conte, G.B. 56 conversion 246; 247 ‘Corinthian bronze’ 230 Crespelle, J.-P. 152; 155 crime historical study of – 261 Crouch, K. 370 cultural cross-comparison 267 Cumont, F. 291 D’Arms, J.H. 370 Davis, L.J. 5 declamations 98; 105 deinotês 60; 64 Demetrius 60 deviant behaviour sociology of – 261 Diaghilev, S. 153; 156 Dieterich, A. 284 Digenes Akrites 319 Dillon, J.M. 51 Diophanes 256 Don Quixote 327; 344 Doody, M.A. 1; 5; 73; 82; 206; 323; 324; 341; 342; 344; 347 Döpp, S. 27 Dowden, K. 193 dreams 204 divine instructions 256 in Achilles Tatius 139 nightmares 187 Durgnat, R. 204 Eco, U. 241 Edmundson, J. 297

402

Edwards, G. 196; 199 Egger, B. 83; 100; 138 Eisenberg, D. 342 Eisenstein, S. 163 Elsom, H. 204 Emerson, C. 8 enargeia / evidentia 177 epic and novel 342 epiphany reports 116 Erasmus 332 Naufragium / ‘The Shipwreck’ 335 Eros in Chariton 55 èthopoiia 49 exairesthai 64 Fellini Satyricon 350 Festugière A.-J. 245 Fetterly, J. 78 fiction and history 145 fictional device eidôlopoiia 40 fictional discourse 262 fictionality awareness of – in antiquity 264 contract of – 262 film noir 162 flashback 180 from multiple points of view 181 flavus 221 Fokine, M. 156 food and fasting in Apuleius’ novel 192 in the novel 206 forceful style 60 Forcione, A.K. 344 Forte, B. 87 Foucault, M. 77; 93 Frye, N. 5 Fuentes, V. 189 Fusillo, M. 57; 101; 114; 142 Geffcken, J. 48

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gender mediating factor 74 Genette, G. 224; 263 Goldhill, S. 76 Goodman, N. 2 Gow, G. 196 Gowers, E. 204 Grafton, A. 354; 360 Greek sophists in Roman Empire 250 Grimal, P. 146 Grottanelli, C. 139 Grube, G.M.A. 64 Hägg, T. 69; 164; 344 Hani, J. 220 Hardy, T. Far From the Madding Crowd 170 Tess of d’Urbervilles 75 The Mayor of Casterbridge 169 Harrison, S.J. 274 Hawks, H. 163 Heath, J.R. 188; 193; 206 Hebrew Bible 379 Heliodorus Renaissance reception of – 344 Hernández Lara, C. 55 Hernandez Satyricon 351 heroine 75 Hitchcock, Alfred 163 Psycho 162; 174 Hunter, J.P. 5; 323 Hunter, R. 56 iconographie du Roman d’Alexandre 303 Ife, B.W. 330 imaginary conversations 33; 40 Imperial iconography 88 initiation 253 insects 231; 233; 234; 235; 236; 237; 239; 240; 241 ancient theories of – 233 and metamorphosis 234 Iser, W. 263 Isis/Osiris 253 James, P. 218; 224

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Kahn, C. 32 Kenney, E.J. 229 Kidwell, C. 339 Kinder, M. 188 Konstan, D. 18 Kuch, H. 147 Ladin, J. 8 Laes, C. 357; 360 lament 57 Laplace, M. 55 Larner, G. 158 Lateiner, D. 141 Lazarillo de Tormes 341 légende d’Alexandre christianisée 310 légendes de fondation 308 Lent 197 Lenz, F.W. 36 Létoublon, F. 137 Lettre à l’empereur Théophile 312 Levinson, A. 156 Lévi-Strauss, C. 74 Lewis, C.S. 336; 339 Lifar, S. 156 Longus 17 Lucianic corpus 214 Lucianus Erasmus and More on – 332 Lyly, John Euphues. The Anatomy of Wyt 339 Lysias 99 MacDonald, M.Y. 80 Malalas 312 Martin, R. 220 martyrologies 116 Mason, H.J. 250 McKeon, M. 5; 322 Medvedev, P.N. 3 Meijering, R. 40 Mellen, J. 190 Merkelbach, R. 73; 114; 283 metamorphoses literal and metaphorical, in Apuleius’ Met. 209 metaphor 140

403

counterfeit coinage 230 legal imagery 95 culinary 185 Meyer, F. 152 Midrashim 380 mimesis 266 in Aristoteles 47 miracle stories 115 Mithras and Sol 285 Mithras stories in monumental art 285 Momigliano, A. 33 Montesquieu Lettres Persanes 272 More, Thomas 332 Utopia 335 Morgan, J.R. 88; 164; 178 Morson, S. 8 mystery fiction 161 mystery films 171 myth 297 re-enactment of – in the arena 296; 297 names significant – 233 narration and nutrition 185; 194 embedded tales in Apuleius and Buñuel 200 multiple levels of – 202 narrating “I” in Achilles Tatius 142 narrative “history – myth – plasma” 43 transformation of – in the crucible of religion 284; 292 visual storytelling 162 Nectanebus 312 Nelson, W. 337 Nero 293 equated with the Sun god 294 novella 331; 341 Orenstein, A. 153 Osiris 255 Paglia, C. 139

404

Pamphile 231 papyri records of criminal offences 267 parody 248; 274 Pernot, L. 35 Perpetua 79 Petronius 2; 20; 23; 197; 204 and Oscar Wilde 374 in the Middle Ages 326 Nodot’s fragments 357 Saturnalian motifs in – 26 Petronius Redivivus 355 and New York Unexpurgated 361 and The Great Gatsby 352 forgery 352 imitation 364 Phaedrus fables 210 picaresque novel hunger in – 206 Pinciano, Alonso López 344 Plato literary appreciation of – in 2nd/3rd cent. A.D. 38 Plautus Asinaria 211 poetic licence 42 Polaszek, E. 139 Polycarpus 128 Pomponius Asina 211 Proclus 51 prosôpopoiia 65 Protesilaus 29 Prüfungsroman 16 ps. Lucianus Onos 216 pseudepigraphy 354 Pseudo-Callisthenes 303 manuscripts 301; 320 Pseudo-Methodius 320 Psyche 232; 238 Rabelais, François 339 reader ‘second reader’ 271 ‘resistant –’ 78

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female – identification 79 privileged knowledge of – 98 response 69; 117; 118 See also audience Reardon, B.P. 57; 68; 142 réécriture 321 repetition in Buñuel and Apuleius 192 Richardson, S. Pamela 75 Riley, E.C. 346 Roman d’Alexandre dans la polémique chrétiennepaïenne 309 et hagiographie 313 Rosenbaum, J. 189; 191; 196; 205 Ruiz Montero, C. 56; 59; 146 Russell, D.A. 105; 110 Salisbury, J.E. 80 Samuels, C.T. 190 Sannazaro Arcadia 338 Sarapis 254 satire 272; 336 Saturnalia 26 Scaliger, Julius Caesar 344 Scarcella, A.M. 13; 55; 146 Schlam, C.C. 232 Schmeling, G. 352 Schmidt, K. 48 Schmidt, V.M. 305 Searle, J.R. 262 Seroff, V.I. 153 Seth/Typhon 220 Settis Frugoni, C. 305 Shumate, N.C. 246 Sidney, Sir Philip New Arcadia 345 Simon, J. 190 Smith, W.S. 257 social climbing 370–371 Socratic dialogue 32 Sohlberg, D. 35 Sophianos, D. 306 Stephens, S.A. 63 Stephens, W. 344

I NDI CES

Stevenson, R.L. Kidnapped 169 Stolz, W. 360 Stuckey, J.H. 351; 375 Sturges, J. 163 subscriptiones of Sallustius in ms. of Apuleius’ Met. 209 Sullivan, J.P. 362; 364 surrealism 203 suspense 172; 179 Swain, S. 29; 82 2'4"!2ƒ76 Talmudim 380 Tarrant, H. 51 Thecla 79; 82 Thrasyllus 214 Tiridates of Armenia journey to Rome 284; 291 title antiphrastic function of – 224 Todorov, T. 3 Toohey, P. 56 tragic irony 67 Trahoulia, N. 305 travesty in Achilles Tatius 144 Trimalchio 27 Tynyanof, I. 4 Van Mal - Maeder, D. 196

405

Varro double titles of satires 213 Menippeae 211 Vidal, A.S. 188; 203 Vives, Juan Luis 329 Veritas fucata ... / ‘Truth falsified ...’ 336 Vlastos, G. 32 Voloshinov, V.N. 3 Warning, R. 262 Watt, I. 1; 322 Weinreich, O. 164 Weiss, C.G. 247 Welles, Orson Touch of Evil 162; 172 Wesseling, B. 63; 69 Wiersma, S. 138 Wilson, D. de A. 346 Winkler, J.J. 196; 210; 211; 215; 220; 245; 273 women in Achilles Tatius 138 Wood, R. 175 Wu, H.H. 200 Wyke, M. 137; 140 Wyler, William Ben-Hur 172 Xenophon Ephes. religious themes in – 117 Xyngopoulos, A. 304