Ancient Narrative Volume 2 (2002)
ANCIENT NARRATIVE Editorial Board Maaike Zimmerman, University of Groningen Gareth Schmeling, University of Florida, Gainesville Heinz Hofmann, Universität Tübingen Stephen Harrison, Corpus Christi College, Oxford Costas Panayotakis (review editor), University of Glasgow Advisory Board Jean Alvares, Montclair State University Alain Billault, Université Jean Moulin, Lyon III Ewen Bowie, Corpus Christi College, Oxford Jan Bremmer, University of Groningen Ken Dowden, University of Birmingham Ben Hijmans, Emeritus of Classics, University of Groningen Ronald Hock, University of Southern California, Los Angeles Niklas Holzberg, Universität München Irene de Jong, University of Amsterdam Bernhard Kytzler, University of Natal, Durban John Morgan, University of Wales, Swansea Ruurd Nauta, University of Groningen Rudi van der Paardt, University of Leiden Costas Panayotakis, University of Glasgow Stelios Panayotakis, University of Groningen Judith Perkins, Saint Joseph College, West Hartford Bryan Reardon, Professor Emeritus of Classics, University of California, Irvine James Tatum, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire Alfons Wouters, University of Leuven Subscriptions Barkhuis Zuurstukken 37 9761 KP Eelde the Netherlands Tel. +31 50 3080936 Fax +31 50 3080934
[email protected] www.ancientnarrative.com
Ancient Narrative Volume 2 (2002)
BARKHUIS
&
THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GRONINGEN GRONINGEN
2003
Graphical design: Barkhuis Printed by: Drukkerij Giethoorn ten Brink ISSN 1568 3540 ISBN 90 807390 4 9
Table of contents Editorial note
VII
Articles JEAN ALVARES Utopian Themes in Three Greek Romances
1
MARIO ANDREASSI Il mimo tra ‘consumo’ e ‘letteratura’: Charition e Moicheutria
30
EWEN BOWIE The chronology of the earlier Greek novels since B.E. Perry: revisions and precisions
47
NINA V. BRAGINSKAIA From the Marginals to the Center: Olga Freidenberg’s Works on the Greek Novel
64
GOTTSKÁLK JENSSON The Satyrica of Petronius as a Roman Palimpsest
86
MAAIKE ZIMMERMAN Latinising the Novel. Scholarship since Perry on Greek ‘models’ and Roman (re-)creations
123
STEPHEN HARRISON Constructing Apuleius: The Emergence of a Literary Artist
143
WARREN S. SMITH, BAYNARD WOODS Tale of Aristomenes: Declamation in a Platonic Mode
172
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TA B L E O F C O NT E N TS
Bibliography NINA V. BRAGINSKAIA Ancient Novel and Prose Fiction: Bibliography of Translations, Commentaries and Studies by Russian Scholars.
194
Reviews M. ZIMMERMAN,
Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses, Book X. Text, Introduction and Commentary. Reviewed by Ellen Finkelpearl.
240
A. KAHANE, A. LAIRD (eds.): A Companion to the Prologue to Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. Reviewed by Luca Graverini.
251
GIOVANNI REALE, Botticelli. La “Primavera” o le “Nozze di Filologia e Mercurio”? Rilettura di carattere filosofico ed ermeneutico del capolavoro di Botticelli con la prima presentazione analitica dei personaggi e dei particolari simbolici. Reviewed by Ilaria Ramelli. 263 Werner Riess: Apuleius und die Räuber: ein Beitrag zur historischen Kriminalitätsforschung. Reviewed by Brent D. Shaw.
268
Abstracts
280
Indices
287
Index locorum
287
General index
288
Editorial note The editors herewith present the second volume of Ancient Narrative, in which the articles and reviews that were pre-published in electronic version on the website of our journal during 2002, are collected and printed. Our sincere thanks go to all those who contributed to this volume: the authors, and the members of the advisory board whose thorough readings of and suggestions on earlier versions of the papers presented here have been of invaluable help in shaping these final publications. We also thank those readers who have e-mailed the authors with remarks and suggestions while the papers were on the AN website. Here we would like to emphasize that pre-publication on the website of Ancient Narrative aims at encouraging discussion with colleagues and specialists. AN should in this way function as a kind of continuous conference. Authors and readers alike may profit from the discussions, contacts, and suggestions resulting from the pre-publications on the website. We feel that too few of our readers and subscribers are as yet aware of this aspect of Ancient Narrative, and we encourage all to accept the invitation to e-mail the authors of website papers. In order to demonstrate the advantage of AN as a medium for online presentation and discussion of papers before final publication, a set of papers on ‘The Ancient Novel since Perry’ was pre-published on the website of AN in November-December 2002. These papers were meant to function as starting points for a panel discussion at the Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association in January 2003, in New Orleans. The session was organized and presided by Gareth Schmeling. Those who attended it had had the opportunity to read the complete papers on the AN website, and at the panel session the authors only presented short summaries of their papers. This allowed for much more time for discussion. Two respondents, Alain Billault and Antonio Stramaglia, had been invited to open the discussion. Three of these papers (by Bowie, Harrison, and Zimmerman) are now published in the present volume. Given the theme of the panel discussion, it was obvious that all three papers were to deal predominantly with the history of scholarship (since Perry) on the ancient novels. It is a happy coincidence that two more
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contributions in this volume, each in their own way, deal with the history of scholarship. One is by Jensson, who, besides pleading for a re-opening of the question of the Greek background of Petronius’ Satyrica, offers an overview of the approaches to this topic by classical scholars of the 19th and 20th centuries. The other one is by Nina Braginskaia; this article is about the Russian scholar Olga Freidenberg, whose impressive studies on the ancient novels had hitherto sadly remained unknown to scholars in Western Europe. Olga Freidenberg worked in isolation, and Braginskaia’s paper is, among other things, a passionate plea for opening up and broadening communication between Eastern and Western European scholarship. The editors are convinced that a medium such as Ancient Narrative could and should be of great help in promoting such communication. The previous remarks on the functioning of Ancient Narrative in general have led to the highlighting of some of the contributions to this volume. It is, we think, not necessary to summarize all articles further, and we refer our readers to the abstracts and indexes at the end of the book. As has been announced on our website, we have changed our method of publication: Ancient Narrative no longer appears in distinct electronic issues, but articles which have been accepted are published on the website as soon as they have gone through the process of peerreview and subsequent revision by the authors. They remain for at least two or three months on the website; during this period, readers are welcome to e-mail the authors for discussion and suggestions. Every autumn the articles which have figured on the AN website over the past year, appear, revised one more time by the authors, in print in the annual volumes, together with the year’s book reviews and shorter notices. Of course, theme-oriented issues of AN will continue to be published on the website as separate issues of combined sets of articles; these are later printed in the separate series of AN Supplementa. But the opportunity to enter discussion as long as the papers of these theme-oriented issues are on the website remains the same as indicated above for the regular website-publications. The editors. Autumn 2003
Utopian Themes in Three Greek Romances1 J EAN A LVARES Montclair State University
Among scholars of Classics the study of utopian themes in the Greco-Roman world tends to focus on those ideal states imagined by philosophers like Plato or Zeno, utopian novellas such as those of Iambulus and Euhemerus; those near-utopias of the legendary past imaged by Plutarch and Dio of Prusa, the primitive or mythical paradise appearing in Hesiod’s Golden Age and among Homer’s Ethiopians and Pindar’s Hyperboreans, plus the comic utopias of Aristophanes and other satirists.2 But the wider field of current utopian studies also considers the ideal and utopian themes found in an extensive variety of materials, as well as those ideal elements which exist in even the most naturalistic literary work, if only ironically or in displaced form. The Greek romances are often called ideal, but a fuller description of their ideal dimensions needs to be presented beyond the usual references to the couple’s status as aristocrats, their idyllic love, fidelity and enjoyment of the happy end. For example, one might consider the full ideological significance of the terms in which the romance’s ideal dimensions are conceived, or how these ideal elements relate to a long and complex tradition of idealistic images found within literature, myth and religion, and thereby provide further layers of meaning. Here I shall first set out some critical methods I have used, and then give the preliminaries of such a more complete description of idealistic images, motifs and themes mentioned above, concentrating on the romances of Chariton, Longus and Heliodorus. An understanding of these utopian themes, their presence and function within these texts, can better illuminate their full ————— 1
2
This is a considerably expanded version of the paper I gave at the International Conference on the Novel (ICAN 2000) at Groningen, Wednesday, July 26, 2000. For accounts of the Greek utopia see Ferguson (1975); Günther & Müller (1988); Giangrande (1976); Clay & Purvis (1999) 1–51; Dawson (1992).
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reception by their readers, as well as add details pertaining to their era’s intellectual and ideological contexts and their rôle in the process of historical change. For those interested in teaching the ancient novel in a wider literary and humanistic context, these investigations can help connect the ancient Greek romances to later medieval romantic traditions and other presentations of ideal environments. This essay is a prolegomenon to a longer study, and thus is, like this project, to a certain degree experimental; I have utilized and combined methodologies less common to standard Classics scholarship in order to open further avenues for reading and interpretation and for the refinement of these methods. The first approach I use is best called myth-symbolic criticism, which postulates that all artistic productions are extensively informed by preexisting structures of meaning, which include images and narratives. These building-blocks are often referred to as archetypes, although there is nothing mystical à la Jung about them. Since mythology, if not quite a total system of symbolic thought, is certainly a structured symbolizing activity,3 myths, the earlier and more ‘primitive’ the better, are particularly useful for showing the most basic forms of these archetypes, since these narratives are less displaced by later concerns for realism and conventional morality. Scholars of myth and folktale commonly acknowledge the existence of ‘story types’ such as the Quest, and these have been fairly extensively catalogued.4 In common with the structuralists, myth critics understand that forms of imaginative production (including literature) grow out of inherent ways of thinking about details of the world, human life and its needs, conflicts and contradictions. And just as forms of houses and tools have been refined over generations, so certain ‘archetypal’ story patterns, themes, characters and so forth have evolved with the expressive capacity to contain and communicate a culture’s thoughts about the universe and human life within it. The patterns of narrative and image found within formal literature are related to, but not reducible to, their analogs found in myth, and scholars who focus on the use of such archetypes in literature must remain aware of the dialectical relationship between a mythic pattern within a literary work and such factors as the individual author’s psychology and creativeness, the historical and cultural ————— 3 4
See Vickery (1980) 221. See Propp (1968); Aarne and Thompson (1961); Dundes (1964); Sowa (1984) is especially useful.
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realities of his epoch, and the demands of the genre.5 The best known proponent of myth-symbolic criticism was Northrop Frye, who explored those great, overarching narratives that inform much myth and early literature and continue to exist, often in displayed or in fragmentary form, in various later genres.6 For Frye myth was the structural principle of literature, and thus all literature has a mythic dimension.7 Although many aspects of Frye’s myth-critical methods and conclusions are unacceptable,8 his survey of the characters and patterns of romance remains invaluable.9 The fact that the basic plot of many Greek romances is so easily described conforms to Frye’s dictum that most romances are rigidly conventional,10 being based on patterns of action, character and image long proven to best reproduce a set matrix of themes, ideas and expressions of feeling; patterns so omnipresent and enduring in turn strongly influence the processes of writing and reading.11 ————— 5
6
7 8
9
10
11
This dialectical process is similar to Walter Burkert’s system of applying structuralism to classical mythology; see Burkert (1979). See Frye’s The Secular Scripture; The Anatomy of Criticism; Four Essays; and also The Great Code: the Bible and Literature. As Russell (2000) shows, Frye was substantially influenced by Ernst Cassirer, a Neo-Kantian, and especially by his four-volume The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Cassirer viewed all literature, art and other cultural productions as different forms of symbol manipulation; Cassirer believed these symbols and patterns of symbol manipulation arose first in ‘mythic’ or ‘expressive’ form, and gradually evolved into modern forms of narrative, art etc. through a somewhat logical process of extension and reification of their inherent loads of meaning. See Vickery (1980) 224; Frye (1970) 18. Especially troubling is Frye’s subordination of all myth and narratives to one ‘monomyth’ and other rigid (and sometimes contradictory) patterns and his attempt to tie his muthoi to the seasons, as well as his strained use of Freudian theories; see Wimsatt (1966). Heiserman (1977) 222 note 5, quoted Frye’s statement about the adventure as the essential component of romance, one which involves the hero’s struggle (often fatal) with the antagonist and the hero’s return and recognition, and simply declares that this definition cannot apply to the Greek romances; in doing so Heiserman ignored Frye’s more fluid application of this pattern and his fuller exposition of the various phases and themes of romance. Frye (1976) 36, 45; Balfour (1988) 56; see also Morgan (1995) 130–152; Perry (1967) 53–79. Nimis (1994, 1999, and especially 1998) suggests that the ancient novels do not organically reflect from their first lines the meanings that their (often makeshift) conclusions later impose; rather the author sometimes begins with a vague plot idea, and initially employs meaning-rich images or mythological motifs (many identifiably archetypal) to open a series of narrative possibilities, some of which the author develops, with others left behind as red-herrings. The author fights a continual battle to rein in the narrative drive of
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Frye saw that four meta-narratives, four ‘master plots’ so to speak, informed literature. These in turn are represented by his four great metagenres, which he also referred to as muthoi — comedy, romance, tragedy and irony/satire.12 While one might reject Frye’s assertion of such an overarching pattern for all literature, Frye’s muthoi nevertheless remain a valuable heuristic device for interpreting literature. Frye’s muthoi of comedy and romance are ideal in spirit, for both genres possess a protagonist who triumphs over opposition and creates a better condition. However, in comedy the opposition is more between delusion and reality, and its triumph an anagnôresis of the true situation; a new and better type of society often emerges as the beneficial result of the action; the comic hero is more lucky than heroic, and often the blocking characters are more deluded than evil. In contrast, in romance the focus is more upon the hero’s quest, and his more forceful triumph over evil, and the benefit that results from the overall action tends to be located more in the hero’s new status, although a new society frequently emerges, as seen, for example, in Aeneas’ establishment of the Trojans in Italy or Arthur’s Camelot. The hero of romance is properly noble and heroic, and his opponents often are epitomes of evil. Frye gave each archetypal muthos six phases, which present different aspects of the mythos’ total narrative. For example, the phases of romance and comedy range from presenting the new society or hero as something incipient and tentative, to something that has been established as part of the world order, to something in decay or being viewed from a more universal or contemplative viewpoint. This chart illustrates Frye’s six phases of comedy and romance:13
—————
12 13
the imported images and themes, and often must impose an artificial closure to create the appearance of unified meaning. Thus this construction of meaning is a process, often associative. The author of a lengthy fiction thus is like Levi-Strauss’ bricoleur, creating new stories and new meanings by assembling a narrative from odds and ends at hand, such as previously existing patterns and elements, with the chance process of association in part governing the choices made; see Levi-Strauss (1966) 16–33. On these muthoi, see Frye (1957) 158–239; Denham (1978) 66–76. This chart is heavily indebted to the analysis and chart in Denham (1978) 81.
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I II III
IV V VI
COMEDY Premature/Ironic phase. The new society and its powers unequal to the society it faces. Quixotic phase. The adolescence of the new society, more eccentric than powerful. The typical phase. The establishment of the new society, usually by overcoming an older, deluded order. The green world phase. The society’s maturity and triumph, where its potentials are fleshed out. The Arcadian phase. The new society viewed as part of a settled order. The gothic/eccentric phase. The new society collapses, becoming a perverse parody of itself or shrinking to a small group or even an individual.
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ROMANCE The origins of the hero phase. Theme of the mysterious origin of the hero. Pastoral innocence phase. The youth, often idyllic, of the hero. The typical phase. Often seen in the Quest, and in the triumph of the hero over evil. The continuous innocence phase. The maintenance of the innocent world against threats. Idyllic phase. A reflective, idyllic view of experience, where the hero enjoys the triumph. The contemplative/panoptic phase. The adventure now becomes contemplative, otherworldly, more internal and distanced.
When an extensive body of cultural productions involving a single myth or legend (for example, the poems, plays, mimes, etc. concerning Heracles or Odysseus) is surveyed, all these phases can appear; these phases, taken together, can create a virtual history of the hero’s life that stretches from his birth to his more contemplative (and sometimes decaying or eccentric) old age.14 Frye noted how, with time, literary (not archetypal) genres develop more encyclopedic forms;15 the novel is an especially good example of this.16 Thus the work of a later genre (such as the romance) can contain aspects common to several of these phases as it narrates the protagonists’ life and adventures and thereby creates more complex and extensive levels of meaning. The Greek romances possess many elements of Frye’s muthos of romance; the protagonists have illustrious and sometimes have mysterious origins (Daphnis, Chloe, Charicleia); their childhood is generally idyllic; they go on journeys and have adventures which largely conform to the Quest-pattern. Yet, as in Frye’s 4th and 5th phases, the protagonists are also ————— 14 15 16
See Denham (1978) 78–80; Frye (1957) 184–186. See Denham (1978) 119–122; Frye (1957) 54–58, 315–326. This accords with Bakhtin’s depiction of the novel’s inherent heteroglossia and polyphony; see Holquist (1990) 69–70; Morson and Emerson (1990) 139–145.
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defenders and maintainers of a previously established ideal world against threats, and such works often contain scenes which reflect more panoptically and philosophically on events. What makes the Greek romances ‘romances’ is their emphasis on adventure. Yet only Chariton’s Chaireas and, to a lesser extent, Heliodorus’ Theagenes resemble proper romantic heroes. Xenophon’s Habrocomes is heroic mainly in the persistence of his wanderings and endurance of his trials, as is his Anthia. Achilles Tatius’ protagonists have horrific adventures and in his endurance and defense of his love even Clitophon is quasi-heroic. A triumph of good over evil appears in the crucifixion of Chariton’s Theron, the exile of Achilles Tatius’ Thersandros, and the defeat of Helidorus’ Persians by Hydaspes. But more than the triumph of good over evil, the adventures of the Greek romance involve the preservation of innocence and personal integrity, as emblematized by the preservation of virginity and faithfulness to the beloved. The comic (in Frye’s sense of the term) dimension also bears utopian significance. The passivity, inexperience and occasional foolishness of the romantic hero combined with his ultimate good luck (Chaireas, Clitophon, Daphnis) links him with the protagonists of New Comedy.17 Frye’s comic muthos stresses the freedom from illusion and irrational law combined with the recognition of truth, which appears in such episodes as Chaireas’ successful acquittal of the charge of murdering Callirhoe, the escape of characters from arranged marriages in Achilles Tatius and Longus, and the abolition of human sacrifice in Heliodorus. Sometimes erstwhile villains are redeemed, suggesting they are more ignorant than evil; thus Xenophon’s bandit Hippothous and Heliodorus’ Thyamis are brought back into society and to their proper status, and even the would-be rapist Lampis plays the flute at Chloe’s wedding (4.38). More utopian is the implicit creation of a new society seen in the weddings that conclude some romances, along with the promise presented by their children (such as the children of Callirhoe and Chaireas, and of Daphnis and Chloe), as well as the new political and social status achieved by the protagonists and their friends and allies. The modern desire for realism (a culturally relative concept at best) is relatively new; the myths of preurban, preliterate peoples are startling in their violation of physical law, their amorality and the bizarreness of their characters and events, all elements which more directly and forcefully express desire and meaning, and thus produce clearer manifestations of arche————— 17
See Borgogno (1971); Corbato (1968).
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typal patterns and images. Those archetypal patterns, because of their resonance with vital dimensions of the human psyche, persist, although they are usually partially disguised through displacement in the direction of the real and the ethical. This process of incorporation is aided by the fact that the ‘constructive principles’ of storytelling remain the same in mythical and naturalistic stories.18 Frye charts how such a mythic image ‘descends’ from its most undisplaced manifestation to its most realistic and ironic.19 Thus the omnipotent Supreme Being of high myth becomes the Spartan King Lycurgus, the superlative rulers of romance, or More’s King Utopus. A frequent pattern in myth is that of ‘goddess forced to associate with mortals,’ a pattern evident in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, in which the goddess is forced by Zeus to fall in love with Anchises.20 Chariton’s Callirhoe, while technically no goddess, nevertheless fulfills this archetypal role: she is the agalma (1.1.1) of Syracuse, and is compared to, and even mistaken for, a goddess.21 The texts themselves explicitly point to these archetypes. Chariton’s Dionysios, suspicious of Callirhoe’s real identity, informs his bailiff Leonas that “historians and poets tell us that divine beings are compelled to associate with mortals” (2.4.8). Similarly Dionysios and, later, Chaireas (3.3.4–6, 3.9.5) imagine some god has abducted Callirhoe. While the romances are not mystery texts,22 they employ many narrative and symbolic patterns used in religious cult, patterns which import their burden of ideal meanings and thus influence the reader’s reception of the story. In addition to myth-symbolic criticism the other two methods of criticism, I employ connect these utopian themes with the ideological and ideational dimensions of society and social change. Ernst Bloch23 viewed these ————— 18 19 20
21
22 23
Frye (1957) 51–52. See Frye (1957) 49–52, 141–158; Denham (1978) 60–66. Sowa’s full pattern is that (1) Zeus causes goddess to become involved with mortals; (2) goddess appears to mortals in disguise, often tells a lie; (3) goddess reveals her identity to mortals; (4) goddess seeks to give immortality to mortal, but instead gives fertility or equivalent. The goddesses Harmonia, Thetis, Kallirhoe, Eos, Kirke, and Kalypso were also compelled to associate with mortals, although all their stories do not fit Sowa’s pattern; for a discussion of this theme largely in the context of the Homeric Hymns, see Sowa (1984) 39–66, 281. See 1.1.1–2, 1.1.6, 1.14.1, 2.3.6–7, 3.2.14–16, 4.1.9, 4.1.11, 4.7.5–7, 5.3.3, 5.3.9, 8.6.11. For further discussion of Callirhoe’s presentation as a goddess, see Muchow (1988) 75– 87; Helms (1966) 42–45; Ruiz-Montero (1989) 126; Laplace (1980) 121–122. For a survey with bibliography on this topic, see Beck (1996) 131–150. For my understanding of Bloch I am especially indebted to Hudson (1982). Particularly important for this study are Bloch’s The Spirit of Utopia and The Principle of Hope.
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and other utopian elements as part of a much wider history of humanity’s imagining of a better world; his vast The Principle of Hope details how the dream of a fulfilling human society haunts all types of cultural production, literary and otherwise. Bloch gives quite substantial reasons for this focus on utopian themes; he recognized, especially in his analysis of the rise of Nazism,24 the energy for social transformation that existed in these utopian imaginings, which the Nazis and other reactionaries have exploited. This same imaginative force, when used positively, can be educative, motivational and revolutionary. Bloch noted the ‘surplus’ of utopian meaning possessed by many images and themes within even anti-utopian compositions.25 Bloch recognized the dynamism that arises from the open-endedness of human desire, for individuals as subjects constantly seek an object equal to themselves. This search takes place first in the imagination, which, for Bloch, is in some sense constitutive; our creative minds, working through the possibilities which the cosmos presents, can glimpse a ‘pre-appearance (VorSchein)’ of potential solutions, if only in the form of a latency or tendency. Bloch’s concept of the ‘objective real possibility (das objektiv-real Mögliche)’ follows from an understanding of what becomes possible within the objective realities and equally objective tendencies in human life (including psychological and spiritual existence) and the material universe. Bloch also, in his focus on the ‘not yet (Noch-Nicht)’, demonstrated how the future holds the meaning of the past as well as the present, and that the full utopian dimension of the present moment is hidden in the future. Thus in the apocalyptic and eschatological dimensions of art and literature Bloch saw the concrete and realizable outlines of a direction and goal for human history. The Greek romance corresponds to that type of modern, popular literature that Bloch designated as ‘colportage’, tales of adventure and miracle whose utopian themes lie close to the surface.26 To give two simple examples; a persistent folktale theme concerns a world no longer hostile to the fulfillment of desire and passion, as seen most simply in tales of Cockaigne or Luilekkerland. This vision is part of a more extensive dream of the elimination of all gaps between human beings and divine power, other individu————— 24 25
26
See Bloch (1959). Thus in consumer advertising and political propaganda utopian overtones (complete sensual gratification, images of a just and harmonious society) are used to sell products or politicians. See Geoghegan (1996) 58; Bloch (1986), 352–393.
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als, their own inner selves, physical nature and the necessities of human life. The hope is for an integrated life, nature and a society made for humanity. This vision particularly corresponds to the conclusion of Frye’s comic muthos, where people of all orders, including some former villains, appear at the final festivities, and even animals, plants and the material world take part. Another ideal theme is the ludic society, one in which there is no work, only play,27 a condition observed at the conclusion of Xenophon of Ephesus’ romance, wherein the protagonists’ later lives became ‘one long festival.’ The work of Daphnis and Chloe in the Lesbian countryside likewise presents this ludic dimension. Utopias based on this dream of emotional satisfaction have more substantial expressions, for example in Fourier’s matrices of carefully matched passions required for his Phalansteries, in the utopia of artistry and unalienated labor of Morris’ News from Nowhere, and in Marcuse’s visions of a libidinally liberated society.28 For Bloch those images and themes which the Greek romances share with apocalyptic and eschatological discourses bear considerable utopian meaning.29 In such texts a superior society emerges often due to a radical break with history, as occurs when Heliodorus’ Hydaspes abolishes human sacrifice and his daughter Charicleia transcends all confining conceptions of race and ethnicity. The full story of Charicleia and thus of Meroë’s past and future is not fully known until the romance’s conclusion, when truths are revealed that cast past events in a different light. In a sense the past is reconstructed and redeemed by the future, one of the eternal promises of apocalyptic discourse.30 Fredric Jameson also sees literature as a ‘socially symbolic act’ that reflects (in albeit complex ways) the various social and ideological structures and means of production within a given society.31 His analysis stresses how the contradictions and limitations within society exert so pervasive an effect ————— 27 28
29 30
31
For a modern expression of this ideal, see Black (1986). See especially Eros and Civilization; like Bloch, Marcuse stressed an instinctual drive for happiness and freedom, which, contra Freud, he believed could be fulfilled within society. On Bloch’s interest in apocalyptic/eschatological thinking, see Hudson (1982) 117–120. A fundamental difference exists between the ideal/comic vision and the tragic vision in their view of time and the past; the anagnôresis is of central importance. For comedy, the past conceals the key to a true identity which brings with it a better future, while in tragedy the past reveals a curse or primal evil that dooms the future. See especially Jameson (1981).
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upon individuals that literature cannot help but reproduce them, even when these conditions are an ‘absent cause’ determining what topics cannot be directly addressed, what patterns of deformation occur, and what is finally expressed and how effectively within the text. Further, every culture possesses a mix of social formations and means of production; some are relics of a past time, some represent the dominant modes, and some are the germs of the future society. These formations are always in active tension, which constitutes a type of subterranean revolutionary process, which only occasionally breaks out in the familiar earthquakes of political revolutions.32 Jameson’s views concerning literary works are also similar to Levi-Strauss’ understanding of myth as a space in which resolutions are constructed which cannot be created in the real world.33 As with Bloch’s notion of the ‘utopian surplus or excess of meaning’,34 imaginative works often reproduce concrete social tensions and contradictions, which are then imaginatively harmonized through the use of utopian themes and images, usually to the advantage of the socially dominant class, but which sometimes reveal more plausible solutions grounded in the concrete social practice and potential of the author’s society. For example, in the Greek East, as Dio of Prusa’s career illustrates,35 aristocratic rivalries were nearly as critical in his era as in the fifth century B.C.E. In Chariton’s romance the two leading men of Syracuse, Hermocrates and Chaireas’ father Ariston, are deadly rivals (1.1.3), yet through the operations of Erôs acting the demagogue their rivalry is eliminated (1.1.11–13). During Callirhoe’s funeral and the Syracusans’ later activities while searching for her, the Syracusan demos, ekklesia and boule present a harmonious and unified front.36 Chariton’s romance clearly provides images of familiar social problems; but these concerns are then managed and defused by the utopian vision.37
————— 32 33 34
35 36
37
Jameson (1990) 167–168. Jameson (1971) 384, citing Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes tropiques, Paris: 1955, 199–203. The ‘utopian surplus’ is that extra, perhaps unintended, ideal significance a narrative, theme, or image contains; see Hudson (1982) 106, 160–164; Bloch (1972) 409–417. Jones (1978) 95–114. For example, when Hermocrates proposes an embassy to recover Callirhoe from Asia, the assembled demos cries ‘Let us sail!’ and most of the boule immediately volunteer (3.4.17). The equal number of ambassadors chosen from the demos and boule likewise implies social unity. See Jameson (1990) 137–140; Jameson cites the influence of Holland (1968).
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I should also mention three more commonly considered ideal aspects of the Greek romances; the focus on aristocracy, the role of the gods and the depiction of erotic relationships. As often noted, the protagonists of the ancient novel belong to the high aristocracy. Frye would see such aristocrats as a characteristic element of romance, their lives a displaced image of the perfect existence of the gods. While these images of aristocratic life conform to the ideology of class constructions in Greco-Roman society, in their ‘utopian surplus’ they also affirm a general ideal of human life, of freedom, economic autonomy and Bloch’s ‘upright gait’ of the citizen secure and respected in his social role. The gods, oracles, dreams and various miracles within the romances have an utopian force in their presentation of a cosmos ruled at some level by a human-like (and thus potentially rational and sympathetic) power. Further, the mysterious operations of the gods and chance can be viewed as projections or assertions of the unknown and unlimited potential which Bloch saw in the lived moment. Thus romantic protagonists (especially Charicleia38) create schemes to buy time and to allow this potential to develop. Obviously ideal too is the ability of the lovers to find in each other the perfect object for their affections. As noted above, their relationships recall the themes of the sacred marriage and union of a goddess with a mortal. But a perhaps more concretely realizable utopian dimension is found in the lovers’ equality.39 They are usually of nearly similar ages, love each other with equal desperation, without much of the male aggressiveness and domination common in Greco-Roman society, although it must be admitted romantic heroines in the end are generally subordinated to the patriarchal order.40 Using patterns and methods outlined above, let us consider now Chariton’s Chaireas and Callirhoe, Heliodorus’ Aithiopika and Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe. Chariton’s Chaireas and Callirhoe. As noted above, Callirhoe’s history has significant correspondences with Sowa’s ‘Marriage of the Fertility Goddess’ pattern. It also conforms to ————— 38 39 40
See Chew (1994) 210–211. See Konstan (1994) 14–59. For a survey of this topic with bibliography, see Johne (1996) 151–207; Egger (1990).
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Sowa’s ‘Rape of the Goddess’ pattern,41 and in particular to sufferings of Demeter and Korê, who descends through a type of death into a lower world;42 afterward these deadly powers are in part overcome and Korê rises again, having obtained new status and bringing benefit to mortals, and having experienced human suffering and a previously unknown realm.43 Both Callirhoe and Korê are abducted from Sicily and endure symbolic death,44 and are compelled by trickery and force to undergo marriages with somebody of undoubted nobility; both Demeter and Chaireas, pursuing their abducted loved one, are disguised and assume servitude. Zeus initially gave Korê to Hades but was forced to acknowledge Demeter’s power; like Zeus, Chariton’s Artaxerxes gives Callirhoe to Dionysios (7.5.15), but he is forced (see Chaireas’ letter, 8.4.2–5) to accept Callirhoe’s return. As Hades obtained a message through Hermes to release Korê, Dionysios gets a message from the Great King and a letter from Callirhoe (8.5.6) detailing the final arrangements concerning herself and their child. Both heroines remain tied to the other realm; Korê must return yearly to Hades, and Callirhoe leaves her child with Dionysios;45 Korê and Demeter receive new honors after their return, and likewise Chaireas and Callirhoe return with new status and riches. As the struggles of Demeter and Korê created a beneficent relationship between the gods and mortals which individuals of varied nationalities could share through the Eleusinian rites, the multiethnic crowd of Chaireas and Callirhoe’s followers gain a place in a superior Syracuse (8.8.12–14). Because Korê crosses borders to the inaccessible world of Hades, she obtains experience of a previously unknown realm and can help humans in their relations with that realm; in Callirhoe’s travels she too gains much experi————— 41
42 43 44
45
In this pattern (1) a loved one is abducted; (2) the grieved party searches for the abductee; (3) claims are settled and the loser learns of the arrangements that must be made; (4) payment of some kind is made; see Sowa (1984) 282. Several gods of Near Eastern myths die, and some return to life; see Foley (1977) 94–95. I follow here the analysis of Foley (1977) 84–97. Callirhoe is presumed dead, buried with an elaborate funeral, taken from her tomb and then is carried over water, which in myth often exists as a barrier to the lower world. Not only Callirhoe, but Xenophon of Ephesus’ Anthia, Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe (three times!), the nameless girl in Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana and Apuleius’ Psyche also come back to life after a type of death. While the melodramatic possiblities of such a scene are obvious, it is equally clear how this conquest of death connects with the deepest of human aspirations. In Sowa’s pattern often a type of payment is made, and the child, whom Dionysios retains for a time, might be seen as functioning as this type of payment.
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ence of previously unknown eastern areas, and in Callirhoe’s friendship with Statira (8.47–9) a new relationship between the opposed realms of West and East is forged. The evident correspondences of Callirhoe’s narrative with the Korê myth give it undertones of a profound myth about the conquest of the underworld and its powers and the creation of a new relationship with that world, as well as of other substantial benefits to humanity. Chariton’s romance, as the story of Syracuse and its leading citizens, generally conforms to Frye’s 4th phase romance; an ideal Syracuse has been proven by Hermocrates’ defeat of Athens, and its excellence must be protected and maintained, a process thematized by the struggles of Chaireas and especially Callirhoe to safeguard their fidelity and moral purity. Being the children of the first and second men of Syracuse, they also represent Syracuse’s future rulers. Their child, whose excellent upbringing and return is insisted upon (2.9.5, 8.7.12), and whose future history is compared to mythical heroes like Cyrus and Amphion (2.9.5), promises further greatness for Syracuse.46 Thus the outcome of the couple’s adventures not only maintains the exemplary present, but also provides for Syracuse’s future. In the references to past conflicts between Athenians and Persians and between Syracusans and Athenians and in the promise of the child to come, the romance presents the more panoptic perspective of Frye’s 5th phase, where the adventures and the final results are revealed as part of a greater order of events. Chaireas’ own story reflects Frye’s 3rd phase quest romance and corresponds to Sowa’s ‘Journey’ pattern,47 as well as to folktale quest motifs. Chaireas learns of Callirhoe’s abduction and goes off to find her; symbolically Callirhoe is taken to the land of the dead, and Chaireas likewise travels there, a motif reinforced by his false death and funeral. The old priestess (see especially 3.6.5) and Mithridates loosely correspond to the usual helpers who aid the mythic protagonist in finding his lost item or love. Chaireas, after much suffering, finds Callirhoe. The death struggle with the antagonist, another common plot element of romance, can be seen in Chaireas’ violent battle with Persia, which he undertakes initially in expectation of death (7.1.5–7). Often in Frye’s 3rd phase of romance a substitute for the hero is ————— 46 47
See Alvares (1997) 613–629. In this pattern: (1) the protagonist loses something; (2) then goes off to find the lost item; this may involve travels to the underworld, and usually takes much time; (3) the protagonist encounters female and male beings who aid the search; (4) the protagonist finds the lost item or learns that it cannot be obtained; (5) a substitute dies.
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destroyed,48 a role fulfilled by the nameless Egyptian king who commits suicide. Chaireas’ labors, as well as those of other heroes in Greek romance, which involve penitential suffering in pursuit of a clearly superior woman, recall those more spiritualized quests of medieval romance, whose heroes suffer in service to ladies who draw them to a higher level. Considering Callirhoe’s status as the avatar of Aphrodite who is a fundamental power who can even overrule Tyche, Chaireas can be viewed as an hero who has returned home having attained heroic honor through deeds in service to his beloved, and who has also been thoroughly established in a faith which before he had held only superficially. The utopian vision can posit a fuller correspondence between human nature and the world and its history, whose meaning is still hidden, allowing for the possibility of a different kind of history with a more humane set of motivators. Chariton’s romance contains a history wherein devotion to erotic ideals produces greater success for society as well as for the individual than the pursuit of the usual motivators of history, such as wealth, status and power.49 Thus Chaireas’ erotically motivated exploits reproduce those of Alexander the Great, Xenophon, Leonidas and the Athenians at Salamis; his triumph is presented as superior to that of Hermocrates, for he brings home not the poverty of Attika, but the riches of Persia (8.6.12). In his concluding speech (8.7.3–11), Chaireas does more than fulfill the crowd’s desire for details; Chaireas unfolds a new history, one that makes the past’s evils no longer painful and meaningless; in a sense he has rewritten history according to a meaning that he has discovered only in the course of time. As noted, a rather idealistic text can also concretely reflect some social realities. C & C has several depictions of society reflecting then-current social conditions and contradictions such as the abuses of despotism and the decline of even quasi-democratic institutions, and, for the Greeks, the conflict between the richness of their cultural tradition and the realities of Roman power.50 As seen above, Chariton’s romance presents well-known and dangerous aristocratic rivalries, but also shows how they are defused and the social orders harmonized though devotion to Erôs and Callirhoe. While Chariton’s Persia is no exact allegorical figuration of Rome, in his description of ————— 48 49 50
See Frye (1957) 193; Denham (1978) 71. See Alvares (1997) 613–629. For recent studies of these issues, see Swain (1996); Edwards (1996); Whitmarsh (2001); also Alvares (2001–2).
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Persian despotism his readers could recognize some realities of their lives under Roman power, as well as the elements of an imaginable alternative. Syracuse and its leader Hermocrates had been frequently idealized in Greek rhetoric and literature,51 and Chariton’s ideal government is one guided by a first man;52 nevertheless several successful democratic processes appear, as when the Syracusans gather in the theater (even the women; 1.1.12), and their public request that the couple be allowed to wed is granted. Even the Egyptians ‘elect by show of hands’ their king (6.8.2), as the Persian women elect Rhodogyne to face Callirhoe in the beauty contest (5.3.4). A common utopian theme is the inclusive state. The Greek rhetoric of the second sophistic53 as well as some forms of Judeo-Christian apocalyptic expressed this ideal, as did Chariton’s romance. A multiethnic micro-empire, comprised of Dorians, Aradians, Cypriots, and Egyptians spontaneously gathers and follows Chaireas to Syracuse, a marked contrast to the Persian empire, which compels unity through force. Chaireas’ three hundred Dorians are given immediate citizenship, and even the Egyptians gain grants of farmland from Hermocrates (8.8.14). Three other facts are also relevant to the work’s political subtext: (1) Chariton repeatedly stresses Syracuse’s independence; (2) despite Chaireas’ victory at sea the Persians ultimately win and Chaireas, once he has regained Callirhoe, has no further plans for aggression against Persia; (3) in the Egyptian rebellion Greek soldiers were instrumental on both sides of the conflict. I would suggest that these three facts are related to another, more concrete political dream, the possibility for a greater “freedom of the Greeks”54 which ————— 51
52
53
54
See Billault (1989) 540–548; Bompaire (1977) 55–68. Chariton, however, has repressed any suggestion of the complete historical Hermocrates, who was exiled and later killed in civil strife. A political view presented in Stoic and Cynic speculation; see Ruiz-Montero (1989) 139– 141. Note how Aelius Aristides in his Roman Oration declares that the emperor has “(59) appointed to your citizenship, or even to kinship with you, the better part of the world’s talent, courage and leadership; while the rest you recognized as a league under your hegemony. (60) Neither sea nor intervening continent are bars to citizenship, nor are Asia and Europe divided in their treatment here. In your empire all paths are open to all. No one worthy of rule or trust remains an alien, but a civil community of the World has been established as a Free Republic under one, the best, ruler and teacher of order” (Oliver’s [1953] translation, 901). Nero had proclaimed the freedom of the province of Achaea in 67 C.E.; note that in Plutarch’s On the Delays of Divine Vengeance (32), the cruel punishment destined for
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would be granted by Romans who had come to understand how valuable Greeks could be as friends or dangerous as enemies.55 Heliodorus’ Aithiopika. Utopian societies since Homer were placed in Ethiopia, a tradition Heliodorus evokes and builds upon. To the extent that the Aithiopika is Charicleia’s story, it conforms to Frye’s 1st, 2nd and 3rd phase romances, emphasizing the heroine’s mysterious birth, upbringing in innocence and subsequent adventures. The mysterious child’s father in undisplaced myth is a god (as fathered Romulus), becoming here the near-ideal king Hydaspes. Although technically Hydaspes’ daughter, Charicleia, conceived as Persinna viewed a painting of Andromeda (whom she resembles exactly), is in a sense ‘fathered’ by the picture,56 rather like a Platonic form come to Earth. The marvelous child’s mother is frequently a victim and suspected of sexual misconduct and her child is frequently abandoned; Persinna, fearing suspicions of adultery, likewise must exile Charicleia. The marvelous child, after adventures and the recovery of its true identity, creates or restores an entire society, as did Romulus and Remus, a service Charicleia also performs for Meroë. The marvelous child often enjoys an idyllic, pastoral childhood (e.g. Romulus and Remus among the herdsmen) as does Charicleia, first among the shepherds of the Ethiopian countryside (2.31) then within Apollo’s temple as Charicles’ adoptive daughter. In Frye’s 3rd phase of romance, dominated by the Quest pattern, the protagonist’s wanderings and search for the lost item are connected with the attainment (or resumption) of status. Charicleia’s quest is for the secret of her true identity, homeland and past, rather like the goals of Vergil’s Aeneas in the epic’s first half. As the romance of Meroë, the Aithiopika corresponds to Frye’s 4th and 5th phases, wherein an already ideal society is defended, improved or extended, and is shown to be established as part of the cosmic order. Meroë itself is obviously ideal, associated with Herodotus’ superlative Ethiopians
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Nero is mitigated, since the gods owe him gratitude for freeing “the noblest and most beloved of Heaven.” See Alvares (2001–2) 140. See Whitmarsh (1998) 112–113.
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who repelled Persian aggression (Histories 3.19–28).57 Meroë’s government pursues a celestial harmony through the worship of the Sun and Moon, with a priest-king at its head and an advisory council of philosopher/saints, the Gymnosophists, and thus has correspondences with the solar/celestial oriented theologies of later antiquity as well as philosophical utopias like Iambulus’ City of the Sun, Zeno of Citium’s Stoic Cosmopolis or Campanella’s much later City of the Sun. Bloch linked the themes of revolution and apocalypse/eschaton, a radical break with the past that creates a new future and thus recreates and redeems prior events; such ideal themes fill the Aithiopika’s latter third. There is a battle of world empires (the Persian and the Merotic) in which a great city is taken and the elements confused as the Nile is diverted around Syene, a paradox the text underscores (9.5.5).58 The virginity test upon the fiery grate has eschatological correlates,59 as does Theagenes’ bout with the Ethiopian giant.60 Hydaspes’ elimination of the custom of human sacrifice presents a ————— 57
58
59
60
Note the medieval legends of Prester John, ruler of a vast empire in Ethiopia or the East who opposed the forces of Islam; see Bar-Ilan (1995) for discussion and further bibliography. Here recall the often-cited similarity between Heliodorus’ depiction of the siege of Syene and Julian’s depiction of the siege of Nisibis by the Parthian King Shapur II in 350 C.E.; for discussion with bibliography, see Morgan (1996) 418–421. If, as Morgan believes, Heliodorus must have written after 350 C. E., it is quite possible he saw Julian’s destruction in 363 C. E. and the humiliating peace Jovian made with Parthia shortly after, which resulted in the Roman loss of Armenia. At that time the perception of the fragility of Roman power would certainly have increased, making it easier for a writer to imagine (and portray) Rome’s critical weakness. Consider the New Testament’s declaration that a person’s works will be tested by fire (1 Cor. 3: 8–15 and Rev. 22:12). Charicleia, putting on her Delphic robe with its solar rays and leaping upon the burning eschara, is presented as a transfigured being, glowing with a holiness that arises from her virgin purity, more goddess than a mortal woman (10.9.3.); see Morgan (1998) 71–72. Giants are archetypal figures of arrogance, power and chaos (e.g. the Greek Gigantomachy) and some apocalyptic writings (the Apocalypse of Peter, the Book of Enoch) give a prominent position to giants and their defeat; St. Perpetua (Pass. Perpetua 9–10) dreams of fighting a giant Egyptian, who is recognized as the devil; later in Moschus (for Latin version see Minge PL 74.150) this figure becomes an Ethiopian; see Morgan (1998) 75–76. Theagenes’ defeat of the ‘giant’ Ethiopian recalls this archetypal image. Morgan suggests that this wrestling is an initiation which turns Theagenes into an honorary Ethiopian. But the gross disparity in their sizes and styles of fighting recalls the match between Castor and Amycus in the Argonautica, which is also a battle between old and new versions of heroism. Thus, in wrestling the Ethiopian Theagenes also symbolically battles those archaic, brutal and powerful elements in Ethiopian tradition, which the
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break with the evils of Merotic history. In many eschatological discourses the radical break comes with the appearance of a messiah figure;61 Charicleia’s peculiar status and condition of origin (especially the divine command given to Hydaspes to mate, 4.8.4), and even appearance,62 make her such a transformational figure. However, the past is not completely eliminated, but reincorporated and purified. Charicleia exactly resembles Andromeda, the first creatrix of Ethiopia, who was also offered as a human sacrifice by her parents, and would have been killed but for Perseus’ arrival; but now, instead of the primal63 crime repeating itself, Charicleia’s father rejects the custom of human sacrifice. Thus in the amazing events at Meroë the Aithiopika present the past as being rewritten by the future. Scholars make much of the deviousness of Heliodorus’ plotting, the complex manner in which Charicleia’s identity is mystified, interrogated and then resolved. Such complexity and unknowing mixed with unrealized potential echoes Bloch’s ‘darkness of the lived moment’ which conceals the utopian potential and tendency present in everyday life.64 The unified, inclusive, harmonious and festal society is a frequent element of apocalyptic discourse.65 The wedding of Charicleia and Theagenes, the union of the priest of the Sun with the priestess of the Moon, takes place via miracles at a critical juncture in Meroë’s history. As Andromeda married a noble Greek and with him founded a new kingdom, so Charicleia will —————
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62
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64 65
people themselves now reject. Theagenes also resembles another common figure of myth, the outsider whose presence is needed to remedy a crisis situation, a rôle Aeneas and Hercules play in the Aeneid. Further, Theagenes’ wrestling with the loose bull (10.28–9) also recalls the myth of Mithras, who likewise wrestles and captures the cosmic bull for the sun god; Theagenes will become priest of the Sun at Meroë; see de la Vega (1988) 175–188; also Morgan (1998) 62–64, 73–77. Outside Judeo-Christian eschatology such a messiah figure can be found among various non-industrial, non-urban cultures, such as the “transformational deity” anticipated by the Coast Salish Prophet Dance, as well as the Javanese “Ratu Idil” and West Papa’s “Lord Mansren” who figures in the cargo cults; see Cook (1995) 70– 81. Not only does Charicleia look like Andromeda, but she seems, even as a child, to have an unusually piercing gaze (2.31); note that Calasiris claimed one can detect gods by their gaze (3.13). Such a primal evil that explains subsequent evils is a factor common to foundation myths such as the story of Cain and Abel, Romulus and Remus, or Tantalus’ cooking of Pelops. See Bloch (1977) 256–262. Note, for example, the wedding of Lamb in Revelation chpt. 19, or Jesus’ parable that compared the Kingdom to a wedding feast (Matt. 22.1–14.)
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marry a Greek who claims descent from the original Hellenes;66 these repetitions67 and renewals of prior events suggest a return to the primordial creation-time,68 again making the romance’s events part of a profound cosmic/historical pattern. Charicleia herself merges several worlds; she is born of Ethiopian royalty, raised at Delphi by the priest Charikles, obtains a second foster father in the Egyptian priest Calasiris and finally marries Theagenes, descendent of Achilles, that paradigm of ancestral Greek aretê. Charicleia and Theagenes as future rulers will blend the best of Ethiopia, Greece and even Egypt. Through this and Charicleia’s paradoxical racial makeup, Heliodorus’ text subverts the relevance of race and ethnicity, implying the possibility of greater unity between peoples.69 Eschatological discourse commonly features a radical recentering where the marginal becomes central; Whitmarsh argues that Heliodorus’ romance (as do most of the romances to some extent) asks its readers to reorient themselves, placing Meroë, not Greece, in the central position from which the rest of the world is considered.70 Interestingly, Heliodorus particularly stresses the theme of exile;71 Charicles, Thyamis, Calasiris, Knemon and Charicleia herself all suffer exile. Here one is justified in observing a probable connection between Helidorus’ various social positions72 and this emphasis on exile and problematized identity. Considering all the complex negotiations that were involved in the social position of Heliodorus and his class, it is easy to see how anxieties, resentments and dreams of relief could arise which his romance would in turn express, creating an imaginative solution to impossible tensions and ————— 66
67
68
69 70 71 72
Theagenes is descended from Hellen, son of Deucalion (2.34.2); see Whitmarsh (1998) 103. Morgan (1998, 60–78) stresses repetitions and duplications as one of the central structural principles of Heliodorus’ narrative. Such a return to the Urzeit is stressed especially by Eliade (1971). It is also often a notable component of eschatological/apocalyptic discourse; see Cook (1995) 28. See Berry (2001). See Whitmarsh (1998) 98–101. See Whitmarsh (1998) 106 and note 57. Consider Heliodorus as a Syrian defined as an outsider by the gaze and other social practices of Greeks and Romans; as (at least) a lower-level aristocrat (perhaps one who took pride in the historical links between Emesa and the Severans) who also defined himself in opposition to those lower on the social hierarchy; as a non-Greek author defined functionally as a producer and transmitter of Greek cultural (and thus ideological) productions in part alien to him; quite probably as a member of the town councilor class whose position was becoming increasingly burdensome.
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contradictions; at one near-magic stroke Charicleia gains an ideal solution to all her problems of identity, lineage and status. While the direct divine action seems absent from Heliodorus’ plot,73 obvious references to magic occur. While Calasiris is sometimes the charlatan,74 using Charicles’ stereotypical views of Egyptian magic to manipulate him,75 Calasiris’ insistent distinction between high and low magic (3.16) has idealistic implications. Magic, like technology, is a method of producing results. The Egyptian woman who reanimates her dead son (6.14–15) is like Dr. Frankenstein who makes a creature out of dead bodies. Calasiris’ higher learning accords with the ideal theme of a knowledge or science that brings humanity and the universe into a cooperative relationship, not one which makes the material world and human life mere things to be manipulated, which dehumanizes and destroys its user. Likewise the solar/celestial religion of Meroë and of Sisimithres’ gymnosophists can be viewed in part as Heliodorus’ imaginative dream of a more effective religion,76 as Apuleius’ Metamorphoses presents Isis worship (at least from Lucius’ perspective) as an ideal type of religious experience. Heliodorus’ romance, like Chariton’s, presents Persia as an aggressive empire ruled by corrupt and oppressive leaders who initiate war to gain territory and material wealth. In this activity Heliodorus’ reader could see a similarity to the aggressive efforts of the Romans to expand their borders. In contrast to the Persian empire, the just multiethnic empire that appears only in microcosm at the end of Chaireas and Callirhoe is already in place in Ethiopia. Hydaspes rules a world-spanning empire that includes Eastern and Western Ethiopians and has allies in the Troglodytai, Blemmyes, and even ————— 73
74 75
76
According to Chew (1994) Heliodorus gives human choice more importance by minimizing divine activity. However, consider the way God works in the Book of Acts; amazingly fortuitous outcomes can seem just as indicative of divine power as epiphanies, and such subtlety agrees with Heliodorus’ more refined sensibility and his penchant for keeping matters ambiguous. See Winkler (1982) 93–158. See Berry (2000) especially 91–101. One can view Calasiris as an opportunistic sophist who takes advantage of Charicleia’s situation and then dies, leaving the couple in great danger, after he has achieved what he desired. The emperor Julian wrote a neoplatonic Hymn to King Helios and supposedly claimed Helios sent him a dream about Constantius’ coming death (Zosimus, 3.9, 6–7). While the Aithiopika is hardly a mystery text for Emesa’s Helios-cult, it seems possible that Heliodorus, like Julian, saw in Helios worship a vehicle for expressing his (probably refined) religious beliefs and inclinations.
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the Chinese. Hydaspes’ Ethiopians successfully resist an expansionist power, like Chariton’s Hermocrates repelled the Athenian expedition. By Heliodorus’ era the absolutism of the Roman emperor’s power was undisguised, as was the use of religion to support the regime. Hydaspes presents a superior model for such a sovereign;77 while Meroë is no democracy, Hydaspes, like Hermocrates, is a clever and effective military leader, and shows mercy and carefully follows the rule of law. There is fruitful interaction between populace and Hydaspes, who will not violate ancestral customs without popular support (10.16). Jameson’s analysis stresses how all societies contain remnants of prior social formations; the abolishment of Meroë’s ancestral custom of human sacrifice epitomizes the process of breaking free of all those archaic and barbaric (yet popular78) social practices surviving from previous times; such an operation is a concrete task that all societies must face to progress. Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe Longus’ romance seems the most escapist, set in a semi-idyllic pastoral world closely watched by benevolent gods; there is also a sense that the romance represents the ideals of a world passing away.79 As often noted, D & C has an experimental quality, negotiating its way through various dialectics of nature, country and wilderness, of muthos and logos, and of truth and falsehood. The second sophistic, with its obsession with the past, belongs to a transitional period leading to the very different world of late antiquity. Such a transitional period, when circumstances are unsettled and traditions contested, can be particularly rich in idealistic and utopian images. ————— 77
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Hydaspes’ mercy, righteousness, respect for law, and graciousness to his people create a nearly filial bond with them (10.3.3; 10.17.2); on Hydaspes’ ideal rule, see also Szepessy (1957) 247–251. It is the people of Meroë that call most loudly for the human sacrifice (10.7.1). The pastoral of Philetas and Theocritus can be seen as a reaction to the decline of the polis-world, whose systems for creating identity were overwhelmed in the mass cultures of the Hellenistic cities. Interestingly, some critics believe Longus’ romance is a response to a tale reported in Plutarch (On the Obsolescence of Oracles XVII) that the passengers of a passing ship heard the cry ‘Great Pan is dead’, symbolizing the end of the pagan Greek world; see McCulloh (1970) 13–15. On the era’s pessimism and sense of an exhaustion, see MacQueen (1990) 175–181.
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Longus’ romance, as the tale of Daphnis and Chloe, recalls Frye’s first three phases of romance. The children have a mysterious birth from higher beings80 and are raised in pastoral innocence, one with strong intimations of the primitive rural paradise, their childhood innocence reproducing humankind’s primordial guiltlessness. This romance verges on (or becomes) comedy,81 which, in Frye’s analysis, centers on marriage, fertility and the forming of a new society, whose successful heroes are more lucky than effectual. And there is an implicit Quest — to find out what Love is, knowledge needed so that the protagonists’ love can be properly consummated. The pastoral setting recalls Hesiod’s Golden Age, and the story of Daphnis and Chloe can be read as a myth about the development of civilization and the discovery of sexual love82 — but one with superior outcomes. Erôs intends to make Chloe a muthos; at times Erôs seems to be conducting an experiment in love, like Psammetichus’ attempt to find humanity’s original tongue (Herodotus, Histories 2.2); the protagonists’ absolute naiveté makes possible for them a less compromised amatory practice, one without the violence implied in the myths of Phassa, Syrinx and Echo.83 The couple’s erotic play develops largely outside the strictures of conventional, restrictive morality; their first sexual experiments are hindered only by their lack of knowledge, and once Daphnis has learned the secret of sex, he has no idea that he should maintain Chloe’s virginity; yet once he has learned about the bloodshed inherent in a woman’s loss of virginity, Daphnis spontaneously restricts his sexual behavior (3.20, 3.24). While here the ‘sexual symmetry’ between Daphnis and Chloe is compromised, these episodes also imply that erôs, when it is allowed to grow without restrictions and fear, can automatically acquire the ethical dimensions that moralizing systems try to impose from without. Thus the erotic careers of Daphnis and Chloe furnish a more
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As in New Comedy, they are the children of aristocrats; they are in the pastoral world but clearly not of it, being set apart by their beauty (1.7.1). Anderson (1982, 41–49) stresses the ineptness of the rustics and the couple and sees D & C as essentially a comedy in the modern sense of the word. See Hunter (1996) 377–382; Winkler (1990) 101–126. See MacQueen (1990) 82–97. While I hesitate to accept Winkler’s suggestion that the reader is supposed to link Chloe with Demeter, I agree that the superior relationship between Daphnis and Chloe entails restraining Chloe and her capabilities, with the inherent violence and inequalities of sex being more repressed than truly eliminated; see Winkler (1990).
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ideal vision of love, its growth and its processes.84 As was the case with Charicleia’s replay of Andromeda’s sacrifice, a past mistake is also avoided in D & C; as noted, this time the couple’s love develops without the violence and oppression common to past erotic relationships. There is also a primal wrongdoing; Daphnis and Chloe as infants were exposed by their parents, a terrible deed which is transformed into a felix culpa as these past horrors are rewritten by later events, developments which, as at Meroë, restore a broken family and bring potential benefit to the wider community through a marriage and the couple’s assumption of their proper social position. Daphnis and Chloe’s wedding feast (4.38), which combines city and country folk and customs, where all are forgiven and all matters set right, and where even the animals participate, echoes the reformed, inclusive and festal world of apocalyptic/eschatological narrative. Thyamis’ rehabilitation was linked to a corrected social situation, the recovery of his priesthood. Ostensible villains such as the seductress Lykainion and kidnapper Lampis are likewise welcome at their wedding, since the social contradictions responsible for their actions are now (at least symbolically) dissolved. Fittingly, this occurs at a time linked with the vintage and Dionysos, a god who breaks down the alienating boundaries between persons and the natural world and other individuals. Daphnis and Chloe represent a new type of social being whose relationships unite, to the advantage of all, the realms of the gods, humans, country, city and physical nature. This new model for society will continue, as the couple, once married, divide their time between city and country, and make sure their children are given pastoral names and suckled by animals as they once were (4.39). As the romance of the countryside of Mytilene and its population, D & C corresponds to Frye’s 4th phase of comedy and romance, in which an ideal society must be defended and extended. It also has considerable elements of Frye’s 5th phase; Longus stresses his tale’s universality85 and the constant mention of natural forces and the narrative’s connection between the progress of the seasons and plot developments suggests that these events ex————— 84
85
Note that Longus’ introduction not only claims to be able to provide useful information and to teach (as does Thucydides’ prologue) but also to remind us about erôs, not only as a mundane process, but, as the rest of the romance shows, erôs as an ideal universal force that brings harmony to the entire universe, as Chalk (1960) emphasizes. Hunter (1996) 378.
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press fundamental patterns. This ideal aspect is aligned with Longus’ presentation of Erôs as the oldest and most powerful of the gods, who in syncretic fashion can all be identified with Erôs.86 Heliodorus’ Charicleia is something of a Platonic form incarnate; Longus, by borrowing themes and images from Plato’s Phaedrus,87 recalls the Platonic doctrine of those forms of absolute beauty that objects of this world reflect and hints at the connection between physical erôs and philosophic enlightenment; such a platonic doctrine insists that physical desire can be utilized for the highest philosophical purposes,88 and Gnathon’s partial redemption which is achieved through overcoming the brutish Lampis can be explained by his status as a theatês of Daphnis’ platonically ideal beauty (4.16).89 As the works of Apuleius, Lucian, and Aelius Aristides show, even sophisticated readers could have considerable longing for a religion that provided rescue from life’s arbitrary horrors, and many such readers would have responded to this ideal dimension in Longus’ romance. The actions of the Gymnosophists and the Ethiopians of Meroë represent Heliodorus’ dream of a more perfect religious practice; as has been seen above, Longus too provides an imaginative, ideal vison of a cosmos informed by the divine. This universe, a totality organized by a provident Erôs with a harmony recalling Plato’s ideal cosmic music, is able to accommodate the emotional, imaginative and rational aspects of humanity. The gods of this world are accessible; Daphnis and Chloe develop a close relationship with Pan and the Nymphs and Erôs, and through them with the material and biological universe. In Longus’ era many aristocrats participated in Dionysic rituals held in the countryside, and Dionysos imagery is common on Roman-era sarcophagi. Dionysophanes and Chloe’s parents, devotees of the rural gods (4.13), leave the city to partake in the rural Dionysos festival and, through the resulting events and discoveries, their lives are substantially improved. The life of the Lesbian aristocrats appears one of continuous pleasure without the burdens of work, although this ideal dimension is undercut by the circumstances of childrens’ exposure (4.24). Bloch stressed the dream of a humanized nature and humanized work, an aspect quite prevalent in Lon————— 86 87
88 89
See especially Chalk (1960) 32–51. Borrowing, of course, with considerable irony and comedy; Socrates in the Phaedrus claims the city, not the country, is where he finds education, and Plato generally makes a strong separation between muthos and logos; see Hunter (1997) 17–18. See Hunter (1997) 15–28; Bretzigheimer (1988) 515–555. MacQueen (1990) 170.
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Longus; it is hard to distinguish the work that Daphnis and Chloe do from play; the closeness of the protagonists to their animals, and the use of music instead of force to control them, suggests a very different vision of a proper means of production. The gardens, especially the great ornamental garden of 4.2–3, where art and nature are indistinguishably blended, again point to an ideal, cooperative fusion of human and natural effort, the result of a humane technology.90 Longus’ romance, although largely reproducing the city-dweller’s idyllic vision of country life,91 contains abundant references to worldly evil; the practice of slavery, child-exposure, warfare and piracy, and the parasitical control of the city over the countryside, plus animal attacks and poor harvests. While such solutions as an end to war through the offices of Pan are utterly fanciful, the diminution of class distinctions during their wedding, and the later lives of the mature Daphnis and Chloe as aristocrats who defy the usual aristocratic social codes92 and are not cut off from the land and the people who produce their wealth,93 contains the rudiments of a realizable social improvement. Summation Chariton’s romance is most utopian in its echoes of the myth of Demeter and Korê, in which the powers of the underworld are defeated and a new beneficent situation arises for humankind, and in the presentation of a recognizable, but better, type of history and society, which presents images of urban social harmony, democracy, rule of law and Greek independence from foreign imperial control. Heliodorus’ romance likewise reflects contemporary ————— 90
91
92 93
Although the violent images depicted on the altar in the garden’s center (4.3) suggest the violence at the heart of human life and relationships. Longo (1978) and DiVirgilio (1991) stress how this depiction of a countryside whose inhabitants are not obviously in poverty (they always have the resources to give gifts) and are often occupied in festivities, and are ennobled by a certain virtuous poverty, encourages Longus’ urban readers forget the oppressive system their lifestyle is based upon. See Daude (1991). Gnathon, who makes a career of self-indulgent over-consumption without doing any constructive work and who is particularly despised by the country folk and made an object of ridicule by Longus particularly embodies this social evil; see Winkler (1990) 112. Further, Whitmarsh has pointed out that the only character that is explicitly designated as pepaideumenos is the urban parasite Gnathon (4.17.3); see Whitmarsh (2001) 102.
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political problems and presents an even more ideal alternative in Hydaspes and Meroë. It also contains themes common to eschatology and apocalypse; Charicleia is clearly the marvelous child and reformer that must find her true identity and restore her people, creating a model for a more unified and less barbaric type of society as well as for personal integrity. It also, more than the other romances, challenges notions of Greek supremacy. Longus’ romance presents exiled children who must find their identity and proper status, and who will create a new model for individual behavior and social relations. Longus’ romance is especially utopian in its suggestion of the possibility of recovering the lost potentials of erôs, of forging more ideal relationships with nature and creating more ludic forms of work, and dissolving (at least partially) the gulf between social classes. All these romances show a future whose hidden potentials are able to rewrite and redeem a compromised past. This overview hardly exhausts the topic. While the narrative of triumphant love was the most rewarding element for most readers of the Greek romance, this did not preclude other sources of engagement. The patterns our romances share with myths and religious formulations which posit a better world to a certain degree imported this perspective into them. And the persistence of literary works, folktales, rituals and other creative productions based on these perspectives testifies to the large number of individuals for whom such an ideal possibility was able to be enjoyed, if not faithfully believed. The limitations and distortions of social and political life make themselves felt in these texts, but also hopes, including objectively real hopes, appear; certainly images of a freer, less alienated society would have had their delights alongside the productions of erôs. Finally, by pointing out the persistence of this ideal dream within literary texts, we thereby show its durability in human history and aid those who still imagine the possibility of radical change, helping them know that there will be always a ground wherein the beginnings of a better world may take root. Bibliography Aarne, A., and Thompson, S. 1961. The Types of Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications No. 184, Helsinki. Alvares, J. 1997. ‘Chariton’s Erotic History,’ AJP 118, 613–629. — 2001–2. ‘Some Political and Ideological Dimensions of Chariton’s Chaireas and Callir-
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hoe,’ CJ 97.2, 113–144. Anderson, G. 1982. Eros Sophistes – Ancient Novelists at Play, Chico, CA. Arnott, G. 1994. ‘Longus, Natural History, and Realism,’ in J. Tatum, ed., The Search for the Ancient Novel, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 199–215. Balfour, I. 1988. Northrop Frye, New York. Bar-Ilan, M 1995. ‘Prester John: Fiction and History,’ History of European Ideas 20, 291– 298. Berry, J. 2001. Narrative and Identity in Heliodorus’ Aithiopika, Dissertation University of Chicago. Billault, A. 1989. ‘De l’histoire au roman: Hermocrate de Syracuse,’ REG 102, 540–548. Black, B. 1986. ‘The Abolition of Work,’ in B. Black, The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, Port Townsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited. This essay is reproduced on the internet: www.scenewash.org/lobbies/chainthinker/situationist/black/zero/work18.html. Bloch, E. 1959. Erbschaft dieser Zeit. (enlarged edition), Berlin and Frankfurt. — 1972. Das Materialismusproblem, seine Geschichte und Substanz, Frankfurt am Main. — 1977. Geist der Utopie, Frankfurt am Main. — Plaice, S. (N. Plaice, P. Knight, trans.) 1986. The Principle of Hope. (3 vols.), MIT Press. — Zipes, J. 1988. (F. Mecklenberg, trans.). The Utopian Function of Art and Literature, MIT Press. Bompaire, J. 1977. ‘Le décor Sicilien dans le roman grec et dans la littérature contemporaine,’ REG 90, 55–68. Borgogno, A. 1971. ‘Menandro in Caritone,’ RFIC 99, 257–263. Bretzigheimer, G. 1988. ‘Die Komik in Longos’ Hirtenroman Daphnis und Chloe,’ Gymnasium 95, 515–555. Burkert, W. 1979. Structure and history in Greek Mythology and Ritual, Berkeley. Chalk, H. H. O. 1960. ‘Eros and the Lesbian Pastorals of Longus,’ JHS 80, 32–51. Chew, K. 1994. Novel Techniques: Motivation and Causation in the Ancient Novels with Special Reference to Heliodorus’ Aethiopica, Dissertation UCLA. Clay, D., Purvis, A. 1999. Four Island Utopias, Focus Press. Corbato, C. 1968. ‘Da Menandro a Caritone. Studi sulla Genesi del Romanzo Greco e i suoi Rapporti con la Commedia Nuova I,’ Quaderni Triestini sul Teatro Antico 1, 5–44. Cook, S. L. 1995. Prophecy and Apocalypticism, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Daude, C. 1991. ‘Le roman de Daphnis et Chloé, ou comment ne pas être «un animal politique»,’ in N. Fick et J.-C. Carrière, eds., Mélanges: Etienne Bernand, Université de Besançon, Paris, 203–225. Dawson, D. 1992. Communist Utopias in Greek Thought, Oxford. de la Vega, M.J. Hidalgo. 1988. ‘Los misterios y la magia en las Etiopicas de Heliodoro,’ Studia Historica. Historia Antigua 6, 175–188. Denham, R. D. 1978. Northrop Frye and Critical Method, Pennsylvania State University Press. Di Virgilio, R. 1991. La narrativa greca d’amore: “Dafni e Cloe” di Longo, Rome: Accademia nazionale dei Lincei. Dundes, A. G. 1964. The Morphology of North American Indian Folktales, Helsinki. Edwards, D. R. 1996. Religion and Power. Pagans, Jews and Christians in the Greek East, New York. Egger, B. 1990. Women in the Greek Novel: Constructing the Feminine, Dissertation University of California-Irvine. Eliade, M. 1971 (W. R. Trask, trans.). The Myth of the Eternal Return, or, Cosmos and History, Princeton, N.J. Ferguson, J. 1975. Utopias of the Classical World, Ithaca.
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Foley, H. P. 1977. ‘Interpretive Essay on the Homeric Hymn to Demeter,’ in H. P. Foley, ed., The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Princeton, 77–168. Frye, N. 1957. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, Princeton. — 1970. The Stubborn Structure; Essays on Criticism and Society, Ithaca. — 1976. Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance, Harvard University Press. — 1982. The Great Code: The Bible and Literature, New York. Geoghegan, V. 1996. Ernst Bloch, New York. Giangrande, L. 1976. ‘Les Utopies Hellénistiques,’ Cahiers des Études Anciennes 5, 17–33. Günther, R., Müller, R. 1988. Das goldene Zeitalter: Utopien der hellenistisch-römischen Antike, Stuttgart. Heiserman, A. 1977. The Novel before the Novel. Essays and Discussions, Chicago. Helms, J. 1966. Character Portrayal in the Romance of Chariton, The Hague. Holquist, M. 1990. Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World, London. Holland, N. 1968. The Dynamics of Literary Reponse, Oxford. Hudson, W. 1982. The Marxist Philosophy of Ernst Bloch, New York. Hunter, R. 1996. ‘Longus, Daphnis and Chloe,’ in G. Schmeling, ed., The Novel in the Ancient World, Leiden, 361–386. — 1997. ‘Longus and Plato,’ in Picone, M., Zimmermann, B., eds., Der antike Roman und seine mittelalterliche Rezeption, Basel, 15–28. Itzkoff, S. W. 1977. Ernst Cassirer, Philosopher of Culture, Boston. Jameson, F. 1981. The Political Unconciousness. Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act, Ithaca. — 1971. Marxism and Form, Princeton. — 1990. ‘Five Theses on Marxism,’ in M. Hardt, K. Weeks, eds., The Jameson Reader, Oxford, 165–171. — 1990. ‘Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture,’ in M. Hardt, K. Weeks, eds., The Jameson Reader, Oxford, 121–148. Johne, R. 1996. ‘Women in the Ancient Novel,’ in G. Schmeling, ed., The Novel in the Ancient World, Leiden, 151–207. Jones, C. P. 1978. The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom, Harvard University Press. Konstan, D. 1994. Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres, Princeton. Laplace, M. 1980. ‘Les Légendes Troyennes dans le “Roman” de Chariton, Chairéas et Callirhoé,’ REG 93, 83–125. Levi-Strauss, C. 1966. The Savage Mind, University of Chicago Press. Longo, O. 1978. ‘Paesaggio di Longo Sofista,’ Quaderni di Storia 4, 99–120. Marcuse, H. 1955. Eros and Civilization, Boston. MacQueen, B. D. 1990. Myth, Rhetoric and Fiction. A Reading of Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. McCulloh, W. E. 1970. Longus, New York. Morgan, J. R. 1995. ‘The Greek novel: towards a sociology of production and reception,’ in A. Powell, ed., The Greek World, London, 130–152. — 1996. ‘Heliodorus,’ in G. Schmeling, ed., The Novel in the Ancient World. Leiden, 417– 456. — “Narrative Doublets in Heliodorus’ Aithiopika,” in Hunter, R., ed., Studies in Heliodorus, Cambridge, 1998, 60–78. Morson, G.S., and Emerson, C. 1990. Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics, Stanford. Muchow, M.D. 1988. Passionate Love and Respectable Society in Three Greek Novels. Dissertation, Johns Hopkins University. Nimis, S. 1994. “The Prosaics of the Ancient Novel,” Arethusa 27, 387–411. — 1998. “Memory and Description in the Ancient Novel,” Arethusa 31, 99–122.
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— 1999. “The Sense of Open-Endedness in the Ancient Novel,” Arethusa 32, 215–238. Oliver, J.H. 1953. The Ruling Power. A Study of the Roman Empire in the Second Century after Christ through the Roman Oration of Aelius Aristides. (= TAPHS, n.s., vol. 43.4, 871–1003), Philadelphia. Perry, B.E. 1967. The Ancient Romances: a Literary-Historical Account of their Origins. Berkeley. Propp, V. – Scott, L., trans. 1968. The Morphology of the Folktale. 2nd ed. Austin. Ruiz-Montero, C. 2000. “Caritón de Aphrodisias y el Mundo Real,” in P. Liviabella Furiani and A. M. Scarcella, eds., Piccolo Mondo Antico. Perugia, 1989, 107–149. Russell, F., Northrop Frye on Myth. New York. Scarcella, A.M. 1993. “Realtà e Letteratura nel Paesaggio Sociale ed Economico del Romanzo di Longo Sofista,” in Romanzo e Romanzieri. Note di Narratologia Greca. Perugia, 241–257. Sowa, C.W. 1984. Traditional Themes and the Homeric Hymns, Chicago. Swain, S.C.R. 1996. Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism and Power in the Greek World A.D. 50–250, Oxford. Szepessy, T. 1957. “Die Aithiopika des Heliodoros und der griechische sophistische Liebesroman,” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 5, 241–259. Vickery, J.B. 1980. “Literary Criticism and Myth: Ango-American Critics,” in J.P. Strelka, ed., Literary Criticism and Myth, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 210–237. Whitmarsh, T. 2001. Greek Literature and the Roman Empire, Oxford. — 1998. “The Birth of a Prodigy: Heliodorus and the Genealogy of Hellenism,” in R. Hunter, ed., Studies in Heliodorus, Cambridge, 93–124. Wimsatt, W.K. 1966. “Northrop Frye: Criticism as Myth,” in M. Krieger, ed., Northrop Frye in Modern Criticism. Selected Papers from the English Institute, New York – London, 75–107. Winkler, J. 1982. “The Mendacity of Kalasiris and the Narrative Strategy of Heliodoros’ Aithiopika,” Yale Classical Studies 27, 93–158. — 1990. “The Education of Chloe: Hidden Injuries of Sex,” in J. Winkler, ed., The Constraints of Desire. The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece. New York, 101–126.
Il mimo tra ‘consumo’ e ‘letteratura’: Charition e Moicheutria M ARIO A NDREASSI Università di Bari
I mimi popolari del Charition e della Moicheutria, risalenti a un periodo oscillante tra I e II secolo d.C. e tramandati rispettivamente dal recto e dal verso del papiro di Ossirinco 413,1 costituiscono un significativo esempio di quella che è comunemente definita letteratura di consumo. Pur riconoscendone l’importanza storica, gli studiosi tendono ad assegnare a questi testi una scarsa valenza letteraria e a sottolineare invece la loro destinazione a un consumo immediato, senza velleità artistiche e competenze letterarie né da parte del mimografo né del pubblico.2 Tale distinzione sembra tuttavia fermarsi a un giudizio estetico, trascurando di cogliere le dinamiche che presiedono alla stesura e alla fruizione del testo. È possibile, al contrario, verificare come il Charition e la Moicheutria non soltanto siano contigui al territorio letterario, ma si segnalino anche per il recupero e, soprattutto, la rielaborazione di temi tradizionalmente letterari, che adesso, tra I e II secolo d.C., vengono proposti a un pubblico nuovo, talora molto diverso da quello cui i modelli originari erano destinati. Charition – Omero – Euripide Protagonista omonima del Charition è una ragazza greca che, per motivi imprecisabili (il papiro è mutilo della parte iniziale del mimo), è prigioniera ————— 1
2
L’editio princeps del papiro, alla cui numerazione interlineare farò riferimento, è stata pubblicata da Grenfell-Hunt 1903, 41–57. Per il testo seguo l’edizione di Cunningham 1987, 47–51. Per ulteriore bibliografia rinvio ad Andreassi 2001a, IX–XV. Si vedano i giudizi di Grenfell-Hunt 1903, 44; Mekler 1909, 22; Crusius 1910, 99 e 101; Arnott 1971, 124.
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di un popolo indiano e svolge le mansioni di sacerdotessa presso il tempio della dea Selene. Un gruppo di Greci, guidato dal fratello di Charition, giunge in soccorso della giovane. La liberazione avviene grazie a un espediente ideato dalla stessa Charition: l’offerta di vino puro agli Indiani, che, poco avvezzi alla bevanda, ne sono attratti e, divenuti innocui per l’ubriachezza, non ostacolano la fuga dei Greci. Nella vicenda gli studiosi (e segnatamente, da ultimo, Santelia 1991, 12– 34) hanno riconosciuto i segni di una chiara dipendenza da Euripide e da Omero. Le analogie andranno ricondotte, in particolare, a due nuclei tematici, all’interno dei quali si possono stabilire ulteriori punti di contatto. a. Fuga di una giovane greca da una terra barbara Il motivo è attestato nelle due tragedie ‘gemelle’ di Euripide, l’Ifigenia in Tauride e l’Elena, rispetto alle quali il Charition mostra già nell’intreccio evidenti parallelismi: le protagoniste sono confinate in un territorio barbaro (l’India; la regione dei Tauri; l’Egitto)3 e hanno trovato rifugio in un luogo sacro (tempio di Selene; tempio di Artemide; tomba di Proteo); inaspettatamente, esse si ricongiungono a una persona cara (il fratello o il marito), con cui, in seguito all’adozione di uno stratagemma ingannatore, riescono a imbarcarsi e a fuggire in patria. Analoga simmetria si riconosce, in un’ottica narratologica, nella funzione assolta dai personaggi: all’eroe (Charition; Ifigenia; Elena) si affiancano un eroe secondario (il fratello; Oreste; Menelao) e degli aiutanti (il servo; Pilade e il coro di donne greche; Teonoe), mentre un antagonista (il re indiano; Toante; Teoclimeno) cerca di ostacolare i loro piani. Comuni sono pure le modalità che caratterizzano l’inganno tramato ai danni del nemico; significativamente, è sempre la protagonista ad assumersi il compito di ideare e organizzare lo stratagemma;4 in tutti e tre i testi, poi, il ————— 3
4
L’insistenza, all’interno delle due tragedie, sull’elemento barbaro è confermato dalla frequenza dell’aggettivo βάρβαρος, che nell’Elena è attestato ai vv. 192, 224, 234, 257, 274, 276, 295, 501, 598, 600, 666, 743, 789, 800, 863–864, 1042, 1100, 1117, 1132, 1210, 1258, 1380, 1507, 1594, 1604, e nell’Ifigenia ricorre ai vv. 31, 180, 417, 629, 739, 775, 886, 906, 1086, 1112, 1170, 1174, 1337, 1400, 1422. Si osservi, tuttavia, che nella seconda parziale redazione del Charition, tramandata sul verso del papiro, è il personaggio ς a elaborare il piano ingannatore, facendo così ‘venir meno uno dei punti caratterizzanti la dipendenza del Charition da Ifigenia in Tauride e da Elena’ (Santelia 1991, 97).
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piano ha luogo in un contesto religioso (un rito di purificazione nelle tragedie euripidee, una cerimonia sacra in onore della dea Selene nel Charition) e il personaggio antagonista fa il suo ingresso in scena solo dopo che l’inganno è stato predisposto e definito nei dettagli. Ulteriori elementi, infine, consentono di stabilire singoli collegamenti tra il Charition e ciascuna delle due tragedie di Euripide: Ifigenia e Charition, per esempio, sono entrambe sacerdotesse nel tempio di una dea (rispettivamente Artemide e Selene), la quale è invocata prima di salpare e di abbandonare la terra straniera (vv. 1398–1402 – r. 106); nell’Elena, Teoclimeno è dedito alla caccia come lo saranno, nel Charition, i barbari Indiani (vv. 153– 154, 1169–1170 – r. 116), i cui attacchi annunciati ai rr. 10 e 56–57 del mimo sembrano dare indirettamente fondamento al timore manifestato, nell’Elena, da Menelao, allorché, ricevendo il messaggero inviato dai compagni, si chiede allarmato se non vi sia stata un’incursione dei barbari Egiziani (v. 600); infine, Menelao, prima ancora che sia stato messo a punto il piano ingannatore, esorta Elena a fuggire, non diversamente da quanto farà il fratello di Charition con la protagonista del mimo (vv. 742–744 – r. 41). b. Somministrazione del vino a un nemico barbaro La somministrazione del vino akratos agli Indiani, al fine di annullare ogni loro potenzialità offensiva, richiama palesemente il nono libro dell’Odissea e il dramma satiresco euripideo del Ciclope: come il Ciclope di Omero (che conosce il vino ma non quello straordinario di Marone offertogli da Odisseo [vv. 357–359]) e il Polifemo euripideo (del tutto ignaro in materia enologica [v. 123]), gli Indiani sono inesperti di vino (rr. 52–54) e si prestano a divenire vittime predestinate dell’inganno tramato da Charition. Le analogie coinvolgono, al di là del tema letterario, le modalità narrative con cui l’episodio si sviluppa. Al pari di Polifemo, per esempio, gli Indiani sono inizialmente assenti sulla scena,5 ma, come nei modelli di Omero e Euripide, la loro esistenza è nota ai Greci e, in tutti e tre i testi, una specifica affermazione – pronunciata rispettivamente da Odisseo (vv. 232–233), da Sileno (v. 193) e dal servo (r. 10) – richiama l’attenzione sull’arrivo del nemico e introduce l’incontroscontro tra barbari e Greci. ————— 5
Gli Indiani e il Ciclope euripideo condividono la medesima attività, la caccia (r. 116 – v. 130), mentre il Ciclope omerico è dedito alla pastorizia (v. 217): tutti comunque sono accomunati da uno stretto contatto con il mondo animale.
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Durante l’offerta del vino puro il fratello di Charition, animato dagli stessi obiettivi dell’Odisseo omerico (vv. 347, 361) e di quello euripideo (vv. 530, 570), cerca di far sì che il nemico beva quanto più rapidamente possibile un’ingente quantità di vino (rr. 66, 69). Le conseguenze sono analoghe in tutti e tre i testi, poiché l’ebbrezza nella quale cadono il Ciclope e gli Indiani produce un netto abbassamento del loro tasso di ostilità: in Omero, Polifemo soltanto dopo aver bevuto il vino di Marone si adegua alle norme dell’ospitalità e chiede a Odisseo quale sia il suo nome (v. 355);6 in Euripide, il Ciclope, ubriaco per effetto del vino akratos, si abbandona gioiosamente al canto (vv. 423–426); nel Charition, gli Indiani danno vita a danze sfrenate nelle quali sembra vogliano coinvolgere il servo (r. 72). Moicheutria – Eronda Il mimo della Moicheutria ha per protagonista una risoluta signora, che è accesa da amore non corrisposto per lo schiavo Esopo, a sua volta innamorato e fedele alla compagna Apollonia; inasprita dal rifiuto, la padrona ordina ad altri servi di giustiziare i due amanti; quindi si avventura in un nuovo progetto omicida (l’avvelenamento del marito); le sue trame sono tuttavia sventate dai servi e il mimo si conclude con la ‘resurrezione’ delle presunte vittime e la punizione di Malakos, lo schiavo confidente della moicheutria. La prima parte della Moicheutria porta sulla scena un motivo, quello dell’amore della padrona per il proprio schiavo, che trova numerose attestazioni nella letteratura greca così come in quella latina.7 Particolarmente rilevante è il caso del quinto mimiambo di Eronda, dove la padrona Bitinna è fuori di sé per il sospetto che lo schiavo Gastrone la tradisca con la più giovane Anfitea. L’analogia tematica tra il quinto mimiambo e la pièce di Ossirinco è palese:8 un unico filo rosso sembra legare il mimo letterario a quello popolare.9 ————— 6
7
8 9
Anche Odisseo, peraltro, si rivolge al Ciclope ‘con dolci parole’ (v. 363) solo quando il vino è sceso ‘nei precordi’ del nemico (v. 362). Cf. Andreassi 2001a, 109; per i mimi basati sul tema dell’adulterio cf. Reynolds 1946 e Kehoe 1984. Si veda anche quanto ha già messo in evidenza Simon 1991, 25–32. La dipendenza non sembra, a mio avviso, di tipo unidirezionale: come infatti è lecito supporre che Eronda abbia attinto alla fonte delle rappresentazioni popolari (dove il tema dell’adulterio giocava un ruolo di primo piano), così è ipotizzabile che un autore del II
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I protagonisti. Al centro di entrambi i mimi vi è una coppia costituita dalla padrona e dallo schiavo da lei concupito: Bitinna e Gastrone, la moicheutria ed Esopo. La relazione è soggetta, di per sé, a una dinamica facilmente prevedibile: da una parte un personaggio che dispone della massima autorità impositiva, dall’altra un altro che, per statuto, deve sottomettersi incondizionatamente al volere del primo.10 Il meccanismo però si inceppa – e da qui prende avvio l’intera vicenda dei due mimi – per la presenza (solo nominale in Eronda, scenica nella Moicheutria) di un terzo personaggio: la ragazza amata dallo schiavo. Anfitea e Apollonia costituiscono la causa scatenante della furiosa gelosia di Bitinna e della moicheutria, le quali, private del contraccambio erotico e disorientate dall’improvvisa inefficacia del loro potere, trovano nella vendetta il solo mezzo alternativo per continuare a dare dispoticamente sfogo alla propria volontà. La reciprocità amorosa e la gelosia. Sebbene Anfitea non appaia sulla scena (è solamente menzionata ai vv. 3, 4, 29) e Apollonia si limiti al ruolo di personaggio muto, caratterizzato da sostanziale passività, le due donne diventano oggetto di un’incontenibile gelosia da parte delle padrone. L’ostilità, in cui si sommano disappunto per l’amore non corrisposto e risentimento per essere state preferite a rivali evidentemente più giovani,11 trova in entrambi i mimi una molto netta formulazione. Il quinto mimiambo si apre con un polemico quanto esplicito interrogativo retorico in cui Bitinna contesta a Gastrone di averla trascurata per rivolgere piuttosto ad Anfitea le sue attenzioni sessuali (vv. 2–3). La domanda, che mostra un dualismo nel quale la persona loquens risulta chiaramente sconfitta, si rinnova nella Moicheutria, dove la protagonista sottolinea, con chiaro disappunto, l’inconcepibile preferenza che Esopo accorderebbe ai faticosi lavori campestri in luogo del ben più semplice compito di esaudire i desideri erotici di lei (rr. 118a–b).
————— 10
11
secolo d.C., quale appunto il mimografo di Ossirinco, potesse conoscere la versione ‘letteraria’ proposta dal quinto mimiambo erondeo. Sono gli stessi protagonisti, in entrambi i mimi, a chiarire la loro condizione sociale. Dinanzi all’ira gelosa della padrona, Gastrone sottolinea: Βίτιννα, δοῦλός εἰµι (v. 6), e Bitinna, a sua volta, ribadisce: δεῖ σ’ ὀτεύνεκ’ εἰ<ς> δοῦλος (v. 20); analogamente, nella Moicheutria, la protagonista, stizzita nel constatare l’inefficacia dei propri ordini, esclama: µαστιγία, ἐγὼ ἡ κυρία || [ ]υ.του. κελεύω καὶ οὐ γίνεται; (rr. 110–111). E non è solo l’anagrafe a sconfiggere Bitinna e la moicheutria, bensì – come rileva efficacemente Gómez 1990–1992, 75 n. 22 – anche l’onomastica: ‘Amfitea té a veure amb els déus i Apol·lonia, malgrat tractar-se d’una esclava, es diu com un déu’.
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Ancor più icastica è la contrapposizione con la rivale, instaurata più avanti da Bitinna: esclusa dall’amore dello schiavo, del quale invece gode la rivale, la padrona protesta di essere trattata alla stregua di una ‘pezza da piedi’ (ποδόψηστρον, v. 30); in modo analogo, la moicheutria, dopo aver fatto amaramente menzione degli incontri tra Esopo e Apollonia (r. 115), sottolinea la complice intesa che induce lo schiavo a vantarsi con Apollonia delle proprie vicissitudini (rr. 119–120); come Bitinna, la protagonista del mimo di Ossirinco mette in evidenza la propria esclusione da uno status di reciprocità amorosa che appare invece perfettamente realizzata nel legame che unisce il concupito alla rivale. Gli schiavi. Come richiede la loro condizione di padrone, Bitinna e la moicheutria sono circondate da schiavi esecutori degli ordini punitivi: Pirria viene incaricato da Bitinna di legare Gastrone (vv. 10, 25), di spogliarlo (vv. 18, 20) e di portarlo allo zetreion di Ermone (vv. 32–34, 48–49); in modo analogo, la moicheutria ordina ai suoi schiavi di portare le fruste (r. 114), di giustiziare Esopo e Apollonia (rr. 120–128), di consegnare Apollonia, ricatturata dopo la fuga, alle guardie campestri (rr. 140–142) e di sgozzare Esopo, dopo averlo riacciuffato (rr. 143–144). Comune ai due mimi è il tema della solidarietà che lega gli schiavi tra loro. Nella Moicheutria essa giunge al punto che il servo Spinther organizza e dirige un vero e proprio controintrigo in difesa dei compagni di schiavitù: con il pretesto di una teofania e, poi, con l’impiego di un potente sonnifero, egli riesce per due volte a salvare Esopo e Apollonia dalla morte. Obbedisce alla medesima logica il doppio tentativo con cui, in Eronda, la schiava Cidilla cerca e poi ottiene da Bitinna la grazia per Gastrone; altrettanto comprensibile e coerente risulterà, viceversa, il contrariato stupore che la stessa Cidilla manifesta dinanzi alla durezza di Pirria nel trascinare Gastrone alla tortura, dimentico di essere suo syndoulos (vv. 55b–58). La delega della punizione. Benché ossessionate dal desiderio di vendetta, Bitinna e la moicheutria rinunciano entrambe a eseguire in prima persona la condanna inflitta al concupito, preferendo delegare persone specificamente addette a questa incombenza. Nel mimiambo erondeo, Bitinna, dopo aver assegnato a Pirria l’incarico da legare Gastrone (vv. 10b–13, 18, 25), gli ordina di condurlo alla tortura presso lo zetreion:12 accompagnato da Drecone, Pirria dovrà farsi latore del ————— 12
È interessante osservare che Bitinna, poco prima di ordinare a Pirria di condurre Gastrone al luogo di tortura, esprime chiaramente il timore di una fuga (v. 31); la sua ap-
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messaggio della padrona e chiedere a Ermone di infliggere a Gastrone mille frustate sulla spalla e altrettante sulla pancia (vv. 32–34; l’ordine di riferire il messaggio è ripetuto ai vv. 48–49); quindi Bitinna, mutata opinione sulla pena da far subire a Gastrone, convoca il marchiatore Cosi perché provveda, con i suoi attrezzi, a tatuare indelebilmente lo schiavo (vv. 65–68). Analoghe procedure sono seguite dalla moicheutria: dopo aver convocato Esopo (al quale riserva, verosimilmente, un anticipo di punizione a base di frustate [r. 116]) e Apollonia (che entra in scena già imbavagliata [rr. 121– 122]), la padrona dà precise disposizioni agli altri schiavi affinché si occupino della crocifissione dei due condannati (rr. 122–128); in seguito, quando Apollonia viene ricatturata, la protagonista, ricalcando le azioni di Bitinna, si rivolge ai servi perché consegnino la amante di Esopo alle guardie campestri e riferiscano loro l’ordine di tenerla legata saldamente (rr. 140–141). Moicheutria – Esopo13 Il nome dello schiavo perseguitato dalla moicheutria – Esopo – costituisce il primo rimando a un più ampio patrimonio culturale e letterario che, gravitante intorno alla figura leggendaria del favolista greco, è poi confluito nella Vita Aesopi,14 la biografia anonima romanzata che, giuntati in due redazioni principali (G e W),15 fu approntata nel medesimo arco di —————
13
14
15
prensione non è immotivata se si considera che nella Moicheutria proprio una fuga, dopo una presunta teofania, consentirà a Esopo e Apollonia di evitare la crocifissione (rr. 129– 132). Riprendo, sinteticamente, quanto ho già argomentato in Andreassi 2001b, cui rinvio per la bibliografia (integrata, dove necessario, nelle note che seguono). La prima – e poco nota – traduzione italiana integrale della Vita è stata curata da Pillolla 1996 (si segnala anche S. Gentile [a cura di], Vita e favole di Esopo, Napoli 1988, che costituisce la ristampa anastatica di un volume pubblicato dallo stesso Gentile nel 1961 [Adriatica Editrice, Bari] contenente un volgarizzamento inedito della Vita Aesopi risalente al secolo XV [verosimilmente al 1480: Cod. 758 della Biblioteca Universitaria di Valencia]). Sulla struttura della Vita rimando ai fondamentali contributi di Niklas Holzberg (citati in Andreassi 2001b), cui si aggiungano Holzberg 2001a, 84–93 e, per ulteriori indicazioni bibliografiche, Holzberg 2001b; per un quadro d’insieme cf. anche, da ultimo, Adrados 1999. Dopo l’edizione di Westermann (approntata nel 1845 utilizzando un solo codice) e quella di Perry (pubblicata nel 1952, sulla base di undici manoscritti), la redazione W è stata nuovamente edita da Papathomopoulos 1999, il quale, differentemente da Perry, non ha unificato in un singolo testo le due differenti recensioni in cui i codici hanno tramandato la redazione W.
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tempo16 – e forse nella stessa area geografica – del mimo di Ossirinco. Non pochi sembrano essere i motivi tematici che accostano il mimo della Moicheutria al territorio della tradizione relativa a Esopo.17 La schiavitù. 18 Attestata già in Erodoto (2, 134), la notizia della schiavitù di Esopo trova eco nella Vita Aesopi, dove il favolista, come l’Esopo del mimo, è uno schiavo.19 La sua attività si svolge nei campi, dove è assai spesso descritto (capp. 1–20) nell’atto di ‘zappare’ (σκάπτειν), lavoro particolarmente improbo ricordato anche dalla moicheutria ai rr. 117–118 allorché lo schiavo rifiuta il molto meno faticoso ordine di congiungersi con lei. Il mutismo e la mimica. Nel mimo di Ossirinco Esopo è un personaggio muto: con ogni verisimiglianza la sua recitazione doveva basarsi sulla mimica. Anche il favolista, nello spietato eikonismos20 che di lui viene proposto nell’incipit della biografia,21 è muto, come viene ripetutamente sottolineato dall’anonimo autore al fine di preparare il terreno al prodigioso intervento delle Muse che restituiranno la parola a Esopo.22 La mimica diventa dunque la sola alternativa all’afonia, come si evince dall’episodio del furto dei fichi (3 [G]): ingiustamente accusato, Esopo mette in scena un vero e proprio mimo che gli consente di scagionarsi dall’accusa e di indicare i reali colpevoli. Esopo e la padrona. 23 Nel mimo di Ossirinco, la tensione tra la padrona innamorata e lo schiavo che non la contraccambia sfocia inevitabilmente nel conflitto, e la moicheutria non esita a ordinare di giustiziare Esopo. Lo schema, con andamento inverso, si ripete nella Vita: inizialmente ————— 16
17
18 19 20
21
22 23
A una datazione ellenistica pensano, invece, Adrados 1993, 664 e 1999, 648 e, in parte, Hägg 1997, 183, il quale fa risalire a un ‘separate Hellenistic work’ i capitoli 20–91 (rapporto di Esopo con il padrone Xanto). Questa connessione sembra essere stata alquanto trascurata dagli studiosi. A parte la sintetica ipotesi avanzata da Crusius 1914, 111, secondo cui Esopo è ‘nomen ad fabellam Romanensem referendum’, solo Gómez 1990–1992 ha suggerito un concreto rapporto testuale tra Eronda, la Moicheutria e la Vita Aesopi. Su questo tema si veda Hopkins 1993. Per il rapporto tra Esopo e il suo padrone (il filosofo Xanto) rinvio ancora a Hägg 1997. Sull’iconografia di Esopo si vedano Zanker 1997, 37–38, Papademetriou 1997, 13–42 (su cui cf. Holzberg 1999, 237), Salomone 1999 e, da ultimo, Lissarrague 2000. L’esordio della Vita, considerato nella più ampia prospettiva delle analogie che accomunano la biografia di Esopo con la produzione evangelica apocrifa, è stato oggetto di interessanti riflessioni da parte di Pervo 1998, 105–109 (si veda anche Shiner 1998). Su questo punto si veda, da ultimo, Dillery 1999. Sull’argomento cf. Jedrkiewicz 1994, 218–220.
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schizzinosa e contrariata per l’acquisto di Esopo, la lubrica moglie di Xanto muta presto parere allorché scopre le sorprendenti dimensioni del membro virile dello schiavo e ne reclama, come la moicheutria, le prestazioni sessuali (75–76 [W]).24 L’elemento apollineo. Nella tradizione manoscritta della Vita Aesopi la discordanza tra le recensioni W e G rispetto al ruolo assegnato ad Apollo (G antiapollinea, W filoapollinea o, comunque, non ostile) lascia desumere, al di là delle possibili esegesi critiche, che la figura di Apollo è strettamente associata alla vicenda biografica di Esopo. Non sarà un caso, allora, che nel mimo di Ossirinco la schiava amata da Esopo e causa della sua condanna a morte si chiami Apollonia: in un testo dove i nomi sono di tipo ‘parlante’,25 una donna contrassegnata come ‘proprietà’ di Apollo – proprio come la coppa del tempio delfico per il cui furto il favolista è ingiustamente accusato e condannato nella Vita – determina il destino di Esopo.26 La morte. In numerose fonti letterarie così come nella Vita, la morte di Esopo è quella tipica degli ierosili: il favolista è condannato all’apokremnismos, ossia a essere gettato da una rupe. A tale procedura potrebbero alludere i lacunosi righi 148–150 della Moicheutria, dove la protagonista, di fronte al ‘cadavere’ di Esopo, gli domanda perché egli, invece di compiere un’imprecisata azione (verosimilmente quella di contraccambiare la sua passione erotica), abbia preferito ‘essere precipitato’ (r. 149: ῥιφῆναι). Dal momento che nel mimo non vi è alcun rimando alla pratica dell’apokremnismos, una possibile interpretazione andrà ricercata in un contesto allusivo: all’interno della palese ironia paratragica che caratterizza la scena, l’anonimo mimografo inserisce l’ulteriore rimando al noto – e dunque riconoscibile – tema della morte di Esopo precipitato dalla rupe.27 ————— 24
25
26 27
Una nuova traduzione italiana di questo episodio (e di quelli narrati ai capp. 129 e 131) è apparsa, con un sintetico apparato di note, in Merkle-Stramaglia 2000; sull’‘erotic appeal of the deformed’ si può consultare anche Garland 1995, 52–54. Per un’analisi particolarmente attenta a cogliere gli aspetti giambici che caratterizzano il rapporto tra Esopo e la padrona rinvio a Gómez 1987, 199–207. Su Malakos, l’‘Effeminato’, confidente della moicheutria, rimando a quanto ho già argomentato in Andreassi 2000; il brillante organizzatore del controintrigo che smaschera la padrona omicida è Spinther, ‘Scintilla’; le stesse qualifiche di ‘padrona’, ‘schiavo’, ‘vecchio’, ‘parassita’ rinviano a specifiche identità sceniche. Sull’antagonismo tra Esopo e Apollo si veda anche Nagy 1979, 289–291. Sulla morte di Esopo, equiparata al sacrificio rituale del pharmakos, rinvio ai contributi citati in Andreassi 2001b e a Nagy 1979, 279–288.
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La resurrezione. Il mimo della Moicheutria si conclude con la resurrezione di Esopo, di Apollonia e del padrone. L’immagine di Esopo redivivo, assente nella Vita Aesopi, trova nella letteratura greca diverse attestazioni, tra cui spicca quella di Platone Comico (fr. 70 K.-A.),28 attraverso la quale si può desumere che il motivo, verosimilmente penetrato nell’immaginario collettivo, apparteneva al repertorio teatrale già tra V e IV secolo a.C. Moicheutria – Senofonte Efesio – Eliodoro Il diffuso tema letterario della passione della padrona per il servo ha riscosso successo anche nel romanzo: Senofonte Efesio racconta, in 3,12 – 4,1–4, l’appassionato quanto criminale amore della padrona Cinò per il servo Abrocome; Eliodoro, in una lunga esposizione che abbraccia il settimo e l’ottavo libro dei suoi Ethiopika, narra la vicenda dell’amore non corrisposto della regina Arsace per il prigioniero e schiavo Teagene. Differentemente dai casi finora esaminati, qui non si può parlare – se non altro per motivi cronologici29 – di specifiche allusioni o rielaborazioni parodiche da parte dell’anonimo autore della Moicheutria. Ciò che invece appare significativo, nella nostra prospettiva d’analisi, è la rilevante somiglianza dell’impianto narrativo che regola lo sviluppo degli episodi: tanto nel mimo quanto nei due romanzi, i personaggi, le motivazioni e le dinamiche d’azione sembrano obbedire a meccanismi analoghi, per nulla estranei a una techne compositiva di tipo letterario.30 La protagonista. Nel mimo, o quanto meno nella parte che di esso ci è giunta, non vi è un ritratto fisico della moicheutria, ma è evidente che a questa esigenza suppliva la natura stessa dello spettacolo, dal momento che il pubblico poteva vedere la protagonista direttamente con i propri occhi. È ————— 28
29
30
Esopo è anche il titolo di una commedia di Alessi, di cui si sono conservati solo pochi versi (fr. 9 K.-A.), dai quali non è possibile stabilire se vi fossero riferimenti alla resurrezione del favolista. La datazione di Senofonte al II secolo d.C. ne fa, al massimo, un contemporaneo dei due mimi di Ossirinco, mentre Eliodoro, sebbene la sua cronologia sia incerta, è sicuramente vissuto in un’epoca successiva, non anteriore al III–IV secolo d.C. Entrambe le vicende, a loro volta, possono essere considerate un’ennesima rielaborazione dell’assai noto Potipharmotif, in base al quale una donna sposata (come appunto la moglie di Putifarre nel racconto veterotestamentario di Ge. 39, 7–21) si innamora di un ospite (Giuseppe nell’episodio biblico) e, venendo da lui rifiutata, lo accusa di violenza sessuale. Per il Potipharmotif cf. López Salvá 1994 e Andreassi 1997, 9–11.
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verosimile, comunque, che ella fosse un personaggio dal grande impatto visivo, come lasciano pensare i due omologhi romanzeschi di Cinò e Arsace: segnalandosi l’una per l’orribile ripugnanza (3,12,3) e l’altra per l’eccezionale bellezza (7,2,1), esse sono entrambe figure sopra le righe, l’una e l’altra caratterizzate da uno statuto estetico che le pone al di là della media. Ciò che soprattutto accomuna le tre protagoniste è il ruolo sociale, il quale contribuisce a definire in negativo il loro comportamento: tutte padrone dello schiavo che concupiscono, esse occupano una posizione sociale nettamente dominante rispetto all’oggetto della loro passione (Arsace è persino regina). Tanta spregiudicata immoralità non giunge inaspettata: al pubblico della Moicheutria non sarà sfuggita la sbrigativa risolutezza con cui la protagonista dapprima rivolge i propri appetiti sessuali verso lo schiavo Esopo e, subito dopo, passa a tramare l’omicidio del marito; quanto a Cinò e Arsace, sono gli stessi romanzieri, in apertura della narrazione, a sollecitare l’attenzione dei lettori sulla malvagità delle due signore: Cinò, donna ‘molto peggiore a udirsi’ che a vedersi, ‘ha oltrepassato ogni dissolutezza’ (3,12,3); Arsace, a sua volta, è ‘riprovevole per condotta di vita e asservita a piaceri illeciti ed eccessivi’ (7,3,1). Il marito. La presenza di un legittimo consorte rende ancor più riprovevole la passione della padrona per lo schiavo: alla violazione dello status sociale si aggiunge quella del vincolo coniugale. In tutti e tre i casi il marito è una figura impossibilitata o incapace di intervenire per fermare le azioni della moglie: l’anziano marito della moicheutria pare infatti essersi allontanato dall’abitazione dopo un’aspra discussione,31 la cui successiva rappacificazione è presa a pretesto dalla donna per tentare di avvelenarlo; Oroondate, il satrapo sposo di Arsace (il quale già in passato, quando la moglie si era innamorata del casto Tiami, aveva preferito non prendere provvedimenti nei confronti di lei [7,2,2–5]), è lontano da Menfi, impegnato in una guerra contro gli Etiopi, e la stessa serva e mezzana di Arsace, Cibele, non manca di sottolineare astutamente la sua assenza allorché rivela a Teagene la passione della regina per lui (7,20,2); soltanto Arasso, il marito di Cinò, è fisicamente presente allorché la consorte si innamora del giovane schiavo Abrocome, ma egli è un anziano soldato fuori servizio (3,12,2), evidentemente tenuto in scacco dalla moglie, tanto da non accorgersi che, mentre egli ama Abrocome ————— 31
Secondo gli studiosi – Sudhaus 1906, 248; Nicoll 1931, 118; Manteuffel 1930, 47 – la disputa ha avuto luogo (o comunque è stata riferita) nella parte iniziale del mimo, non tramandataci dal papiro di Ossirinco.
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di un amore filiale (3,12,4), Cinò ne fa oggetto di spregiudicate avances. Unico fra i tre mariti traditi, Arasso detiene inoltre l’infausto primato di venire ucciso dalla moglie e poi compianto dalla stessa omicida.32 Il marito della moicheutria, invece, pur essendo vittima di un avvelenamento (non legato, comunque, alla vicenda adulterina), trova la salvezza per merito del fedele servo Spinther (non diversamente da quanto accadrà a Cariclea, salvata anch’essa dal veleno di Cibele grazie all’intervento di una giovane schiava che scambia i bicchieri [8,6,8 – 8,9,5]). E, nella vicenda narrata da Eliodoro, la fedifraga Arsace arriva al punto di auspicare il ritorno di Oroondate: temendo di essere stata scoperta, la donna sa bene di poter placare le ire del marito tradito con qualche affettuosa ed efficace carezza (8,5,7). La proposta erotica. Dopo aver manifestato i propri sentimenti (r. 107), la moicheutria manda a chiamare lo schiavo Esopo, con l’esplicito incarico di soddisfare i desideri sessuali di lei (r. 108). Non meno diretta è Cinò, la quale, innamoratasi a prima vista di Abrocome, non riesce più a trattenersi e, smaniosa di appagare il proprio desiderio (3,12,3), incalza il giovane con la richiesta di vivere insieme, una volta eliminato il marito Arasso (3,12,4). Arsace, condizionata dal suo status di regina, è l’unica che non dichiara il proprio amore allo schiavo (tanto più che questi è ritenuto, inizialmente, un ospite straniero), preferendo ricorrere all’ausilio di un’aiutante (l’anziana serva Cibele), la quale svolge il ruolo di mezzana e di suo ‘doppio’; in questo modo Eliodoro può non soltanto descrivere il crescendo della passione della regina (7,4,2; 7,6,1; 7,8,6 e, soprattutto, 7,9–10), ma anche far pronunciare a Cibele parole inequivocabili, allorché ella, a più riprese sollecitata dall’impaziente padrona (7,19,9), rivela a Teagene l’ardente sentimento di Arsace: la regina – riferisce Cibele – si strugge per lui e lo desidera follemente (7,20,2 e 5). La fedeltà a un’altra donna. Esopo, Abrocome e Teagene sono innamorati, rispettivamente, di Apollonia, Anzia e Cariclea, le quali costituiscono un fortissimo ostacolo al cedimento del giovane concupito: in nome di Apollonia, Esopo affronta fieramente le frustate della moicheutria; il pensiero di Anzia rallenta il cedimento (peraltro solo momentaneo) di Abrocome alle pressioni di Cinò; l’amore per Cariclea è il sentimento, ricambiato, che guida le azioni di Teagene e la sua resistenza agli assalti di Arsace. ————— 32
Qualche analogia è nella Moicheutria, dove la protagonista, dinanzi al presunto cadavere dell’amato Esopo, da lei stessa fatto uccidere, passa a compiangerlo con tono paratragico (rr. 147–150).
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Se, in Senofonte Efesio, Cinò ignora l’esistenza di Anzia, negli altri due testi la padrona è ben consapevole dell’esistenza della rivale, per la quale nutre una feroce gelosia che la spinge, anche sul piano linguistico, a un atteggiamento ostile e violento: la moicheutria definisce Apollonia una ‘puledra’ (r. 119), sottolineandone così la natura lasciva e altezzosa;33 Arsace, con maggiore odio, dopo aver ripetutamente constatato l’intensità del sentimento di Cariclea per Teagene, chiama la rivale ‘maledetta’ (8,7,1). La vendetta. Snodo fondamentale in tutti e tre i testi presi in considerazione è il passaggio dall’amore non contraccambiato al rabbioso desiderio di vendetta. Nella Moicheutria la protagonista, furiosa per il rifiuto di Esopo, procede immediatamente alla punizione, avvalendosi senza alcun indugio dell’autoritario status di padrona: alle severe minacce (rr. 114 e 116), la donna fa seguire impietose frustate e quindi l’ordine, impartito agli altri servi, di crocifiggere e sgozzare il giovane sdegnoso insieme alla sua amata Apollonia (rr. 124 e 127). Più subdolo, ma non meno spietato, è il piano di vendetta escogitato da Cinò: la padrona, infatti, fa arrestare Abrocome accusandolo pubblicamente dell’omicidio del marito Arasso (3,12,6), da lei stessa in precedenza commesso nel folle tentativo di eliminare ogni ostacolo che si frapponesse all’unione con lo schiavo. In Eliodoro, la feroce tortura che Arsace, aizzata da Cibele, infligge a Teagene (8,6,1–2) giunge quasi inevitabile dopo i ripetuti rifiuti che il giovane le ha opposto. Il passaggio dall’amore non contraccambiato all’odio è esplicitamente sottolineato nel corso della narrazione: Cibele ricorda a Teagene che le donne di nobile origine diventano – se sono innamorate – spietate e vendicative (7,20,4); Arsace in persona, poi, manda a dire a Teagene che, se si ostina nel rifiutarla, farà i conti nel medesimo tempo con un’amante respinta e una padrona adirata (7,25,2); e lo stesso narratore teorizza infine, con tono gnomico, che ‘un amore privato della speranza non ha riguardo dell’amato e desidera volgere l’insuccesso in vendetta’ (8,6,1). La delega della punizione. La vendetta punitiva messa in atto dalle protagoniste è in tutti e tre i casi delegata ad altra persona. La moicheutria si rivolge dapprima ai servi, perché procedano alla crocifissione di Esopo e di Apollonia (rr. 122–128), e poi, attraverso di loro, alle guardie campestri, affinché tengano in custodia Apollonia, ricatturata dopo la fuga (rr. 140– 142). Alla crocifissione, che avviene peraltro con modalità molto simili a ————— 33
Per questa duplice caratterizzazione cf. Andreassi 2001a, 117.
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quelle prescritte dalla moicheutria nel mimo di Ossirinco,34 è condannato anche Abrocome (4,2,1–3), fatto ingiustamente arrestare da Cinò e inviato al governatore d’Egitto per espiare la pena. Come la padrona adultera del mimo, anche la risentita regina Arsace, nel romanzo di Eliodoro, si affida alla servitù (l’eunuco Eufrate) per far cedere, con la reclusione e le torture, il recalcitrante Teagene; inoltre, desiderosa di vendicarsi e di rendere più aspre le sofferenze dei due innamorati, fa sì che essi condividano la prigionia e le catene (8,9,21). In realtà, la reciproca visione allevia la pena di Teagene e Cariclea, i quali, in una paradossale gara, affrontano ogni inasprimento della punizione come una nuova prova d’amore; ben più smaliziata, la moicheutria conosce il potere balsamico della reciproca visione e impartisce ai servi precise istruzioni affinché, al momento della crocifissione, evitino che Esopo e Apollonia possano guardarsi e così esalare l’ultimo respiro immersi nel piacere (rr. 124–127). L’intervento divino. Nella Moicheutria una teofania avrebbe consentito a Esopo e Apollonia di fuggire, secondo quanto sostengono i servi incaricati di crocifiggere i condannati (rr. 129–131). L’episodio, piuttosto marginale nel mimo, sembra proporre in realtà un’allusione umoristica a uno schema narrativo, che, come mostrano i romanzi di Senofonte Efesio e Eliodoro, doveva già aver assunto le caratteristiche stereotipe del topos. Abrocome, crocifisso presso le rive del Nilo, è infatti salvato dal provvidenziale intervento del fiume egiziano, che, invocato dal giovane come una divinità (4,2,4), dapprima lo trasporta senza danno fino al mare, e, poi, quando l’eroe è nuovamente catturato e messo al rogo, interviene con le sue acque per spegnere il fuoco della pira (4,2,8), dando luogo a un thauma che costringe i presenti a interrogarsi sulla reale colpevolezza di Abrocome (4,2,9–10). Analoga prodigiosa salvezza trova pure Cariclea (8,9): condannata al rogo da Arsace per l’avvelenamento di Cibele (uccisa dalla bevanda che l’anziana serva intendeva somministrare proprio a Cariclea), la giovane amante di Teagene si rivela miracolosamente inattaccabile dalle fiamme; anche in questo caso gli increduli astanti sono indotti a credere che il sorprendente fenomeno sia da addebitare alla benevolenza divina che protegge la fanciulla, evidentemente innocente; la stessa Cariclea, confidandosi con Teagene, attribuisce la salvezza a ‘qualche intervento soprannaturale’ e a un ‘beneficio degli dèi’ (8,10,2), e continua a mostrarsi riconoscente verso la ‘benevolenza divina’ (8,11,8) anche quando comprende che il miracolo va in realtà ascritto ————— 34
Cf. Andreassi 1999, 20.
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al potere della pietra incastonata nel suo anello. La conclusione. Gli episodi narrati da Senofonte Efesio e da Eliodoro si concludono con la morte di Cinò e Arsace: l’una è condannata alla crocifissione dal governatore d’Egitto (4,4,2), l’altra si suicida impiccandosi (8,15,2). Diverso, almeno in apparenza, è il caso della Moicheutria dove, dopo l’uscita di scena della padrona, se ne perdono letteralmente le tracce. Se tuttavia si considera la prospettiva scenica della pièce, che prevede il costante parallelismo tra le macchinazioni della moicheutria e le contromosse di Spinther, si comprende che un’eventuale punizione della donna apparirebbe un elemento del tutto marginale.35 Indiretta conferma giunge proprio dalle vicende romanzesche, dove la notizia della morte di Cinò e di quella di Arsace sono riferite incidentalmente, a titolo di cronaca, allorché la vicenda si è, di fatto, già risolta: ininfluenti nello sviluppo narrativo, le morti delle due donne sembrano più che altro rispondere alla curiosità di quell’ampia percentuale di lettori che, abituata alla cristallizzazione delle forme del romanzo, va alla ricerca dell’inevitabile happy ending, con la sconfitta del personaggio ‘cattivo’ e la vittoria dei ‘buoni’. Da quanto si è fin qui esaminato emerge una significativa contiguità tra una produzione ritenuta di immediato consumo, quale il Charition e la Moicheutria, e l’ambito letterario tradizionale.36 Una contiguità che, per di più, si manifesta in forme differenziate: la parodia – o, quanto meno, un processo di degradazione del modello ‘alto’ – avvicina il Charition ai testi di Omero e di Euripide; l’analogia tematica con il quinto mimiambo di Eronda pone la Moicheutria nel solco della più nitida espressione letteraria del genere mimico; le allusioni alla tradizione biografica su Esopo documentano il recupero di un patrimonio già consolidato sul piano culturale e confluito, poi, nel testo della Vita Aesopi; le somiglianze strutturali con le vicende del romanzo denotano, infine, una familiarità con un ambito che assumerà le caratteristiche di un genere letterario tradizionale. I mimografi non si limitano, dunque, ad aderire a schemi già collaudati e destinati a conservarsi nel corso dei secoli, ma danno prova di saper reinterpretare e riproporre parti significative e identificabili del repertorio letterario: ————— 35 36
Per ulteriori considerazioni cf. Andreassi 2001a, 157. Non è trascurabile, peraltro, che in entrambi i mimi agiscono meccanismi tipicamente teatrali (‘a parte’, verbi scenici, didascalie verbali, indicazioni registiche) che dimostrano notevole familiarità dei mimografi di Ossirinco con una specifica techne scenica.
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operazione, questa, che non può prescindere dalla familiarità con i modelli e dall’innegabile capacità di ‘smontarli’ e ‘ricostruirli’ nelle loro parti significative, di rivisitarli e adattarli a un pubblico e a un contesto differenti da quelli originari. Collocabili tra ‘consumo’ e ‘letteratura’, i mimi di Ossirinco rivelano così, da una parte, l’impasse accusata – per lo meno rispetto a questo tipo di testi – dalla tradizionale e fuorviante cesura tra letteratura alta e letteratura bassa; dall’altra, inducono all’adozione di un più duttile approccio critico: una prospettiva di analisi, cioè, che sappia cogliere con precisione, e in tutta la sua eterogenea complessità, quel processo osmotico lungo il quale si snoda la metamorfosi del patrimonio letterario. Bibliografia Adrados, F.R. 1993. Rec. a: M. Papathomopoulos, Aesopus Revisitatus, Ioannina 1989, e a: M. Papathomopoulos, Ὁ βίος τοῦ Ἀισώπου. Ἡ παραλλαγὴ Γ. Κριτικὴ ἔκδοση µὲ Ἐισαγωγὴ καὶ Μετάφραση, Ioannina 1990, Gnomon 65, 660–64. — 1999. History of the Graeco-Latin Fable, I, Leiden – Boston – Köln, 647–85 (trad. inglese, rivista e aggiornata, di Historia de la fábula greco-latina, I.2, Madrid 1979). Andreassi, M. 1997. ‘Osmosis and contiguity between ‘low’ and ‘high’ Literature: Moicheutria (POxy 413 verso) and Apuleius’, in: H. Hofmann, M. Zimmerman (edd.), Groningen Colloquia on the Novel, vol. 8, Groningen, 1–21. — 1999. ‘P.Oxy. III 413 (Moicheutria), rr. 122–124 verso’, ZPE 124, 17–21. — 2000. ‘La figura del malakos nel mimo della Moicheutria’, Hermes 128, 320–26. — 2001a. Mimi greci in Egitto: Charition e Moicheutria, Bari. — 2001b. ‘Esopo sulla scena: il mimo della Moicheutria e la Vita Aesopi’, RhM 144, 203– 25. Arnott, W.G. 1971. ‘Herodas and the kitchen sink’, G&R 18, 121–32. Crusius, O. 1914. (ed.) Herondae Mimiambi, Novis fragmentis adiectis, Lipsiae5. — 1910. ‘Über das Phantastische im Mimus’, NJA 25, 81–102. Cunningham, I.C. 1987. (ed.) Herodas Mimiambi. Cum appendice fragmentorum mimorum papyraceorum, Leipzig. Dillery, J. 1999. ‘Aesop, Isis, and the Heliconian Muses’, CPh 94, 268–80. Garland, R. 1995. The Eye of the Beholder. Deformity & Disability in the Graeco-Roman World, London. Gómez (i Cardó), P. 1987. La Vida d’Isop, entre el iambe, la faula i la novela, Barcelona (diss.). Gómez, P. 1990–1992. ‘El frigi del mimiamb V d’Herodes’, Ítaca 6–8, 71–80. Grenfell, B.P., Hunt, A.S. 1903. ‘413. Farce and Mime’, in: The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vol. 3, London. Hägg, T. 1997. ‘A Professor and his Slave: Conventions and Values in the Life of Aesop’, in: P. Bilde, T. Engberg-Pedersen, L. Hannestad, J. Zahle (edd.), Conventional values of the Hellenistic Greek, Aarhus, 177–203. Holzberg, N. 1999. ‘The Fabulist, the Scholars, and the Discourse: Aesop Studies Today’, IJCT 6, 236–42 (rec. a Papademetriou 1997).
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— 2001a. Die antike Fabel. Eine Einführung, Darmstadt2. — 2001b. Der antike Roman. Eine Einführung, Düsseldorf – Zürich2. Hopkins, K. 1993. ‘Novel Evidence for Roman Slavery’, P&P 138, 3–27. Jedrkiewicz, S. 1994. ‘La mujer del filósofo y la mujer de la filosofía’, in: Actas del IX Simposio de la Sociedad Española de Literatura General y Comparada, Zaragoza, 215– 24. Kehoe, P.H. 1984. ‘The adultery mime reconsidered’, in: D.F. Bright, E.S. Ramage (edd.), Classical Texts and their Traditions. Studies in Honor of C.R. Trahman, Chico, 89–106. Lissarrague, F. 2000. ‘Aesop, Between Man and Beast: Ancient Portraits and Illustrations’, in: B. Cohen (ed.), Not the Classical Ideal. Athens and the Construction of the Other in Greek Art, Leiden – Boston – Köln, 132–49. López Salvá, M. 1994. ‘El tema de Putifar en la literatura arcaica y clásica griega en su relación con la literatura del Próximo Oriente’, CFC(G) 4, 77–112. Manteuffel, G. 1930. De opusculis Graecis Aegypti e papyris, ostracis lapidibusque collectis, Warszawa. Mekler, S. 1909. Zur Farce von Oxyrhynchos, in: «Wiener Eranos. Zur 50. Versammlung deutscher Philologen … in Graz», Wien, 20–25. Merkle, S. – Stramaglia, A. 2000. Vita di Esopo, in: A. Stramaglia (ed.), Ἔρως. Antiche trame greche d’amore, Bari, 307–14. Nagy, G. 1979. The Best of the Achaeans. Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry, Baltimore – London. Nicoll, A. 1931. Masks, Mimes and Miracles. Studies in the Popular Theatre, London – Bombay – Sydney. Papademetriou, J.-Th.A. 1997. Aesop As An Archetypal Hero, Athens. Papathomopoulos, M. 1999. Ὁ Βίος τοῦ Αἰσώπου. Ἡ Παραλλαγὴ W, editio princeps. Εἰσαγωγή, Κείµενο, Μετάφραση, Σχολία, Ἀθήνα. Pervo, R.I. 1998. ‘A Nihilist Fabula: Introducing the Life of Aesop’, in: R.F. Hock, J. Bradley Chance, J. Perkins (edd.), Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative, Atlanta, 77– 120. Pillolla, M.P. 1996. Anonimo. Esopo, viaggi e avventure. Romanzo antico, Cagliari. Reynolds, R.W. 1946. ‘The Adultery Mime’, CQ 40, 77–84. Salomone, S. 1999. ‘Una risata veramente diabolica: l’eidos di Esopo nel Romanzo di Esopo (C.24 W)’, StudUmanistPiceni 19, 176–87. Santelia, S. 1991. Charition liberata (P.Oxy 413), Bari. Shiner, W. 1998. ‘Creating Plot in Episodic Narratives: The Life of Aesop and the Gospel of Mark’, in: R.F. Hock, J. Bradley Chance, J. Perkins (edd.), Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative, Atlanta, 155–76. Simon, F.-J. 1991. Τὰ κύλλ’ ἀείδειν. Interpretationen zu den Mimiamben des Herodas, Frankfurt a. M. – Bern – New York – Paris. Sudhaus, S. 1906. ‘Der Mimus von Oxyrhynchos’, Hermes 41, 247–77. Zanker, P. 1997. La maschera di Socrate. L’immagine dell’ intellettuale nell’arte antica, Torino (ediz. orig. München 1995).
The chronology of the earlier Greek novels since B.E. Perry: revisions and precisions E WEN B OWIE Corpus Christi College
This paper first revisits the problem of the chronology of the early Greek novels. The texts at issue are the Ninus romance, the Chaereas and Callirhoe of Chariton, the Ephesiaca of Xenophon, and the Metiochus and Parthenope romance. I then add some observations on the dates of Antonius Diogenes and Achilles Tatius, and on the geographical location of the genesis of the Greek novels.1 I For Chariton2 and for Metiochus and Parthenope we are given a firm terminus ante quem by papyri, in each case of ca. A.D. 150: these are the dates of the Michaelides papyrus of Chariton and of the Berlin fragments (P. Berol. 7927+9588+21179) of Metiochus and Parthenope. The terminus ante quem given by the principal Ninus papyrus (P. Berol. 6926, with fragments A and B) is half a century earlier: unless its writer broke the regular habit of first using a roll of papyrus on the side on which the fibres ran horizontally, the recto, somewhat easing the movement of writing, and instead chose to use the verso (where the fibres ran vertically) the Chariton text on the recto of P. Berol. 6296 is earlier than the tax documents written on its verso; and these ————— 1
2
Versions of this paper were given at the École Normale Supérieure, rue d’Ulm, Paris and at Melbourne and Göteborg Universities, and a penultimate version was pre-circulated and discussed at the novel panel during the New Orleans meeting of the APA in January 2003. I benefited greatly from discussions on these occasions, and particularly from the critique offered by Antonio Stramaglia at the APA panel. For recent and authoritative discussions of the date of Chariton see Reardon, 1996, 309– 335; Ruiz Montero, 1993, 1008–1012.
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documents are of the year A.D. 100/101 (fragment A) and A.D. 101/102 (fragment B). The hand is comparable to others dated to A.D. 60–90,3 and is assigned by Susan Stephens to ca. A.D. 75.4 Ninus cannot possibly have been composed later than A.D. 100, and was most probably composed earlier than ca. A.D. 75. This chronology also follows from the other known papyrus of the Ninus, fragment C, from Oxyrhynchus (PSI 1305), described by Stephens as ‘assignable also to the last half of the first century B.C.’5 How much earlier? Here we run out of evidence, and have to start guessing. Most scholars guess ‘early’, and in any case earlier than Chariton’s work. I quote Gerald Sandy, in the Anglophone bible of the Greek novels, Bryan Reardon’s Collected Ancient Greek Novels: On the basis of this terminus ante quem, as well as on the basis of palaeography and the author’s literary style, papyrologists have established that fragments A and B were written down sometime between 100 B.C. and A.D. 100. This chronology annihilated the then prevailing view of Rohde that the Greek romances were a product of the Second Sophistic, the period of renewed Greek literary activity during the second and early third centuries A.D.6 This statement seems to elide the views of literary historians and papyrologists. Now, at any rate, papyrologists are saying ca. A.D. 75: as far as I know no papyrologist would support an early 1st century A.D. date for our papyrus text, far less the 1st century B.C. And of course if Ninus were composed around A.D. 60–75, it would fall within the second sophistic as defined by Philostratus (who, after all, invented it!), since Philostratus’ first imperial sophist is Nicetes, already prominent in Smyrna when Nero referred his dispute with a λογιστής (finance commissioner) (Verginius?) Rufus to the court of Rufus himself, by then (A.D. 67–8) on an imperial appointment in Gaul (Philostratus, VS 1.19.512). Nicetes was heard ca. A.D. 79 by Pliny (epist. 6.6.3) in Rome, whither his reputation in Asia for flowery rhetoric had already permeated by the dramatic date of Tacitus’ dialogus 15.3, i.e. ca. A.D. 75. ————— 3 4 5 6
Roberts, 1956, plates 11a and 11b. Stephens and Winkler 1995, 31. Stephen and Winkler 1995, 63. Sandy 1989, 803.
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So the case for a significantly earlier date for the composition of Ninus must rest on what Sandy called ‘the author’s literary style’. That had already been stressed by Lesky:7 The affinity with historiography, and linguistical details, such as the pronounced dread of hiatus, recommend an early date, probably the second century B.C. There is consensus here, and authority: Bryan Reardon’s view in 19918 endorsed that of Gerald Sandy. What are the props of this inclination to set the composition of the Ninus a century or more before the papyrus? ‘The affinity with historiography’ can count for little: the ‘historiographical manner’ is equally strong in Chariton, and a version of it is vigorous in Heliodorus, as was well analysed by John Morgan in 1982.9 The simplicity of the style may be one feature implied by Sandy to be significant: it cannot be denied – though it should not be exaggerated – but it would not suffice to detach the date of Ninus from that of Chariton, for whom an early dating in the sequence of novels was first proposed precisely on stylistic grounds. If we try to appeal to more precise or objective stylistic criteria, the case of Chariton should give us pause. On the basis of his linguistic analysis of Chariton Papanikolaou concluded, and persuaded Albrecht Dihle – or did Dihle persuade Papanikolaou? – that Chariton’s relative immunity to Atticism required a dating as early as the first century B.C. But a wider examination of Chariton’s language, by Ruiz Montero and Hernandez Lara, has shown how much he shares with first century A.D. writers – Philo, Josephus and Plutarch.10 The fragments of Ninus are not extensive enough for a telling analysis such as has been done for Chariton. But for what it is worth, Ninus does indeed avoid hiatus,11 as Reeve noted in 1971, though from this Reeve drew the opposite conclusion to Lesky. It also seems to seek out favoured clausulae and Attic vocabulary, with some exceptions.12 These exceptions had been ————— 7 8
9 10 11 12
Lesky 1966, 861. ‘The romance itself probably goes back at least to the 1st century B.C.’: Reardon 1991, 10 n.14 Morgan 1982. Ruiz Montero 1991; Hernandez Lara 1994. Reeve 1971, 536–538. Stephens and Winkler 1995, 31.
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adduced by Dihle in 1978 in his discussion of the Metiochus and Parthenope fragment13 – non-Atticist features that he argued to put Ninus in the same pre-Atticising world as the one in which he wished to locate Chariton and the Metiochus and Parthenope romance. They are not wholly convincing, as the following discussion attempts to show: ναυτιλία A.III 20–21. But ναυτιλία is used twice in this sense ‘sea journey’ in Heliodorus (6.6.3, 7.14.8) and at another place in the sense ‘sailing’ (5.27.3). Its use in the novelists, not admittedly an Attic use, is likely to be drawn from Herodotus (cf. Hdt 1.1.1, 1.163.1). ἤµην A.III 38 for Attic ἠ̑ν. Again the Ninus does not stand alone. Xenophon of Ephesus, not surprisingly, has συνήµην 3.2.9, ἤµην 5.1.6. Neither Chariton nor Heliodorus has ἤµην, but Achilles Tatius has it three times (3.22.3, 4.1.2, 5.1.4). Longus has it at 4.28.3, and it is offered by V at 2.7.4 where F has ἠ̑ν; παρήµην is in both F and V at 2.5.3. κόρη AIV 20. Again this is indeed a non-Attic word, but it is one that is repeatedly used by most novelists to describe their heroine – Xenophon, Achilles Tatius, Longus and Heliodorus. Chariton is unusual in using it only twice (1.3.1, of Callirhoe shortly after her marriage, 3.8.3 of her beauty before she gave birth to her child οὐκέτι κόρης ἀλλὰ γυναικός ἀκµὴν προσλαβοῦσα), but this is chiefly because his Callirhoe is not a κόρη for most of his story. ἐντός with genitive A IV 23: ἡ γὰρ παρθέν[ος ἐντὸς τ]ῆς γυναικωνίτιδ [ος ζῶσα ο]ὐκ εὐThis is not, as Dihle suggested, a simple equivalent for ἐν with the dative. ἐντός here and in general means “inside” not “in”, as it does in the one place where Longus uses it at 2.25.2 ἄκρας ... ἐπεκτεινοµένης µηνοειδῶς, ἡ̑ς ἐντὸς ἡ θάλασσα γαληνότερον τῶν λιµένων ὅρµον εἰργάζετο. ἐρυθαίνω not ἐρυθραίνω, A IV 35. Like ἐντός, this is a supplement, but a fairly secure one: there seems to be no room for a ρ. The form without a ρ is indeed poetic and not Attic, and favoured, for example, by Apollonius Rhodius (also Leonidas Tar., AP 9.322). Neither form appears in the other novelists, who use ἐρυθριάω. But the poetic form ἐρυθαίνω did creep into at least one second-century writer who was careful: Arrian in one of his mete-
————— 13
Dihle 1978, 55 n.
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orological fragments uses ἐρυθαίνεται;14 and it is also offered as a way of describing cheeks by Pollux 2.87. θέρειος and not Attic θερινός is used at B.II 13. However Longus used both θέρειος (at 3.24.1 καιναὶ τέρψεις καὶ θέρειοι) and Attic θερινός, if we accept Courier’s reading at 1.17.4 of χλωρότερον τὸ πρόσωπον ἠ̑ν πόας θερινῆς, based on the superscript θε above the καί of καιρινῆς in F. The form that the author of Ninus needs for his purpose and uses is a comparative: πολὺ θερειότερος τῆς ὥρας ἐπιπεσὼν νότος. Even if he had remembered, unlike Longus, that θερινός is not Attic, he might have been deterred from using θερινός by discovering that this form had no attested comparative. πλὴν ἀλλά, cited by Dihle, is not read in modern editions of the papyrus. θηρίον for a war-elephant, B.III 18, 24, cf. Polyb. 11.1.2. But it is not clear that at B.III 18 and 24 the term is meant to be technical (as it appears to be in Polybius): the beasts have already been referred to as ἐλέφαντες at B.III 11. What we are finding in Ninus, I think, is careful writing that shares some features with other genres that are more single-minded in their Atticising, but writing that looks to a wider range of models that not surprisingly includes the godfather of novel-writing, Herodotus. These features allow a date for the composition of the novel much nearer to that of the papyrus: although I see no particular reason to put it as late as, say, ca. A.D. 90, I think that the widespread inclination to date it substantially earlier has little objective basis, and I do not see how we can exclude a date as late as the 60s A.D. It has been suggested that the lapse of some twenty years between postulated composition of Ninus in the 60s and apparent copying of our papyrus no later than ca. A.D. 90 is too short a span for a text composed (most probably, see below) in Aphrodisias to reach the place it was copied (?Karanis). We do not even begin to have data which would allow us to estimate the average time for a text composed in Rome or Asia Minor to reach cities in Egypt, and no doubt there was considerable variation between one case and another. At one extreme we can note the elegiacs by Gallus from Qasr Ibrîm, composed probably in the 50s or 40s B.C. and discovered in a context that belongs
————— 14
Stobaeus I 31.8 = Scripta minora ed. A.G. Roos p.191.27.
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most probably to the late 20s B.C.15 It is, of course, a special case: but it suffices to demonstrate that it would be unwise to insist on a lapse of (e.g.) four or more decades before a text composed elsewhere might be found on an Egyptian papyrus. Another point that does not bear on dating may nevertheless be worth noticing. The author of Ninus has hit on a key term which appears in two other novels, those of Chariton and Heliodorus, ἀστάθµητος. It is combined with ἀτέκµαρτος at A III 28–9. The author of Ninus may have found these two words within 4 lines of each other in a speech of Hermocrates in Thucydides: 4.62.4 τὸ ... ἀστάθµητον τοῦ µέλλοντος; 4.63.1 διὰ τὸ ἀτέκµαρτον δέος. They well bring out a generic feature of the novelistic world – neither characters nor readers can be sure what the couple’s fate will be. Chariton uses it once;16 Heliodorus uses it three times.17 I react similarly to Dihle’s linguistic arguments for the date of the Metiochus and Parthenope, though I do so more selectively. Dihle noted σήµερον not Attic τήµερον at I.31. Chariton has σήµερον five times; Achilles Tatius σήµερον once and τήµερον once; Longus has only τήµερον, once; Heliodorus has σήµερον twice and τήµερον fifteen times. If one supposes that the sophistic novelists were consistent then we should blame the copyists for the occasional appearance in them of σήµερον and we should suppose that Longus and Heliodorus, at least, and perhaps Achilles Tatius, wrote τήµερον. Equally it seems probable that Chariton wrote σήµερον; perhaps so too did the author of Ninus, but a single case has to be treated with caution.18 I.25 τὸ εὐθαρσές: as Dihle noted, the form is used by Xenophon – whom Dihle then dismisses as a forerunner of the koine. Xenophon was also, however, an important model for several types of writing in the second century – Arrian had a go at almost all of them – and Heliodorus has εὐθαρσέστερον at 10.18.2. The use of τὸ εὐθαρσές by the author of Metiochus and Parthenope does not help the case for the 1st century B.C. date. ————— 15
16 17
18
Anderson, Parsons and Nisbet 1979, esp. 128: ‘If we accept (1), we shall date the Galluspapyrus c. 50 B.C. – c. 20 B.C. If we accept (2), we shall date it c. 50 B.C. – A.D. 25. The balance of evidence favours (1)’… 6.4.5: στῆθος ἀστάθµητον or στῆθος ἀσταθµήτου πλῆρες (the text is uncertain). 5.4.7 ἐπεὶ δὲ ἁστάθµητόν τι τὸ ἀνθρώπειον; 6.7.3 ἀσταθµητότατον τύχης ἀνθρωπίνης κίνηµα, 6.9.3 οὐκ ἐννοήσεις ἄνθρωπος οὖσα, πρᾶγµα ἀστάθµητον. For the problem of σήµερον and τήµερον in Comedy see Arnott 2002, 209–210.
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Nor does his use of βρέφος at I.48. True, βρέφος never appears in Attic prose. But the novelists use the word frequently, usually of young babies but once, as here, of Eros: the use of βρέφος to designate Eros is found in Achilles Tatius at 1.2.1; the others are Chariton – five times, twice (2.11.4, 3.2.13) of the child the pregnant Callirhoe is carrying and thrice of the same child after his birth (3.8.6, 7; 5.10.8); Achilles Tatius 1.10.1; Longus 1.2.1, 3.1, 6.1 (of the exposed babies); Heliodorus 9.11.5–6. I find it hard to see βρέφος as contributing to the case for an early date. Then consider παντελῶς qualifying an adjective at I.53. Not Attic, notes Dihle, but he admits a few exceptions in Plato and Xenophon, e.g. Republic 502D7 παντελῶς ἀληθής. This shows that the author has a broad conception of Attic models, not that he antedates Atticism. Finally at II.43 παρηρτηµένον. This verb is not, indeed, attested in classical Attic. But its use by Plutarch (Ant. 4.3, Mor. 844E), by Lucian (Peregr. 15), and by the arch-Atticiser Aelian (NA 1.2, 5.3) surely exculpates our author from careless slumming. Again, as with the Ninus, I think Dihle has overestimated the factors that might count against locating the writer in a period when Atticism was gaining strength, and I suggest that the novelists’ awareness of their literary ancestry and their consequent readiness to draw on Plato, Xenophon and even Herodotus need to be thrown into the scales. A further piece of evidence might help us in dating Metiochus and Parthenope. A short text on an ostracon in the collection of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, O.Bodl. II 2175, was argued by Gronewald to be a part of the novel: he suggested that the words ‘Parthenope, are you forgetful even of your Metiochus?’ (lines 2–4) might be a letter.19 Stephens and Winkler note that it could as well be a soliloquy, but that ‘since the characters from the novel were popular subjects for theatrical performance, the ostracon is just as likely to be a derivative composition, perhaps related to rhetorical exercise, or a quotation of a famous line from a stage performance’.20 On any interpretation the ostracon seems to imply the existence of a Metiochus and Parthenope narrative. It was perhaps because they rated the chance of this being from the actual text of the novel as low that Stephens and Winkler did not discuss the date of the ostracon, saying no more than that it was ‘from ————— 19 20
Gronewald 1977. Stephens and Winkler 1995, 93. For a full discussion of the literary kind and context to which the ostracon might be assigned see Stramaglia 1994, 120–127.
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the Roman period’.21 But as Stephens and Winkler were going to press Stramaglia suggested that the ostracon was written in the first decades of the first century A.D., citing the support of Cavallo.22 However Cavallo had also said that he could see parallels to the hand in which the ostracon was written over a period running from the first century B.C. to as late as A.D. 66.23 Dirk Obbink has very kindly examined the ostracon and has stressed that this sort of hand is extremely difficult to date: he has suggested that it could well have been written as late as the second half of the first century A.D. It is perhaps unfortunate that the phrase ‘i primi decenni’ has attracted more attention than his other suggested termini of 1st century B.C.– A.D. 66. Even supposing that this text is from the novel, it seems clear that a date in the 60s A.D. would do no violence to the evidence, such as it is. But the ostracon offers no significant support for a date in the first century B.C. Where, then, do I put Metiochus and Parthenope? Close to Chariton, probably but not certainly. Where then Chariton? I am not persuaded by the the case put by Marie-Françoise Baslez for a Flavian or Hadrianic date, which is partly based on the perception of the Euphrates as a frontier between Rome and Parthia, i.e. within the novel the Greek world and the Persian, and partly on the Armenian route taken by Mithridates at 5.2.1.24 Nor am I persuaded by that of Christopher Jones for the same date on the grounds of the similarity between Chariton’s Dionysius of Miletus and the sophist of that name known from epigraphy, Cassius Dio and Philostratus’ Lives25 – a similarity that I concede, but that I take to be clear evidence that Chariton’s character must antedate a distinguished Milesian of the same name unless he were prepared to cause great offence to a man with some power in provincia Asia. I tentatively accept the reference of Persius Satire 1.134 post prandia Callirhoen do to our author’s Callirhoe, and hence the hypothesis of the work’s publication by the early 60s A.D. Another detail might offer a little support. Chariton gives the name Chaereas to his hero who sets the disasters of the novel in train by an act of ————— 21 22
23
24 25
Stephens and Winkler1995, 93. Stramaglia 1994, 123 referring to Cavallo (‘per verba’) as dating it ‘ai primi decenni del I d. C.’ Stramaglia 1994, 123, n.129: ‘Cavallo per verba, adducendo riscontri (specialmente per il my) che si collocano in un arco cronologico compreso fra PBerol inv. 13045 (Pack2 2102) = PGP 2.2, 15 (I a.C.); e POxy 246 = GLH 10c (66 d.C.)’. Baslez 1992. Jones 1992.
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violence and to some extent redeems himself by gathering Greek mercenaries to fight heroically agains the Persian king. Why? It is not a very common name, though it is borne by an Athenian in Thucydides (8.74.1, 3; 86.3). In the 40s A.D., however, it was in the headlines: it was the name of the man who as a centurion in A.D. 14 had been an adulescens animi ferox (Tacitus Annales 1.32) and who 27 years later, now a tribune of the cohors praetoria, had been so persistently insulted by the emperor Gaius that he assassinated him on 24 January A.D. 41: Cassius Chaerea – in Greek Κάσσιος Χαιρέας. The act was remembered in the Greek world as it was in the Roman:26 adulescens animi ferox well describes Chariton’s young Chaereas. This is not to say that the use of the name Chaereas in New Comedy (e.g. by Menander in Dyskolos, Aspis, Koneazomenai and at least one other play) plays no part in Chariton’s choice of name. But although Chaereas is an adulescens in love, there are more strands to his character than are intimated by these ancestors in New Comedy, and those of propensity to violent actions and readiness to seek a military career are better explained by the midfirst century historical figure Cassius Chaerea. That events at Rome and affecting the empire should be known to an author from Aphrodisias is no surprise. In the Julio-Claudian period Aphrodisias and its élite were strengthening their links with the ruling family in Rome.27 Aphrodisias could also be the πατρίς of the author of Ninus, an idea that has occurred independently, I think, to me and to Stephens and Winkler. I think it is unlikely that the author is Chariton himself: the papyrus text of Ninus twice has οἰ̑σθας (e.g. A II.22) whereas Chariton’s manuscript always has οἰ̑σθα;28 as we saw, Ninus has ἤµην at A.III 38 for Attic ἠ̑ν, Chariton does not; and Chariton’s very selective use of κόρη does not quite match the case in Ninus. So perhaps we should imagine two Julio-Claudian novel writers in Aphrodisias, not one. Of these Chariton, on the above, admittedly very precarious argument, should be writing between A.D. 41 and A.D. 61. Is Ninus before or after Chariton? The more confident claim I make is that we have no good ground for putting him before, certainly no good sty————— 26
27
28
Plutarch, de superstitione 170E, Josephus, AJ 18.32–114, Pausanias 9.27.4 (though omitting the name), Dio exc. 59.29. Cf. the presence of the obscure Ti. Claudius Drusus in the Sebasteion reliefs from Aphrodisias as noted by Smith 1987, 95, or his hypothesis that one or more of the commissioners of the North Portico, Menander, Eusebes and Attalis Apphion, had seen the Augustan series of reliefs in the Porticus ad nationes, Smith 1988, 75. For οἶσθας and οἶσθα in Comedy see Arnott 2002, 203–204.
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listic ground. Less confidently, I hazard a possible reason for putting Ninus later. The king’s expedition into the wintry wilds of Armenia constitutes a colourfully handled section of our fragments. Chariton too had taken his satrap Mithridates through Armenia to get to Babylon,29 but without dwelling on the problems of this route (5.2.1). But since Chariton had written, if we place him before A.D. 61, campaigning in Armenia had been in the news. Early in Nero’s reign war between Rome and Parthia had again broken out, with control of Armenia the chief objective, and the campaigns of Corbulo in A.D. 58 and subsequent years figure prominently in Tacitus’ and Cassius Dio’s account of that period (Tacitus annales Books 12–15, Cassius Dio Books 60–63). Armenia is the principal battle-ground. Of course Armenia had been a similar casus belli in the late republic, involving campaigns by Lucullus and Pompeius, and in the Augustan period. But if we put Chariton in the 40s or 50s A.D, and if we suppose that the author of Ninus is not far removed in time or place from Chariton, then the years from A.D. 58 to 63 offer themselves as a time when Armenian campaigns might be an especially attractive subject for prose fiction rooted in recognisable historical landscapes. That is speculation enough. But let me be even bolder (and hence more vulnerable). It is often thought that the account of the campaigns in Tacitus and Dio goes back to the memoirs of Corbulo himself: these can hardly antedate A.D. 63, nor can they have been written after his death in A.D. 66. If it were precisely the publication of these memoirs that suggested campaigning in Armenia to the author of Ninus (but of course that may not have been what triggered the fiction) then a date after A.D. 63 would follow. We would then have a chronology that put Chariton’s publication of his novel some years before the composition of the Ninus. Rome’s claimed successes in Armenia were certainly known in Aphrodisias around A.D. 60, as is clear from the Sebasteion relief which shows Nero supporting an Armenia who is slumping and eroticised,30 a feature that might be thought interesting for an exploration of the genesis of the erotic novel. I say rather less about our other early novelist, Xenophon of Ephesus. Like almost all scholars before the recent book by James O’Sullivan,31 and like several since, I adhere to the view that Xenophon draws on Chariton, and not Chariton on Xenophon. But without papyri Xenophon is even more ————— 29 30 31
Cf. Baslez 1992. Smith 1987, 117–120 with Plates xvi and xvii, O’Sullivan 1995, cf. Schmeling 1996b, Morgan 1996.
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difficult to date. One detail, however, is often adduced: the mention of an officer in Cilicia ‘in charge of peace’, ὁ τῆς εἰρήνης τῆς ἐν Κιλικίας προεστώς (2.13.3, cf. 3.9.5). This office held by the character Perilaos has been seen to be the same as that of εἰρηνάρχης or εἰρήναρχος, occasionally attested in the epigraphy of Roman Asia Minor.32 The earliest such attestation is currently from the reign of Trajan. That does not, however, compel a dating of Xenophon after A.D. 98. We have no right to suppose that our earliest epigraphic testimony is exactly contemporary with the first institution of such an office, and in any case none of these inscriptions is from Cilicia, whose mountainous regions were much more fertile ground for brigandage than the environs of Smyrna, Miletus or even Ancyra. Xenophon could well be writing some time earlier than A.D. 98.33 One detail remains to be exploited. When Habrocomes lodges near Syracuse with an old fisherman, Aegialeus, he discovers that the fisherman had eloped from Sparta as a youth with his beloved Thelxinoe, and that his love for her had been so constant that recently, on her death, he had not buried her but kept her body in a back room of his small house (5.1.4–9). Aegialeus takes Habrocomes to show him the body, which has been given ‘Egyptian burial’ (τὸ δὲ σῶµα αὐτῆς ἐτέθαπτο ταφῃ̑ Αἰγυπτίᾳ). It is worth asking whether this burial of Thelxinoe, apparently embalming, takes its inspiration from the embalming of Poppaea by Nero, reported by Tacitus, annales 16.6, an event of the year A.D. 65: corpus non igni abolitum, ut Romanus mos, sed regum externorum consuetudine differtum odoribus conditur tumuloque Iuliorum infertur. What has emerged from this discussion of the early novels? They all seem likely to have been composed within a few decades: Chariton between A.D. 41 and 62, Ninus between A.D. 63 and ca. 75, Xenophon after A.D. 65, Metiochus and Parthenope less firmly dated, but pulled by its stylistic similarity to Chariton into the same ambience. That ambience may also be geographically circumscribed: Chariton and the author of Ninus both working in Aphrodisias, Xenophon (if indeed he is from Ephesus) some 90 miles away ————— 32
33
εἰρηνάρχης, IGR 4.203 (Ancyra), OGI 550 (Phrygia), Codex Justinianus 10.77; or εἰρήναρχος: IGR 4.1543 (Erythrae), Milet I (7) 263, Codex Justinianus 10.1.9. Note too the adjective εἰρηναρχικός BCH 9, 347 (Caria), and the verb εἰρηναρχεῖν IGR 4.1437, 1438 (Smyrna); 3.208 (Ancyra, Hadrianic). See now Rife 2002, Appendix A.
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in a city that had links of various sorts with Aphrodisias. It may therefore be no accident that the setting of some important scenes in Metiochus and Parthenope was Samos, the closest of the major Aegean islands to Ephesus and Aphrodisias. Persius shows that Chariton was soon known in Rome, the papyri and perhaps the ostracon that it did not take more than a generation for all but Xenophon to become known to Greek readers in Egypt, presumably via Alexandria (a city that had connections of many sorts with Ephesus). II It should not, then, be very surprising that the two writers who constitute what seems to us to be the next generation of novelists should also be linked respectively to Aphrodisias (Antonius Diogenes) and to Alexandria and Ephesus (Achilles Tatius). Antonius Diogenes’ work, τὰ ὑπὲρ Θούλην ἄπιστα, is a quirky variant on the story of boy-girl love presented by the texts already mentioned, not a straightforward example of it. However the case for his place of origin being Aphrodisias is a strong one: Bowersock34 pointed out that only in the epigraphy of Aphrodisias do we have so far an example of the conjunction of the Roman nomen Antonius with the Greek name Diogenes. One case is L. Antonius Claudius Dometinus Diogenes, whose impressive statue from the Odeon at Aphrodisias is well known.35 This prominent figure in early thirdcentury Aphrodisias cannot himself be the novelist, two of whose papyri are dated ca. A.D. 200 while a third (though this is not certainly attributed to Antonius Diogenes) is dated ca. 150.36 But the man whose statue we have could well have had our novelist as father or grandfather, and as Bowersock pointed out, a more recently discovered text, an inscription on a sarcophagus, attests a Flavius Antonius Diogenes, demonstrating that at least one member of the family acquired Roman citizenship in the Flavian period.37 If we take A.D. 200 as a certain terminus ante quem, and A.D. 150 as a possible terminus ante quem, have we any clues to how much earlier Antonius Diogenes actually wrote? Photius believed his work to be one of the sources of Lucian’s Verae Historiae, and although John Morgan brought strong argu————— 34 35 36 37
Bowersock 1994, 38–40. PIR C 853: for the statue see Inan and Alföldi-Rosenbaum 1979, Zanker 1995, 245 pl. 135. P.Michigan inv. 5, cf. Stephens and Winkler 1995, 173–178. The sarcophagus was published by Jones and Smith 1994, cf. SEG 44 (1994) 866.
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ments against that view almost two decades ago,38 I don’t think he showed that it must be wrong. If Photius was right, then Antonius’ work was in circulation by no later than ca. A.D. 160. But he could well be writing much earlier. Again geographical focus might be relevant. Thule, flaunted in Antonius Diogenes’ title and important in his plot, had been brought to the Greek world’s attention by Pytheas of Massalia, whence come several of the fifteen or so mentions in Strabo, as does at least one of those in the elder Pliny.39 Then Thule seems to disappear from Greek literary consciousness: it figures in the technical work of Geminus, Introduction to astronomy, ca. A.D. 50, but is not mentioned in substantial corpora of the later first century A.D., those of Philo, Josephus or Plutarch, despite Plutarch’s introduction in a Delphic dialogue of a fellow philosopher who had been to Britain and made dedication to the Ocean, Demetrius of Tarsus.40 The second century is different: Thule is mentioned by Dionysius of Alexandria, the Periegete, writing between A.D. 130 and 138;41 by Vettius Valens,42 writing between A.D. 152 and 162; by Ptolemy in his Geography43 writing ca. A.D. 160 and by Aelius Herodianus,44 writing between A.D. 161 and 180. A nexus of events may have played a part. First, the Roman expedition while Agricola was governor of Britain that reached and reported back on Thule: that took place in one of the years A.D. 80–83. Second, early in A.D. 98, the publication by Tacitus of his Agricola, mentioning that achievement (Agricola 10). Third, I suggest, the exploitation of Thule by Antonius Diogenes in τὰ ὑπὲρ Θούλην ἄπιστα. I conjecture – but it can only be speculation – that Antonius Diogenes’ attention was drawn to Thule by the expedition and the publicity given to it by Tacitus, and that in turn he is responsible for Thule’s seven lines in the Periegesis of Dionysius, a popularising, not a scientific work. Again all very precarious: but if correct, a date between A.D. 98 and A.D. 130 would follow. That date is in turn supported by Bowersock’s proposal that the Faustinus to whom Antonius dedicated his work is the same as the patron of Martial and dedicatee of the third and fourth books of his epigrams. That ————— 38 39 40 41 42 43 44
Morgan 1985. HN 2.187 cf. 4.104. Plu. de defectu oraculorum 410A. Lines 580–86. For the date cf. Bowie 1990, 77, Counillon 1981. 9 p.9.11. 2.3.14, 2.6.22, 8.3.3. de pros. cath. 3.1 p.319.9.
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suggested to him that Antonius’ work belonged ‘in the time of Domitian or a little later’.45 Taking this together with the argument from the attention given to Thule we might tentatively put it in the decade following A.D 98. The next in sequence is most probably Achilles Tatius. Two of the six papyri are dated by Stephens and Winkler around A.D. 150: P. Oxyrhynchus 383646 and P.Mediolanus 124.47 The Milan papyrus is dated more cautiously to the end of the second century by Vogliano and Conca. For P. Oxyrhynchus 3836 Parsons allowed a mid- to late 2nd century date. Stephens’ date of around A.D. 150 is of course not precise, and she is choosing between rough dates of A.D. 175 and A.D. 150. But even a date a few years before A.D. 175 would make it unlikely that we should see the βουκόλοι of Achilles Tatius as a reflection of historical trouble with the βουκόλοι recorded by Cassius Dio 72.4.1 for A.D. 172.48 Although that is the earliest appearance of βουκόλοι in Roman imperial historiography, it is clear that they had been a thorn in the flesh of urban authorities since the Ptolemaic period. When Achilles Tatius uses the name Pantheia for Sostratus’ wife, the mother of Leucippe (1.3.6, 2.28.1 etc.) he will have done so partly because of its lineage in erotic fiction. Xenophon’s Cyropaideia had told the story of Araspas’ lust for Pantheia and of Pantheia’s faithfulness to her absent husband (5.1–17, 6.1.31–47) and her eventual suicide upon his corpse when he was killed in battle (7.3.2–15). This seminal tale of love had been reworked in the 120s,130s or perhaps 140s in a piece variously ascribed to the sophist Dionysius of Miletus and to his younger contemporary, the writer of rhetorical technai and ab epistulis graecis, Caninius Celer (Philostratus VS 1.22.524). Celer was mentioned as ab epistulis graecis by Aelius Aristides (Or. 50.57) in an incident of January A.D. 148, but the date of his Araspas the lover of Pantheia cannot be fixed. However unless it was dangerously satirical, it was surely written before the eastern provinces were titillated by reports of an affair between the emperor Lucius Verus and a hetaera from Smyrna also called Pantheia. I am inclined to draw the same conclusion for Achilles Tatius, which would allow us to import more precision than the ————— 45
46 47 48
Bowersock 1994, 37–38, followed by Stramaglia 1999, 97–100 and 2000, 15. For Martial’s Faustinus cf. PIR F 127. The dedication by Antonius Diogenes is attested by Photius Biblioth. Cod. 166, 111a, p.147.22–32 Henry γράφει Φαυστίνῳ ὅτι τε συντάττει περὶ τῶν ὑπὲρ Θούλην ἀπίστων . . . Parsons 1989. Edited by Vogliano 1938, cf. Conca 1969. As suggested by Schwartz 1967.
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papyrus data allow and set Leucippe and Cleitophon before A.D. 164. When Achilles Tatius chose the name Pantheia for the conventionally moral mother of Leucippe, it was a name that connoted marital fidelity. By the time Apuleius wrote his Metamorphoses, almost certainly well after A.D. 164, the name’s associations had broadened, and to its tang of erotic fiction had been added a whiff of Roman imperial misdemeanour – just as a name that might have evoked Augustinian saintliness in a work of fiction composed a decade ago, Monica, will for a while continue to have added piquancy in a fictional text. Thus the name chosen by Apuleius for one of his lustful witches, Pantheia, resonates on the level both of ideal and of satirical erotic fiction. Another detail might support a pre-160 date suggested by the papyrus. The Alexandrian coinage in the reign of Pius breaks with earlier practice by representing a number of mythological subjects. Among these is the scene of Andromeda being liberated by Perseus.49 This is one of two scenes which were apparently represented in a pair of paintings at the temple of Zeus Casius at Pelusium viewed and interpreted by the characters of Achilles Tatius (3.6–8). That this painting was among the famous sights for tourists in Alexandria is of course sufficient to explain its appearance in both Achilles Tatius and on coins. But if other indications point to a date some time before A.D. 160 for the novel, its appearance on coins of the years 160/161 (year 24 of the reign of Pius) is perhaps not mere coincidence. Did the novelist react to the coins? Did the mint-master react to the novel? III What follows from these proposals for our understanding of the genre as a whole? It may be significant not simply that the context of the novel’s birth becomes not the late hellenistic Greek world but the Roman empire, but that it becomes the earlier decades of the cultural renaissance that begins at the same time as, and is strongly influenced by, Philostratus’ Second Sophistic. The background to the writers’ own lives is not one of political chaos and uncertainty, one in which the reversals of fortune might be fancied once ————— 49
My attention was drawn to the coins and to their possible link with the paintings in Achilles Tatius by Angelo Geissen in a paper delivered to a colloquium on ‘Coinage and identity in the Roman provinces’ held in Oxford in September 2002. Milne 1933, 57 nos 2421 and 2422 records drachmae in the Ashmolean collection with Perseus and Andromeda which he assigns to A.D. 160/161 (year 24).
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more to make Greek political units (of whatever size) the controlling powers of the eastern Mediterranean, but one in which it has become progressively clearer in the three or four generations since Actium that Roman dominance was there to stay. That the novels, like declamations and much historiography, took readers and audiences out of this world has invited various historical explanations which I do not wish to debate again here. That the universe into which the novels took readers was one of strong personal emotions was of course not new in Greek literature (and attention to the self has contemporary parallels in the philosophical writing of Plutarch and then Arrian). But that the principal emotion in this genre was ἔρως, and persistent and idealistic ἔρως at that, cannot be fully (or even partly?) explained by changing social or political contexts. Perhaps the Tuesday afternoon in July was right after all. But not any July. A July in a decade when Greek rhetorical activity and Greek literary compositions of related sorts were attracting more and more writers and readers, speakers and audiences, and when the imperative to display paideia was becoming ever stronger. And a hot July in the booming city of Aphrodisias, presided over by its great cult of Aphrodite. The writer or writers of Aphrodisias hit on a winning formula. But if they had been playing with a literary experiment in a more remote city, Perinthus or Oenoanda or Tyana, would it ever have spread? Or would our 20th and 21st century houses, bookshops and libraries be dominated by a quite different literary invention? Bibliography Anderson, R.D., Parsons, P.J. and Nisbet, R.G.M. 1979. ‘Elegiacs by Gallus from Qasr Ibrîm’, JRS 1979, 125–55. Arnott, W.G. 2002. ‘Some orthographical variants in the papyri of later Greek comedy’ in A.Willi (ed.), The Language of Greek Comedy’, Oxford: OUP, 191–217. Baslez, M.-F. 1992. ‘De l’histoire au roman: la Perse de Chariton’, in M.-F. Baslez, P. Hoffmann and M. Trédé (edd), Le monde du roman grec, Paris: ENS, 199–212. Bowersock, G.W. 1994. Fiction as history: Nero to Julian. Berkeley – Los Angeles: California U.P. Bowie, E.L. 1990. ‘Greek poetry in the Antonine Age’ in Russell 1990, 53–90. Conca, F. 1969. Rendiconti dell’ Istituto Lombardo 103, 651–665. Counillon, P. 1981. ‘Un autre acrostiche dans la periégèse de Denys’, REG 94, 514–22. Dihle, A. ‘Zur Datierung des Metiochos-Romans’, WJA, NF 4, 47–55. Gronewald, M. 1977. ‘Ein neues Fragment aus dem Metiochos-Parthenope Roman (Ostracon Bodl. 2175 =P2 2782)’, ZPE 24, 21–22. Hernandez Lara, C. 1994. Estudios sobre el aticismo de Cariton de Afrodisias. Amsterdam: Hakkert. Inan, J. and Alföldi-Rosenbaum, E., 1979. Römische und frühbyzantinische Porträtplastik aus der Turkei. Neue Funde. Mainz: von Zabern.
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Jones, C.P. 1992. ‘La personnalité de Chariton’ in M.-F.Baslez, P. Hoffmann and M. Trédé (edd), Le monde du roman grec, Paris: ENS, 161–167. — and Smith, R.R.R. 1994: Archaeologischer Anzeiger (1994), 461–72. Lesky, A. 1966. A History of Greek Literature [= Geschichte der Griechischen Literatur, translated by J.Willis and C. de Heer] London: Methuen. Milne, J.G. 1933. University of Oxford. Ashmolean Museum. Catalogue of Alexandrian Coins. Oxford – London: OUP. Morgan, J.R. 1982. ‘History, romance and realism in Heliodorus’, CA 1, 221–65. — 1985. ‘Lucian’s True Histories and the Wonders beyond Thule of Antonius Diogenes’, CQ 35, 475–90. — 1996. Review of O’Sullivan 1995 in JHS 116, 199–200. O’Sullivan, J.N. 1995. Xenophon of Ephesus. His compositional technique and the birth of the novel. Berlin – New York: de Gruyter. Papanikolau, A. 1973. Chariton-Studien. Göttingen. Parsons, P.J. 1989. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 56: 66–69. Pecere, O. and Stramaglia, A. 1996. La letteratura di consumo: atti del convegno internazionale, Cassino, 14–17 settembre 1994, Cassino. Reardon, B.P. 1991. The Form of Greek Romance. Princeton: Princeton U.P. — 1996. ‘Chariton’ in Schmeling 1996a, 309–335. Reeve, M.D. 1971. ‘Hiatus in the Greek novelists’, CQ 21, 514–39. Rife, J.R. 2002. ‘Officials of the Roman Provinces in Xenophon’s Ephesiaca’, ZPE 138, 93– 108. Roberts, C.H. 1956. Greek literary hands, 350 B.C. – A.D. 400. Oxford. Ruiz Montero, C. 1991. ‘Aspects of the vocabulary of Chariton of Aphrodisias’, CQ 41, 484– 89. — 1994. ‘Chariton von Aphrodisias: Ein Überblick’ in ANRW 2.34.2, 1006–1054. Berlin – New York: de Gruyter. Russell, D.A. 1990 (ed.). Antonine Literature. Oxford. Sandy, G. 1989. ‘Ninus’ in B.P. Reardon (ed.) Collected Ancient Greek Novels (Berkeley – Los Angeles: California U.P.) 803–808 Schmeling, G. 1996a. The Novel in the Ancient World. Leiden – New York – Cologne: Brill. — 1996. Review of O’Sullivan 1995 in American Journal of Philology 117, 660–663. Schwartz, J. 1967. ‘Quelques observations sur des romans grecs’, AC 36, 536–52. Smith, R.R.R. 1987. ‘The imperial reliefs from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias’, JRS 77, 88– 138. — 1988. ‘The Ethne from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias’, JRS 78, 50–77. Stephens, S.A. and Winkler, J.J. 1995. Ancient Greek Novels: the fragments. Princeton. Stramaglia, A. 1999. Res inauditae, incredulae. Storie di fantasmi nel mondo Greco-latino. Bari: Levante. — 2000. Ἕρως. Antiche trame greche d’ amore. Bari: Levante. Vogliano, A. 1938. ‘Un papiro di Achille Tazio’, SIFC 15, 121–30. Zanker, P. 1997. The mask of Socrates. Berkeley – Los Angeles: California U.P.
From the Marginals to the Center: Olga Freidenberg’s Works on the Greek Novel N INA V. B RAGINSKAIA Moscow
Olga Freidenberg, 1910s
Olga Freidenberg, 1950s
Olga Freidenberg: Image and Heritage You see two faces of the same person – Olga Freidenberg born 1890. The first one is of a young and carefree woman before her becoming a great scholar and a philosopher. The other one is of the same woman, looking like someone who has lost all hopes. The photograph was taken when she served as the Head of the University Classics Department and had already written her major books. Most of what she wrote was locked away in an iron trunk and, after her death in 1955 in Leningrad, remained in that chest, that is, unpublished. In 1972, when I first opened that trunk, I found there – just to mention the most important items – nine completed monographs, thousands of pages covering such topics as Greek novel, Roman comedy and Greek tragedy, Sappho and Hesiod, Homer and ancient folklore and so forth; there
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were at least two dozens of completed articles, an enormous manuscript of two thousand and five hundred pages of her memoirs, and several sets of correspondence with different people. It was rather astonishing to discover among all those riches one hundred and thirty letters from Boris Pasternak, Olga’s first cousin and Russia’s famous poet and novelist. Russian Scholars: Colleagues or Informants? The Correspondence was translated into dozens of European languages (in Dutch it appeared 14 years ago1) and was widely read, which made Olga Freidenberg’s name and personality rather familiar to Slavonic scholars, yet not to classicists. Even now that neither the iron trunk nor the iron curtain stand in the way of knowledge and communication, Russian scholars, it seems to me, look at their Western colleagues through a kind of one-way transparent glass. While Russian scholars do the utmost to follow what is going on in their professional field in Europe and the US, their Western colleagues, as a rule, notice Russian scholars when they occasionally become interested in Russians. With the exception of a few charismatic figures, like, for example, Bakhtin, the acquaintance with whom is considered obligatory, Russian scholars are usually viewed as informants rather than colleagues. They are expected merely to represent their national culture, rather than enter an international academic community as its equal members. It is easier to hold Bakhtin’s theory of the novel as ‘Russian’ if he is the only representative of Russian thought. Yet, Bakhtin and Freidenberg were peers – their ideas on the novel were developing in the same period of time, and their theories ‘are two antinomic worlds that badly need each other but never converge’.2 Scholar in Isolation In these circumstances, as I understand them, I would like to introduce to the students of the ancient novel the ideas and writings of Olga Freidenberg, who, I believe, was the first one to draw the comparison between pagan ————— 1 2
Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg 1988. Perlina 1991, 18. The Freidenberg-Bakhtin correlation deserves special and equitable treatment. See on the problem Perlina 1998.
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erotic novels and both Apocryphal Acts and canonic Acts and Gospels, the inclusion of the latter being of course a rather daring initiative for those days. She discussed the existence of a narrative genre that she was the first one to define as ‘Acts and Passions’ and that incorporated both: the Greek romance and Christian narratives. In her Master thesis, written at the very beginning of the 20s, Freidenberg came to the revolutionary conclusion that the ‘Greek’ novel was Oriental in its origin, and that the plots of its different narratives exhibit a retentive archetypal pattern which turned out to be a remake of the legomenon which can be traced back to the dromenon of the fertility cults. At the time when Rohde’s authority was still unquestionable, she rejected his Entwicklungsgeschichte together with his dating of the novels. Not knowing about the discovery of early papyri, she maintained that the first novels were probably written in the 1st century B.C. Karl Kerényi’s famous book on the Oriental and religious origin of the novel was not yet written. Rosa Söder’s3 pioneering work on Apocryphal Acts and romanhafte Literatur der Antike did not yet exist. Only seven decades later came into existence the Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative Working Group. In 1926, Freidenberg used an opportunity to send a summary of her work, translated into German to Adolf Harnack. In his reply Harnack emphasized that Freidenberg’s main idea sounded convincing and that her main conclusions were justifiable. He also called the author ideenreich und erfindungsreich, reconsidering thus his own writings on the Acts of Paul and Thecla. Unfortunately, this contact with the world of free scholarship happened to be the last one in her life. Later in life, Freidenberg wrote: «I dreamt about entering the true science abroad. With time this dream became somehow choked by itself as choked became every living thing with Stalin’s advent. But before my hopes had died, how many anxieties, searches for salvation, attempts to introduce my works into the common course of the humanities! I understood quite well that there were in Russia outstanding scholars but there was no scholarship».
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Söder 1932.
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‘Greek novel as Acts and Passions’ Two accompanying texts below provide the translation of the contents of Freidenberg’s thesis ‘The Greek novel as Acts and Passions’ and the translation of a short excerpt from the text. It illustrates the scale of her research and the themes she pondered. I’ll attempt to emphasize the most important ideas comparing them to what has been done in European scholarship since 1921.4 Freidenberg attributed the origin of the schematic plot of the novel to the mythic pattern, the story of death and resurrection of the fertility gods. The pattern, treated in ascetic mode in one case and in erotic in another, was common to the Christian Acts (partly to the Gospels as well) and to the Greek erotic novel. At the beginning, this approach made a shocking impression. Freidenberg became conscious of suffering as the essential motif of the novel rather than the love of a young couple. Suffering, passions, martyrdom was at the same time the leading motive of Acts, Lives of the Saints, Gospels and Martyrdoms. So the motif of suffering unites novel and early Christian narratives. And unbelievable beauty of the heroine is also a common feature. Thecla is a beautiful virgin and τοῦ θεοῦ δούλη, or ἵεροδούλη, as pagan priestesses used to be, as was, for example, Chariclea. Freidenberg showed that virginity (not chastity), physical beauty and sacral slavery – all of these motifs were alien to early Christianity but were typical for paganism. She wrote: «Death and resurrection – were the alpha and omega for Christians; immortality and eternal life were of equal significance for Neopythagoreans. On the one hand, there was Christ, on the other Dionysus. The way the Christians bestowed on Christ all the cult motives of death and resurrection, the Pythagoreans surrounded Pythagoras with a halo of Dionysian legend, which once upon a time was the property of Dionysus alone… Similarly, the first Christian Church … finds in the elements of the erotic novel all the conditions it needs and from that moment on is prepared to share with it even its own content. In this way numerous Lives of Saints, with their plots borrowed from the Greek novel, came into being». Myth and ritual provided the novel as well as the Acts or Lives of the Saints with empty structures to be filled in the first centuries after Christ with ‘new ————— 4
Freidenberg’s work on the Acts of Paul and Thecla was written in 1919–21, her thesis ‘The Origin of the Greek Novel’ or ‘Greek Novel as Acts and Passions’ in 1922–23 and defended in Petrograd (Sanct Petersburg) University in 1924.
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wine’. There was a great difference in the cast: a young amorous couple in their wanderings in one case, and a god or sage accompanied by one or more disciples in another. Yet the Acts of Paul and Thecla obviously transform the story of love into the story of religious devotion, while the story of Joseph and Aseneth combines both variants in one plot: religious conversion becomes indistinguishable from marriage. Daphnis – another character of the novel – proves his affinity to the god of fertility periodically dying and arising, while the Life of Aesop presents a wandering sage slandered and put to death. The characters of the novels and those of pious or didactic genres form part of a system of characters that includes the main character of the Gospels as well.5 Posthumous Context. As far as I am aware – and my awareness is limited due to the scarcity of professional literature in Russia – there are not many works that are theoretically close to what Freidenberg was discussing. The scholars whose thoughts were compatible with Freidenberg’s are easy to mention. First of all, Rosa Söder in 1932, then Graham Anderson in 1984,6 with his emphasis on Oriental origins of the Novel. The latter sidesteps the actual question of invention of the novel by tracing the themes of the novel to the ‘ [near-eastern] fertility and divine kingship myths of several millennia before’. Richard Pervo discussed the Acts as novels, pointing to, among other things, the artistic design imposed on the story, and to the presence of the omniscient author.7 Kate Cooper, in The Virgin and the Bride, discussed both the ancient novel and the Apocryphal Acts as manifestations of the same literary genre;8 Judith Perkins, analyzing the themes of martyrdom and suffering in early Christian texts, drew parallels with the suffering heroes and heroines in Greek novels.9 In her time Freidenberg knew the book of the Belgian academic Maurice Wilmotte10 who proclaimed in 1923 the parallel study of pagan and hagiographic literature.(Meanwhile I never met any references to his work in our ————— 5 6 7 8 9 10
Cf. Wills 1997. Anderson 1984. Pervo 1987; 1994; 1996. Cooper 1996, 20–67, esp. 45–67 (on the Acts of Paul and Thecla). Perkins 1995. Wilmotte 1922.
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days). Yet his view was restricted by the problem of influence and borrowing: he regarded the novel as a genre contemporary to the early Christian narratives. His approach of a historian prevented him to understand similarities in any terms other than the terms of the arguable contact. Freidenberg was not very much interested in using novels as one of the historical sources for their time, something that is usually of special interest to historians and theologians. Ronald F. Hock shows that for New Testament scholars the real reason for reading and studying novels is their ability to clarify and illuminate early Christian and Jewish literature.11 As he believes, the novels provide the reader with a detailed and coherent or so to say ‘thick’ account of the social, economic, and religious institutions of the people and regions that witnessed the spread of Christianity. I am not discussing here the historical value of the data taken from the romances pretending to refer to a remote past; it is not my issue now. I am sure that Ronald Hock and many others know how to extract historical evidence from fiction. I merely want to emphasize that to learn more about the private life and social institutions of the first and second centuries of our era, it would be better to have an encyclopedia on these subjects written by scholars contemporary to the events, instead of fiction. The use of fictional texts as historical sources remains a delicate issue. Freidenberg did not describe the similarities between novels and Christian narratives exclusively in terms of influence and imitation. Usually if one finds borrowing and adoption of the elements of fiction into the Acts or Gospels, the presumed aim of such ‘re-use’ of pagan elements in Christian education is declared to be combining profit with delight or introducing elements of entertainment into hagiographic literature.12 In my opinion, however, the analysis of these matters by Olga Freidenberg reaches a level that lies at a greater depth. She called it ‘paleontology of the plot’. Novels have a common pattern of plot and set motives not because their authors imitated each other. Freidenberg did not deny the existence of literary tradition and imitation, but the plot, die Handlungspersonen and the names of the novel, according to Freidenberg, were not a free invention, that is, they did not appear as a result of the author’s literary activity. Imitation is often understood as an ultima ratio for the fact that the novels and the Acts and Gospels are built out of very similar elements. I understand researchers ————— 11 12
Hock 1998, 126. Cf. Parsons 1989, 407–10; Huber-Rebenich 1999.
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who acknowledge the difficulties in deciding who is imitating or/and influencing whom.13 Influence means that the things to influence and to be influenced do exist as such: pagan novel on the one hand and Christian literature on the other. We became used to the existence of such entities as Christianity, paganism, and Christian literature opposing Classical literature. But people of the first decades or centuries of the new era were unaware of their being inhabitants of a new Christian world; neither did they suspect that what they read could be described as exclusively pagan, Christian, Gnostic or Jewish. It is worth noting, however, that in recent decades the influence is not interpreted always as an irresistible impact. The Acts of the Apostles, mostly Apocryphal, are regarded now not simply as a genres with some motifs parallel to those of ancient romance, but are conceived as subverting the latter’s ideological tasks by turning inside out its values of social stability and gender roles.14 The rejection of passionate persecutions and sexual harassment, obsession with chastity and virginity, are common to romances and Christian literature. Yet the search for a beloved, and matrimony as a final goal in the romances are opposed to the rejection of marriage, celibacy, virginity and chastity as a final goal in the Christian narratives. In a recent article by Jo-Ann A. Brant15, who compares elements of the plot in the Gospels to those in novels, the compound motifs ‘Abandoned child’, ‘Family tension’ and ‘Adopted parents’ are described in terms of archetypal patterns reconsidered in the Fourth Gospel and in the novels quite differently or even in opposite modes. This approach has much in common with Olga Freidenberg’s. Freidenberg was far from limiting herself to apocryphal works, as it had been customary until recently. I think that one of the impediments for Anglophone scholars was the implication of the very word ‘fiction’. The term ‘Christian Fiction’ usually encompasses apocryphal works – Acts, Lives of Saints and Gospels; scholars often felt that when viewing canonic Gospels or any other part of the Sacra Scriptura as fiction, they would enter forbidden ground and deny kerygma. I do not intend to either deny or confirm this position. I would prefer to speak about literary works, their origin, structure ————— 13 14
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Swain 1999, 11. Categorizing of the Apocryphal Acts as romance one may find now along with Pervo (see above) on the canonical Acts as Romance – Alexander 1995; Aubin 1998. Brant 1998, 199–217.
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and function and avoid defining them from the religious point of view. The reason for doing so is not confessional but historical. What I mean is that no one consciously went about creating apocryphal works, no one knew what canon one’s work would be considered to fit. There was no one (possibly with the exception of Julian the Apostate) who called himself ‘pagan’. Ross Shepard Kraemer successfully demonstrated that Joseph and Aseneth, for example, could be read in more than one religious context.16 Genres as well as meter, for example, are not so to say ‘monosemantic’. On the other hand, to state that the Greek novel was some kind of reflection of remarkable stories coming out of Palestine is just ‘to scratch the surface of a huge topic’. If looking at the stories of resurrection we would perceive the prevalence of ‘Scheintod’ narratives in the novels as an influence of the Gospel stories,17 we presumably miss the historical depth of these stories and their similarities. Moreover, such approaches impose upon the ancients a modern point of view. In fact, any detail found in the Gospels has numberless reverberations in arts, commentaries, poetry, literature and imagination nurtured by Christian tradition. Analysing common features in the narratives that were composed contemporaneously with the rise of Christian literature, European scholars are mostly inclined to see the Gospels as the primary source. But Scheintod in Lucian, Chariton or Achilles Tatius is not ‘an unmistakable echo’ of the Gospels. Gospels have no genuine priority in this case. They have true and incontestable singularity only for European researchers (believers and not-believers), not for the readers in the early Roman Empire. Freidenberg illuminated Christian and Jewish literature with the help of the novel in a different way by disclosing their common origin as a genre. The story of sufferings, adventures and final glorifying in love and life or love and death was considered by Freidenberg as a common heritage of Mediterranean culture, of the Hellenistic world under Roman power. It was a common semantic vocabulary used and reused by Pythagoreans, Christians, Platonists, montanists etc. The author of the Acts of Paul and Thecla did not have to remember that Ishtar gave her jewelry to the door-keeper of the netherworld when he described how Thecla gave her bangle and silver mirror to a prison’s guard. On the other hand, the usage of the archaic mythic plot does not exclude the probability that a Greek or Roman author imbued ————— 16 17
Kraemer 1998. Bowersock 1994.
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his work with a symbolical meaning of his own coinage. It is well known that medieval authors too were skilful in symbolical interpretation of the ancient novels. Philip the Philosopher applied it to presumably Heliodorus’s ‘Charicleia’ and many others did the same with the tale of Cupid and Psyche. It is extremely difficult to reconcile the optics of the folk and literary or historical study. When Pieter J. Lalleman asks to submit any proof for the Jewish novel as a key to the origin of the Greek novel, he obviously wins: apart from some partial textual parallels there is no such a ‘proof’.18 Yet we know that folktales all over the world share common motifs and the scale of the phenomenon restrains our thirst for evidence and testimonies.19 Freidenberg thought that to understand this phenomenon one should place the Greek novel into a non-Greek context. This she did at the time when E. Rohde and those who followed him saw in the novel an obvious indication of the decay of the Hellenic culture. The very idea of the decay of Greekness in late antiquity and the perception of the novel as a result of the degradation of the Hellenic culture are based on fixed notions of what is Greek and what is non-Greek, moulded by traditional classicist education. The tendency to discard the Greek novel altogether, to explain it away rather than to provide an explanation, was, in my opinion, a normal response to something not Greek by origin. I would compare it to the reaction of the traditionally educated Hellenistic philosophers to Christian writings and homilies. It is mostly in the 90s that classicists recognized ‘new standards of otherness’ emerging in Late antiquity, and a new sense of the Hellenic – or better Hellenistic – standard. While recognizing the Oriental origin of the novel, Freidenberg was far from agreeing with Kerényi or Merkelbach. Kerényi concentrated on Isiac religion and on Egypt, Merkelbach saw in the novel the actual legomenon of the mystery cults. Seeing mystery cults behind the novel, both scholars offered a narrow and unnecessarily concrete solution. Freidenberg instead considers religion as one of the manifestations of social values, and Egypt as one of the Mediterranean localities, and its role as prominent only for the period when the novel emerged as Greek fic————— 18
19
Lalleman 1998. I think it exists, but reserve for the future both furnishing the evidences and developing the proof. I would like to point here to an article by Cristiano Grottanelli (Grottanelli 1987, esp. 30– 31), who shows the amazing similarity of the Biblical story of Joseph and that of Callirhoe.
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tion. Her analysis of proper names led Freidenberg most often to the Near East and Asia Minor, sometimes to Egypt as well. She believed that ancient literature differs from modern literature not so much in its function as in its origin. Freidenberg would say that ‘free invention on a Tuesday afternoon in July’ meant building up romances out of prefabricated units; their plots, characters, many details and expressions were preconfigured by ‘raw’ material from the reservoir of traditional narratives. The Fate of the Work: Marr, Stalin, and Oblivion. Freidenberg’s work was not accepted then by the majority of the Leningrad scholarly community. Yet, there was one very powerful person who supported her. His assistance was limited, but fatal. It determined a lot in her life: success and tragedy, fortune and loss and total oblivion after her retirement and death. His name was Nikolai Marr, an extremely controversial figure in our history. He was a highly respected and powerful academic at the time when he radically changed his research field and created a new linguistic theory that rejected everything that had been done in comparative linguistics until then. His global theory was a bizarre mixture of insights and insanity. Freidenberg, unlike other women of her generation who became scholars and scientists, could not claim any support from her own family. She was neither a daughter, nor a wife, not even a mistress or a niece of any member of the academic community. The support offered to her by Marr meant everything for her; it was like a gift from heavens. As for him, he needed only one thing – devout followers of his theory. Freidenberg’s success was partially the result of her association with Marr, who clothed his theories in Marxist formulas in order to promote his teaching. He was the only member of the Tsarist academy of science to become a member of the Communist party. He surrounded himself with scholarly feeble, insignificant people who based their career on their membership in the Communist party and ‘soon they turned into the huge force that Marr himself feared’ and turned his highly suspicious theory into the only acceptable school of linguistics in the Soviet Union. When Marrism became obligatory, Freidenberg was forced to claim an even closer connection to him. «They demanded that I recognize that my book [Poetics of Plot and Genre - NB] was written after Marr; all my own breath was driven out
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of it. They forced Marr on me – and this was incorrect, since I followed German archaeology, Usener and his metaphoristics of the thing» (Memoirs). She had a mighty, powerful and independent mind; she was herself a theorist and philosopher of culture of world class. But in the 30s she apparently used her reputation of being a Marrist for her career. Later when Stalin himself denounced Marr as a non-Marxist scholar, she paid for being Marr’s disciple by having her reputation buried in oblivion. Whatever scholarly reasons for the refutation of Marr could exist – for Stalin in any case they were not purely academic – the obligatory and enforced change of mind achieved one of the goals of the totalitarian ruler, which was to ruin a person’s intellectual independence and sense of one’s personal dignity. Freidenberg did not renounce Marr when he became a scapegoat. She retired and died leaving a trunk full of manuscripts. One may only wonder what was better for the scholar: support or persecution from the Stalinist regime. In the first situation, as a person, one lost the sense of critical perspective. And in the latter one could hardly survive as a human being. Freidenberg survived. But as much as she succeeded in escaping ruin as a person, she was ruined as a scholar, and as much as she survived as a scholar, she was ruined as a person. The Role of the Marginal. I often ask myself whether such a thing as Zeitgeist really exists, whether science and humanities move and develop in some regular way, whether the accumulation of knowledge as well as the alternation of paradigms could be predicted. If that is the case, how can we understand the phenomenon of the vanguard on the margins of academic community? Maybe there are some advantages in the lack of a synchronicity between the development of Russian semi-European scholarship and Western scholarship, education and humanities? Does Western scholarly tradition provide people not only with a firm foundation for further research but is it also a powerful source of pressure exercised by this tradition upon the individual? If so, I believe that European scholarship may benefit from having Russian, Hungarian, or Pol-
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ish works translated into more current languages and thus profit from the Marginals who were ahead of their time.20 I started working with Freidenberg’s archives immediately after graduating from the Moscow University and wanted to publish her work on the Greek novel among the first. But in order to write a preface I needed to know the context of contemporary studies of the ancient novel. Alas! The middle of the 70s coincided with the outburst of Novel studies. Up to now, I am hunting for works on the ancient novel and cannot either practically, or theoretically catch the tail. I do now what I can. I add to my concise introduction an excerpt in English from Freidenberg’s manuscript together with the Table of Contents, which offers the reader a perspective of the whole work. I hope it will be enough to persuade the international academic community into searching a way to make the works of Freidenberg available for Western scholars.21 Bibliography Alexander, L. 1995. ‘ “In Journeyings Often”: Voyaging in the Acts of the Apostles and in Greek Romance’, in: C. M. Tuckett, (ed.) Luke's Literary Achievement: Collected Essays, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Supplement Series 116, Sheffield, 17–39. Anderson, G. 1984. Ancient Fiction: the Novel in the Graeco-Roman World. London: Croom Helm; Totowa. N.J: Barnes & Noble. Aubin, M. 1998. ‘Reversing Romance? The Acts of Thecla and the Ancient Novel’, in: Hock, R.F., Chance, J.B., Perkins, J. (eds.), Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative. Society of Biblical Literature, Symposium Series Number 6. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 257– 72. Bowersock, G.W. 1994. Fiction as History: Nero to Julian. Berkeley: University of California Press. Brant, J.-A. 1998. ‘Divine Birth and Apparent Parents: The Plot of the Fourth Gospel’, in: Hock, R.F., Chance, J.B., Perkins, J. (eds.), Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative. Society of Biblical Literature, Symposium Series Number 6. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 199–217. Cooper, K. 1996. The Virgin and the Bride, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Grottanelli, C. 1987. ‘The Ancient Novel and Biblical Narrative’, QUCC N.S. 27, 7–34.
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Freidenberg was not the only ‘inventor’ in her family: her father Mikhael Freidenberg designed the first device for films with sound – ‘talkie movies’ at the beginning of the century, the first automatic telephone station in Europe (working without telephone operator), and what we call linotype. He died in 1920 with his inventions unknown or stolen from him. I apologize on account of the vague and inaccurate translation, which is all my responsibility; it would have been much worse without the kind assistance of Alla Zeide-Becker and Prof. Eve Adler.
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Hock, R. 1998. ‘Why New Testament Scholars Should Read Ancient Novels’, in: Hock, R.F., Chance, J.B., Perkins, J., (eds.), Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative. Society of Biblical Literature, Symposium Series Number 6. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 121–38. Huber-Rebenich, G. 1999. ‘Hagiographic Fiction as Entertainment’, in: H. Hofmann (ed.), Latin Fiction: the Latin Novel in Context, London: Routledge, 187–212. Kraemer, R.S. 1998. When Aseneth Met Joseph. A Late Antique Tale of the Biblical Patriarch and his Egyptian Wife Reconsidered, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lalleman, P. 1998. ‘The Canonical and the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles’, in: Hofmann, H., Zimmerman, M. (eds.), Groningen Colloquia on the Novel 9, 181–91. Parsons, M.C. 1989. ‘The Book of Acts as an Ancient Novel’, Interpretation 43, 407–10. Pasternak, B. and Freidenberg, O. 1988. Contradans in brieven. 1910–1954. Samenstelling en inleiding E. Mossman. Vertaling en noten K. Warmenhoven. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij de Arbeiderspers. Perkins, J. 1995. The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era, London – New York: Routledge. Perlina, N. 1990–1991. ‘From Historical Semantics to the Semantics of Cultural Forms: O.M. Freidenberg's Contribution to Russian Literary Theory’ in: Olga Mikhailovna Freidenberg [Selected Translations]. Guest ed. N. Perlina, Soviet Studies in Literature: A Journal of Translations [Part I], Vol. 27, 1, 5–21. — 1998. ‘The Freidenberg-Bakhtin Correlation’, Elementa: Journal of Slavic Studies and Comparative Cultural Semiotics 4, 1–15. Pervo, R. 1987. Profit with Delight: The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. — 1994. ‘Early Christian Fiction’, in: J. R. Morgan, R. Stoneman, (eds.) Greek Fiction. The Greek Novel in Context. London: Routledge, 239–53. — 1996. ‘The Ancient Novel Becomes Christian’, in: G. Schmeling (ed.), The Novel in the Ancient World. Leiden: Brill, 685–711. Söder, R. 1932. Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten und die Romanhafte Literatur der Antike, Stuttgart: Würzburger Studien zur Altertumswissenschaft III. Swain, S. 1999. ‘A Century and More of the Greek Novel’, in: S. Swain (ed.), Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3–35. Wilmotte, M. 1923. De l’origine du roman en France; la tradition antique et les éléments chrétiens du roman, (Académie Royale de Belgique. Mémoires 18, fasc. 5), Bruxelles: M. Lamertin. Wills, L.M. 1997. The Quest for the Historical Gospel. London – New York: Routledge.
Appendix 1 [Falconilla] A chapter of the ‘Greek Novel as Acts and Passions’ by Olga Freidenberg The Semantics of the Proper Names 1 We have just seen that the structure of the Acts of Paul and Thecla reveals its identity as the structure of the Greek Hellenistic narrative usually called the
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‘Greek novel’. Since we do not know what makes for the peculiarity of the Greek novel itself, we cannot proceed with just stating the existence of similarity. The Acts are helpful in analyzing the Greek novel and in inquiring into the origin of its peculiarity and its presence in a genre presumably alien to it. But what is it, however, the ‘structure of a work’? It is a ‘ready-made’ fact, which could be taken for granted or on trust. But having agreed that the more stable and complete a ready-made fact is, the more we should suspect it and break it down into its constituent parts, we now strike upon the very ‘ready-made’ forms of the novel. So what is the most immovable and most ‘complete’ in it? The names. The names are the most stable remnants of the sources. So we start our analysis exactly with the names. Where did they come from? What do they mean, these resonant or as they say ‘poetic’ names. Let us take the Acts of Paul and Thecla – a Greek novel. The scholar would appreciate its literary naivité, its provocative mixture of dissimilar features, its revealing character, deserving the highest attention in treating names.<…> … Let us try to penetrate into the semantics of the proper names starting with the rare Latin name Falconilla. Its oddity is striking. Who is this Falconilla? Everything pertaining to her is incongruous, from her Latin name to her role. Her character seems to be a rudiment or remnant: she is emphatically mentioned in the entanglement of the martyrdom but she is practically absent from the story and completely forgotten at the denouement. She is tightly linked to Thecla. Every time Tryphene addresses Thecla, Falconilla is sure to be mentioned. And the very intercession of Tryphene (that saved Thecla: 27–31, 39) is evoked by an association of her deceased daughter with this adopted one. In vain would we discuss the historical existence of the name Falconilla. It really did exist as a Roman aristocratic name (e.g CIL, VIII, 7066); yet to know its refined character is enough to reject any historical Falconilla as the historical base for a genre like the apocryphal acts. The apocrypha never make use of rare or uncommon names. Being popular stories usually shaded by vulgarity and based on folk legends as their sources, the Apocryphal narratives use only names which had become impersonal due to their popularity (like Diocletianus, Nero, Tryphene, Alexander), or had been inherited from the sources of the tradition either in their original form or in a disguised one.
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The name Falconilla is of this kind. Its stem is falco, falconis (ἱέραξ in Greek). Therefore Φαλκονίλλα is a disguised name for the ‘she-falcon’. Such a name could be dated after Alexander both by form – namely its combination of the Latin root with the latinized Greek form, and by content – namely its reference to an Egyptian cult, and provides us with a typical example of Hellenistic syncretism. The name itself that indicates one of Isis’ aspects involves some Egyptian religious notions: the Falcon is a symbol of her son Horus in his solar nature.22 Isis’ aspect as the mother of her solar son Falcon is figuratively presented in her sobriquet ‘she-falcon’. She conceived her falcon son while mourning over the corpse of her husband Osiris. At that moment she herself was a ‘she-falcon’23 As a she-falcon she appeared before Osiris. On one of the monuments she is presented as a she-falcon hovering over her husband’s dead body. As a ‘she-falcon’ she is pictured on Osiris’ tomb. Bracelets decorated with golden falcons were worn by Egyptian queens.24 It is presumably not by a coincidence that this symbol is attached to Isis in the context of the mourning ritual. According to the myth, Isis after giving birth to her son, hid him in the bushes. In one of her visits to him she found him dead.25 Here we have a version of the myth that was most popular in the Ancient East (and just as popular in the West in the post-Hellenistic period). It was a myth about nature’s young force dying a temporary violent death. But soon it will revive for a joyful life. Harpocrates (that was the name of Horus as a child) will rise from the dead with the help of Ra, the great god of the Sun. In the post-Hellenistic era the Greek myth literally repeats this story. It creates a hero Hierax (ἱέραξ) – Falcon who is young and who dies young. The ritual music and festivals of flowers and adoration of Hera are related to him.26 Another myth makes Hierax die because of Poseidon, the symbol of Water. In this legend from Asia Minor Hierax is linked to the presentation of the grain and to the cult of Demeter.27 ————— 22 23 24 25 26 27
Wiedemann 1897, 26; Breasted 1912, 109; Frazer 1914, II, 21. Breasted 1912, 28. Frazer 1914, II, 22; Amélineau 1899, 107–115. Budge 1911, I, 92; II 84; 274; Frazer 1914, II, 8. Poll. 4, 10, 78–79. Ant. Lib. 3.
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As youthful son or new growth of flowers and grains, yet always as a lad, Horus being son of Isis dies suddenly and his cult is one of mourning and tears. At first, in Egypt, he was attached to his mother Isis as her son. Later in the period of religious syncretism and strong Syro-Phoenician influence the myth makes the idea of beauty and flourishing more prominent and thus the image of son is either screened or merged with an image of the lover – the young Adonis snatched away by death. Now the Egyptian goddess Isis loses the clearness of her primordial image of mother and wife. In her case also the idea of beauty and fertility advances to the forefront and Isis acquires the features of the Phoenician and Greek goddess Astarte-Aphrodite. Harpocrates blends with Adonis-Tammuz in the aspect of the prematurely deceased young lover of Isis-Astarte.28 In his turn Osiris is conceived as Isis’ son, or rather the search for Osiris and his ritual mourning appears to be transferred to her son. So, according to Minucius Felix (in the early Christian era), Isis was mourning over the loss of her son and was searching for him, grieving and beating her breast until finding him and giving way to her joy at the sight of his resurrection. The cult that once had belonged to Osiris was transferred to Harpocrates-Horus because Isis was perceived as the mother of both.29 Syncretism leads to the merging of Harpocrates-Osiris with Adonis, and to the fusion of Isis as Astarte-Aphrodite (who absorbs the features of the great Mother of the Gods from Asia Minor) with ‘Dea Syria’ and Hera.30 In the times of Apuleius she was regarded as the principle of all things worshipped under various names: as God’s Mother in one locality, Aphrodite in the second, Kore in the third and Demeter in the fourth etc.31 So when the Greek myth joins Hierax with Hera or Demeter, it is again Isis as mother or as beloved. In post-Hellenistic cults of Egypt Isis meets Hierax in her initial form. There is a dedicatory inscription from Isis’ sanctuary in Ptolemais dated to the time of Philadelphus. The inscription addresses the god ΑΡΒΑΚΕΙ ΚΑΙ ΙΕΡΑΚΙ and Ἀρβάκει would be the same as ἱέρακι, i.e. Horus-Falcon.32 In his fusion with Adonis Horus retains the solar substance of the Falcon. At least Adonis (called Κίρρις on Cyprus), has the ap-
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Baudissin 1911, 153; 178; Ohnefalsch–Richter 1893, 188; 194; 196; 198; 200. Min. Fel. Oct. 21; cf. Plu. De Is. 14. Luc. Syr.D. 1; 6; 13; 15. Apul. Met. 11, 5. RA, sér. III, 1883, 2 (Miller).
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pearance of a falcon (εἶδος ἱέρακος).33 Horus whom Greeks called Apollo becomes a falcon in his fight with Typhon-heat.34 So whether it is Isis-mother with her son Harpocrates-Hierax, or AstarteAphrodite with her beloved Adonis, the essence remains always the same: the Falcon would always relate to Falconilla as a young, subordinate part to the great creative principle. The structure of the myth that joins them consists of images of beauty, flourishing, and violent death. The cult to which both names, Falcon and Falconilla, belong consists of ritual lament, mourning music,35 rites of wanderings, search, and findings.36 It seems that the vulgar mixture of Greek and Latin in Falconilla’s name suited popular literary templates. We would look in vain for her name in refined classical literature. Yet we may find it emerging in the Lives of the Saints. Myths and their vocabulary were not to the taste of the Lives. On the contrary the Lives denied myths but being themselves founded on myth, though vulgar and trivial, they introduced mythic characters in disguised form. Falconilla appears in one more Christian book besides our Acts, namely in the Life of Saint Pancratius.37 There is an episode with the beautiful queen Falconilla. People brought gifts to her merely in order to see her beauty. She had a young son, Falcon, who lived in her gardens and unexpectedly died. Mourning for him, she built a temple in his honor. And his statue was called ‘Falcon God’. We see now the full and final representation of the myth about AphroditeAstarte, who lives in her sacral grove with her son-lover. Suddenly in the garden death abducts him and Aphrodite starts her rite of search and tears. The garden of Falconilla where Falcon perishes in his bloom presents a combination of the gardens of Aphrodite and the ‘gardens of Adonis’. We have just seen an embodiment of the most tender vegetation suddenly withered and we have just seen how Adonis amalgamates with Harpocrates, Osiris and Horus.38 Legends similar to those about Osiris are attached to one of the Saints Pancratius, namely to the Pancratius in whose Life there is a story about Falcon and Falconilla. The stories tell us about parts of his body buried far ————— 33 34 35 36 37 38
EM s.v. Κίρρις; Et.Gud. s.v. Κίρκος. Ant. Lib. 28. ‘Falconian fret (stop)’ [ἱεράκιον] was invented by Hierax; see Poll. 4, 78. Plu. De Is.: ἀφανισµός, ζήτησις, εὕρεσις [disappearance, search, finding]. Greek text seen by Veselovskij, 1886 I, 65. Luc. De Dea Syr.; Plu. De Is. 13 sqq.; St. Byz. s. v. Ἀµαθοῦς; Hippol. Haer. 5, 9 (Migne, SG 16,3); Ohnefalsch – Richter 1893, I, 208 f..
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from one another and worshipped in different places. Saint Pancratius (his name meaning ‘Omnipotent’) repeats in this way the fate of Osiris whom Typhon had torn into pieces. Isis buried Osiris’ limbs in different localities of Egypt thus giving birth to many cults.39 There is however also a direct proof for considering ‘Falconilla’ to be one of Isis’ names. In Tauromenium on Sicily where the events of the story about Falcon and Falconilla took place there was a Church of Saint Pancratius. In this place excavations have brought to light a dedicatory inscription in honor of Isis and Serapis (the later form of Osiris).40 It turned out that this church of Pancratius = Omnipotent once had been a temple of Isis, and there had survived a marble plaque with the figure of a priestess of Isis incised on it.41 We see now that on the place of Pancratius there had been the worshipping of Osiris and on the place of the cult of Falconilla there had been the cult of Isis. Meanwhile Saint Pancratius, the bishop of Tauromenium, a disciple of the Apostle Peter, was born in Antioch.42 In our Apocrypha we find that Falconilla was from Antioch. Whether or not there ever existed any connection of the myths with the native cities of the Saints as places of their worship, or not, nevertheless in Syria of the Christian times and in Asia Minor, Isis as well as Horus-Osiris were quite popular. As for Horus, he had his own myths in Troas and in the Phrygo-Bithynian territory,43 that is in the places close to Iconion – Thecla’s native city. Let us draw a first conclusion from our first experience: Falconilla being supposedly a rudiment or remnant in the Christian Apocryphal narrative and playing the role of the dead daughter who is compared with the living Thecla turns out to be a character of pagan myth, a Hellenistic double of the Egyptian deity Isis, namely of her mourning aspect in which the coming of death and the waiting for revival is accentuated. Unexpectedly the world of ancient ideas and conceptions is disclosed before us. The negligible and accessory name in our Acts proved to belong precisely to the Egyptian goddess Isis. It remains only to discover whether this is accidental or not. How could Isis get into the Acts and why is her role
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Plu. De Is. 18; Acta Sanctorun Maji, 12, t. III, 17. CIL X, 6989; IG XIV, 685 n.14 a. Archäologische Zeitschrift 1868, 131; Ciaceri 1911, 262 sq. Menolog. Imp. Basilii, 305, 177. Ant.Lib.3.
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so tiny? Naturally we cannot answer this question until we decode the rest of the names in the Acts. Let us continue with Thamyris… 1921 Amélineau, E. 1899. Le tombeau d’Osiris; monographie de la découverte fait en 1897–1898, Paris. Baudissin, W.W. 1911. Adonis und Esmun. Eine Untersuchung zur Geschichte des Glaubens an Auferstehungsgötter und an Heilgötter, Leipzig. Breasted, J.H. 1912. The Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt. New York. Budge, E.A. 1911. Wallis Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, London, New York. Ciaceri, E. 1911. Culti e miti nella storia d’antica Sicilia, Catania. Frazer, J.G. 1914. The Golden Bough. 3d ed. Pt. IV: Adonis, Attis, Osiris; Studies in the History of Oriental Religion Vol. I-II.L. Ohnefalsch-Richter, M.H. 1893. Kypros, Bibel and Homer. Oriental civilisation, art, cult and religion in ancient times, London. Veselovskij, A.N. 1886. Iz istorii romana i povesti. Materialy i issledovanija. Vypusk 1. Greko-vizantijskij period, Sanct Petersburg. Wiedemann, A. 1897. Religion of the Ancient Egyptians. New York, London.
Appendix 2 Olga Freidenberg, Greek Novel as Genre of Acts and Passions, 1919–1923. Table of Contents I. A Specimen of the Greek novel. 1–31 The Acts of Paul and Thecla are damned and simultaneously consecrated by the Church. 1.Their translation 5. Martyrdom and prevailing woman’s role constitute their peculiarities. 16. This specimen of the Acts differs from the genre of the Acts 17. It also differs from the genre of Martyrdom 19. Remarkable relationship of Thecla’s martyrdom as a genre and the Acts of Paul 21. Christianity – a layer on pagan soil. 22. The plot of the Acts, if purged of conventional contents, reveals the plot structure of the Greek novel 27. The structure of the Greek novel corresponds to the martyrdom of the Acts 28. Why are they called exactly ‘Acts’? The problematic nature of the two elements - of the martyrdom and the acts. II The Paleontology of the Novel. 32–116 1. The Semantics of Proper Names 33–78. What does ‘ready-made forms’ of the novel mean? 33. The name Falconilla 34. This name is a disguised sobri-
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quet of Isis; it unites the cycle of myths about the mournful aspect of motherhood and the death of a young plant-son 35. Thamyris as a Greek variety of Adonis 41. In Phoenicia he is river god and a tree god, with healing and prophetic powers. 43. In Asia Minor and Cyprus he is associated with the labrys, with fire’s flame, and with theriomachia 44. In Dodona he is the god of mountains, water, trees, and prophecy. 45. Under a feminine name he appears in Herodotus’ legend, which is based on the myths about the god of love and death 46. As it happens in the Caucasus, where he becomes Saint Tamara. 47. The Biblical Tamars are related to the same cycle of the myths. 48. The cycle of the myths about disappearance and search, and the finding of the young god of vegetation who is worshipped with exultation and tears is an amalgamate around Thamaris-Thamyris 40. This made him an embodiment of music 52. He is a prehistoric deity like Falconilla 53. Thecla is also a prehistoric divinity ascending, as Thamyris does, to an undivided image of sky-water-light-tree, and in historical times becomes a Semitic deity of fertility 54. The names of the heroes from the Acts are the names of prehistoric deities and later of the deities of fertility. 59. Longus’ pastoral: Chloe corresponds to Thecla, Daphnis, Thamyris; in the Greek localities she corresponds to Dionysos 64. Historia Apollonii regis Tyri: the hero is the fertility god Dionysus of Tyre; the heroines are deities of fertility and light; the plot is taken from the myths about Dionysos 67. ‘Chaereas and Callirhoe’ by Chariton: the plot is based on the Naxos Dionysian legend; the characters belong to Dionysian myths 74. Xenophon: Anthia and Habrocomes as Aphrodite and Adonis 75. Behind all names in the Greek novel there is the imagery of one and the same fertility cult that creates common motifs and similar characters; the names of the characters uncover a certain East-Mediterranean cycle of myths. This, together with all other mythic motifs, yields the Greek novel. 76. 2 The Semantics of the Motifs 79–116. The starting point of the novel is marriage which signifies death; ‘flourishing’ means ‘fall’ 79. Image ‘death from love’ is equal to the image ‘marriage-death’ 81. The love of the novel is the metaphor of death and resurrection 82. This way of perceiving love and marriage calls for characters doomed to sufferings. 83 At the heart of the story there is the image of Death; with Greeks, it becomes Fate; it reveals itself in passions within a system of acts and sufferings 85. The dialectic identity of erotics and resurrection 89. Resurrections in the novel: the rising
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from the tomb 90; the crucifixions 93; jeering before death 95; passions as a farce 96. Image of ‘water’: water motifs and water characters 98. Variants: blood, wine, milk 100. Image of ‘fire’: fire as a merciful deity 103. The fire cult is the cult of productivity: in myths 104. In rites 105. Passing through death used to be a holy day and degenerated into martyrdom 106. Two mythic cycles – of Adonis and of Heracles; in the latter feminine and masculine deities are equal and the main motifs are: labours and victory; zoömorphism and fighting with beasts 109. Erotic motif of transvestism. Conclusion: two archaic social communities, the agricultural and that of the hunters create, in conformity with their ideology, two mythic patterns: one consists of the elements of struggle and labours, the second one consists of martyrdom and passions 113. III The Problem of Forming the Forms. 118–174. 1 The Correspondence between Semantics and Plot Structure 11–140. What caused the unity of two different structures? 118 Passions in the ritual system 119. The plot of rite and the plot of legend 123. The festival of death and fertility, the Greek Thesmophoria evokes an erotic plot in the story 125. The same in the Anthesteria 127. The Jewish Passover is even more obvious 128. Easter (rebirth) is always Christmas (birth) 131. The agrarian folklore of Bethlehem: parallel agrarian and erotic motifs 132. The sacral legend of the Easter, gospels, are typical for the folklore of Bethlehem 133. Bethlehem as an agricultural image 135. The same social and ideological semantics yield structures that are different from the very beginning 136. The structures of the gospels and of the novels are dialectically identical 138. 2 The Relations of Semantics and Genre Structure 141–174. The general characteristic of literary works whose plot is taken from the cult of fertility: memoirs in their formal characteristics, they have passions and acts as their content, presented as real events that were thoroughly investigated and realistic 141. Liturgical character of both the Greek novel and the Gospels 143. Both the Greek novel and the Gospels are dedicated to the god 145. Dialectic relations of the acts and passions 148. Whatever the Acts were by their religious content – pagan or Christian, they have the structure of persecutions, prison, court, sentence, miraculous escape and divine intervention 150. The
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Greek novels as acts 157. Dialectic relation of novel and drama 160. And comedy 165. Passions, acts and comedy 156. The so called New Comedy makes use of the Christmas plot 167. Virgin mother? Common characters, common plot structure 172. IV Social Adaptation. 175–192. The features of the Greek novel as a genre: Mediterranean location, abstract realism, the scenes of ‘hydromachia’, ‘pyromachia’ and ‘theriomachia’ framed by the separation and meeting of the love-couple 175. In the heyday of Hellenism the New Comedy developed the so to say ‘Christmas’-part of the plot 177. The ‘Easter’ part became the material of the Gospels and novels; as a work of Hellenism it could be considered a barren product of decay 182. The effete realism of the novel 184. The motif of virginity 186. Historical parallelism of an erotic and a religious genre 188. The dialectic of prehistory and history. V Index
The Satyrica of Petronius as a Roman Palimpsest G OTTSKÁLK J ENSSON Reykjavík
Roman literature is possibly the most palimpsestuous of literatures.1 So much so that lovers of Roman letters have had to fight off the unwanted comparison with Roman plastic arts where, as is well known, there are no originals. A series of famous names will emphasise the obvious: Plautus, Terence, Varro, Cicero, Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Livy, Horace, Ovid, Seneca, Statius and Apuleius. These (and many more) were borrowers, reworkers, rewriters. But we try not to hold it against them. When the stuff of Roman literature is Greek (and often, too, when it is Roman) the method of writing is translation, transformation, and imitation. By the same process that Roman literature grew out of Greek literature, much of Western literature grew out of Latin literature. In fact, ever since the Romantics, we have been extremely reluctant to admit to this influence, to any influence in fact, instead fantasizing about ‘originality’, or what one theorist sees as a longing for a freedom from paternal influence.2 Of course, demanding originality from Roman literature is to apply later esthetics to earlier art, but the anachronism doesn’t usually bother Petronian scholars. Few Roman writers have been more fantasized about in this manner than the elusive author of the Satyrica. We shall see in the central part of this paper that the modern ‘Petronius’ was invented in the late 19th century under ideological pressure. Although we rarely admit to this, we know nothing about ————— 1
2
I use the term ‘palimpsest’ as a broad term to denote a text derived from a previous text through transformation or imitation. It covers translation, copy, make-over, adaptation and many other such terms. For the purpose of this article the broad sense of the word is defined by Gérard Genette’s Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Translated by Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky (Lincoln and London 1997; original French publication 1982). According to Genette (399) the adjective ‘palimpsestuous’ was coined by Philippe Lejeune. For this Romantic and Post-Romantic psychology of literature, see Harold Bloom’s classic The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (New York, 1973).
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the author with certainty.3 If we ignore the usual guesswork, too uncertain in any case to provide a substantial foundation, we are left with no more than a name on the title page. And yet so much meaning has been invested in that name, so much affection has been bestowed since the 19th century upon this putatively ‘original’ Roman novelist, that the mere proposal that the Satyrica is a typical Roman palimpsest evokes a sense that a line of propriety has been crossed. Not surprisingly, the proposal has never been made before. One Scottish scholar,4 it is true, in an influential study on the ‘Roman Novel’, ridicules the Frenchman Collignon and the American Perry because they ‘regard the Satyricon as the adaptation of a lost romance perhaps called Priapeia.’ But he misrepresents the writings of these scholars. Albert Collignon, too, believed Petronius to be an original author and merely suggested that he might perhaps have used some plot ideas from a Greek model.5 Ben Edwin Perry was likewise a firm believer in Petronian originality and merely claimed that he used the same method as the author of the Greek Ass Story and wrote the central fable ‘on the basis of folklore plots’.6 The Oxford professor Peter Parsons certainly did write the notorious words: ‘Natural reason long ago revealed that Petronius had a Greek model,’ but he didn’t mean a specific Greek work that Petronius had adapted, but a genre that Petronius had imitated.7 As much is revealed by his reference to ‘the Greek Schelmenroman’ and the fact that Parsons qualifies his statement with a footnote reference to a certain German publication from the early 20th century.8 If we make the effort to follow up on the reference, we find that Ulrich von WilamowitzMöllendorff in no weak terms affirms Petronian originality (Dem Dichter soll wahrlich seine Originalität nicht verkleinert werden), and merely speculates as to whether there existed a Greek roman comique or Schelmenroman, subsequently granting with an evident grudge that ‘das picarische Element’ in Petronius is as Greek as the wrath of Priapus, the Widow of Ephesos and the ————— 3
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Rose, 1971, persuaded many with his arguments for the identification of the author with C. Petronius, described as Nero’s elegantiarum arbiter by Tacitus (Ann. 16.18–19), but the identification is plausible at best and the case remains inconclusive. Smith 1975, xii– xiv, 213–214, has pointed out some of the weaknesses of this identification. Walsh 1970, 17 Collignon 1892, 323. Perry 1925, 39f. Parsons 1971, 66. As to the notoriety of these words, cf. Stephens and Winkler 1995, 364–366. The footnote runs like this: ‘e.g. Die Kultur der Gegenwart I viii, Die Gr. u. Lat. Literatur (3rd edn 1912) 190 (Willamowitz), 459 (Leo).’
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shipwreck. At the end of this concession he adds the words: ‘... as is taught by the obvious and confirmed by analysis’ (lehrt der Augenschein und bestätigt die Analyse), which is clearly the phrase Parsons has anglicized by his ‘natural reason ... revealed’. We find nothing here or elsewhere regarding a specific Greek text that Petronius may have adapted. What is meant by a ‘Greek model’ in Petronian scholarship is always either a ‘serious’ Greek novel to be parodied, or some Greek genre which is designated by some such label as ‘comic’, ‘criminal’ or the anachronistic ‘picaresque’ (from the Spanish word picaro) and its German translation Schelmenroman. The possibility of a Greek text, the Σατυρικά, directly adopted by Petronius has never been entertained before, not even when scholars have attempted to list all the hypothetical possibilities.9 So, either it is simply a foolish idea, a philological absurdity, or it has become one of those things that you better not suggest, if you care for your respectability in the scholarly community: a disciplinary taboo. At the risk of making an ass of myself, I shall now try to show that, philologically, the suggestion is not unsound. What we are dealing with is a Roman narrative with a Greek title, Satyrica (Σατυρικά),10 told by a Greek called Encolpius (Εγκόλπιος)—hence the Greek accusative ‘Encolpion’ (Sat. 92,7; 104,1; 109,3; 114,9; 128,7)—from the Greek city of Massalia (Μασσαλία). In short a Greek story populated by Greek characters moving in a Greek environment. Given this general Greekness of the story, is it not possible that there existed a Greek novel by Encolpius of Massalia (almost certainly a pseudonym) relating the travels of an exiled anti-Odysseus? Can we rule out palimpsest because the Greek text is never even mentioned in extant Greco-Roman ————— 9
10
Stephens and Winkler 1995, 364–365 n. 17, do just this when they ask in continuation of Parsons’ dictum: ‘what kind of Greek model? Greek novels of the historical or “idealistic” type, as well as salacious stories like Aristides’ Milesiaka certainly preexisted the Satyrica, and Petronius, educated Roman that he was, would surely have read what existed. Did he adapt or satirize what had come to be a generic plot, did he have an individual serious novel in mind when he wrote the Satyrica, or was he writing a style of criminalsatiric fiction already well established in Greek?’ The title of the earliest and best MS is Satiricon, or Satyricon. The fourth century writer Marius Victorinus also preserves Satyricon (GL 6, 153). The Latin spelling Satyricon (sc. libri) stands for the Greek genitive plural Σατυρικῶν which gives Σατυρικά in the nominative. Henriksson 1956, 77, concludes in his study of Greek book-titles in Roman literature that the Roman readership of Petronius could probably not differentiate the meaning of the forms Satiricon and Satyricon, since there is no indication that such etymological understanding existed. In other words, satyrs and satire were related concepts.
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literature? Despite the lack of any remains of a Greek story, the problem of the Greekness of the Satyrica will not go away, because such a multitude of texts is completely lost and Roman literary history teaches us that Greek material in Roman literature originates from specific sources. As we shall see later in the article, at a certain point in the reception of the text it was indeed necessary to explain away the Greekness of the Satyrica before it could be read as a quintessential ‘national’ Roman novel of the realistic type. If one argues from the premise of ancient literary history alone, there is nothing improbable in the hypothesis that an ancient Roman writer composed a Latin fictional narrative by loosely rewriting a Greek text, yet retaining both the Greek title and the name of the Greek narrator, along with much of the rest of the story. We can say with certainty that there is nothing improbable in this hypothesis, because this is what Cornelius Sisenna did in the first century B.C., when he created his Milesiae or Milesiarum libri, a Latin version of the lost Greek Milesiaca (Μιλησιακά) by Aristides of Miletus;11 and because this is what Apuleius did, in the second century, when he produced the Metamorphoses, a Latin version of the partly preserved Greek Metamorphoseis (Μεταµορφώσεις) of Lucius of Patras. There is no need to mention other Roman genres built on Greek works. Nothing in the ancient testimony contradicts this possibility. The Lucianic dialogue Erotes shows that the Greek Milesiaca (Μιλησιακά) had the form of recollections, narrated by the central narrative persona of Aristides, who every now and then related how he encountered other people who told him stories, which he then incorporated into his own novelistic narrative by retelling them in the persona of the individual from whom he claimed to have heard them, thus playfully creating a distance between himself and the obscene material he related.12 Ovid’s Tristia and Plutarch’s Life of Crassus support the testimony of the Lucianic dialogue, and add that a Roman, Cornelius Sisenna, created a Latin version of the Milesiaca (Μιλησιακά) in the first century B.C. Apuleius himself tells us in the opening of his Latin adaptation of the Metamorphoseis (Μεταµορφώσεις) that the story is told in the sermo Milesius, the Milesian discourse. Since the Byzantine scholar Photios describes the Metamorphoseis (Μεταµορφώσεις) as being in several volumes and ‘stuffed with fabulous ————— 11 12
For the evidence of the title, see Harrison 1998. This structure was first revealed by Bürger 1892, whose thesis has now been restated by Harrison 1998, who thoroughly examines the testimony about Milesian tales, and myself in a Ph.D. dissertation from 1996, 304–319 (forthcoming in print as AN Supplementum).
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stories and shameless obscenity’ (Phot. Bibl. Cod. 129, γέµει ... πλασµάτων µὲν µυθικῶν, ἀρρητοποιΐας δὲ αἰσχρᾶς) there is little reason to doubt that the Greek story had the same narrative structure as its Latin version, although this structure is only partly preserved in the epitome Lukios or the Ass (Λούκιος ἣ Ὄνος). As for the similarity of these texts with the Satyrica, Macrobius tells us, in a commentary on Cicero’s Dream of Scipio, that Petronius and Apuleius wrote the same kind of stories (Somn. 1.2.7–8). We can furthermore ascertain from the distinct and unusual narrative form of the Satyrica that it is written in the sermo Milesius, i.e. it has the same narrative structure (described by Lucian in his Erotes) as the Milesiaca, and the Metamorphoses of Apuleius. The Apuleian term sermo Milesius implies both a generic relationship with the Μιλησιακά and Roman palimpsest, since the reference in Apuleius’ Latin must be to Sisenna’s Latin adaptation of that work. It is thus Apuleius’ generic label for his palimpsest, and probably wasn’t in the Metamorphoseis. According to its ancient description, this type of narration should be thought of as imitating oral and performative story-telling, i.e. it should be analyzed and described with reference to the paradigm of a single story-teller, a single speaking voice, capable of impersonating the characters of the story. In the following model of the narrative speaker-personae in the Satyrica the proper names may be thought of as verbal equivalents of masks (the narrator is marked by caps, ENCOLPIUS, even in minimal bridges crossing from one impersonation to another, but the impersonated masks by quotation marks, e.g., ‘Agamemnon’). By accident of preservation, the extant Satyrica opens in the middle of a passage where the narrator is impersonating his younger self, a character in the story, as he spoke at that moment in the past, after which the central identity resurfaces and so on and so forth: [...] ‘Encolpius’ — ENCOLPIUS (3.1) — ‘Agamemnon’ — ENCOLPIUS (6.1–17.3) — ‘Quartilla’ — ENCOLPIUS (18.1–37.1) — ‘Hermeros’ — ENCOLPIUS (39.1) — ‘Trimalchio’ — ENCOLPIUS (40.1– 42.1) — ‘Seleucus’ — ENCOLPIUS (43.1) — ‘Phileros’ — ENCOLPIUS (44.1) — ‘Ganymedes’ — ENCOLPIUS (45.1) — ‘Echion’ — ENCOLPIUS (47.1) — ‘Trimalchio’ — ENCOLPIUS (47.7–50.4) — ‘Trimalchio’ — ENCOLPIUS (52.4–55.4) — ‘Trimalchio’ — ENCOLPIUS (56.7–57.1) — ‘Hermeros’ — ENCOLPIUS (59.1–61.5) — ‘Niceros’ — ENCOLPIUS (63.1) — ‘Trimalchio’ — ENCOLPIUS (64.1–
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(64.1–65.9) — ‘Habinnas’ — ENCOLPIUS (67.2–71.5) — ‘Trimalchio’ — ENCOLPIUS (72.1–74.13) — ‘Trimalchio’ — ENCOLPIUS (78.1– 81.2) — ‘Encolpius’ — ENCOLPIUS (82.1–83.7) — ‘Eumolpus’ — ENCOLPIUS (90.1–101.9) — ‘Eumolpus’ — ENCOLPIUS (102.10) — ‘Encolpius’ — ENCOLPIUS (102.14) — ‘Giton’ — ENCOLPIUS (103.3–106.4) — ‘Eumolpus’ — ENCOLPIUS (107.7) — ‘Lichas’ — ENCOLPIUS (107.12–108.14) — ‘Tryphaena’ — ENCOLPIUS (109.1– 110.8) — ‘Eumolpus’ — ENCOLPIUS (113.1–115.9) — ‘Encolpius’ — ENCOLPIUS (115.20–116.3) — ‘vilicus quisdam’ — ENCOLPIUS (117.1–13) — ‘Eumolpus’ — ENCOLPIUS (124.2–125.4) — ‘Chrysis’ — ENCOLPIUS (126.8–129.3) — ‘Circe’ — ENCOLPIUS (129.10–12) — ‘Encolpius’ — ENCOLPIUS (130.7–132.9) — ‘Encolpius’ — ENCOLPIUS (132.11–12) — ‘Encolpius’ — ENCOLPIUS (133.1–2) — ‘Encolpius’ — ENCOLPIUS (133.4–134.10) — ‘Oenothea’ — ENCOLPIUS (135.1–138.5) — ‘Encolpius’ — ENCOLPIUS (139.3–141.1) — ‘Eumolpus’ […]. A similar model of the narrative speaker-personae in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius would look like this: LUCIUS (1.1–5) — ‘Aristomenes’ — LUCIUS (1.21–2.13) — ‘Milo’ — LUCIUS (2.15–21) — ‘Thelyphron’ — LUCIUS (2.31–3.3) — ‘accusator quidam’ — LUCIUS (3.4) — ‘Lucius’ — LUCIUS (3.7–15) — ‘Fotis’ — LUCIUS (3.19–4.9) — ‘unus ex numero latronum’ — LUCIUS (4.22–26) — ‘Charite’ — LUCIUS (4.27) — ‘delira et temulenta illa anicula’ — LUCIUS (6.25–28) — ‘Charite’ — LUCIUS (6.30–31) — ‘unus latronum’ — LUCIUS (6.32–7.1) — ‘quidam de numero latronum’ — LUCIUS (7.2–5) — ‘Haemus (sive Tlepolemus)’ — LUCIUS (7.10–8.1) — ‘unus ex famulis Charites’ — LUCIUS (8.15– 20) — ‘senex magnus’ — LUCIUS (8.21–9.16) — ‘anicula’ — LUCIUS (9.22–24) — ‘maritus’ — LUCIUS (9.26–8) — ‘medicus’ — LUCIUS (10.12–11.2) — ‘Lucius’ — LUCIUS (11.3–4) — ‘Isis’ — LUCIUS (11.7–15) — ‘sacerdos’ — LUCIUS (11.15–25) — ‘Lucius’ — LUCIUS (11.26–29) — ‘imago’ — LUCIUS (11.30). Note that the characters and names in both stories are mostly Greek. Behind the Roman name Lucius is the Greek Λούκιος. One would be hard pressed to
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find a similar use of Greek characters and names in Roman literature, except in Latin New Comedy, Greco-Roman Tragedy or Greco-Roman Epic on Greek subjects, i.e. Latin palimpsests written over Greek texts, where the common practice was to keep the original names.13 As for the relationship of the Greek narrators to the authors of these works, we know that Lucius of Patras was the narrator of the Greek Metamorphoseis (Μεταµορφώσεις), just as Aristides of Miletus narrated the Milesiaca (Μιλησιακά). Loukios of Patras is generally thought to be a fictional identity, but the historical identity of Aristides is no less obscure. Encolpius of Massalia is therefore no more and no less historical than the others. All three Greek works could have been anonymous. In the context of the Milesiaca, Ovid adds a third anonymous author who ‘recently composed the Sybaritica’ (Trist. 2.417, nec qui composuit nuper Sybaritica), which seems to be the same text as the Sybaritici libelli referred to by Martial (12.95,1–2) as the emulated Greek model of a pornographic composition in Latin from the stylus of a certain Mussetius (Musseti pathicissimos libellos, / Qui certant Sybariticis libellis). The lack of cultural and linguistic realism in Roman poetic palimpsests has been studied by Gordon Williams. In a truly insightful chapter, ‘The blending of Greek and Roman’, Williams explains how Roman authors acted as if the transition from Greek to Roman literature was a natural continuation of the same tradition: ‘Roman poets treated both earlier Roman poets and Greek poets in the same way that Greek poets had themselves treated their own predecessors’.14 This is only surprising to us, because we are accustomed to assigning a ‘nationality’ to literary works and explaining them as French, German, English etc. A Roman palimpsest is neither a translation, which presupposes that one language can function as the unproblematic parallel of another, nor a complete reworking, which transforms cultural settings and forces them to comply with the new environment. Instead, Roman palimpsests blend Greek and Roman elements in such an undifferentiated manner that the final outcome is, from our point of view, a utopian creation. ————— 13
14
The Greek names of the puellae or boys of the poems of e.g. Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid do not really comprise a good counterexample, for they have a special function as pseudonyms (cf. Apuleius Apol. 10,5). Nor is the Greekness of these names completely meaningless. Catullus for one uses the name ‘Lesbia’ to intimate his debt to the poetry of Sappho. Williams 1968, 254.
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These symptoms are obvious in those works which we know to be direct Roman adaptations from Greek literature, such as the works Williams makes the objects of his study, the comedies of Plautus, Virgil’s Eclogues, and Horace’s Odes. Despite the process of transformation, which adds much Roman material in the Latin language so that a peculiar Greco-Roman cultural amalgam is created which nowhere existed in antiquity, the Satyrica has a cultural milieu that is recognizably Greek and based on a ‘tradition of malicious erotic ethnography’15 and the mythologized identities of Greek cities. The setting for the last episode of the extant Satyrica is the city of Croton. Since this is the only intact introduction to a Greek city in the story as we have it, it is all the more significant. Why Croton? What wars are being referred to in the introduction of Croton as a city which has ‘squandered its wealth in frequent wars’ (Sat. 116, post attritas bellis frequentibus opes)? The ancient Greek colony of Croton (Κρότων) is best known in literature for destroying great and luxurious Sybaris in 510 B.C. Sybaris had been closely affiliated with wealthy and powerful Miletos which, in turn, saw its golden age end in the late fifth century. Like luxurious Sybaris and wealthy Miletos, powerful Croton is a legend of the distant past, from the period after the Greek colonial expansion. Such tales of the life in famous ancient cities may have been termed ‘community legends’ µῦθοι πολιτικοί (Schol. Arist. Vesp. 1259a), and are worthy of consideration as a genre on their own. Sybaris was proverbial for the same quality that made the Milesians notorious, namely luxury and licentious behavior. The city of Croton in the Satyrica, a place without regenerative power that feeds on the old and has made legacy hunting into a way of life, is therefore not a realistic description of Roman Italy, but a fantasy and a legend of the distant past. The choice of Croton in the Satyrica obeys the same logic as the choice of Thessaly—legendary for witchcraft—for Lucius’ encounter with witches in the Greek Metamorphoses (Μεταµορφώσεις), and the choice of luxurious Miletos as the setting for the licentious and obscene stories told in the Milesiaca (Μιλησιακά) of Aristides. Croton, however, is not the city that defines the subject of the Satyrica in the same manner that Thessaly defines the subject of the Greek Ass story and Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, or Miletus and Sybaris defined the subjects of, respectively, the lost Milesiaca and Sybaritica. To find such a ‘political’ iden————— 15
Harrison 1998, 63.
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tity for the Satyrica we must spend a little more effort than is usual on reconstructing the lost opening episode. The evidence for the ancient and long independent Greek city of Massalia, or modern Marseilles, as Encolpius’ birthplace comes mainly from one fourth century fragment,16 which, read side by side with a few passages of the Satyrica, yields this information. Servius’ commentary (Aen. 3.57) provides the following description (Fr. I) culled from the full-text Satyrica: auri sacra fames] sacra id est execrabilis. tractus est autem sermo ex more Gallorum. nam Massilienses quotiens pestilentia laborabant, unus se ex pauperibus offerebat alendus anno integro publicis et purioribus cibis. hic postea ornatus verbenis et vestibus sacris circumducebatur per totam civitatem cum execrationibus, ut in ipsum reciderent mala totius civitatis, et sic proiciebatur. hoc autem in Petronio lectum est. accursed hunger for gold] sacra means accursed. This manner of speaking derives from the custom of the Gauls, for whenever the Massaliots suffered from a pestilence, one of the poor citizens offered himself to be fed for a whole year on public and pure food. This individual was later dressed in branches and sacred attire and led around the whole city with ————— 16
Fragment IV also ties the Satyrica to Massalia. The fragment consists of a few lines from a poetic eulogy of Sidonius Apollinaris (Carm. 28.145–7): quid vos eloquii canam Latini, / Arpinas, Patavine, Mantuane / … / et te Massiliensium per hortos / sacri stipitis, Arbiter, colonum / Hellespontiaco parem Priapo? (‘what shall I sing about you, sires of Latin eloquence, / you from Arpinum, you from Patavium, you from Mantua / ... / and you, Arbiter, worshipper of the holy tree trunk / throughout the gardens of Massalia, / yourself on par with Hellespontiac Priapus?’). The late fifth century Christian bishop here apostrophizes three Roman literary worthies (Cicero, Livy and Virgil) by noting only their birthplaces. He goes on to address others and amongst them ‘Arbiter’, who is presented as being in Massalia, as if Petronius Arbiter, the author, were that character of the Satyrica whom Servius refers to in the first fragment. Bücheler 1862, ad Fr. IV, who says the idea had been adumbrated by Lilius Gyraldus, was the first to unravel the biographical fallacy in Sidonius’ reading by noting that the poet ‘thought that Petronius was the same as Encolpius’ (ratus videlicet eundem esse Petronium atque Encolpium). The lines are clearly modeled on Satyrica 139.2, me quoque per terras, per cani Nereos aequor / Hellespontiaci sequitur gravis ira Priapi (‘me, too, through lands, over hoary Nereus’ surface, / haunts the heavy wrath of Hellespontiac Priapus.’) This rather obvious intertextuality has, to my knowledge, never been pointed out before, and it shows that no crime against Priapus or resulting wrath of the god is necessitated in Massalia because of fragment IV.
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curses, so that on him would descend the evils of the whole city, and thus he was banished. This can indeed be read in Petronius. Servius is, unsuccessfully, attempting to explain the word sacra in Virgil by assuming that, since he was a Mantuan and therefore originally from Gallia Cisalpina, he might have used the word in a specifically Gallic sense. Hence the association with the Petronian passage which Servius takes to be reliable evidence for religious customs in the Greek city of Massalia (also in Gallia) in accordance with the grammarian’s practice of culling historical and biographical information from literary texts. It is of scant importance to us whether the information thus acquired is reliable.17 What matters is that Servius read in Petronius that one of the poor citizens of Massalia, unus ex pauperibus [sc. civibus], had volunteered to act the role of ‘scapegoat’ (φαρµακός) in return for being fed for a whole year at public expense, and was then expelled from the city when that time was up. As we learn from textbooks on Greek religion, the human scapegoat is sacrificed only in a social sense. His treatment is reminiscent of that of a beast marked for sacrifice. The beating and cursing of the φαρµακός to ward off sin, plague or famine was no doubt of importance in actual ancient ritual (e.g., the beating of boys in the ritual of Artemis Ortheia at Sparta), but the behavior of the human scapegoat was likely conventionalized and may have resembled that of a writhing dancer or an actor in comedy, such as the stupidus of mime.18 A relevant ancient account of such a ritual survives in the poems of Hipponax (Frs. 5–11 [West]). In threatening his enemies with destruction Hipponax provides a description of how the φαρµακός should be dealt with: A deformed and repulsive male is selected and feasted on figs, barley broth, and cheese, then whipped with fig branches and sea onions, and struck seven times on his membrum virile. Walter Burkert explains how there is a moral condemnation implicit in the rejection of this supposedly depraved individual:19
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18 19
Another commentary, that of Lactantius Placidus on Statius’ Thebais (10.793–4), has sometimes been adduced as further evidence for the historical truth of this alleged Gallic custom, but as Paratore 1933, 1,152, has shown, it is entirely derived from Servius’ clause, using very similar language, and therefore offers no independent evidence. Lactantius Placidus mentions neither Massalia nor Petronius. See Wylie 1994, 48–49. For Greek scapegoat rituals generally, see Burkert 1985, 82–84.
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It is clearly essential that the creature to be driven out be first brought into intimate contact with the community, the city; this is the sense of the gifts of food which are constantly mentioned. Figs are doubly contrasted to normal culture, to the fruits of the field and to the flesh of the victim; they point to sweetness, luxury, licentiousness, a breath of a golden age from which reality must be rudely distinguished …; the outcast is then called the one wiped off all around, peripsema. There is not active killing, but simply a matter of offscourings which must be thrown across the boundaries or over the cliffs, never to return. It is easy to see how this episode would fit into the Satyrica’s plot. Encolpius, Ascyltos or Eumolpus are just the types to recklessly exploit such a situation without regard for the consequences.20 Constantly penniless and needy, they gladly take every opportunity that comes along to get food, money and sex.21 In the extant Satyrica, religious cults and rituals are generally represented as pretexts for sexual and financial exploitation, and we may accordingly imagine the tone and mood of the episode as anything but solemn.22 But most importantly, the possibility that the branches mentioned in the account of Servius have something to do with the beating of the scapegoat, and, in any case, the general prominence of Encolpius’ phallus in the extant story, make him exceptionally well suited to play the φαρµακός in such a ritual. In the extant text of the Satyrica the shaving of Encolpius’ and Giton’s heads, which is then interpreted as sinister for the entire ship’s company (Sat. 103.5), might be cited as a partial parallel. The feeding and fattening of Encolpius is also an important part of the Croton episode,23 where there is likewise a sense of imminent danger which spoils the pleasure of temporary well-being (Sat. 125.2–4). More————— 20
21
22
23
Sat. 99.1, ego sic semper et ubique vixi, ut ultimam quamque lucem tamquam non redituram consumerem (‘I have always and everywhere lived, as if enjoying the final light and dawn would never rise again’). 125.4, nempe rursus fugiendum erit et tandem expugnata paupertas nova mendicitate revocanda (‘no doubt it will be necessary to flee again and our poverty, that had finally been taken care of, will again call for a stint of begging’). Cf. Stephens and Winkler 1995, 365, on the Iolaos and Tinouphis fragments: ‘Both focus on areas in which religion could and often did cross over into charlatanry, both mix in sex and low life in metrical form, both are written in a vigorous but hardly elegant Greek, both are full of textual errors, neither shows a trace of serious purpose.’ 125.2, quotidie magis magisque superfluentibus bonis saginatum corpus impleveram (‘each day I filled my stuffed body as the situation with material goods became more and more overabundant’).
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over, his humiliating procession through the streets of Massalia has a partial but striking resemblance to the Risus-festival in Apuleius (Met. 3.1–12), where Lucius is made the butt of the entire citizenry of Hypata.24 Such an opening episode for the Satyrica conforms with the general trend in Greek fiction; a ritual or a religious festival is used in three of the five fully extant erotic fictions to get the plot going (Chariton, Xenophon, Heliodorus). In the Greek cultural context, so preoccupied with the preservation of civic cohesion, to be thus cursed or mocked by a whole city, especially one’s own, is nothing short of a nightmare and certainly the ultimate in humiliation. Servius says he read about this humiliated Massaliot in Petronius, and from the extant part of the Satyrica we know that, of the characters in the story, Encolpius himself is most susceptible to humiliation. Our reading of the Servius fragment yields information about Encolpius’ citizenship, poverty, voluntary assumption of the degrading role of scapegoat, and final expulsion from Massalia. If this information is right, we would expect some of it to be reflected in what Encolpius says about himself in the fragments of his narrative that have come down to us. Two passages in the extant text of the Satyrica fall into place as soon as we accept this information. Firstly, Encolpius refers to himself as ‘exile’ (81.3, exul) in a retrospective soliloquy at a moment of disillusion when he has no reason to misrepresent himself to the original reader, who already knows the facts; and secondly, Lichas calls him a scapegoat: ‘You thief, what do you have to say for yourself? What stray salamander has burnt off your eyebrows? What god have you offered your hair? Answer, you scapegoat!’ (107.15, ‘quid dicis tu latro? quae sola salamandra supercilia tua exussit? cui deo crinem vovisti? pharmace, responde!’). These retrospective references to the protagonist in the extant Satyrica match so perfectly the fragment of Servius—in both texts Encolpius is an exile and a scapegoat—that their appositeness is most unlikely to be merely coincidental. Let us deal with the latter reference first and then move to the question of exile. That pharmace should be considered Greek, transcribed with Latin letters, is proven by the fact that it occurs nowhere else in extant Latin literature, so far as I have been able to ascertain. As Harlow has shown, pharmace is correctly read as the Greek vocative φαρµακέ, ‘scapegoat’.25 The word belongs to ————— 24
25
It may be added here in a footnote that Fellini incorporated the Risus-festival into his cinematographic version of the Satyrica, creating some quite memorable scenes. Harlow 1974, 377.
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the vocabulary of Greek satiric and comic authors such as Hipponax and Aristophanes and is used as a term of abuse, and so it might even occur here without a reference to anything specific.26 However, the other two items in the same address do have references to specific facts about Encolpius: He has stolen things from the ship and he has lost his eyebrows. The force of Lichas’ question above is not that he himself believes that a ‘stray salamander’ leaped from the sea aboard the ship and burnt off his eyebrows, but that he is mockingly anticipating some far-fetched explanation from Encolpius.27 Rounding off his attack by nastily reminding Encolpius of the humiliation he underwent in Massalia as a ‘scapegoat’, Lichas delivers a serious blow to the ego of our hero. Significantly, Encolpius the narrator acknowledges the truth of Lichas’ accusations: ‘and I couldn’t find anything to say against this accusation of a most obvious guilt’ (108.1, nec quid in re manifestissima dicerem inveniebam). Let us now examine the description of Encolpius as an exile (81.3) and the significance of this for the story. Besides Encolpius, there are two other ‘exiles’ (exules) in the story. Tryphaena calls Giton an exul (100.4), and she herself is so referred to (100.7, exulem) by Eumolpus, when addressing Encolpius and Giton who would certainly know the facts about her exile.28 It should be noted that the words exilium and exul were not used lightly in the Latin language and rarely in a transferred sense and then only of inanimate things and ————— 26
27
28
E.g. Hippon. Fr. 7 [West], et passim; Ar. Ra. 733. The early commentator Janus Souza read pharmace as the vocative of φαρµακός (Burmann 1743, 2:38). LSJ ad verb. derives the abusive sense of φαρµακός, ‘scapegoat’, from the fact that criminals could be used as scapegoats. Strangely, however, translators of the Satyrica have usually taken pharmace here for another Greek word φάρµακος (on the accent see the grammarian Herodianus 1.150 [Lentz]) meaning ‘sorcerer’ and translated it as ‘empoisonneur’ (Ernout), ‘Giftmischer, Zauberer’ (Stefenelli), ‘poisonous fellow’ (Heseltine), ‘poisonous creature’ (Sullivan), ‘snake in the grass’ (Branham and Kinney). The word is found e.g. in the vocabulary of the Greek LXX. The problem with this reading is that we have no reason to suspect Encolpius of magical practices. A marine animal similar to the salamander, possibly some sort of ‘mollusc’, is said by Pliny (Nat. 10.188) to emit a substance with depilatory effects. Encolpius at one point claims that Ascyltos was ‘by his own admission worthy of exile’ (81.4, sua quoque confessione dignus exilio), which could possibly indicate that we had a fourth exile in the story. The editio Pithoeana has exito, but it is not supported by other witnesses, and shortly before Encolpius has spoken of Ascyltos and himself as having experienced similar fortune (80.8). But even if Ascyltos is an exile he is unlikely to originate from Massalia, because he was clearly not on the ship of Lichas with the others. He is not a protagonist and both comes into the story and disappears from it in Campania.
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animals. Moreover, the terms are without abusive connotations (as opposed to fugitivus, ‘runaway’, ‘fugitive’) since they usually involve people of some rank and standing. An exilium is either a legal banishment (the legal terms are expulsio, eiectio, aquae et ignis interdictio, deportatio and relegatio), or a voluntary emigration (demigratio, fuga, peregrinatio). There is always in these terms an implicit contrast to patria and domus. For these three Greek characters in our story to be called exules in Campania and thereabouts proves that they are not Roman citizens, but come from an independent city outside Roman territory. That city is most likely as Greek as they are themselves. The best way to understand the significance of the institution of exile in the Roman world is to consider it in the light of legal arrangements between independent states. An exiled Roman citizen could through the ius exulandi, ‘the right to live in exile’, adopt a new patria and thus forfeit his Roman citizenship.29 This arrangement was reciprocal and exules from independent cities which had a foedus with Rome could take up citizenship there and thus relinquish their previous status at home (Cic. de Orat. 1.177). In early times the exiled Roman did not need to go far into exile and could find a new home without leaving Latium, in cities such as Tibur, Praeneste, Lavinium and Ardea, or he could go to the Latin colonies. In later times Tarquinii, Nuceria and Ravenna would serve the same purposes. But when the ager Romanus had been expanded so as to cover the whole Italian peninsula and especially after the civil wars, when all Italian cities had been granted Roman citizenship, such places had to be sought outside Italy, in Gallia, Greece or Asia (Cic. Mur. 89). In the early principate the closest foreign city to the North and West, and one that was preeminently qualified to accept Roman exiles, happened to be Massalia. This independent Greek city-state, lying in the middle of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis, had had a politically privileged status in the area ever since the war against the Gallic tribes in 123–21 B.C.30 In Roman
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Kleinfeller 1958, 1683–85. Strabo has a chapter on Massalia (Str. 4.1.4f.). In the early principate Massalia was still an officially independent Greek city-state which laid great store by its ancient customs and citizenship and had a long-standing relationship of amicitia with the Romans. In Strabo’s time (ca. 63 B.C. – 19) the city had a high reputation for its rhetorical and philosophical schools which attracted upper class Romans. Tacitus corroborates this reputation of the Massaliots for rhetorical and philosophical skills (Ann. 4.44, Ag. 4). For a concise account of ancient Massalia, see Wackernagel 1966, 2130–53.
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sources, moreover, it is often mentioned as the preferred destination of Roman exules.31 Given the reciprocity of the institution of exilium, the frequency with which the Romans themselves chose Massalia as their place of exile makes this city the most probable, if not the only possible, place of origin of our first century Greek exules on board a Tarentine ship heading south along the west coast of the Italian peninsula. Since we know that Encolpius is a Massaliot, and we may assume that he left the city by sea on the ship of Lichas, a merchant who would have had commercial reasons for going to Massalia, the conclusion is hard to resist that Giton and Tryphaena originate from Massalia, are likewise exiles and were also on that ship. The great complexity of the relationships of Encolpius, Tryphaena, Giton, Lichas and his wife, which is evident from the reciprocal accusations and apologies when the boys board the ship again in the Greek city, requires them to have spent considerable time together on that ship before arriving in Campania. But what could the name of Massalia stand for in Roman and especially Greek literature somewhere around the beginning of our era, when one could imagine that the putative Greek Σατυρικά was written? What would be the ————— 31
Even before the civil war, in 70 B.C., the corrupt former governor of Sicily, C. Verres, chose Massalia as his city of exile and took there much wealth. In 63 B.C. it seemed the obvious place to go to for Catilina, if he had chosen exile (Sal. Cat. 34.2). Milo, too, went there in 52 B.C. (Asc. Mil. 32.13; 45.23), became a citizen and despite his discontent could joke that he was happy to be in exile because of the excellent mullets of Massalia (D.C. 40.54). After the execution of Jullus Antonius by the order of Augustus, in relation to the adultery of Julia (2 B.C.), his adolescent son Lucius Antonius was sent to Massalia ‘where his exile would be hidden by the pretense of study’ (Tac. Ann. 4.44). Tacitus (Ann. 4.43.5) reports an interesting embassy to Tiberius in 25 undertaken by the Massaliots to ask for the legitimation of the testament of a certain Vulcancius Moschus, who had left his property to the city ut patriae. This well known rhetor (Sen. Suas. 1.2; Con. 2.3.4 et passim) was born in Pergamum (Porphyrion De Hor. ep. 1.4.9), but had to face charges of murder by poison and therefore left Pergamum, despite his defense by Asinius Pollio (Sen. Con. 2.5.13.) and Torquatus, Horace’s friend (Ep. 1.5.9). Later he had settled in Massalia as a rhetor. The Massaliots brought the case before Tiberius to test the validity of the ius exulandi in Massalia, which was thus reaffirmed. Seneca wrote to Nero about a father who had shown his clemency to a son who had made an attempt on his life: ‘satisfying himself with exile—and a luxurious exile—he detained the parricide at Massalia and gave him the same liberal allowance that he had before’ (Cl. 1.15.2). Finally, in 58, Nero on false charges bade Cornelius Sulla leave Rome and stay within the walls of Massalia (Tac. Ann. 13.47.3). These walls had been torn down by Caesar in 49 B.C., but were reconstructed by the wealthy Massaliot doctor, Crinas, with Nero’s permission (Plin. Nat. 29.9).
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mythic ‘political’ identity of this city that would lend the story a flavor comparable to what we have discussed in the Μιλησιακά and the Μεταµορφώσεις? In Roman literature the name of Massalia is loaded with political and cultural significance. The city’s destiny was perceived as intimately connected with that of Rome from its very foundation. Legend had it that in the times of king Tarquinius the youthful settlers from Phocaea, which is sometimes portrayed as another sacked Troy (Luc. 3.340), had sailed up the Tiber and made friends with the Romans before continuing on their journey to found Massalia in the midst of savage nations.32 For the Romans they remained a symbol of old Greek civilization miraculously preserved in the heart of barbarian darkness.33 Severity, gravity and discipline were the communal virtues of Massaliots lauded by Roman authors (Cic. Flac. 26.63; V.Max. 2.6.7). These were virtues that the Romans did not commonly associate with Greeks, but rather with their own ‘old Rome’ (vetus Roma). Massalia was believed to have provided financial aid after the sack of Rome by Gauls, and for this, according to Justin (Just. 43.5.10), it was granted ‘immunity’ (immunitas), ‘an auditors’ place in the senate’ (locus spectaculorum in senatu), and ‘a treaty of equal right’ (foedus aequo iure). Like Rome it fought against the Carthaginians. It had the reputation of a faithful friend and ally to Rome in war and peace (Just. 43.5.3). Accordingly, the siege and subsequent capitulation of Massalia to Caesar during the civil war was perceived as symbolic of the irreparable harm and madness of that conflict. For Rome to turn against such an ally was typical of the self-destructive fraternal slaughter that was the civil war. In the account given by Lucan in the Pharsalia (Luc. 3.298f.) the Massaliots face Caesar with ‘an un-Greek steadfastness’ (Luc. 3.302, non Graia levitate) and they appeal to him by reminding him of the historical relationship of the two states and demonstrating clearly their old-fashioned hatred of tyranny and civil strife. Civil wars are evil, and if Rome has the good fortune to negotiate peace, Caesar and Pompey can both come to Massalia to dwell there in exile (Luc. 3.333–5). Thus, in a Roman palimpsest, Massalia, like Troy in the poem of Eumolpus about the fall of Troy (Sat. 89), might be presented as a projection of Rome herself with respect to her fate in the civil war, the subject of another of ————— 32
33
There is a short history of Massalia in Justin 43.3–5, which is an epitome of Trogus’ Historiae Philippicae from the first century B.C. This aspect of the city’s image is emphasized in numerous sources: Cic. Flac. 63, Phil. 8.9; Liv. 37.54; Sil. 15.168–72; V.Max. 2.6.7; Tac. Ag. 4; Mela 2.77.
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Eumolpus’ poems (Sat. 119–124). The logic of the admiration of Massalia by the Romans is explained by A. Trevor Hodge in the following manner: ‘Romans, almost without exception, were fulsome in their admiration, praising the Massaliots as a kind of puritan supermen, while speaking of their politics and foreign policy in terminology that tends painfully to remind a modern ear of a right-winger speaking of a friendly banana republic.’34 Significantly, however, Greek writers have quite a different story to tell, and one that resonates better with the tenor we are familiar with in the story told in our fragments of the Satyrica. They saw Massalia, again in the words of A. Trevor Hodge, ‘as a kind of ‘Naughty Paree, O-la-la!’.’35 In Greek texts the Massaliots have a reputation for being effeminate and soft, which is proven by the fact that they wear floor-length tunics (Athen. Deipn. 12, 523, c; Ps. Plutarch Proverb. Alex. 60). The phrase ‘sailing to Massalia’ (Suidas, s.v. ‘Pleuseias es massalian’; Ps. Plutarch Proverb. Alex. 60) acquired a proverbial meaning of ‘going to the dogs’. Another peculiarity is male proper names with feminine endings: Protis, Apellis, Thespis, Zenothemis, Taxaris, Charmis. The only Roman writer that adopts this Greek attitude towards the Massaliots is the comic dramatist Plautus, who lets a character refer to effeminacy as ‘practising the morals of the Massaliots’ (Plaut. Cas. 963). This atypical attitude for a Roman text, could be explained by Plautus’ own admission that he adapted the Casina from a play by the 3rd cent. Greek poet of New Comedy, Diphilus of Sinope. As far as we can tell, Massalia appears to have been an old-fashioned city state with an aristocratic constitution, and very conservative with respect to its religious customs and the Greek language. An archaic Ionic dialect held its ground there, and Greek continued to be the spoken language until late antiquity.36 Encolpius’ marked preference for old Greek literature and art, and his apparently genuine astonishment at things seen and heard on his trip through Italy under the Julio-Claudian dynasty, are thus intelligible as aspects of his Massaliotic background. His surprise is therefore not due to stupidity, but to his foreign and culturally ‘finer’ origin, and may to a certain extent be used to measure the deviant mores of those whom he encounters. At the same time the ————— 34 35 36
Hodge 1998, 4. Hodge 1998, 4. See Clerc 1971, 1: 458–464, on the intellectual culture. The Greek inscriptions of Massalia dating from the Roman era are notable for their archaic and Ionian forms, though this may perhaps be due to an officially cultivated archaism to boost local patriotism rather than the survival of the old dialect in common speech.
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joke is always on him, because of his typical Massaliotic effeminacy, his softness and obsession with Giton. There is another reason why this city is especially appropriate as the origin of the narrator of the Satyrica. Massalia, which prided itself on having a port of major commercial importance in the western Mediterranean, was famous for its Atlantic seafarers and their incredible travelogues. Pytheas of Massalia, for one, claimed to have sailed into the outer-sea and north along the coast. His voyage supposedly took him to many previously unknown lands and led to the discovery of the mysterious island of Thule. But he was branded the very worst of liars by Strabo (1.4.3) and mocked by Polybios (34.5.7) as someone too poor—another poor Massaliot—to undertake an expedition to far-away places. Antonius Diogenes certainly parodies Pytheas amongst others in his lost The Wonders beyond Thule (Phot. Bibl. Cod. 166). Euthymenes, another Massaliot adventurer, claimed to have rounded the southern tip of Africa and located the Nile’s source and thus solved this centuries-long debate. But he is called a braggart by the sophist Aelius Aristides and his Periplous nothing but an ‘account for Alkinous’ (Aristid. Aeg. p.354 [Jebb], ἀπόλογος ᾿Αλκίνου), i.e., of the same type as the lying fables told by Odysseus to the gullible king of the Phaeacians. The Younger Seneca cites Euthymenes of Massalia only to refute his claims, and adds that in the olden days ‘there was room for lies; because the realms of the outer sea were unexplored, they were allowed to make up fables’ (Sen. Nat. 4.2.22–25, tunc erat mendacio locus; cum ignota essent externa, licebat illis fabulas mittere). Lucan, with an obvious allusion to Nero’s interest in the problem of the sources of the Nile (Sen. Nat. 6.8.3), also refers to the Massaliot’s story as hearsay, rumor, in a conversation between Caesar and Acoreus, an Egyptian priest (Luc. 10.255–7). Because of such incredible travelers’ tales connected with the city of Massalia, Aelius Aristides uses the term ‘Massaliotic fables’ (Aeg. p.353 [Jebb], µῦθοι Μασσαλιωτικοί) to cover this type of travelogue and relies on his readers to know to what he is referring. Whether the Massaliots Pytheas and Euthymenes were mere liars or misunderstood explorers far ahead of their time makes little difference for our purposes. More important is that they were known to later authors as Odyssean spinners of yarns, which makes their city especially appropriate as the home of Encolpius, the narrator of the travelogue we know as the Satyrica. The outlines of what happened in the first episode in Massalia are not difficult to reconstruct based on such evidence as the Servius fragment, the numerous retrospective allusions in the extant text of the Satyrica and the formu-
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laic frames of Greek travelogues. Like strangers in Greek literature typically do, Encolpius will have begun his tale by identifying himself through his city of origin, Massalia. Encolpius will further have associated with his Massaliotic identity the qualities that define him most as a character and a narrator: nobility, old-style education and travel, alluding also to his ‘softness’ and love for Giton. His education and taste fit well with the image of Massalia as a university town in imperial times, and his travels fit well with the fact that Massalia counted among its famous citizens certain travelers who explored the outerocean, and came back to tell incredible tales. One does not have to ponder long the possibility of a discursive strategy for the opening of this story to see how the hackneyed motif of the Phaeacian tales of Odysseus could here be given yet another creative spin in Greek literature. The whole set-up is highly adaptable for an ancient Greek satire about literature, human attitudes and morals. The Odyssean traveller who goes from city to city and gets to know many places and the minds of many men is an ideal vehicle for such a satire. Rather than taking a trip to the fabulous edges of the world, as his fellow Massaliots claimed to have done, the overeducated but unheroic Encolpius goes to the heart of civilization to face moral and esthetic monstrosities of no less fabulous proportions. This movement inwards to the ordinary (and prosaic) and away from the mythical (and poetic)37 is no doubt related to the therapeutic strategy of Greek Cynic satire which ridiculed scholars for studying in detail the errors of Odysseus while being ignorant of their own.38 For Petronius ————— 37
38
There is no room here to discuss the Menippean form of the Satyrica, but very briefly my view is that the genre puts prose in an antagonistic relationship with poetry with a marked preference for prose. This explains a) why the prose is continuous and there is far more of it than the fragmentary poetic passages in the Satyrica; b) why the prose sections are traditionally described as elegant, while the verse has been seen as exceedingly problematic; c) why, in Encolpius’ parlance, speaking in prose is to speak humane, ‘like a human being’, while speaking poetice, ‘like a poet’, is a sure sign of madness (Sat. 90.2– 5); and d) why the poet Eumolpus, a metaliterary figure in a certain sense reflecting the author, is more successful as storyteller in prose, fabulator, than as poeta (as was shown by R. Beck 1979). A valuable but neglected source on the history and ideas of Cynicism is the Cynic letters, most of which derive from the Augustan period (Malherbe 1986, 2 and 14). Diogenes’ Epistles 30–40, in particular, contain material which is often strangely reminiscent of passages in the Satyrica. We have here the same emphasis on the wandering human explorer who goes from city to city and is exemplified by such heroic figures as the beggar Odysseus (34.2–3); we also have striking instances of phallic humour and masturbation (35.2), and perhaps most remarkably the ridicule of stupid signs posted outside private
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the effeminate Massaliot provided, additionally, an ideal vehicle for a satire to subvert Roman chauvinism. This brings us to the second premise of the argument based on a rereading of the history of the Satyrica’s reception in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Habent sua fata libelli. The modern reception begins with Franz Bücheler’s edition of the text in 1862, which still defines the practices of current editors. In this first modern edition the Satyrica is known as the Saturae or Satires of Petronius, and published in a single volume with the prosimetric satires of Varro and Seneca, along with Priapic poetry. This edition—although the editor identifies the narrative structure and setting as Greek and correctly emphasizes the centrality of the narrative persona of Encolpius—put our text squarely in the class of Roman Satire. Because of the general acceptance of Isaac Casaubon’s classic treatise, De Satyrica Graecorum Poesi & Romanorum Satira (Paris 1605), which argued for the necessity of a radical differentiation between Roman satire and Greek satyric poetry, this meant that any attempt to relate the Saturae of Petronius to Greek texts would provoke accusations of category confusion. Another significant event in the reception of Petronius took place in 1876, when a clever young philologist, Erwin Rohde, published a complete study on the origin of the Greek Romance, Der griechische Roman und seine Vorläufer, which rejected any generic relation between the Satires of Petronius and the extant Greek romances.39 It is well known that Rohde held little appreciation for the Greek Novel, which he saw as being a ‘synthetic’ type of literature: sentimental, because of its origin in erotic poetry; fabulous, because of its origin in fantastic travel literature, or Reisefabulistik; and stylistically pretentious, because it was written in the Second Sophistic. Although falling outside of his topic, Rohde dedicated one of his extended philological footnotes to the Satires of Petronius, which he identifies as being ‘Menippean satire’. Petronius is following Varro, he concludes, as did Seneca, his contemporary. In laying out the development of Menippean satire, Rohde acknowledges a debt to his friend Friedrich Nietzsche, who had argued that Varro followed Menippus ————— 39
houses in foreign cities (36.1). The best edition is still that of Hercher, Epistolographi Graeci with Latin translation. Rohde 1876, 248–250.
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closely both with regard to the form and spirit of his satires.40 According to this, if there was any Greek background material to the Satyrica, it had already been filtered through Varro and turned into Roman satire before it could exert influence on Petronius. This anxiety about influence is everywhere present in the classical scholarship of the period, but finds its most pronounced expression in an article published in Hermes two years later, 1878, by Theodor Mommsen, a Berlin professor towering over a generation of German philologists. The article sets out to accomplish the apparently straightforward task of locating the Campanian city of Trimalchio and analyzing the epigraphic style of the freedman’s projected epitaph, for the purpose of dating the work. However, the impact it had on scholarship derived from a side issue, addressed by the historian with such enthusiasm, and appealing to so many contemporary passions, as to spark a revolution in the study of the Satyrica.41 After praising the account of the adventures of Encolpius and his comrades as being in the first rank in Roman literature for ‘originality’ and ‘skillful mastery’, Mommsen acknowledges—obliged to do so by Bücheler’s description of the work—that the author of the Satyrica has an obvious fondness for setting the scenes of his story in Hellenic environments, first in Massalia, and then in Greek Campania and Croton. However, despite this fact, Mommsen claims that it is clear that Petronius ‘has, like hardly any other, given full expression to the distinct Italic identity’ (wie kaum ein anderer die italische Individualität zum vollen Ausdruck gebracht hat), and, ‘perhaps alone of all the Romans, has followed the route of his own genius, independent of Greek models’ (vielleicht allein unter allen römischen unabhängig von griechischen Mustern seinen eigenen genialen Weg gegangen ist). Having formulated this paradox, Mommsen must now offer an explanation of how Petronius could give ‘full expression’ to his ‘Italic identity’ in a work of literature about Greek characters moving in a Greek environment. On the one hand, he argues, Petronius had to be careful not to give any hint of ‘the firm footing of his own nationality’ (den festen Boden der eigenen Nationalität) in order not to spoil ‘his setting in an essentially Hellenic environment’ (seine Szene in das eigentlich hellenische Gebiet), but on the other—and ————— 40 41
Nietzsche 1870, §11 ad fin; in Colli and Montinari 1982, 2: 1, 240f. Mommsen, Th. 1878, 106–121. This article is identified by Bürger 1892, 346 n.2, as the origin of the unprecedented view that the work of Petronius was ‘vielleicht das künstlerisch höchststehende Erzeugniss der ganzen römischen Literatur.’
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to the same effect—he had no mind to dispense with ‘the influence of the Greek essence’ (die Einwirkungen des griechischen Wesens) in the representation of ‘his home country’ (seiner Heimath) and his times. Mommsen’s Petronius, who is an ‘artist’ (Künstler), and a ‘portrayer of manners and a satirist’ (Sittenmaler und Satiriker), was thus constrained to write a Greek story to be faithful to the reality of Hellenization in Italy, and once having embarked on such a project, was forced to conceal his unquestionable ‘Italic nationality’, to which he nevertheless managed to give the fullest expression.42 To understand the modern anxiety at the root of the constitution of Mommsen’s Petronius, we will certainly benefit from paying less attention to the Roman socio-cultural background of the first century, and more attention to the revolutionary events taking place in central Europe in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. The man who invented the modern Petronius was a romantic nationalist and self-confessed animal politicum,43 who had been exiled from Saxony in 1850 for the part he played in the struggle of philologists and other intellectuals for a unified greater Germany. At the time of writing the article on Petronius, Mommsen had been a National Liberal in the Prussian Landtag for five years, and his sympathies towards the recently victorious Italian risorgimento movement were obvious and derived from the kindred struggle of the two nationalist movements, the German and the Italian, at times against common enemies (e.g. the Garibaldini were greatly aided by Bismarck’s military successes in the Franco-Prussian war). Mommsen’s famous and widely successful Römische Geschichte (1854– 56) was, rather than the history of that ancient empire, the history of the ‘Italic’ nation from the earliest immigrations to the end of the Roman Republic. His interest in ancient history went beyond the scientific, and he consciously attempted to write a work of ‘political’ history which would focus on the significance of classical antiquity for his own times. Roman history was his subject of choice, principally because the Italic nation ‘alone among all the civilized nations of antiquity succeeded in constructing a national unity based on political independence’ (errang allein unter allen Kulturvölkern des Altertums bei einer auf Selbständigkeit ruhenden Verfassung die nationale Ein————— 42
43
The term ‘Italic nationality’ (italische Nationalität) in Mommsen’s text is meaningless, unless we understand it to be the ancient correlate of the fledgling Italian nationality. Mommsen’s English translator, W.P. Dickson (New York 1868), did not hesitate to translate ‘italische’ with ‘Italian’. In Mommsen’s own testament, Wucher 1956, 218f.
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heit).44 The terms used by the historian, ‘nation’, ‘independence’, ‘unity’, were the political buzzwords of the time.45 The untenable antithesis in much of Mommsen’s historical writing holds that ‘Roman’ somehow stands for practical realism and a genius for state-building—his Napoleonic Caesar is ‘durch und durch Realist’ (RG. III.450)—while ‘Greek’ is seen as synonymous with fabulous story-telling and abstract philosophizing.46 Although Mommsen does not mention Petronius in his Römische Geschichte, he there molds Terentius Varro into a similar ancient Italian genius. It is Varro’s composition of satires that provided the basis for turning him into a quintessential Roman author, despite ample evidence that he was adapting into Latin a Greek satirical genre. Petronius, likewise, could be recruited as the voice of the Italian nation, because of Bücheler’s use of Satirae as the title of the work, in place of Satyricon or the nominative Satyrica (which as a generic term refers to Greek ‘satyr-plays’), and because this first modern editor of the work had derived it from the satirists Varro and Horace. Even preferring the Latin word to the Greek as the original title of the work is, however, not sufficient to preclude its association with Greek satiric genres, since ancient readers would have directly connected the satires of Petronius with those dissolute and shameless creatures named σάτυροι.47 The next big step in the modern interpretation of the Satyrica was directly influenced by the arrival on the scene of a new manner of writing, documentary Naturalism. As so often in German literature, this movement was heralded by pamphlets demanding a new scientific objectivity in literature. The principal model was Emile Zola and the organs of the movement were such journals as the Kritische Waffengänge (1882–84) in Berlin, and Die Gesellschaft (1885–1902) in Munich. Among the moderately progressive philologists of the day some apprehension was felt that the heritage of classicism and romanticism was in danger of being discredited. This concern at least inspired Elimar ————— 44 45 46 47
Römische Geschichte 1854, 1: 30. Wucher 1956, 63. Wucher 1956, 139f. Cf. Schol. Hor. Ep. 1.11.12, saturam … dictam sive a saturis, quod similiter in hoc carmine ridiculae res pudendaeque dicuntur, quae velut a saturis proferuntur; sive a satura lance; Evanth. de Com. 2.5, satyra … a satyris, quos in iocis semper ac petulantiis deos scimus esse, vocitata est; Schol. Pers. prol. 1, satira … a saturitate, quod plena sit conviciis et reprehensionibus hominum; 11.8, dicta … satira a saturitate, unde in choro Liberi patris ministri vino atque epulis pleni Saturi appellabantur.
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Klebs to formulate the first explicit thesis about the composition of the Satyrica, in his classic article, ‘Zur Composition von Petronius’ Satirae’ (1889). Klebs’ Petronius is simply ‘the strongest realist of antiquity’ (der stärkeste Realist des Alterthums) as well as a satirical genius whose great achievement is to have given ‘artistic character’ (künstlerische Charakter) to ‘realism’ (Realismus), in contrast with the writers of Klebs’ own time, who ‘merely share with Petronius the long-winded treatment of smut’ (die mit ihm nur die breite Behandlung des Schmutzes gemein haben).48 For Klebs, no attempt is necessary to explain the existence of a realistic novel in antiquity, and so he grants a degree of universality to this predominant form of his times, which enables it to transcend the limitations of literary history. Klebs nevertheless notes the similarities of Encolpius’ narrative persona (an intelligent and well educated person telling the story of his wanderings and chaotic adventures outside the reach of law and civilization) to that of Lucius, in the Greek ass story and the Metamorphoses of Apuleius. But he also finds a partial analogy in the Satyrica with the picaresque novel of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Neither link, however, is seen to have literary-historical implications other than demonstrating the universality of the form. Contrary to what Klebs’ argument has come to represent in the later scholarship,49 his intention was not to argue that Petronius was offering a prosaic parody or travesty of such epic poems as the Odyssey or the Aeneid: Daran wird natürlich kein Verständiger denken, daß es Petrons Absicht gewesen sei eine prosaische Travestie zu den Gesängen vom Zorn Poseidons oder Junos zu schreiben. Ein Werk mit einer solchen Fülle lebensvoller Schilderungen der Wirklichkeit erhebt von selber dagegen Einspruch, unter die reinen Literatur-Satiren eingereiht zu werden.50
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49
50
A similar definition of the Satyrica as ‘antiker Schmutz’ is found in Nietzsche’s posthumous fragments, where the philosopher, after comparing favourably the experience of reading the Satyrica to that of reading the New Testament, poses the following question: ‘ist nicht der antike Schmutz noch mehr werth als diese ganze kleine anmaßliche Christen-Weisheit und -Muckerei?’ Nachgelassene Fragmente; Herbst 1887 bis März 1888 10 [93] (213); in Colli and Montinari 1970, 8: 2, 175–176. E.g. Perry 1967, 186, ‘another sees in it a parody on the epic’, with a footnote reference to Klebs’ article. Klebs 1889, 630.
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According to Klebs, then, rather than creating a simple parody of epic, Petronius merely used an epic structure in the Satyrica for the purpose of achieving ‘inner unity’ (innerer Einheit) for the otherwise loosely structured realistic portrayal of his times. Klebs’ once influential thesis, which postulates an over-arching epic theme of divine wrath in the Satyrica, was in part an expansion of Bücheler’s suggestion that the fragment from Sidonius Apollinaris (Fr. I) might be seen as an indication of Priapic involvement in the story as early as the opening episode in Massalia. To this Klebs added several instances in the extant text where Priapus seems to have a role in the plot. Hence, he concluded that the strife between Encolpius and Priapus was a unifying motif of great importance in the original story. He also drew attention to the many parodic allusions to Greek myth and Roman legends, which serve the same purpose, especially allusions to the Homeric Odyssey, as for instance in the comic recognition scene where Lichas identifies the bald and shaven Encolpius by his mentula, and the narrator explicitly compares this to Odysseus’ more heroic recognition by his scar (Od. 19.386–507). The purpose of such parody in the Satyrica, according to Klebs, is to express, by way of irony, the narrator’s awareness of his pathetic humiliation. This irony is both sophisticated and self-conscious and therefore resembles the narrative posturing frequently assumed by modern authors. To buttress his claim, Klebs highlights the ironic pathos of the narrator where it finds its clearest articulation, in the poem in 139.2, where Encolpius states that the gravis ira Priapi signifies for him what the fateful wrath of Poseidon meant for Odysseus (der Zorn des Priapus bedeutet für Encolpios Schicksale, was Poseidons Zorn für Odysseus). Klebs, in effect, privileges this particular poem and uses it as master text for interpreting the whole of the Satyrica. According to Klebs, by giving the ‘I-novel’ (Ich-Roman) of Encolpius an epic structure, Petronius endowed his Realismus with ‘artistic character’ (künstlerischer Charakter). This supposed achievement of the ancient author is then promoted as the ideal for contemporary writers, an esthetic reconciliation between unrestrained modernity and a possibly endangered classical tradition. The few loose ends that needed tying up—as for example the fact that Petronius wrote the text in the first century, rather than in the nineteenth— were taken care of by the philologist Martin Rosenblüth, whose inaugural dissertation, Beiträge zur Quellenkunde von Petrons Satiren (1902), defined the genre of the Satyrica as ‘synthetic’, i.e. as everything and nothing at the
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same time, and formulated better than others the thesis of the ‘great question mark’ or the generic enigma. We cannot blame German philologists alone for this transformation of the Satyrica, because no protests were heard from Italian, French, English or American scholars. For example, the French scholar Albert Collignon, in his important study Étude sur Pétrone (1892), completely rejected the ‘tempting hypothesis’ (hypothèse séduisante) that there existed a genre of licentious Greek romance which Petronius might have imitated generically. Even the apparently similar Pseudo-Lucianic ass story, he claims, is different, since it is not Menippean in form. In sum, Collignon joins the camp of Mommsen and Rohde, and emphasizes the alleged categorical difference of the Greek and Roman novels: ‘Les romans grecs que nous possédons et le Satiricon ne proviennent pas des mêmes sources, et n’ont ni le même objet, ni le même ton’. He also argues with Rohde and Klebs that the Satyrica is a picaresque romance in subject-matter and Menippean satire in form, and he makes of Petronius the inventor of an ‘absolutely original genre’ (une œuvre absolument originale), the Roman novel (roman Latin), the only prototype of which is the Satyrica itself.51 The only classicists who protested were other German philologists, who had witnessed at close hand the alchemy worked upon the ‘antike Schmutz’ of the Satyrica. These scholars were Karl Bürger, but also to a lesser degree Richard Heinze,52 who complained already in the nineteenth century about the easy acceptance of a new scholarly ‘dogma’ that saw the extant Greek and Roman novels as the products of modern-like national sensitivities, and much preferred the Roman, which was seen as original, modern and realistic, to the Greek, which was seen as sentimental and reactionary. It seems that those German scholars who found little of interest for the subject in the exclusive analytical rigour of nationalism, and saw ancient literary history and the connection between Greek and Roman in less black-orwhite terms, were mostly ignored by subsequent generations.53 This was un————— 51 52 53
Collignon 1892, 38–39. Heinze 1899, 494. This view is now changing with a new generation of scholars, as is indicated by the fact that Niklas Holzberg 1995 now follows Heinze completely in his introductory study, and describes the Satyrica throughout in terms of ‘realism’ and parody of the idealistic Greek romance. He further takes the Iolaos fragment as an indication that ‘there really was a Greek tradition of comic realistic narrative combining prose with verse. And it seems reasonable to assume that this tradition was older than Petronius’ Satyrica’ (63).
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fortunate because the philological arguments still incline towards the case of Latin adaptation from Greek; but, perhaps most compellingly, the verdict of the sands of Egypt, to which both parties to the quarrel had the wisdom to appeal, has been unanimously in favour of Bürger and Heinze and against Mommsen, Rohde and Rosenblüth.54 Later Petronian scholars either tend to brush off the anomaly or fail to notice it at all. It is perhaps a measure of Mommsen’s authority that his attempt to account for the linguistic and cultural mixture of the Satyrica as Petronius’ direct and faithful representation of life in Campania has not been questioned by later scholars. In his seminal study of the ‘Roman novel’, Walsh describes the Satyrica as taking its reader on: what purports to be a conducted tour of the Greek city-life of Gaul and Italy, but which is essentially a review of the Roman contemporary scene. Though the hero and his friends are Greeks, their attitudes and preoccupations are wholly Roman. The inconsistency did not trouble Petronius, whose aim was ephemeral entertainment, not a closely articulated work of art; and the Romanising of the characters and situations lends the novel a greater immediacy and realism [italics mine].55 Mommsen had, to his credit, realized that, in a faithful description of contemporary life, Greek characters moving in a Greek environment should neither speak Latin perfectly like educated Romans, nor quote Roman authors off the top of their heads.56 Walsh merely leaves his readers with a rhetorical antithesis between what ‘purports’ and what ‘is essentially’, which begs the question ————— 54
55 56
Rosenblüth’s appeal to the sands of Egypt echoes Bürger’s 1903, 28, final words: ‘Es wäre zu wünschen, daß der Boden Ägyptens, der unsere Kenntnis des idealistischen Romans im Altertume in den letzten Jahren so bedeutend bereichert und uns darüber ganz neue Anschauungen gebracht hat, auch für diesen seinen realistischen Vetter sich einmal fruchtbar erwiese.’ Walsh 1970, 79. The following is a complete list of Greek and Roman authors in the Satyrica: Demosthenes (2.5), Homer (2.4, 48.7, 59.3, 118.5), Euripides (2.3), Hyperides (2.8), the nine lyric poets (2.4, 118.5), Pindar (2.4), Plato (2.5), Sophocles (2.3), Thucydides (2.8), Democritus (88.3), Eudoxus (88.4), Chrysippus (88.4), Epicurus (104.3, 132.15v.7), Cicero (3.2, 5v.20, 55.5), Lucilius (4.5), Publilius Syrus (55.5), Horace (118.5), Virgil (68.5, 118.5), Cato (137.9v.6), Labeo and Servius (137.9v.8).
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why Petronius should have taken it upon himself to write a Greek story to convey ‘a review of the Roman contemporary scene.’ Walsh’s idea that the very ‘inconsistency’ and artificiality of the ‘Romanising’ of this Greek story could both be entertaining and result in ‘immediacy and realism’ clearly recalls Mommsen’s topsy-turvy logic. Another scholar who had dealt with the problem just before Walsh, Gareth Schmeling, likewise noted in a study on the personal names in Petronius that: Greek names so pervade and dominate the Satyricon that the whole atmosphere becomes Greek … Instead of populating his novel with Greek freedmen, former slaves, and present slaves, Petronius could have used Roman characters. He chose not to. The only literary genre in earlier Roman history to use such a large number of Greek characters was comedy.57 Although Schmeling does not say so, the Greek names in the comedies of Plautus and Terence were taken from the Greek plays that they were adapting into Latin, or invented to suit their Greek context. A likely conclusion, therefore, to be drawn from the similarity of the use of names in the Satyrica and Roman comedy is that the former is a Roman adaptation as well. The point, however, is missed by Schmeling, who claims that Plautus and Terence used Greek names in their plays in order ‘that they might escape the charge of ridiculing and demeaning their own race.’ Schmeling goes on to argue, on the basis of this unfounded Roman chauvinism in authors who were not even trueblooded Romans, that ‘to the Roman audience the use of such a high proportion (77%) of Greek names in a work of literature written by a Roman could mean only one thing: comedy’.58 Schmeling’s conclusion is untenable, since Greek names in such texts as Seneca’s adaptations of Greek tragedies were certainly no indication of comedy to their Roman audience. We obviously need to understand better the logic of the linguistic and cultural mixture in the Satyrica. The main character and narrator is a Greek exile from Massalia, who was brought up and educated in the Greek language, but who in the extant part of the work, while a luckless youth wandering in the Greek cities of southern Italy, is represented as fluent in Latin and possessing a mature knowledge of such Roman authors as Cicero, Lucilius, Virgil, Livy ————— 57 58
Schmeling 1969, 5. Schmeling 1969, 6.
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and Horace. The native language of Massalia in the early empire was certainly Greek.59 The Massaliot rhetor, Agroitas, whom the Elder Seneca describes as having spoken arte inculta on a certain controversia, in order to resemble a Roman, even so utters his sententia in Greek (Sen. Con. 2.6.12). As a rule, Greek rhetors declaimed in Greek and Roman rhetors in Latin—and possibly Greek, if they had the perfect knowledge of the language that rhetorical exercises demanded. Even if Encolpius is supposed to be a highly atypical Greek who learned Latin as an adult, as for example Dionysius of Halicarnassus claimed to have done,60 which would have made it possible for him to tell his story in Latin, the narrator’s representation of his own youthful self remains problematic. Fresh from Greek speaking Massalia, it is impossible to believe that he would have been so sensitive to the correct pronunciation of Latin that an imperfect recital of Vergilian verses should offend him (Sat. 68.5). In the declamation in Latin which opens the extant text of the Satyrica, this well-trained Greek youth begins by expressing his disgust with bombastic rhetorical exercises, which he describes as filled with fabulous plots and sound-effects, and far removed from the realities of the typically Roman courts in the forum (1.2); he then proceeds to evoke a whole gallery of Greekonly literary worthies (Sophocles, Euripides, Pindar, the lyric poets, Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, Thucydides, Hyperides), who according to him never had to undergo such useless schooling and yet became masters of artistic discourse; and he ends by blaming the decline of oratory on a ‘windy and enormous loquacity that has recently migrated to Athens from Asia’ (2.7, nuper ventosa istaec et enormis loquacitas Athenas ex Asia commigravit), referring to the notorious bogeyman of the ‘Asianic’ style, or ‘Asianism’. While it seemed at first that we were situated in the vicinity of the law courts of a Roman forum, the bulk of young Encolpius’ inept declamation shows no further awareness of things Roman, but upholds what can only be described as an ————— 59
60
According to Varro three languages were spoken in Massalia, Greek, Latin and Gallic (Isid. Orig. 15.1.63, Trilingues, quod et graece loquuntur et latine et gallice). But the Gallic language was not written, although undoubtedly spoken by slaves and traders, and Latin was only spoken by the Romans residing in Massalia, at least until the second century, for Latin inscriptions in Massalia are written out in Greek characters (CIL 12.56), and Roman names first begin to appear towards the end of the second century, when Massalia at last became a city under Roman administration; see Clerc 1971, 1: 460. After he settled in Rome where he lived for twenty-two years, as he explains in the introduction to Roman Antiquities.
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Attic point of view, to the extent of having led scholars to suspect that young Encolpius’ language and opinions are ‘owed to a Greek source.’61 This strange mixture of ‘Roman’ and ‘Greek’ is potentially even more confusing in the subsequent Lucilian metrical rendering, improvised by the Greek Agamemnon, on the important subject of the proper schooling for boys. The highly circumlocutory hexameter part of this ‘poem’ could be summarized in the following way: Whether born in Athens, Sparta or Naples (sirenumve domus), the boy should begin with Homer, and soon after study Plato and Demosthenes; but then he should switch languages and become immersed in Roman authors and be ‘relieved of the burden of Greek sounds’ (Sat. 5.15– 16, Graio / exonerata sono),62 and when he is thoroughly steeped in Latin literature his taste will change, and he can employ Cicero as model for the composition of epic poetry. An educational programme like this one never existed anywhere in GrecoRoman antiquity. Firstly, there is discrepancy between form and content. Why does Lucilian, and therefore ‘Roman’ satire, deal with the education of Greek schoolboys from Athens, Sparta and Naples? Secondly, the bilingual nature of the curriculum does not square with what we know of the education of Greek boys. Thirdly, it is absurd that the Greek schoolboy would perceive the switch from his own language, Greek, to a foreign language, Latin, as the lifting of a burden. It is true that certain elements here could fit the education of Roman schoolboys, who traditionally began with Greek (the Romans took over wholesale the Greek educational system), before they moved on to works written in Latin. At that point in his education, the Roman boy might well be relieved to switch from a foreign language, Greek, to his own mother tongue, Latin.63 But the poem does not deal with the education of Roman boys. Agamemnon’s school programme is said to be for Greek boys, but it is really for Roman boys, and yet Agamemnon is himself Greek (he does not have a Roman praenomen any more than most of the characters), and he lectures in a Greek city (urbs Graeca), where Greek schoolboys would be the norm. Even if we assume, contrary to appearances, that Agamemnon is a thor————— 61 62
63
See recently Sinclair 1984, 234, who surveys the older scholarship as well. There is another language switcher in the poetic Fr. XXXI. According to Bücheler, Dousa suggested the speaker was a parrot, but even so this parrot would be modeled on the typical advena in Rome. For sonum in the sense of ‘the sound of the spoken language’ see also Ov. Fast. 5.195, corrupta Latino / littera ... Graeca sono. The education of Echion’s son follows the same Roman pattern: 46.5, ceterum iam graeculis [sc. litteris] calcem impingit et Latinas [sc. litteras] coepit non male appetere.
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oughly Romanized Greek, this highly atypical linguistic condition— improvising poetry in Latin was not an easy feat, even for native speakers— still clashes with the fact that he intends his curriculum for Greek boys.64 The truth is that, however we turn this poem on its head, we can never show that anything of the kind could ever have been composed by any real individual in any real ancient Campanian city. The poem and its setting are simply not, as Mommsen argued, a realistic representation of the cultural mix of southern Italy in the first century. However, if we presume that Petronius recomposed in Latin a preexisting Greek poem on the same topic and shaped it in the form of a Lucilian satire, adding a Roman layer on top of the Greek foundation, this process could well have produced this poem. The underlying Greek hypotext and context would have presented Agamemnon trying to impress Encolpius by improvising in Greek on the topic of how Greek boys had to be raised on the ancient musical diet of Homer (epic), Plato (philosophy), and Demosthenes (rhetoric), so that they could later imitate these canonical authors in their own literary productions. When Petronius reached this poem in his Greek model, in order to rewrite it as Lucilian satire, he first had to make changes in the meter. Imitating the most famous contemporary writer of satires in Latin, A. Persius Flaccus (34–62), who imitated the meters of Lucilius in the prologue of his works, the Greek rhetor Agamemnon now breaks into Latin scazons, or limping iambics, and then switches abruptly to hexameters. Towards the end of Petronius’ Latin recomposition, then, the switch of languages is reflected in the boys’ curriculum, and Cicero is added to their reading, regardless of their being as Greek as their teacher. If I have described how Petronius transformed this poem of the Satyrica, then this part at least of his Greek hypotext was just as prosimetric as its Latin adaptation. The unavoidable implication is that the Greek model of the central fabula of the Massaliot Encolpius was prosimetric as a whole. We need not doubt that other sections of the work, such as the shorter fabulae of Eumolpus, both of which are set in Asia Minor, Pergamum and Ephesos, had their Greek models. It is harder to determine, however, whether the large poems attributed to the poet had any counterparts in the Greek model or were just added by Petronius, since the traditional method of Roman adaptation could include ————— 64
The real linguistic constitution of such men was more like that of Lucian’s humiliated Greek scholar in the household of a wealthy Roman pater familias who ‘barbarizes the Roman language’ (Lucian Merc. Cond. 24, τὴν Ῥωµαίων φωνὴν βαρβαρίζων).
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completely new material, or material which came from other works, either Greek or Latin, by ‘contamination’. One amusing side-effect of this thesis is that it seems that we can now finally put to rest the long standing debate about the identity of the city of Trimalchio. In tune with the characteristic layering in the Satyrica of Roman elements on top of Greek foundations, it becomes a possibility that the ‘Greek city’ / ‘Roman colony’ never really existed in ancient Campania, but was created by Petronius through the transformation of the Greek hypotext. Which explains why, despite the fairly detailed description of the place, it has still been impossible to determine its identity to everyone’s satisfaction. Neither the extensive archeological research in the area, nor the great amount of scholarly ink spilled over the problem since Mommsen, has changed much in this respect. The real reason for this state of things is the frustrating inconsistency of the information provided by the text of Satyrica. On the one hand, the place is a ‘Greek city’ with the presence of Greek scholars and a Greek cultural environment (therefore Neapolis), and on the other, the language spoken there is Latin, and it seems that we are dealing with a Roman colony with Roman institutions and magistrates (therefore Puteoli, or even Cumae). Neither Mommsen’s claim that Cumae was properly an urbs Graeca, nor Rose’s contention that the term urbs Graeca (Sat. 81.3) is mere mockery of the place—in the manner of Juvenal calling Rome itself a Greek city65—solves the problem. Cumae and Puteoli were not Greek cities by any stretch of the imagination, and the term urbs Graeca issues from the mouth of a native Greek, and is not intended as the mockery of a quintessentially Roman place, but instead refers to a city which shows many signs of being indeed Greek. Perhaps the hardest thing to accept in this new reading of the Satyrica is the idea that the ‘vulgar’ Latin of the freedmen, some of whom are originally of Greco-Asian background, does not represent a realistic imitation of how such characters would actually have spoken Latin. In an interesting twist of the palimpsest, the most fully Romanized Greeks of the Satyrica, such former slaves as Gaius Trimalchio and his friends, speak an inferior Latin compared to the genuine Greeks. The ‘vulgar’ Latin of the freedmen does not betray any unusually strong Greek qualities which would show them to be Petronius’ faithful representation of the speech-mannerisms of this particular ethnic minority in Rome—we have no examples of what the argot of this class was actually like. The modern impression is accidental, and follows directly from ————— 65
Rose 1962, 404; Juv. 3.60–61, non possum ferre, Quirites, / Graecam urbem.
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Mommsen’s assumption that Petronius set out to document the contemporary scene, in the manner of modern literary Naturalists. Ancient mimicry of speech mannerisms aims at ridiculing the subjects who are imitated, and never shows the modern interest in preserving an accurate image of their ways, for the sake of scientifically inspired documentation. Just as the Latin of the ‘genuine Greeks’ of the story is the generic colloquial Latin of educated Romans (a well defined stylistic category in the rhetorical treatises), the Latin of the Romanized Greeks of the story is the generic language of native speakers among the lower orders, always the legitimate target of ridicule in stratified ancient Mediterranean societies. Although my reading of the Satyrica as palimpsest does deprive the text of a certain imagined quality of ‘presence’ or re-presentation of how things Roman really were, it does not propose anything hitherto unheard of with regard to the language of the freedmen. As the best of the seventeenth-century classical scholars understood,66 the freedmen’s language is the literary aping of halfeducated colloquial Latin, and as such it is unrelated to the truly uneducated style of the Pompeii graffiti. No doubt the uneducated characters of the Greek work adapted by Petronius spoke a barbaric and solecistic Greek, and Petronius decided to retain this feature in his Latin adaptation. The fragments of Greek prosimetric narratives, the Iolaos (POxy. 3010) and Tinouphis (PHaun. inv. 400), show signs of loose writing and ‘vulgarity’ of language.67 Sisenna’s adaptation of the Milesiaca (Μιλησιακά) of Aristides seems to have been in that style too (Fro. Aur. 4.3.2), and judging from the plain language of the epitome of the Greek ass story and Apuleius’ attempts to imply colloquial language without actually writing in that mode, the Metamorphoseis (Μεταµορφώσεις) probably exhibited examples of linguistic mimicry, which in general is a feature of sermocinatio in performa**nce literature. Once the acting of lowly social types hits the stage in performance, the mimicry of their speech mannerisms is irresistible. The nature of the linguistic errors of the freedmen is akin to Trimalchio’s mistakes in mythology; they are errors by design for the sake of humour, since they systematically subvert the correct myths in a way that no true ignoramus ————— 66
67
E.g., the author of the treatise published in 1666 under the name of Mario Statileo, probably Pierre Petit. The history of the interpretation of ‘vulgar’ Latin in the Satyrica is surveyed in Boyce 1991, 14–34. According to Stephens and Winkler 1995, 367, both texts contain ‘a number of vulgarisms and uncorrected errors in both the prose and the verse sections of the text.’
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could accomplish. Trimalchio’s persona is the creation of an educated mind. Niceros’ ghost story (61.3–62.14), likewise, is deliberately mis-told and the character appropriately fears the mocking laughter of the scholastici (Sat. 61.4), not because Latin is his second language, but because he is violating the principles of good rhetorical narration. When all is considered, the language of the freedmen in the Satyrica is no harder to account for in a Roman adaptation of a Greek model than the language of the Greek characters of Plautus, another traditional source for ‘vulgar’ Latin. Trimalchio’s antics at one point offer an interesting example of Latinization as he overlays the Greek of the Homeric poems with a Latin translation. When his Homeristae are ‘insolently’ exchanging Homeric verses in Greek, he drowns their recital by reading loudly a Latin translation of Homer to his guests (Sat. 59.3). In the same manner of overwriting the Greek voices of the Satyrica, Plocamus, one of Trimalchio’s guests, is made to assert that his own ‘abominable hissing’ is Greek (Sat. 64.5), but the Massaliot Encolpius is unable to confirm this in his witty Latin narrative, as if his knowledge of Greek was limited to the correct literary Greek of school exercises. A further paradoxical blending is apparent, when the characters Encolpius and Eumolpus, while describing and discussing the works of Greek artists and thinkers, refer to them as ‘Greeks’ (Sat. 83.2, Graeci) and ‘crazy little Greeks’ (Sat. 88.10, Graeculi delirantes), as if they were assuming a patronizing attitude of native Romans towards themselves. Although the latter is obviously ironic, the former is spoken by Encolpius in all seriousness in a simple reference to a Greek term (Sat. 83.2, quam Graeci ‘monocnemon’ appellant). What Encolpius should have said, if he were a simple Latin-speaking Greek, is quam nos ‘monocnemon’ appellamus (‘whom we call “the single-greaved”’). Something strange is going on here, as Müller indirectly admits by wanting to delete ‘Graeci’, just as Fraenkel wanted to delete ‘Graeco more’ in Eumolpus’ description of the type of burial intended in his Ephesian story (Sat. 111.3). Neither place is unsound, however, according to the logic of Roman palimpsests. To sum up: This paper has argued that Petronius wrote his fictional narrative in the common Roman manner of transforming a pre-existing Greek text. The hypotext, now lost, of his palimpsest most likely bore the same Greek title, Σατυρικά. The argument was constructed in five main stages: Firstly, the literary-historical facts are shown to support the hypothesis of a specific Greek model, i.e. character-names, narrative structure, and testimonia all associate
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the Satyrica with recognized Roman palimpsests; secondly, a reconstruction of the lost opening episode set in Massalia explains the background and makeup of Encolpius’ personality, the legal status of the protagonists as exiles, and the satirical logic of the Greek story, which, in addition, is shown to be especially suitable for Roman adaptation because of the special significance of Massalia in Latin literature; thirdly, a survey of 19th century scholarship uncovers the anachronistic and ideologically motivated modern reception of the author, Petronius, as a writer of ancient ‘Italian’ realistic fiction; in the fourth place, the cultural mixture of things ‘Roman’ and ‘Greek’ in the Satyrica is shown not to be realistic for Italy in the first century A.D. but, on the contrary, to display utopian qualities characteristic of Roman palimpsests; and in the fifth place, some problematic loci in the text are revisited to show the usefulness of the hypothesis as a tool for improving our understanding of this fragmentary narrative. Finally, I wish to reiterate that it is not an argument against my hypothesis that no such work as a Greek Σατυρικά is ever mentioned in extant literature. We know very well that texts, especially Greek texts of such low repute as semi-pornographic, even ‘criminal’ novels, can easily have disappeared without a trace. And if I am right, this particular work has indeed not disappeared without a trace, because its gist is preserved in the fragments of its Latin palimpsest. Bibliography Beck, R. 1979. ‘Eumolpus poeta, Eumolpus fabulator’, Phoenix 33, 239–253. Branham, R B. and Kinney, D. 1997. Petronius: Satyrica, Berkeley – Los Angeles. Bloom, H. 1973. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry, New York. Boyce, B.T. 1991. The Language of the Freedmen in Petronius’ Cena Trimalchionis, Leiden. Bright, D.F. and Ramage, E.S. (eds.) 1984. Classical Texts and Their Traditions: Studies in Honor of C.R. Trahman, Chico, California. Bücheler, F. and Heräus, G. (eds.) 1922 [1862]. Petronii Saturae et Liber Priapeorum … adiectae sunt Varronis et Senecae saturae similesque reliquiae, Berlin. Burkert, W. 1985. Greek Religion, Cambridge, Mass. Burmann, P. (ed.) 1665. Titi Petronii Arbitri Satyricôn Qvae Supersunt, 4 vols. Revised by J.J. Reiske, Amsterdam. Bürger, K. 1888. ‘Zu Apuleius’, Hermes 23, 489–498. — 1892. ‘Der Antike Roman vor Petronius’, Hermes 27, 345–358. — 1902. ‘Der Lukiosroman und seine literaturgeschichtliche Bedeutung’, in Studien zur Geschichte des griechischen Romans. Erster Teil, Blankenburg am Harz. — 1903. ‘Der literaturgeschichtliche Stellung des Antonius Diogenes und der Historia Apollonii’, in Studien zur Geschichte des griechischen Romans. Zweiter Teil, Blankenburg am Harz. Casaubon, I. 1973 [1605]. De Satyrica Graecorum Poesi & Romanorum Satira, New York.
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Ciaffi, V. 1955. Struttura del Satyricon, Turin. Clerc, M. 1971 [1927–1929]. Massalia, histoire de Marseille dans l’antiquité. Vol. 1–2, Marseille. Colli, G. and Montinari, M. (eds.) 1970. Nietzsche Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Berlin. Collignon, A. 1892. Étude sur Pétrone, Paris. Ernout, A. (ed.) 1962 [1923]. Le Satyricon, Paris. Genette, G. 1997 [1982]. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. (Trans.) Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky, Lincoln – London. Harlow, R.B. 1974. ‘Pharmace, Petronius 107.15’, Hermes 102, 377. Harrison, S.J. 1998. ‘The Milesian Tales and the Roman Novel’, Groningen Colloquia on the Novel 9, 61–73. Heinze, R. 1899. ‘Petronius und der griechische Roman’, Hermes 34, 494–519. Henriksson, K.-E. 1956. Griechische Büchertitel in der römischen Literatur. Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, Ser. B, Tom. 102,1, Helsinki. Hercher, R. 1873. Epistolographi Graeci, Amsterdam. Heseltine, M. (trans.) 1987. Petronius, Cambridge, Mass. – London. Hinneberg, P. (ed.) 1912. Die griechische und lateinische Literatur und Sprache, in Die Kultur der Gegenwart, Teil I, Abtlg. VIII, Berlin. Hodge, A. Trevor. 1998. Ancient Greek France, Redwood, Trowbridge. Holzberg, N. 1993. ‘A Lesser Known ‘Picaresque’ Novel of Greek Origin: The Aesop Romance and its Influence’, Groningen Colloquia on the Novel 5, 1–16. — 1995. The Ancient Novel: An Introduction, London – New York. Jensson, G. 1997. The Recollections of Encolpius: A Reading of the Satyrica as Greco-Roman Erotic Fiction (diss.), Toronto. Klebs, E. 1889. ‘Zur Composition von Petronius Satirae’, Philologus 47, 623–635. Kleinfeller, G. 1958. ‘Exilium’, RE VI.2, 1683–1685. Malherbe, J.A. 1986. [1977]. The Cynic Epistles, Atlanta, Georgia. Mommsen, Th. 1854. Römische Geschichte, Berlin. — 1868. The History of Rome. Translated with the Author’s Sanction and Additions by William P. Dickson; With a Preface by Leonard Schmitz, New York. — 1878. ‘Trimalchios Heimath und Grabschrift’, Hermes 13, 106–121. Nietzsche, F. 1870. Beiträge zur Quellenkunde und Kritik des Laertius Diogenes, Basel. Paratore, E. (ed.) 1933. Il Satyricon di Petronio, Florence. Parsons, P.J. 1971. ‘A Greek Satyricon?’, BICS 8, 53–68. Perry, B.E. 1925. ‘Petronius and the Comic Romance’, CP 20, 31–49. — 1967. The Ancient Romances. A Literary-historical Account of Their Origin, Berkeley – Los Angeles. Rohde, E. 1960 3rd ed. [1876]. Der griechische Roman und seine Vorläufer, Leipzig. — 1893. ‘Zum griechischen Roman’, RhM. 48, 110–140. Rose, C.K.F. 1962. ‘Time and Place in the Satyricon,’ TAPA 93, 402–409. — 1971. The Date and Author of the Satyricon, Leiden. Rosenblüth, M. 1909. Beiträge zur Quellenkunde von Petrons Satiren, Berlin. Schmeling, G.L. 1969. ‘The Literary Use of Names in Petronius’ Satyricon’, Riv. di St. Class. 17, 5–10. Sinclair, B.W. 1984. ‘Encolpius and Asianism (Satyricon 2.7)’, in Bright and Ramage, 231– 237. Smith, M.S. (ed.) 1975. Petronii Arbitri Cena Trimalchionis, Oxford. Stefenelli, A. 1962. Die Volkssprache im Werk des Petron im Hinblick auf die romanischen Sprachen, Vienna. Stephens, S.A. and Winkler, J.J. (eds.) 1995. Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments, Princeton.
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Sullivan, J.P. 1968. The Satyricon of Petronius: a Literary Study, London. van Rooy, C.A. 1965. Studies in Classical Satire and Related Literary Theory, Leiden. von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, U. 1907. Die griechische und lateinische Literatur und Sprache, in P. Hinneberg (ed.) 1912. Teil I, Abtlg. VIII., 2, 124f. Berlin. Wackernagel, H. 1966. ‘Massalia’, RE Band XIV 2, 2130–2153. Walsh, P.G. 1970. The Roman Novel, Cambridge. Williams, G. 1968. Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry, Oxford. Wucher, A. 1956. Theodor Mommsen. Geschichtsschreibung und Politik, Göttingen. Wylie, K. 1994. Satyric and Heroic Mimes: Attitude as the Way of the Mime in Ritual and Beyond, Jefferson, N.C.
Latinising the Novel. Scholarship since Perry on Greek ‘models’ and Roman (re-)creations M AAIKE Z IMMERMAN Groningen 1. Introduction This paper discusses some aspects of what I would call ‘latinising’ the novels: the ways some Latin authors, motivated and inspired—among other things—by Greek fictional material, created novels of their own.1 These texts often proudly and self-consciously display—and no doubt expect their audience to recognize—their Greek background. At the same time these products clearly situate themselves in the tradition of Roman literature, and seem to breathe a distinctly Roman atmosphere.2 In the next few pages I will look at some of the processes which may contribute to this ‘Roman flavour’. In the course of this investigation, which refers to important publications over the past decades, it will, I hope, become apparent what has happened in research on the Roman novels since Perry, and what has caused our views and insights—and, perhaps more importantly, the questions we ask—to differ from Perry’s.3 It is important to note that, although Walsh’s The Roman ————— 1
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My thanks go to Gareth Schmeling, who initiated, coordinated, and presided the panel session ‘The Ancient Novel since Perry’ at the APA convention in New Orleans, January 2003, of which this paper originally was a part. I sincerely thank both respondents at that session, Antonio Stramaglia and Alain Billault, for their responses and suggestions. I am, moreover, very grateful to Stephen Harrison for his careful reading (and correcting of the English) of an earlier version of this paper. One may be reminded of Walsh 1970, 1 (on the novels of Petronius and Apuleius) “… both are endowed with an authentically Roman flavour”. In this paper I will have to confine myself to pointing out only those developments that have a bearing on my subject. For more inclusive overviews I refer to the important collections of articles in Schmeling 1996 (2003: paperback edition with revised introduction and bibliography), Harrison 1999, and Hofmann 1999. Schmeling 1996, 457–551 (Schmeling, Harrison, and Schmeling) and 563–580 (Merkle) are specific essays on the
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Novel was first published in 1970, only three years after Perry’s Ancient Romances, and in parts as a strong reaction to Perry’s analysis of Petronius and Apuleius, it already belongs to another world altogether. The same can be said of Sullivan’s literary study (1968) of Petronius’ novel.4 This is no doubt due to the fact that the roots of Perry’s book of 1967 go back to insights developed during a much earlier period: not just to the Sather Lectures of 1951, but to his dissertation on the Metamorphoses (1919), and on articles both on Apuleius and on Chariton which had been published in the1920s and ’30s.5 With his Ancient Romances Perry offered first and foremost a literaryhistorical account of the origins of the Greek Romances, but he included important chapters on the Latin novels. In these he discussed the three Latin texts which are generally treated as the Latin ‘novels proper’: Petronius’ Satyrica, Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, and the Historia Apollonii regis Tyri. He also introduced his readers to a Christian Latin novel, the Recognitiones, as the Latin translator/adaptor of the Greek Homiliae called his version of the so-called Pseudo-Clementines. In this paper I will concentrate on the novels of Petronius and Apuleius.6 Numerous other Latin texts have since Perry’s publications been recognized as belonging to—or at least as being enlightening for—the study of Latin fiction, but they will not occupy us here.7 —————
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Latin novels proper; but the book includes much information and discussion pertaining to the Latin novels as well as to the Greek novels in its first, general part (1–305). Harrison 1999, besides offering a useful collection of reprints and translations of important articles on Petronius and Apuleius, has an illuminating and very helpful assessment of the research on these Roman novels in his Introduction (Harrison 1999, XI–XXXIX); Hofmann 1999, in the Introduction as well as in the original contributions to this collection, addresses a wider field of ‘Latin Fiction’. See Harrison 1999, XX and XXXI on the lasting value of Walsh’s discussion of both the novels of Petronius and Apuleius, especially of the literary texture of both works; see also Schlam, Finkelpearl 2000, 48 f. and especially 203 ff. As Bryan Reardon pointed out in his paper on ‘The Ancient Novel at the Time of Perry’, which opened the APA session (see note 1), and which will be published elsewhere. For the developments since Perry in scholarship on the Historia Apollonii regis Tyri see, e.g., Schmeling 1999, with bibliography; for the Latin Recognitiones see Huber– Rebenich 1999, 192 f., with helpful bibliographical references in notes. Perry 1967 is mentioned there as the earliest guide to this apostolic novel (note 10 on p. 208). For a concise and clear overview of the range of these texts see Hofmann 1999, with references to further literature.
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Before coming to this paper’s theme of ‘latinising the novel’, and thus to the specifically ‘Roman connection’ of the Latin novels, I will briefly consider what we have learnt in the years since Perry about their being part of the larger literary world of Greco-Roman fiction, in short, their ‘Greek connection’.8 2. The Latin novels: the Greek connection 2.1. Greek ‘palimpsests’ of Roman novels; a short overview While the existence of a Greek text as some kind of ‘palimpsest’ behind Apuleius’ Metamorphoses has long been recognized (see below, 2.2), for other Latin novels the scholarly opinion is not as unequivocal. Regarding Petronius’ Satyrica, the idea that this work somehow reacted (in a parodic way) to the Greek ideal romances, put forward by Heinze 1899, has been very influential. At the other end of the scale, scholars have emphatically claimed that Petronius’ novel is a uniquely Roman creation, a one-off happening in world literature, due to the coincidence of one individual genius and the constraints of the period in which this author lived. Such is also the opinion of Perry: …Thus the first and only truly Roman novel was born of necessity and special circumstances, springing up full grown all at once like Athena from the head of Zeus. It was merely an accident of time, place, and individual personality. It had no forebears and no descendants.9 The suggestion that Petronius’ Satyrica is parodying a known set of Greek texts, commonly taken together as the ‘ideal Greek love-romance’, is different, of course, from assuming that behind the Latin novel of Petronius one Greek text stands as a ‘palimpsest’. This latter idea, too, had been defended by Bürger 1892, and has recently been revived with new arguments. ————— 8 9
Sandy 1994 is a helpful overview on this subject, with bibliographical references. Perry 1967, 206. In a footnote (p. 362 f.) Perry refers to a change of opinion in this respect: he formerly had sided with those who sought to explain the Satyrica in terms of Milesian tale (see below, 2.3). For a very differently-oriënted discussion of the radical originality of Petronius’ Satyrica see Zeitlin 1971, repr. in Harrison 1999.
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Inbetween the two extreme positions adumbrated above, stand those who have assessed and investigated the presence of various Greek subliterary genres that have been re-used and combined in Petronius’ intricate and innovative Latin novel;10 this will be discussed more extensively below, in section 2.3. The role of a Greek ‘palimpsest’ behind the Historia Apollonii regis Tyri is still a matter of intense debate. Here it must suffice to refer to the concise assessment of this problem, with bibliographical references, in the article ‘Historia Apollonii regis Tyrii’ by Fusillo and Galli, in H. Cancik, ed., Der Neue Pauly 5, 1998, 635–636. It has in any case been shown that several elements of the Historia Apollonii can only be explained by a strong Greek connection of this text at one of its stages of development.11 Of the two ‘Troy romances’, Latin prose texts, written in imperial times, and styled as eye-witness reports of the Trojan war, the Ephemeris belli Troiani by “Dictys” certainly is based on a Greek original.12 For the other text, the Acta diurna belli Troiani by “Dares”, there are strong indications for assuming a Greek original.13 The Latin Res gestae Alexandri Magni of the early 4th century A.D. is a translation by Iulius Valerius of the oldest version of the Greek text of Ps. Callisthenes. 2.2.
Apuleius’ Metamorphoses
As is generally accepted, Apuleius’ Metamorphoses is a translationadaptation-transformation of a lost, Greek text, mentioned by Photius as the Μεταµορφώσεις by ‘Lucius of Patrae’.14 An epitome of that Greek work has ————— 10
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See, e.g., C. Panayotakis 1995; Barchiesi 1999; this is an English translation, with an updating afterword by the author, of Barchiesi 1986. Perry 1967, 320 f. strongly pronounced himself against Rohde’s assumption of a Greek text behind the Historia Apollonii. S. Panayotakis, in his forthcoming commentary on the Historia Apollonii regis Tyri, will, through careful analysis of this text, show that such mutually exclusive notions as ‘original’, ‘translation’, ‘pagan’ ‘Christian’, ‘Greek’, ‘Latin’, may not be helpful for our appreciation of this text, since they may each correspond to one of various stages of development through which this text has gone. See for a case study S. Panayotakis 2000. See Merkle 1989, 113 f.; Merkle 1996, 564, with note 4. See Beschorner 1992, 231–243; Merkle 1996, 578 with note 33. Photius, Bibliotheke 129. As Perry already pointed out, and as has repeatedly since been acknowledged by others, Photius’ identification of the author of the lost Μεταµορφώσεις
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come down to us in the manuscripts of Lucian, with the title Λούκιος ἤ Ὄνος . Scholars on the whole agree that this epitome cannot be the work of Lucian. However, from studying this pseudo-Lucianic Onos in comparison with the Latin novel of Apuleius we can form some conclusions about the longer, lost Greek Μεταµορφώσεις, and about the Latin Metamorphoses’ relation with it. This is what Perry, and many after him, have done. Perry had become convinced that the lost Μεταµορφώσεις indeed was a work of Lucian: …the Lucianic peculiarities of thought and expression in the Onos, as in some other writings of Lucian that were once branded as spurious but now regarded as genuine, are so numerous and so striking that no one who weighs them judiciously can doubt that they originated with Lucian. Since we cannot assign the epitome to him, that is, the Onos, we are bound to conclude, in consideration both of the manuscript tradition and the nature of the text, its language and thought, that the original Μεταµορφώσεις was written by Lucian. No other explanation will account for the facts as we know them today.15 Perry’s suggestion, first published in his dissertation of 1920, and repeated in later publications, has been very influential, and is widely accepted. Recently, however, his views have been challenged on several grounds, for instance by Mason, who raises important objections: Perry’s … principal argument, that Onos is the kind of work which Lucian might have written, does not prove that ‘Lucian was the only man known to us who wrote in that humorous or satirical spirit ’(Perry 1967: 213). This claim has become less compelling as we have become more aware of the wide variety of ancient prose fiction. The linguistic character of the Onos, which supposedly used the same vocabulary and phraseology as the Μεταµορφώσεις, differs significantly from Lucian’s clever style. It is not at all obvious that either the process of epitomisation, or —————
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must be a mistake caused by his confusing the narrator of that story, who probably was a ‘Lucius of Patrae’ (as in the epitome), with the author. See e.g. Mason 1994, 1669–1671 (“Lukios of Patrae”). Perry 1967, 227.
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the art of parodying a supposed source, can fully explain the linguistic and stylistic differences (Hall 1981: 362–364).16 Mason also points to questions of relative chronology which make Lucianic authorship of the Μεταµορφώσεις problematic.17 2.3. Petronius’ Satyrica There are widely divergent modes in which scholars define the unmistakably existing ‘Greek connection’ of Petronius’ novel: Barchiesi 1986 has pointed to the impact which a number of Greek papyrus finds must have on our understanding of Petronius’ Satyrica.18 In an overview of the relevant material, Barchiesi analyses various Greek fragmentary texts belonging to what increasingly appears to have been a vast group of texts of popular entertainment literature—of an erotic and/or fantastic, or purely farcical nature—and which must have been widely read both by Greek and Roman readers. Far from positing one concrete Greek text as a ‘palimpsest’ behind Petronius’ novel, Barchiesi remarks: Every new finding warns us more and more clearly that we must distinguish between the nature of the model and the use Petronius makes of it. On the one hand, we must get a better understanding of the paraliterature which provided Petronius with material for his composition. On the other hand, the new fragments of Greek novels also serve as a point of contrast. They help us define what Petronius could not have found in the great pool of lost novels.19 However, also the idea of a concrete Greek text as a ‘palimpsest’ for Petronius’ novel had been proposed long before the discovery of papyrus fragments of Greek comic-realistic novels, by Bürger 1892.20 His sugges————— 16 17 18 19
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Mason 1999, 105, referring to J. Hall, Lucian’s Satire, New York 1981. Mason 1999, 105; see also Mason 1994, 1681 f. See also below, section 2.4. Barchiesi 1999, 139; the quotation is taken from the English translation of Barchiesi 1986, in Harrison 1999. Bürger 1892 proposed as a model for the Satyrica a Greek novelistic narrative, consisting of a main story presented by an ego-narrator, with various sub-narratives embedded in
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tions found few adherents at that time, and were rather eclipsed by Heinze’s influential thesis (mentioned above in section 2.1). Moreover, from the final decades of the 19th century onward, “Petronian scholarship—under pressure from pervasive ideologies, relating to the consolidation of national states in Europe, and the general upheaval caused by the revolutionary progress in science and technology—began to invest unstintingly in a vision of Petronius as a national writer and a great innovator. According to this interpretation, Petronius had, in the fashion of contemporary writers of Naturalist documentary novels, such as Emile Zola, invented a new form of literature for describing the daily life and manners of his ancient Italian fellow countrymen.” Petronius became “the quintessential Roman or ancient Italian author, whose artistic ‘originality’, supposedly, was not compromised by ‘foreign’ Greek influence.”21 In an as yet unpublished dissertation, Jensson 1997 has by means of an analysis of the narrative form of Petronius’ Satyrica (applying the ancient rhetorical theory of narratio), argued that the Satyrica may be seen as the performance of one narrator (Encolpius), who presents the story as his “recollections”, during which he impersonates various characters; this results in a mixture of discourse types. Jensson in this dissertation has moreover taken up Bürger’s thesis, but has added an analysis of linguistic and cultural layering in the Satyrica, and argues that the work is most likely an adaptation of a specific Greek model, also written in a mixture of discourse types.22 2.4. Greek fragments and the Roman novels Papyrus fragments Undoubtedly one of the major breakthroughs in research on the ancient novels in the last decades of the twentieth century has been the discovery and publication of a number of papyrus fragments of Greek novels (their impact has already been mentioned above in section 2.3, regarding Petronius’ ‘Greek connection’). Not only did these profoundly change earlier ideas on ————— 21
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the principal story. His article includes a thorough literary-historical investigation of the Μιλησιακά of Aristides, and its Roman adaptation by Sisenna. These quotations are from Jensson 1997, 289 f. See also his contribution in this volume of Ancient Narrative. Jensson’s dissertation will be published in the series of Supplementa of Ancient Narrative; see also his contribution in this volume of Ancient Narrative.
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the chronology of the Greek novels;23 they also made it quite clear that considering the so-called ‘comic-realistic’ novels of Petronius and Apuleius as exclusively Roman type of prose fiction was wrong-headed. ‘Apuleius and Petronius are joined now by several other Greek fragments – Phoinikika, Daulis, Iolaos, and Tinouphis. These comprise what seems to be a subgenre in the field of ancient fiction … The conventional division between Greek and Latin has now broken down, and it remains an open question which gave rise to the other.’24 It is interesting to note that, as early as 1903, Bürger had foreseen exactly such an effect from further papyrus finds: “Es wäre zu wünschen, dass der Boden Ägyptens, der unsere Kenntnis des idealistischen Romans im Altertume in den letzten Jahren so bedeutend bereichert und uns darüber ganz neue Anschauungen gebracht hat, auch für diesen seinen realistischen Vetter sich einmal fruchtbar erweise.”25 Some of the above-mentioned fragments, moreover, have shown that Petronius’ Satyrica was not unique in its application of prosimetrum in a novel. The fragments of both Iolaos and Tinouphis are by scholars considered prosimetric texts, but Barchiesi is more cautious on this last point.26 Other fragments Iamblichus’ Babyloniaka, known from an extensive summary in Photius, and from some fragments, likewise seems to have more in common with the Latin novels than with the five ‘idealistic’ Greek romances.27 A very interesting set of Greek prose fragments has recently been collected from the Etymologicum Genuinum through careful philological and lexical research: their discoverer, Alpers (1996), has edited and discussed the ————— 23
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Perry himself discusses the Ninos fragments and those of Metiochos and Parthenope; when he wrote his Ancient Romances the early dating for Chariton had already been firmly established thanks to the recovery of papyrus fragments of Chariton’s novel from the 2nd century A.D. (see Perry 1967, 96 f.; 153 f. on Ninos, and 172 with note 18 on p. 358 f. on Metiochos and Parthenope). Thus Stephens and Winkler 1995, 7; see also their discussions of Lollianos’ Phoinikika (and Apuleius: 322 f.); on Iolaos (358 f.); Daulis (375 f.), and Tinouphis (400 f.). I owe this quotation to Jensson 1997, 328, n. 541. See Kussl 1991, 3 f., and 171 f.; a concise and helpful discussion may be found in Relihan 1993, Appendix A, 199–202; Sandy 1994a, 139 f. More cautiously on prosimetric character of these texts: Barchiesi 1999, 140 f.; see also Schmeling 1996a. Photius’ summary and the main fragments are translated with an introduction by Sandy in Reardon 1989, 783 f.
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fragments, and shown that they belong together as fragments from a lost longer fictional prose text which should be dated not later than the beginning or middle of the 2nd century A.D. He has pointed out remarkable situational and lexical parallels with Petronius’ and Apuleius’ novels. Alpers has proposed to refer to the lost text from which these fragments come, as the ‘Protagoras novel’, after the name of one of the main characters in the fragments. It is tempting to suppose that Apuleius’ Hermagoras, of which some fragments are preserved, and which is generally regarded as another novel by Apuleius, could be affiliated with a similar Greek text like the ‘Protagoras novel’. Perry (1927) interestingly suggests that Apuleius chose the name Hermagoras because he thought it appropriate to a protagonist who is, as can be inferred from the fragments, represented as a travelling professional rhetorician. Similarly, Alpers’ Protagoras may have been represented as such a travelling ‘sophist’. In connection with Alpers’ ‘Protagoras’ Barchiesi interestingly points to the names of two characters in Petronius’ novel who are named after masters of classical rhetoric: Corax and Gorgias.28 From the short surveys above it is clear, then, that there exists a strong and vital ‘Greek connection’ for most of the Latin fictional prose texts of the imperial period, certainly not less than had been the case in earlier phases of Latin literary history. Especially regarding approaches to this aspect of Latin literature, its ‘Greek connection’, a great deal has changed since the productive years of Perry. From several passages of his comparison of the Latin Metamorphoses with the Greek (lost) Μεταµορφώσεις, it becomes clear that Perry is convinced that the Greek text—although we do not have it—must on many points have been superior to the Latin text – which we do have. We have now learnt to appreciate the self-conscious and creative ways in which Latin authors manage their ‘Greek connection’, as will become clear from the next chapter. 3. The Roman Connection 3.1. Translation and intertextuality in Roman literature As all readers of Latin literature know, it had from its early stages developed in a dynamic interplay with Greek literature, literary interaction being only ————— 28
Barchiesi 1999, 141.
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one segment of the Romans’ “… entire experience in dialogue with this other culture,” to use a phrase of Feeney.29 It is not necessary here to expand on this theme. From recent studies on this fascinating subject we have learnt to appreciate the fact that Roman literature, in this active dialogue, has developed a highly differentiated consciousness of itself. The writers of the Latin novels have their share in this long tradition, too, and have inherited a specific Roman attitude towards taking Greek texts as starting points for the creation of their own Latin literary productions. In transforming Greek prose fiction into Latin novels Petronius—if we accept the thesis of the Greek ‘palimpsest’ behind the Satyrica (see above, 2.3)— and Apuleius are thus connected to a long range of Latin authors who had done the same, in differing degrees of adaptation, appropriation, and transformation. That is why I find it appropriate to classify this translating activity involved in the creation of the Roman novels as part of the ‘Roman connection’. In the past decades the handling of Greek ‘models’ in for instance Roman epic, Roman comedy, Catullus and his predecessors, the Augustan elegists, and others, has often been the subject of intense study. Many of the results reached there have revealed aspects of individual authors’ practice of—and reflexion on—‘translation’.30 Some efforts, too, have been undertaken, for instance by Seele 1995, to go beyond just comparing individual Roman ‘translations’ with their Greek counterparts when the latter are still available, and to attempt at reaching a more comprehensive insight into translation in antiquity, its methods and its theories. While variation exists between different authors in the degree of ‘Romanization’ of their Greek models, one permanent aspect of the Roman translations is signalled in practically all periods of the Hellenizing of Roman literature: the translating authors more often than not write for an audience that can be expected to be acquainted with the Greek models that are being adapted. This circumstance is a factor of importance in explaining the completely different attitude of Latin literary translations and adaptations of Greek originals, compared to modern literary translations and adaptations from one language into another. The audience’s aesthetic pleasure in these Latin re-creations no doubt for a considerable part consisted in recognizing ————— 29
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Quote from Feeney 1998, 25; his book has much pertinent discussion related to the theme of this paper. Traina 1970 is a perceptive study on many aspects of the practice of poetic translations from Livius Andronicus to Cicero.
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the Greek ‘palimpsest’ behind it, and especially in assessing what it had become in the hands of a Roman author. It has, moreover, often rightly been emphasized that, in the course of the development of a Roman literary tradition, Roman literature of course begets its own ‘classics’, with the result that successive literary artists are in dynamic interaction with Roman as well as Greek models.31 One particularly brilliant, and often-discussed, example from Petronius may suffice to illustrate the innovative force of such intricate intertextuality: in the famous Tale of the Widow of Ephesus (Sat. 111–112) Petronius has combined the plot of a Greek Vorlage with sophisticated references to Vergil’s Dido in the Aeneid. In Apuleius’ Metamorphoses the episode of Charite is one striking example out of many.32 In view of the specific aspects of Latin literature as adumbrated above, it is quite understandable why modern theories of intertextuality have been adopted and employed with special enthusiasm in the research of Latin literature.33 While the relationship between Greek and Latin literature, as well as the relationship between successive Latin poets has always occupied scholars, in the course of the 20th century the investigation of this phenomenon has rapidly developed from the enumeration of ‘parallels’, or ‘Quellenforschung’, into emphasizing the variety of allusive techniques with which Roman authors involve their audiences in an intricate intertextual dialogue with the literary tradition known to both author and audience. The development sketched above has inspired many studies of the interaction of the Latin novels with Greek models as well as with the Latin literary tradition. If we accept Jensson’s arguments for assuming that Petronius in writing his novel was transforming a pre-existing Greek text, a Greek ‘Σατυρικά ’,34 new insights in the Roman practice of ‘translation’ could profitably be applied. And all we might infer from ancient testimonies about the translatory activities of a Sisenna and his contemporary Varro—these two must have known each other fairly well—might be revealing when looked at ————— 31
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Important discussion on this subject may be found in Hinds 1998, in his chapter 3 on “Diachrony: literary history and its narratives”. See Finkelpearl 1998, 115 f., with bibliographical references; cf. also the ‘Phaedra Tale’ in Apuleius, Met. 10.2–12, with Zimmerman 2000, 417–432. Thus also Schmitz 2002, 97, after a very helpful introduction to the most important of those modern theories from p. 91 on. See above, section 2.3.
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from new perspectives. Something might certainly be gained from such an investigation for Apuleian studies as well.35 Both Hijmans 1987 and Mason 1994 have compared passages from the Metamorphoses with parallel passages in the Greek epitome (‘the Onos’), and demonstrated Apuleius’ independent and creative handling of his Vorlage.36 The chapter of Walsh 1970 on the literary texture of Petronius’ and Apuleius’ novels has been an important starting point for further studies.37 It would be superfluous to enumerate all publications since devoted to study of the interaction of Apuleius’ novel and the preceding Greek and Latin literary tradition: we have excellent annotated bibliographies, on Petronius by Schmeling, Stuckey 1977 and of course in the continuous issues of the Petronian Society Newsletter (edited by G. Schmeling). For Apuleius we have such annotated bibliographies by Schlam 1971, and Schlam and Finkelpearl 2000.38 Finkelpearl 1998 is a monograph (mainly on epic allusion in Apuleius) which exemplifies a point made above, viz. what can be gained in classical study from a judicious use of a range of modern theories of intertextuality. Harrison 2002 discusses the function of the literary allusions to epic and tragedy in a number of instances of ‘literary topography’ in Apuleius’ novel. Increasingly, modern commentaries on these texts, too, show themselves sensitive to intertextual interpretation of detected ‘parallels’ or ‘borrowings’. Much more can be done and will no doubt effectuate a new understanding of
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38
See Lefèvre 1997, 79 ff.; Harrison 1998. Hijmans 1987, 399 ff., also on Apuleius as a translator of philosophical texts, with bibliographical references. Mason 1994, 1696 ff. Van Thiel 1971 had prepared such studies by publishing a synoptic edition of Apulius’ novel and the text of the Greek epitome. Walsh 1970, 32–66. For Petronius, the fifth chapter of Sullivan 1968, 158–213 contains many helpful observations on Petronius’ use of preceding and contemporary literature. Modern approaches to literary references in Petronius are e.g.: Connors 1998; Hallett 2003. In 2000 Ellen Finkelpearl published the review of scholarship on Apuleius’ Metamorphoses 1970–1998, on which she and Carl Schlam had worked together, and which she had completed after Schlam’s death in 1993. For the scholarship on Literary Allusion (both to Greek and Latin literature) see Schlam and Finkelpearl 2000, 202–219. For scholarship on the relation of Apuleius’ novel with the Greek ass tales as ‘sources’ see ib. 36 ff.
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the intricate relationship between these works, their Greek ‘palimpsests’, and of their Roman connections.39 3.2. The spectre of ‘contaminatio’ Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, and the Ps. Clementine Recognitiones as well as the anonymous Historia Apollonii regis Tyri each receives separate treatment in Perry’s book. However, Perry sometimes combines them in so far as all of them suffer from their authors’ handling of ‘contaminatio’.40 Even in more recent literature one sometimes still encounters the term contaminatio, mostly used as a negative criticism, in connection with Roman authors who combine different elements in composing new texts.41 The term itself derives from some mis-understood passages in prologues of Terentius, where the speaker quotes malevolent critics who accuse him of ‘spoiling’ (contaminare) his Greek models.42 It is indeed an often described procedure in Latin literature that different elements, often moreover adapted from different sources, are combined into one poem, play, or other text. This procedure is undeniably present in many pages of Apuleius’ novel, and has puzzled scholars. It has provoked reactions like Perry’s, who disapproves of Apuleius’ “carelessly mechanical methods of composition”, denying the existence of this conscious combinatory technique, and has at the opposite end of the spectrum given rise to forced efforts to allot all disparate elements a place in an overarching thematic whole, which often implies subjective interpretation. One can trace the strong reactions to Perry’s negative judgement of careless composition by reading the annotated bibliographies mentioned above. The unity-disunity controversy in Apuleian studies has nowadays made way for the more sober establishment of the presence of different material, often in close conjunction. On the other hand, the discussion on the unity of the Metamorphoses has mostly concentrated on the apparently disjunctive final, “Isis book”, book 11. Finkelpearl 1998, after reviewing the ————— 39
40 41 42
See for instance the series of Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius, 1977 – …, and the forthcoming commentary on the Historia Apollonii regis Tyri by S. Panayotakis. E.g. Perry 1967, 300. The term is applied, and discussed, without negative implications, in Hinds 1998, 141 f. E.g. Ter. Andria 9–21; Heau. 17. Discussions may be found at several places in West, Woodman 1979, through their index, s.v. contaminatio; see also A.S. Gratwick in the Cambridge History of Classical Literature (ed. E.J. Kenney) vol. II, 117, pleading for redifinition of contaminatio as a technical term.
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main representatives of the unity-disunity discussion, proposes “to offer a reading that simply continues (viz. in book 11) to look at the text in terms of literary indebtedness…”.43 Such a reading has the advantage of not restricting the discussion of combination technique to the eleventh book. Without using the often negatively loaded term contaminatio, it is, however, clearly an aspect of the ‘Roman connection’ of the novels of Petronius, Apuleius, and of the anonymous Historia Apollonii, that they often show this characteristic technique of intricate interweaving or juxtaposing of various elements. In many cases this technique in an intertextual reading reveals a shift of emphasis when the author alludes to one (or even more) ‘model(s)’ by way of involving allusion to yet another (or other) ‘model(s)’. As is the case in the translating practices described above, this combinatory technique has the effect of inviting the attentive cooperation of the audience: again, these authors reckoned with an audience that could recognize the sources and their re-use in the new text. No wonder that ‘the sutures show’: they are meant to be noticed.44 Related to the juxtaposition of different models are the jarring generic juxtapositions which in recent publications on Petronius’ Satyrica have been shown to be “not … an incidental feature of the Satyricon, but in a sense the very reason for its existence.” This quotation is from Christesen and Torlone 2002, who in their turn quote Conte (1996, 141) “… the chief purpose of this text is precisely the accumulation of languages, the grafting of one genre upon another, the inexhaustible contamination of different literary forms”. Christesen and Torlone proceed to place this aspect of Petronius’ novel in a long-established, specifically Roman, tradition of generic experimentation.45 A remarkable characteristic of the hybridization of genre practiced by Roman writers is, according to them, “the coherence of the final product.”46 Although Apuleius’ approach to the Greco-Roman generic tradition is different from Petronius’,47 interpretation of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, too, has ————— 43 44
45 46 47
Finkelpearl 1998, 188. An interesting case of such ‘contaminating’ practices (with a strong ‘latinising’ effect) by Apuleius is discussed by Smith and Woods in this volume of AN; they even handle the term ‘contaminatio’ at some point (p. 181), but without negative connotations. See also the references given above in note 32, and Jensson in this volume pp. 116–117. Christesen and Torlone 2002, 138 ff. Christesen and Torlone 2002, 142 f. Christesen and Torlone 2002, 159 ff., while rightly emphasizing the different fashions in which genre is deployed in the Satyrica and the Metamorphoses, in my opinion too easily
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been shown to gain from a more creative way of looking at the characteristic experimental handling of the Greco-Roman generic tradition in the works of Roman authors. In the conclusion of her monograph on Apuleius Finkelpearl remarks: “The novel sets other texts within it in an exploratory manner, working its way toward autonomy and acceptance of its own legitimacy as a multiform and heteroglot genre.”48 3.3. Bakhtin and the ancient novels The wide range of other appropriated literary texts, so characteristic of these Roman novels, results in a polyphonic whole, a multiplicity of generic discourses. Today many studies of the Roman novels discuss this polyphony in the Bakhtinian sense of the novel as an ‘open’, ‘dialogic’ form, whose polyphonic language and structure cannot be reduced to a ‘monologic’ worldview.49 Other ideas of Bakhtin have proved to be relevant in discussing aspects of the novels of Petronius and Apuleius: in his book on Dostoevsky, Bakhtin discusses among other texts Petronius’ and Apuleius’ novels as instances of ancient ‘carnivalesque’ literature.50 These ideas would, as others since have argued, go a long way in accounting for “the unique atmosphere of mystery and surrealism”, which Perry signals after his discussion of (for instance) the —————
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ignore the presence of literary stylization in Apuleius’ ‘realistic’ novel. Apuleius, indeed, may not make the generic system itself an object of representation in the way Petronius did. However, far from representing an experimentation with novelistic realism, Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, too, presents us first and foremost with a ‘world of paper’. See, e.g., Finkelpearl 1998, 147 f., and passim; Harrison 2000, 210–259; van Mal – Maeder 2003; Zimmerman 2003 (forthcoming). Finkelpearl 1998, 218. See Schmitz 2002, 76–90, with further bibliographic references, for a helpful discussion of Bakhtin’s theories and their importance for ancient literature; Branham 2002. Fusillo 1996, 279 ff. discusses Bakhtin’s relevance for the ancient novels. See also Slater 1990, 141 f. on the relevance of Bakhtin’s theory for Petronius and Apuleius; Branham 2002a. Bakhtin had developed his ideas on carnivalesque literature first in his dissertation on Rabelais (original edition Moskou 1965; English translation by H. Iswolsky, Bloomington 1984). But in his book on Dostoevsky (Bakhtin 21963, German translation by A. Schramm, München 1971), on pp. 113 ff. (of the German translation) he traces the history of carnivalesque texts back to antiquity. Schmitz 2001, 88 f. briefly but clearly discusses Petronius’ novel as ‘karnevalisierte Gattung’. Teuber 1993 is a rich discussion of carnivalesque elements in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. Pertinent discussion and case studies on Bakhtin’s notion of carnival laughter in connection with Petronius are to be found in Plaza 2000, 8–9, 107–110, 120–122, 186–187, 210–211.
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Risus festival.51 According to him it is all due to Apuleius’ negligence for structure and his carelessly joining together two or more originally independent stories (see above, section 3.2: ‘the spectre of contaminatio’). Although Bakhtin wrote most of his works in the first half of the 20th century, they were translated into other languages (and only partially), from about 1970 onward. Perry could not have been acquainted with Bakhtin’s ideas. However, in his careful reading of the Roman novels of Petronius and Apuleius Perry has often put his finger on most of the characteristics of these novels which still occupy scholars today. His explanations of those characteristics, and his overall appreciation of the Roman novels was different from today, but then, his tools were different. This appears very clearly once more from my next, and brief final point in this discussion of ‘Latinising the novels’: 3.4. The ego-narrative In an interesting appendix,52 Perry addresses ‘The Ego-Narrative in Comic Stories’: authors of comic narrative, according to Perry, often chose an egonarrator as the narrator of these comic fictions because they followed, by way of mimicry, what was the prevailing fashion in seriously meant wonderstories. In these (Perry starts from Odysseus’ first-person report at the court of Alkinoos) the use of the first person was for the author, according to Perry, a way of discharging himself of responsibility for the telling of lies. Most people will agree with Perry that comic tales, told by an ego-narrator, indeed often are intended as parodies of the seriously meant wonder-tales told by an “I”. But in the latter, the use of the first person is probably better explained as an authentication gesture, a truth-assertion of the fantastic tale, than by Perry’s hard-to-follow arguments of an author’s act of discharging himself of the responsibility for what is told.53 As is repeatedly emphasized in overviews on the use of literary theory in classical studies, the application of narratology in the interpretation of classical texts has been a “success story”.54 This story was yet to begin when ————— 51 52 53
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Perry 1967, 281. Perry 1967, 325 ff.; see also 111 ff. See Maeder 1991, 10 f., with references to other literature. The authentication gesture would then at the same time function as a fictional signal for the informed reader. I am quoting from Harrison’s General Introduction in Harrison 2001 (ed.), 13.
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Perry’s book was conceived. Here is not the place to expand on this. It must suffice to point out that, as far as analysis of the ego-narrative in the Roman novels concerns, the analytical tools of narratology, especially through the dichotomies of author~narrator, auctorial narrator~actorial narrator, and homodiegetic narration~heterodiegetic narration (and combinations) have been of great use.55 They have helped to reveal more precisely the complex dialectic among author, auctorial ego-narrator, and actorial ego-narrator, with its various levels of irony and tension, in these works.56 To end with the ‘Roman atmosphere’ of the Latin novels, I briefly point to an important aspect of the ego-narrative in the Roman novel, which in my opinion merits further exploration. When reading the ego-narratives of the novels by Petronius and Apuleius, and the many studies devoted in recent years to that aspect of these Latin novels, one comes to realize two things. First, the very high degree of sophistication with which these authors explore, employ, and take advantage of the homodiegetic narrative situation they have created. Second, as one of the results of this sophistication, the various nuances of distancing, of (self-)irony and self-deprecation, seriousness, or ambiguity, with which the “I” presents his(/her) narration. The question is, whether these two observations, taken together, may be regarded as contributing to that distinctive ‘Roman feel’ in these novels.57 In favour of this idea one could point to distinctly Roman modes of employing the “I” as a rôle, a persona, in various literary genres. In a number of recent studies, this aspect has often been investigated in connection with Roman literature as a social, or a political, or even a religious performance: the persona is, in each text, modeled according to the intentions of that text.58 Augustan elegy and Latin verse satire are only two pronounced examples of this ambiguous and often sophisticated use of different personae. As commentators have shown, both Petronius’ and Apuleius’ novels abound with intertextual references to these two genres, among others.59 It might be a good theme for a future symposion, or for a future theme-oriented issue in Ancient Narrative, ————— 55
56 57 58 59
For an explanation of these terms, derived from the methodologies of Genette, combined with the typology of Lintvelt, see e.g. Hofmann 1993. For a helpful overview, with bibliographical references in notes, see Fusillo 1996, 286 ff. Beck 1982 discusses Latin literary antecedents of the ego-narrator in Petronius. See e.g. White 1993; Gleason 1995; Bloomer 1997; Habinek 1998. On echoes of satire in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, see also Zimmerman 2003a (forthcoming).
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to explore the Roman connection of the ever-elusive and ever-intriguing egonarrator in the Roman novels. Bibliography Alpers, K. 1996. ‘Zwischen Athen, Abdera und Samos. Fragmente eines unbekannten Romans aus der Zeit der Zweiten Sophistik’, in M. Billerbeck, J. Schamp (eds.) Kainotomia. Die Erneuerung der griechischen Tradition. Colloquium Pavlos Tzermias (4. XI. 1995), Freiburg (Swiss), 19–55. Bakhtin, M.M. 1971. Probleme der Poetik Dostoevskijs, (Russian orig. Moscou 21963), transl. A. Schramm, München (with German spelling of Bakhtin’s name: Bachtin). — 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays, ed. by M. Holquist, transl. by M. Holquist, C. Emerson, Austin. Barchiesi, A. 1986. ‘Tracce di narrativa greca e romanzo latino: una rassegna’, in: Semiotica della novella latina, Materiali e contributi per la storia della narrativa greco-latina 4, Rome, 219–236. — 1999. ‘Traces of Greek Narrative and the Roman Novel: A Survey’, in Harrison, S.J. (ed.). 1999. Oxford Readings in the Roman Novel, Oxford, 124–141 (transl. of Barchiesi 1986 by B. Graziosi, with an afterword by the author). Beck, R. 1982. ‘The Satyricon: Satire, Narrator and Antecedents’, MH 39, 206–214. Beschorner, A. 1992. Untersuchungen zu Dares Phrygius. Classica Monacensia 4, Tübingen. Bloomer W.M. 1992. Valerius Maximus and the Rhetoric of the New Nobility, Chapel Hill – London. — 1997. ‘Schooling in Persona: Imagination and Subordination in Roman Education’, CA 16, 57–78. Branham, R. Bracht (ed.). 2002. Bakhtin and the Classics, Evanston, Illinois. — 2002a. ‘Representing Time in Ancient Fiction’, in M. Zimmerman, G. Schmeling, H. Hofmann, S. Harrison (eds.), Ancient Narrative, Vol. 1 (2000–2001), Groningen, 1–31. Bürger, K. 1892. ‘Der antike Roman vor Petronius’, Hermes 27, 345–358. Christesen, P. and Torlone, Z. 2002. ‘Ex omnibus unum, nec hoc nec illud: Genre in Petronius’, MD 49, 135–172. Connors, C. 1998. Petronius the Poet, Cambridge. Conte, G.B. 1996. The Hidden Author: An Interpretation of Petronius’ Satyricon, transl. E. Fantham, Berkeley. Feeney, D. 1998. Literature and Religion at Rome. Cultures, contexts, and beliefs, Cambridge. Finkelpearl, E.D. 1998. Metamorphoses of Language in Apuleius: A Study of Allusion in the Novel, Ann Arbor. Fusillo, M. 1996. ‘Modern Critical Theories and the Ancient Novel’, in G. Schmeling (ed.) The Novel in the Ancient World, Leiden – New York – Köln (Mnemosyne supplement 159), 277–305. Gleason, M. 1995. Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome, Princeton. Habinek, T.N. 1998. The Politics of Latin Literature. Writing, Identity and Empire in Ancient Rome, Princeton. Hallett, J. 2003. ‘Resistant (and enabling) Reading: Petronius’ Satyricon and Latin Love Elegy’, in S. Panayotakis, M. Zimmerman, W.H. Keulen (eds.) The Ancient Novel and Beyond, Leiden – Boston, 329–343.
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Harrison, S.J. 1998. ‘The Milesian Tales and the Roman Novel’, in H. Hofmann, M. Zimmerman (eds.) Groningen Colloquia on the Novel Vol. IX, 61–73. — 1999 (ed.). Oxford Readings in the Roman Novel, Oxford. — 2000. Apuleius. A Latin Sophist, Oxford. — 2001. (ed.) Texts, Ideas, and the Classics. Scholarship, Theory, and Classical Literature, Oxford. — 2002. ‘Literary Topography in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, in M. Paschalis, S. Frangoulidis (eds.), Space in the Ancient Novel, Ancient Narrative Supplementum 1, Groningen, 40–57. Heinze, R. 1899. ‘Petron und der griechische Roman’, Hermes 34, 494–519 (repr. in: R. Heinze, ed. Vom Geist des Römertums, Stuttgart 1960, 417–439). Hijmans, B.L. 1987. ‘Apuleius, Philosophus Platonicus’, in W. Haase, H. Temporini (eds.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt (ANRW) II. 36.1, Berlin – New York, 395– 475. Hinds, S. 1998. Allusion and intertext. Dynamics of appropriation in Roman poetry, Cambridge. Hofmann, H. 1993. ‘Die Flucht des Erzählers. Narrative Strategien in den Ehebruchsgeschichten von Apuleius’ Goldenem Esel’, in H. Hofmann (ed.) Groningen Colloquia on the Novel Vol. V, Groningen, 111–141. Huber – Rebenich, G. 1999. ‘Hagiographic fiction as entertainment’, in H. Hofmann (ed.), Latin Fiction. The Latin Novel in Context, London – New York, 187–212. Jensson, G. 1997. “The recollections of Encolpius”: A reading of the Satyrica as GrecoRoman Erotic Fiction, diss. Univ. of Toronto. Kussl, R. 1991. Papyrusfragmente griechischer Romane. Ausgewählte Untersuchungen. Classica Monacensia 2, Tübingen. Lefèvre, E. 1997. Studien zur Struktur der ‘Milesischen’ Novelle bei Petron und Apuleius, Stuttgart. Maeder, D. 1991. ‘Au Seuil des Romans Grecs: effets de réel et effets de création’, in H. Hofmann (ed.), Groningen Colloquia on the Novel Vol. IV, 1–33. van Mal – Maeder, D. 2003. ‘La mise en scène déclamatoire chez les romanciers Latins’, in: S. Panayotakis, M. Zimmerman, W.H. Keulen, eds., The Ancient Novel and Beyond, Leiden – Boston, 345–355. Mason, H.J. 1994. ‘Greek and Latin Versions of the Ass-Story’, in W. Haase, H. Temporini (eds.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt (ANRW) II. 34.2, Berlin – New York, 1665–1707. — 1999. ‘The Metamorphoses of Apuleius and its Greek sources’, in H. Hofmann (ed.), Latin Fiction. The Latin Novel in Context, London – New York, 103–112. Merkle, S. 1989. Die Ephemeris belli Troiani des Diktys von Kreta. Studien zur klassischen Philologie 44, Frankfurt. — 1996. ‘The Truth and Nothing but the Truth: Dictys and Dares’, in G. Schmeling (ed.). The Novel in the Ancient World, Leiden – New York – Köln (Mnemosyne supplement 159), 563–580. Panayotakis, C. 1995. Theatrum Arbitri. Theatrical Elements in the Satyrica of Petronius, Leiden – New York – Köln (Mnemosyne supplement 146). Panayotakis, S. 2000. ‘The Knot and the Hymen: A reconsideration of nodus uirginitatis (Hist. Apoll. 1)’, Mnemosyne 53, 599–608. Perry, B.E. 1927. ‘On Apuleius’ Hermagoras’, AJPh 48, 192–199. — 1967. The Ancient Romances. A Literary-Historical Account of their Origins, Berkeley – Los Angeles. Plaza, M. 2000. Laughter and Derision in Petronius’ Satyrica. A Literary Study, Studia Latina Stockholmiensia XLVI, Stockholm.
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Reardon, B.P. (ed.) 1989. Collected Ancient Greek Novels, Berkeley – Los Angeles. Relihan, J. 1993. Ancient Menippean Satire, Baltimore. Sandy, G.N. 1989.‘Iamblichus. A Babylonian Story’, in B.P. Reardon (ed.) Collected Ancient Greek Novels, Berkeley – Los Angeles, 783–802. — 1994. ‘Apuleius’ “Metamorphoses” and the Ancient Novel’, in W. Haase, H. Temporini (eds.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt (ANRW) II. 34.2, Berlin – New York, 1512–1574. — 1994a. ‘New Pages of Greek Fiction’, in J.R. Morgan, R. Stoneman (eds.) Greek Fiction. The Greek Novel in Context, London – New York, 130–145. Schlam, C. (†) and Finkelpearl, E. 2000. A Review of Scholarship on Apuleius’ Metamorphoses 1970–1998, Lustrum 42 (eds. H. Gartner, M. Weissenberger). Schmeling, G. 1996 (ed.). The Novel in the Ancient World, Leiden – New York – Köln (Mnemosyne supplement 159). — 1996a. ‘Genre and the Satyricon: Menippean Satire and the Novel’, in C. Klodt (ed.), Satura lanx. Festschrift W. Krenkel, Hildesheim, 105–117. — 1999. ‘The History of Apollonius King of Tyre’, in H. Hofmann (ed.), Latin Fiction. The Latin Novel in Context, London – New York, 141–152. — 2003 (ed.). The Novel in the Ancient World (revised paperback edition of Schmeling 1996), Leiden – Boston. — and Stuckey, J. 1997. A Bibliography of Petronius (Mnemosyne supplement 39). Schmitz, T.A. 2002. Moderne Literaturtheorie und antike Texte. Eine Einführung, Darmstadt. Seele, A. 1995. Römische Übersetzer, Nöte, Freiheiten, Absichten : Verfahren des literarischen Übersetzens in der griechisch-römischen Antike, Darmstadt. Slater, N.W. 1989. Reading Petronius, Baltimore. Stephens, S.A., Winkler, J.J. 1995. Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments, Princeton. Sullivan, J.P. 1968. The Satyricon of Petronius: A Literary Study, London. Traina, A. 1970. Vortit barbare. Le traduzioni poetiche da Livio Andronico a Cicerone, Roma. Teuber, B. 1993. ‘Zur Schreibkunst eines Zirkusreiters: Karnevaleskes Erzählen im “Goldenen Esel” und die Sorge um sich in der antiken Ethik’, in S. Döpp (ed.) Karnevaleske Phänomene in antiken und nachantiken Kulturen und Literaturen. Stätten und Formen der Kommunikation im Altertum 1 (Bochumer Altertumswissenschaftl. Colloquium 13), Trier, 179–238. van Thiel, H. 1971. Der Eselsroman. I: Untersuchungen. II: Synoptische Ausgabe, München (Zetemata 54: 1–2). Walsh, P.G. 1970. The Roman Novel, Cambridge. West, D.A. and Woodman, A.J. (eds.) 1979. Creative Imitation and Latin Literature, Cambridge. White, P. 1993. Promised Verse: Poets in the Society of Augustan Rome, Cambridge. Zeitlin, F.I. 1971. ‘Petronius as Paradox: Anarchy and Artistic Integrity’, TAPA 102, 631– 684; repr. in S.J. Harrison (ed.) 1999, 1–49. Zimmerman, M. 2000. Apuleius Madaurensis, Metamorphoses Book X. Text, Introduction and Commentary. Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius, Groningen. — 2003 (forthcoming), ‘Les grandes villes dans les Métamorphoses d’ Apulée, in B. Pouderon (ed.), Lieux, décors et paysages de l’ancien roman des origines à Byzance, Actes du Colloque de Tours, Octobre 2002, Presses de la Maison d’Orient, 000. — 2003a (forthcoming), ‘Echoes of Roman satire in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, in R.R. Nauta (ed.), Genre in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and Related Texts, Leuven, 000.
Constructing Apuleius: The Emergence of a Literary Artist S TEPHEN H ARRISON Corpus Christi College, Oxford
This paper aims to be both a contribution to the history of scholarship and a stimulus to further research. In it I seek to follow some key themes in the scholarly reception of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses before and after the work of Ben Edwin Perry, and to show how the critical constructions of literary works are necessarily affected by contemporary ideological prejudices, which change over time as scholarship develops. In particular, I try to trace the emergence after much negative judgement of the modern construction of Apuleius as a careful literary artist, and of the Metamorphoses as a novel worthy of detailed study and a carefully composed, complex and highly allusive literary text, a view which has come into being almost entirely during the twentieth century, and to suggest consequent paths for further scholarly investigation.1 1: The Problems of Prejudice – from Antiquity to Perry Anxiety about how ancient prose fiction relates to the conventional canon of literary genres, about its overall quality, and about whether it can be accounted ‘proper’ literature, goes back to the Roman world.2 Prose fiction is notably omitted from the most extensive survey of literary genres to be ————— 1
2
My thanks go to the audience at the panel in New Orleans for discussion of an earlier version of this paper, and especially to Antonio Stramaglia for useful comment on Renaissance Apuleianism; also to Ruurd Nauta for helpful information and discussion on the issue of ‘Silver Latin’ (see note 11 below). My attendance at the 2003 APA Annual Meeting at New Orleans would not have been possible without generous grants from the British Academy (Overseas Conference Grant) and from the Faculty of Classics at Oxford, for both of which I am most grateful. On this issue see Kennedy 2001, 115.
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found in ancient literary criticism, the syllabus for the aspiring orator in the tenth book of Quintilian’s Institutio, and novels are largely unmentioned in the other literature of the ancient world until the fourth to fifth centuries. Then we find two revealing comments. In his Neoplatonising commentary on the Somnium Scipionis of Cicero, Macrobius condemns prose fiction as merely titillating and more suitable for the nursery than for serious consideration (Somn.1.2.8): Auditum mulcent …argumenta fictis casibus amatorum referta, quibus vel multum se Arbiter exercuit vel Apuleium non nunquam lusisse miramur. Hoc totum fabularum genus, quod solas aurium delicias profitetur, e sacrario suo in nutricum cunas sapientiae tractatus eliminat. ‘Our hearing is charmed by plots stuffed with the imagined vicissitudes of lovers, on which Petronius spent much labour, and in which we are surprised that even Apuleius often sported. This whole kind of story, since it aims only at the pleasuring of the ears, is expelled by the discussion of wisdom from its shrine to take refuge in the cradles of nurses’. Here prose fiction and its trivial concerns are seen as mere empty and false story-telling, insignificant compared to the truth of philosophy which is central for Macrobius himself; Apuleius’ combination of Platonic philosophy and novel-writing is seen as surprising and inconsistent. A similar attitude is shown in the supposed attack by Septimius Severus in a letter to the Senate on the character of Clodius Albinus, his rival for the purple in 195–7, in the Historia Augusta (SHA Clod. Alb.12.12): Maior fuit dolor, quod illum pro litterato laudandum plerique duxistis, cum ille neniis quibusdam anilibus occupatus inter Milesias Punicas Apulei sui et ludicra litteraria consenesceret. ‘It is a greater pain to me that many of you have deemed him to deserve praise as a man of literature, when he was busied with some nonsense or other fit for old women and was growing senile amongst the Punic Milesian tales of his friend Apuleius3 and such literary trivialities’. ————— 3
Clodius came from Hadrumetum near Carthage and therefore from Africa Proconsularis, the same province as Apuleius. Since Severus also came from the province, from Lepcis
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This association of novels with old women, suggesting the credulity of their readers and the triviality of their content, is likely to be of earlier origin, since it is seems to be playfully alluded to in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, when the inserted tale of Cupid and Psyche, which is clearly designed to parallel the plot of a Greek romantic novel, is presented as being told by a real old woman, the anonymous housekeeper of a robber-band, who herself introduces her narrative as an old woman’s tale in a phrase which seems to pick up the kind of criticisms made by Macrobius and Severus’ supposed letter (4.27.8): sed ego te narrationibus lepidis anilibusque fabulis protinus avocabo, ‘but I will distract you at once with elegant narratives and with the stories of an old woman’. Allegory, a mode of analysis which discovers seriousness under apparent frivolity, has naturally been perennially popular in the criticism of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, which unlike Petronius’ Satyrica offers clear opportunities for figurative interpretation. The most famous analysis of Apuleius from the ancient world, the reading of the story of Cupid and Psyche by Fulgentius, from the late fifth or early sixth century,4 offers an elaborate allegory (Myth. 3.6), from which I select a key portion: Civitatem posuerunt quasi in modum mundi, in qua regem et reginam velut deum et materiam posuerunt. Quibus tres filias addunt, id est carnem, ultronietatem quam libertatem arbitrii dicimus et animam; Psice enim Graece anima dicitur … huic invidet Venus quasi libido; ad quam perdendam cupiditatem mittit; sed quia cupiditas est boni, est mali, cupiditas animam diligit et ei velut in coniunctione miscetur … ‘They [i.e. Apuleius and his lost Greek imitator Aristophontes of Athens] have put Psyche’s city to represent the universe, in which they have put a king and a queen, standing for God and matter. To these they add three daughters, that is the flesh, spontaneity (which we call freedom of will) and the soul, for the soul is called ‘psyche’ in Greek … She is envied by Venus, representing lust, who sends Desire to destroy her; but since De—————
4
Magna, sui must suggest more than origin in the same province, and could imply that Clodius knew Apuleius, a generation older, but this semi-fictionalised biography is unfortunately not reliable on such details. On the dating of the Mythologiae see Hays 1996, 24.
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sire is for both good and bad, Desire loves the soul and mixes with it in a form of union’ The details of the allegory are not wholly clear, but it is plain that we are dealing with a serious moralising interpretation in a familiar ancient tradition, aimed at uncovering the real truth under the apparent falsity and levity of fiction.5 The Renaissance like late antiquity felt that the apparent triviality of Apuleian fiction needed explanation and justification, by allegory if necessary. The elder Filippo Beroaldo, the most distinguished Renaissance editor of Apuleius, clearly addressed this issue in the introduction to his 1500 text of and commentary on the Metamorphoses,6 where he discusses the writer’s intention and plan (scriptoris intentio atque consilium): Ego Apuleium quidem nostrum confirmo Lucianum Graecum scriptorem argumento consimili imitari, verum sub hoc transmutationis involucro naturam mortalium et mores humanos quasi transeunter designare voluisse, ut admoneretur ex hominibus asinos fieri: quando voluptatibus beluinis immersi asinali stoliditate brutescimus nec ulla rationis virtutisque scintilla in nobis elucescit. …rursus ex asino in hominem reformatio significat calcatis voluptatibus exutisque corporalibus deliciis rationem respicere et hominem interiorem qui verus est homo ex ergastulo illo caenoso ad lucidum habitaculum virtute et religione ducibus migrasse … illa vero eruditioribus principalis huiusce transformationis causa valdeque probabilis videri potest, ut videlicet sub hoc mystico praetextu Apuleius noster Pythagoricae Platonicaeque philosophiae consultissimo dogmata utriusque doctoris ostenderet et sub hac ludicra narratione palingenesiam et metempsychosim, id est regenerationem transmutationemque, dissimulanter afferret… ‘I for my part maintain that our Apuleius imitated the Greek writer Lucian by means of a similar plot, but wished under the cover of this ————— 5
6
Fulgentius makes it clear that in his view Apuleius and Aristophontes write merely falsitas, a word he uses twice of their fictions in his analysis at Myth.3.6. On Fulgentius’ methods of allegorising in the Mythologiae see the very helpful material in Hays 1996, 93–132. Cited from Fol.2v. of Beroaldo 1500, with some normalisation of spelling and punctuation. For an assessment of Beroaldo’s commentary see Krautter 1971.
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story of metamorphosis to mark out as if in passing the nature of man and human character, so that a warning should be given that asses can be made of men: since when submerged in bestial pleasures we become like brutes with the stupidity of the ass, and no spark or reason or virtue shines out in us … Again, the retransformation from ass to man signifies the spurning of pleasures and the stripping off of fleshly delights so as to take note of reason, and that the inner man, which is the true man, has passed from that foul prison to a habitation of light through virtue and religion…. to the more learned the following can indeed seem the principal cause of this transformation and an extremely probable one, namely so that under this mystic pretext, our Apuleius, an expert in Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy, might demonstrate the teachings of both masters and introduce in a concealed way under the cover of this frivolous narrative palingenesis and metempsychosis, that is rebirth and transformation… .’7 It was in the Renaissance, too, that Apuleius’ novel came under attack from a different angle, that of its style. Though there is some ancient evidence for an African provincial accent in the speaking of Latin,8 and Isidore in the seventh century could claim that Latin had been corrupted by contact with barbarian languages in the expansion of the Roman Empire (Orig. 9.1.7), it is to the Renaissance that we owe the argument that provinces generated their own debased regional dialects of Latin, and the invention of ‘African Latin’ in particular, a topic that was to be the subject of particularly heated scholarly debate in the late nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries.9 The cult of Ciceronian style amongst many humanists10 led to the denigration of other Latin styles and to the categorisation in particular of post-Ciceronian Latin as decadent,11 though Beroaldus and several other humanists prized ————— 7
8 9
10 11
Beroaldus’ views here were paraphrased and adopted by Adlington 1566, the first English translator of Apuleius, in his preface ‘To the Reader’; for this and other Renaissance adherents of allegorical interpretation cf. Heine 1978, 32–33. See Petersmann 1998 and n.51 below. For the historiography of the question see Brock 1911, 161–261, and the discussion below, pp.161–162. Cf. e.g. Bolgar 1954, 249–275. This is part of the invention of an inferior ‘Silver Latin’, which goes back at least as far as Erasmus; see Farrell 2001, 90–92, Klein 1967 and Ax 1996.
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and defended the exuberant and non-classical diction of Apuleius.12 A letter of Erasmus written some twenty years after Beroaldus’ edition (Ep. 1334, from 1523) clearly uses this rhetoric against Apuleius, characterising his style along with that of his fellow-African Tertullian as studied, affected and obscure, showing provincial over-striving for stylistic effect: Mihi veterum dictionem variam consideranti videtur vix ullos provinciales feliciter reddidisse Romani sermonis simplicitatem praeter aliquot, qui Romae a pueris sunt educati. Nam et Tertulliano et Apuleio suus quidam est character et in decretis Afrorum, quae multa refert Augustinus contra Petilianum et Crescentium, deprehendas anxiam affectationem eloquentiae, sed sic, ut Afros agnoscas. On considering the varying styles of the ancients, it seems to me that hardly any writers of provincial origin have successfully rendered the purity of the Roman language, except for those who were educated at Rome from their youth. For Tertullian and Apuleius have their own particular stylistic stamp; in the decrees written by Africans, too, which are cited in abundance by Augustine writing against Petilianus and Crescentius, you will find an anxious affectation of style, but such as to enable you to recognise them as Africans. Some of Erasmus’ great contemporaries put it more succinctly, claiming that the style of Apuleius’ novel was as asinine as his hero’s metamorphosis. Thus Melanchthon (Eloquentiae encomium 29): recte Apuleius, qui cum asinum repraesentaret, rudere quam loqui mallet, ‘rightly did Apuleius in depicting an ass choose to bray rather than speak’. Vives (De tradendis disciplinis 1.3), picking up Melanchthon’s gibe, differentiated between the unacceptable style of the Metamorphoses and the more restrained style of some of the other works, thinking no doubt of the more Ciceronian Apologia: Apuleius in asino plane rudit, in aliis sonat hominem, ‘Apuleius in his ass clearly brays, in his other works he sounds a human note’. The already established twin criticisms of the Metamorphoses, frivolity of subject-matter and barbarism of style, are deployed in the most influential ————— 12
See D’Amico 1984.
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work of literary criticism on the novel before the nineteenth century.13 The Traité des Romans et leurs origines (1670) of Pierre-Daniel Huet, tutor of the Dauphin (son of Louis XIV) and originator of the Delphine Classics, translator of Daphnis and Chloe and Bishop of Avranches, concludes by arguing that novels can be defended as serious literature if they have a didactic underlying purpose and are excellent in material and style: ‘Now Fictions being nothing but narrations, true in appearance and false in effect, the minds of the simple, who discern only the bark, are pleased with this show of truth, and very well satisfied. But those who penetrate further, and see into the solid, are easily disgusted with this falsity, so that the first love the falsehood, because it is concealed under an appearance of truth, and these others are distasted with this Image of truth, by reason of the real falsehood which is couched under it, if this falsehood is not otherwise ingenious, mysterious and instructive, and buoys itself up by the excellence of the invention and art.’14 At the beginning of his work, Huet had defined the key purpose of novels as moral didacticism, and it is interesting to see literary excellence achieving almost equal prominence by the end in the passage just cited. The opening is uncompromising: ‘The chief end of a Romance, or (at least) that which ought to be, and which the Composer ought to propose to himself, is the Instruction of the Reader, to whom he must always present Vertue crowned, and Vice punished.’15 Literary entertainment and pleasant style is then justified in a Lucretian-style argument that literary honey is needed to sweeten the moral cup owing to human pride: ‘But as the spirit of man naturally hates to be taught, and self-love does spurn against Instructions, ‘tis to be deceived by the blandishments of ————— 13
14 15
It was reprinted many times in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; I cite from the English translation of Lewis (= Huet 1715). Huet 1715, 97. Huet 1715, 3.
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pleasure, and the severity of Precepts to be sweetened by the agreement of Examples.’16 But for Huet neither Petronius nor Apuleius, though not without their merits, provided attractive style or fitting didactic content. Petronius contained ‘agreeable and ingenious fictions, but very often too wanton and immodest,’17 and his style was too affected: ‘he is somewhat too much Painted and Studied, and degenerates from that natural and majestic simplicity of the happy age of Augustus.’18 Apuleius’ novel was ‘an Italian fiction very divertising and full of Wit,’19 but ‘he has not at all retrencht the smuttiness which was in the Originals which he had followed’ and ‘his style is that of a Sophist, full of affectation and violent figures, hard, barbarous and befitting an African.’20 That this low view of Apuleian Latinity was alive and well a century later is shown by David Ruhnken’s preface to Oudendorp’s (posthumous) edition of 1786.21 Ruhnken repeats the familiar charge of barbarous style, but grounds his accusation more precisely in the wholesale appropriation of archaic language in the Metamorphoses when Apuleius had the ‘better’ example of Cicero before him. He argues that the Antonine writers Gellius and Apuleius (the palimpsest of Fronto was not to be discovered for another generation) could indeed write like Cicero and other classical authors but chose to adulterate this style with excessively archaic vocabulary (I–II): Non ii quidem optimos illos omnino reliquerunt, sed tamen cum eorum imitatione scriptores ex ultima antiquitate repetitos coniunxerunt, ut modo cum Cicerone, Caesare, Livio et similibus, modo cum Evandri matre loqui viderentur. ‘For their part these writers did not leave aside these excellent models, but yet combined with imitation of these the use of writers sought out from the most distant antiquity, so that sometimes they seemed to be ————— 16 17 18 19 20 21
Id. ib. Huet 1715, 69. Huet 1715, 70. Huet 1715, 34. Huet 1715, 72. Oudendorp 1786.
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conversing with Cicero, Caesar, Livy and the like, sometimes with the mother of Evander’. But in this deliberate lexical obscurantism, Ruhnken continues, Apuleius had done his linguistic research and was largely echoing archaic usage as opposed to rankly inventing terms (II–III): Is igitur tantum abfuit, ut sibi in hoc genere temperaret, ut potius e casca vetustate eam orationem conflaret, quam nemo, nisi qui multum temporis in ea Latinitate cognoscenda contriverit, sese sperat assecuturum. Scio viros eruditos esse, qui non omnia huius modi verba ab antiquis scriptoribus sumpta, sed temere et pro libidine conficta putent … sed ego libentius sequar Oudendorpium … bene iudicantem, nihil Appuleium sine exemplo scripsisse … ‘He was so far from restraining himself in this sphere that he preferred to throw together that style of his from primitive antiquity, that no-one can hope to follow unless he has spent a great deal of time in learning that kind of Latin. I know that there are scholars who believe that all his words of this kind are not taken from ancient writers but are wilfully and capriciously invented … but I would prefer to follow Oudendorp’s sound view that Apuleius wrote nothing without a model’. This partial defence of exquisite lexical archaism interestingly echoes the programmatic statements of Fronto, who was (as already noted above) yet to be rediscovered.22 But Ruhnken’s relative moderation here does not detract from his overall negative judgement on Apuleius’ archaism, which is followed by an uncompromising attack on his ‘swollen’ style as a whole (IV): Est sane ista antiquitatis affectatio molesta Appuleium legentibus. Nescio tamen, an molestior sit tumor Africanus, quo orationem, in iis quidem libris, quos a doctis legi voluit, praeter modum et pudorem inflavit. ‘That affectation of archaism is irritating enough for Apuleius’ readers. But even more irritating may be the African tumidity, with which he in————— 22
Cf. Marache 1957.
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flated his style beyond the limits of shame, at least in those books which he wished men of learning to read.’ Here Ruhnken seems to be referring to issues of syntax rather than vocabulary, to the deliberate and exuberant accumulations of effects of sound, balance and sentence-structure which were later to be so notably attacked by Norden (see below). Half a century later in the preface to his important edition of 1842,23 Hildebrand could only assent to Ruhnken’s judgement on Apuleius’ style in the Metamorphoses, pointing again to its ‘African’ exuberance and the contrast with the more Ciceronian works (xxiv): Mihi vero accuratius libros perlegenti haec statim quaestio sese obtulit, cur in Metamorphosi auctor turgidum plane et conquisitum et ad taedium usque luxurians genus dicendi affectasset: qua quidem verborum copia nimiisque eloquendi ac fucatis illis pigmentis tanto lectorem fastidio affecit, ut nisi animus vivida imaginandi et speciosa describendi alliceretur ratione, librum statim e manibus deponeremus. Quodsi Florida praecipue tamen Apologiam ceterosque Apuleii libros accuratissime perlectos cum Metamorphosi contuleris, unius eiusdemque esse scriptoris omnia vix tibi persuaseris. ‘As I read carefully through the works this question presented itself to me immediately – why the author in the Metamorphoses had affected a style which was plainly swollen and recherché, and exuberant to the point of over-satiety. He affects the reader with such disgust with his abundance of words and his excessive and artificial colours of speech, that were it not that our mind is attracted by his vivid powers of imagination and his decorative manner of description, we would put down the book at once. But if you compare the Florida and especially the Apologia and the other works of Apuleius with the Metamorphoses after the closest of readings, you will have difficulty in convincing yourself that all these works are by one and the same author.’
————— 23
Hildebrand 1842.
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Hildebrand attributed this exuberance again to Apuleius’ African origin and suggests that the Metamorphoses were composed early in his career at Rome, a view which has recently been notably revived (xxv):24 Omnes enim Afros constat antiqua quaeque affectasse …. Si vero Apuleium saepius quam ceteros Afros hanc antiquitatem plane obsoletam sectatum fuisse apparet, minus dedita opera quaesitae affectationi hoc tribuo, qua sui temporis perversitatem corruptumque iudicium perstringere voluerit, quam iuvenili eius ingenio et quae in adulescentulis saepius observari potest, verborum inusitatorum captationi, qua orationem vividiorem reddi et exornari putant. ‘For it is generally agreed that all the African writers affected whatever was ancient … but if it clearly emerges that Apuleius pursued this wholly outdated archaism more often than other African writers, on reflection I attribute this less to a search for affectation and more to his youthful spirit and to something which is often observable in young men, the taking up of unusual words, with which they think that their style is made more vivid and ornate.’ But it was in the matter of allegory, untouched by Oudendorp, that Hildebrand mounted a defence of Apuleius. In a discussion of some ten pages he generates a Platonising allegory which is recognisably based on Fulgentius, of which I cite his outline summary (p. xxxviii): Psychem castam intelligo atque pudicam animam, qualem a summo numine profectam Plato iam disseruit. Cupido sive Eros coelestis ille est et sanctus amor qui pudicae et purae insitus animae a natura est, unde eius nominatur maritus, quia artissimo naturae vinculo cum Psyche coniunctus est. ‘I understand Psyche to be the chaste and innocent soul, in the form that set out from the supreme deity according to Plato. Cupid or Eros is that heavenly and holy love which is naturally inherent in the chaste and pure soul, and is hence called her husband, since he is joined with Psyche in the closest of nature’s bonds.’ ————— 24
Cf. Dowden 1994.
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In the second half of the nineteenth century, with the rise of the concept of ‘African’ Latin, anti-Apuleian scholars tend to focus on the issue of outlandish language rather than frivolous content. The most notable treatment is that of Norden in Die Antike Kunstprosa (1898), who like Huet before him emphasised the sophistic element in Apuleius. Norden, writing with youthful polemic in his first major book, opposed the then fashionable idea of African Latin, but delivered an attack on Apuleian Latinity which held no punches: Bei ihm feiert der in bacchantischen Taumel dahinrasende, wie einer wilder Strom sich selbst überstürzende, in ein wogendes Nebelmeer wüster Phantastik zergehende Stil seine Orgien; hier paart sich mit dem ungeheuerlichsten Schwulst der affektierteste Zierlichkeit; alle die Mätzchen, die dem weichlichsten Wohlklang dienen, werden in der verschwenderischsten Weise angebracht, als da sind Alliterationen, Ohren und Augen verwirrende Wortspiele, abzirkelte Satzteilchen mit genauester Korresponsion bis auf den Silbenzahl und mit klingelndem Gleichklang am Ende. Die römische Sprache, die ernste würdige Matrone, ist zum prostibulum geworden, die Sprache des lupanar hat ihre castitas ausgezogen. ‘In him the style which rages away in Bacchic ecstasy, which rushes along like a wild torrent, which vanishes into a misty surging sea of depraved imagination, celebrates its debaucheries; here the most affected delicacy is coupled with the most monstrous bombast; all the tricks which serve to produce the most feeble euphony are applied in the most extravagant manner, such as alliterations, word-plays which bewilder eye and ear, precisely-shaped clauses with the most exact correspondences, even as far as the number of syllables, and with a jingling harmony at the end. The Roman language, a serious and worthy matron, has become a prostitute; the language of the brothel has stripped away her chastity.’25 In the nineteenth century, where the modern novel was so central to general literary output, appreciation of this ancient novelist was inevitably linked with critical battles over the novel more generally, battles not entirely van-
————— 25
Norden 1898, II. 600–601.
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ished by the day of Ben Edwin Perry.26 In the essay ‘The Art of Fiction’ of 1884, the earliest of his contributions to the criticism of the novel, Henry James suggests that it is only recently that the novel had become a respectable subject of literary criticism,27 and indeed the novel had become increasingly socially, morally and intellectually acceptable since Jane Austen’s determined defence of it under fire in the fifth chapter of Northanger Abbey (1818, written 1798), a development which is well traced by Trollope in his Autobiography of 1883.28 For his critics in the early twentieth century, Apuleius could thus be received as a late and non-canonical writer of barbarous style, best known for his work in a genre which was barely intellectually respectable. This was the context in which Rudolf Helm entered on his project of editing all the (non-philosophical) works of Apuleius, which occupied him for the first decade of the twentieth century.29 Helm was a junior colleague of Eduard Norden in Berlin for the whole of that time, but clearly did not share Norden’s disdain for Apuleian style. In the 1910 Latin preface to the Florida which gathers Helm’s views on all the Apuleian works, he argues (rightly I think) against the view that the statement in the prologue of the Metamorphoses that the narrator learnt Latin late in life applies to Apuleius himself: Sed hoc quidem vix credet qui eum scriptores antiquos haud sine fructu legisse animadvertet, qui optime eum verba elegisse sentiet ut rebus et personis accommodaret, qui denique intelleget summam iam artem inesse in hoc libro, quem primum scriptum esse putant. ‘But this will hardly be credible to anyone who notes that he has read the older writers not without profit, who feels that he has made an excellent selection of words to suit his material and characters, who indeed under————— 26
27
28
29
On the battles over the status of the novel in Britain cf. e.g. Altick 1957 110–116, 123– 126, 194–198; for Perry’s consciousness of the debate cf. Perry 1967, 330. James 1957, esp. 23 ‘Only a short time ago it might have been supposed that the English novel was not what the French call discutable’. Trollope 1946, 194–198, arguing that the novel became respectable in the period 1826– 1876. His editions (all subsequently revised) first appeared as follows: Apologia (Helm 1905), Metamorphoses (Helm 1907) and Florida (Helm 1910).
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stands that this book (which they think was written first) contains the highest art.’30 The issue of the high quality of Apuleian style in the Metamorphoses is here connected with another argument, that the novel could not have been the earliest work of Apuleius (with which I also agree).31 But Helm principally pursued another angle of negative criticism, one reflected in other scholarly work of the early twentieth century – the inappropriateness of Apuleius’ inserted tales and the general confusion of his narrative line. Both these emerged from increasing scholarly interest in the relationship between Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and its Greek model, rightly identified by Helm himself with the lost Greek Metamorphoses of Lucius of Patras, which suggested that Apuleius should be viewed as an inferior Latin imitator and even mangler of a Greek work. This is clearly the mindset behind Helm’s view on the inserted tales, quae quamquam lector ut laetetur efficiunt, tamen totum narrationis corpus, ut ita dicam, totum deformant, ‘which though they effect pleasure for the reader, nevertheless (so to speak) deform the whole body of the narrative.’32 Modern scholars have a very different view, and the consensus, following German work of the generation following Helm and especially the work in English of James Tatum in his important article of 1969, is (to cite Tatum himself) that ‘by anticipation of later events; by sensitivity to the narrative ‘environment’; by extremely subtle interrelationships between characters in a tale, and the people hearing it; and by thematic relationship to the final “Isisbook”, the tales are not simply relevant to the main story, they are in fact essential to its conclusion and its philosophy of human life’.33 We will return shortly to the key question of the coherence of Book 11 with the rest of the novel, but on the issue of the coherence of the tales with the main narrative Helmian scepticism is outmoded given modern research, which argues rightly for high Apuleian narrative and narratological skill. The supposed incoherence of the tales was for Helm symptomatic of a larger incompetence, which he attacks in a section entitled De rebus ne————— 30 31 32 33
Helm 1910, xi–xii. See Harrison 2000, 9–10. Helm 1910, v. Tatum 1969, 525 = Tatum 1999, 192.
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glegenter compositis, ‘on material carelessly composed.’34 Though it is undeniable that a long work such as the Metamorphoses, like the epics of Homer and Vergil, has its small inconsistencies, some of Helm’s examples are indicative of an unwillingness to accept that Apuleius was capable of subtle intertextuality. For instance, Helm discusses the scene from the narrative of Aristomenes to Lucius in the first book, where Aristomenes relates his own despairing attempt at suicide in a shabby inn, including his farewell address to his bed (Met. 1.16): ‘grabbatule, animo meo carissime, qui mecum tot aerumnas exanclasti’. Helm comments: ita …lectum appellare videtur, non qui per unam noctem mutilo et putri et alieno, sed qui suo et semper eodem usus est. sed non satis perspicio, qua ex conditione rerum haec possint sumpta esse, quae certe ad amantis tristem multo magis quadrarent, ‘this kind of address to a bed seems not to belong to someone who has used another’s mangled and crumbling bed for one night, but to someone who has used his own and always the same one. But I do not understand from what circumstances these words are derived, which would certainly be much more fitting for a lamenting lover’. Helm, though he is conscious to some degree elsewhere of both Apuleius’ use of previous authors and his sense of humour, does not see (as Silvia Mattiacci has most fully explored)35 that this scene brilliantly parodies several literary sources, and especially the tragic scenes in Euripides’ Alcestis where the queen Alcestis, about to die for her husband Admetus, bids a touching farewell to her marital bed (177–80), or in Sophocles’ Trachiniae, where the suicidal Deianira does the same (920– 22), as well as the scene in Vergil’s Aeneid where Dido, bent on suicide, bids farewell to the bed which she had shared with Aeneas (4.648–52). This (again) is one of many cases in which detailed modern research can make a concrete contribution, and where an undemanding view of Apuleian literary texture is less effective for interpretation. Another key question confronted by Helm is that of the relevance of Book 11 to the rest of the novel: nam ut nos magnopere iuvat de diebus festis piaculisque et pompis Isidis edoceri, ita tota haec descriptio aliena est a hilari lubricaque fabula quae antecedit, ‘for though it gives us great pleasure to be given such full information about the festivals, offerings of processions of Isis, this whole description is alien to the amusing and lubricious tale ————— 34 35
Helm 1910, xv–xvii. Mattiacci 1993.
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which precedes it.’36 This fundamental issue was also famously faced by Ben Edwin Perry in his The Ancient Romances of 1967. By that date Perry had spent some five decades working on Apuleius and connected texts, and his fundamental view was that of Helm, and was well paraphrased as follows: ‘his method was to look for evidence of res neglegenter compositae and to argue from them that Apuleius was either unwilling or unable to develop and sustain a single idea.’37 Naturally with this general view, Perry followed Helm in viewing Book 11 as basically inconsistent with the rest of the Metamorphoses. His judgement, though lengthy, is worth citing for its emphasis and for its importance in the scholarly debate, though by 1967 the mood was turning the other way:38 ‘… the last book of the Metamorphoses was added for a very special purpose …to redeem his book from the appearance of complete frivolity. To publish for sheer entertainment a lengthy work of fiction in the form of dramatically sput-out witch stories, fairy tales and tales of sensational or scandalous adventure, all of which types of prose narrative were looked upon with disdain by his contemporaries as trivial old wives’ tales (aniles fabulae), or tales fit only to be told on the street-corner (aureae fabulae), was something that Apuleius really wanted to do, but did not dare to do, without qualifying his work in such a way as would leave the impression that he had, after all, something of serious importance to convey by it, which was instructive, and high-minded, and thereby worthy of an educated writer. Book XI served that necessary purpose, but only in a very perfunctory and superficial fashion. Instead of building into the framework of his story-book as a whole an ostensible meaning in terms of satire, philosophical critique, or allegory which would be evident from start to finish, as is the case in Lucian’s novels, Apuleius is content merely to tack on at the end a piece of solemn pageantry as ballast to offset the prevailing levity of the preceding ten books. With his showman’s instinct for the value of immediate dramatic effects (which often leads him into self-contradiction elsewhere), he feels that all he needs to do in order to prevent the publication of his old wives’ tales ————— 36 37 38
Helm 1910, vi. Sandy 1978, 124. Cf. e.g. Sandy 1978.
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from becoming a scandal in the literary world, comparable to that of Aristides’ Milesiaca, is to make a personal appearance on the stage in the last act, bow deeply and reverently before his audience, and overwhelm them with the magic of his eloquence on a subject of grave and universal import, a subject about which he speaks with earnest conviction and sincerity, but which does not belong with the story of Lucius.’39 At the same time, Perry, though critical of Apuleius’intellectual content and level of seriousness, was (like Helm) more positive about his style: ‘Indeed, it is in the realm of style that Apuleius has made his most original contribution to literature; for that style – so highly colored, fanciful and rococo, so studiously piquant and recherché, and so picturesque, varied and opulent – is shaped in large measure by his own romantic outlook on the world.’40 A romantic Apuleius is an interesting concept for modern Apuleian scholars; but it is plainly with this idea that Perry justified his interest in the writer, since he argued that the Metamorphoses was ‘deeply permeated with a spirit of belief in the hidden and marvellous potentialities of nature and human life.’41 Perry certainly did not hold an allegorical view of the Metamorphoses: in a terse footnote he dismisses the work of religious allegorisers such as Merkelbach as ‘all nonsense to me,’42 and he plainly holds that Apuleius’ Platonism is too superficial to provide an allegorical interpretation of his novel. 2: Beyond Perry: Present and Future Directions in Apuleian Studies Thus in Apuleian criticism up to Perry we have seen three main strands in a predominantly negative reception of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses: criticism on the grounds of extravagant and decadent style, of frivolous and low-brow content, and of poor literary and narrative technique. Perry himself would agree to the last two of these charges while tolerating Apuleian style as in————— 39 40 41 42
Perry 1967, 244–245. Perry 1967, 239. Perry 1967, 239. Perry 1967, 336 n.17.
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teresting for its exoticism. In this final section I will look at these three areas in turn, trace the development of scholarship in each since Perry and open up future prospects, and conclude by suggesting some further directions which Apuleian scholarship might usefully explore. In broader academic terms, the prejudice which underlies the view of Apuleius as late, decadent and second-rate is one which is under general challenge in modern classical studies. Driven partly by the vast body of existing research on traditionally canonical periods and genres, recent scholarship has focussed on writers and writings beyond conventional bounds and has re-evaluated texts previously viewed as ‘marginal’; the Greek and Roman novels have recently been identified as a genre which has raised its standing as a result of this process,43 and though there is naturally a danger of making exaggerated claims for the interest and quality of previously neglected texts, the avidity with which scholars have taken to the novel and the enthusiasm of their students who have seen the ancient novels become increasingly central to classics courses suggest that these texts provide substantial subjects of study. It is not perhaps coincidental that this movement within the classics has coincided with the more general challenge to the literary canon in the ‘culture wars’ of the 1980’s and early 1990’s.44 As we shall see below, this ideological metamorphosis has affected scholarship on Apuleian language, literary texture and narrative technique, changing the common perception of the Metamorphoses: no longer an incoherent and marginal work in barbarous Latin, it is now viewed as an elegantly expressed, intertextually complex and narratologically intriguing central work of Roman literature. Apuleian style and language Between the time of Norden and Perry most analysis of the style of the Metamorphoses was devoted to listing its syntactical features45 or to working out the balance in its diction between everyday and elevated Latin.46 Callebat’s later work47 has used his analysis of the mixed register of the style in ————— 43 44 45 46
47
Kennedy 2001, 115. On the ‘culture wars’ see especially the essays in Gorak 2001. The main contribution of Bernhard 1927. The route taken by Médan 1925 and especially Callebat 1968, which remains the most detailed and helpful work on the topic. Now conveniently collected in Callebat 1998.
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the Met. to argue that the richness and exuberance of Apuleian style represents a lively and vivid view of the world and a genuine awareness and seeking after religious experience and philosophical truth. Rather different and perhaps less speculative is the work by scholars such as Tatum, who like Norden ascribes many of the features of Apuleius’ style to his sophistic intellectual context and his continuation of the Gorgianic tradition of rhetorical Asianism.48 This is also true of perhaps the most useful recent brief analysis of Apuleian style, that of Kenney,49 who also views Apuleius as an Asianist but as belonging to the central tradition of Latin literary style. Importantly, he stresses the poetic elements in Apuleius’ language in the Metamorphoses, and suggests that Apuleius’ exuberance derives partly from this feature rather than from mere eccentricity. More thought is needed here on the way in which artistic prose replaced poetry as a vehicle for complex and ambitious literature under the high Roman empire, the very period where Apuleius is writing; the scattered evidence needs to be brought together and analysed in a detailed and literaryhistorical manner. We need in effect a general history of Latin prose in the second century from (say) Pliny the younger to Tertullian, in which Apuleius can be placed in his proper context. This should cover not only the development of the language of prose through the use of archaic and poetic vocabulary, but also issues of genre and literary history, especially the way in which more flexible prose genres such as the novel and the miscellany tend to replace conventional poetic genres such as the epic, something which has been only briefly touched on in the work of by scholars such as Marache and Steinmetz.50 One interesting feature of recent work is a revival of discussion of African Latin. Lancel has distinguished between the supposed lexical Africitas identified by nineteenth-century scholars and the tendency of writers from Roman North Africa to a high rhetorical style with exuberance and euphony as its main features,51 which fits well Juvenal’s quip that Africa is the nutricula causidicorum (7.14). There is no real evidence for lexical Africitas, he argues, but the shared general stylistic features demand further research. Kenney went beyond this in speaking of Apuleius’ ‘creative and poetic atti————— 48 49 50 51
Tatum 1979, 135–159. Kenney 1990a, 28–38. Marache 1952, Steinmetz 1982. Lancel 1987.
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tude to the language, suggesting the experimental exploitation of an adopted tongue, as by an Ennius or a Nabokov’.52 However, it seems likely that from his early education in Madauros Apuleius learnt Latin before Greek, though he may have known the vernacular Punic before either, and Latin is therefore for him the natural tongue of literary composition rather than an artificial form of discourse; and if learning Latin in an African context engendered such style, we would expect more of it in writers of similar background such as Fronto, who shares Apuleian archaism but not his exuberance. Most recently, Petersmann has shown that there is clear evidence from inscriptions and grammarians for some elements of pronunciation, orthography and even morphology as especially prevalent in Roman North Africa, but he denies that this extended to the written language and argues that such elements may be survivals from the archaic vulgar Latin of earlier Roman settlers.53 On this front Bakhtinian formalism might be a useful theoretical model. Though Bakhtin himself wrote about Apuleius in his work on the chronotope, novelistic space and time,54 he did not discuss his language in detail apart from pointing to the potential openness created by Apuleian bilingualism.55 Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia can be profitably pursued further in an Apuleian context. Heteroglossia is roughly speaking the range of informal, varied, dialectal or colloquial languages which differ from and oppose official or literary discourse.56 In Bakhtinian terms, a parodic novel such as the Metamorphoses is a site of continuous dialogue between this subversive linguistic tendency and official or elevated literary language. This would seem to fit well with the combination between colloquial, archaic and literary elements consistently detected by detailed research into the style of Apuleius’ novel, and a study which could draw together the detailed linguistic evidence while applying a Bakhtinian model would be an exciting prospect; this key idea has been partly applied at a more thematic level in Finkelpearl 1998, who shows that the Met. seems to fit well the Bakhtinian notion that the novel naturally subverts and ironises more elevated literary genres, given its largely ironic relationship to epic, but could be pursued in more detail. ————— 52 53
54 55 56
Kenney 1990a, 29. Petersmann 1998. ‘African’ pronunciation could be recognised as such: cf. Statius Silv. 4.5.45 sermo Poenus with Coleman 1988, 169. Bakhtin 1981, 111–123. Bakhtin 1981, 60, 64. Cf. Bakhtin 1981, 259–422 with the analysis of Vice 1997, 18–44.
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Frivolity of content Many modern readers still feel the urge to interpret Apuleius’ Metamorphoses as an allegorical text, feeling that the surface story is too insubstantial and frivolous for so apparently ambitious a literary work, and thinking (unlike Perry) that the novel can be unified through an allegorical interpretation. The most extreme example of this tendency is Merkelbach: his view that the whole novel, and especially the story of Cupid and Psyche, represents an allegorical version of the conversion of Lucius to Isiac religion in the last book, though much attacked, has been sustained by the same writer a generation later.57 Other accounts have been advanced claiming that the novel is a Platonising allegory, a view as we have seen which goes back at least as far as Beroaldus in the Renaissance.58 In my view these attempts to make Apuleius intellectually respectable in terms of uplifting content are misconceived, for reasons which say more about intuitive modern views on the supposed didactic and moralising function of high literature than about the Metamorphoses.59 The programmatic prologue of the Met. itself claims that the reader will receive pleasure from reading this text (1.1 lector intende, laetaberis): there is no requirement to make further demands of ideological or improving content, and such content is in any case not the sole criterion for intellectual interest. What we have in the Metamorphoses, as (I would argue) in Ovid’s homonymous epic poem, is a type of literature where the prime intellectual element derives not from a didactic message but from a complex and allusive literary texture. One aspect helpful here is the connection of Apuleius with the Second Sophistic, which has been recently strongly emphasised.60 Here is a literary environment where epideictic-type performance, whether in person or on the page, is a prime criterion of literary standing, and where literary texture and stylistic features such as archaism (or pure ‘Attic’ Greek) are often more important than the didactic content of a piece of writing. The Metamorphoses constantly demonstrates the cultural capital (to use Bourdieu’s term)61 of its author and his elite literary education, and this sociological ————— 57 58
59 60 61
Merkelbach 1962 and 1995. See pp. 146–147 above and Thibau 1965, Gianotti 1986, Kenney 1990b, Fick-Michel 1991. See Harrison 2000, 235–259. Cf. Sandy 1997; Harrison 2000. Cf. Bourdieu 1984, and the comment of Robbins 2000, 32–36.
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aspect of literary culture in the second century AD, already raised for the Greek sophists,62 could be given more emphasis in the study of Apuleius.63 The Met. is clearly an act of self-definition and self-advertisement by an elite intellectual, and deserves further study as such. Literary and narrative technique The reassessment of the literary and narrative texture of the Metamorphoses has been perhaps the most important achievement of the post-Perry generation of Apuleian scholars. In terms of literary texture, the careful analyses of Apuleian style made by Callebat and others have laid the ground work for the type of thoroughgoing literary and linguistic commentary to be found in the latest volumes of the Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius,64 where ten or more pages of commentary are dedicated to each page of Latin text, recognising the depth of allusion and literary ornament underlying Apuleian language, and showing that apparent peculiarities are due to conscious archaism, subtle intertextual echoes, and recognisable planning. These commentaries have been supplemented by an increasing number of studies.65 These works and others of similar content make the kind of connections long familiar to readers of the scholarship on Latin poetry, showing a wide range of literary allusion and a subtle adaptation of diverse material to a particular novelistic context. This has allowed research on the literary texture of Apuleius to connect with what one might call the ‘intertextual revolution’, the way in which literary allusion and its various forms have come to dominate the most interesting recent work on Latin poetry, for example in the work of Conte, Thomas, Hinds, Barchiesi and Hardie.66 The fruits of applying intertextual literary analysis to the Metamorphoses are still to be wholly harvested. The recognition of complex literary texture has also led to a revaluation of the issue of the novel’s readership. Earlier views, famously including that ————— 62 63 64 65
66
Cf. Schmitz 1997. Harrison 2000, 226 n.88 at least mentions Bourdieu, but more can be done. Cf. Hijmans et al 1995, Zimmerman 2000, van Mal-Maeder 2001. Most notable perhaps are Walsh 1970, the first sustained argument for complex and allusive Apuleian literary texture, and Finkelpearl 1998, which is the first book-length study of Apuleius’novel to engage with the theory of intertextuality. For other work (especially by Mattiacci and Frangoulidis) cf. Harrison 1999, xxxiv–xxxv. Conte 1986, Thomas 1999, Hinds 1998, Barchiesi 2001, Hardie 2002.
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of Perry himself, that the implied readership of ancient novels was at a cultural level below that of the readers of elevated ancient texts such as epic and tragedy have now been refuted, not only through our increased knowledge of the circulation and production of literary texts, but also through the aforementioned scholarly analysis of novelistic texts which shows their highly literary and allusive nature. Novels like the Metamorphoses can thus be expected to engage in literary allusion at the same level as (say) the Aeneid or Ovid’s Metamorphoses and achieve readerly recognition. A comparable reversal has taken place in the analysis and valuation of Apuleian narrative technique. In terms of macro-narrative, most modern scholars are agreed against Perry that the Metamorphoses shows a conscious and consistent thematic unity and that Book 11 is organically linked to Books 1–10, even if they disagree about the nature of the unifying thread;67 the specific connections between the conversion-narrative of Book 11 and the adventures of Lucius in Books 1–10 uncovered by close scholarly analysis are too many to be ignored.68 In terms of micro-narrative, I alluded above to Helm’s heading ‘de rebus neglegenter compositis’, and there is a similar section in Perry’s chapter on Apuleius which is a natural extension of his belief in the work’s overall lack of unity and the ‘bolting-on’ of Book 11. These concerns with illogicalities, especially in the embedded narrative stories of Aristomenes and Thelyphron, have some marginal validity, but too often impose twentieth-century standards of realism and consistency which both Homer and Vergil would fail; they also exclude deliberate narrative confusion and misleading which has since been seen as a characteristic Apuleian trait, and effects such as dramatic irony or the second-time reader. Thus Byrrhena’s words at 2.31.2, hunc tua praesentia nobis efficies gratiorem, ‘you will make this day more pleasant for us by your presence’, plainly look forward to the forthcoming appearance of Lucius in the mock-trial at the festival of laughter. Perry regards this as impossible, since neither Byrrhena nor Lucius know that the trial will take place, as it is the result of unexpected events yet to happen,69 but this view ignores the perspective of the omniscient narrator and the second-time reader, for whom this statement is proleptically amusing and dramatically ironic.70 This passage has a close paral————— 67 68 69 70
Cf. e.g. Sandy 1978, and further material cited at Harrison 1999, xxxii. Useful here are Wlosok 1969 (translated as Wlosok 1999) and Alpers 1980. Perry 1967, 279–280. See van Mal–Maeder 2001, 400.
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lel in another utterance of Byrrhena, where, as Lucius looks at the statue of Actaeon, she says (2.5.1) tua sunt cuncta quae vides, ‘everything you see belongs to you’, both offering him the run of her house and suggesting without knowing it that Lucius too will come to disaster through voyeurism and bestial metamorphosis, though here there are also cleverly misleading elements (Lucius will not die, and will be saved rather than destroyed by the intervention of a goddess).71 Some countervailing voices were available even in Perry’s own time,72 but one of the most important developments in post-Perry Apuleian scholarship has been the general emergence of the view that the Metamorphoses is not only a work of careful thematic unity (whether or not through Isiac and Platonic colour) but also one in which all the resources of narrative technique are consistently exploited to subtle effect. Two important articles published shortly after Perry’s book deserve mention here as symptomatic of this upwards revaluation of Apuleian narrative technique: that of Tatum,73 which first adequately demonstrated the way in which the inset tales reflected the main plot of the novel, and that of Smith,74 which pointed to the careful and subtle effects achieved by the separation of narrator and author. The most significant piece of work, however, is that of Winkler’s Actor and Auctor,75 a book which has been rightly characterised as epoch-making in Apuleian studies,76 and on which I will not linger here. Its suggestion that the Metamorphoses is like a detective novel in which the ending leads to reassessment of the previous plot has been a vital contribution to arguments for overall unity and coherent structure, while its constant stress on Apuleian narratological tricksiness, hermeneutic playfulness and deconstructive tendencies has provided many creative answers to apparent difficulties and inconsistencies as well as demonstrating the text’s narrative competence and indeed virtuosity.
————— 71 72 73 74 75 76
See van Mal–Maeder 2001, 91–92. See Harrison 1999, xxxv. Tatum 1969 (= Tatum 1999). Smith 1972 (= Smith 1999). Winkler 1985. Cf. e.g. Penwill 1990, Harrison 2000, xxxiii.
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Some future directions for research77 The work of Winkler shows that the application of literary-theoretical considerations can make decisive contributions to the interpretation of Apuleius. His use of narratology, along with its use by the Groningen group in the later volumes of their commentary, provides a springboard for much further analysis, whether or not specifically narratological in form.78 Other areas of theory await fruitful employment. Relatively little feminist analysis has been applied to the Metamorphoses; though some work has been done on the representation of Psyche as a feminine type79and on the possible colouring of the narrative of Cupid and Psyche by its aged female narrator,80 a feminist analysis of the function and characters of (e.g.) Pamphile, Photis and Byrrhena, or of the poor view taken of female sexuality in the ‘adultery-tales’ of Book 9 would be a very interesting development. The Metamorphoses might well respond well to postmodernist analysis, at least in its post-Winklerian form: the subversion by gaps and slippages of the master narrative of error, punishment, conversion and rescue is a key element in Winkler’s deconstructive analysis, but has a recognisably postmodern tendency, as does the stylistic combination of traditional literary language, recherché archaism and exuberant neologism, and the overall aspect of hermeneutic playfulness and parody. A current project to study Bakhtinian formalism in the context of the ancient novel will surely have much to say about Apuleius from a Bakhtinian perspective, whether in connection with his notion of heteroglossia, discussed above, or through the use of his concepts of the carnivalesque (the Isis festival of Book 11?) or the chronotope (how ‘everyday’ is the space and time of the Met, and does it vary at significant points?). A post-colonialist approach to the Metamorphoses fits (but would be complicated by) its status as an appropriation of a Greek plot (along with that plot’s implicit opposition to Roman authority – cf. e.g the account of the soldier in books 9.39–10.1, cf. Onos 44–5). Here Apuleius’ origins and location for most of his career in Roman North Africa might allow his analysis as a peripheral figure vis-à-vis the cultural core of Rome; this would not be ————— 77
78 79 80
It may be instructive to compare this final section with my views a decade ago (Bowie and Harrison 1993). A good example here is Bitel 2000. Katz 1976. van Mal–Maeder and Zimmerman 1998.
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in terms of the empire writing back (there are few signs of subaltern resentment in the Met.), but in terms of the evident anxiety of the Met. to belong to metropolitan Roman culture.81 Another area where there has been much work but where much is still needed is that of reception. The relative obscurity of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses in late antiquity and the middle ages82 is more than outweighed by its significant influence on the emerging novelistic literature of the Renaissance and early modern period,83 and there is much significant nineteenth century material.84 Looking the other way chronologically, intertextual analysis should continue to look at further earlier genres which have a particular influence on the literary texture of the Met.; here important work on Roman declamation and on New Comedy is in progress.85 Overall, there seems little doubt that future research will continue to stress the complexity, learning and subtlety of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, and its importance as a major and influential work of classical literature. Both these ideas would have been somewhat problematic for Ben Edwin Perry’s view of this work, but we should not forget that but for his foregrounding of a neglected genre throughout his academic career, and particularly at its end in his Sather Lectures, the study of the ancient novel might well not be where it is today. Bibliography Adlington, W., 1566. The Eleven Bookes of the Golden Asse, London: Henry Wykes. Alpers, K., 1980. ‘Innere Beziehungen und Kontraste als “hermeneutische Zeichen” in den Metamorphosen des Apuleius von Madauros’, WJA 6, 197–207. Altick, R.D., 1957. The English Common Reader, Chicago: Chicago UP. Ax, W., 1996. ‘Quattuor linguae latinae aetates. Neue Forschungen zur Geschichte der Begriffe “Goldene” und “Silberne Latinität” ’, Hermes 124 : 220–240. Bakhtin, M., 1981. The Dialogic Imagination [ed. M. Holquist], Austin: Texas UP. Barchiesi, A., 2001. Speaking Volumes: Narrative and intertext in Ovid and other Latin poets, London: Duckworth. Bernhard, M., 1927. Der Stil des Apuleius von Madaura, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer
————— 81 82 83
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For the Met. and the culture of Rome cf. Dowden 1994. Cf. Schlam 1990, Horsfall Scotti 1991, Stramaglia 1996. There is some stimulating material in Doody 1997, and a monograph version of Carver 1991 (which will provide a more detailed and contextualised account) is well advanced. E.g. Walter Pater’s use of Apuleius in his Marius the Epicurean (1885); cf. Brzenk 1978. Cf. May 2002; van Mal–Maeder 2003 and 2003a (forthcoming).
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Beroaldo, P, 1500. Commentarii a Philippo Beroaldo conditi in Asinum Aureum L. Apuleii, Bologna: Faelli. Bitel, A., 2000. Quis Ille? Alter Egos in Apuleius’ Golden Ass, Oxford D.Phil.thesis. Bolgar, R.R., 1954. The Classical Heritage, Cambridge: CUP. Bourdieu, P., 1984. Distinction: a social critique of the theory of taste, London: Routledge. Bowie, E.L., and Harrison, S.J., 1993. ‘The Romance of the Novel’, JRS 83, 159–178. Brzenk, E.J., 1978. ‘Apuleius, Pater and the Bildungsroman’ in Hijmans and van der Paardt, 231–238. Brock, M.D., 1911. Studies in Fronto and his Age, Cambridge: CUP. Callebat, L., 1968. Sermo Cotidianus dans les Métamorphoses d'Apulée, Caen: Univ. de Caen. — 1998. Langages du roman latin [Spudasmata 71], Hildesheim: Olms. Carver, R.H.F., 1991. The Protean Ass: The Metamorphoses of Apuleius from Antiquity, Oxford D.Phil.thesis. Coleman, K.M., 1988. Statius Silvae IV, Oxford: OUP. Conte, G.B., 1986. The Rhetoric of Imitation, Ithaca: Cornell UP. D’Amico, J.F., 1984. ‘The Progress of Renaissance Latin Prose : The Case of Apuleianism’, RenQ 37 : 351–392. Doody, M.A., 1997. The True Story of the Novel, London: HarperCollins. Dowden, K., 1994. ‘The Roman Audience of the Golden Ass’, in J. Tatum (ed.), The Search for the Ancient Novel, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 419–434. Farrell, J., 2001. Latin Language and Latin Culture, Cambridge: CUP. Fick–Michel, N., 1991. Art et Mystique dans les Métamorphoses d'Apulée, Paris: Univ.de Franche-Comté. Finkelpearl, E.D., 1998. Metamorphosis of Language in Apuleius. A Study of Allusion in the Novel, Ann Arbor: Michigan U.P Gianotti, G.F., 1986. ‘Romanzo’ e ideologia: studi sulle Metamorfosi di Apuleio, Naples: Liguori. Gorak, J (ed.), 2001. Canon vs. Culture: Reflections on the Current Debate, New York – London: Garland. Hardie, P.R., 2002. Ovid and the Poetics of Allusion, Cambridge: CUP. Harrison, S.J., 1999 (ed.). Oxford Readings in the Roman Novel, Oxford: OUP. — 2000. Apuleius: A Latin Sophist, Oxford: OUP. Hays, B.G., 1996. Fulgentius the Mythographer, Ph.D. Diss. Cornell. Heine, R, 1978. ‘Picaresque novel versus allegory’ in Hijmans and van der Paardt, 25–42. Helm, R., 1905. Apulei Opera Quae Supersunt II.1: Apologia, Leipzig: Teubner. — 1907. Apulei Opera Quae Supersunt I: Metamorphoseon Libri XI, Leipzig: Teubner. — 1910. Apulei Opera Quae Supersunt II.2: Florida. Leipzig: Teubner. Hijmans, B.L., Jr. and van der Paardt, R.Th. (eds.), 1978. Aspects of Apuleius' Golden Ass, Groningen: Bouma’s Boekhuis. Hijmans Jr. B.L et. al., 1995. Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses Book IX, Groningen: Forsten. Hildebrand, G.F., 1842. L. Apuleii Opera Omnia I, Leipzig: Cnobloch. Hinds, S.E., 1998. Allusion and Intertext, Cambridge, CUP. Horsfall Scotti, M.T., 1991. ‘Apuleio nel mondo tardo-antico’, AAPel 66 [1990] : 75–88. Huet, P-D., 1715 [tr. S.Lewis.]. A Treatise of Romances and their Origins, London: Hooke and Caldecott. James, H., 1957 (originally 1884). ‘The Art of Fiction’ in id. [ed. L. Edel], The House of Fiction, London: Macmillan, 23–45. Katz, P.B., 1976, ‘The myth of Psyche: a definition of the nature of the feminine’, Arethusa 9, 111–118.
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Kennedy, G.A., 2001. ‘The Origins of the Concept of a Canon and its Application to the Greek and Roman Classics’ in Gorak (ed.), 105–117. Kenney, E.J., 1990a. Apuleius: Cupid &Psyche, Cambridge, CUP. — 1990b. 'Psyche and her mysterious husband', in Russell, (ed.), 175–198. Klein, U, 1967, ‘ “Gold-“ und “Silber”-Latein’, Arcadia 2 : 248–267. Krautter, K., 1971. Philologische Methode und humanistische Existenz. Filippo Beroaldo und sein Kommentar zum Goldenen Esel des Apuleius, Munich: Fink. Lancel, S., 1987, ‘Y-a-t’il une Africitas?’, REL 63, 161–182. Marache, R., 1952. La critique littéraire de langue latine et le développement du goût archaïsant au IIe siècle de notre ère, Rennes: Plihon. — 1957. Mots nouveaux et mots archaïques chez Fronton et Aulu-Gelle, Paris: Presses Univ. de France. Mattiacci, S., 1993. ‘La lecti invocatio di Aristomene: pluralità di modelli e parodia in Apul. Met.1.16’, Maia 45, 257–267. May, R., 2002. A Comic Novel? Roman and New Comedy in Apuleius' Metamorphoses, Oxford D.Phil Thesis. Médan, P., 1925. La latinité d’Apulée dans les Métamorphoses, Paris: Hachette. Merkelbach, R., 1962. Roman und Mysterium in der Antike, Berlin – Munich: Beck. — 1995. Isis Regina – Zeus Sarapis, Stuttgart: Teubner. Norden, E., 1898, Die Antike Kunstprosa vom VI. Jahrhundert v.Chr. bis in die Zeit der Renaissance II, Leipzig: Teubner. Oudendorp, F., 1786. Appulei Opera Omnia I [ed. Ruhnken, D.], Leiden: van der Eyk en Vygh. Penwill, J.L., 1990. ‘Ambages Reciprocae: Reviewing Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, in Boyle, A.J., (ed.).The Imperial Muse, II: Flavian Epicists to Claudian, Bendigo, Vic.: Aureal, 211–235. Petersmann, H., 1998. ‘Gab es ein Afrikanisches Latein? Neue Sichten eines alten Problems der lateinischen Sprachwissenschaft’, in: B. García Herńandez (ed.), Estudios de linguística latina, Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas, I. 25–36. Robbins, D., 2000. Bourdieu and Culture, London: Sage. Russell, D.A. (ed.), 1990. Antonine Literature, Oxford: OUP. Sandy, G.N, 1978. ‘Book 11: Ballast or Anchor?’, in Hijmans and van der Paardt, 123–140. — 1997. The Greek World of Apuleius [Mnemosyne Suppl.174], Leiden: Brill. Schlam, C.C., 1990. ‘Apuleius and the Middle Ages’ in Bernardo, A. and Levin, S. (eds.), The Classics in the Middle Ages, Binghamton, NY: CMERS, 363–369. Schmitz, T., 1997. Bildung und Macht: zur sozialen und politischen Funktion der zweiten Sophistik in der griechischen Welt der Kaiserzeit [Zetemata; Heft 97], Munich: Beck. Smith, W.S., 1972. ‘The Narrative Voice in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, TAPA 103, 513–534. [reprinted in Harrison (ed.), 1999, 195–216] Steinmetz, P., 1982. Untersuchungen zur römischen Literatur des zweiten Jahrhunderts nach Christi Geburt [Palingenesia 16], Wiesbaden: Steiner. Stramaglia, A., 1996. ‘Apuleio come auctor: premesse tardoantiche di un uso umanistico’, Studi Umanistici Piceni 16 : 137–161. Tatum, J., 1969. ‘The tales in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, TAPA 100, 487–527 [reprinted in Harrison (ed.) 1999, 157–194] Thibau, R., 1965. ‘Les Métamorphoses d’Apulée et la théorie platonicienne de l’éros’, Studia Philosophica Gandensia 3, 89–144. Thomas, R.F., 1999. Reading Virgil and his Texts, Ann Arbor: Michigan UP. Trollope, A., 1946 (originally 1883). An Autobiography, London: Norgate and Williams. van Mal–Maeder, D., 2001. Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses Livre II, Groningen: Forsten.
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— 2003, ‘La mise en scène déclamatoire chez les romanciers latins’ in Panayotakis, S., Zimmerman, M., Keulen, W.H. (eds.), The Ancient Novel and Beyond, Leiden – Boston: Brill, 345–355. — 2003a (forthcoming), La Fiction des Déclamations, Leiden – Boston: Brill. — and Zimmerman, M., 1998. ‘The Many Voices in Cupid and Psyche’, in Zimmerman et al, (eds.), 83–102. Walsh, P.G., 1970. The Roman Novel, Cambridge: CUP. Winkler, J.J., 1985. Auctor & Actor: a narratological reading of Apuleius’ Golden Ass, Berkeley – Los Angeles: California UP. Wlosok, A., 1969. ‘Zur Einheit der Metamorphosen des Apuleius’, Philologus 113, 68–84. — 1999. ‘On the unity of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, in Harrison (ed.), 142–156. Vice, J., 1997. Introducing Bakhtin, Manchester – New York: Manchester UP. Zimmerman, M., 2000. Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses Book X, Groningen: Forsten. — et al. (eds.) 1998. Aspects of Apuleius’ Golden Ass II: Cupid and Psyche, Groningen: Forsten.
Tale of Aristomenes: Declamation in a Platonic Mode W ARREN S. S MITH , Albuquerque B AYNARD W OODS , Pittsburgh Summary This paper suggests sources for Apuleius’ Tale of Aristomenes. The many legal references in the tale are consistent with its close resemblance to plots outlined by Cicero in De Inventione and De Divinatione; in both plots one of two travelers is murdered in an inn. This plot is then embellished by a story of two murderous witches, as found in Greek folktale. The story is further enriched by the addition of Platonic touches starting with the portrait of “Socrates” whose character both mirrors and contrasts with the famous Athenian philosopher. The first lesson for Lucius to absorb in Apuleius’ Golden Ass is the tale told by Aristomenes on the road to Hypata. This is a gripping story with a recurring legal flavor, having a repeated emphasis on Aristomenes’ fear of prosecution for the murder of his companion; this emphasis seems consistent with the origin of the tale in a courtroom debate or school declamation; declamatory themes are a common source for the plots and details of tales in this novel.1 The tale shows evidence of being cunningly stitched together from at least two major sources: the first a legal source with the flavor of the declamation schools, the second a folktale with a witchcraft emphasis. The tale which results from this combination has then been overlaid with Platonic allusion and allegory, with special reference to Plato’s Phaedrus.
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Harrison 2000, 224; van Mal – Maeder 2003.
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1) The legal jokes begin with 1.9, where one of the victims of Meroe is a lawyer, whom the witch has now humbled by turning him into a ram; his bestial aspect however has not prompted him to retire from the bar, but he continues energetically to plead causes (aries ille causas agit). The narrator of the novel himself has legal aspirations and is trained as a public speaker (prologue 1), so that the declaimerbecome-ram prefigures the narrator’s transformation into an ass as a “lawyer joke”. 2) In 1.14, after the apparent death of Socrates, Aristomenes speculates about the case which will be made against him in court, framing the accusations of a hypothetical prosecutor in the language of a legal sententia such as are categorized by Quintilian in his Institutio oratoria 8.5 (see further below). 3) The suspiciousness of Aristomenes’ desire to depart early, and alone, from the inn, after the death of Socrates, is pointedly remarked on by the sleepy innkeeper (1.15), who suspects him of murdering his companion, even without evidence of a corpse, simply because of his wanting to leave so hastily. 4) Aristomenes then attempts suicide, sure he will be found guilty because his bed is the “only witness” to what really happened (1.16). 5) The innkeeper rushes in, aroused by what he takes to be continued suspiciousness in Aristomenes’ behavior, who first wanted to leave, but is now lying in bed; then, at the surprise revival of Socrates, the innkeeper’s earlier accusations are now triumphantly dismissed by Aristomenes as “slander” (calumniaris). 6) Aristomenes, even after leaving the inn with Socrates, continues to worry that his companion will die after all, and that he will be accused of the murder; the absence of other travelers along the road, who might serve as potential witnesses, adds to his fear. After Socrates’ second and final death, Aristomenes goes into exile, trembling and fearing for his life. Thus a constant running sub-theme in the story is the possible prosecution of Aristomenes for causing the death of his companion; Aristomenes is preoccupied, almost to the point of obsession, with the possibility of being falsely condemned (indeed one school of critical thinking argues that, because Aristomenes carries out Meroe’s wishes by burying Socrates, he is in fact a kind of
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accomplice in the latter’s death).2 The injustice of such a possible suspicion about Aristomenes is heightened by the knowledge, impressed on us by the narrator (Socraten contubernalem meum…necessarium et summe cognitum, 1.6.1–2) that the two men are in reality bosom companions, and that Aristomenes, far from plotting against Socrates, has gone to great lengths to rescue him and restore him to dignity. Clearly the legal aspects of the tale are central to its orientation, and may tell us something about the origin of the plot. As the bizarre series of events unfolds, our expectations are increasingly aroused that Aristomenes will actually be charged with murder. As it turns out, in Apuleius’ manner the repeatedly expressed fears of the narrator prove to be false clues, and Aristomenes is never arrested; yet as in the case of Homer’s Bellerophon, another victim of unjust persecution (Homer Iliad 6.200–202), his life is deeply altered by the incident and he is compelled to leave his homeland and wander into exile along trackless paths. (Some of the same preoccupation with legalism, likewise creating a sense of foreboding about the fate of the narrator, pervades the subsequent Tale of Thelyphron, 2.22–30, where Apuleius slyly inserts the false expectation that Thelyphron will be mutilated by the authorities as a punishment for his failure to stay awake, 2.22.) This emphasis on an unresolved legal quandry in the witchcraft tale is easier to explain if the story has its origin in a real or hypothetical court case. In fact we can find such a case in a legal exemplum cited by Cicero in 2.4.14 of De Inventione; this exemplum is mentioned in passing in Scobie’s commentary on Book 1 of the Golden Ass,3 but it has not been given the close study it deserves as a probable important source for the Tale of Aristomenes. De Inventione, a youthful work by Cicero, seems likely to share a Greek source with the Rhetorica Ad Herennium, with which it has some close thematic and structural connections. Cicero himself, however, speaks of having patched the treatise together out of “notebooks” (commentariola) based on the lectures of his teachers at Crassus’ house,4 left it incomplete and later disparaged it (De Oratore 1.2.5). Be that as it may, its likelihood as a source on which Apuleius may have drawn is increased by its evident popularity, circulation and influence in later antiquity (commentaries were written on it by ————— 2
3 4
Perry 1967, 375 n. 22; Scobie 1975, 110–111; on Aristomenes as accomplice, Frangoulidis 1999, 375 and 387–388. Scobie 1975, 112, on 1.15. Kennedy 1972, 106–107.
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Victorinus and Grillius) and in the middle ages.5 A similar story by Cicero about two travelling companions and an innkeeper (De Div. 1.57) will be examined further below. In the tale from De Inventione, presented by Cicero in bare outline, two travelers, one a businessman with a large sum of money, meet on the road and stop together in an inn. They fall into a deep sleep. The innkeeper enters the room, draws the sword of the businessman’s companion, kills him, takes his money, replaces the sword in its scabbard, and withdraws. The dead man’s companion has slept through the murder, but then awakens and decides (for unexplained reasons) to leave the inn long before dawn. After repeated shouts he is unable to arouse his companion, but then takes his own sword (without realizing that its blade is now bloody) and other belongings, and resumes his journey. The innkeeper, discovering his absence, raises a cry of murder, and with some guests he sets out in pursuit of the traveler. They find him with the bloodstained sword. He is returned to the city and accused of murder, framed by the real criminal but with the evidence running strongly against him. If this story, or one like it, is the basis for Apuleius’ tale of Aristomenes, some of the seemingly whimsical oddities and loose ends in Apuleius’ story are explained as carryovers from the source, plot details now placed in a new context. Apuleius has added to the pathos of the story by making the two men bosom companions, in contrast with Cicero where they meet for the first time on the road. Both stories have the two men staying in the same room, and both emphasize the deepness of their sleep due to weariness (Cicero artius iam ut ex lassitudine dormire, 2.4.14; Apuleius 1.17 [spoken by Socrates] marcidum alioquin me altissimo somno excussit). In both stories, the murder is done with a sword; in Cicero’s story a sword is understandable as the protective weapon a traveler might need, but in Apuleius’ case the murder is carried out by a pair of witches who intrude into the scene, and who have probably been introduced by Apuleius into the originally separate story of the two travelers. A sword might seem an unlikely weapon for a witch to carry. Witches usually kill in a variety of other ways such as with their bare hands, or by poison or magic herbs, or by starving their victims to death; cf. Canidia in Horace Ep. 5. 32– 34; the witch in 9.31 hangs her victim. The sword may be a carryover from the legend of Medea, who uses a sword to kill her children (cf. Seneca Medea 969–970; Apuleius Apology 78, where Medea is joined with Philomela and Clytemnestra as murderesses who use swords), or its use by one of the witches ————— 5
Howell 1941, 28–29; Kennedy 1972, 106–111, 126–138.
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may be an instance of imperfect suturing by Apuleius of two disparate stories, and it provides thematic links within the Golden Ass to the sword-swallower described earlier by Lucius and to the “flashing sword” later used by Charite (8.13). Conversely, however, some of Apuleius’ touches may have been deliberately (and skillfully) added to account for unexplained details in Cicero. The hypothetical courtroom cases devised by rhetorical theorists tend to include details which seem contrived and unconvincing, and Cicero’s story is no exception: improbabilities include the landlord risking the murder of the businessman when his companion, a potential witness, was sleeping nearby (though there is an attempt to account for this by a reference to both men’s deep sleep from weariness, which the landlord sensit, was aware of), followed by the unmotivated awakening of the companion after the murderer has already departed, and his sudden desire to leave the inn in the middle of the night; finally, one is struck by the oddity of his failure to approach the murdered man to examine him after his repeated shouts do not wake him up. These loose ends in Cicero are explained away in Apuleius’ version, whose character Aristomenes is rudely awakened by the violent intrusion of the witches, and then, after the murder of Socrates, has a good reason for leaving the inn early and alone, since he wants to escape possible prosecution; he has no need to examine Socrates’ body closely, since his death after the removal of his heart seems a foregone conclusion. For good measure, the inevitability of death in such a case can even be reinforced by another legal topos, for Quintilian (Institutio oratoria 5.9.5) says that “When a man has received a wound in the heart, he is bound to die, and the reference is to the future.” In contrast with this inexorable chain of decisions by Aristomenes which seems to leave him in a trap, the man in Cicero’s story who leaves early does not realize his companion is dead, and thus has no clear motive for his sudden departure; indeed this departure seems artificially devised by the author of the tale to make him look suspicious and weight the case against him, added to the unexplained facts that he does not wake up during the murder and never approaches his companion to try to rouse him. Aristomenes, for his part, is prevented from leaving by the innkeeper who is discovered, in an almost surrealistic scene, asleep behind the door. The innkeeper interprets Aristomenes’ desire to leave before dawn as evidence of his possible guilt in murdering his companion, with whom he has been alone. Aristomenes imagines his hypothetical accusers claiming, “You could at least have called out for help, if a big
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man like you could not fight off a woman by himself…” The hypothetical charge against him is framed in such a way as to recall the language of the lawcourts. In the Roman legal system, one who has witnessed a murder has to provide a plausible explanation for his failure either to prevent the crime or to apprehend the criminals. For example, in Ps. Quint. Decl. Mai. 7.11 a father has witnessed the murder of his son, but the question arises as to why the killers are still at large. The answer by the father depends on his convincing the jurors that to take action against the killers would have been unreasonable for a father in the state of bereavement, would have called for the aid of more than one person, and moreover would not have been appropriate to his social station. These are the presumptions which apparently lie behind the father’s objection that to leave the body of his son and pursue the culprit would more properly have been the job of servants and freedmen (which he lacked), and not of a bereaved father. Aristomenes has no such ready objection since his adversary was a woman, and presumably weaker, and the deed took place in an inn, where help would presumably have been ready at hand if he had asked for it. Even worse, he creates a further suspicion when he suddenly wants to leave the inn at night. In legal terms, his departure alone would add credence to the motive of attempted escape from arrest. For example, in Rhetorica Ad Herennium 4.41.53, a defendant’s departure for home “in the dead of night” (multa nocte) after a murder is listed as a highly suspicious sign; so also Quintilian 5.10.44 (noctu existi), and Ps-Quintilian Decl. Mai. 1.13 (here the murder is made more probable by the opportunity of a secret place, weapon, and the cloak of darkness). As Aristomenes ponders the words of his hypothetical accuser, the case against him climaxes with the clever reversal of the outburst, “Therefore, since you escaped death, return to it now!” This has the force of a highly effective rhetorical climax, and is consistent with Quintilian’s definition of an epiphonema, or “explanation attached to the close of a statement or proof by way of climax” (Quint. Inst. or. 8.5.11). Moreover the sentence also has a pointed style which recalls the courtroom debates of the elder Seneca’s Controversiae. Quintilian specifically points out that sententiae often depend on paradox or surprise twist for their effect (8.5.15). The cleverness of the riposte is intended to type it as a crushing objection to Aristomenes, for which he can provide no answer (contrast, for example, the weak accusations made in court by Aemilianus, quoted verbatim in Apul. Apol. 54, which Apuleius as defendant is able easily to ridicule and refute).
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After the return of Aristomenes to the bedroom and his pathetic attempt at suicide, the innkeeper in Apuleius’ tale is suspected by Socrates of wanting to steal something; this charge blurted out by Socrates may simply be based on a natural suspicion which is associated with the profession of innkeeper (i.e. their supposed tendency to steal);6 in fact, such a taint extends to female innkeepers and Meroe herself is described as a caupona.7 Socrates’ remark, however, acquires new meaning if it is a sly glance by Apuleius at the plot of the original story recorded by Cicero, where the innkeeper measures up to his stereotype, and actually does steal the businessman’s money. Finally, in 2.13.43 of De Inventione Cicero lists a series of pertinent circumstances about the case which tend to suggest the guilt of the accused traveler, such as his approaching his companion, asking to spend the night with him, and his abandoning a supposedly intimate friend with such indifference, and wanting to leave the inn alone; many of these circumstances apply to Aristomenes as well, except the final one, that he had a bloodstained sword. Finally, another of Aristomenes’ fears has a precedent in Cicero: (1.19): The very absence of other travelers along the road added to my fear. Who would ever believe that one of two companions was murdered without the other being guilty? (quis crederet itself is a phrase which may be associated with the courtroom, see Seneca Controv. 1.1.3). In De Inventione 1.80.43 we find a similar possible argument being used in a murder case about the presence of witnesses being a possible deterrent to a crime. Though in that instance the argument is rejected by Cicero as illogical, it might have suggested the above idea to Apuleius: “The murder must have been committed in a lonely spot. How could a man be killed in a crowd?” The consideration of the location of the crime seems to have been a commonplace in deliberations about the probable guilt of a suspect; similarly the author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, in his discussion of “place” as one of the factors to be considered in deciding the guilt of the accused, says: “The Place is examined as follows: Was it frequented or deserted, always a lonely place, or deserted then at the moment of the crime?… Could the victim be seen and heard?” (2.3.7), cf.also Quint. Inst. or. 7.2.44; ps. Quint. Declam. Mai.7.9 (concerning the unreliability of a single witness to a murder occurring in a lonely place). ————— 6 7
Panayotakis 1998, 128. Scobie 1983, 94.
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In short, the inquisitiveness of the doorkeeper, who seizes on Aristomenes’ suspicious behavior, gives him an air of ominousness and eeriness, almost clairvoyance, because he knows so much and sounds trained in the law, knowing which arguments will be effective in court; furthermore, the ongoing soliloquies by Aristomenes himself, in which he is daunted by the enormity of the prima facie case against himself, give the tale a legal atmosphere. The overall effect is another reminder of the power of the two witches: their combined evil has the power of creating a likely presumption of guilt against an innocent victim, whose very kindness toward his friend, and attempts to help him, do nothing but increase the gravity of a charge of murder which can be made out against him; eventually these fears of prosecution turn him into a paranoid wreck whose subsequent life is haunted by his fears of prosecution. The second version of this story told by Cicero (De Div. 1.57; there is a closely similar version in Valerius Maximus 1.7 ext. 10) adds a few further details which Apuleius may have borrowed. Here two close friends (familiares, like the two men in Apuleius, in contrast with the two men in De Inv. who meet on the road as strangers) arrive in Megara, where one traveler stays at an inn, the other at the home of a friend. The man in the inn appears to his friend in a dream in the middle of the night, first begging for protection against the murderous innkeeper, then in a later dream, reporting the murder and instructing his friend how to find the body before the innkeeper disposes of it (this plot is also the source for the story told by Chaunticleer in Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale 2984–3049). Here the two travelers stay at separate lodgings, and there is no longer a possible suspicion that one is responsible for the other’s murder. However, the two dreams predicting and reporting the murder may have provided the suggestion for the bloody dreams described by Aristomenes and Socrates in Met. 1.18, in the second of which, as in this second story by Cicero, the dead man (as a ghost in Cicero, and as a walking corpse in Apuleius) describes his own murder8 (there is another partial parallel for the De Diviniatione in Chrysippus’ work on dreams, see Pease’s notes on Cicero, and the Suida). Apuleius may have fleshed out Cicero’s bare plot line from the De Inventione, which has the flavor of a cliched topos used to illustrate principles of courtroom procedure, into a full-blown story by weaving into it some unexpected external material. But the parallels with Cicero should warn us against assuming that Apuleius’ tale has an immediate Greek source (aside from the ————— 8
See Panayotakis 1998, 128.
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issue of the precise identity of Cicero’s hypothetical Greek sources) or must have been found in the lost Greek Metamorphoses. Whatever the immediate source may be, many of the details lend the tale a Roman flavor, and the legal interest is what we would expect from the clever Latin sophist of the Apology whose narrator forewarns us in the novel’s prologue of his double training in Greece (philosophy, which we consider more closely below) and Rome (the legal milieu of the forum). A Folktale Source The attribution of the Tale of Aristomenes to a plot found in Cicero assumes a complex process, then, because it seems to involve a combination of details from related but separate stories. But interwoven with the Ciceronian stories of two travelers is the second, and most sensational, part of the tale, involving murderous witches and their victims, which seems to come from a separate, and probably Greek, source. Several possible sources from Greek folklore lie at hand. The bursting in of the two witches on Aristomenes and Socrates, with Meroe vowing to get revenge on Socrates for the insults she has received, resembles a modern Greek tale recorded by John Lawson; Scobie remarks on the tendency of witches to “resort to members of their own sex to find remedies for real or imagined injuries inflicted on them by the opposite sex”.9 The modern folk tale, as in the Tale of Aristomenes, has two witches (they are sisters in Apuleius’ version; in the modern version, they are the wife and mother-in-law of their victim) tearing internal organs out of a sleeping man and repairing the wound so that it is not visible. Eventually, the man and his companion track down the witches and kill them. In the story as Lawson records it, the two women are Striges, capable of assuming other forms, and it is no surprise that they are drunkards (like Apuleius’ Meroe), as well as hungry for human flesh. They are also apparently capable of turning into birds like Apuleius’ Pamphile, since at one point they fly off by unspecified means to raid the local wine-shop in order to supplement their dinner of human flesh. So also in the Aristomenes tale the two women steal Socrates’ heart presumably to eat it; likewise in the Tale of Thelyphron, 2.23, the witches try to bite off strips of flesh from the corpse which Thelyphron is guarding, and end up at————— 9
Lawson 1910, 182; see the same story compared by Klinger 1907 with the Aristomenes tale; also Scobie 1975, 88–90.
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tacking Thelyphron himself in a similar manner (in other witch-stories the body parts may be collected to use as ingredients in performing magic spells, as in the grisly collection assembled by Pamphile in Golden Ass 3.17). As in Apuleius, the horror of the folktale story consists partly in a man’s discovering that his bedpartner has murderous, even vampirish intentions against him (compare also the story of Tobit from the Biblical Apocrypha). What is notably absent from the story of the two witches as recorded by Lawson is the kind of sexual jealousy which is so strong a motivator of Meroe in the Tale of Aristomenes, even driving her to kill the man who wants to escape from her embraces. Still, by using a modified version of this folktale in his story in combination with the episode from Cicero, Apuleius caps the emotional tension and irony by interweaving two stories which combine intimacy with violence: the sexual intimacy of two lovers (in the folktale, husband and wife) is violently ended by the woman’s murderous intentions against her partner. This is consistent with the folktale behavior of witches who as Scobie says,10 invariably strike at those closest to them, their “kith and kin,” as Medea famously does in killing her own children. The extra shudder associated with this witchly behavior is then enhanced by Apuleius’ contaminatio whereby it is combined with a separate episode in which the close friendship of two travelling companions is not enough to prevent the suspicion that one has murdered the other. The indignation of the wrongly accused partner is highlighted (much as later, in 7.3, Lucius is horrified by the suggestion that he has robbed the house of his host Milo, whom he perversely regards as almost like a father to him), and the charge of murder against him, brought by the perfidious landlord, is reduced to a hypothetical case against Aristomenes which never actually is brought to court, while the suggestion by Socrates that the landlord wants to rob him is the only vestige of the actual thievery by the landlord in the original story. The witchcraft and the sexual jealousy imported by Apuleius from the folktale source have greatly added to the human interest of the tale in his version of it. This Greek folktale recording the murderous activity of two witches is sometimes cited as a guarantee of a Greek source for the tale of Aristomenes; obviously it is connected to Apuleius’ story in some of its details, but is far removed from it in tone and atmosphere. Apuleius’ tale has been fleshed out with a richness and complexity that seem to suggest a variety of sources, and ————— 10
Scobie 1983, 87–88: he observes that a wife’s resorting to witchcraft may be a consequence of the lack of legal channels available to her for redress of wrongs.
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remind us of the Romanness in many respects. In addition to its likely inspiration for part of its plot in the law courts and rhetorical theory, and its dashes of philosophy, the story is noteworthy for its macabre humor, which gives it the touches of what we would call a black comedy. The victory of the domineering female and the humbling of the male have a very Roman flavor suggesting satire or New Comedy. Horace’s Canidia has clearly influenced the portrait of the witches. Socrates’ lover Meroe has supernatural powers: not only can she play various magical tricks on her lovers or people who thwart her, but she has control over the elements themselves, can lower the sky or suspend the earth, light up Tartarus itself. So far she sounds like a replica of Canidia, who in Horace’s Epode 17 boasts she can tear down the moon by her spells, or raise the dead (Epode 17. 78–79). The fictional Socrates has been emaciated, prematurely aged, reduced to living as a beggar; his skin has yellowed; these symptoms are very similar to the complaints by Horace as narrator of Epode 17.21–25 where he complains that he has become an old man and his own health has been ruined (including the yellowed skin) by the relationship with Canidia. Furthermore the implacable Canidia in that same poem threatens to use Horace as a horse and ride around on him (74–75); Apuleius’ witches similarly assume the dominant position, crouching on top of their victim Aristomenes, and urinate on him as a final reminder of their swinishness, a kind of triumph of corporal sensuality over the intellect (with the “man of excellent valor” reduced to the helplessness of a newborn baby). It is probable that a similar point is made later on in the narrative, when Fotis makes love to Lucius in the dominant position, by mounting and riding on him—a victory of serviles voluptates over the cloistered and helpless intellect (cf. the stories and illustrations of the “mounted Aristotle” in which a woman tricks the famous philosopher into allowing her to dominate him by riding on his back; this motif in Medieval literature and art is described in Smith 199511). In addition, the prominence in Apuleius of the theme of sexual jealousy causes Meroe and her partner, particularly in Meroe’s nagging of her partner Socrates, to pick up comic aspects from their resemblance to virago wives from Roman comedy. The attack by the witches, for example, on Meroe’s reluctant lover, resembles a scene out of farce, like a verbal battle between a married couple with Meroe in the role of a shrewish, demanding wife who thoroughly intimidates her aged husband. Good examples from Plautus are the matron Artemonia intruding on her husband in the appropriately named ————— 11
Smith 1995, passim.
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“Comedy of Asses,” Asinaria, and the trickery and taunts by Cleostrata against her erring husband Lysidamus in the Casina. In Plautus’ “Comedy of Asses,” its title alone suggesting the Asinus Aureus, the cheating husband Demaenetus and his son recline at table, drinking and cavorting with a prostitute, and the Plautine wife Artemona eavesdrops on them, apparently through a window of the house, and eventually bursts in on them much like Apuleius’ Meroe does on Socrates. In Apuleius’ version, of course, Meroe does not find Socrates sleeping with another woman, but with the wretched Aristomenes, grotesquely “turned into a tortoise.” Plautus’ frustrated matrona taunts his husband for his advanced age: Perii misera, ut osculatur carnufex, capuli decus “Ugh! Poor me! How the old wreck kisses! He would look great lying in a coffin.”(892); cf. Cleostrata’s taunts at her husband in Casina 153–155: Acheruntis pabulum “Food for the grave” etc. and the sarcastic Iubeo te salvere, amator “Good morning to you, Mr. Lover!” (969) This taunting by Plautine wives is matched by the sarcasm of Meroe in 1.12 when she calls Socrates her “Endymion and Catamite,” mythological references to young men which call ironic attention to the age of Socrates (he is not specifically called a senex, but this seems implied by his decrepit physical condition as described by Aristomenes), whereas the witch herself, described as being “of rather advanced age”(altioris aetatis) fantasizes that she is an innocent young maiden whom the older Socrates has deflowered (illusit aetatulam meam). – In the “Comedy of Asses” Artemona accuses her husband of desertion and neglecting his marital duties in bed: fundum alienum arat, incultum familiarem deserit “He is sowing a neighbor’s field while he leaves his own uncultivated” (874) (cf. Meroe’s diebus ac noctibus illusit aetatulam meam, “by day and night he mocks my delicate age” 1.12). –
Artemona vows revenge on her husband for his insults:
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Ne illa ecastor faenerato funditat “truly he will pay interest for that shot at me” (902) (cf. Meroe’s me diffamat probris “he assails my reputation with his taunts”). And the metaphorical death of the erring husband in Plautus (911, mortuost Demaenetus) while he declares himself a dead man (Nullus sum, Asinaria 922) becomes a literal murder in the Aristomenes tale. All of these touches take us away from Greek folktale and remind us that many of the details of Apuleius’ portrait of Meroe could be regarded as patched together from Horace and Plautus. The complexity of the plot line and layers of meaning in the tale should give us pause about assuming that a Greek tale is necessarily the primary source for the Tale of Aristomenes. Platonism as Source The final complicating factor in Apuleius’ use of his material in this story is the extent to which it has been colored by Platonism. Apuleius, the selfdescribed philosophus Platonicus and author of learned treatises on Plato and Socrates, often alludes to the writings of Plato in his many works,12 though curiously, he never mentions Plato by name in the Golden Ass (see below). The Golden Ass, or parts of it, can be read as a Platonic allegory, with frequent references to the Phaedrus in particular as a subtext; sometimes however, the meaning of such references can be hard to read, since they are disguised behind a façade of irony and absurdity.13 Philosophy to Apuleius is a part of the general culture, and the Phaedrus in particular is frequently drawn on as a source in 2nd century AD Greek literature.14 Such irony and absurdity seem constantly to threaten to discredit the serious intention of the Platonic paraphernalia; as a consequence it is by no means clear, as is often assumed, that these references to an idealistic philosophy are meant to inspire the reader positively, or that the subtext of the novel is a kind of propaganda for Platonism. We must beware, therefore, of any assumption that the presence of Platonic elements in the Tale of Aristomenes, or any other, is a guarantee that a ————— 12 13 14
Sandy 1997, 252–255. Winkler 1985, 126. Dillon 1977, 307; Trapp 1990.
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moralistic reading of Platonism lies behind their inclusion. Harrison, speaking of the fictional “Socrates”, is correct as far as he goes: This [the fate of Socrates] could be presented as a serious moralizing lesson for Lucius, about to face similar erotic dangers in Hypata, but the entertaining black comedy overcomes any didactic element, especially since Lucius (as usual) fails to heed the cautionary tale.15 It seems easiest to argue that the “serious moralizing element” in the tale of Aristomenes, as later in that of Thelyphron, does work in its lesson, but it is a soberingly negative one. Before the powers of black magic, legal innocence is of no use; if accused, you will be convicted anyway by a corrupt jury, as the historical Socrates was (cf. Lucius’ outburst in Book 10.33 against the “vultures wearing togas,” and compare Petronius Sat. 14), moral purity and Platonic idealism, much less cleverness and caution, are no guarantee against ruination by the violent forces beyond your control. Idealism and caution are plowed under and suffer along with ignorance and vice. The characters and events in the Tale of Aristomenes cannot be fully discussed without mention of their connection with Lucius, the narrator who forces the story out of Aristomenes and is connected spiritually both with him and his companion Socrates. Aristomenes himself, well-meaning but ineffectual, prefigures the later misadventures of Lucius in his doomed efforts to confront and control the power of witches; the disreputable Socrates by his grotesquely pitiable state foreshadows the bizarre and disastrous consequences of Lucius’ surrender to sensuality and black magic, and the fate of this namesake of the most famous of philosophers also seems to imply the helplessness of philosophy to cope with the dark powers. The desire which motivates the young Lucius in the first part of the novel is both sexual and philosophical; indeed the connections between these two desires are underlined, to give just one of many possible examples, by the echo of Felix et
certius beatus in 2.7.6 (Lucius’ longing for Fotis) in 11.16 Felix hercules et ter beatus, a phrase used by the crowd in the context of their approval of Lucius’ receiving the favor of Isis. Lucius’ desire to be a bird, as expressed to Fotis, is one of wishing to leave behind earthly restraints, to be domus omnes procul (3.23). He regards birds as denizens of the air, perhaps thinking of Plato’s Timaeus 40 A1 where, of the four kinds of entities, ————— 15
Harrison 2000, 256.
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the one directly below the gods is “the kind that has wings and travels through the air.” If Lucius had read Apuleius’ De Deo Socratis, however, he would have known that “birds cannot be regarded as the proper inhabitants of the air, being in fact earthly” (318). Lucius establishes his (flawed) philosophical credentials at the start of his journey by his claim to kinship in Thessaly with Plutarch (who was actually from Chaeronea) and his nephew Sextus (1.2).16 This reference to a prominent Platonist might seem to have an increased significance since it occurs at the start of the novel, and moreover Plato himself and Platonism are never named anywhere in the Golden Ass.17 The opening sentence of Apuleius’ narrative brackets Thessaly, the land of witchcraft and magic, on either side of the two philosophers. But the glitch thrown at us by the apparent geographical mistake casts a shadow over the validity of the reference. As Plutarch is dislodged in Thessaly,18 and his philosophy implicitly pitted against witchcraft, so will the pale replica of the “philosopher Socrates” in the oncoming tale be reduced to squalor as he sits in rags on the ground, having become the pitiful slave of an oversexed witch whose powers have completely baffled him. Lucius describes to his travel companions how he choked on polenta, a cheese pudding sometimes listed as the diet of philosophers (presumably because it is compatible with their austere lifestyle), Plaut. Curc. 295, Persius 3.55. As is frequently the case in Apuleius’ allusive style of narration, a small and seemingly trivial or even absurd detail can have wide symbolic implications and in this case, the choking prepares us for the tone of the story which lies immediately ahead. Lucius chokes on the food of philosophers in the context of a symposium, when moreover the choking is caused by his greediness in trying to keep up with his companions (thus implying a moral flaw incompatible with philosophical serenity). This incident is the equivalent of Aristophanes’ “hiccup” in Plato’s Symposium (185C–E), a hiccup which, like the buffoonery of his later story, was a humorous reminder that the jokester Aristophanes is shallow, rather out of sync with the loftier philosophizing of Socrates and his patroness Diotima. In 2.10, Fotis calls Lucius scholasticus (a young and inexperienced student, divorced from real life: see examples in OLD 2) who will get indigestion if he tastes her honey. Lucius’ dabbling in philosophy leaves him unprepared for the real world (cf. Seneca Cont. 7. Par. ————— 16 17 18
See Scobie’s commentary and Dowden 1994, 428–429. Harrison 2000, 254–255. Sandy 1997, 253.
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4). Among the details which suggest a tie-in between Aristomenes and Lucius are the former’s choking on a piece of bread, out of fear, in 1.19, which has an ominous echo of Lucius and the cheese-pudding. The fictional Socrates then tops them both by not only choking, but dying, after he has eaten a large quantity (bonam partem) of cheese. Aristomenes the “cheese-merchant” ironically serves his friend “Socrates” a big portion of the food of philosophers, which he cannot even swallow. The choking of all three characters is a warning that in trying to combat witchcraft with the maxims of Platonism, they have more than met their match. Lucius’ intellectual credentials are real, but will severely be put to the test by the sensuous temptations of the world, including the power of magic and the lure of sex. These are not really separate drives. A Thessalian witch like Meroe is associated with pure appetite, including heavy drinking, vengefulness, macabre violence, and nymphomania. Such witches reduce their victims to sexual beings, like the fictional Socrates, and punish them when they try to escape; their victims lower themselves to become slaves of the witches, or, in Lucius’ case, behave inappropriately to their social station19 by falling in love with a slave, which in Fotis’ case is a double danger since she is linked to the occult through her service to the witch Pamphile. Of those who have studied the Platonic elements in the Tale of Aristomenes, R. Thibau is particularly adept at searching out allusions, though not all of his examples are equally plausible. His detailed analysis lies behind some of the following analysis, as does the work of van der Paardt and Muenstermann.20 (1.2) On the road to Hypata the companion of Aristomenes breaks out into a guffaw, and asks him to stop telling such monstrous lies. The laughter and incomprehension are those of the non-initiate. Thrasymachus in Plato Rep. 337, who breaks out into a guffaw and laughs sardonically at the irony of Socrates; but later Thrasymachus is so trapped by Socrates’ arguments as to be reduced to sweating and embarrassment. Such a reaction can be compared with that of non-initiates in Christian literature: the mob at Athens “scoffs” at the preaching of Paul, Acts 17.32, Tertullian’s accusers laugh at his preaching in the Apologeticus, 18.4 and 23.13. Thus the tale has the nature of a “sacred story” containing elements so fantastic as to be unintelligible to a non-initiate, as indeed the powers of witches in this novel seem like ————— 19 20
Sandy 1997, 246. R. Thibau 1965; van der Paardt 1978; Muenstermann 1995, 8–22.
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an old wives’ tale but are all too deadly and real for those whom they touch. At various times in the novel, Apuleius conveys both sides of the Platonic message. In Plato himself, after the Symposium’s positive account of Eros, Republic 9.571–580 shows us plainly the dangers to be found on the erotic road. As for Apuleius’ fictional Socrates, he is in some respects the antithesis of the Greek philosopher who in the Gorgias (491D) urges temperance and self-mastery over the pleasures and desires that are in oneself. The Aristomenes tale in its early stages gives evidence of being Platonic in its moral framework, particularly in the moralizing against the fictional Socrates for abandoning his family for a prostitute: ‘Pol quidem tu dignus’ inquam ‘es extrema sustinere, siquid est tamen novissimo extremius, qui voluptatem et scortum scorteum lari et liberis praetulisti.’ “By heaven” I said “you deserve to suffer the worst—if indeed there is anything worse than your most recent condition—since you preferred the pleasures of Venus and a leathery old whore to your own hearth and children.” (trans. Hanson) This little speech seems to have significance as Tatum says as “the only explicit condemnation of voluptas ever made [in the novel] until the priest in 11.15 mentions Lucius’ ‘servile pleasures’”;21 it is also given prominence as part of the opening tale of the novel, which could be seen as having the nature of a program piece. Yet Aristomenes’ reproach of Socrates for neglecting his family is hardly to be accepted without irony, like so much else in the novel, because it is based in part, as we explore below, on Crito’s misguided reproach of the philosopher Socrates for rejecting the offer of his friends to smuggle him out of jail. At the start of the tale (1.6) Aristomenes, who is ironically named for his “excellent valor,” meets his equally ironically named friend Socrates, a once respectable man now humiliated by his addiction to lust. The philosopher Socrates, in contrast, (at least in the Platonic corpus) was known for his ability to resist such temptation, even the advances of the beautiful Alcibiades, as Harrison,22 points out. Apuleius’ description of the fictional Socrates as paene alius lurore, “almost a different man due to his pallor,” may be, as Thibau ————— 21 22
Tatum 1969, 494. Harrison 2000, 256.
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suggests23 a humorous glance at the vast distance between this disreputable character and Plato’s Socrates. One hesitates, however, to conclude that Apuleius intended the two “Socrateses” to be opposites from one another, since the philosopher Socrates was also sometimes lampooned as pale, unkempt, and dirty,24 and the fictional character evidently embodies these memorably humorous physical characteristics of his namesake. Nor is the historical tradition consistent on the issue of Socrates’ supposed abstemious and pure style of living, as in later antiquity the stories about Socrates start to grow more sensational. Theodoret in his Graecarum Affectionum Curatio 12.63–65 reports a tradition preserved by Porphyry that the historical Socrates was prone to anger and a slave of pleasures (ταῖς ἡδυπαθείαις δεδουλοῦµενον) and that he frequently had affairs with married women and women of common origin (so Porphyry Historia Philosophiae frg. 14.) Thus Apuleius’ account of the fictional Socrates as dissolute may not be so far outside the mainstream of the tradition as it was current in late antiquity; one might compare also the story reported by Nietzsche in which Socrates concurs with the judgment of a physiognomist passing through Athens, who remarked that Socrates was a monster, containing within him every kind of foul lust and vice.25 Moreover, the attacks by Meroe and her sister Panthia on Socrates could be in part inspired by the story that Socrates’ two wives Xanthippe and Myron sometimes joined their forces in attacking him for laughing at them (Theodoret and Porphyry op. cit., Jerome Adversus Jovinianum 1.48, cf. Meroe’s phrase illusit aetatulam meam) and that Meroe’s urinating on Aristomenes matches Xanthippe’s throwing of dirty water on her husband’s head (Diogenes Laertius 2:36 [1:166–167], an indignity which the philosopher turns into a joke, saying that he knew that after thundering, Xanthippe would rain, lit. “make water;” by the time the story is told by Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, the water has actually become “pisse,” Chaucer, Wife of Bath’s Prologue 729). Apuleius’ Socrates has lost everything, first by being stripped by bandits on his way to Larissa on a business venture (1.7; a frequent fate of travelers in the Golden Ass) and later, through his relationship to the witch Meroe, has been reduced to the straits that Diotima ascribes to Eros in Plato’s Symposium (203C7–D3), “tough and shriveled and shoeless and homeless, always lying in ————— 23 24 25
Thibau 1965, 106. See, for example, Dover’s edition of Aristophanes’ Clouds (Oxford 1968) xxxiii–xxxiv. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols trans. R.J. Hollingdale, London 1968, 40–41.
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the dirt without a bed…” (compare also Diogenes Laertius 2.37, where Xanthippe tears the cloak off Socrates’ back in the market-place.) The fictional Socrates is accused of neglecting his children and causing a disgrace to his townsmen (1.6); the philosopher Socrates is charged by Crito with the same crimes in his choice of suicide over escape from prison (Crito 45C sqq.). Apuleius’ Socrates, confronted with his disgrace, covers his head with his tattered remnant of a cloak, recalling Phaedrus 237A–242E, where Socrates wants to avoid looking at Phaedrus while he speaks because he feels shame for praising the inferior Eros based on desire alone (the gesture by the fictional Socrates also perhaps foreshadows his own death by recalling Phaedo 118A, 26). This lower, tyrannical Eros is exemplified in Apuleius’ fictional character (see also Plato Rep. 9.573–575). Looked at from a different point of view, Apuleius’ Socrates, “who knows only the inferior form of love” (Muenstermann 1995, 15) has settled for the Venus vulgaris discussed by Apuleius himself in Apologia 12.411–415, based on Plato’s Symposium 180D. Meroe’s trick of turning her lovers into various animals (beaver, frog, ram) once she is finished with them,26 may reflect the passage in Plato’s Republic (620 A–C) where souls who are passing into the upper world may choose the forms of various animals which reflect their character; the croaking frog swimming in a vat of wine is suited to the congenial, wine-bibbing innkeeper, while the ram fighting cases in court suits the aggressive lawyer (1.9). Meroe’s transporting the home of another enemy to the top of a jagged mountain (1.10) recalls Plato Rep. 9.578E where a man is transported to a solitary area by the gods along with his whole family, and is forced to become flatterer to his own slaves in order to be released. Those who “beg for mercy” to Meroe are comparable to the slaves of their appetites in the Platonic allegory, just as Meroe herself embodies the power of reckless and unrestrained indulgence in sex, drinking, and physical force; to surrender to her is to lose control over one’s own life. Aristomenes’ attempt to help Socrates, however, is counter-productive and leads to his death. When he urges him in 1.11 to come away with him before dawn and escape the witches, the intention to leave is supernaturally telegraphed to Meroe and she comes seeking revenge, a chilling reminder of the all-pervasive power of the witches. Aristomenes is echoing Crito’s advice to Socrates in Crito 46A to steal away from his persecutors in the dead of night. Plato’s Socrates refused the offer, and sacrificed his life to preserve his virtue; ————— 26
As van der Paardt says, 1978, 82.
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but ironically, the fictional Socrates would have had a better chance of preserving his life if he had heeded his namesake, the philosopher of the Platonic dialogue, and refused to be part of his friend’s plan to escape from prison.27 The bursting in of the two witches causes Aristomenes’ bed to flip over on him and cover him; thus he metaphorically repeats the fate of Meroe’s lovers, and is changed into an animal, namely a tortoise (1.12). Despite the shock of the moment, Aristomenes laughs at the thought of his transformation, and even allows himself to engage in a Platonic reflection: he observes that certain emotions and their contraries, like tears and laughter, are closely related. The model for this is Socrates’ reflection in the prison cell, Phaedo 60B, when the fetters from his legs are removed, about how the pain in his leg has been closely followed by pleasure, this illustrating the close juxtaposition of opposites. Meanwhile both Aristomenes and Socrates bounce back and forth between life and death—metaphorically in the former case, since the witches are on the verge of killing him, but when he ends up on the floor drenched with urine he is like a newborn babe, whereas Socrates is first murdered and then suddenly discovered alive again. Such brushes with death followed by rebirth have parallels in the Greek novels (see esp. Achilles Tatius 3.15), but in Apuleius we may be closer to the lesson of Socrates in the Phaedo 72B, that “the living are generated from the dead as much as the dead from the living.” Finally, Aristomenes and Lucius sit down to refresh themselves under a plane tree (clearly recalling the episode of Phaedrus and Socrates from Phaedrus 229A), and eat bread and cheese. Socrates begins to look pale—and Aristomenes persuades him to drink from the stream, whereupon he dies (just as the philosospher died from a drink).28 Thus the comically named Socrates dies due to his tawdry love for a witch, in a setting which recalls the speech the philosopher Socrates made in praise of love. The ambiguity of Lucius’ tirade against the murder of the philosopher Socrates in 10.33 (when Lucius is rudely told that his philosophy is that of an ass) is a final roar of laughter by the reader against the braying of the ass who is trying to lure us into accepting his neat categories of thought. Socrates can be either a disreputable derelict or a saintly martyr, and philosophy itself can act as a φάρµακον that may be remedy or poison.29 ————— 27 28 29
Cf. Thibau 1965, 106–107. Again noted by van der Paardt 1978, 83. Jacques Derrida 1981, pp. 99 et passim.
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In our final judgement about the tale of Aristomenes, it is useful to add that in some respects it puts us in mind of the situation reported as background in Apuleius’ Apology, in the sense that in each work the main character is threatened with being condemned by hostile and unsympathetic adversaries for a crime which, with great indignation, he denies having committed. Again in both works, superimposed on the legal wrangling is a philosophical veneer, which in the Apology is treated with confidence and even brashness, but has acquired far greater subtlety and ambiguity in the novel. In his Apology Apuleius uses his wide knowledge of literature and philosophy, especially his command of Platonism (whom he identifies in Apology 65 as both a “teacher for life and a chief advocate in court,” ut vitae magistro, ita causae patrono) to toy with the small-minded prosecutors who are out to frame him on a false charge of bewitching his wife to marry him. The Tale of Aristomenes shows us rather a world in which intellectual posturing has little effect, magic is no false charge but a horrifying reality, and the powers of evil have the upper hand: the witches prevail, and the forces of justice will be helpless to stop the real culprits, while there is a real threat that an innocent man will be condemned. Aristomenes, the man of “excellent might” is unprepared for the forces of witchcraft; Socrates himself, the man of saintly virtue, is reduced to a slave of his bodily appetites. As a program piece for the novel as a whole, the Tale of Aristomenes is a grim warning of the unleashing of dark forces in the world. Bibliography Anderson, G. 1993. The Second Sophistic: A Cultural Phenomenon in the Roman Empire, London: Routledge. Ausland, H.W. 1997. ‘On Reading Plato Mimetically’, AJP 118, 371–418. Bowersock, G.W. 1974. Approaches to the Second Sophistic, University Park, Pennsylvania. Derrida, J. 1981. Dissemination, translated by Barbara Johnson, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dillon, J. 1997. The Middle Platonists, Ithaca: Cornell. Dowden, K. 1994.‘The Roman Audience of the Golden Ass’, in J. Tatum, ed., The Search for the Ancient Novel, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 419–434. — 1998. ‘Cupid and Psyche: A Question of the Vision of Apuleius’, in M. Zimmerman et al., eds, Aspects of Apuleius’ Golden Ass Volume II: Cupid and Psyche, Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1–22. Fick–Michel, N. 1991. Art et Mystique dans les Métamorphoses d’Apulée, Paris: Annales Littéraires de l’Université de Franche-Comté. Fitton, J.W. 1970. ‘ “That Was No Lady, That Was…” ’, CQ 10, 56–66.
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Frangoulidis, S. 1999. ‘Cui videbor veri similia dicere proferens vera? Aristomenes and the Witches in Apuleius’ Tale of Aristomenes’, CJ 94, 375–391. Harrison, S.J. 2000. Apuleius: A Latin Sophist, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heath, J.R. 1982. ‘Narration and Nutrition in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, Ramus 11, 57–77. Hijmans, B.L. 1987. ‘Apuleius Philosophus Platonicus’, ANRW 36.1, New York: de Gruyter, 395–475. Hunink, V. 1997. Apuleius of Madauros: Pro Se De Magia (Apologia). Edited with commentary. 2 vols., Amsterdam: Gieben. Klinger, W. 1907. ‘Zur Maerchenkunde,’ Philologus 66, 342–345. Kennedy, G. 1972. The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Keulen, W.H. 2000. ‘Significant Names in Apuleius: a ‘Good Contriver’ and his Rival in the Cheese Trade (Met 1, 5)’, Apuleiana Groningana X, Mnemosyne 53, 310–321. Lawson, J.C. 1910. Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Long, A.A. 1988. ‘Socrates in Hellenistic Philosophy’, CQ 38, 150–171. Münstermann, H. 1995. Apuleius: Metamorphosen literarischer Vorlagen. Untersuchung dreier Episoden des Romans unter Berücksichtigung der Philosophie und Theologie des Apuleius. Stuttgart – Leipzig. Panayotakis, S. 1998. ‘On Wine and Nightmares: Apul. Met. 1,18’, in H. Hofmann and M. Zimmerman, eds., Groningen Colloquia on the Novel Vol. IX , Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 115–129. Perry, B.E. 1967. The Ancient Romances. A Literary-historical account of their origins. Berkeley – Los Angeles: University of California Press. Sandy, G. 1997. The Greek World of Apuleius: Apuleius and the Second Sophistic, Leiden: Brill. — 1999. ‘The Tale of Cupid and Psyche’, in H. Hofmann, ed., Latin Fiction: The Latin Novel in Context, London: Routledge, 126–138. Schlam, C. 1970. ‘Platonica in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius’, TAPA 101, 477–488. Scobie, A. 1983. Apuleius and Folklore, London: The Folklore Society. — 1975. Apuleius Metamorphoses (Asinus Aureus) I, Meisenheim am Glan: Verlag Anton Hain. Smith, S. 1995. The Power of Women: A Topos In Medieval Art and Literature, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Smith, W.S. 1993. ‘Interlocking of Theme and Meaning in the Golden Ass’, in H. Hofmann, ed., Groningen Colloquia on the Novel Vol. V , 75–89. Tatum, J. 1969. ‘The Tales in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, TAPA 100, 487–527. Thibau, R. 1965. ‘Les Métamorphoses d’Apulée et la Théorie Platonicienne de l’Eros’, Studia Philosophica Gandensia 3, 89–144. Trapp, M.B. 1990. ‘Plato’s Phaedrus in Second-Century Greek Literature’, in D.A. Russell, ed., Antonine Literature, Oxford: Clarendon, 141–173. van Mal – Maeder, D. 2003. ‘La mise en scène déclamatoire chez les romanciers latins’, in S. Panayotakis, M. Zimmerman, W.H. Keulen, eds., The Ancient Novel and Beyond, Leiden – Boston: Brill, 345–355. van der Paardt, R.Th. 1978. ‘Various Aspects of Narrative Technique in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, in B.L. Hijmans, R.Th. van der Paardt, eds, Aspects of Apuleius’ Golden Ass Groningen: Bouma’s Boekhuis, 75–87. Walsh, P.G. 1981. ‘Apuleius and Plutarch’, in H.J. Blumenthal, R.A. Markus, eds., Neoplatonism and Early Christian Thought: Essays in Honor of A.H. Armstrong London, 20–32. Winkler, J.J. 1985. Auctor and Actor, a Narratological Reading of Apuleius’ Golden Ass, Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press.
Ancient Novel and Prose Fiction: Bibliography of Translations, Commentaries and Studies by Russian Scholars. NINA V . BRAGINSKAIA
Moscow
This Bibliography includes works of the scholars of the former USSR in different languages and some works of Russian scholars published in Western languages. The bibliography is compiled by Nina V. Braginskaia (Moscow) for AN and the Web bibliography supported by Dr. Jean Alvares. Each item is rendered in English, in transliterated form, and in Cyrillic (if necessary). The translations aim to make it possible to understand the content of the work, the kind of edition and how to pronounce the name of the author and the title. It is not helpful in finding the book in the librarian catalogues. Only transliteration and Cyrillic form are designed for search in the library or book store. The transliteration follows System III recommended by J.Thomas Shaw (The Transliteration of Modern Russian for English-Language Publications. MLA, New York 1979) as most acceptable to use for bibliographies in literary or linguistic publications and for separately published bibliographies if the audience is to be international. The only exception is ‘‘ě’’ instead of ‘‘è’’ for Cyrillic ‘‘э’’. The order is alphabetic; the works of the same author, ancient or modern, follow the chronological order (the title is not taken into account). The Bibliography is incomplete, both because it omits some titles and because it lacks some information about included titles (sometimes the editorial houses and pages are missing). Nevertheless I hope it makes sense to start in this form. I am very grateful for checking of some of the translated titles to Eve Adler (Middlebury), Maria Plaza (Stockholm), Nina Perlina (Bloomington), Alla Zeide-Becker (New York).
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Achilles Tatius. The Story of Leucippe and Clitophon in Eight Books. Excerpts // Scythica et Caucasica. Scriptores Graeci / Ed. and transl. V.V. Latyshev. Vol. I. St. Petersburg, 1890. P. 872. Russian translation: Vestnik drevnej istorii (Journal of Ancient History). 1948. № 4. P. 271. Axill Tatij. Rasskaz o Levkippe i Klitofonte v vos’mi knigax. Otryvki // Scythica et Caucasica / Greč. tekst i perevod V.V. Latyševa. T. I. SPb., 1890. C. 872. Russkij perevod: VDI. 1948. № 4. S. 271. Ахилл Татий. Рассказ о Левкиппе и Клитофонте в восьми книгах. Отрывки // Sсythica et Caucasica / Греч. текст и перевод В.В. Латышева. T. I. СПб., 1890. C. 872. Русский перевод: ВДИ. 1948. № 4. С. 271. Achilles Tatius of Alexandria. Leucippe and Clitophon: A Novel / Transl. by A.B.D.E.M. Ed. by B.L. Bogaevskiy. Intro. by A.V. Boldyrev. Moscow: Gosizdat, 1925. 192 p. Excerps: Zubov V.P., Petrovskiy F.A. Architecture of the Classical World. Moscow, 1940. P. 206, 414, 417. Axill Tatij Aleksandrijskij. Levkippa i Klitofont. Roman / Perevod A.B.D.E.M. Pod red. B.L. Bogaevskogo. Vstup. stat’ja A.V. Boldyreva. M.: Gosizdat, 1925. 192 s. Otryvki: Zubov V.P., Petrovskij F.A. Arxitektura antičnogo mira. M., 1940. S. 206, 414, 417. Ахилл Татий Александрийский. Левкиппа и Клитофонт. Роман / Перевод А.Б.Д.Е.М. Под ред. Б.Л. Богаевского. Вступ. статья А.В. Болдырева. М.: Госиздат, 1925. 192 с. Отрывки: 3убов В.П., Петровский Ф.А. Архитектура античного мира. М., 1940. С. 206, 414, 417. Achilles Tatius. Leucippe and Clitophon. Excerpt / Transl. by A. Boldyrev. Ed. by B.L. Bogaevskiy // Late Greek Prose. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaja literatura, 1960. P. 329–338. Axill Tatij. Levkippa i Klitofont. Otryvok / Perevod A. Boldyreva. Pod red. B. Bogaevskogo // Pozdnjaja grečeskaja proza. M.: Xudožestvennaja literatura, 1960. S. 329–338. Ахилл Татий. Левкиппа и Клитофонт. Отрывок / Перевод А. Болдырева. Под ред. Б. Богаевского // Поздняя греческая проза. М.: Художественная литература, 1960. С. 329–338. Achilles Tatius. Leucippe and Clitophon; Longus. Daphnis and Chloe; Petronius. Satyricon; Apuleius. Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass /Transl. by V. Chemberdzhi, S. Kondratyev, V. Yarkho, M. Kuzmin. Intro. (“On the Ancient Novel”. P. 5–20) by S. Polyakova; Annot. by V. Chemberdzhi, M. GrabarPassek, V. Yarkho. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaja literatura, 1969. 590 p. Axill Tatij. Levkippa i Klitofont; Long. Dafnis i Xloja; Petronij. Satirikon; Apulej. Metamorfozy, ili Zolotoj osel / Russkie perevody V. Čemberdži, S. Kondrat’eva, V. Jarxo, M. Kuzmina. Vstup. stat’ja («Ob antičnom romane» S. Poljakovoj. S. 5–20). Primeč. V. Čemberdži, M. Grabar’-Passek i V. Jarxo. M.: Xudožestvennaja literatura, 1969. 590 s. Ахилл Татий. Левкиппа и Клитофонт; Лонг. Дафнис и Хлоя; Петроний. Сатирикон; Апулей. Метаморфозы, или Золотой осел / Русские переводы
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There are many other editions of this work; I mention only the first.
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M. ZIMMERMAN, Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses, Book X. Text, Introduction and Commentary. Groningen, Egbert Forsten, 2000. Pp. 487. Hardback. € 70. ISBN 90 6980 128 0.
Reviewed by Ellen Finkelpearl, Claremont, CA. Maaike Zimmerman apologizes with characteristic self-effacement at the very beginning of this commentary: “This book has been with me for many years” (p. 5). I must apologize in kind. I have carried this book around for too long in my ICAN bag and it is very heavy. However, in her case, the more one looks at the commentary with its thoughtful thoroughness, the question is really how one person ever managed to do so much. Zimmerman’s Book 10 follows the format of the others in the Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius series with which all readers of AN must be familiar: after the Introduction and Text, the commentary repeats the Latin text one sentence at a time and offers “a working translation”. Then follows an exhaustive commentary covering every possible issue from textual variants to narratology. The commentary incorporates references to new and old work on Apuleius, and a lengthy bibliography of works cited appears at the end, as well as a bibliography of items that have appeared since 1995, to continue the bibliography since the last Groningen Commentary. There are three appendices (discussed below). At nearly 500 pages, this is the longest of the Groningen commentaries to date. While this commentary looks very much like the others in the series, it is the first to be written by only one author. While there were obvious disadvantages for Zimmerman, the commentary does not seem to suffer, but rather achieves a unity of vision and continuity of discussion that would have been more difficult in a group. The book becomes not simply an analysis of anomalous words or cruces, a list of textual parallels or an explanation of little-known practices, etc. as commentaries so often are, but is itself (in addition to all those things) an essay on Book 10 and the important themes that recur within it. I confess that I had planned, for the purposes of this review, to read only a few parts of it and to use them as exemplary, but that I could not, allowing for exaggeration, stop reading it. Book 10, as Z. points out passim, has received less attention than it deserves, since it is generally lumped together with the formless mass of later
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books in which the world “becomes increasingly gloomy and oppressive” (pp. 440–41). Tatum, Schlam, Shumate and others argue (with variations) that the function of these books is to act as a counterpoint to the salvation of Book 11 by showing the evil of society (especially women) and the absence of moral or epistemological anchors without Isis. (Z. disagrees with that view however, seeing Lucius as not feeling revulsion and the world as one in which justice often wins.) However, Book 10 deserves separate consideration; in contrast to the shapeless string of adultery tales of Book 9, for example, this book offers a very tight chiastic structure in which two lengthy inset tales of evil women and doctors (2–12; 23–28) mirror each other and alternate with a narrative of Lucius’ own life and, in particular, his real and projected mating with a (human) woman.1 The longest tale, that of the nouerca (2–12), is highly literary and self-consciously allusive (as Z. shows at in detail in Appendix 1). The book also follows Lucius-ass’s partial integration into human society as his special talents are discovered by the cooks who care for him, and he begins to eat human food, communicate with humans through gesture, and mate with a wealthy matrona, thus exploring the dividing line between human and animal. Finally, Book 10 ends with the colorful and lascivious pantomime of the Judgment of Paris held in the theater at Corinth—often examined in its own right as evidence of the nature of ancient theatrical entertainment—from which Lucius, in fear, and possibly moral revulsion, flees. Thus, this transitional book is distinct from the other late books by its tight form, its diverse content, its literariness, and by the ambiguities in Lucius’ social, existential, and moral status. Re-reading this book now with the help of Z.’s commentary, one comes to realize how much a good commentary enriches one’s reading, by supplying the sort of concrete social-historical information that one might otherwise pass over. So, for example, along with interesting speculations about whether Apuleius’ readers (Z. fundamentally agrees with Dowden 1994, that they are Roman) had an accurate picture of the legal situation in the provinces, Z. tells us the functions of magistrates in the Greek towns under Roman jurisdiction (e.g. pp. 131–33); she tells us, in relation to the false death of the young man at 10.12, that the dead wore beautiful shrouds and were wrapped so as to prevent the mouth from falling open; she teaches us that a cursor (10.5) was a slave specially trained as a kind of mail carrier, and that to own one is a sign of wealth; we learn that “in military jargon, an ex————— 1
See, in particular, Finkelpearl 1998 149–151.
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tremely difficult piece of country is called nouerca” (p. 66); as part of an analysis of Lucius’ progression from animal to human food, Z. patiently explicates one of those impossible Apuleian catalogues of food: “…ille porcorum, pullorum, piscium et cuiusce modi pulmentorum largissimas reliquias, hic panes, crustula, lucunculos, hamos, lacertulos et plura scitamenta mellita” (10.13)—hamus, attested only here, is presumably a crescentshaped pastry… . She teaches us about the luxuriousness of balsam stored in a tin jar (p. 274): tin mined in Britain was transported by Phoenicians who kept its origins mysteriously secret for commercial reasons and thus its mention contributes to a fairy-tale atmosphere of Oriental luxury. She comes up with a new interpretation of the word ueternus (10.9); rather than settling for the meaning “of long duration” favored by translators, she has found a passage in Plautus where it seems to mean “coma” (p. 159). Connoisseurs of ass-lore, as students of the ancient novel tend to be, we learn of the staggering amounts of baggage asses in Greece carry even today (p. 56) and of the excellent quality of Gallic mules, praised in Claud. Carm. Min 18: De Mulabus Gallicis (p. 255). Much much more of this sort makes the commentary fascinating reading which brings the text to life in new ways. Z. devotes particular attention in many parts of the commentary to issues of narratology and intertextuality. Her narrative methodology is that of Lintvelt, in contrast with the looser methodology employed by Winkler which many may associate with Apuleius studies. She follows mainly the Teubner text of Helm 1955, with a few variations, but often retains readings of F where Helm has regularized spelling. For example she argues for the form fidi genitive (p. 152); at 10.22, she opts for passarem over passerem (the matrona’s term of endearment for Lucius), arguing that the alternate spelling may already have been current in Apuleius’ time. In general, these readings raise intriguing linguistic questions which others may more knowledgeably judge. As I mentioned above, however, the commentary also functions as a running analysis of various important issues in Book 10 and offers some interesting new interpretations of various themes and characters. We may begin with her reading of the longest of the tales, the Stepmother episode at 2–12. One of the problematic aspects of this episode is the way the entire story diverges from tragedy to romance. After a statement of the situation (a stepmother is in love with her stepson), the narrator announces that a tragedy is to follow: “iam ergo, lector optime, scito te tragoediam, non fabulam
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legere et a socco ad coturnum ascendere,” 10.2, from which the “optimus lector” will understand the reference to a Phaedra tale. However, due to the intervention of a good and clever doctor, a sleeping potion is substituted for the poison intended for the stepson and the long tale ends with the “rebirth” of a son presumed dead, and the reconciliation of the father and the other son. In short, the story is not a tragedy in the traditional sense, but becomes a romance. As Z. reminds us, some critics have seen the narrator’s announcement as deliberately “misleading”, while others, such as Walsh, have felt that the author “hardly knew where his story was headed”. Z. suggests, in the course of her notes and in the appendices and introduction, that we should think in a more positive way about the tale’s change of direction by applying Nimis’ theories of the “prosaics” of the novel: “the narrative is not necessarily an ‘act of structurating towards the ending’, but rather a more tentative, experimental movement, feeling its way towards an end that is not yet fully realized”.2 The literary allusions that appear so densely in this episode provoke in the reader “inferential walks” and tentative hypotheses about how the story will progress.3 Z. emphasizes the way that “the activity of the reader is enlisted precisely in this way” (p. 418). In the course of Appendix I and extensively in the notes, Z. provides an exhaustive survey of the possible literary and extra-literary sources of the story, including some less often invoked: mime, declamation, and the story of Antiochus and Stratonike—all of which may cause the reader to form hypotheses about the outcome of the story. (She pays less attention than might be warranted to Ovid Ep. 4 and, in my opinion, to Dido.) She notes, however, that the actors behave inconsistently with their literary models: “again and again, this leads to reversals in the story, in which the actors move farther and farther from their ‘models’” (p. 431). Most notably, the good medicus, in saying “non patiar” at 10.11, himself disallows the traditional trajectory of the story: “By himself he opposes with all his might the course the story threatens to take” (p. 175). At the conclusion of her discussion in the notes, Z. points to the absence of an evaluation or summary of the tale or any explanation for its change in direction and concludes that “it is up to the reader to supply an overall interpretation and a reviewed evaluation” (p. 193), and in the conclusion to Appendix I, she states that the author Apuleius may not have known how it would end. ————— 2 3
Nimis 1999, 217f. quoted in Z. p. 418. Nimis 1994, 403, quoting Umberto Eco, quoted on Z. p. 418.
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Thus, Z. in a sense combines the interpretation that views the narrator’s pronouncement as deliberately misleading (the allusions take one along false paths) with one that sees Apuleius as not knowing where the story is going. She folds the dense intertext into her analysis, making it part of the process of interpretation, bringing to the forefront the reader’s role as interpreter. What I find best here is that Z. probes very deeply into the way that generic expectations are defeated and that the direction of the intertexts is not followed. Echoes of earlier literature are included in order to create possible trajectories for the story, but may well be false leads. Z. looks more closely at each allusion than anyone else has before. (Frequently she critiques my work on allusion quite rightly, via strategically placed and understated use of the word “however.”) However, for me, several aspects of this approach are problematic. Most of all, while “prosaics” offers an attractive alternative model of composition, in this case its methods would signal a troubling lack of authorial control. It is one thing for an author to include apparently irrelevant information and other “voices” which could have been a part of a different draft or abadoned direction, and quite another to inform the reader directly that the story is a tragedy when it is not. Those who see the “iam ergo…” as misleading at least are assuming a sophisticated author who creates games around misreading and plays with our systems of judgment, and their reading is part of an overall interpretation of Apuleius which puts misleading, misreading and tricks of the narrator in the foreground. The prosaics approach assumes an Apuleius who lets his characters get away from him and does not go back and revise. It is my sense that we should read the problematic declaration that we will be reading a “tragoedia” and ascending to the cothurnus less in terms of the tale’s ending and more in terms of its elevated and literary nature. Not all tragedies actually end tragically. Another curious aspect of this reading, though perhaps mainly a matter of rhetoric and expression, is the way that characters are said themselves to change the direction of the story. The example of the medicus who transforms the tale from a tragedy to a romance or mime has been mentioned above. Z. also argues that because the iuuenis is, at 10.4, “probe litteratus” he is therefore conscious of his role as a Hippolytus; on the basis of his book knowledge, he deliberately acts differently in the attempt to avoid Hippolytus’ mistakes. In Appendix 3, Z. depicts a phenomenon in which the actors step out of their parts as defined by generic conventions, and that finally the ass flees from the theater, “no longer prepared to play the part expected of
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him” (p. 444). Given the close attention to narrative levels and Lintveltian distinctions between concepts like “concrete author/abstract author”, and the absence of qualifying language in the circumstances at hand, it is somewhat difficult to know in exactly what sense Z. means that the characters oppose the course of the story rather than that e.g. the author creates characters who act in ways the reader might not have predicted. I am also intrigued by her criticism of the iuuenis (cf. later on the wealthy Thiasus) who, to others except O. Tappi, has seemed an exemplary youth. Z. states that “the black-and-white view of this fictive narrator is, however, weakened by the abstract author because of the subtle signals of criticism of the iuuenis’ behaviour that can be found in the text” (p. 106), referring to his clumsiness and half-hearted behavior which does not fail to avert disaster. Another prominent feature of the discussion of this scene is Z.’s exploration of the influence of mime. Others, as Z. mentions, have seen mime as a source for episodes elsewhere in the Metamorphoses (Winkler 1985, Fick 1991, Andreassi 1997), and it is reasonable to expect, given the general nature of the text, that subliterary genres have had some part in creating it. As her point of departure she uses Wiemken, Steinmetz and others who attempt to reconstruct the original mime (p. 425), and she cites as a background P. Ox. 413, the “Mime of the Poisoner,” in which a slave fails to respond to the advances of a married woman, with consequences similar to those in Apuleius. Z. rightly draws attention to the fact that the stepmother attempting to poison her stepson is not a feature of the Phaedra tragedies, but that another, qualitatively different narrative has intruded itself in the middle of the tale. “It is conceivable that Apuleius interspersed his ‘Phaedra’ with obvious mime-reminiscences for the very purpose of showing his contemporaneous audience how a tragic Phaedra could degenerate into a common, evil poisoner” (425). At a couple of points in the commentary, she draws attention to a description of gesture (pp. 87; 143), which could be an indication that Apuleius was depicting live dramatic performance. The problem with this theory—one which has much to recommend it—is that it is nearly impossible to prove, and is more often asserted than supported. For example, the trial scene at 10.7f. is said to be “a frequent motif in the Greek novel and mime” (p. 136 and cf. p. 425), the poison-mixing stepmother is called “widespread in mime” (p. 107), and the vividness of the narration as the wrong son drinks the potion (10.5) is used as support for its
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possible origins in mime. Z. is surely right to argue that other influences beyond Seneca and Euripides are at work here, and to argue that mime is probably at work in the Met., but there simply does not seem to be enough to work with. Stepmothers and poisoning occur in many genres of Latin literature, including satire which might be worth investigating further as a source. It also seems odd to make so much of so little in this episode, but to say much less about possible mime influence in the parallel story at 10.23–28. The next section of book 10, chapters 13–18 concerns the cook-brothers and Lucius’ new master, Thiasus, who stages lavish entertainments and treats his donkey as a conuiua. Lucius’ fame as a clever donkey who can perform tricks leads to his liaison with the wealthy matrona (19–22). Here, Z.’s focus in the narrative of her notes is on “the human being within the ass/the animal within the human being” (and see Intro 2.3). She largely agrees here with those, such as Shumate, who read in this section not only the (tenuous) progression of Lucius into human society, but, as a complement, the degeneration of humans into an animalesque state. Here it seems to me that, given the attention devoted to literary models and backgrounds in this commentary, more could be done with traditions of comedy, satire, animal fable, and perhaps the social conditions of the convivium. Z. mentions the scurrula (p. 235) and the parasitus (p. 237), but the discussion is not extensive. This scene seems to me to evoke satirically all sorts of associations with the serious Roman rites of community involving proper wine-drinking, witty conversation and brotherhood (cf. forthcoming work of Habinek). Dining satires also are probably in the background here, as well as the less literary motifs found in fable in which animals behave like humans. Z. does mention repeatedly the evolving nature of the human/animal divide throughout the notes, but more could be done. Thus, while the notes devote close attention to literary and non-literary sources, I would have preferred greater attention to questions of which sources were of primary importance in each particular scene (cf. methodologies of Conte, Hinds). She also introduces interesting observations on the character of Thiasus. Although his most apparent trait may be his affectionate relationship with his remarkable donkey, Z. extracts sinister undertones: “Thiasus is consistently characterized as the sybaritic millionaire who does as he pleases and expects others to indulge his whims” (pp. 252–53). She connects his name with Dionysian cult, and describes him as a Silenus figure since he rides on an ass (p. 254). Lucius’ apparent good fortune at this moment is illusory: as soon as
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254). Lucius’ apparent good fortune at this moment is illusory: as soon as the whim strikes Thiasus to have his conuiua perform in the arena with a condemned woman and risk being mauled by beasts, Lucius becomes no more than an animal to him (p. 258). For the matrona, too, Z. has some critical words. She notes that the emphasis on the purity of the matrona’s feelings, absent in the corresponding sections of the Onos, has caused some critics to see the scene as an important step in Lucius’ humanization and progression toward Isis.4 Z. objects that “There is irony at the level of the abstract author: the naïve narrator describes the woman’s kisses as pura atque sincera, but immediately afterwards he quotes, in direct discourse, some truly banal formulas used by the woman” (p. 277). She views the naïve Lucius as completely taken in by the matrona, in contrast to the reader who sees through such phrases as “sine te iam uiuere nequeo” as empty words. While Z. has good reason to argue that this scene does not represent an important step toward Isis, it seems nonetheless unfair to the matrona to dismiss her words as insincere merely because they are banal. Are these not the words people use in such circumstances when they are in fact most sincere? Z. adds also to the character of the matrona the suggestion that she is surrounded by Eastern splendor, exemplified in the eunuchs and her Tyrian purple. As she has already presented extensive documentation of the decadence of Corinth, it would be interesting to pursue the question of how easternness complements or differs from the Corinthian decadence. (Altogether, her reassessments of the iuuenis, Thiasus, and the matrona are well worth further thought, though possibly in part overreadings of the text.) Appendix 2 provides a text, translation, and very welcome distillation of the approaches to and scholarship on the spurcum additamentum which appears in the margin of some manuscripts (not including F) at 10.21. While there are still some who would defend the authenticity of the obscene passage (cf. Pennisi 1970; Pizzica 1981; Winkler 1985, 193), Z. follows Mariotti’s conclusions based on detailed linguistic analysis, that the additamentum was composed in the eleventh century at Monte Cassino in a period and place where there was intense interest in Apuleius. It remains to discuss the final scene of the book: the pantomime in the theater, Lucius’ indignant outburst against corrupt judgments, his flight, and the question of whether Lucius seems to have developed morally and spiritu————— 4
For example, Shumate 1996, 126.
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ally in Book 10. On this last point, Z. is insistent, rightly I think, that Lucius’ flight is motivated by fear rather than revulsion. “The narrator’s text contains no suggestion that the flight of the main character of the Met. is an attempt to turn his back on a depraved world, as the secundary [sic] literature often claims” (p. 408). She points out that the narrator at 10.34 gives a clear list of motives for the ass’s flight. Although they include “pudor”, the overwhelming emotion is fear. It is significant that Lucius enjoys animal food for the first time at 10.29 and eagerly watches the spectacle, all of which argues strongly against a reading which sees Lucius as re-crossing a borderline between human and animal (pp. 360, 412). In this connection, I must question her dismissal of the erotic overtones of the scene in which Venus’ dance culminates in the eruption of saffron out of hidden pipes in the artificial Mt. Ida, after which the mountain is swallowed up in a chasm in the earth.5 It seems to me that, in this highly erotic scene, with Venus dancing lasciviously and the condemned woman waiting to mate with Lucius, we are entitled to see practices like the spewing of saffron from pipes—which is, it is true, a well attested feature of the ancient theater—in light of the surrounding atmosphere. That they are attested elsewhere does not mean that Apuleius cannot imbue the practices with sexual innuendo in this scene. The fact that Lucius does not see and condemn this sexual depravity and instead focusses on the corruption of judges fits well with Z.’s reading of Lucius as an ass who has not progressed beyond his animal state. In her commentary on Lucius’ strange outburst against judges (10.33), Z. brings out the connection to Cynic diatribe and downplays the importance of the reference to Socrates for the larger interpretation of the Met. while acknowledging that the auctorial narrator is one of those philosophers who “iurent in ipsius nomen”. “It is impossible to build a serious Platonic interpretation of the Met. on this kind of passage” (p. 400)—a refreshing point of view given both the whimsical nature of the outburst and the tendency of some scholars to milk Platonic references for more than they are worth. The sentence which follows and concludes the outburst, imagining that the reader will exclaim: “ecce nunc patiemur philosophantem nobis asinum!” (10.33) has received much attention because of the apparent slippage between the narrating and experiencing “I”. The reader imagines that an ass is narrating. Z. points out that other passages in the Met. play with the fiction ————— 5
Finkelpearl 1991.
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of a narrating ass, e.g. in the Tale of Cupid and Psyche at 6.25 when Lucius laments that he does not have a pen and tablets to write down such a beautiful tale. She also cites Warren Smith who argues that “asinum” should be taken in a transferred meaning as “fool” (p. 401). However, she also cites an interesting parallel in Lucian Gall. 20f. where a rooster philosophizes, opening up various unexplored paths into the role of animal fable in the Met.. One has the sense that more could have been said at this point in the commentary about this curious passage, particularly about narratology, but perhaps this is asking more of a commentary than is reasonable. If, in fact, the bulk of this review treats the commentary as if it were more like a narrative essay on Book 10 than a sentence by sentence, word by word definitive commentary, this is strong testimony to the persistence of Z.’s incorporation of these larger issues, and if this reviewer disagrees with some of the perspectives on such overarching themes, it should not be understood as serious criticism of the commentary as a vehicle for vastly enriching the reader’s experience of Book 10. The book, while beautifully bound and printed, is not without typographical errors, sometimes apparently the result of proofreading by someone whose first language is not English (e.g. Boek, p. 15; consuption p. 22; contekst p. 202; de Met. p. 225). In addition, there are a few places in the commentary where one might expect fuller discussion; for example, the words “at ego” at 10.13 (p. 196) receive a comment on the use of subject pronouns, but no mention of the opening words of the Prologue (likewise “prosapia” at 10.18, p. 250). The word “fabula”, especially when it is used at 10.2, receives very little attention, though cross-references are provided to earlier GCA volumes. At the same time, the commentary is also full of much more information and many more ideas than can be adequately addressed in a review. We all must feel extreme gratitude toward the authors of these detailed commentaries along with a sense of frustration that there do not exist any texts to use in the classroom. One can only hope that the Groningen commentaries are in part a first step toward creating a series that is less detailed, like Ruebel’s new Book I, though Groningen need not be the origin of texts so different in nature. Meanwhile, this commentary will be a source of immense interest, pleasure, and help to scholars of Apuleius.
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Bibliography Andreassi, M. 1997. ‘Osmosis and contiguity between ‘low’ and ‘high’ Literature: Moicheutria and Apuleius’, GCN 8, 1–21 Dowden, K. 1994. ‘The Roman Audience of the Golden Ass’, in: J. Tatum, ed., The Search for the Ancient Novel, Baltimore–London, 419–434 Fick, N. 1991. Art et Mystique dans les Métamorphoses d’Apulée, Paris Finkelpearl, E. 1991. ‘The Judgement of Lucius: Apuleius, Metamorphoses 10,29–34’, ClAnt 10, 221–236 — 1998. Metamorphosis of Language in Apuleius, Ann Arbor Nimis, S. 1994. ‘The Prosaics of the Ancient Novels’, Arethusa 27, 387–411 — 1999. ‘The Sense of Open-endedness in the Ancient Novel’, Arethusa 32, 215–238 Pennisi, G. 1970. Apuleio e l’”Additamentum” a” “Metamorphoses” X,21, Messina Pizzica, M. 1981. ‘Ancora sull’ additamentum ad Apul. Met. X 21’, in: AA. VV., Letterature Comparate. Studi in onore di Ettore Paratore vol. 2ndo, Bologna, 763–772 Winkler, J. 1985. Auctor & Actor. A Narratological Reading of Apuleius’ Golden Ass, Berkeley–Los Angeles
A. KAHANE, A. LAIRD (eds.): A Companion to the Prologue to Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. XV + 325. Hardback, £50.00. ISBN 0–19–815238–8.
Reviewed by Luca Graverini, Arezzo (Italy). All’interno delle Metamorfosi di Apuleio esistono alcuni punti che catalizzano maggiormente l’attenzione, sia degli studiosi che del pubblico più vasto. Tra questi centri di interesse, accanto all’ampia novella di Amore e Psiche e alla conclusione mistico-religiosa dell’ultimo libro, una posizione di rilievo è occupata senza dubbio dal prologo: un testo breve (appena 119 parole), ma che per la sua funzione programmatica, il tono allusivo, i numerosi riferimenti intertestuali e culturali e i molteplici e non sempre evidenti legami con il resto dell’opera non manca di sollecitare una grande quantità di problemi ermeneutici. Il dibattito tra gli studiosi è tutt’altro che sopito, e la varietà di opinioni sembra anzi accrescersi continuamente; il Companion edito da Ahuvia Kahane e Andrew Laird giunge quindi come un opportuno e riuscito tentativo di offrire un’ampia panoramica delle molteplici possibilità interpretative di questo testo. La prima cosa da sottolineare – ed è una nota estremamente positiva – è che i curatori hanno evidentemente fatto ogni sforzo per superare i limiti di una critica solamente ‘interna’ al testo apuleiano: il volume raccoglie infatti 24 contributi di 25 studiosi di primo piano, e per molti di essi Apuleio e il romanzo antico in genere non rappresentano il principale campo di indagine. Si integrano in tal modo competenze relative ai più disparati ambiti degli studi letterari, storici e filosofici relativi al mondo greco e romano, con significative aperture verso il Medioevo e il Rinascimento; e notevole è anche la varietà delle metodologie critiche utilizzate nel volume, dove si trovano ad esempio saggi di taglio prevalentemente filologico assieme ad altri che valorizzano approcci basati su narratologia e ‘speech act theory’. Una polymathia pienamente coerente con il carattere e le inclinazioni dello stesso Apuleio, e un ottimo punto di partenza per l’interpretazione. Si tratta di un’impostazione estremamente feconda, e in certa misura anche innovativa per la critica apuleiana; essa tuttavia porta con sé alcune conseguenze, non necessariamente indesiderabili, ma che è opportuno sottolineare. Un primo effetto, ovvio, è che 24 contributi dedicati ad una singola
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pagina di testo latino, anche se dalle implicazioni culturali estremamente ampie, rendono inevitabilmente il Companion un volume dedicato soprattutto ad un pubblico di specialisti. Le voci nel coro sono molte, e in parte anche discordanti: tra gli autori vi è dialogo, e frequenti sono i rimandi interni da un saggio all’altro (purtroppo, senza l’indicazione del numero di pagina, cosa che rende la consultazione più laboriosa); tuttavia, come è ovvio, su numerosi punti sia marginali che centrali permane il disaccordo. Il Companion – come, del resto, le Metamorfosi – richiede un pubblico attento ed attivo; il lettore è chiamato ad esercitare il proprio giudizio e ad effettuare una propria scelta tra le numerose proposte ermeneutiche. Gli stessi fattori numerici di cui sopra suggeriscono l’idea di una certa frammentazione, con numerosi saggi di breve estensione: per cui, in certi casi (la cui individuazione ovviamente dipende dalle inclinazioni del singolo lettore) si potrebbe desiderare una trattazione più estesa, mentre inevitabilmente alcuni argomenti sono affrontati, in modo più o meno diretto, in vari contributi. Quest’ultima difficoltà è in parte alleviata dalla presenza di tre indici (Index prologi verborum et locutionum, Index Locorum, General Index), che aiutano il lettore a rintracciare velocemente le pagine dove i singoli punti di interesse sono affrontati. Anche il raggruppamento dei numerosi interventi in 9 sezioni tematiche è naturalmente di aiuto, ma sovrapposizioni e riferimenti incrociati sono inevitabili. Nel primo degli indici, ad esempio, la sola domanda Quis ille? conta ben 27 riferimenti distribuiti in 16 saggi diversi: un caso estremo, naturalmente, ma significativo. Diversamente da altre raccolte di saggi, di argomento talvolta anche troppo ampio, questo Companion è estremamente ‘mirato’: difficilmente quindi si presta alla lettura di pochi capitoli separatamente, e richiede un impegno più estensivo. È il prezzo da pagare per l’approccio multidisciplinare già lodato sopra, e tutto sommato lo si paga volentieri. Un’ultima avvertenza riguarda il fatto che il volume non prevede un vero e proprio sforzo sistematico nei confronti della letteratura critica precedente, e non vi si troverà una rassegna organica delle varie interpretazioni finora proposte. Anche la bibliografia è solamente la collazione delle bibliografie particolari relative ai vari saggi (con qualche omissione: ad esempio, non vi si trova il recente volume di A. Laird “Powers of Expression, Expressions of Power”, Oxford 1999, citato a p. 29, n. 4), e purtroppo non è quindi esaustiva. L’aggiunta dei lavori dedicati espressamente al prologo delle Metamorfo-
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si, anche se non citati nel corso del volume, sarebbe stata auspicabile e di non difficile realizzazione; così com’è, la bibliografia rischia di costituire un indesiderabile ‘collo di bottiglia’ rispetto ad eventuali futuri studi sul prologo, oscurando in qualche modo l’esistenza di studi non citati nell’autorevole Companion. Non vi compaiono ad esempio contributi ‘storici’ come F. Calonghi, Il prologo delle Metamorfosi di Apuleio, “RFIC” 43, 1915, 1–33 e 209–237, ma anche studi relativamente recenti quali M. Scotti, Il proemio delle Metamorfosi tra Ovidio ed Apuleio, “GIF” 34, 1982, 43–65; e C. Harrauer – F. Römer, Beobachtungen zum Metamorphosen-Prolog des Apuleius, “Mnemosyne” 38, 1985, 353–372. Altre omissioni (ad es. R. Nicolai, Quis ille? Il proemio delle Metamorfosi di Apuleio e il problema del lettore ideale, “MD” 42, 1999, 143–164) sono dovute anche ai vari anni trascorsi tra il convegno, tenuto ad Oxford nel 1996, e la pubblicazione del volume, datato 2001 ma apparso solo quest’anno. La frammentazione di cui sopra, purtroppo, costituisce una difficoltà soprattutto per il recensore. Le idee e le proposte contenute nel volume sono assai varie e numerose, e sarebbe naturalmente possibile individuare percorsi interpretativi e raggruppamenti differenti da quelli delineati dalla struttura del volume e dai confini stessi dei singoli saggi; difficilmente tuttavia il risultato sarebbe più perspicuo, o maggiore l’utilità della recensione. Un’analisi sequenziale del Companion fornirà un esempio senza dubbio non molto raffinato di desultoria scientia, ma avrà per lo meno il vantaggio di informare con un certo dettaglio sul contenuto del volume. Il primo gruppo di saggi (“Language and Latinity”) si apre con l’edizione del prologo a cura di STEPHEN HARRISON e MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM, corredata di traduzione inglese e commento. Il testo stampato è relativamente conservativo, anche se la punteggiatura è differente, e migliore, rispetto alle edizioni oggi più diffuse; l’apparato critico e il commento inoltre non rinunciano ad introdurre e motivare cinque nuove congetture, proposte dai due autori e da R. G. M. Nisbet. Si tratta di interventi per lo più lievi e paleograficamente ben spiegabili, tesi a risolvere problemi interpretativi o durezze espressive del testo; anche se non si impongono con evidenza, costituiscono indubbiamente utili spunti di riflessione. Qualche dubbio semmai si può avanzare sulla reale utilità di sostituire qui sim a quis ille?, come suggerisce Winterbottom (se si considera l’alta popolarità di cui la domanda gode tra gli
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stessi autori rappresentati nel Companion, la proposta può sembrare quasi iconoclastica!). Il commento ad loc. afferma che l’emendamento eliminerebbe la fastidiosa presenza di un misterioso terzo interlocutore, che si aggiungerebbe all’ego parlante e al lettore/ascoltatore cui esso si rivolge: ma se tale presenza è fonte di imbarazzo, piuttosto che emendare il testo, è forse più economico attribuire il fatidico quis ille? proprio al lettore: tramite occupatio, l’ego parlante previene una domanda che il suo interlocutore si pone, o si potrebbe porre tacitamente (come accade in 9,30,1 e 11,23,5; in 10,33,4, diversamente dagli altri due brani, la domanda è appunto tacita). Se il lettore/ascoltatore parla a se stesso, è giustificato l’uso di ille invece di tu, e non c’è bisogno di pensare ad una terza persona che ponga la fatidica domanda (come fanno anche altri, ad es. de Jong, pp. 201 ss., o Laird, p. 278; l’ipotesi del soliloquio è invece abbozzata anche da Slater a p. 218, n.19). A considerazioni di lingua e stile sono dedicati anche i due contributi successivi, di R. G. M. NISBET e JONATHAN G. F. POWELL, che su alcuni punti introducono utili ampliamenti al commento di Harrison e Winterbottom dimostrando la varietà delle possibili interpretazioni di questo testo. Un buon esempio è permulceam, che assieme a conseram è considerato da Harrison e Winterbottom un “mildly jussive subjunctive” (p. 10); Nisbet, cui si deve un approfondito studio della colometria e delle clausole del prologo, propende piuttosto (p. 19) per l’indicativo futuro (permulceam sarebbe una forma anomala); una più ampia discussione è offerta da Powell (pp. 32–35), che giunge ad ipotizzare (con la dovuta cautela) che l’uso anomalo di permulceam come futuro possa essere “a mark of Greek origin”, coerente con la persona di rudis locutor assunta da Apuleio nel prologo. In generale, Powell non rifiuta a priori la possibilità che elementi di lingua o stile caratteristici dell’Africa settentrionale (su una possibile africanità di pronuncia cfr. Nisbet, p. 20) potessero affiorare anche negli scritti di un retore colto e raffinato quale Apuleio: il problema vero, avverte l’autore, risiede nella estrema difficoltà di identificare simili elementi in modo metodologicamente rigoroso. Nella sezione dedicata ai “Cultural Contexts”, il saggio di MARK J. EDWARDS è appunto dedicato allo “African Character” di Apuleio. Il prologo delle Metamorfosi, in realtà, non sembrerebbe (a parere di chi scrive) un buon punto di partenza per un argomento di questo tipo: vi sono infatti menzionati luoghi caratteristici di gran parte del Mediterraneo, ma l’Africa (a
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meno che in essa non comprendiamo l’Egitto: come in effetti fa K. Clarke, che a p. 102 suggerisce che la menzione dell’Egitto e del Nilo possa alludere anche alle origini africane di Apuleio; v. infra per alcuni dubbi su questo) brilla per la sua assenza; e può non essere facile concordare con Edwards quando afferma che il “warlike language” del prologo (ad es. merui, aggressus) suggerisce che è giunto il momento per l’Africa di emulare le vittorie della Grecia, che come dice Orazio ferum victorem cepit (pp. 50–51 e n. 18). L’argomento, tuttavia, è assai interessante; e l’autore delinea un quadro breve ma coinvolgente di analogie tra le Metamorfosi e, soprattutto, il De Pallio di Tertulliano. Questioni di biculturalismo sono al centro anche del contributo di SIMON SWAIN, ma questa volta i termini della polarità sono la Grecia e Roma. Perché Apuleio ha scelto di imitare, o riscrivere, proprio l’opera di un non meglio noto Lucio di Patre? Swain suggerisce che, da una parte, la cosa permetteva ad Apuleio di mettere in mostra la propria piena padronanza della lingua e della cultura sia greca che latina; dall’altra, le non elevate pretese letterarie del modello greco gli consentivano di evitare il rischio, molto forte nei casi di imitazioni latine di originali greci, di finire per riconoscerne la superiorità. L’opera del Patrense era significativamente differenziata dagli altri romanzi greci a noi noti, ambientati in un mondo che volutamente ignorava l’esistenza stessa di Roma: l’azione si svolge infatti nella provincia romana di Macedonia, e il protagonista è un cittadino romano. Il racconto di Apuleio è quindi una fabula Graecanica, come asserisce il prologo: e per Swain l’aggettivo significa “not Greek but Roman pretending to be Greek, Roman claiming cultural pre-eminence because it had subsumed Greek” (p. 63). MICHAEL B. TRAPP individua nel prologo precisi riferimenti al Fedro di Platone. La filosofia platonica in generale, e il Fedro in particolare, costituiscono un background importante in numerose parti delle Metamorfosi, come la storia di Socrate e il racconto di Amore e Psiche; tuttavia, nel prologo, le reminiscenze platoniche danno luogo ad un curioso effetto di contrasto, e Apuleio sembra opporsi al suo ‘maestro’ suggerendo una rivalutazione delle attività di scrivere, parlare e ascoltare con puro fine di intrattenimento, cosa normalmente stigmatizzata dai filosofi. Solo un labile confine separa dalla precedente la sezione “Intertexts”, dove trovano posto tre saggi che valorizzano il rapporto del romanzo di Apuleio con Teocrito, Persio, il Vangelo di Luca e gli Atti degli Apostoli. Si tratta di
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proposte utili e innovative, relative ad autori che non è frequente vedere associati ad Apuleio; in un’ottica più tradizionale, tuttavia, si può sentire la mancanza di un contributo dedicato ad Ovidio, nella cui opera il prologo delle Metamorfosi trova evidentemente un riferimento di primaria importanza (M. Scotti ad esempio, nell’articolo citato supra, offre suggerimenti molto utili anche se non esaustivi). Assai stimolante il contributo di BRUCE GIBSON su papyrum Aegyptiam argutia Nilotici calami inscriptam, un’espressione della quale si erano sinora sottolineate soprattutto le possibili connessioni con il finale isiaco del libro 11; il rapporto con l’inizio del primo Idillio teocriteo, che inizia anch’esso con un “dolce sussurro”, ne svela invece le potenzialità letterarie, quale dichiarazione di stile alessandrino: l’Egitto e il Nilo, oltre che ad Iside, possono ben alludere a Teocrito, poeta di Alessandria. Se e come questa poetica teocritea e alessandrina trovi applicazione al di fuori del prologo, è però una curiosità che rimane purtroppo, nell’ambito di questo saggio, insoddisfatta. I paralleli proposti da EMILY GOWERS con le Satire di Persio sono meno lessicalizzati e più generici; ne emerge tuttavia un quadro coerente (sostanzialmente analogo a quello già delineato da Trapp) che vede il narratore seducente del prologo in contrasto con i canoni etico-letterari della satira di Persio, impregnata di stoicismo. Proponendo un confronto tra le Metamorfosi da un lato e il Vangelo di Luca e gli Atti degli Apostoli dall’altro, WARREN S. SMITH affronta un tema, quello delle possibili interferenze culturali tra il mondo pagano del romanzo e il mondo giudeo-cristiano, importante e forse ancora non sufficientemente studiato (in generale, cfr. ora anche R. F. Hock – J. Bradley Chance – J. Perkins, edd., Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative, Atlanta 1998): ed in effetti varie affinità nella tecnica narrativa e in alcuni nuclei tematici sono evidenziabili. Riguardo però alla datazione del Vangelo e degli Atti di Luca come grosso modo contemporanei alle Metamorfosi non sembra esservi in realtà l’ampio consensus presupposto da Smith (p. 94 e n.7) e, anche senza accogliere le controverse argomentazioni proposte da Carsten Peter Thiede in favore di una datazione di Luca alla seconda metà degli anni 50, una datazione non oltre il 90 d.C. sembra essere la più diffusa1. ————— 1
Cfr. ad es. G. Schneider, Gli Atti degli Apostoli. I. Testo greco e traduzione. Introduzione e commento ai capp. 1,1 – 8,40, Brescia 1985 (Freiburg 1980), pp. 165–168 e n. 101, con ampia dossografia. Una datazione più antica, comunque, non inficia ovviamente di per sé la possibilità di relazioni culturali di qualche tipo.
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Il prologo contiene una notevole quantità di termini relativi a luoghi geografici (da sermo Milesius a fabula Graecanica, passando per l’Egitto, Atene, Corinto, Sparta e Roma): per KATHERINE CLARKE, il cui saggio apre la sezione “Topography”, questi riferimenti contribuiscono a delineare “not only spatial but also temporal and cultural associations for the author” (p. 101). Il prologo conduce il lettore in un “viaggio mentale” (p. 105) che parte in Africa, passa per la Grecia (che fornisce il background culturale di Apuleio e della sua opera: ma non si tratta della Grecia contemporanea, bensì dell’antica e ormai perduta patria della poesia e della letteratura) e conduce a Roma: che però non è vista nella normale (per un autore latino) posizione di centro del mondo, ma viene anzi marginalizzata. Si tratta di una prospettiva che ben si accorda a quella di Edwards, anche se i due saggi risultano separati in maniera un po’ artificiosa dalla struttura del volume. Qualche perplessità può suscitare il connettere la menzione dell’Egitto alle origini africane di Apuleio, se tale menzione deve servire a delineare un pedigree culturale: se infatti è vero che le nozioni geografiche degli antichi erano talvolta vaghe, doveva comunque essere difficile sovrapporre Egitto e Africa (intesa in senso stretto, Cartagine e la sua provincia) come simboli di identità culturale. La menzione di Isthmos Ephyrea ha per DOREEN INNES una funzione di mediazione tra le vicine perifrasi che identificano Atene e Sparta, e rappresentano a loro volta la contrapposizione, tipica della teoria letteraria antica, tra i due poli del dulce e dell’utile (ma non è spiegato molto chiaramente in che modo Taenaros Spartiatica veicoli l’idea di utile). Corinto inoltre è la città di Venere-Iside, e può per questo simbolizzare l’amore profano e quello sacro: in quest’ottica, varie connessioni sono individuabili con il tessuto narrativo e ideale del romanzo. Infine, la perifrasi utilizzata per indicare Corinto punta chiaramente all’Iliade, e precisamente al famoso brano dove Glauco spiega a Diomede la propria genealogia: che in ultima analisi risale alla Grecia, benché Glauco sia nato in Licia. Anche con questa allusione Apuleio, che non era greco, punta ad includere la Grecia e la sua gloria letteraria nella propria vetus prosapia. La parte dedicata a “Literary History” è la più ampia del volume, e raccoglie quattro saggi che mettono in relazione il prologo delle Metamorfosi con differenti insiemi di testi letterari, affrontando questioni sia interpretative che relative al genere letterario. KEN DOWDEN sfrutta soprattutto il confronto
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con Sisenna e con i prologhi plautini. Ne emerge una concezione assai libera, da parte di Apuleio, del genere ‘romanzesco’ come genere misto e relativamente libero: di qui la caleidoscopica varietà di riferimenti intertestuali che arrichiscono il prologo fino quasi a disorientare il lettore e confonderne le aspettative. Contrastanti anche gli indizi che il testo fornisce riguardo all’identità dell’ego parlante: a tal proposito Dowden si pronuncia ragionevolmente per un’identità multipla, e conclude (con una formulazione umoristicamente draconiana) che “no one shall seek to identify the speaker (singular) of Apuleius’ Prologue. There shall, however, be no prohibition on adding identities” (p. 129). ANTON BITEL parte da un’analisi narratologica del prologo, sottolineando che le ‘marche di genere’ offerte dal testo possono essere interpretate in modo radicalmente opposto dal lettore extratestuale e dall’ascoltatore intratestuale (il tu cui si rivolge l’io parlante). Il primo è già indirizzato, nell’interpretazione, dal titolo del volume che ha tra le mani (probabilmente, in origine, Asinus aureus: perì metamorphóseon, come suggeriva J. Winkler), che suggerisce chiaramente un’opera di finzione; e tale impressione finisce per essere corroborata da due termini chiave contenuti nel prologo, come fabula e sermo Milesius, facilmente interpretabili come riferimento a racconti immaginari. Tuttavia l’ascoltatore intratestuale non è preindirizzato dal titolo del libro: e gli è possibile anche interpretare fabula come “oral history”, racconto orale di fatti reali; e sermo Milesius come riferimento alle Storie di Ecateo di Mileto, piuttosto che ai Milesiaká di Aristide-Sisenna. Non particolarmente stringenti sembrano i rapporti intertestuali proposti da Bitel tra il prologo di Ecateo e quello di Apuleio; tuttavia l’ipotesi della doppia possibilità interpretativa è corroborata anche dal dettagliato studio di ROBERT H. F. CARVER sulla recezione, le interpretazioni e le traduzioni del prologo delle Metamorfosi, dalla tarda antichità fino ai giorni nostri. Carver infatti ricorda tra l’altro (pp. 169 s.) che Macrobio e Fulgenzio non avevano dubbi riguardo alla natura di ‘fiction’ dei fatti narrati da Apuleio; tuttavia essi rappresentano quasi un’eccezione, e più diffusa era l’interpretazione autobiografica del romanzo (adottata ad esempio da Sant’Agostino), suggerita dalla facile identificazione dell’ego parlante con l’autore. La connessione con il genere Milesio (anche se Dowden nega a pp. 126 s. l’esistenza di un vero e proprio ‘genere’, che sarebbe rappresentato unicamente dalle opere di Aristide e Sisenna) è valorizzata anche da JOHN MORGAN (pp. 161 ss.) nell’ambito del suo studio comparativo sui prologhi
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delle Metamorfosi e dei romanzi greci. L’at ego tibi iniziale sembra infatti presupporre un racconto reciproco di storie, di cui le Metamorfosi non rappresentano che un frammento: e dagli Amores pseudolucianei sappiamo che Aristide rappresentava appunto se stesso quale partecipante ad un simile scambio di racconti, in veste sia di narratore che di ascoltatore. Il prologo apuleiano prelude ad un racconto che sarà “informal, comic, and pleasurable, unrealistic and relatively relaxed about its fictionality” (p. 162: anche se, avverte Morgan, non necessariamente il romanzo stesso corrisponderà alle aspettative create dal prologo): un programma assai diverso da quello dei romanzi greci a noi giunti, anche se è difficile che Apuleio intendesse, nel prologo, farne la parodia. L’intrinseca molteplicità dell’io parlante del prologo, già affermata da Dowden, ritorna nel saggio di YUN LEE TOO, con il quale si apre la parte dedicata a “Identity and Stability”. Gli indizi forniti dal prologo riguardo all’identità del parlante sono molteplici e divergenti: e fin dal loro inizio le Metamorfosi si caratterizzano come un “pastiche of cultural, and specifically textual, antecedents” (p. 178). Le identità culturali suggerite dai riferimenti all’Egitto, alla Grecia e a Roma si sovrappongono l’una all’altra, si aggregano ma non si fondono; il passaggio dalla lingua greca a quella latina e l’evidente varietà di livelli stilistici non contribuiscono certo a dare unità e compattezza al quadro. Rispondere alla provocatoria domanda quis ille?, e definire l’identità di questo parlante proteiforme, costituisce per la Too (che fa proprie le idee di Roland Barthes sulla ‘morte dell’autore’) una tentazione cui si deve resistere: come mostrano anche alcuni esempi tratti dal racconto di Amore e Psiche, il romanzo “refuses immobility and the immobilizing presence of the author” (p. 183). Se molteplice è l’identità del parlante, molteplici sono anche i ‘contratti’ che il prologo stabilisce con il lettore, come mostrato da JOHN HENDERSON: argomento tanto più importante in quanto le Metamorfosi sono un “truly power-full text, an ‘authoritarian fiction’” che “deserves to be handled warily from the face-off, not toyed with as belleslettres” (p. 189). Nella sezione “Dialogue and Reader”, IRENE J. F. DE JONG propone nuovamente Platone quale modello letterario, questa volta per la struttura (pseudo-) dialogica data al prologo. Sfidando le ire di Dowden e della Too, la de Jong sostiene l’identificazione del parlante con Lucio: il principale
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argomento a favore risiede nel fatto che non vi è alcuna cesura evidente tra l’ego del prologo e il soggetto narrante del racconto vero e proprio, e l’argomentazione è rafforzata dall’analisi narratologica di vari brani del romanzo. Tra le varie proposte, questa è quella che ha riscosso maggior successo tra i partecipanti al convegno del 1996: l’Introduction del volume rivela infatti (p. 5) che la mozione presentata al termine dei lavori, per cui “This House believes that the speaker of the Prologue is Lucius”, ha ricevuto 12 voti a favore. I quattro voti contrari e le nove astensioni dimostrano comunque quanto il problema sia controverso – e, forse, provano anche un certo grado di tendenziosità nella formulazione della mozione, alla quale chi fa propria l’impostazione di Dowden e della Too troverà difficile rispondere in un modo o nell’altro. NIALL SLATER sottolinea come il dialogo con il lettore, e la ‘proposta di contratto’ a lui rivolta, inizino ancor prima del prologo: un ruolo importante in questo senso è giocato da elementi paratestuali, quale la forma fisica assunta dal testo (rotoli di papiro), il titolo, il nome dell’autore. L’invito alla lettura più diretto è comunque nel prologo, del quale Slater propone una lettura strettamente lineare esaminando i messaggi veicolati di volta in volta da alcuni punti chiave del testo, e il modo in cui un ‘lettore lineare’ reagisce ad essi. Il prologo non offre al lettore alcun appiglio preciso per l’incasellamento delle Metamorfosi in un qualche genere letterario; ed alla fine il contratto proposto assume una forma inusualmente esplicita e imperativa nel celebre lector intende, laetaberis. La dialettica tra oralità e scrittura, e le conseguenze talvolta paradossali che derivano dalla compresenza nel prologo di riferimenti ad ambedue i mezzi di comunicazione, sono analizzate in dettaglio nella sezione “Voice and Writing”. DON FOWLER rileva, nel prologo ma più in generale in tutte le Metamorfosi, una tensione tra “an assumed orality and an actual written reception” (p. 225): la pretesa oralità invita il lettore ad immaginarsi presente e partecipe all’azione, e con l’incipimus finale il prologo sembra quasi voler associare autore e lettore alla produzione di ciò che seguirà, l’atto della lettura. Tuttavia sono frequenti nel romanzo anche le allusioni alla realtà scritta del testo, che finiscono per contraddire la ‘presenza’ del lettore sulla scena dove si svolgono gli avvenimenti. In alcuni brani il pubblico sembra invitato a partecipare al processo di trasformazione del racconto in testo scritto, ed è possibile che la dialettica tra testo in fieri e testo compiuto si rifletta nella
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menzione, nel prologo, dello stilus e del calamus: termini in parte intercambiabili, ma che si possono anche riferire l’uno all’attività di scrittura dell’autore su tavolette di cera, l’altro a quella del copista di professione, con inchiostro e su papiro. AHUVIA KAHANE prosegue osservando che il rapporto tra parola e testo scritto non si presenta nel nostro prologo come un processo lineare che porta dall’una all’altro, come imporrebbe la teoria classica della mímesis enunciata da Aristotele. La voce parlante del prologo è una voce, ma non ha un suono, né inflessioni dialettali o tonalità particolari; esiste indipendentemente dai suoni emessi dal lettore che legge il testo. Il prologo sembra insistere in modo particolare sugli effetti paradossali che derivano da una ‘voce scritta’: il lettore, leggendo, pronuncia at ego tibi, ma non può ovviamente identificarsi con l’ego del prologo né tantomeno riferirsi a se stesso con la seconda persona (tibi, che pure è rivolto al lettore). Questa destrutturazione delle gerarchie mimetiche classiche contribuisce allo “openly modern feel” delle Metamorfosi (p. 240), che in questo possono essere paragonate al dipinto di Velasquez Las Meninas. La parte conclusiva, “Narrative and Prologue”, consta di tre saggi dedicati ai rapporti tra il prologo e il resto del romanzo. MAAIKE ZIMMERMAN nota che il problema della sfuggente identità dell’io parlante del prologo ha parzialmente oscurato l’importanza del ruolo svolto dal tu cui il prologo stesso si rivolge. Il prologo ci presenta questo lettore (‘characterized fictive reader’) come appassionato di storie Milesie, che deve essere persuaso a compiere lo sforzo di sottoporsi ad una lettura più impegnativa (p. 247). Nel romanzo, il ‘fictive reader’ è chiamato in causa frequentemente, e gli si attribuisce una vasta gamma di reazioni differenti che finiscono per disorientare un ‘actual reader’ (lettore reale, extratestuale); finché, nel libro 11, egli viene ad assumere una personalità assai diversa da quella dell’avido lettore di Milesie presupposto dal prologo. Occorre dunque evitare di identificare troppo frettolosamente con il ‘fictive reader’ descritto provvisoriamente all’inizio il vero ‘lettore implicito’ del romanzo. L’immagine della desultoria scientia, che richiama l’arte circense del passaggio in corsa da un cavallo all’altro, è valorizzata da PAULA JAMES, che la considera “at least one of the narrative keys to the novel” (p. 262) e ne indaga le connessioni con varie parti del romanzo: principalmente la cornice narrativa del racconto di Aristomene, e la nuova apparizione sulla scena del
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cavallo di Lucio in 11,20. Il cavallo sembra fungere da ‘trait d’union’ tra l’ego parlante del prologo e il protagonista del romanzo, e fornire anche un modello di ascoltatore attento come quello richiesto dalle Metamorfosi: il prologo promette di “accarezzare le orecchie” del lettore/ascoltatore, immagine che sembra implicare “an asinine but attentive audience to match the asinine but attentive narrator of the story” (p. 261). L’idea di ‘morte dell’autore’, già valorizzata in altri saggi, torna con una nuova, sconcertante e più letterale valenza nel contributo conclusivo di ANDREW LAIRD. Dal punto di vista narratologico, l’inizio di ogni racconto in prima persona deve essere letto e interpretato alla luce della conclusione del racconto stesso (pp. 276–277); la regola vale anche per il prologo di Apuleio, ed è confermata da numerosi collegamenti tematici che lo legano al capitolo finale delle Metamorfosi. Il romanzo risulta essere quindi in certo senso una ‘storia infinita’, in cui la fine si riconnette perpetuamente al principio. Il prologo, in una simile struttura, serve come punto di ingresso, che consente l’accesso dall’esterno a questa sorta di trasposizione narrativa dell’anello di Moebius; per assolvere a questa funzione, esso presenta la doppia natura di fabula (termine che Laird accosta a ‘narrative’), come il resto del romanzo, e di sermo (‘discourse’), apostrofe al lettore. Il risultato più paradossale dell’analisi di Laird è senz’altro il fatto che il prologo risulta essere pronunciato da un morto: lo suggeriscono la parola finale di tutto il racconto, obibam, che può suggerire la morte del protagonista quale grado finale della sua iniziazione; mentre il prologo – che tra l’altro accenna a Taenaros Spartiaca, luogo di accesso all’oltretomba – presenta varie caratteristiche che lo possono avvicinare alle iscrizioni sepolcrali (pp. 272 e 276).
GIOVANNI REALE, Botticelli. La “Primavera” o le “Nozze di Filologia e Mercurio”? Rilettura di carattere filosofico ed ermeneutico del capolavoro di Botticelli con la prima presentazione analitica dei personaggi e dei particolari simbolici. Rimini, Idea Libri 2001. pp. 295. ISBN 88 7082 734 8 Reviewed by Ilaria Ramelli, Via Faustini 6, 29010 San Nicolò (Piacenza), [email protected]. In quest’opera Giovanni Reale, il quale, oltre a essere uno dei maggiori studiosi del pensiero antico, è anche acuto interprete di arte rinascimentale,1 sviluppa con dovizia e finezza argomentativa l’ipotesi che il quadro botticelliano generalmente noto come la Primavera sia in realtà una rappresentazione allegorica ispirata al “romanzo enciclopedico” di Marziano Capella De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii.2 In particolare, nella Prefazione (pp. 9–15) l’Autore illustra le ragioni per cui il capolavoro di Botticelli vada oggi riletto secondo una nuova modalità ermeneutica. Segue quindi una cospicua sezione del libro (pp. 16–171) in cui sono riprodotti, in fotografie di eccellente fattura e di grande formato, la visione d’insieme e numerosi particolari del quadro in questione. Il cap. I del saggio (pp. 175–180) presenta alcune previe considerazioni di carattere metodologico, vòlte a illustrare il percorso storico-ermeneutico seguito dall’Autore nello studio. Il cap. II (pp. 181–236) ha un andamento storico e analizza di volta in volta i varî criterî interpretativi che, dall’età rinascimentale ai giorni nostri, sono stati applicati al quadro: dapprima il metodo fondato sui paralleli letterarî tratti dai testi classici e quello neoplatonico del Ficino e dell’Accademia platonica fiorentina; quindi l’esegesi storica basata sulla celebrazione di matrimonî o eventi connessi con la famiglia de’ Medici e quella “naturalistica” ispirata al calendario rurale e alla stagione della Primavera: in questo contesto si colloca l’interessante passo di Girolamo Aleandro del 1616 su Mercurio come dio della primavera: per questa interpretazione Aleandro si fonda proprio su Marziano Capella. Opportunamente, dunque, ————— 1
2
Si vedano i suoi Raffaello. La “Scuola di Atene”, Milano 1997; Raffaello. La “Disputa”, Milano 1998; Raffaello. Il “Parnaso”, Milano 1999. Mi sia consentito il rinvio alla mia traduzione, introdotta e commentata, Marziano Capella. Le nozze di Filologia e di Mercurio, Milano 2001.
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l’Autore fa rilevare subito dopo l’importanza e la portata dell’opera di Marziano, nell’età tardo-antica, medioevale e umanistica. Si passa, infine, alle ipotesi del Novecento: dopo un primo richiamo al testo di Marziano Capella nell’interpretazione del quadro botticelliano da parte di Wickhoff nel 1906, viene la tesi di Claudia La Malfa, che interpreta il dipinto alla luce di due passi del libro II del De nuptiis.3 Infine, è esposta e fatta propria dal Reale la tesi di Claudia Villa,4 che legge sistematicamente il quadro in riferimento all’opera di Marziano. L’Autore passa quindi, nel cap. III, a presentare analiticamente le proprie proposte interpretative per ogni singolo aspetto del quadro e, nel cap. IV (pp. 279–288), si sofferma sul significato delle piante, dei fiori e dei frutti, le cui specie sono ben distinguibili. Un’opportuna e illuminante sintesi è infine offerta nel cap. V, contenente importanti osservazioni conclusive sul quadro come «rappresentazione della “Primavera” della nuova cultura umanistico-rinascimentale incentrata sulla Poesia, sulla Retorica e sulla Filologia» (pp. 289–295), in cui di particolare rilievo appare la sezione che mostra come le idee espresse da Marziano Capella si fondano con quelle tipiche del platonismo e la parte in cui l’Autore spiega le ragioni per cui, tra le sette arti liberali, Botticelli ne abbia scelta una sola come ancella di Filologia. Il pregio fondamentale del libro mi sembra consistere, oltre che nella ricchezza e nella bellezza del corredo fotografico, soprattutto nella sistematicità e nell’organicità della interpretazione proposta, la quale, come accennavamo, riprende, sviluppa, integra notevolmente e articola in modo esauriente – specialmente in rapporto all’universo culturale e filosofico platonico in cui si pone il Botticelli – i preziosi spunti della Villa. In particolare, il Reale fa notare come la scena del quadro astragga dalle dimensioni spazio-temporali e come la presentazione dei personaggi nel loro insieme risulti una icona emblematica di un’Idea platonica (pp. 239–241). Il personaggio di Mercurio, una figura che in precedenza aveva provocato gravi difficoltà interpretative, alla luce dell’opera del Capella si spiega con estrema facilità, essendo lo sposo di Filologia; il fatto che volti le spalle a tutti viene spiegato dal Reale, come già dalla Villa, con l’identificazione tra il dio e il pianeta in Marziano: il pianeta Mercurio ha un moto retrogrado ————— 3
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C. La Malfa, Firenze e l’allegoria dell’eloquenza: una nuova interpretazione della “Primavera” di Botticelli, «Storia dell’Arte» 97 (1999), pp. 249–293. C. Villa, Per una lettura della “Primavera”. Mercurio “retrogrado” e la retorica nella bottega di Botticelli, «Strumenti critici» 13 (1998), pp. 1–28.
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(Mart. Cap. VIII 879–880). Qui è còlto da Botticelli nel momento in cui decide di consultare il fratello Apollo – questo consulto relativo appunto al matrimonio è descritto da Marziano nel I libro –, che coincide con il momento in cui conclude, come pianeta, il suo moto di retrogradazione, prima dell’inizio del ciclo del moto diretto, che segna il principio della primavera (p. 243). Le nubi o nebbie che Mercurio disperde con il caduceo sono probabilmente quelle che ombreggiano l’alta roccia in cui risiede Febo prima del suo incontro con il fratello in Marziano (I 11); del resto le nebbie caratterizzano Mercurio, pianeta freddo che segue Febo-Sole, caldo, come ricorda un commentatore anonimo di Marziano del XII sec.5 I raggi che emanano dagli occhi di Mercurio si spiegano con l’appellativo Stilbonte che Marziano gli attribuisce e che significa «splendente» (p. 244). I calzari alati e il petaso rinviano all’eloquenza e alla sua velocità nel raggiungere i proprî scopi persuasivi;6 Mercurio inoltre è ritratto dal Botticelli «rivestito di un piccolo mantello», come lo presenta Marziano (I 5), il cui colore rosso e le cui fiamme simboleggiano amore: e questo ben si adatta allo sposo del De nuptiis. Il dito indice alzato del dio indica l’esistenza di un mondo trascendente, come è anche nel caso del San Giovanni al Louvre di Leonardo, quello di Platone nella Scuola di Atene di Raffaello e quello di Giustino Martire nella Disputa del Sacramento dello stesso Raffaello. Della raffigurazione di Mercurio, che è visto come il dio dell’ermeneutica, molti altri sono i dettagli che ricevono una minuziosa interpretazione. Delle tre Grazie, connesse tradizionalmente con Mercurio e collegate da Marziano stesso alle sue nozze, quella di spalle, disadorna, è Castità, quella di sinistra è Voluttà e quella di destra è Bellezza. La figura femminile al centro della composizione figurativa, solitamente presentata come la Primavera, è la protagonista del romanzo di Marziano: Filologia: anche di questo personaggio varie caratteristiche sono interpretate alla luce del testo di Marziano (p. 253): ad esempio, il suo pallore, evidente nel quadro, è attribuito a Filologia per ben due volte, esplicitamente, da Marziano (I 37; II 139). I calzari di papiro intrecciato, analogamente, sono ascritti a Filologia in Marziano, II 115. Inoltre, sia le fiammelle della scollatura sia il colore rosso della pietra e del manto di Filologia si spiegano bene come simboli dell’amore, dato che ella è la sposa; non è un caso che il rosso compaia solo in Mercurio e in Filologia. Perfino dell’asimmetria del ————— 5 6
Cit. dalla Villa, Per una lettura, p. 1. La Malfa, Firenze e l’allegoria, 256–258.
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volto e degli occhi è resa ragione con il duplica statuto di Filologia quale vergine mortale e quale dèa immortale (pp. 260–261). Cupido, in ottica platonica, è simbolo dell’amore spirituale. La donna con i fiori è Retorica, come aveva già intuito la Villa, reinterpretata secondo la concezione umanistico-rinascimentale. In Marziano la Retorica è, tra le sette arti liberali, quella trattata più ampiamente e associata con Filologia. Se in Marziano Retorica è armata, nel Botticelli è caratterizzata dai fiori (i flores retorici, appunto), secondo uno sviluppo iconografico pienamente documentabile.7 Il gruppo di destra, formato dal dèmone e da Flora, che è qui simbolo della poesia, è espressione iconografica del “divino furore” che è l’ispirazione poetica, secondo l’ottica che, derivata da Platone (specialmente nel Simposio, come illustra il Reale alle pp. 270–273), è esposta da Marsilio Ficino, Sul divino furore (la si veda riportata alle pp. 274 sgg.). Di notevole originalità mi sembra dotata anche l’interpretazione allegorica applicata dal Reale agli elementi vegetali nel dipinto. La fila esterna di abeti ha la funzione di isolare il giardino degli aranci, per farlo risultare come un luogo a sé stante, come un’Idea platonica espressa per immagini (p. 279). Che i frutti raffigurati a destra siano sette mele cotogne sembra dimostrato in maniera convincente dall’evidenza del raffronto fotografico con mele cotogne vere (pp. 280–281): le mele cotogne ritornano, dorate, anche entro il filare di arance a indicare il pomerium rhetoricae. Quanto ai fiori d’arancio, è noto che simboleggiano le nozze, e si adattano perfettamente alla supposta rappresentazione delle nozze tra Filologia e Mercurio. Tra le sette mele cotogne non dorate e quelle dorate – grazie all’ispirazione, secondo il Reale – collocate più a sinistra si situano i tre alberi di allòro, che è sacro ad Apollo, fratello di Mercurio, e rappresenta la poesia: non per nulla tali alberi sono raffigurati dietro il gruppo che rappresenta l’ispirazione poetica. Il cespuglio di mirto dietro a Filologia, che sembra quasi incoronarla, essendo legato a Venere e usato nelle cerimonie nuziali, si attaglia ottimamente al soggetto del quadro ipotizzato dall’Autore. Vengono identificati con precisione anche i fiori che escono dalla bocca di Flora (= Poesia) e, almeno in parte, quelli che adornano Retorica, nonché i fiori collegati a Filologia e a Mercurio – quelli sul bordo del vestito di ————— 7
Emblematico appare il cod. Laurenziano S. Marco 190, del sec. XII, dove Retorica ha ancora la spada, ma in luogo dell’elmo porta un velo ornato con fiori, ripetuti sui bordi delle vesti: cfr. Villa, Per una lettura, p. 10.
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Filologia corrispondono a quelli degli stivali di Mercurioe i fiori sul prato. A proposito di questi ultimi, l’assenza di qualsiasi fiore piegato o schiacciato dalle figure dei varî personaggi fa quasi sembrare che tali figure non abbiano peso, e questo ci riconduce al discorso dell’astrazione spazio-temporale che caratterizza questa scena. La stretta connessione dei temi marzianei e di quelli platonici che sembrano ispirare quest’opera pittorica del Botticelli è tutt’altro che forzata: Marziano stesso, pur non essendo un filosofo, era comunque un neoplatonico. Mi sembra, dunque, che la proposta ermeneutica del Reale sia la più convincente e completa finora formulata. Va ascritto a merito dell’insigne studioso, infine, l’ammissione (p. 295) che il capolavoro, in quanto tale, non può essere completamente imprigionato nei nostri schemi interpretativi, anche se le nostre ipotesi esegetiche hanno per lo meno l’aspirazione ad avvicinarsi, per quanto possibile, alla completezza.
Werner Riess: Apuleius und die Räuber: ein Beitrag zur historischen Kriminalitätsforschung. 463 pp. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2001 (Heidelberger Althistorische Beiträge und Epigraphische Studien, Bd. 35). Hardback, € 83.00. ISBN 3 515 07826 6 Reviewed by Brent D. Shaw, University of Pennsylvania, e-mail: [email protected] Originally a Heidelberg dissertation, completed in 1999 under the aegis of Géza Alföldy, this imposing work represents one of the most concerted and extensive attacks yet on the problem of the representation of banditry in the prose literature of the high empire, most specifically in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius. Following hard on Thomas Grünewald’s recent analysis of Roman robbers, Räuber, Rebellen, Rivalen, Rächer: Studien zu Latrones im römischen Reich, Riess’s monograph both extends the conclusions of that work and develops his own specific theses on the relationship between history and fiction.1 In several respects, the two books overlap, a ‘double coverage’ that is especially true of the first half of Riess’s book which, like Grünewald’s, is devoted to the realia of banditry in the empire.2 For the historian, although less so for the scholar of Apuleian studies, the title is pleasantly misleading, since the manner in which Riess elaborates his thesis takes him over a far wider range of evidence than a specific concern with the portrayal of robbers in Apuleius’ novel. In some ways, the book might usefully be conceived as two separate works bound into one: the first a detailed study of what is known about ‘actual’ robbers and brigandage in the Roman empire and the second an exploration of how Apuleius’ portrayal of robbers and bandit gangs relates to this reality. ————— 1
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It should be noted that Riess was permitted to see Grünewald’s work in advance of publication; the reviewer should also note his views on this earlier work: Thomas Grünewald, Räuber, Rebellen, Rivalen, Rächer: Studien zu Latrones im römischen Reich, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 1999 [Heinz Bellen ed., Forschungen zur Antiken Sklaverei, Bd. 31] [in] The Bryn Mawr Classical Review, vol. 11 (2000.02.12), electronic text at: http://ccat. sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2000/2000-02-12.html In other important respects, however, they differ substantially. Grünewald is devoted to the development of a complex typology of bandits and robbers, whereas Riess is satisfied with a very general twofold division into ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ robbers (pp. 89–90), a division which does not much affect what he subsequently has to say in any event.
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The section of the book that is specifically devoted to Apuleius’ novel, entitled ‘Apuleius und die Räuber,’ comes near the book’s end. Given the title of the work, its comparative brevity is perhaps surprising. The rest of the volume, the first two thirds and more, is devoted to providing the context for understanding Apuleius’ fictional representation of bandits: it is the foundation on which the specific study of the novel is constructed. The first section of the book is introduced with a ‘Methodische Hinführung’ (pp. 7– 44) that outlines the existing work on banditry in the Roman empire, as well as some of the author’s working premises. This introduction is followed by the longest part of the whole book, entitled ‘Die römische Gesellschaft und die Räuber’ (pp. 45–236), a finely detailed analysis of the place of bandits in the Roman social order based on various kinds of empirical data. This bulky core of the book is divided into five subsections that deal sequentially with the social background of brigandage, the activities of bandits, the values and ideals that such men espoused, the structure of the brigand gangs and, finally, the nature of their marginalization in the mainstream social, legal, and political order. Only following this expansive undergirding of positive facts about robbers does Riess finally approach the ostensible subject of his research: a specific consideration of the picture offered by Apuleius of the organization and behavior of bandit gangs. This analysis is followed immediately by a broad overview that attempts to treat the general problem of the relationship between fiction and history by inverting both possible approaches: the nature of fictive elements in historical narratives and the use of historical reality in fictional tales. The bibliography is wide-ranging, and the indexes are sufficiently detailed to be useful. The whole is supplemented by a valuable Anhang: a collection of records on the actions of robbers attested in papyri from Roman Egypt. In his judgments on what constituted the ‘objective conditions’ of bandits and brigandage in the empire, the papyrological evidence is particularly significant for Riess, since it offers some hope of a reportorial benchmark against which the fictive assertions of Apuleius’ picture of brigandage can be assessed. Beyond its technical competence, methodological clarity, and extensive coverage of the data, the book has several other unusual strengths. For a work in ancient history, the consistent use of a range of materials on brigandage in early modern Europe, especially a range of works on banditry in German-speaking lands in the period that are not likely to be common
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knowledge even to many modern historians, is a real boon.3 What is more, the comparative material is used carefully and judiciously. Riess does recognize that in some very important respects — for example, the efficiency and predictability of land communications along roads — conditions in the Roman empire in the most complex phases of its development were closer to those that prevailed in early nineteenth-century western Europe rather than they were to those of earlier periods of European history (pp. 244–45). The different research styles of history and literary studies are reflected in the prose and composition of the two parts of the book. The first part is a careful and near-exhaustive record and delineation of evidence and fact, a careful arraignment of data and deduction to construct a plausible empirical picture of bandits, gang formation, brigand operations, and their repression and punishment. The second part of the book, on the other hand, begins with the portentous announcement that we live in ‘the Post-Winklerian Era’ of literary aesthetics (p. 247). This latter part of the volume, devoted specifically to Apuleius’ text, consists of a commentary-like exegesis of the bandit narratives in the Metamorphoses read against the reality of brigandage outlined in the first two-thirds of the work.4 Riess begins by pointing out the importance of this singular source to the subject: ‘Der Goldene Esel enthält die ausführlichsten Räuberdarstellungen der lateinischen Literatur. Mehr als ein Drittel des Textes handelt von ihnen.’ And he recognizes the place of the ‘bahnbrechenden Studie von Winkler,’ a new approach to Apuleius that forefronted our recognition of the author’s constant subversion of the reader’s assumptions, his penchant for playing with expectations, hiding knowledge, and delaying conclusions that might be held by the reader. Riess also notes, albeit in a cautious footnote (p. 247n4), some of the negative reactions to this narratological project, of which Winkler was, at that time, in the vanguard. He clearly wishes to eschew some of the more radical claims ————— 3
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I noted about two dozen of these modern studies of banditry in late mediaeval and early modern German lands. I was previously acquainted with only three or four of them. Although Riess offers a modest explanation (p. 249), it is still difficult for the reviewer to accept that the extended parts of Apuleius’ text that are quoted for analysis are presented in a standard German translation rather than in the original Latin. Although the reviewer is not opposed in any way to the wider dissemination of ideas, especially to those in related fields of historical and literary inquiry, I think that it would have been better to furnish the Latin text in addition to the German translation. At many points, readers will surely wonder what Apuleius’ actual words were, and they will therefore have to keep the Latin text to hand alongside the book.
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sometimes associated with the post-structuralist ideas of text and prefers instead to locate the author and text in a ‘real world’ context. Riess states the aims of his query with laudable clarity, and more than once: to what extent is the content of Apuleius’ bandit narratives representative of his social class, in what sort of total social discourse is the author located, and what elements in the mass of data that fill the novel are relevant to the history of criminality in the Roman empire (p. 24 f, 248)? Laudably, Riess is not willing to dispense with a whole range of items in the last category simply because they are labeled ‘literary commonplaces’ by scholars, with the sensible warning that ‘auch Topoi stellen zumindest einen Weg dar, Realität zu erfassen.’ But in many cases, he is reduced, as historians often are, to saying that this or that event or practice is ‘plausible,’ that a given text contains ‘einen kleinen Kern an Plausibilität’ (p. 281). Or that a statement in Apuleius is ‘confirmed by other data.’ In one case, that ‘diese Überlegung nicht aus der Luft gegriffen ist’ (of Met. 7.9.4–6) ‘zeigen die vielen antiken Nachrichten über den Frauenraub’ (p. 284). Although certainly not ‘aus der Luft,’ the incident could just as easily be prompted by Apuleius’ reading of those same other ancient literary sources on Frauenraub (i.e., that such kidnapped women not infrequently ended up in brothels or other kinds of servitude) to which we have access and which we, like Riess, are using to check Apuleian authenticity. Another test is logical consistency. While I would often agree with Riess, some of the cases, again, seem open to question, such as ‘die logischen Brüche’ in the famous scene where the gardener’s ass is seized by a soldier (Met. 9.39). On closer inspection the ‘logical inconsistencies’ seem, to my eyes, less ‘inconsistent’ than Riess asserts. As for the objective tests against which Riess tests the authenticity of the Apuleian account, the faith that he places in the documents from Roman Egypt, for example — papyrus records of appeals, judicial responses, court judgments, and other orders issued by authorities — sometimes seems open to question. Historians have long been aware of the significant fictive elements that are also embedded in the narratives that appellants and defendants tell to courts. In fact, it is a typical social area of ‘story telling’ and in more than one sense.5 What did and did not get before the Roman ————— 5
Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and their Tellers in SixteenthCentury France, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1987, provides an extreme example of the sort of ‘fictionalizing’ tendencies that lie behind simple claims placed before a court in
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authorities and in what form is not something that can be read in a straightforward way, even from these brief and apparently objective administrative documents. For example, there is the problem of violence conducted in the context of robberies in which Riess quite correctly argues that the surviving records indicate the ‘Seltenheit des Mordes’ (p. 118 f). The problem with this is that the records that have survived are those kept by private persons who survived in order to lodge complaints and to lay charges with Roman courts. Naturally, such records do not tend to contain references to homicides that were committed in the context of violent robberies and assaults where no-one survived to tell the tale. On the other hand, his comparative crosschecks with criminality do yield interesting observations. In the case of the highwayman and highway robbery (Straßenräub) as the standard image of the typical act of brigandage, Riess notes that only six of his 138 cases from Egypt, or about 4–5%, fall into this category and that this matches the incidence found in certain counties of sixteenth and seventeenthcentury England (p. 109, 111n123, based on Cockburn’s work). The observation is well taken, but it should perhaps lead one to query the categorization of Straßenräub as a genuine form of banditry, whereas misdeeds like breaking and entering that dominated both civil societies were probably thought of as the acts of common criminals.6 Another problem with reading the papyrological evidence as a straightforward guide to other societies in the Roman empire is the standard and vexatious problem of the typicality of Egypt. The concern is not a trivial one since, as Riess himself notes (p. 119n7), even regions within a nation state as small as pre-modern England reveal substantial differences in the incidence of homicides committed in the course of violent robberies. The fact that only two or three of his 138 cases of violent robbery reveal a death committed in the course of the assault can be accepted only with some caution. Although he rightly questions the statistical significance of some of the epigraphical texts that are frequently arraigned in studies of Roman bandits (typical ones, for example, that attest to a victim ‘interfectus a latronibus,’ vel sim.), it is not clear that the records of the papyri on ‘policing conditions’ in Egyptian towns and villages necessarily provide a good guide ————— 6
the more fully elaborated ‘pardon tales’ forged by petitioners to the French crown. One wonders if some of the problem in seeing the distinction lies in the fact that the German Räuber does not mark this difference as clearly as does the English distinction between ‘robber’ (almost always used of the common criminal) and ‘bandit’?
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to conditions of violence that was typical of the more remote rural regions of the western and northern empire where most of these inscriptions are found. As he himself shows by a collation of the available evidence, these inscriptions are concentrated in the very same regions where the imperial forces of the state were used in much larger anti-bandit repression operations than the low-level policing normally found in Egypt (p. 17, nn55–56). The large-scale repressive actions involving units of the army surely demonstrates that in some parts of the empire there were gangs of the type envisaged by Apuleius and that their operations were unlike the housebreakings committed by a few individuals in Egyptian villages. Similarly, in his discussion of the structure of bandit gangs, Riess leans on the fact that the papyrological data show that attacks by large gangs were rare to argue that Apuleius’ portrait of large gang operations is exaggerated and aberrant (p. 301 f). The context of armed robbery in Egypt, however, where, apart from the special case of the border peripheries and the delta, one is dealing with small and strongly interdependent village milieux, would seem to suggest that robbery similarly would have been a small-scale, internal affair. A further problem with the Egyptian data is that the society of the villages of upper Egypt (the source of all of Riess’s papyri) was a civilly ordered society in which it is possible to speak of ‘ordinary criminals’ and crime rather than bandits and brigandage. The distinction is critical, and Hobsbawm (whatever misgivings one might have about his ‘social bandit’ thesis) was surely right to make it.7 It is interesting to see that many of the complainants configure the wrongdoers as brigands rather than mere thieves, surely knowing that this was, rhetorically, a far more powerful castigation in the eyes of the authorities. In making these objections, I must make clear that I do not reject all implications drawn from the papyrological data, but simply that the normal procedural processes of the Roman judicial system on the one hand, and the peculiar ecological conditions of village life along the Nile on the other, should be taken fully into consideration. Given these caveats, it is not clear that the levels of violence in the empire were necessarily as low as Riess seems to think, or that the putative lower level is to be explained by the ————— 7
Hobsbawm, Bandits, rev. ed., London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000 (New York, New Press, 2000), p. 17 f., with detailed bibliographical updates and commentary (original edition: London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969); it is a distinction accepted by most subsequent students of the phenomenon.
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impact of the norms of upper class culture and behavior filtering down through the social ranks to civilize the behavior of ordinary people in the empire, in a manner analogous to the ‘civilizing process’ that, as Norbert Elias argues, domesticated early modern Europeans. Otherwise, Riess is surely right strongly to contextualize brigand violence as one segment of the much larger history of the Randgruppen of the empire. He is also right to attempt some sort of comparative history of bandits and their actions. Just how violent were the societies of the Roman empire by comparison with other pre-modern societies close to them in type and structure? What is to be our standard of judgment? Several long-term studies have shown just how much more violent social orders of only a few centuries ago were than our own in terms of interpersonal civil violence.8 Such facts affect not only our judgment of what is violent in a given text, but also what the writers of the time would have considered particularly violent by their own standards. Establishing that picture is important. In Riess’s somewhat more pacific view of the empire and brigand violence, Apuleius’ picture seems exaggerated if not comically overdrawn — and therefore his conclusion about the novel follows: where the most blood flows, the novel is at its most fictional (‘wo am meisten Blut fließt, die Literarizität des Textes am größsten ist’: p. 293). But when he appeals to the descriptions of robbers in the papyri to dispute that most armed attempts were not as ‘spectacular’ as some of those depicted by Apuleius (267), he is probably on much stronger ground. The literary depictions, he argues, I think convincingly, are not drawn from any actual quotidian incidents of which Apuleius himself had experience, but are drawn mostly from literary prototypes. So, for example, the details of the bandits’ attack on the house of Chryseros (Met. 4.9–12) is modeled on accounts of the sieges of cities in epic, with conscious textual recollections of literary prototypes, like those found in Seven Against Thebes (pp. 268–71). The referentiality, however, is easily spotted since Apuleius himself ostentatiously indicates as much (see Met. 4.9 and 4.13, gross hints unlikely to be missed by an ancient reader). Given Apuleius’ rhetorical training, it is also difficult to avoid seeing stories and narrative materials as arranged purposefully in artificial triads, again dependent on the mode of the literary pastiche (p. 275n56). Riess thus makes his case for this dominant intertextual mode as characterizing Apuleius’ portrait of the bandits. In ————— 8
L. Stone, “Interpersonal Violence in English Society, 1300–1980,” Past & Present 101 (1983), 22–33.
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several of the examples that Reiss examines, however, he could have made it even better by exploiting the obvious parallels and patterns available to the author from his own works, especially in the Apologia, written and experienced some time, perhaps a decade or more, before his writing of the novel. In Apuleius’ portrait of the structure and operations of bandit gangs, Riess accepts the consensus of some recent Apuleian scholarship in seeing the heavy hand of parody everywhere in the mannered fashion so typical of the baroque prose of the period: the egalitarian spirit of the gang is a play on the norms of radical democracy, the organization of the band is a humorous play on that of an urban collegium, the brigand sacrifices are parodies of the proper religious ceremonials of any good civic community, and so on. Another palpable creation of the novelist is the speech used by the bandits, a mode too literary and improbably correct for the real criminal (p. 310 f.). In an echo of the dyadic structure of the book — the deliberate contrast between an empirically established picture of ‘real bandits’ and the imaginative representations of writers of fiction — the question that Riess has of the novel is less its relationship to reality (in terms of representation) than it is an attempt to gauge or to measure the distance between fictive and real-life bandits. His principal methods are to contrast the conditions in the novel with the world reflected in literary sources (legal texts, historian’s accounts) and more objective records (legal papyri from Egypt, inscriptions, the norms of the law codes), and then to apply normative standards of ‘probability’ and ‘likelihood.’ Of course, canons of ‘plausibility’ and ‘likelihood’ are themselves open to constant query. For example, in judging it unlikely that robbers would have left one of their own behind in a town as a spy after a raid (p. 302), Riess appeals to the probability that such a plant would be immediately unmasked because of his status as an outsider or stranger. In the small and comparatively stable villages of Upper Egypt that would perhaps have been true. But if other Mediterranean towns were as mobile and shifting as Horden and Purcell argue, then the presence of drifters, wanderers, shepherds, itinerant traders, migrant laborers, soldiers in transit, and other such mobile persons would have formed a normal floating world in the population in which it would have been difficult so easily to identify the appearance of a given outsider as unusual. Riess’s preference is that the incident of ‘the plant’ is actually present because of the narrative demands of the story. This is persuasive, but the point seems to be made better by the literary analysis of the bandits in the text rather than by any
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comparison with reality. He also judges the author of the Onos as having a much better grasp of the demimonde of friends, supporters, suppliers, receivers, and informants that populated the underworld of the robbers (p. 303). But the problem with this is Riess’s good observation, made much earlier, that all of these literary forms are deliberately engaging the reader with an erethetic experience, that they were purposefully selecting ‘an extreme form’ of reality to emphasize (p. 44).9 But the quality of any novelist’s constructed relationship to reality is therefore bound to be a species of exaggeration. It is inherently part of the rhetoric of the genre. Using a combination of both methods (and with a detail that can only be hinted at in a brief review), Riess presents a credible case for a very strong kind of skepticism of those who would hold the Apuleian portrait of bandits as having much to do with the real-life conditions of robbers and bandits in imperial society. At best, he argues, Apuleius deploys general background structures that might pertain to real-life brigandage, but he had little connection, if any at all, with the actual day-to-day life of bandits. He was therefore dependent on a pastiche of literary prototypes, technical themes, rhetorical types, and his own imagination to create his fiction. On the other hand, the way in which Apuleius assembles and orchestrates these elements is a good guide to the mentalité (Mentalitätstand) of the elites of the empire (p. 312). Riess’s bedrock skepticism about Apuleius’ portrait of robbers as being one that is empirically true is surely well founded. But as Iger and Assman argue (p. 356–59), this empirical shortfall is surely located less in the ‘testable’ individual details in his account (as those in a Dickensian novel) that are part of the ‘general background’ furnishing the novel with its credibility, as it is in the ‘forefront’ of assemblage and interpretation. The whole aura of Apuleius’ narration, while referring to an understood reality ‘out there,’ is embedded within the ideological structure of his class and its interpretation of that reality in his own age, and so highlights elements of parody, irony, and satire in his narration. Such distortions were necessary parts of the artistic canon of representation in his age. Riess does make judicious use of Auerbach’s ————— 9
A tactic also used by later Christian writers, for example, in connection with their portraits of the poor; P. Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (HanoverLondon, University Press of New England, 2000), 45 f., draws attention to the same process of selection amongst Christian writers in their descriptions of the poor – for what seem to me analogous structural reasons.
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Mimesis on the general inability of fictional representation in the literature of the age to present the reality of living conditions of persons outside the upper classes ‘as is,’ but rather the constant need to distort, to misrepresent, and to degrade them as humorous or farcical in kind. But this use seems tentative and not as daring as Auerbach’s thesis would suggest. It only hints at a deeper division between reality and its representation that somehow makes the very canons of that world different from ours. This takes us back to a possible problem of a conception of the problem itself. Riess lays heavy emphasis on the sociological insights of criminology (p. 7 f), a specific study of a general type of misbehavior that emerged in Europe and America over the course of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. The genre of modern prose fiction that most corresponds to this development, indeed emerges in tandem with it is the modern murder mystery, the detective novel, from Holmes to Hammett. The genre simply does not exist in the Roman world (but it did, significantly, in pre-modern China). However good they might be in their own way, Steven Saylor’s literary efforts rightly strike a quite discordant note in any modern Roman historian. It is rather the pirate and the bandit that are at the heart of ancient prose fiction – and so, again, it is critically important to make the distinction between the common criminal and the bandit. The final, specifically Apuleian section of the book is developed like a running commentary: a selection of the text is presented (in German translation) and is then followed by Riess’s exegesis. For each of the sections of commentary, one can naturally think of additions and extensions. And sometimes the few paragraphs that link a piece of quoted text with the next seem too brief to offer a fully satisfying analysis. For example, in his discussion of the youthful ruffians of Hypata who threaten Lucius with harm to ‘get their kicks’ (Met. 2.18 & 2.32 f), Riess rightly draws attention to the activities of the jeunesse dorée known from the urban centers of early modern western Europe, and he also notes some general works on Roman youth.10 But there is no systematic investigation of the place of the iuventus organizations in Roman towns and their relationship to the problem of controlling and channeling the activities of potentially violent young men — like the ‘Hell-Raisers’ or eversores of Augustine’s youth at Carthage (Conf. ————— 10
Mentioning Eyben, for example, but not the equally important work by Marc Kleijwegt, Ancient Youth: the Ambiguity of Youth and the Absence of Adolescence in Greco-Roman Society, Amsterdam, J. C. Gieben, 1991.
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3.3.6). Nor is there use of the wide range of Maria Jaczynowska’s scholarship and, perhaps important, the presence of these organizations in the municipal towns of north Africa where Apuleius might well have confronted their members.11 Despite the length and detail of the book, it is perhaps surprising that some good opportunities to confront Apuleius’ text with his own experiences have been lost. In a real sense, the book proper ends with this last third that is devoted to Apuleius’ text. The reader, however, is asked to forge on through a fourth part entitled ‘eine theoretische Nachbetrachtung’ (pp. 349–74). Its utility to the whole is questionable. Having completed the core of the book, the reader is confronted with a generalizing diptych on ‘Die Geschichte in der Fiktion’ and ‘Die Fiktion in der Geschichte.’ Neither chapter contains much actual content on Apuleius, on the Metamorphoses, or references to bandits in imperial literature. Rather, each is a consideration of some problematic aspects of the relationship between historical and fictional writing. Alas, neither is detailed enough to offer more than a synopsis of the views of a few current thinkers on the subject. The first is more useful in that it highlights recent German scholarship by Kate Hamburger and, especially, the theoretical ideas of Wolfgang Iser, and extensions of the latter’s work by Aleida Assman — concepts that might not be well known to those who study the construction of ancient fiction and historical texts.12 These particular parts of the chapter are interesting, since Riess attempts to demonstrate how their ideas can usefully be applied to an analysis of Apuleius’ text. Even as a theoretical excursus, however, the second of the two final chapters, that on fiction in history, is, I think, rather less successful. It replays Hayden White’s dubious hypotheses as if they were part of a broadly accepted consensus amongst historians, and White’s conceptions of the relationships between the generic elements of fiction/rhetoric and history as if they were canonical expositions on the subject. In any event, the content of these ————— 11
12
M. Jaczynowska, Les associations de la jeunesse romaine sous le Haut-Empire, transl. I. Wosczyk, Warsaw, Polish Academy of Sciences, 1978, encompassing a large number of article publications by her on the subject. K. Hamburger, Die Logik der Dichtung, Stuttgart, 1994 and A. Assmann, Die Legitimität der Fiktion: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der literarischen Kommunikation, Munich, 1980. The works by Iser are better known; several of his standard works relevant to the problem of creation of fictive literature are in English translation (e.g., his Fiktive und das Imaginäre of 1991 was made available in English in 1993). But Riess uses the much wider range of Iser’s work that is available in German, and to good effect.
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additions might better have been relegated to appendices or, perhaps better, dispersed throughout the analysis in the text itself. What final judgments might an historian essay? Not only does Riess offer the finest exposition of the problem yet attempted, but his powerful analysis logically indicates avenues of more exciting and innovative work that can be explored. It might be said that Riess’s technically competent and comprehensive analysis has just about exhausted the limits of what can be gained by assembling the canonical evidence. His careful compilations of the literary sources, epigraphical texts, numismatic data, and legal norms, and his development of typologies and first-order explanations have taken the subject to a sort of asymptotic limit of what can be done by means of a thorough-going empirical approach that is both critical and imaginative. Any new study must depart from the picture that he has established and (it is to be hoped) not reiterate, yet again, the range of known cases and stereotypical examples of banditry in the Roman world, including those from the novelists. Riess has shown the distance that separates Apuleian fictions from the actual modalities of banditry in the empire, and he has surely vitiated once and for all any simple pillaging of Apuleius’ text for neat examples of Roman social life at the margins. These are questions that excite and agitate the historian. And to have answered them is no small achievement. As for the functions, modalities, and significances of the fiction itself, it must be confessed that this whole aspect of the problem does not fit easily under the rubric of Kriminalitätsforschung. Trying to unravel this knot will involve the sorting out of the complex interplay between the internal structures of the fiction, its literary models, the audiences and their expectations, the author’s intentions and assumptions, and the social reproduction of texts. One has only to consider, to take a few examples, the fictions of John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, Schiller’s Die Räuber, or, better, the cycle of Robin Hood stories, mutating over time, through different genres, altering the structure and status of the bandit world in the process, to have some sense of how difficult this problem will be. Riess’s work persuasively demonstrates what Apuleius’ novel is not, but precisely what it was as a cultural artifact of imperial literature and, more particularly, why bandits were placed in it in the fashion that they were is the difficult question that remains.
Abstracts Utopian Themes in Three Greek Romances J EAN A LVARES The ancient Greek romances are ideal in more than their protagonists’ wealth, high status, beauty, exceptional love and the happy ending they eventually find. Here is a preliminary theorization and overview of a wider explication of the romances’ ideal themes. Three approaches are drawn upon to provide examples for such a project: the myth-thematic approach, as exemplified by the work of Northrop Frye, and those of the Marxist critics Fredric Jameson and Ernst Bloch. Myth-thematic criticism highlights those ideal and persistent patterns the ideal romances share with profound myths such as that of Demeter and Kore or with eschatological discourses as well as with medieval and later romances. Jameson and Bloch consider that utopian dimensions exist in all artistic works, if only in disguised and displaced forms. Their approaches help the critic delineate a romance’s ideologies (which necessarily employ ideal themes) and its complex ‘political unconscious’, which, as in Chariton’s romance, can provide some serious images of a superior political life. Such an expanded understanding of the ancient romance’s ideal dimensions can provide a fruitful source of new insights for scholars and will assist those who wish to teach the romances in the broader contexts of later western literature, art and the processes of historical and cultural change.
Il mimo tra ‘consumo’ e ‘letteratura’: Charition e Moicheutria M ARIO A NDREASSI Il contributo prende in esame i mimi del Charition e della Moicheutria e si propone di dimostrare che questa produzione popolare non esclude il recupero e la rielaborazione di temi tradizionalmente letterari. L’epica e la tragedia (nel caso del Charition), il mimo ellenistico e il romanzo (per la Moicheu-
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tria) si rivelano i generi dai quali i due mimi sembrano in varia misura dipendere e/o ricollegarsi: attraverso un’analisi comparativa si riescono a isolare i temi che legano le pièces mimiche al repertorio letterario e a verificare quali meccanismi intervengono nella ripresa dei modelli. La distinzione tra letteratura alta e letteratura bassa appare, alla luce di questo esame, parziale e poco efficace; sarà da preferire, invece, un più flessibile approccio critico, che consenta di cogliere l’eterogeneo processo osmotico lungo il quale si evolve la metamorfosi del patrimonio letterario.
The chronology of the earlier Greek novels since B.E. Perry: revisions and precisions E WEN B OWIE This paper revisits the problem of the chronology of the earlier Greek novels. For Perry (whose hypotheses were formed by 1951 although only published in 1967), Reardon (1969), Papanikolaou (1973) and Dihle (1978), Chariton and the author(s) of Ninus and of Metiochos and Parthenope were writing in the first century BC, and thus to be read (especially in Reardon’s view) in the context of late Hellenistic society. This paper bases its arguments on: (a) The linguistic features of Ninus and Metiochus and Parthenope, which do not support the early dating given to both by Dihle (when discussing the latter in 1978) any more than the early date for Chariton can survive the arguments of Ruiz Montero (1991) and Hernandez Lara (1994), scholars whose lexical work offers a more sophisticated theoretical framework than that of Papanikolaou. (b) On a more rigorous examination of the terminus ante quem given by the papyrus of Ninus. (c) On the terminus ante quem offered by the ostracon (first identified as bearing a text of Metiochos and Parthenope in 1977). (d) On references in Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus and Ninus to events of the period 37 – 66 A.D. (e) On points of shared concern between the sculpture of Aphrodisias ca. 50 AD and the Ninus romance.
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It proposes that: (i) all four works were probably written ca. 50–70 A.D. (ii) Chariton’s romance was probably written earlier than the Ninus. (iii) three were probably written in Aphrodisias and the fourth in relatively nearby Ephesus. (iv) the genre should be seen as having initially had only a local vogue. A second section of the paper adduces arguments for dating Antonius Diogenes between A.D.100 and 130 and Achilles Tatius around A.D.140 – 150. The final section of the paper briefly assesses the implications for this dating of the first burst of extended Greek prose fiction not in the Hellenistic period but in the high Roman empire, between A.D. 50 and A.D. 70, taking account of recent work on the nature of the Hellenistic city and of the culture of the Greek cities in the Roman empire respectively.
From the Marginals to the Center: Olga Freidenberg’s Works on the Greek Novel N INA V. B RAGINSKAIA A survey of the ideas and writings of Olga Freidenberg, who was the first one (in early 1920s in Russia) to draw the comparison between pagan erotic novels and both Apocryphal Acts and Canonical Acts and Gospels. She defined a narrative genre standing behind them all as ‘Acts and Passions’ of a hero. Earlier than anyone in Europe she came to the conclusion that the ‘Greek’ novel was Oriental in its origin, that the plots of its different narratives exhibit a retentive archetypal pattern which turned out to be a remake of the legomenon which can be traced back to the dromenon of the fertility cults. The Table of contents of Freidenberg’s book on the origin of Greek novel and a chapter from it, which scrutinizes the names of the characters in the Acts of Paul and Thecla accompany the survey.
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The Satyrica of Petronius as a Roman Palimpsest G OTTSKÁLK T. J ENSSON This paper argues that Petronius wrote his fictional narrative in the common Roman manner of transforming a pre-existing Greek text. The hypotext, now lost, of his palimpsest bore the same Greek title, Saturiká. The argument is constructed in three main stages. Firstly, a reconstruction of the lost opening episode set in Massilia explains both the narrative persona of Encolpius and the logic of the story; secondly, a survey of 19th century scholarship shows the ideologically motivated reception of the author, Petronius, in the image of an ‘original’ writer of realistic fiction; and thirdly, some problematic loci in the extant text of the Latin Satyrica are revisited to show the usefulness of the hypothesis as a tool for improving our understanding of this fragmentary text.
Latinising the Novel. Scholarship since Perry on Greek ‘models’ and Roman (re-)creations M AAIKE Z IMMERMAN It is well known that behind many of the Roman novelistic texts stand Greek models. To mention only the most obvious ones, the Golden Ass or Metamorphoses of Apuleius, composed in the 2nd century AD, is based on a Greek model, written not much earlier. Recently even a fresh case has been made for the opinion that Petronius’ Satyrica might be considered an adaptation of a comic Greek novel. Although the dispute has not been settled, there are strong indications that at some stage in the genesis of the Latin novel Historia Apollonii regis Tyri, transmitted to us in late-antique versions, an earlier, now lost Greek text plays a role. Also Latin ‘translations’ of the Greek Alexander romance are known, e.g. the one by Julius Valerius (4th cent. AD). More examples could be added. In this paper I will take a fresh look at the ways in which Latin novelists handled the Greek models which inspired them. It will be shown that this process is best described as a process of re-creation rather than adaptation. The result more often than not is a new and original text, at the background of which Latin literary predecessors stand on a more than equal footing with the Greek ‘palimpsest’. The thoroughly Roman feel of these new creations is
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partly effected by means of an intricate intertextual dialogue with preceding Roman literary texts, especially epic, mainly Vergil, but also his successors. Other Roman literary texts are involved as well; for instance it will be shown that Roman Satire often not only contributes to the characterization of the personae of prime and secondary narrators, but also lends a special atmosphere to whole episodes of these Roman novelistic texts. In this connection I will also demonstrate that, especially in the case of the narrating “I” of some Latin novels, the Roman authors have deepened and complicated the issue of the speaking “I”, a phenomenon which may be explained by specific developments of the enunciating “I” in Latin literature. Perry 1967 discussed the handling of Greek models by Roman novelistic authors in terms of the use of ‘sources’ which were then ‘enlarged’ and/or ‘contaminated’ by the Latin authors, the result being described as more or less successful patchwork. Since Perry a number of studies have, through various approaches, helped to establish the insight that the Roman novels have their own, intrinsic literary value. The independent handling of Greek predecessors by Latin novelists will be discussed against the background of the long tradition of translation and adaptation of Greek originals for Roman readers, and the novelists’ position within that tradition will be investigated. Latin novelists were also in a position to fully exploit the heritage of Latin literature including its richly developed art of entertaining a sophisticated intertextual dialogue with literary predecessors. Thus, in this paper a complex and intriguing picture of the relationship of the Latin novels with Greek models will emerge, a relationship which cannot be subsumed under the heading of adaptation or ‘contamination’ of sources.
Constructing Apuleius: The Emergence of a Literary Artist S TEPHEN H ARRISON This paper aims to be both a contribution to the history of scholarship and a stimulus to further research. In it I seek to follow some key themes in Apuleian scholarship, and to show how these themes and their treatments are necessarily affected by contemporary prejudices, which change over time as scholarship develops. In particular, I try to trace the emergence of the modern consensus that Apuleius is a careful literary artist, and that the Metamorphoses is a novel worthy of study and a complex and highly allusive literary
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text, a view which has come into being almost entirely during the twentieth century. The few Roman verdicts on the literary quality and importance of the ancient novels are negative, usually on the grounds that these texts are too frivolous in content to join the serious canon of literature. This early marginalisation is partly revised in the Renaissance, where the allegorical interpretation of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (along with that of other novels) could be argued to confer the deep intellectual significance which seemed to be lacking on the surface, and where some at least admired Apuleius’ Latinity, though it was also in the Renaissance that the then derogatory concept of ‘African Latin’ came into being. From the early modern period to the nineteenth century Apuleius was largely viewed as post-classical, inferior and decadent, whether or not he was also classified as ‘African’. Consequently, in the first half of the twentieth century Apuleius was widely viewed as a second-rate compiler of little literary talent or originality, even by those who did most work on his literary and narrative technique (e.g. Rudolf Helm or Ben Edwin Perry). However, since the 1960’s a different consensus has emerged which sees Apuleius as a high-grade literary artist whose capacity for allusive reworking of intertexts and for narrative complexity matches that of traditionally admired ‘classical’ authors, and his Metamorphoses as a major and intensely textured work of Latin literature. This paper looks at this development in Apuleian scholarship, especially on the Metamorphoses, and at its larger ideological explanations (e.g. ‘canonical’ prejudice against ‘marginal’ and ‘late’ authors and genres, more ‘liberal’ modern approaches, especially literary theory, and the search for a wider range of texts to study), and assesses the prospects for research at the start of the twenty-first century.
Tale of Aristomenes: Declamation in a Platonic Mode W ARREN S. S MITH AND B AYNARD W OODS This paper suggests sources for Apuleius’ Tale of Aristomenes. The many legal references in the tale are consistent with its close resemblance to plots outlined by Cicero in De Inventione and De Divinatione; in both plots one of two travelers is murdered in an inn. This plot is then embellished by a story of two murderous witches, as found in Greek folktale, who in Apuleius’
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version murderously attack the two travellers. The story is further enriched by the addition of Platonic touches starting with the portrait of “Socrates” whose character both mirrors and contrasts with the famous Athenian philosopher.
Indices Index locorum∗ Achilles Tatius 3.6-8, 61 Apuleius Met. 1.2, 186 Met. 1.7, 189 Met. 1.12, 183 Met. 1.16.2, 157 Met. 3.17, 181 Chariton 1.1.11-13, 10 8.7.3-11, 14 8.8.12-14, 12 Cicero div. 1.57, 179 inv. 2.4.14, 174 Erasmus Ep. 1334, 148 Fulgentius Myth. 3.6, 145 Heliodorus 3.16, 20 7.9 - 8.15, 39 9.5.5, 17 Herodas Mim. 5, 33 Historia Augusta SHA Clod. Alb. 12.12, 144 Homerus Od. 9,357-359, 32
Isidorus Orig. 9.1.7, 147 Longus 4.16, 24 4.38, 6 Lucanus 3.298 f., 101 Macrobius Somn. 1.2.8, 144 Petronius Frg. 1, 94 Sat. 1-5, 114 Sat. 59.3, 119 Sat. 61.3-62.14, 119 Sat. 81.3, 97 Sat. 83.2, 119 Sat. 107.15, 97 Plautus Cas. 963, 102 Tertullianus apol. 18.4, 187 apol. 23.13, 187 Valerius Maximus 1.7 ext. 10, 179 Vulgata act. 17.32, 187 Xenophon Ephes. 3.12-4.4, 39 Ephes. 5.1.4-9, 57
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This index offers only a selection of passages discussed.
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General index Achilles Tatius, 60 Acts of Paul and Thecla, 68 Falconilla in -, 77 allegory, 145, 153, 163, 184 Alpers, K., 130 Anderson, G., 68 Antonius Diogenes, 58, 103 Aphrodisias, 55, 62 apocalypse, 17 apocalyptic discourse, 9, 18, 23 Apuleius ‘African Latin’, 147, 161 and the Greek Met., 89 and the Second Sophistic, 163 Apology and Met., 192 Greek and Roman backgrounds of Met., 181 Hermagoras, 131 inner tales of Met., 156 literary texture in Met., 164 narrative technique, 165 Platonism in Met., 184, 186 Renaissance criticism of Met., 148 Socrates in Met., 188 archetypal patterns in Greek novels, 66 Aristides Milesiaca, 89 Austen, Jane, 155 Bakhtin, M.M., 162 carnivalisation, 137 polyphony, 137 Barchiesi, A., 128, 131 Baslez, M.-F., 54 Beroaldo, Filippo, 146 Bloch, E., 7, 17, 24 Bowersock, G.W., 58 Brant, J.A.A., 70 Bücheler, F., 105 Bürger, C., 111, 125, 128 Callebat, L., 160 Campanella, 17 Casaubon, I., 105 Chaereas, 54 Chariton, 11
and Korê myth, 13 and Ninus, 55 political subtext in -, 15 Chaucer, 179, 189 Christesen, P., 136 Collignon, A., 87, 111 contaminatio, 135 Conte, G.B., 136 Cooper, K., 68 Cynic satire, 104 Dares, 126 death and resurrection in pagan and Christian narrative, 67 declamationes, 172, 177 Dictys, 126 Dihle, A., 49 Early Christian narratives and Greek romance, 66 epiphonema, 177 escapism, 21 eschatological discourse, 23 Euripides Cyc., 32 Hel., 31 IT, 31 Feeney, D., 132 Finkelpearl, E.D., 134, 135, 137, 162 folklore, 180 folktale, 172 Frye, N., 3, 13, 16, 22 Fusillo, M., 126 Galli, L., 126 genre, 137 ‘hybridization’, 136 Gronewald, M., 53 Harrison, S.J., 134, 185 Heinze, R., 111, 125 Heliodorus, 16 Helm, R., 155 Hernandez Lara, C., 49 Hijmans, B.L., 134 Historia Apollonii regis Tyri, 126 Hock, R.F., 69 Hodge, A.T., 102 Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, 7
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Huet, P.-D., 149 Iamblichus Babyloniaka, 130 Iambulus, 17 intertextuality, 133, 134, 164 Iulius Valerius, 126 James, Henry, 155 Jameson, F., 9 Jensson, G.T., 129 Jones, C.P., 54 Joseph and Aseneth, 68 Kenney, E.J., 161 Klebs, E., 109 Kraemer, R.S., 71 Lancel, S., 161 Lawson, J., 180 legal jokes, 173 Lesky, A., 49 Levi-Strauss, C., 10 Life of Saint Pancratius, 80 Longus, 21 Lucian ps. Lucianic Onos, 127 magic, 20 Marcuse, H., 9 Marr, Nikolai, 73 Mason, H.J., 127, 134 Massalia (Marseilles), 94, 99 Mattiacci, S., 157 Merkelbach, R., 163 Metiochus and Parthenope, 52 Mommsen, T., 106 Morgan, J.R., 49, 58 motifs ‘Potiphar’ motif, 39 Scheintod, 71 suffering, 67 Münstermann, H., 187 myth-symbolic criticism, 2 names significant -, 38 narrative ego-narrative, 138 narratology and classical texts, 138 Ninus, 49 and Chariton, 55 Norden, E., 154
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O’Sullivan, J.N., 56 Paardt, R.Th. van der, 187 Papanikolaou, A., 49 papyrus fragments of Greek novels, 129 Parsons, P., 87 Perkins, J., 68 Perry, B.E., 87, 124, 131, 135, 138, 143, 155, 158 persona, 139 Pervo, R., 68 Petersmann, H., 162 Petronius Croton in Sat., 93 reception of Sat., 105 the freedmen’s language, 118 Trimalchio’s ‘Greek city’, 117 Widow of Ephesus, 133 Plato Phaedrus, 184 Plautus Asinaria, 183 popular literature, 128 proper names Greek - in Roman literature, 92, 113 nomi ‘parlante’, 38 in Greek novels, 77 Quintilianus Institutio oratoria, 144 readership of ancient novel, 165 Reardon, B.P., 49 Reeve, M.D., 49 Res gestae Alexandri Magni, 126 Rohde, E., 72, 105 Roman comedy in Apuleius’ Met., 182 Rosenblüth, M., 110 Ruiz Montero, C., 49 Sandy, G.N., 48 Santelia, S., 31 scapegoat ritual, 95 Schlam, C.C., 134 Schmeling, G., 113, 134 Scobie, A., 180 Seele, A., 132 Sisenna Milesiae, 89 Smith, W.S., 166
290 social realities in ideal Greek romance, 14 Socrates, 189 Söder, R., 68 Sowa, C.W., 11 Stephens, S.A., 48, 53 Stramaglia, A., 54 Sullivan, J.P., 124 Sybaritica, 92 Tatum, J., 156, 161, 166, 188 Terentius, 135 themes ‘Land of Cockaigne’, 8 ‘ludic society’, 9 exile, 19 Thibau, R., 187
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Thule, 59 Torlone, Z., 136 translation in antiquity, 132 travelogues Euthymenes of Massalia, 103 Pytheas of Massalia, 59, 103 Vita Aesopi, 36, 68 Walsh, P.G., 112, 123, 134 Whitmarsh, T., 19 Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, U. von, 87 Williams, G., 92 Wilmotte, M., 68 Winkler, J.J., 53, 166 witches, 175, 180, 187 Zeno of Citium, 17
