Dracontius’ Orestes [1 ed.] 1032131268, 9781032131269, 9781032131276, 9781003227786

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Contents
Preface and acknowledgements
1 Introduction
2 Dracontius, Orestes
3 Notes
Appendix: textual variations
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

DRACONTIUS’ ORESTES

This is the first English translation of Dracontius’ Orestes, a Latin poem from Vandal North Africa that tells the mythic story of the cycle of murder and vengeance suffered by the family of Agamemnon. This book provides the reader with a highly accurate and readable English translation of the Orestes, which is accessible for both scholarly and non-scholarly readers; it is accompanied by a full introduction and notes. The introduction discusses the literary, educational and rhetorical culture of Vandal North Africa, as well as the most important literary aspects of the Orestes including its major themes, the main literary influences upon it and its structure and style. Roche also includes a biography of Dracontius and examines the Orestes’ relationship to his other poetry, to his Christianity and to the Vandals. The notes explain all important allusions to earlier literature, they highlight themes and issues raised by each section of the poem, and they provide a comprehensive overview of each section of the work so that all readers can understand and appreciate the Orestes against the backdrop of ancient and late-antique literature. Dracontius’ Orestes is of interest to students and scholars of ancient literature, especially the Latin poetry of late antiquity, ancient epics, the reception of tragedy and comparative literature. It is also suitable for scholars of late antiquity and the general reader interested in the ancient world more broadly. Paul Roche is Associate Professor in Latin at the University of Sydney. He has published editions of Lucan, De Bello Civili Book I (Oxford 2009) and Book VII (Cambridge 2019), and he has edited books on Lucan, Pliny the Younger and politics in Latin literature.

ROUTLEDGE LATER LATIN POETRY Edited by Joseph Pucci Brown University, USA

The Routledge Later Latin Poetry series provides English translations of the works of those poets writing in Latin between the fourth and the eighth centuries inclusive. It responds to the increasing interest in later Latin authors and especially the growth in courses devoted to late antiquity. Books in the series are designed to provide comprehensive coverage to support students studying later Latin poetry and to introduce the material to those wishing to read these important and often under translated works in English. The RLLP is devoted to publishing creative, accessible translations. Each volume is self-contained: introductory material contextualizes the life and output of the poet in question and includes manuscript and editorial details; some discussion of metrics and Latinity; and a sense of how the work being translated might be interpreted (including where possible the scholarly history of the same). This section concludes, as need be, with maps and a list of any editorial changes made by the translator to the established Latin text. At the conclusion of each volume, in addition to endnotes and a works cited list, there is a general index that, beyond allowing readers to negotiate content, also serves as a glossary of names, dates, figures, places and events. Volumes hew, as much as possible, to line-for-line versions of the Latin original, so that those who come to the translations with a knowledge of Latin can orient their reading with the original. By offering English translations of later Latin poetry with comprehensive supporting material the series enables a greater understanding of late antiquity through one of its most important literary outputs. The poems are significant sources for the culture, religion and daily life of the period and clear and imaginative translations also offer readers the chance to appreciate their quality. THE COMPLETE WORKS OF CLAUDIAN Translated with an Introduction and Notes Neil W. Bernstein For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Later-Latin-Poetry/book-series/LLP

DRACONTIUS’ ORESTES Paul Roche

Cover image: Orestes Pursued by the Furies by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905), oil on canvas, 1862. IanDagnall Computing/Alamy Stock Photo First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Paul Roche The right of Paul Roche to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-13126-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-13127-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-22778-6 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003227786 Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

Preface and acknowledgements 1 Introduction

vi 1

2 Dracontius, Orestes

41

3 Notes

71 120 123 129

Appendix: textual variations Bibliography Index

v

P R E FA C E A N D ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Dracontius’ Orestes is a short-scale epic poem of just under a thousand hexameter lines, written in Vandal North Africa towards the end of the fifth or at the start of the sixth century CE. It constitutes antiquity’s final retelling of one of its earliest and most powerful mythic narratives, that of the cycle of murder and vengeance suffered by the family of Agamemnon. It is the longest, most complex and most ambitious of Dracontius’ mythological narratives, rivalled in his oeuvre only by his three-book epic on Christian faith, De Laudibus Dei. The Orestes shows a deep consciousness of earlier retellings of its plot going back over nearly a thousand years to Aeschylus’ Oresteia, but at the same time, its status as a cultural product of late antiquity is thoroughly reflected in its narrative style, structure and ethos. The Orestes is thus an important poem from a major centre of power in the fifth and sixth century: it marks a significant moment in the reception of classical myth and literature in late antiquity; it is an original, compelling narrative in its own right; it reflects many of the tastes and concerns of the era and culture that produced it; and it has an unusual and fascinating critical history. However, it has never been translated into English, or verse in any modern language. This is why I am delighted that this new edition of the poem is appearing in the Routledge Later Latin Poetry series, which continues to make important poetic works from late antiquity available to a wider audience in excellent and accessible editions. It is a pleasure to express my gratitude for the help and support I have had in the writing of this edition. I  am very grateful to the series editor, Joseph Pucci, for his warm reception of the idea of an edition of the Orestes and for his encouragement and support for this project from beginning to end. The series’ readers, Maria Jennifer Falcone, Angelo Luceri and Aaron Pelttari, gave excellent and generous feedback at an early stage of the project that was both much valued and very encouraging. Bob Cowan read an early draft of the translation and notes and offered many comments that

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P reface and acknowledgements

improved and corrected both of these; Bob also discussed with me several problems relating to ancient literary culture. Caillan Davenport provided much needed advice on nomenclature in late antiquity. Michael Hanaghan read a late draft of the whole book and offered many insightful suggestions. Michael prompted me to think and rethink choices in the translation from start to finish; I’m grateful to him for his time and care. Anne Rogerson read the introduction and gave excellent feedback which improved and clarified it. Finally, I  would like to thank Lizzi Risch and Marcia Adams at Routledge for their advice on the manuscript, and for their support for this book. Research for this book was supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Project funding scheme (project DP220100395).

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1 INTRODUCTION

The poet and his works We know very little about the life of Dracontius. Our information about him derives from two sources: (i) a subscription of 24 words appended to one of his poems in the Codex Neapolitanus, a manuscript dated to the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century; and (ii) snippets of biographical information from his works.1 This subscription tells us that his full name was Blossius Aemilius Dracontius, and that he was a uir clarissimus, a man of senatorial rank; this status was hereditary and so may have been inherited by him rather than attained in his own lifetime. His name is a mix of old and new elements. ‘Blossius’ was an old Roman family name (held most famously by the Stoic Gaius Blossius of Cumae, who died in 128 BCE); it was not a common name in late antiquity, but a number of men called Blossius or ‘Blossus’, including another uir clarissimus, are attested at Furnos Minus just west of Carthage.2 ‘Aemilius’ was a venerable and very famous Roman family name. The Aemilii were preeminent in politics from the early fifth century BCE until they died out under the Julio-Claudian emperors in the first century CE. It is possible that Dracontius traced this part of his name to a grant of citizenship made by a member of the Aemilian family many centuries earlier, at which point his ancestor had taken on the name ‘Aemilius’ in recognition of this gift.3 Another possibility is that a similarsounding North African name was replaced by this Roman name at some point in the family’s history: the name ‘Himilis’, for example, appears to have been Romanized to ‘Aemilius’ by other North Africans.4 The cognomen ‘Dracontius’ is only shared by three other men, all of whom were located in North Africa in the fourth century, including a vicar of Africa from Furnos Minus.5 This form of name, a cognomen based on an everyday word (‘draco’ means ‘snake’) and the suffix ‘-ius’ (or ‘-ios’ in Greek), had been very common since the second century CE.6

DOI: 10.4324/9781003227786-1

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Dracontius writes as a native of North Africa under the Vandals: in his poem, the Satisfactio, he writes that he could have recorded ‘the deeds of my own generals and the wars so fertile in triumphs for the Hasding name’ (21), an allusion to the Hasding Vandals who invaded North Africa c. 428 and ruled the Kingdom of Carthage in the period c. 439–534.7 Dracontius had a thorough education in rhetoric, which was the focus of Roman education more generally.8 He dedicates the first and third poem of his Romulea to Felicianus, his grammaticus. This was a professional teacher of language and literature, who taught upper-class boys at around the age of 12 and focussed upon language and poetry. Prior to the grammaticus, the child had been taught reading and the basics of language by a ludi magister, an elementary teacher. The third and last stage of education came at around 15 years old, when a rhetor, a teacher of rhetoric, trained the students in two skills: (i) preliminary exercises which prepared them to create and perform orations, these exercises were called ‘progymnasmata’; and (ii) declamation: the delivery of practice speeches. These speeches were of two main types. Suasoriae offered advice to mythological or historical figures in particular situations (topics might explore, e.g., whether Agamemnon should sacrifice his daughter Iphigeneia, or whether Hannibal should cross the Alps), while controuersiae argued one, the other, or both sides of a fictional legal case. These declamatory exercises became incredibly popular in the Roman empire and could draw large crowds to their performances. In the case of Dracontius, the subscription records that he declaimed a verse controuersia, Romulea 5, in the Baths of Gargilius: a massive complex that had hosted a conference of more than 500 Catholic and Donatist bishops in the summer of 411.9 Declamation exerted a significant influence on the style of poetry more generally, as we shall discuss later. It is a reasonable assumption that Dracontius knew at least some Greek as well as Latin: other authors under the Vandals show knowledge of Greek, and the Orestes seems to draw on Aeschylus and other tragedians at many points, but it is possible that Dracontius was using Latin translations rather than the Greek originals.10 The subscription tells us that Dracontius was a togatus in the law courts of the proconsul of Carthage, a man called Pacideius. The term togatus may describe a legal advocate or a judge within a court, and references made by Dracontius to his own legal work suggest a judicial capacity: he writes, for example, of passing sentence and granting pardons (De Laudibus Dei 3.630–1, 654–7); either definition of Dracontius’ profession would indicate his social prominence in Carthage.11 Dracontius was a Nicene-Christian, the dominant version of Christianity, supported by numerous church councils, including the influential Council of Constantinople in 381. This is important to note because many Vandals 2

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were Arian and during the reign of Huneric (477–84) the Nicene Church in Africa was vigorously persecuted.12 There is no evidence that Dracontius suffered for his faith under the persecution, but he did cause political offence under King Gunthamund (484–96) and paid a heavy price for his transgression. He wrote in praise of someone other than the Vandal king: ‘my offence was to keep silent about our temperate lords and even to celebrate a man unknown to me, albeit one with sovereign authority’ (Satisfactio 93–4). We don’t know the identity of this man ‘with sovereign authority’: perhaps a foreign ruler such as the Byzantine emperor Zeno or Odoacer the ruler of Italy, or possibly Gunthamund’s predecessor, Huneric.13 Gunthamund took offence at the poem; Dracontius lost his property and was imprisoned along with his family for a considerable time. His imprisonment by Gunthamund is the only broadly datable event in his life. It was during his time in prison that Dracontius wrote two major poetic works, both of which are Christian in emphasis. The first of these is the Satisfactio, a poem of 316 lines in elegiac couplets seeking the clemency of Gunthamund. In this poem Dracontius mixes direct address to the king with prayer and reflections on time; he draws upon biblical, classical and historical examples of forgiveness in order to entreat the king. His most ambitious work was the three-book poem De Laudibus Dei: this was a hexameter poem of over 2,300 lines describing the creation of the universe and the fall of man, God’s benevolence and his reward and punishment of human actions; and it ended with a lengthy confession and prayer for divine clemency. Dracontius was released and his estate restored to him—most probably during the reign of the next king, Thrasamund (ruled 496–523)— thanks to the intervention of powerful friends (Romulea 6.37–40). A poem in praise of Thrasamund written by Dracontius was known to the Italian Humanist Bernadino Corio in the sixteenth century but is now lost.14 We have no further biographical information about our poet. Apart from the Satisfactio and De Laudibus Dei, Dracontius wrote a number secular poems of indeterminate date and varying length and subject matter, many of which reflect his highly-rhetorical education and some of which seem to point forward to (or reflect) the Orestes.15 Ten of these are transmitted in one manuscript and are sometimes collectively called the Romulea, but it is unlikely that they are a complete collection made by Dracontius, and the name itself first appears in a fourteenth century manuscript; I cite these poems as, for example, ‘Romulea 1’ only for the sake of convention.16 Dracontius’ secular poetry comprises two short, dedicatory pieces to Felicianus (Romulea 1 and 3); two poems celebrating weddings (as a genre these were called ‘epithalamia’: Romulea 6 and 7); three rhetorical poems: (i) a speech of Hercules as he marvels at the regenerating head of the Hydra—an exercise that rhetoricians called a ‘prosopopoeia’ or 3

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‘ethopopoeia’ (Romulea 4; compare Orestes 593–602 and the notes on these lines); (ii) a controuersia about a rich man and his poor enemy exploring the issue of asylum and forgiveness (Romulea 5; compare Orestes 887–962 and the notes on this section); and (iii) a suasoria in verse debating whether or not Achilles should sell the body of Hector to his father Priam (Romulea 9). Finally, closer in style to the Orestes are three mythological narratives: (i) on Hylas, the companion of Hercules who was abducted by water nymphs in Mysia (Romulea 2); (ii) on the abduction of Helen by Paris (Romulea 8); and (iii) a version of the Medea myth, which treats both the events at Colchis and those in Greece (these are usually treated separately; Romulea 10). In addition, two brief poems by Dracontius were preserved by the Humanist Bernardino Corio: one is on the 12 months of the year (in which two lines of poetry celebrate each month) and another is on the origin of roses in the blood of the goddess Venus (seven elegiac couplets); some further, very slender fragments also survive.

Latin poetry in Vandal North Africa North Africa had been famous for the eloquence of its authors since the first century CE, and its production of oratory and literature continued through the rise of Christianity and into late antiquity.17 There was a profusion of Latin literature under the Vandals, and the period from the 480 to the 530s was especially rich in literary activity.18 In addition to a considerable body of prose literature—predominantly, but not exclusively, ecclesiastical—a wealth of Latin poetry survives from North Africa in the period of Dracontius’ lifetime. Much of this poetry is preserved in the Codex Salmasianus, a manuscript dating to around 800 CE and forming the bulk of the collection now known as the Anthologia Latina.19 A brief snapshot of the nature of this poetry may help place Dracontius in a larger context.20 Fulgentius of Ruspe (460s–520s or 30s), a bishop and theologian, wrote the Psalmus contra Vandalos Arrianos, a verse repudiation of Arrian doctrine with an elaborate abecedarian structure, proceeding in sequence through the entire alphabet. In an epigram of eight hexameters, Cato (AL 387 R = 382 SB) wrote a poem in praise of King Huneric (ruled 477–484) for a building project in which land was reclaimed from the sea. Florentinus (AL 376 R  =  371 SB) extolled King Thrasamund and celebrated the city of Carthage as an intellectual and civic powerhouse in 36 hexameters.21 Five poems of the uir clarissimus Felix (AL 210–214 R  =  201–14 SB) praised Thrasamund’s construction of new baths in Carthage; in the fifth poem he embedded 36 letters going down through the text in three separate columns (an acrostic, a mesostic and a telostic) which reads ‘Thrasamund, brightening the sky, renews all vows’. Poems 90–197 R (= 78–188 SB) of 4

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the Anthologia Latina appear very likely to be an incomplete volume of one author’s epigrammatic poetry, mainly in elegiac couplets, written in North Africa around 500 CE.22 These poems offer a wide variety of topics: descriptions of objects, poems on animals and people of various occupations, satirical attacks, poems describing buildings, mythic subjects and some Christian topics. Luxorius, who was active around 523–34, was the author of 89 or 90 epigrams in varying meters as well as a Virgilian cento (AL 287–375 R = 282–370 SB): these were composed under Hilderic (ruled 523–30) and Gelimer (ruled 530–534), most likely in Carthage, which he mentions frequently. Luxorius’ grammaticus circulated his poetry, and Luxorius himself had a grammatical treatise dedicated to him. His poetry praises the eminent and powerful and mocks various subjects in the tradition of the first century epigrammatist Martial; it shows us a vivid cross-section of aristocratic life under the Vandals.23 An anonymous contemporary of Luxorius offered praise in verse to King Hilderic (AL 215 R = 206 SB). Poems 38–80 R (= 25–68 SB) in the Anthologia Latina are a collection of poems written in uersus serpentinus: these are two-line poems comprising a single elegiac couplet in which the first half of the first line (the hexameter) is identical to the second half of the second line (the pentameter). These comprise just under 40 poems on myths as well as pieces on fate, friendship, readership and poetic fame. They are attributed to North Africa on the basis of their relationship to Dracontius’ poetry, particularly Romulea 10. We also have, inter alia, a poem attacking a high-ranking official of Gelimer (AL 341 R = 336 SB) and anonymous praise of the poet Luxorius (AL 37 R = 24 SB). The overwhelming preference of the Codex Salmasianus for epigrammatic pieces may distort our picture of how typical or otherwise longer mythological narratives such as the Orestes were. Nevertheless, we can clearly see a poetic culture that valued doctrina (learning, erudition) as well as metrical and linguistic dexterity; that engaged with contemporary politics, religious issues and social mores; that showed pride in its own cultural, literary and civic achievements; and that was highly attuned to and receptive of its classical past.

The Orestes How do we have the Orestes? The Orestes is a very late addition to our corpus of ancient texts, and the manner in which we came to have it and know its authorship has been called ‘one of the most astonishing chapters in the annals of Latin philology’;24 it is certainly a very impressive feat of comparative analysis and attention to style. The poem survives to us as an anonymous text preserved in two 5

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manuscripts, one dating to the ninth century (B) and the other to the fifteenth (A).25 It thus exists via a completely separate textual tradition from Dracontius’ other works. The Latin text of the Orestes was only published in print for the first time in 1858 (many classical texts and authors were first in print in the fifteenth century), and it was only established as the work of Dracontius through the brilliant critical efforts of a sequence of scholars in the nineteenth century who analyzed the poem’s linguistic, metrical, stylistic and narratological characteristics. Since neither B nor A preserved an author’s name for the Orestes, the first editions of the poem—Müller (1858), Mähly (1866) and Schenkl (1867)—printed it as an anonymous work. Of these editions, Mähly had guessed that the author was Greek, particularly on the basis of lines 963–74: there the narrator claims that the crimes of the Atreid house had besmirched the reputation of the Greek world and he prays that the gods henceforth keep such evil from the Pelasgians, that is, the Greeks. Schenkl rejected this theory—noting the author’s lack of any familiarity with the geography and topography of Greece and the variations he allowed to the metre of a number of Greek names—and brilliantly conjectured that our poem was the work of an African author on the basis of its similarity with the work of Corippus, Luxorius and other North African poets; the two named poets are from the mid-sixth century, so this was an amazingly accurate conclusion in terms of both time and place.26 The first editions to attribute our poem to Dracontius were Mai (1871) and de Duhn (1873): Mai saw a connection between the genre and manuscript titles of the mythological narratives contained in the Romulea, particularly poem 8, The Abduction of Helen, and poem 10, Medea.27 Duhn went further: he was completely convinced that Dracontius was the author on the basis of the similarity of arrangement, vocabulary, expression and versification shared by the Orestes and the poems of the Romulea.28 In the period 1878–1890 a sequence of publications made available the comparative material that fully substantiated Duhn’s thesis. Consensus then built around the attribution to Dracontius in a quick succession of editions of the poem from the period 1875–1906; his authorship has not been in doubt since.29 Title The earliest manuscript of the poem (B) gives the title as ‘The tragedy of Orestes’ (Orestis tragoedia), but the other main manuscript (A) merely calls it ‘The tale (or the ‘story’) of Orestes’ (Orestis fabula). In the Middle Ages the term ‘tragoedia’ was incorporated into the title of works that treated tragic subject matter (conceived quite broadly); it is not to be taken as indicating the genre of tragedy specifically. Thus, Lucan’s Civil War, on the historical conflict between Julius Caesar and the republican forces, and 6

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Statius’ Thebaid, on the myth of the seven against Thebes—both of which are epic poems—were described as ‘tragedies’ in this period.30 Dracontius’ other mythological narratives, preserved in the Codex Neapolitanus (N) are not given the title ‘tragoedia’, even when they do treat subject matter which is more or less explicitly tragic: Romulea 8, The Abduction of Helen, is called an opus (a ‘work’) and Romulea 10, Medea, gives its title as simply ‘Medea’. Rossberg, an early commentator on the Orestes, thought that B’s title ‘Orestis tragoedia’ was a scribal corruption from ‘Orestis Dracontii’ (‘Dracontius’ Orestes’):31 that is, that the title of the poem was ‘Orestes’. Although he himself later recanted this view, it has found favour with some (but by no means all) subsequent editors and scholars, including the most recent, Otto Zwierlein. I am not convinced that B preserves any name, corrupted or not, invented by Dracontius himself nearly 500 years earlier. The naming practices of poetic works in antiquity were varied and could encompass, for example, an abstract title, such as ‘Thebaid’ (to describe events that took place at Thebes), the name of a character within a poem (e.g., Propertius refers to his first book of love poetry as ‘Cynthia’, the name of his love interest) or the first words (called the ‘incipit’) of a work (Virgil’s Aeneid could be cited as the ‘Arma uirumque’, its first two words): these names vary in register from nicknames, to poetic citations, to formal titles, and a single work was often referred to by more than one name in antiquity.32 In sum, I am not so much convinced that the title ‘Orestes’ is right as that ‘Orestis tragoedia’ is likely to be wrong and liable to mislead the reader as to the nature of our poem.33 Genre The Orestes is an epic poem: it is a narrative poem written in continuous hexameters. In the ancient world, epic was conceived of as treating the deeds of gods, heroes and men: Virgil could refer to epic as singing ‘kings and battles’ (Eclogue 6.3) and Horace described it as ‘the achievements of kings and leaders and the grim tale of war’ (Art of Poetry 73–4). Epic was the oldest and most authoritative of genres, and Homer in Greek and Virgil in Latin had a pervasive cultural influence that can be seen across the breadth of ancient literature.34 As an epic poem, we see some of that genre’s fundamental ‘structures’ in the Orestes: the invocation of the Muse (13–24, 350–2); similes (e.g., 224–6, 242–3, 265–8, 302–4, 622–5, 631–7, 711–12, 796–7, 846–8, 856); and fully developed or paired speeches, as opposed to shorter, more fragmented dialogues (e.g., 66–83, 163–218). Some of its scenes are commonly but not exclusively treated in epic poetry, including necromancy (460–514), dream visitations (520–52) and prophecies, particularly prophecies which look to the structure of the poems in which they 7

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are set (133–52). Dracontius gives only cursory or glancing treatment to some common epic phenomena such as the storm at sea (42–5) and the teichoscopia (111–13); he notes several departures by sea, but he avoids the sentimental potential of such scenes (with no farewells to hosts and family, or backward glances to the shore). There are many epic structures that Dracontius does not force upon his material. The Orestes has no catalogue, no ecphrasis (a description of either a work of art, or a topographical feature), no battle scenes, no scenes of divine council or debates between gods.35 The epic narrator is normally unobtrusive and objective. He typically draws attention to his status as a narrating poet (or reflects upon his poetic project) only at the very beginning (as at 1–24) and end of his poem (if there is an epilogue, such as 963–74); other appearances by the narrator are rare. Lucan offered an influential alternative in which the narrator often interjected to comment upon his own subject matter or address his own characters or his readers. There are some major moments of narratorial interjection in the Orestes: in the invocation and epilogue, where these are to be expected; at 271–83, where Dracontius laments the mutability of divine favour and human fortune; and at 350–2 in his second invocation of the Muse. There are also isolated moments where the narrator’s voice or laments are heard (‘ah!’, 270; ‘who, I ask, would not lament these things?’, 422) or where he addresses his own characters (436–41, addressed to Clytemnestra).36 It is also important to stress that much of the Orestes is narrated in the objective manner of Virgil. Dracontius’ subject matter was most famously and typically treated in tragedy, and he acknowledges this when he invokes Melpomene, the Muse of tragedy, to inspire him to recast his material into an epic poem:37 I ask you, Melpomene, descend from your tragic regalia, let the iamb fall silent amid these resounding dactyls. Give me power to narrate (memorare) (13–15) Again in the poem’s epilogue Dracontius gestures explicitly towards tragedy when he refers to the ‘triple tragedy of Mycenae’ (972); note again the nearby presence of another verb for narrating (narrare): in both of these passages, he marks his poem as transforming tragic material into an epic narrative.38 Built into Dracontius’ mythic plot are some of tragedy’s most distinctive generic structures as well: recognition (anagnorisis, the change from ignorance to knowledge, as at e.g., 874–8); reversal (peripeteia, a change to an opposite status or position, at e.g., 269–70); and characters with a moral fault or tragic flaw (harmatia), such as Clytemnestra, or who exhibit hubris (like Aegisthus), or who ‘arrive at fateful decisions while 8

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combining both positive and negative elements in their behaviour’ (as does Orestes).39 Tragedy also commonly featured the notion of inherited guilt; a tension between divine and human causation; tyranny; and a contrast between the concerns of the family with those of the city. Epic, a ‘totalizing genre’, had always contained such elements, even prior to their theorization as ‘tragic’—Plato (Republic 607a) called Homer the first of the tragic poets—and tragedy in turn was highly influenced by epic from its beginnings, retelling its heroic subject matter, reworking its plot devices, adopting and adapting its literary language and expression (as true for Homer as it would later be for Virgil in Latin) and sharing its interest in fate, the gods and human beings.40 There was thus always an extensive overlap of common elements and concerns in both genres. Shorter mythological epics are sometimes called ‘epyllia’ (plural; ‘epyllion’ is the singular); this is a modern term, and there are no surviving reflections on shorter (as opposed to longer or full-scale) epics in classical literary criticism, so any shared characteristics of this sub-group derive from the modern analysis of surviving examples.41 It is an ongoing debate as to whether shorter epics have anything further in common other than (i) their relative shortness, (ii) the fact that they narrate a mythic story and (iii) the fact that they are written in hexameters. More contestable claims are that these kinds of poems, as a genre, often focus upon a single episode in the life of a mythological figure;42 that their characters are often presented in everyday situations or behave more like ordinary people than Homeric heroes;43 that they often focus upon female characters and characteristics; that they often include a love story;44 that they are narrated in uneven or deliberately imbalanced ways in an emotional, subjective style; and that they often feature a second main element, introduced in speech or a lengthy ecphrasis.45 The problem with applying these various further generic definitions is that they are derived by describing what happens in, for example, Callimachus’ Hecale, Moschus’ Europa or Catullus 64 (famous examples of short-scale epics from the Hellenistic and late republican period); they naturally describe these particular poems very well, but they exclude many poems that share the formal characteristics of metre, narrative and length but do not contain these further elements. The Orestes might seem to be a partial fit at best: the narrative encompasses multiple characters and events stretching over many years, and its characters are neither in everyday situations nor do they behave like ordinary people. The fact that Orestes has a dominant female character in Clytemnestra and explores the psychology and pathology of a love affair derives from the influence of Aeschylean and Senecan tragedy. Shorter-scale epics go back to at least the Hellenistic period, while epics on mythological themes originate with Homer and abided in popularity 9

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throughout all of antiquity. The production of epic poetry in Latin appears to have declined in the West after the end of the first century CE only to re-emerge in the fourth century, but Greek epic gains new impetus from the beginning of the second century CE.46 The rise of Christianity and the emergence of Christian genres of poetry in no way spelled the end of mythological narratives or imagery in literature and art, in part because mythology was so intrinsically important a part of education.47 Full-scale mythological epics survive to us from Quintus Smyrnaeus (third century), who wrote 14 books in Greek taking the end of the Iliad to the departure of the Greek fleet; from Soterichus (late third century, from Libya), who wrote a fourbook epic on Dionysus; and from Nonnus of Panopolis (mid to late fifth century), who wrote a 48-book epic in Greek on the life and deeds of Dionysus (the longest epic that we have from antiquity). In Latin, Claudian had written a three-book Latin epic, the Abduction of Proserpina, at the end of the fourth century (and a number of panegyrical and historical epics). Shortscale mythological epics in Greek also survive from late antiquity: works by Triphiodorus on the destruction of Troy (late-third century, from Egypt), Musaeus on Hero and Leander (fifth century) and Colluthus on the abduction of Helen (late fifth century, from Egypt).48 Summary and structure The events of the Orestes occur in the following sequence: 1–24 Proem and invocation of Melpomene, the Muse of tragedy. Part one (25–452): Agamemnon 25–107 Agamemnon’s fleet, returning from Troy, is driven by a storm to Tauris (on the coast of the Black Sea), where he discovers that his daughter Iphigenia is still alive. 108–32 The fleet returns (without Agamemnon) to Mycenae as Clytemnestra watches from the city walls. 133–52 Cassandra reveals her knowledge of Clytemnestra’s adultery with Aegisthus and urges the couple to kill Agamemnon. She prophesies that Orestes will eventually avenge his father’s death and predicts his madness and purification. 153–231 Clytemnestra convinces Aegisthus of the need to murder Agamemnon and tells him about the ruse of the tunic. 232–83 Agamemnon returns and is murdered. 284–304 Electra saves Orestes by taking him and Pylades to Athens. 305–49 Clytemnestra and Aegisthus rule over Mycenae. 350–81 Dorylas, a freed slave of Agamemnon, tells Clytemnestra and Aegisthus that Agamemnon’s children have drowned at sea. 381–412 Clytemnestra addresses the people of Mycenae. She promises peace and declares Aegisthus her husband and king.

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413–26 427–52

Aegisthus acts the tyrant. The narrator compares Clytemnestra to mythic paradigms of infamous and honourable love. Part two (453–802): Orestes’ revenge 453–514 Mycenae grieves under the tyranny. The palace staff visit Agamemnon’s grave at night and invoke his ghost. 515–625 Agamemnon’s ghost visits Orestes and Pylades in Athens and demands that they avenge his murder. 626–81 Orestes and Pylades travel from Athens to Mycenae. 682–802 Aegisthus and Clytemnestra are murdered. Part three (803–962): the madness and absolution of Orestes 803–19 Orestes murders Pyrrhus for abducting his promised bride, Hermione. 820–61 Orestes is plagued by the ghost of Clytemnestra and suffers madness. 862–86 Molossus, the son of Aegisthus, seeks revenge on Orestes. Pylades sends him overseas and at Tauris he is almost made a human sacrifice before he is recognized by Iphigenia, who purifies him and thus heals his madness. 887–962 Orestes is tried and acquitted in Athens. 963–74 Epilogue

The prologue and epilogue frame three large panels of narrative that mirror—in progressively diminishing scale (427 lines ~ 349 lines ~ 159 lines)—the three-part structure of Aeschylus’ Oresteia.49 The Aeschylean framework gives a strong sense of overall unity to the Orestes, with its three climactic scenes of Agamemnon’s murder (247–70), Clytemnestra’s murder (729–94) and Orestes’ acquittal (939–62). This structure is enhanced by various innovations. Dracontius invents the scene of Agamemnon in Tauris (25–107) and adapts the usual Euripidean version of Orestes at Tauris from Iphigenia in Tauris (862–86); he places these two scenes near the beginning and end of his narrative (second and second-last scenes respectively), and they mirror each other, as Agamemnon recognizes Iphigenia, and she in turn recognizes Orestes. Many smaller-scale motifs recur throughout the poem and help to unify it. For example: •

•

hugs and kisses between family, friends and lovers (60–4 between Agamemnon and Iphigenia; 229–31 between Clytemnestra and Aegisthus; 244–5 between Agamemnon and his children; 644 Dorylas embraces Orestes; 959–60 Pylades, Electra and Iphigenia embrace Orestes); the motif is perverted at 229–31 in the physical affection of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus the sacrifice of Polyxena: this twice foreshadows Clytemnestra’s death, and elements of Clytemnestra’s death-scene itself are modelled on earlier poetic accounts of Polyxena’s sacrifice (480–1, 622–5, 786–94)

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• • •

• •

the return to Mycenae (232–43 Agamemnon; 682–94 Orestes and Pylades; 960–2 Orestes, Pylades, Electra and Iphigenia) the escape by boat (287 Electra puts Orestes on a ship to save him; 865–6 Pylades puts Orestes on a ship to save him) the revelation that a character thought dead is alive (66–7 Agamemnon to Iphigenia ‘are you really alive?’; 645 Dorylas to Orestes ‘Do you live my child?’; 737 Orestes to Clytemnestra ‘But I  live (you see!), accursed mother’) the spasming body (264 Agamemnon; 728 Aegisthus; 793 Clytemnestra) Agamemnon’s wealth (30–40, 290, 310–15, 962); compare 316–34 on Clytemnestra’s wealth

Dracontius is highly inventive in his arrangement of the mythic plot and his many innovations, bold changes and additions fundamentally alter the tenor of his version.50 In no other telling of the Oresteia do we find Agamemnon in Tauris (25–107) or Electra saving Orestes by sending him to Athens (284–304). Dracontius also adds the scene of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus ruling over Mycenae (305–49) and invents the ruse of Dorylas, adapting and transforming the idea from Aeschylus and Sophocles (350–81); he also includes a scene of Aegisthus acting the tyrant (413–26). The Orestes is the only version of the story in which Agamemnon’s ghost appears to Orestes and Pylades in Athens (515–51) and has a scene showing the young men returning from Athens to Mycenae (626–81), which is absent from our extant versions but may have been the opening scene of Aeschylus’ play. Dracontius introduces Orestes’ murder of Pyrrhus from other versions of the mythic plot (803–19), and turns the obscure figure Molossus, the son of Aegisthus, into a significant character within his version. Finally, he completely transforms the trial of Orestes from Aeschylus’ Eumenides in terms of characters, arguments and the fundamental issues debated (887–962). Literary models and influences (i) Aeschylus The basic framework of the Orestes is the plot structure of Aeschylus’ Oresteia. The many innovations that Dracontius makes to the Aeschylean plot should not distract us from its status as the ‘blueprint’ onto which Dracontius imposes his own priorities and concerns, nor from his consistent and pervasive engagement with it.51 It is in his smaller-scale adaptations that it appears most likely that Dracontius was engaging with the Greek text (or a very detailed Latin translation). Lines 552 and 705 both come very close to 12

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the wording of Aeschylus but are both used in scenes and contexts that are different to those in the Greek play. Lines 775–8 adapt a scene from another play attributed to Aeschylus, the Prometheus Bound. The context is parallel: an invocation of natural elements to witness an unjust punishment; so too is the arrangement and overlap of terms used. At 972 the notion of a ‘triple tragedy’ besetting the house of the Atreids is brought over from LibationBearers 1065–6. (ii) Virgil The Aeneid was the most important secular text in the Latin tradition. It was both the canonical ‘national epic’ and ‘the Latin school-text par excellence’:52 it was taught at all three levels of education (along with Terence and Cicero), learned in large chunks ‘off by heart’ by schoolboys and offered subjects for progymnasmata and declamation. The Aeneid and its author were also prominent in the visual art of late antiquity in a wide variety of media: illustrated manuscripts, mosaics and portrait busts.53 In late antiquity, as in the early imperial period, texts alluded to the Aeneid in order to accrue authority, generate meaning or import further nuances into their own works. The cultural standing of the Aeneid made it a touchstone for such references.54 Dracontius alludes to the Aeneid more than any other single text, and these references serve a variety of functions.55 They may suggest models that his characters either emulate or transgress. When Clytemnestra declares ‘we’ll die unavenged’ as she convinces Aegisthus to murder her husband, she quotes two noble Virgilian characters: his pius Aeneas (‘dutiful Aeneas’) who will steadfastly defend Troy to his death, and the final, pathos-laden speech of Dido before she commits suicide (168). Later in the same speech Clytemnestra again alludes to the desperate defence of Troy when she exhorts Aegisthus to act boldly with the words ‘There is no hope of safety unless we both despise the safety of our lives’ (171–2). Here is another echo of the words of Aeneas, who will fight to the death against the forces commanded by Agamemnon; the reader must decide whether this suggests Clytemnestra as a defiant opponent to her husband or as a perversion of the heroic ideal embodied in Aeneas, or both. Dido is suggested as a model for Clytemnestra again in her display of wealth (318) and a final time when, as a ghost, Clytemnestra quotes Dido’s own prediction that she will haunt Aeneas relentlessly (835). When Agamemnon is murdered, Virgilian details put the reader in mind of his Hector and Priam (348–9): when he appears as a ghost to the sleeping Orestes and Pylades, the model is clearly Virgil’s ghost of Hector who stirs the sleeping Aeneas to action and sets him on his heroic path (see note on lines 515–625); the allusion is thus suggestive for both Agamemnon and Orestes. 13

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Aegisthus’ danger and treachery are well illustrated by the simile comparing him to a snake at 224–6, but the point is sharpened by Dracontius’ modelling of this simile on a simile in the Aeneid comparing Virgil’s Pyrrhus—the degenerate and murderous son of Achilles—to the same animal. Orestes’ righteous fury gains emphasis by allusion to the fury of Virgil’s Hercules (616). Similarly, Pylades references the implacable battlerage of Virgil’s Turnus when he emerges to exact vengeance upon Aegisthus (715–16). These allusions can be more broadly suggestive. Dracontius twice draws a textual connection between Orestes and Pylades travelling to Mycenae and the descent of Aeneas into the Underworld (629, 639). Later the description of Orestes’ madness will also make allusion to Virgil’s Underworld and offer a model for his tortured state of mind (854–61). Such references may also point to the same scene as it had been told in the Aeneid: Orestes’ murder of Pyrrhus ‘quotes’ Virgil’s version of the same event (818–19). A certain circularity is created when the description of Orestes’ madness directs us to a moment in the Aeneid when we are told that Dido rages ‘just like Orestes, hounded across the stage’, that is, in tragic performances (821–2). Not least in importance or frequency, the Aeneid offered Dracontius many grand poetic phrases that could be suggestive of epic, or could enhance scenes of pathos (873, 965–6), solemnity (963) or high emotion (219, 581, 686, 741–2). (iii) Epic poetry after Virgil The popularity of Ovid’s Metamorphoses was pervasive in late antiquity and Dracontius was very familiar with his oeuvre.56 Ovid’s presence in the Orestes is only occasional but highly effective. The violence of the assassination of Agamemnon is contextualized by allusion to Ovid’s battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs (262). A number of Ovidian death scenes of young women influence Clytemnestra’s death scene and contribute the pathetic details that enrich it (786–94). The trial of Myscelus is a model for the voting scene with coloured pebbles at 940–1. Elsewhere Ovid offers rhetoric to describe high emotion (581–2). Lucan’s Civil War and Statius’ Thebaid, both highly influential on the style of later Latin poetry, offered Dracontius models for a fractured world of interfamilial enmity as well as highly-condensed and emotional rhetoric for decrying the paradoxes of civil conflict.57 Lucan gave Dracontius the classic model of an impassioned, subjective narrator, ready to interject in his own narrative and curse the events and characters of his plot (271–83, 436–41).58 Both authors wrote epics that are dense with paradoxes and hyperboles which try and capture the true horror that they describe. Lucan is used by Dracontius less for his heroic models than 14

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for his rhetoric—taut, contrastive phrases (175–6, 279), hyperbole (907), evocative or ominous expressions (781–4)—but he also provided a neat encapsulation of Agamemnon (507), a model for Pylades in his rage (710) and paradigms of madness and interfamilial violence (846–8). Dracontius draws upon Statius for the rhetoric of horrific violence (6), implacable rage (745–6), imminent death (745–6), the conceit that Furies were familiar with the route to places of great criminality (487) and for the collective delight at the outcome of Orestes’ trial (958). (iv) Senecan tragedy Seneca had written a superb version of the Agamemnon in the first century CE. The play is unmistakeably referenced at line 25 in Agamemnon’s first appearance, and it provides a model and many details for Agamemnon’s murder at 256–70.59 Seneca predominately influences the organization and arrangement of the plot in the first third of the Orestes. In Seneca’s play Cassandra enters and makes her prophecy prior to Agamemnon’s arrival and views his murder as the requital of Troy’s destruction, as she does in Dracontius (138). Seneca also has a plot by Electra to save Orestes, although Dracontius puts his own stamp upon this basic scenario (283–7). Moreover, Seneca eroticizes the relationship between Clytemnestra and Aegisthus (compared to its portrayal in Aeschylus) and this is one of the keynote characteristics of Dracontius’ version of the plot: Seneca describes their ‘blind love’, the flames of their passion, their lust and their jealousy (Agamemnon 118, 132, 135, 134, 174–91, 1001–3). He is also influential for the range of emotions ascribed to Clytemnestra more generally, including her fear of Agamemnon (133) and her sense of shame (pudor, 138), which Seneca makes part of the adultery, but which Dracontius saves for her death scene.60 Themes of the Orestes (i) Family Dracontius’ Orestes is fundamentally a narrative about family; as a poem, it celebrates the bonds and obligations of family members to each other. From the beginning, Orestes’ tragic situation arises from the paradoxes and competing obligations upon his pietas, a Latin term that describes ‘dutiful respect’ and can encompass devotion to the gods (hence our word ‘piety’) or to family members. Thus, in the proem, his relationship to both parents at once is stressed (7–8). Iphigenia’s introduction likewise describes the competing obligations upon her pietas: in her case, her religious duty versus her loyalty to her brother (11–12). In the poem’s epilogue, the events of the 15

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Oresteia-plot and those of other paradigmatic crimes against the family unit are decried one last time, as the narrator prays that such evil be consigned to the mythic past (963–74). Agamemnon enters the poem as the champion of marriage. His murder in the bedchamber is an indignant detail pointing to the transgression of the values he represents in the poem (23–4). His selection of gifts from the Trojan plunder demonstrates his dedication to his family, including his tragically ironic devotion to Clytemnestra (35–40), and his stay on Tauris effects a happy reunion between father and daughter (52–4, 57–73) during which he prays that his family can be reunited for the sake of his wife (94–101). Agamemnon ranks the reunion of his family above his achievement at Troy in his prayer to Diana (98–101), and he is seen as the upholder and supervisor of morality for the whole city (164–7). His first action upon disembarking, and his last before his murder, is to embrace his children and look for his wife (244–7). As a ghost, it is the fact that he was slain by his own wife, and his family’s obligation to avenge him, that most preoccupies him (501–10). The bonds that unite family are also seen in the friendship and loyalty of Orestes and Pylades (291–304, 534–5).61 Orestes’ vengeance is undertaken in part to demonstrate his true paternity (544–6, 590–1) and when he murders his mother, her corruption of family values is to the fore (734–52, 761–780), in contrast to the more political spin given by Pylades in his speech to Clytemnestra and Aegisthus (714–17). It is naturally in terms of a crime against family bonds that Orestes is haunted by his mother (820–61). Pyrrhus’ abduction of Hermione is yet another assault upon the family unit and is seen as such by Orestes, who reasons that he must avenge this new crime if he has already avenged his father (803–19, esp. 814). Minor characters also illustrate the theme of family values. One example is the steadfast loyalty of the freedman Dorylas (350–81, 639–662).62 Note that he is made to reason through the same kinds of moral paradoxes— albeit writ smaller—that duty imposes upon Orestes (357–60). Note also that Clytemnestra entices the citizens of Mycenae with the prospect of peace and images of familial harmony (401–2). Clytemnestra’s passionate, obsessive love affair with Aegisthus represents the main perversion of this familial ideal. When Agamemnon does not return with the fleet, her thoughts return immediately to lustful joy, and she imagines and hopes he has drowned on the voyage back (123–2). The affair in which each adulterous party has all things in common is also a perversion of the perfect friendship of Pylades and Orestes (181–3; cf. 291–304). A reconsideration of the figure of Clytemnestra under the theme of family occurs at 561–73 when Orestes remembers his ‘mother’s great blessings’ to him as a child. Just as Agamemnon’s commitment to family enhances 16

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the horror of his murder, this reminder that Clytemnestra was once a caring mother to Orestes enhances his dilemma and enriches her final scenes in the poem (cf. 739–45, 780). Agamemnon too contravenes the familial ideal more than once: Cassandra enters the poem as ‘his Ilian wife’ (4), a motif that is otherwise played down by Dracontius. He returns from Troy with ‘Ilian brides and daughters born of Trojan mothers’ (29), and he is conscious of and complicit in the sacrifice of Iphigenia (55, 68–9). (ii) Politics and the state There is at the same time a prominent thread running through the narrative that treats the members of the Atreid house as figures of state, and their assassinations and revenges as coups that bring about regime change for the citizens of Mycenae. In the poem’s introduction Agamemnon’s murder is not that of a father and a husband but that of a victorious general and a diademed leader (2, 6), and in our first glimpse of him, we see ‘the lord of lords, king of kings, the general Agamemnon’ (25). Clytemnestra urges Aegisthus to kill ‘the general in his glory, the tyrant in his armour’ (173) and Agamemnon, cast as a tyrant by Clytemnestra, is called both arrogant and cruel (175–7). Aegisthus is tempted by Clytemnestra with his desire for rule (198–9), and when he contemplates the murder of Agamemnon, he thinks of him not as his lover’s husband but as a king within his palace (206–7). Agamemnon is described at the apex of his regal and military authority as he arrives home (239–3). The moment of his murder itself is described as an assault on ‘the head that wears the crown’ and he falls as ‘the innocent king’ (260, 263). After the murder, Aegisthus immediately assumes power; he wants to become a tyrant by means of wealth and to hold the sceptre as king (305–15, 337). Once he is declared Clytemnestra’s husband and king, he immediately acts as an upstart tyrant, cowing the palace into silence with his cruelty and the fear he inspires (413–26, 456–9). Clytemnestra’s plan to corrupt the women of Mycenae aims to rally support around their new regime (321–3). She sells the murder of her husband to the people as a civic duty performed in response to the death caused by Agamemnon’s wars (384–92). She also contrasts the tyranny of Agamemnon with the citizen-rule of Aegisthus (410–12). The plan to kill Clytemnestra and Aegisthus is frequently presented as a coup or a palace revolution. The support of the palace staff is repeatedly invoked for Orestes, as though they support one faction at court (548–51); Pylades plans to go ahead to Mycenae to prepare the staff to take up arms with them (614–15). The arrival of Orestes and Pylades at Mycenae reads like a coup d’état in planning (667–81), execution (695–728) and aftermath (795–802). 17

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(iii) Religion and the supernatural The Orestes attends to the role of the gods in human affairs but offers the reader little guidance on how to interpret the varying aspects and contradictions of this role. This interest comes early, when the poet announces that he will sing ‘of unjust gods whose savage plan was just’ (9), and in the epilogue of the poem, where the narrator prays to the gods that such events as he has told are not visited upon the present world (963–74). Throughout the narrative itself the gods are rarely shown in action.63 They do intermittently intervene in human affairs: Diana takes pity and substitutes a doe for Iphigenia (81–3); Enyo guides Orestes’ hand as he kills his mother (785); the darkening of the sun over Mycenae at the moment of the matricide is an expression of disapproval by Titan, the sun god, although it is narrated from a human perspective (781–4); and Minerva casts her vote to acquit Orestes (942–5). The involvement or approval of the gods is also claimed rather than shown: Dorylas claims this for Orestes (655), and Orestes makes divine approval a key argument in his defence case for his matricide (920–8). Conversely, the anger of the gods is shown by the narrator or inferred by characters at various points: the unnamed goddess is angered at Agamemnon’s fleet and sends a storm (42–5), Diana is irate at Agamemnon’s prayer on Tauris (102–7) and Dorylas thinks Agamemnon prays to angry gods (465–7). The piety of Agamemnon is repeatedly set before the readers (30–4, 47–51, 86–101), but it does nothing to avert either the anger of the gods or his fate. It may be that we are meant to understand that Agamemnon’s sacrifice of Iphigenia has prejudiced the gods against him (68–9). On the other hand, Orestes’ sacrilegious killing of Pyrrhus before the altars at Delphi brings with it no consequences (817–19). In the narrator’s ‘moral’ to the first third of the poem he stresses the mutability of fortune, fate and the gods (271–83), and the poem’s theodicy (its framework of divine justice) is ultimately a bleak lesson for the reader: the gods readily give the greatest gifts, and yet they first desert us and in the end hurt us wretched mortals, or suddenly abandon us, and for our happy lot they make us pay. (279–81) The cult at Tauris in many ways illustrates the inscrutable and often implacable nature of the gods in the poem. Orestes’ sacrifice to Diana is simply the custom of the place, and if Iphigenia were not ‘deceitful in her pious crime’ (12) he would be struck down at the altar (867–86).64 Dracontius is also interested in the balance between divine will, fate and human decisions as the causes of events.65 Cassandra’s prophecy raises the 18

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issue of fate and human choice for the reader. She speaks from a position of religious authority and oracular knowledge, and yet in quick succession she (i) convinces the lovers to kill Agamemnon on rational grounds: so that their joy together should not come to an end (143–5); (ii) tells them ‘the fates decree it and your guilt drives you to it’ (144); and (iii) assures them that ‘the heavens have stored up a similar fate for you both’ (146). Epic poetry could accommodate ‘double motivation’, that is, heroic action that is both divinely and humanly motivated,66 and in the Orestes, motivations and causes are often mixed or multiplied. Clytemnestra decides to act through fear and madness (153–6) and at the same time convinces Aegisthus to act through his own self-interest and self-preservation (216–18); the citizens of Mycenae believe that the murder and its circumstances were fated (342–3) and later the narrator laments that the Parcae, the fates, allowed the years of Aegisthus’ rule (453). The supernatural figure of Agamemnon’s ghost is summoned to seek vengeance and motivates Orestes to punish his murderer (462–82, 527–51), but Orestes is also motivated by a suite of psychological factors, values and by the severe moral code urged upon him by Pylades, who also labels the matricide ‘the punishment of the gods’ (558–60, 583–615, 606–7). (iv) Revenge Revenge pervades the poem and drives its plot. It precedes the opening of the narrative, since Agamemnon is the avenger of Helen’s abduction (22, 167, 438). Clytemnestra is cast by Cassandra as the avenger of the Dardanians in her destined murder of Agamemnon (138); she in turn is concerned she will die ‘unavenged’ at the hands of Agamemnon (168) when he avenges her adultery (218). Orestes is insistently cast as his father’s avenger and is obsessed with his duty to seek revenge for him (285, 574, 630, 674, 690, 845). Agamemnon’s ghost is summoned forth to avenge his own murder (475, 478) and motivates the vengeance of his son (511, 534, 541–6). Vengeance is also embodied in the Furies summoned to avenge Agamemnon and in Clytemnestra’s ghost, who acts and appears as a Fury (483–9, 820–44). Minor characters also contribute to this theme. Both Dorylas’ claim that Jupiter and a personified ocean have avenged themselves by drowning the children (367–9) and Tamyris’ killing of the Persian king to avenge her son (428) are of a piece with the ethical world of the Orestes prior to the trial at Athens. In a more figurative example of the theme, the messenger who brings news of the arrival of Orestes and Pylades likewise comes ‘as a cruel avenger’ (707). By the poem’s end, its cycles of vengeance give way to arbitration and resolution, but the theme is still fairly prominent in the final third of the 19

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plot. Orestes must seek revenge for the abduction of Hermione because he is the avenger of his father (814, 934) and Molossus enters the plot seeking vengeance for Pyrrhus (864–6). The trial at Athens weighs Orestes’ vengeance upon his mother against his obligations to his father as well as the right of Molossus to act as an avenger of Clytemnestra (925–6). (v) Justice Another major theme of the poem is justice, justification and arbitration. From the poem’s outset Dracontius announces that he will ‘pardon publicly the man the Sisters damned’ (16). In stating this he anticipates the finale of the poem in the trial at Athens, but it is significant that he says that he, and not the Athenian jury, will pardon Orestes (whose acquittal stems from the impossibility of a human verdict on divine clemency). There was a long-standing tradition in antiquity of the poet referring to himself or being referred to as ‘doing’ what they are describing in their poetry.67 In this instance there is a suggestion of the purpose of the Orestes and a hint as to where its readers’ sympathies should lie. Justice first emerges as a theme in the narrative when Dorylas insists upon the justice of revenge against Clytemnestra (490–5); Agamemnon’s ghost assures Orestes that it will be no crime to murder his mother (539–40) and Pylades speaks of the justness of executing Aegisthus and Clytemnestra (714–17). In the immediate aftermath of the matricide, the response of the courtiers to the murder (798–802) offers the first external evaluation of this event and its justice and initiates a theme that will dominate the final third of the poem. It is Molossus who makes the crucial shift from cycles of blood guilt and vengeance to arbitration via the courts that will allow the plot to resolve (887–9). In his prosecution speech Molossus accuses Orestes of the double murder and stresses the impiety of killing Pyrrhus in a temple; he insists upon justice via the courts rather than summary justice (900–3). In Orestes’ response he pledges respect for human laws (919) but insists upon the authority of divine justice, made manifest in his healed state of mind (920–4, 927–8); his final appeal is to a human arbitration confirming the authority of divine sanction (936–7). In some important respects Orestes’ argument is sophistry. The fact that he is of sound mind is shoehorned into evidence for a divine mandate for matricide and he goes so far as to claim that his madness was a psychological reaction rather than a supernatural consequence to the murder (931–3). The reader knows that neither claim is true. We have seen that his madness was genuine (820–61) and that Iphigenia purged him of it in Tauris (885–6). It is not surprising that the jury is evenly divided as to whether to accept this argument. Its final proclamation,

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after Minerva’s intervention in the voting, is more of an acknowledgement that it is impossible to try Orestes by human means rather than a declaration of his innocence (947–57). The resolution of the plot’s cycles of violence thus comes through a speech-act of the Athenian courts (‘let Orestes be secure, let him go back to his homeland acquitted of all charges’, 956–7) rather than any ruling on the rightness or otherwise of his actions. In this respect it is the minor character Molossus who, in bringing the case before a human court, finds a way forward from the poem’s mythic world of summary justice. (vi) Gender Like its Aeschylean and Senecan counterparts, the Orestes attends to positive and negative gender stereotypes and perversions of these. As the fleet arrives, the women of Mycenae look from the walls for the return of their husbands and sons (111–13). This scene is a minor note within the theme of family in the poem, but it also offers a contrastive backdrop to Clytemnestra’s transgression of the role of the faithful and dutiful wife. Her intelligence, loaded negatively as guile and cunning, is attributed to her sex and is repeatedly stressed (162–3, 316, 338–9); it is demonstrated most famously in the ruse of the tunic (209–18). She plays the ‘weak woman’ to manipulate Aegisthus (‘woman that I am, pitiable for my sex’), but in cold-blooded fashion she takes Helen as her model, because that woman has ‘murdered so many kings, so many peoples’ and has gone unpunished (200–3). She restores Aegisthus’ confidence in their rule by her plot to corrupt the women of Mycenae with wealth (321–334). Here Clytemnestra relies upon the notion of the city’s wives as potentially treacherous to their husbands and corruptible: she imposes upon the Mycenaean women a negative stereotype that she herself embodies. Finally, Agamemnon’s ghost is incensed by the fact that he was murdered by ‘the worst of wives’ and a ‘woman’s weapons’ (501–8). Positive versions of feminine intelligence and the motif of ‘the cunning woman’ are embodied in Electra and Iphigenia, who both use their intellect and resourcefulness to save Orestes (284–304, 874–86). Moreover, guile is not the exclusive preserve of women in the poem, since Dorylas uses his cunning in an attempt to safeguard the children at 350–81. The positive and negative stereotypes of women are reduced to their most essential form in the mythic paradigms of treacherous and honourable women at 427–52. In the ‘honourable women’ category, it is noteworthy that some of the examples evoke Orestes in their ‘pious impiety’ (441, 444) and thus reflect the central paradox of duty explored by the poem.

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Four prominent motifs   (i) ‘Sorrowful joys’ are announced as the first subject of the poem (1) and the motif echoes throughout the Orestes. We see it concentrated in the first scene at Tauris: in Agamemnon’s joyful weeping when he discovers Iphigenia (63–4), in his joy turned to grief at Iphigenia’s story (84) and when he further claims that Diana took away parental sorrows by saving Iphigenia (90). Moreover, Clytemnestra’s grief will turn to joy if Iphigenia comes home (101). Later, Clytemnestra feigns joy in her sadness and stifles groans to ‘fix her face with joy’ after Cassandra’s prophecy (157–9). The servants recognize Orestes with ‘joyful grief’ when he returns to Mycenae (697). At the end of the narrative, the unmitigated joy stressed at the poem’s end offers some resolution to this motif (959, 96).  (ii) The motif of knowledge and ignorance runs throughout the poem. Agamemnon does not know of Clytemnestra’s adultery and Aegisthus’ crimes (35), but he does know that Iphigenia had been struck down as a victim (55). It is unclear whether Iphigenia knows that her father had a part in her sacrifice (75–83). Clytemnestra does not know that Iphigenia is alive (100): instead, she knows of the details of her daughter’s death (194). In the larger ‘moral’ of the first section, human minds are ignorant of the future (271). Clytemnestra and Aegisthus believe that the children of Agamemnon are dead (379–81). The attack of Orestes and Pylades is widely known at Mycenae but Clytemnestra and Aegisthus are kept in ignorance of it (678–9). (iii) Madness arcs as a theme across the Orestes. Clytemnestra’s passionate fear and love is given a pathological flavour at 119–32; restless fear and madness drive her to plan Agamemnon’s death (153–6) and Aegisthus responds to her plan to kill Agamemnon with derangement (220–3); the madness of love inspired the Lemnian women, just as it inspires Clytemnestra (434; compare 155). The madness of Orestes dominates the final third of the poem (especially 820–61), and his return to sanity both resolves this theme and offers the basis for his acquittal at Athens (871–3, 885–6, 911–37). (iv) ‘Pious impiety’ occurs three times in the prologue (‘pious crime’, 8, 12; ‘pious fury’, 19) and recurs throughout the poem. The paradox does not just describe the central dilemma of Orestes’ vengeance (as at, e.g., 541 ‘a son, aflame with pious love for a parent’s death’ or 602 ‘piety is to reject pious feelings’) but can set pious and impious actions and people in close contrast. Thus at 249–59, the ‘impious queen’ Clytemnestra lures Agamemnon into wearing ‘pious garments’ before Aegisthus ‘impiously strikes’ the death blow. Mythological paradigms reflect this 22

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motif when Alcestis is called a ‘pious wife, impious to herself’ (441), and it is said that Evadne immolated herself on her husband’s pyre because of her ‘impious piety’ (444). Main characters (i) Agamemnon Agamemnon’s characterization in the Orestes is overwhelmingly positive but it does admit some moral complexity. Dracontius repeatedly stresses that we are seeing Agamemnon in the moment of his victory and at the height of his authority after Troy’s fall. We see this in the prologue, where allusions to him as ‘victor’ and to his ‘laurel garlands’ (2, 5) foreshadow this theme, and it is confirmed when we first encounter him at lines 25–9 as the ‘lord of lords, king of kings, the general’ and as a triumphant ‘lord of war’. When he arrives at Mycenae he is still freshly coated in the blood of battle (239–43: ten years after the war!), and enters the palace wearing his armour (250, 254). His authority as king is conveyed in the prologue by reference to his diadem (6), and it is made clear in his comparison to Jupiter, the king of the gods, at lines 242–3—a moment that mixes the two elements of victorious general and king, since he is compared to Jupiter in triumph after the Gigantomachy (see note on lines 242–3). This insistence upon Agamemnon as a king and victor in war makes his inglorious murder all the more pointed and tragic. Thus, we are reminded three times that he had conquered Troy at the moment of his murder (269, 275, 277), and this sits in contrast to the lowly status of his murderer, Aegisthus, as observed during the murder itself (256–83) and in the prayer of Orestes’ au pair to Agamemnon’s shade at 462–82. A second major strand within Agamemnon’s characterization is his pietas to the gods and to his family: these two kinds of devotion are in fact frequently intertwined in the Orestes. We see his religious devotion when he carefully selects gifts for the gods from the plunder of Troy (30–4) and in his immediate desire to offer sacrifice to Diana at Tauris (47–9). His prayer to Diana at 86–101 shows both religious and familial devotion, especially in the remark that his victories mean nothing to him if he cannot reunite Iphigenia with Clytemnestra. As we have seen previously (‘Themes of the Orestes: (i) Family’), Agamemnon’s familial devotion is displayed in his selection of gifts on the homeward voyage and in his tender reunion with Iphigenia, especially so in his speech to her at 66–73. We are repeatedly told that he is a loving father (38, 54, 659) and the motif of children throwing their arms around his neck occurs at 60 and 245–6 (and is echoed in the final embrace of Orestes and his sisters at 960). His children’s reciprocal pietas, 23

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the dutiful respect that they owe to their father, will motivate the vengeance against his murderers and become its justification. Also noted previously is Dracontius’ repeated emphasis of Agamemnon’s tragically ironic affection for Clytemnestra: he selects gifts for her first of his family (35–6), he prays to bring Iphigenia home to her mother (98–101) and he looks anxiously for his wife immediately upon his arrival at Mycenae (247–8). Finally, we may note that the war against Troy is cast as an act of familial duty: Agamemnon is the ‘champion of marriage’ avenging the adulterous abduction of his brother’s wife (23–4), a conceit that contrasts with Clytemnestra’s adultery with Aegisthus. Dracontius does allow some negative nuances into Agamemnon’s portrait. In our first glimpse of him he is returning from Troy with a loot that includes now-enslaved Trojan brides and daughters (29), and allusions are made to the fact that Cassandra was assigned to Agamemnon as his concubine (4, 135). Dracontius makes it clear that Agamemnon did participate in the sacrifice of Iphigenia, but he does not elaborate on this earlier event. The anger of the unnamed goddess at 42 may respond to this sacrifice (see note on line 42). At Tauris, Agamemnon’s guilt is noted by the narrator and by Agamemnon himself (54, 66) and it is reflected in Diana’s anger in response to his prayer (102–3). (ii) Clytemnestra The tone is set for Clytemnestra’s negative characterization when she is introduced as ‘unworthy’ at line 36. However, before her first appearance, we see her through Agamemnon’s eyes, as a concerned mother, mourning the loss of her daughter (71, 99–101). Her first scene in the poem shows her being rejected by the women of Mycenae. Here she is described as faithless, foolish and untrue; she is also downcast and fearful amid the public rejoicing for Agamemnon’s return (114–23), and this same scene vividly shows her devotion to Aegisthus (123, 131–2). Throughout the Orestes, Clytemnestra is fearful of punishment for her adultery but possessed by an obsessive and passionate love for Aegisthus. The other keynote of her portrait is her resourcefulness and guile. She has a psychological complexity that exceeds all other characters in the poem: Dracontius repeatedly allows us to see her inner turmoil and states of mind (119–24, 153–7). She is much stronger than Aegisthus, whom she dominates by exploiting his fear, manipulating his emotions and ambition (163–203, 219) and strengthening his wavering commitment (316–17, 338–9). Clytemnestra confirms enduring stereotypes about women as corruptible and corrupting of their husbands, both in her actions and in her plans to buy the loyalty of the city’s women (321–34).

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The murder of Agamemnon is at the centre of her characterisation. In killing her husband, she exceeds all previous mythic paradigms of treachery and is set in contrast to models of ‘honourable love’ (427–52). After the murder, she is the strategist of the royal couple: she sets out a plan to win the loyalty of the Argives (321–34) and addresses the people to propose an end to the violence (384–412). She shows no remorse for the murder of her husband: she ‘praises the handiwork’ of Aegisthus (264) and is intent upon killing her other children; she is happy to hear that they have perished at sea (350–2, 380–1). When Orestes returns in vengeance, Clytemnestra again exhibits a range of emotions: first indignant rage (704–5), then a false sense of her own safety and sadness for the fate of Aegisthus (729–30), then deranged fear (739–45) and finally defiant commitment to Aegisthus and a pride in her actions (757–60). Her last utterance, a magnificent invocation of the elements, attests to her nobility of spirit (775–8) and her final action of dying modestly and with dignity is a moving epilogue to a superbly-drawn character (786–94). In the Orestes, Clytemnestra is not motivated by Agamemnon’s sacrifice of Iphigenia, as is the case in Aeschylus. This removes a significant dimension from her own moral position in the poem: in Aeschylus, she acts in large part to avenge her daughter’s sacrifice: an act that strikes a balance between morally commendable justice and deplorable crime in the same manner as Orestes’ vengeance for his father. In Aeschylus this stress on Iphigenia makes it difficult to form a judgment on Clytemnestra (as the chorus admits at Agamemnon 1560–1) and gives her a tragic dimension and destiny equal to that of Agamemnon. In the Orestes, Clytemnestra is motivated by her desires to avoid punishment for her adultery and to continue her relationship with Aegisthus (163–203). She is thus an ironic foil to her husband as a champion of marriage in his decision to wage war against Troy after Helen’s elopement with Paris (23–4). But Dracontius’ Clytemnestra does embody the aspects of Aeschylus’ heroine who has ‘a woman’s hopeful heart but rules like a man’ (Agamemnon 11), for she surpasses the typically subordinate roles assigned to women in antiquity. She is assertive and autonomous, the dominant partner in her relationship; as queen she occupies a normatively male position of power, and it is she and not Aegisthus who addresses the populace. It is only as Clytemnestra lies dying that she takes on a more traditional female concern for chastity and a modest appearance. (iii) Orestes Orestes enters the poem defined by the moral paradox of his vengeance: ‘mindful and oblivious of a parent . . . pious in impiety, a man of immoral

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integrity’ (7–8). At Athens his character emerges through his firm friendship with Pylades (291–303, 518–19) and this sets the scene for the latter’s influence over Orestes’ decision to kill his mother. Orestes looks to Pylades for guidance after his father’s apparition (557). He describes his own conflicting duties and emotions at 558–60: he is fully cognisant of Clytemnestra’s devotion to him as a mother, and his initial decision to let her live is an attempt to satisfy his duty (pietas) to his father while preserving his duty to his mother. It is Pylades who shames him and clarifies for Orestes the overwhelming claim of his father (583–615). The bitter grief and rage that Orestes’ exhibits at lines 616–25 is both a worrying echo of Aegisthus striking at absent enemies (compare 220–3) and a foreshadowing of Orestes’ own madness (compare 839–40). From this moment onwards Orestes’ resolve is fixed (compare, e.g., 665–6, 687–92) and is even unshakable as he confronts his mother in person (unlike Aeschylus’ Orestes). He does not allow Clytemnestra to be killed by Pylades but insists on killing her himself, and he does not permit her to die over the body of Aegisthus but slays her at Agamemnon’s tomb (753–74). These actions contrast with his earlier proposed compromise to let her live: now he is relentless to the last moment (‘I have long desired this’, 774); his only concession is to avert his gaze at the point of striking (780). Stronger, uncontrolled emotions come to the fore at the beginning of the third part of the narrative. In lines 803–61 we see Orestes rage at the abduction of his wife, exalt in the murder of Pyrrhus, whom he has impiously killed inside a temple, and descend into madness. His madness is only partially dispelled by the terror of his imminent sacrifice at Tauris (869–73) and continues until he is purified by Iphigenia (885–6). By the time Orestes speaks in his own defence at his trial in Athens his sanity is completely restored. It becomes his proof of divine approval (918–24), and Orestes frames his prior state of mind as grief and distress rather than a madness inflicted on him as a punishment (932–3). At the very end of the narrative, we are told that Orestes returns home with his friends and sisters in joy (961), a detail that allow us a final glimpse at Orestes’ reintegration into his family and state. (iv) Aegisthus Aegisthus was the son of Thyestes and the surviving brother of the children killed in the blood feud between his father and Atreus. In Homer’s Odyssey Aegisthus only murders Agamemnon because of the adultery with Clytemnestra (1.29–43, 3.249–75, 4.524–37), but in later versions of the myth he acts in vengeance for his brothers against Atreus and Agamemnon, both of whom he murders. In some versions Aegisthus was conceived incestuously with Thyestes’ daughter, Pelopeia, and when he was born, he was 26

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exposed; shepherds found him and kept him alive by giving him a she-goat to suckle (Hyginus, Fabulae 87–88), hence his name: a combination of aix ‘goat’ + sthenos ‘strength’. Dracontius simplifies this backstory radically, keeping only the association with shepherds (which he insists upon) and removing any motivation except the love affair from his character (in this way he conforms to the Homeric version of the myth).68 Dracontius’ Aegisthus is characterized in wholly negative terms. He is the adulterous lover of Clytemnestra in contrast to the poem’s champions of family values and marriage (35, 305, 454, 619–20, 646–50, 734–5, 761) and he is the murderer of Agamemnon (256–70, 305). When he strikes at Agamemnon, the king is helpless and Aegisthus uses excessive, repeated violence, striking again and again (259–62). He is insistently portrayed as an impoverished shepherd or a rustic (139–41, 229, 423, 575); his rusticity is often made to reflect his unworthiness as the killer of Agamemnon (270, 722), the lover of Clytemnestra (140, 469–70) or the new ruler of Mycenae (419–20, 453, 662). He is degenerate (160), fearful (220–1, 700) and cowardly; he must be instructed (204–7) and called to action by Clytemnestra (257) and his resolve must be strengthened by her (326–7). As a ruler he is ignorant and unskilled at wielding power (415), and is called a scoundrel, fit for beating (426); he wants to be king in order to enrich himself (310–15) and although Clytemnestra promises that he will be ‘a citizen king’ (412), he immediately descends into tyranny (413–26). He is repeatedly called cruel (375, 416, 495) and he is hated by the palace staff and people of Mycenae (549–51, 725–8, 802). The style of the Orestes In late antiquity, all genres of poetry and many forms of literature were highly influenced by the kind of rhetorical education and training that Dracontius received. It is characteristic of the aesthetics of the age that some of the most famous poets of the fourth century, such as, for example, Ausonius (310–93) and Pacatus (late fourth century), were also orators and professors of rhetoric.69 Dracontius’ professional duties in the proconsular court would have required of him a mastery of rhetoric. It is unsurprising that we know of many advocates who were former rhetoricians, such as Cyprian of Carthage, Augustine and Basil of Caesarea, and we know of several advocates who achieved various levels of prominence as poets, such as Agathius, Leontius and Dioscurus of Aphrodito (all mid-sixth century).70 Formal rhetorical training had exerted an abiding influence on literature of all genres since the beginning of the first century CE. It constituted a powerful cultural continuum joining the world of late antiquity with its classical past. The influence of rhetoric and declamation in literature 27

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more generally can be seen in a style that favours ‘elegance, ingenuity and wit’, achieved by concision, point, concentrated paradoxes and copious argument.71 In late antiquity these characteristics were often married to ‘a taste for the densely textured play of repetition and variation’.72 This found expression in passages of visual immediacy achieved by an attention to details and sequences of enumeration (of the constituent parts that add up to a vivid whole); by parallelism, juxtaposition and contrast; and by antithesis and a tendency to favour shorter, self-contained units of composition. The polychromatic variety of flowers and the radiance of jewels became favoured metaphors of poetic production and style in late antiquity. These literary tastes sit within a larger cultural movement that favoured exquisite miniatures, an accumulative style, catalogues and fragmentation: ‘a pervasive “aesthetics of detail” that privileges the part over the whole and breaks up the literary/artistic experience into a kaleidoscope of sharp close-ups’.73 Dracontius’ Orestes reflects and responds to these contemporary tastes in a variety of ways. Late antique poetry is often described as (and has been criticized for) being episodic, and the Orestes certainly favours selfcontained units of narrative which often end rather abruptly. To give just two examples of this, one might observe the way in which Agamemnon leaves Tauris at 106–7 (with no further communication with his newly rediscovered daughter); or the very self-contained section on the murder of Pyrrhus, in which the murder is narrated in two lines before the perfunctory statement that Orestes ‘returns to the Greeks elated by this second kill’ (819).74 Examples could be multiplied, and the poem’s individual episodes often seem disjointed from those that come before or after them. On the other hand, as we have seen previously, the poem has a strong sense of unity and teleology from beginning to end. Moreover, a suite of motifs thread through the Orestes and invite the reader to consider how earlier scenes are re-echoed in later scenes and vice-versa, and its scenes are often effectively juxtaposed to help sharpen the poem’s themes.75 A general trend that has been observed in the epics of late antiquity (as compared to earlier epics) concerns the proportion of speech to narrative: ‘a significant decrease in the total number of speeches given is accompanied by a considerable increase in their length’.76 One consequence of this phenomenon is that narrative is generally more restricted in late antique epic.77 In both respects the Orestes runs counter to this trend and can be seen as more ‘classicizing’ in its choices: this is surely an influence of the dramatic sources that Dracontius used as the basis of his poem. There are more lines of narrative than direct speech in the poem, although it is fairly evenly balanced (513 lines of narrative versus 461 lines of direct speech),

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and there are 44 direct speeches ranging from half of a line in length to 40.5 lines (Clytemnestra’s exhortation to Aegisthus to murder Agamemnon). The majority of the poem’s speeches are short: 29 of them comprise ten lines or less, and there are both relatively long panels of narrative uninterrupted by direct speech (e.g., 25–65, 254–320, 413–61) and, conversely, sequences where characters communicate through multiple, brief exchanges rather than by long declamatory speeches (e.g., 682–802, the murder of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, which contains 13 brief speeches).78 There are no fully developed ecphrases of a place or physical object in the Orestes, such as was especially popular in late antique epic,79 but there are many individual examples of the visual immediacy favoured by his age. We see this in Agamemnon’s offering at Tauris: a silk-embroidered purple cloth, a robe, inlaid and glittering with encrusted gems (50–1) or in his physical appearance when he arrives at Mycenae: The king disembarks his ship, and rejoices as he touches shore, glistening red with the grime of war, bloodied, beautiful, mighty to behold, ennobled by the horror of battle (239–41) and most typically we see it in the graphic details of the poem’s moments of violence: he raises up the pitiless axe with shaking hand and impiously strikes the unmindful head its death blow, shattering the brow and the head that wears the crown, splitting it in two; and he redoubles his blows, three and four times he strikes the skull, pouring out its brains (258–62) A thousand axes massacre his body, shattering its bones, and his limbs spasm, butchered by wounds (727–8) Her fair limbs blush deep with red gore, her jolting body shakes the ground as she lay (792–3)

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These moments of visual immediacy represent only one of many stylistic choices at work in the poem. There are moments of deep pathos, such as Agamemnon’s recognition of Iphigenia in the Temple of Diana and his heartfelt first speech to her (53–73), or Clytemnestra’s concern to preserve her dignity as she dies (786–94). There are also incisive psychological sketches, such as Clytemnestra’s arc of emotions as she watches the Greek fleet arrive without any sign of Agamemnon (116–32). The poem’s many paradoxes and oxymora reflect at once the influence of rhetoric, the moral complexities of the mythic plot and the tastes of the age. The poem begins with a cluster of contradictory phrases that set the tone: ‘sorrowful joys’ ‘cursed triumphs’, ‘bloody feasts’ ‘Orestes, mindful and oblivious of a parent’, ‘unjust gods whose savage plan was just’ and Electra, ‘deceitful in her pious crime’ (1–12). Paradoxes and oxymora are not pervasive throughout the narrative, but they are strategically brought to the reader’s attention to illustrate, frame or interpret the events of the plot. These are not just concise, concentrated expressions, but momentary riddles that arrest the reader’s attention and force their engagement in order to resolve the incompatible elements that comprise each phrase. They are not merely rhetorical embellishments but speak to the irreconcilably opposed loyalties, obligations and forces at work within the narrative. Later Latin poetry often investigates the nature of its subject matter via tightly-drawn contrasts and antitheses, and this is a prevalent rhetorical strategy within the Orestes.80 Antithesis is often a technique of characterization, as when Clytemnestra’s adultery is set against Agamemnon as the champion of marriage (23–4, 504–10), or her status as adulterer and murderer is contrasted with the innocence of Agamemnon (689, 761–2), or her sadness, fear and anxiety mark her out from the public joy at the fleet’s return from Troy (117–19). Similarly, Aegisthus’ character is damned by various contrasts: his lowly former station is antithetical to the royalty of Clytemnestra (184, 470), to the dignity and authority of Agamemnon (205–6, 269–70, 275–6, 339, 425–6, 530–3, 575–6, 722, 750) and to his new status as ruler of Mycenae (139–41, 414–20, 423–4, 453, 479, 662). Agamemnon’s regal station sets the contrast for his undignified death (343), his absence of a proper burial (277) and his status as a pitiable ghost (462). Minor characters can be sharpened through antitheses as well, such as when Pyrrhus’ regal station is set against his undignified murder (899). There are many more momentary antitheses that occur and contribute to the overall contrastive tendencies of the poem. These often result from nouns with opposite meanings being juxtaposed or contrasted within the same line or sentence: life and death (181, 186–7, 202, 304, 575–8); war and peace (250–1, 395–6, 398–9); the (marriage) chamber and the (sacrificial) altar (80); reward and punishment

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(198); land and sea (357, 364–5); human and divine justice (921–2, 936–7, 947–51) and many others besides. We can see the contemporary taste for enumerative sequences of words and the piling up of nouns (in rhetoric called ‘congeries’ or ‘enumeratio’) at various moments. One example occurs in the prologue when the narrator describes Orestes’ motivation in killing his mother (I italicize the nouns): quem dolor accendit, pudor excitat, erigit ira, mens leuat, attollunt animi, bonus impetus urget (dat furor arma pius, pietas dat noxia ferrum) Inflamed by grief, stirred by shame and exalted in rage, his mind supported and sustained him, good intentions drove him on. Pious fury, sinful piety equipped him with a sword (17–19) In quick succession, eight different subjects and seven different verbs affect the same object (quem ‘him’, Orestes).81 An even starker example occurs when Orestes describes his own emotions at the vision of Agamemnon’s ghost: pectora cor sensus animum praecordia mentem conturbat pietas dolor anxia maeror origo affectus natura pudor reuerentia fama. My breast, heart, sense, soul, emotions and my mind are upheaved by duty, grief, angst, sorrow, birth, devotion, nature, shame, reverence and renown. (558–60) Here Orestes offers a bare list of six nouns as objects of the verb conturbat (‘upheaves’), which has as its subject a bare list of ten nouns. As we have seen with paradox and oxymora, this aesthetic of ‘piling up’ nouns is not without nuance and meaning within the text. In both examples the impression is of exhaustivity.82 In the first example, the congeries conveys the overwhelming variety of emotions, psychological and moral factors besetting the one human being and driving him to commit an unthinkable crime. In the latter example, the congeries fragments aspects of Orestes’ identity to show that every constituent element of his self is disordered by multiple emotions.

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The Orestes and Dracontius’ other poetry The Orestes shares many of the characteristics and preoccupations of Dracontius’ other poetry; this was a crucial factor in identifying our poet as its author. This similarity is especially noticeable in his other, relatively longer mythological narratives, the Abduction of Helen (Romulea 8) and Medea (Romulea 10). The emphasis that Dracontius places upon marriage and the family in the Orestes is typical of his poetry. Marriage is one of his most persistent themes: it features in Romulea 6–10 and it is also celebrated at De Laudibus Dei 1.363–70. The Abduction of Helen repeatedly denounces adultery and celebrates legitimate marriage (8.286–90, 304–8, 571–85, 638–51, 655). Dracontius is interested in the power and destruction caused by sexual attraction. In the Orestes we see this in the affair of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. It can be seen in his other poetry in the Nymphs and their love for Hylas (Romulea 2.100–8), as well as in his account of Helen and Paris (8.490–540), Medea and Jason (10.49–176) and Glauce and Jason (10.369–73).83 In these affairs, it is often the women who are stronger characters than their men. Helen has more agency than Paris (compare 8.529–40, 551–5), as does Medea in relation to Jason and as does Clytemnestra compared to Aegisthus. Similarly, the emphasis upon the bonds of family can be seen elsewhere in his works, such as in the Abduction of Helen. The emotional reunion of Priam and Hecuba with their long-lost son, Paris (8.106–8), resembles the reunion of Agamemnon with Iphigenia on Tauris; so too the parents’ admission of past guilt with respect to their child (8.105). In his mythic narratives, Dracontius mixes human and divine motivation such as we see in the Orestes. Paris is responsible for his crime, but the abduction of Helen is also destined and planned by the gods (8.57–60, 131, 191, 198, 535–9); Paris returns to Troy ‘because his mind and fate ordered him’ (8.68).84 In the Medea divine and human motivation are likewise mixed: for example, Medea is the author of the tragic events in Greece, but these also take place as part of Diana’s curse.85 A significant point of difference between the Orestes and Dracontius’ other mythological narratives is their lengthy and detailed portrayal of gods in speech and action. This is especially prominent in the first half of the Medea; it also occurs in the Abduction of Helen in the judgment of Paris (8.31–60) and in the appearance of Apollo at the reunion of Paris and his family (8.183–212). The second half of the Medea resembles the Orestes more in that the presence of the gods is diminished and morally driven characterportraits prevail.86 The highly inventive approach to plot and the tendency to tell ‘the whole story’ that we see in the Orestes is typical of his other narratives. Consider 32

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his unifying or totalizing treatment of the Medea plot, in which he narrates both events in Colchis and those in Greece, which he locates at Thebes rather than at Corinth. He also innovates in the plot of his Abduction of Helen and Medea in the same way he does in the plot of the Orestes. To give just a sample: in his Abduction of Helen, Paris knows his royal lineage all along; he goes to Greece seeking glory, not Helen; a full-scale debate between diplomats is narrated at Telamon’s court; and Helen is abducted from Cyprus not Salamis. His Medea saves Jason from human sacrifice in Colchis and proposes marriage to him at that very moment; Diana curses Jason and Medea, thus partially motivating the tragic events in Greece; Medea and Jason stay at Colchis as husband and wife for four years; and Medea suggests and carries out the theft of the golden fleece, which Jason later delivers to Creon. One point of difference in the issue of plot is that neither the Abduction of Helen nor the Medea adheres closely to the plot of one main precursor, such as is the case in the Orestes.87 There are further, more localized points of comparison between the Orestes and Dracontius’ other mythological poems. In the Medea the narrator invokes Melpomene for the events in Greece (10.20–1), just as he invokes the same tragic Muse at 13–14; and both poems feature tragic elements.88 In the Medea, Diana’s curse contains many but not all of the elements to be narrated in that poem (10.291–300), as does Cassandra’s curse at 133–52.89 The Medea has a lengthy scene in which Jason is nearly sacrificed to Diana in Colchis, with Medea playing the role of sacrificing priestess (10.177–257): Medea thus plays the role that Iphigenia plays at 862–86. In this scene Jason is saved by the intervention of Cupid, since he makes Medea fall in love with him, at which point Medea uses the same ruse as Iphigenia does in our poem: she proclaims that Jason will be a displeasing sacrifice (10.243–7).90 Some scholars interpret this lengthier scene of human sacrifice to Diana as an indication that the Medea was written after the Orestes, but this is not conclusive.91 The Medea ends with a long intervention by the author (10.570–61) in which he asks that various abstract forces (such as madness and crime) leave the human race alone (570–86) and that the gods Venus, Cupid and Bacchus spare Thebes any further cruelty (587–601). This compares very closely in spirit with the more succinct epilogue to the Orestes at 963–74.92 In the Abduction of Helen, Dracontius insists upon Paris’ former status as a shepherd. He exploits the incongruity of this lowly former position and his new identity as Trojan prince (8.97–8, 117–18 and often); similarly, Paris’ status as shepherd is also a means of contrasting his inferior social position to that of the queen, Helen (8.489–511, 638–44). We see a similar approach to characterizing Aegisthus in the Orestes. In contrast to our poem, having been a shepherd is not uniformly 33

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negative in the Abduction of Helen: Apollo defends Paris’ status (8.206–10) and Paris remembers it fondly in the crisis of a storm at sea (8.402–24). The Orestes and Dracontius’ Christianity It has occasionally been asserted that the Orestes is a Christian recasting of the Aeschylean plot.93 Bright saw the purpose of the Orestes as to ‘measure conduct against the standard of the Law of God. i.e., the Ten Commandments . . . [and] a means of contrasting what his faith taught him and what the pagan world countenanced’.94 This is a difficult reading to substantiate. If this were so, one might expect the final prayer of the poem to be addressed to the Christian god, or to make some explicit mention of the Christian status of the poet’s world. Instead, the watershed expressed at 969–74 is not between the pagan and Christian worlds but between the mythic world of the plot and the contemporary world without reference to the presence of Christianity within it.95 Much more importantly, the major ‘sins’ that Bright sees as being explored in the plot—adultery, murder, parricide, dishonour and violence against one’s father and mother—were anathema to the preChristian world and drew heavy legal punishments in Greek and Roman secular law: there is simply nothing distinctively Christian in the way that Dracontius treats them. Of the other ‘sins’ mentioned by Bright, the ‘covetousness’ of Aegisthus does not appear to be Christian in tone or emphasis, and the ‘prohibition against graven images’ is in no way reflected in the theft of the statue of Diana from Tauris. Others have seen Christian details in the poem, but these also fail to convince. Early editors saw the Christian Hell in Dorylas’ description of the Underworld at 494–6,96 but the concept, the imagery and the vocabulary used are all conventional and pagan.97 Rapisarda and Bright have suggested that Clytemnestra shows penitence at the point of her death (759–60, 786–94).98 However, the details introduced into her death scene are included to assimilate Clytemnestra to Polyxena and other dying heroines. Moreover, Clytemnestra is not penitent about what she has done: if anything, lines 759–60 are a perverse expression of pride in her joint ‘achievement’ with Aegisthus;99 her emphasis is upon the two lovers joined even in death, not upon the fact that their crimes were met with punishment. Her final expressions of pudor (‘shame’) belong to a long tradition of ascribing a sense of dignified shame at the point of death to women, which can be seen in pre-Christian literature, anecdote and visual art.100 While thematic concerns such as free will and divine motivation were live concerns for early Christians, the layering of human decisions, divine will and fate in the Orestes is not marked or explored in any way to distinguish it from the way multiple motivation is treated in early epic and in Aeschylus.101 In short, the Orestes—so far from encoding or reflecting 34

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Dracontius’ Christian values—demonstrates the way in which the poet was able to keep his Christian beliefs and the mythological content of his plot separate in this poem.102 The Orestes and the Vandals It has been tempting to look for allusions to Dracontius’ experience under the Vandals in the Orestes. Rapisarda and Bright thought Clytemnestra’s image of peace at lines 394–6 reflected Dracontius’ dreams for peace in the violent and unstable world of the Vandals.103 Wolff suggested that the view of Aegisthus as a ‘citizen king’ at 411 was a ‘discrete allusion’ to the tyranny of the Vandal kings,104 and he has more recently endorsed the notion that the upstart tyranny of Aegisthus, the assassinations in the family of the Atreid house and Aegisthus’ attempt to seize Agamemnon’s wealth could all conjure recent Vandal history.105 While this is perfectly possible, and we have seen that Dracontius brings the political dimensions of his plot to the fore, such interpretations need to be weighed quite carefully. Clytemnestra’s description of peace is a pastiche of literary influences. This does not mean that Dracontius could not have created that pastiche to reflect his own views on peace, but we should bear in mind the highly conventional nature of her sentiments. It also seems an unlikely choice for Dracontius to put either his yearnings for peace or his model of kingship into the mouth of the poem’s most evil character. Such interpretations also require an assumption about both life under the Vandals in the late fifth or early sixth century and Dracontius’ experience of that life, which may be distorted by the bias of our sources or our knowledge of his imprisonment. They also depend partly upon when we imagine the Orestes to have been written. Many believe that it was composed after his release from prison: the period in which we know, for example, that he wrote a poem in praise of Thrasamund. This may of course have been lip service, but for all we know it reflected his genuine gratitude and relief for his restoration. If it was written prior to his imprisonment, it appears to coincide with a period of Dracontius’ social eminence. Neither scenario makes a critical response to Vandal power impossible, of course. In the case of his writing on power and its abuses more generally, these moments in the poem may well evoke or reflect his contemporary experience and recent history, but they can also be paralleled in the literary tradition with which he was working. If we are looking for something specific to Dracontius’ place and moment in this poem, in my view it may be safer to see the Orestes in its entirety as a magnificent cultural achievement resulting from the educational, literary and rhetorical culture current in North Africa in the late fifth and early sixth century—and to see its style and presentation against the backdrop of late antique aesthetic choices more 35

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generally—than to look for specific details in which the poet’s experience is encoded into the words of his characters.

The translation and its notes My translation aims to convey Dracontius’ poem as faithfully as possible, while preserving its own merit as English free verse. The English stays linefor line with Dracontius’ Latin in order to maintain the pace and structure of the original poem and to make cross-referencing to the Latin text as easy as possible. I have sometimes re-ordered some elements or information in a sentence from one line to another, but generally the correlation between lines is exact. In the translation I have adopted an underlying iambic rhythm in lines that vary in length between 13 and 17 syllables (with some few exceptions). Although Latin meter was based upon patterns of syllable length rather than word stress, the Latin hexameter typically varied from 13 to 17 syllables in length, and so this correlation has given me the flexibility to keep pace with Dracontius while rendering his Latin as accurately as I can. I have also tried as far as possible to convey the effects of Dracontius’ Latin. I  have endeavoured to emulate the register of individual wordchoices from Latin to English; I have tried to place end-stopped or run-on lines where they occur in the text; I have preserved oxymora and paradoxes as faithfully as possible and I have almost always kept the close repetition of vocabulary where it occurs, instead of substituting various English synonyms for the same Latin word. In the rare cases where I found the effect too obscure or jarring in English, I have varied a repeated word and offered a literal rendering in the notes. I have kept proper names and adjectives based on these (e.g., ‘Danaan’, ‘Pelasgian’) as an essential element of the text; these are explained in the notes. On the other hand, I  have standardized the spelling of ancient names in their most recognizable forms: Dracontius has ‘Clytaemestra’ and ‘Egistus’, which I render as ‘Clytemnestra’ and ‘Aegisthus’. The notes provide a summary of each new narrative section of the poem and introduce the models, themes and issues that are pertinent to that section of the poem. Individual notes explain the context, allusive references and meaning of individual lines, phrases and words. In the notes, if I have provided Dracontius’ Latin with an allusion to another author, it is to show how close the quotation, paraphrase or adaptation is and thus how likely it is that Dracontius is consciously engaging with these literary models. Poetry in antiquity often generated new meaning, provided further contexts or created ironies by such intertextuality, and the poet’s control of his literary precursors was one element of his doctrina, his learning. 36

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Notes 1 Codex Neapolitanus is catalogued as ‘IV E 48’ in the Biblioteca Nazionale at Naples. 2 See Bouquet and Wolff 1995: 10–11. For the location of Furnos Minus see Talbert 2000: map 32, E3. 3 On citizenship and nomenclature see Badian 1958: 309–21, Sherwin-White 1973: 294–5, 386–90. 4 Birley 1988: 4–5 discusses a man called ‘Iddibal, son of Himilis, Caphada Aemilius’. 5 Conant 2012: 145–6; RE s.v. ‘Dracontius’ 1–4. 6 Salway 1994: 136. 7 On the Vandals see Merrills and Miles 2010, Conant 2022. 8 On Roman education see Bonner 1977, Kaster 1988: 15–31. On the continuation of Roman education under the Vandals see Merrills and Miles 2010: 213–19. 9 See Shaw 1992: 6 and note 1. 10 On North African authors of this period with some knowledge of Greek see Merrills and Miles 2010: 198, 199, 216, 218. Not all scholars accept that Dracontius may have known Greek: in favour of the notion are, for example, Tolkiehn 1900: 149–60 (a close study of Homer’s Iliad and Romulea 9), Bright 1987: 15 and Bouquet and Wolff 1995: 13–14. Opposed to the idea are, for example, Kaufman 2006: 19–23 and Fischer 2020: 152. On Latin translations of classic Greek texts see Tolkiehn 1900: 78–31 on the Ilias Latina, a Latin version of the Iliad. If we were to imagine a source text in Latin for Dracontius, it would have to represent the Oresteia in much greater detail than the Ilias Latina does the Iliad. 11 On the role of advocates see ODLA s.v. ‘advocati’. 12 See Victor of Vita’s History of the Vandal Persecution, translated with notes by Moorhead 1992. Note that Victor is a polemical source and his bias must be kept in mind by the reader: see ODLA s.v. ‘Victor of Vita’, Shanzer 2004. On the persecution see Conant 2022: 380–3 with further reading at 387 note 23. 13 The thesis of Merrills 2004. 14 See Diaz de Bustamente 1978: 93–4. 15 I assume that the Orestes is late on account of its greater length and complexity compared to the poems of the Romulea. On the relative chronology of the secular poetry, which is uncertain, see Bright 1987: 39 (who places it prior to the Medea (Romulea 10) and after the Helen (Romulea 8)); Bouquet and Wolff 1995: 24–7 give a good overview. 16 The manuscript containing the ten poems is the Codex Neapolitanus (see footnote 1); the name Romulea is in the Florilegium Veronense, codex CLXVIII in the Biblioteca Capitolare in Verona, which transmits some fragments and partial lines of his secular poetry. 17 For an overview see Guédon 2022, Kaufmann 2022a. 18 See Bertini 1974, Kay 2006: 7–13, Merrills and Miles 2010: 204–6, 213–27, Kaufmann 2022a: 337–40 19 See ODLA s.v. ‘Anthologia Latina’; it is cited in the following paragraph as AL with numbers of the editions of Riese and Shackleton Bailey. The Codex Salmasianus is catalogued as ‘Latin 10318’ in the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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20 The following survey is selective rather than exhaustive: I confine myself to examples where the evidence very strongly supports an attribution to North Africa under the Vandals. There are many further examples where the evidence is less certain on place and time: see Kaufmann 2022a: 332–3 for some criteria in attributing poet works to North Africa. 21 Miles 2017: 402 22 See Kay 2006: 1–13. 23 ODLA s.v. ‘Luxorius’. 24 Chatillon 1952: 200. 25 B is Codex 45 in the Burgerbibliothek of Berne in Switzerland; A is Codex Ambrosianus O 74 sup., held in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. 26 Schenkl 1873: 21–2. For more on these authors see their entries in ODLA and OCD. 27 Mai 1871: 1 note 1. Mai had published an edition of Dracontius’ The Abduction of Helen (Romulea 8) earlier in the same year. 28 de Duhn 1873: viii. 29 The comparative studies were Rossberg 1878, Westoff 1883, Barwinski 1887, 1888, 1890. 30 Chatillon 1952: 200. 31 Rossberg 1888: 5. 32 See Horsfall 1981, Mac Góráin 2018: 425–8 with references at 425 note 13. 33 For an overview of the scholarly discussion on the title of the poem see Bouquet and Wolff 1995: 161–2, Wasyl 2011: 43. 34 Hardie 2019b: 26, 45–7. 35 On epic ‘structures’ more generally, see Reitz and Finkmann 2019. 36 See Wasyl 2011: 44–9. 37 Schindler 2019: 496 observes the ‘special situation of [the] poem, which endeavours to put the subject of a classical tragedy into hexameter form’. 38 See Verhelst 2022: 135. 39 Papaioannou and Marinis 2021: 1. 40 See, for example, Goldhill 1997: 128–30, Ambühl 2019: 176–80. 41 For a discussion of the characteristics of the shorter epic see Baumbach and Bär 2012: ix–xvi; Verhelst 2022: 134–6, 150 considers Dracontius’ Orestes against the backdrop of generic awareness. 42 Courtney 1996: 550. 43 Gutzwiller 1981: 6, Wasyl 2011: 19. 44 Merriam 2001. 45 OCD s.v. ‘epyllion’: the authors stress the same reservations I express in this paragraph. 46 Zuenelli 2019: 25–6. 47 See, for example, Cameron 2006: 339–44. 48 On these poets, see their individual entries, as well as ‘epic, Greek’ in ODLA. 49 I find Bright’s (1987: 139–40, 163, 201–3) further subdivision of each section into five ‘acts’ unconvincing. Simons 2005: 308–9 is sceptical of the three-part structure and adopts the murders of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and their respective aftermaths as the poem’s main structural divisions. 50 It is, of course, possible that these innovations were present in some version that was extant in Dracontius’ day but did not survive to us (Grillone 2008: 13, 15). However, we have no evidence that this is the case, and it is fairest to Dracontius and his close engagement with the mythic tradition that we assume

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51 52 53 54

55

56 57 58 59 60 61

62 63 64



65 66 67 68

69 70 71 72 73 74 75

76 77

these new elements are his contributions in the absence of evidence to the contrary. Bright 1987: 20, Bouquet and Wolff 1995: 59–60. Bonner 1977: 213–14. VE s.v. ‘Schools and schooling’, ‘Late antique art’; Kaster 1988: 169–96. On Virgil in late antiquity see Hardie 2019b; on allusion to Virgil in late antiquity see Kaufmann 2017, Pollman 2017. To use just one indicative collection of ‘loci similes’ (lines where vocabulary and phrasing suggest strongly that an author is alluding to another author): Dracontius alludes to the Aeneid x 31, Lucan’s Civil War x 18, Ovid’s Metamorphoses x 12 and Statius’ Thebaid x 11. See Grillone 2008: 203–7. See Bouquet 1995, Fielding 2017 and the essays in Consolino 2018. Moussy 1989: 427, Roberts 1989: 61, Kaufmann 2015. Bright 1987: 153 suggests that these moments show the ‘heightened language of the choral passages in tragedy’, but Lucan is a more direct influence: compare, for example, Civil War 1.510, 2.14–15, 4.373–81, 7.798. See Boyle 2019: cxxiii–cxxiv, whose analysis I follow here. Hall 2005: 66. Bielfeldt 2005: 257–8 suggests that Dracontius describes Orestes and Pylades in terms appropriate to loving brothers: a closeness that she sees reflected in a sarcophagus from the second century ce depicting the pair in identical iconography (Munich Glyptothek, inventory number GL 363). Bright 1987: 159 ‘it is his bond to the slain king as well as the young prince that dictates his actions’. In this sense he is similar to Lucan: see Feeney 1991: 264–9, Roche 2019: 5–7. Pollmann 2017: 45 note 40 calls the cruelty of the pagan gods a central issue in the Orestes. I agree, but without importing any suggestion that the Christian gods are in view in the poem: see the later section on ‘The Orestes and Dracontius’ Christianity’. Gärtner 2019: 160–2. HE s.v. ‘Double motivation’, ‘motivation’. See, for example, Nisbet and Hubbard 1978: 21 on Horace, Odes 2.1.18. Van Zyl Smit 2010 explores the characterization of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. See the comments of Elsner and Hernández Lobato 2017: 6–7. ODLA offers an overview of these figures. Bonner 1949: 51–70, 149–67 gives a good summary of rhetorical strategies favoured in (prose) declamation. Roberts 1989: 9–64 (quote from page 38). Elsner and Hernández Lobato 2017: 11; see too Elsner 2004: 293–309; Hernández Lobato 2012: 318–41. For comments on the abrupt end to the first of these scenes see Bright 1987: 145. Simons 2005: 308 cites two examples of scenes that are effectively juxtaposed to bring out the poem’s themes: (i) the lust of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus followed by the murder of Agamemnon (220–31, 232–83); and (ii) Clytemnestra’s promise of peace followed by Aegisthus’ tyranny (381–412, 413–26). Zuenelli 2019: 30. Miguélez-Cavaro 2008: 268.

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78 On speeches in the Orestes see Aricò 1977–8: 488–91, Bright 1987: 202 and especially Galli Milić 2010, who sees direct speech in the poem as reflecting an experiment in mixing tragedy and epic. 79 Cameron 1970: 262–3, Zuenelli 2019: 30. 80 On contrast and antithesis in later Latin poetry see Roberts 1989: index s.v. ‘antithesis’. 81 The Latin has eight nouns; I  have collapsed the synonyms mens and animi together into ‘mind’ in the English, so there are only seven in the translation. 82 Roberts 1989: 41, cf. 39–47 on the figure more generally. 83 Herren 2016: 305, Wolff 2020: 144. 84 Wolff 2020: 142–3. 85 Fischer 2020: 159. 86 Fischer 2020: 160. 87 Kaufmann 2006: 50, Fischer 2020: 152. 88 See Pollmann 2017: 43–44, Kaufmann 2022b: 99–100. 89 In the Abduction of Helen, Helenus and Cassandra both make prophecies (8.120–33, 134–82), but they do not look forward to the vents described later in their poem. 90 Bright 1987: 54–5. 91 See Bright 1987: 57–8. 92 Gärtner 2019: 162–3. 93 Rapisarda 1951: prefazione, vii–x, 42, 73, 74, 76, 115–16, 132–3, 148, 153, 179, 184, 187, 189, 192–3, 199–200, 205, 207, 210–13, 215–17, endorsed by Bright 1987: 205–6. Simons 2011: 307–58 and Wolff 2020: 142–7 also endorse the view that the Orestes does not encode Christian values. 94 Bright 1987: 205. 95 pace Bureau 2003. 96 Rossberg 1888: 58, Vollmer 1905. 97 Bouquet and Wolff 1995: 193 rightly draw attention to Virgil’s Tartarus at Aeneid 6.548–58; Horsfall 2013: 388–91 and 395–6 has a full analysis of the pre-Virgilian sources for the punishment of sinners in the Underworld. 98 Rapisarda 1951: 183, 184, 187, Bright 1987: 180. 99 Bouquet and Wolff 1995: 218. 100 Crowley 2019: 149–50. 101 See Helm 2004. 102 This is not a general claim about the poet or any of his other works. 103 Rapisarda 1951: 121, Bright 1987: 162. 104 Bouquet and Wolff 1995: 187–8. 105 Wolff 2020: 145.

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2 D R A C O N T I U S, O R E S T E S

Orestes Proem (1–24) I shall sing of sorrowful joys and cursed triumphs: of a victor, killed instead of praised, and bloody feasts, of his long-desired death and the mournful prayer of his Ilian wife (who could not herself cut Atrides’ throat); of laurel garlands glistening red with regal gore and the leader’s diadem spattered with his brains. I’ll sing too of Orestes, mindful and oblivious of a parent, a matricide, pious in impiety, a man of immoral integrity. I’ll sing of unjust gods whose savage plan was just; of an innocent defendant and the Taurian temple that purged him of the Sisters: a virgin saved him from disaster, a priestess, better sister, deceitful in her pious crime. I ask you, Melpomene, descend from your tragic regalia, let the iamb fall silent amid these resounding dactyls. Give me power to narrate the son’s laudable infamy and pardon publicly the man [the Sisters damned]. Inflamed by grief, stirred by shame and exalted in rage, his mind supported and sustained him, good intentions drove him on. Pious fury, sinful piety equipped him with a sword and healing madness spurred him to put right the honours destroyed and the victor’s arms buried when an instigator of crime cut down crime’s avenger, a champion of marriage was slain as the bedchamber watched, and a lover of the marriage bed lay dead before its feet.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003227786-2

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Part one (25–452): Agamemnon Agamemnon in Tauris (25–107) The lord of lords, king of kings, the general Agamemnon— returning after ten years, triumphant from two wars, a mighty lord of war—was bringing back the armada: in Argive ships the king conveyed the pride of conquered Pergamum: Ilian brides and daughters born of Trojan mothers. The king, reviewing in his silent heart the wealth of Asia, 30 was marking out the greatest gifts for the flashing god of thunder and the finest prizes for the great goddess Juno, and choosing fitting gifts for Minervan Athena, and for all the gods who favoured the Danaans. Ignorant of the crimes of his wife and Aegisthus he was preparing many gifts for unworthy Clytemnestra, and smiling as a father he chose many for Orestes (gifts to match a father’s love, the font of his family, yet no match for his actions and his courage yet to come); he also set aside some gifts to please his modest daughter. 40 All this while he cut a path across the blue expanse of sea, but the goddess angered at the calm; easterlies subsided and wave-wandering winds blew taut the white sailcloth: veering off course to where southerlies drove them they bring the Pelasgian fleet to Taurian shores. Undaunted, Agamemnon bids the plunder on to Mycenae: he would follow after making votive offerings to Diana. He enters the temple as a suppliant and reverently adores the chaste divinity of the goddess. As he brings an offering to the altar—a silk-embroidered purple cloth, a robe, inlaid and glittering with encrusted gems— he sees Iphigenia bearing the ritual censers. He stops dead still and sets dazed eyes upon the girl, stunned by fatherly love and the memory of his crime. He knew she had been struck down as victim for the Danaan fleet: this must be chance resemblance. But now his innocent child began to recognize her father more and more: she more hurriedly attends her ritual duties and takes the vessel, reverently rekindling its fire. Quickly the princess threw her arms around her father’s neck, 42

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giving and getting chaste kisses (ties that bind the world!); soon pious tears stream down the faces of the daughter and her father. Her father soon fell silent amid this joyful weeping; his heavy groans and sobs cut short their kisses. At long last love unlocked a path for speech and he begins, ‘Darling daughter, my heart’s love, my recrimination, are you really alive, or are you some flitting apparition? If you were not dedicated to the gods in ritual death, then I rejoice. If you did fall by the gods’ sword, then forgive me. Yes, you must be alive: your body, our touch, they prove it’s true. 70 So tell me by what fate you’re here, far from your mother, at the shrine of the goddess after all these hard years and (more amazing still) how you came to serve Diana?’ Her father had finished speaking. The young girl replied, ‘Father, while you were sailing to the shores of Hector’s lands, Ulysses forged a lying letter written in your name, as if you were bidding me to come without delay to the chamber of Achilles to be his promised bride. My mother believed it. She entrusted me to Ulysses. I was not called to his chamber, but delivered as victim to the altar, but the goddess was mild and her temple stayed holy. Diana took pity: a doe was given in my place, a proxy victim, unlamented. And so, stolen from the knife, I became the goddess’ ward.’ When he had heard these misfortunes Atrides’ joy turned to grief; he reveres the goddess with incense and a heartfelt prayer: ‘Sister of the plectrum-bearing god, Leto’s daughter, Phoebe, by whatever name you are called upon, radiant goddess, through your power you swiftly grant whatever is asked of you. Proving yourself mild and sated with sacred blood, you took away our sorrows and spared grieving parents. The priest’s knife was warm, but starved and cheated of human blood and made do with cheaper fare: you saved a living soul from the altar, from ritual death. I pray that you restore the child we thought was dead to king and father 43

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so good can come of saving her from death; to you, Delian goddess, I’ll give a thousand sheep, deer, goats and pigs in supplication, and heifers with budding horns on lunate brows. Nothing was achieved at Troy if I don’t return to Mycenae with my girl in tow and give her to her weeping mother who thinks she’s dead: let her see her child recovered by your grace and let her own grief turn to joy.’

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These prayers provoke the goddess to fierce anger: she turns her gaze, her eyes, her mind from the request. The warlord senses that Diana’s heart is ablaze, and is afraid: he neither speaks nor approaches further. He hurries back in sadness to the waves of the seashore, boards his ship’s stern and cuts a path on the sea’s expanse. The fleet returns from Troy (108–32) Meanwhile as he made a path through the cresting waves, Fame, flitting about the Mycenean land, had spread the word: the general had returned, enriched by the lot of war. Without delay, the plunder comes in festooned ships, and all eyes turn its way from the citadels of the Greek city, the city’s walls are filled with bands of women. Agamemnon’s wife had come to view the Phrygian captives, faithless as she was, fearing her husband’s arrival. As soon as they saw her, the women, old and young, left and the queen, as foolish as she was untrue, stood and cursed the public joy with breast-beating prayers: her anxious heart trembling with a restless fear, thinking she’d pay for her crimes when her husband returns; fear takes control, her eyes dart everywhere, blood drains from her cheeks, fresh from love’s fervour, and yet she is still fixated on her lover, the cause of her misery. But when she does not see the king descend from the stern, thinking that her crimes may remain unpunished, she rejoices: a radiant blush suffuses her pallid cheeks and betrays the secrets of her innermost thoughts, and a lustful joy beautifies her guilty demeanour. She imagines the king has been drowned in the waves of the ocean 44

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and refuses to think him delayed, so pleased is she at his absence, she wants to run to her lover and tell him her husband has not come home, but her brazen hope is disproved there and then.

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Cassandra’s prophecy (133–52) There was the priestess Cassandra, the first lot assigned to the king, amid Dardanian disasters and the Danaan triumph she had been treated with honour, albeit as part of the plunder. Seized by sacred frenzy, she herself cries out to Clytemnestra from afar, ‘Hail, o Queen of the Greeks, avenger of the Dardanians, solace of captured Troy; and you, conqueror of triumphing generals, good shepherd, Aegisthus, who now sleeps on a bed of soft down, who used to sleep on hides, whom a royal court now welcomes after living in a lowly hut, why do you still hesitate to free yourselves from fear? Kill, lest the joy of your love should soon perish (the time is now, the fates decree it, and your guilt drives you to it): let the axe fall and strike off the head of the victor! Though the heavens have stored up a similar fate for you both, your reckoning will be long delayed while Orestes grows up. You, his mother, will be sacrificed by your son after his father’ death, and your haughty lover will be struck down with you by the stabbing hand (believe me!) of his friend Pylades— ah!—more madness possesses the wretch! Orestes must be purged.’ She spoke, and the ropes held her fast to the bench as she fell. Clytemnestra plans the murder of Agamemnon (153–231) Her prophetic words had terrified the impious queen: a pallor comes on, draining her face, and she resolves on the crime within her pitiless heart, love’s madness urging her on: a restless fear runs riot in her terrified mind. 45

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In this sad state, feigning joy she returned to the palace, beset by her fear. Entering her chamber, she sighed deeply but stifled the groans in her heart and fixed her face with joy. What rumour, what renown reports, whatever news there is degenerate Aegisthus wants to know and listens in stunned silence. Armed with the cunning of her sex, she begins to speak with hidden guile. ‘Young love, tell me what to do. We’re done for. My husband’s coming home from war in triumph and, armed with biting jealousy, he threatens to pass morality laws with heavy strictures on our Argive ways. He took such vengeance on another’s crime: what will he do on his own behalf? We’ll die unavenged and our love will perish too. In a rage he’ll cut us down before our time, he is used to punishing the guilty cruelly with his death-dealing sword. There is no hope of safety unless we both despise the safety of our lives. The general in his glory, the tyrant in his armour must be struck: he must fall before he senses our passion for each other, success in war and Priam’s adverse lot have made him arrogant: exposure to the human race’s blood has made him think our gore is cheap. Because of you I am called unchaste, because of you I endure dishonour, I refuse to lose the profit of so much crime. I speak in anger, but I’m stunned into inaction: the same shared lot of life and death controls us both: we have a common happiness, a common danger too, one impartial lot awaits us both: I order and I beg you, a queen commands a shepherd! Fear of death torments me, woman that I am, pitiable for my sex. Yet I bid you to an urgent task, I order you to save your life, lest I die, doomed to perish by a cruel death with you. Impious wretch, don’t you see? You’ll fall with me if Agamemnon lives. Use your skill, save us from a deadly fate. It will be no struggle to slay the victor with a sword: he will be at ease, secure since he has slain his enemy; he’ll be exposed to our ambush, fearing nothing, at rest. You have no one to fear: Orestes is small, still just a child; 46

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one of my daughters is ash scattered through the temple of Diana, the other is a feeble girl, retiring, pitiable, what would she dare? Meanwhile Menelaus, the other son of Atreus, is an exile. Whatever you do, you act with impunity: when the deed is done you’ll be rewarded, not punished: you’ll go forth in greater fortune and you’ll take possession of the palace and court of Agamemnon. Let me give you a recent example: the Laconian woman, that murderess of so many kings, so many peoples, lives on in peace, blessed after so much death. I shall not fear the Greeks: I slay Thyestes’ heir.’

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His mistress had spoken, and greater hope was given to Aegisthus. ‘By what course of action’, said the shepherd, ‘can I abet a crime so great? It is a heavy task to kill a king, let alone one in his hour of triumph in the royal palace.’ Then the guilty queen responds, showing him the path, ‘The savage king will come, his clothes all drenched in stains of war and clotted blood. The general will need to change his military garb: I’ll give him a tunic with the neck sewn shut. While the tyrant struggles to free his covered head, come out, boldly lead the charge, with all your might split Atrides’ head with an axe: his head, his neck, his brains! These desperate measures are all we have, and they alone will help us. Submit to my plan: the only cure we have is to avert our death by inflicting grief: while I delay the avenger of our crime will soon be here.’ She bathes her face with tears as she says these abominable words. Deranged, his fear ablaze, Aegisthus sweeps upon his sword (terror itself emboldens him, dread makes him reckless), and brandishes the weapon in his hand with an agitated blow, in fear he strikes at an absent man, an invisible enemy. 47

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Just so, a snake at a spring of water opens wide its mouth making in its throat the deadly poison so fatal to mortals, and rears up, flickering its three-forked tongue. His mistress, better pleased by these charades, disgracefully resumes her infamous passion: her former lust returns; in a guilty impulse she hangs on his rustic neck, planting sweet kisses with her shameless lips; and he in turn showers kisses all along her limbs.

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The return and murder of Agamemnon (232–83) While they enjoy this common crime with shared intent, the royal ship arrives arraigned with varied garlands. From here they assume a bolder purpose for their crime: she takes the tunic, the shepherd takes his axe. each adheres to their role: the adulterer hides lurking in narrow recesses, his wife goes straight out bearing the tunic, counting on her husband’s death. The king disembarks from his ship, rejoicing as he touches shore, glistening red with the grime of war, bloodied, beautiful, mighty to behold, ennobled by the horror of battle; just like Jupiter, when after war against the giants he bore back to heaven a celestial garland on his starry brow. His sweet children, nature’s gift, run to their father: they embrace each other and give and receive kisses. Their father turns his gaze here and there, looking for his wife, and goes to the bedchamber across the public threshold of the gate. That impious woman greets his return with lying speech: ‘General, powerful in war, put off those menacing clothes and deign to wear these pious garments as a lover of peace. Look, here for you are clothes that have been woven by our labour their golden threads glisten with a radiant glow’. She spoke, the king took off his armour, and in her treachery she covers his body with the fatal cloak. And while he tries to find an opening in the tunic for his head she holds him and calls Aegisthus, armed and ready: 48

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he raises up the pitiless axe with shaking hand and impiously strikes the unmindful head its death blow, shattering the brow and the head that wears the crown, splitting it in two; and he redoubles his blows, three and four times he strikes the skull, pouring out its brains. As his queen praises this handiwork the innocent king collapses from his wound and shakes the earth, his body in spasms, like a huge boar, entangled in hunters’ nets while it fiercely leaps about trying to evade the net it makes savage thrusts with its hooked tusks and foaming mouth and wastes empty blows and crushing bites: just so the conqueror of Asia was destroyed by a cruel end: ah!—a shepherd’s axe massacred his body! Cruel lot of humankind! Minds ignorant of the future! Who could have believed it—even if, driven by countless emissions, the Delphic cauldron had shaken its prophetic haunts moving the cave, stirring the tripod and wearying the plectrum— that the destroyer of Asia could be struck down by a smallholder, a feeble deserter, a keeper of sheep and cattle? Look, he lacks the fire of a funeral pyre who gave Pergamum to flames! Learn, fortunate ones, never to trust the fates: the gods readily give the greatest gifts, and yet they first desert us and in the end hurt us wretched mortals, or suddenly abandon us, and for our happy lot they make us pay. If anyone refuses to believe this, let him think on Priam’s fate and let sceptics look on Agamemnon’s court!

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Electra saves Orestes (284–304) The virgin Pelopid was crushed by this sudden disaster, and yet she saved Orestes, the avenger of his father: Electra, snatching her brother from the jaws of his mother, put him on a ship and took him off to Athens 49

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(the ship that bore the king now bears the king’s children, the hope of Agamemnon, and the Trojan treasure), rightly troubled, she enrolled him in the study of wisdom His companion there was ever-faithful Pylades. A ready wit and love of language had united them, they had in common all desires and aversions: when these youths exercised in the palaestra they wrestled amicably; when the hunt was on through the lairs of wild game, they hunted as allies; if one of them bridled his fleet-footed stallion, mutual love was the cause; if they were of a mind to cast javelins, each young man would throw; when they played ‘robbers’, the boys were well matched: neither feared defeat nor burned for victory. Just so did Pollux love and cherish his brother Castor, and with equal feelings Castor loved his Pollux, by alternate deaths paying for their loss of life.

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Clytemnestra and Aegisthus rule over Mycenae (305–49) The murderous adulterer is clothed in Tyrian garments and puts around his guilty head a gleaming diadem. As though he were the rightful heir of Agamemnon’s palace— it had become him more to be Thyestes’ heir— he enters and seeks the orphaned Orestes through each [room] < . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > but when Aegisthus realized the Danaan wealth was depleted, his one remaining hope was to seize the Trojan plunder, but he learned that this too was lost, abducted with the king’s son. He can’t bear it; he seethes, because the empty name of king was all he found, because he lost the wealth by which he could become a tyrant and arm himself with iron and gold. With guile his cunning woman comforts her accomplice, strengthening his wavering commitment to their plan: she shows him all the feminine wealth at her disposal and jewellery boxes which she holds out to him, chatting and sliding precious bracelets over her shameful limbs.

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‘With these gifts’, she says, ‘we’ll buy Argive favour throughout the kingdom: we’ll draw the old and new nobility to come into our trust. For the wife of any prince, however great, even if she is honourable and chaste, will dazzle in the adornment of this wealth and make her husband favour us: relying on the sweetness of her speech and armed with my riches—look!—she’ll pour sweet poison in his spellbound ears with charm and skill; and joining expert limbs in gentle embraces the fairer sex will make illustrious allies for us. Gold is quite beautiful, but a woman is more beautiful than gold— gold makes shameful acts accepted, gold adorns virtuous deeds— but Venus mollifies Mars when he is fierce from battle. Believe me, young love: it is as a woman that I speak about our sex’. By these methods she expertly restores her lover’s courage he welcomes these womanly outrages, and joyfully takes action: his lowly mind desires to rule, to hold the sceptre as king. Through guile our king, fearing nothing of the sort, was slain by the plotting of his wife, by the daring of an upstart shepherd < . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > the citizens suppress such thoughts about their prince in silent hearts; but amid their tears they speak these words in anxious murmuring: ‘Had impious Lachesis so determined by the law of the Parcae that our king should die by so degrading a death as an axe’s blow? If only the raging Amazon Penthesilea, whom Atrides barely escaped, had struck him down in battle in his prime, and he had not perished in this inglorious death with guilt for his family, and disaster for his Danaans, dragged by his feet, far from the citadel, to lie on the plain: a corpse without honour, covered by the grave of the night sky.’

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The ruse of Dorylas (350–81) Tell me, Muse, I pray, by what hope did that maternal stepmother fail to find her children, to capture and deliver them their father’s death? Dorylas, Agamemnon’s freedman, was au pair to the boy, Orestes, who had fled. In his wily mind he fashioned a deceptive plan: to lie and say the raging sea had sunk the Atreid children in the ocean’s waves; standing on the shore he said, ‘Gods of the sea and land, caring father who created the world, nature’s heavenly love, to you I pray: nod your assent to these daring plans; help me in my hopes of deception: let me be heard and believed as I lie in his honourable defence. I wish to save the innocent children from their father’s fate, planned for them by their guilty mother and hostile stepfather.’ He spoke, and enters the sea-wandering waves, fully dressed, submerging himself in the blue sea and its waves swelling with foam right up to his head; and only then he seeks dry shores again.

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He runs to the mourning city, frantic in his sorrow, and cries out in a reproachful voice, ‘Jupiter, now our enemy, are you pleased to avenge the Trojans and ruin the Greeks like this? The ocean rages for the Phrygians, the sea is Troy’s avenger. What crime did these children commit? What did these tender youths 370 do on the plains before Troy in the time of war to forfeit their desired escape as the wretches sailed the open sea? I saw them sinking as a wave drew down the ship on which I had sailed as friend and au pair to the Atreids; I alone escaped with nothing, my two feet were my oars. Clytemnestra is just, and cruel Aegisthus is gentle: more savage are the sea’s waves that, even after war, did not spare the children of the Greeks! Now we should say Troy is blessed!’ When he had said these words in piety, he was swept off to the palace 52

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and showered with gifts of wealth for the joy he had brought to their sinful hearts.

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Clytemnestra addresses the people of Mycenae (381–412) Then the impudent queen orders the people to assemble: compelled, they come. In the centre of the palace, she began to speak in this way: ‘Outstanding Danaan leaders, and you lowly people whom Agamemnon’s triumphs in these iron years have not drowned in death; you still survive, albeit gaunt with empty stomachs and drained of the blood you have spilled. Bellona has diminished you like this in savage warfare: this was your king’s crime, who drained the city of its citizens and tried to widow so many wives, bereave its parents, deprive children not yet grown of their parents’ tenderness. And so that cruel man met his death, struck down by an axe, and now his children too lie dead in the avenging sea. Now, I swear, it stops; look forward to a tranquil retirement: there will be peace and quiet, let the trumpet call not wake you from your beds at night, nor let the bugle batter your ears. Gather up the fruits of sweet sleep in its proper time. Let harsh weapons lie idle and swords be bent into scythes. Fit your bows of horn and bend them with all you might, but only for wild animals and swift flying birds. Revive your old age with pleasure and cheerful meals, dote on your sweet grandchildren, the pledges of your sons. The only form of death remaining is the end of health with illness; now it is permitted to hope for an end by nature’s course with years elapsing, and a cause of death other than sword wounds; it is right to hope for burial according to our proper custom. Hope for funeral pyres and let each man build himself a monument to outlast the ashes. That king Agamemnon was a cruel, impious enemy to his own children and a bitter tyrant to his country: Aegisthus will be a citizen king: I declare him as my husband’. 53

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Aegisthus acts the tyrant (413–26) She had spoken, and she ordered all to depart from the court and return to their own homes. But her deplorable adulterer, ignorant and unskilled at wielding royal power, conceitedly plays up to his own self-image: with a mean look he is cruel to the royal staff, though he is a newcomer and they are palace-born; he gives strict orders to men who would have thought it a disgrace if he were serving with them on the palace staff. The sceptre of triumphing kings given to a tyrant shepherd as reward for his crimes, the purple made a blood-prize, his wife’s unspeakable acts, his bride the disgrace of the court— who, I ask, would not lament these things? Yet fear compels them to obey that infamous disgrace: they feared the herdsman vehemently, men who had no fear for Hector’s rage. The rule of Agamemnon was no more; after Pergamum’s capture, a scoundrel fit for beating replaced the comrade of valiant Achilles.

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Paradigms of infamous and honourable love (427–52) Tamyris, the queen of the Getae, killed a king but she bore no dishonour since she avenged her own. If Medea committed a crime, she was inflamed by the grief of a shameful love when she burned the palace down, widowed of her living husband by the whore Glauce. The Lemnian women took up impious arms and defiled their marriage beds with husbands’ blood but this was the fierce frenzy and unspeakable crime of Venus. What the Scythian women did, so great a crime, was done as a barbarous crowd. But you, Pelasgian queen, whom Greece begat (that fertile font of laws), famous wife of the Mycenean, bride of the avenger, you compounded the crime of adultery by killing of your husband. You should have thought of Alcestis, who by her death saved 54

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her husband from the shades: pious wife, impious to herself. What should I say of Evadne, burned on the Theban pyre, a mate to her dead husband on the crackling flame? When an impious piety and sweet affection ordered her to meet a bitter death, the fire fortified her against her wounds of grief as she took this cruel cure, and she went with him to the shades in the ashes of her husband. The urn bore two lovers whom death had brought together. Joyous union! Great paradigm of honour! After his impious death she married her sacrilegious husband: the fire was her bridesmaid, the bier her chamber, the pyre her bed. Many women have taught us what honourable love is.

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Part two (453–802): Orestes’ revenge Mycenae grieves under the tyranny (453–514) While the feeble shepherd ruled (an indictment against the Parcae!) and together they indulged in their illicit affair for a period of seven years and eight months, throughout this time all the palace staff would visit the royal tombs in the middle of the night, weeping for their king anxious, uttering moans and trembling lamentation, they mutter with dread fear, but let moderation restrain them. At that point then, the freedman, Orestes’ skilled au pair, erupted into groaning speech and words of grief: ‘Once best of kings, now a pitiable shade, whose success was ill-omened, whose victory attracted crime, whose triumph bore him death after the war: the prayers you uttered in our shrines must have been heard by angry gods, for the powers you appeased denied you a happy outcome: if only Hector had conquered the Greeks and the stolen Spartan woman had stayed in the embrace of her Paris! Did you take such pains to stop a shepherd having Helen? Look, now a shepherd has your wife! If death is just a journey, if the dead have any feeling, if the soul exists when released from the body, if the spirit lives on, enduring 55

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after death, then hear the cries and grief of your people! Split the earth, let ground gape open in a yawning chasm! Struggle forth and surge up fully armed with vengeful shades, just as once before Achilles rose up from his tomb: exact the penalty from your wife, let her lover pay the price with every limb. Will you die unavenged and a shepherd rule your realm? The hero of Thessaly enforced cruel death upon an innocent virgin: will you, o king, allow the authors of so many crimes to rule your realm in victory? You gods who rule the pit’s cruel chasm, slash its throat, smash the jaws of Tartarus, send forth the Furies’ vipers to this funereal house! Don’t waver: pitiless, they’ll come to Thyestes’ realm, they’ll find the known path and follow their own tracks (you are not Furies if you need to be called first to a crime, if you don’t come here of your own free will). I have a greater hope: that these walls are taken, so near to Thebes, once vowed to hellish shade and deprived of daylight amid the clear light of day. I don’t scruple to seek justice (although I ask for blood): and so I pray that when a just death sentence strikes these cruel criminals down with its righteous sword, that you add fire to Acheron’s torturers, that you add the whip to the Furies’ deadly venom; let cruel Enyo torture the agents of this crime: whatever torment you prepare for the guilty won’t be enough.’ He spoke and from the depths of the tomb groaned a voice: ‘Spare me from the torment of this funereal grief; don’t burden me with pious distress (my household’s love should have lightened my tomb), I whom the worst of wives— aflame with her crimes and her shameful love affair and with her reputation whored—killed with a woman’s weapons, when I had returned a victor from the foe after a decade away avenging my brother’s love, avenging adultery! My adulterous wife slew me, nor did she fear to pollute our home, to stain our household gods, made unclean by her murderous assault and sudden ambush. I shall be avenged, a penalty of blood will be upon them, 56

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but to say no more, Cassandra spoke the truth: believe Cassandra, Cassandra the truthful prophetess.’ He spoke, and all abandoned the tomb, departing home. Orestes and Pylades in Athens (515–625) That night, however, Agamemnon’s shade soon came flying to the city of Athens (since noble Orestes was there, and with him his friend Pylades: each of them exhausted, worn out by his love of the palaestra, breathing loudly in and out in the act of sleeping). The son of Atreus stood before their beds, visible to both in a dream, not like he was in triumph after the war but like he fell, his brow shattered by an axe: dreadful, powerless, trembling, his breath belaboured and groaning, his mouth spread over with ruddy gore and his feeble hands trembling, his neck was open wide and his foot pulled the chains that had dragged him from the palace. ‘Aren’t you ashamed, young men’, he said, ‘in youth’s full vigour, in your prime, with cheeks covered in curly down, equipped with great training and strong bodies, that a shepherd encroaching on the citadel as his bloody reward should dishonour my realm, joyful and shameless to be known by his many crimes, his head held high on pride-swollen neck and disgracefully applauding the report that you have now perished? Should I ask the sons of Cecrops to avenge me when my son is safe, along with his Pylades? (Patroclus did not so love Achilles nor did Pirithous, tried and true, so love his Theseus.) Arm yourself: bring your swords to this household war and cut the evil from your kin with kindred sword. It will be no crime to punish your guilty mother: you’ll justly kill a women defiled by her husband’s death. 57

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A son, aflame with pious love for a parent’s death, who strikes his mother down to avenge his father will be purging his mother of her former crimes. For he proves the man he avenges was truly his father, a worthy punisher of adultery, a pious avenger and my heir, The Danaans love us and they bitterly hate those two. Go with equal courage: the household staff will side with you, angry only that you’ve come so late. The slaves are roaring: they long to tear Aegisthus’ body with their teeth while he yet lives, and to consign to the flames the savage limbs of his abominable wife to be cremated.’ He had spoken, and their groans broke the peace of sleep. Agamemnon’s son was soon instructed, and as he prepares to tell his comrade of his dream he hears the same account from him and is dumbstruck with wonder at his father’s great power that could warn both their minds in the starry hours. ‘Tell me brother’, he said, ‘tell me now what must be done. My breast, heart, sense, soul, emotions and my mind are upheaved by duty, grief, angst, sorrow, birth, devotion, nature, shame, reverence and renown. Do I strike deadly iron into my mother’s womb (the womb that was the path of life, the gate to this great world)? She endured dangers and goading pain for ten long months to bear me conceived in her womb, the seeds of nature, the first elements of sweet life But when my lot was drawn and I attained my birth right, she pressed to my lips breasts that flowed with milk, the sweet honey pouring forth the taste of nectar. My mother became my nurse, my queen became my servant knowing no sleep, she showed a parent’s devotion. She was my father and mother both when my father was at war until age had relieved me of my eleventh year. Shall I show myself unmindful of my mother’s great blessings? Or will my murdered father remain unavenged by me? May that shepherd pay for his deeds and fall alone while my mother lives: with his blood I shall sate my father’s shade. Let this be my mother’s penalty: to live when Aegisthus is struck down 58

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and falls before her eyes; let that foolish woman grieve as she looks upon her lover, she who looked upon Atrides in joy.’ He had said these things hesitantly, but without delay his friend gnashed his teeth, drew long, angry sighs from the depths of his chest in anger and accosting Orestes upbraided him, ‘Has a torpor so cooled your spirit That you think you should do what should not even be said? It is abominable to say these things, abominable to hear them: do we go to Argive Mycenae to pardon the crimes of your mother? What woman, I ask you, is worthier (unworthy crime!) of being struck down by the punishment of the gods? Pay heed, young man, to the orders of the grieving Danaans lest while you judge that the murderess of your father should live you are not believed to be his. Won’t your father’s shade, who came to you asleep in Athens, rightly confront you by a thousand roads? He will lay siege to the threshold of your door and striking the stars with trembling voice reproach you with these words: “Is this, son, how you prepare to defend your father, is it right for you to mourn the fate of a murdered parent like this? Is it like this that you’ll bring offerings in vengeance to my shade? Your stepfather will want to die in such a death so that she can sacrifice to the cruel shade of that guilty man the life of Orestes who spared her: you’ll fall as a victim if your mother is not made a victim first.” What will you do as your father makes this grim speech? Are the accursed spared? You are pious if you reject pious feelings! Let the limbs of the guilty be strewn by your father’s grave! Rise up! By your regal character you are youth’s great hope: let virtue spur your spirit and glory goad your mind, let piety arm your hands and the cruel sword slash their savage necks amid their final groans. I’ll come with you gladly through weapons, through fire, 59

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no-one shall I fear: your father’s subjects are yours. But I will give you counsel that is wise, impartial, and safe: I shall go as your scout: I’ll tell your subjects secretly to hope for your arrival. The palace staff, if they believe me, will favour us in their hearts and will take up swords for you: this is the safest path.’ Inflamed to bitter grief by such words, the youth leaps up roaring, threatening death. He bites down, stifling his words with grinding teeth, and as if catching Aegisthus in the act of adultery, embracing his mother and entwining their limbs in disgrace, he strikes their absent figures, inflicting no death on the guilty. Just so did Achilles’ son Pyrrhus roar after the dream that warned his senses, when in the drowsy night at the impulse of cruel Aeacides that hero, a savage shade to Pergamum, demanded a virgin sacrifice.

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The return of Orestes and Pylades (626–81) Now when the plan of Pylades found favour with Orestes, they strengthen their resolve and take with them only swords. A trail leads them on their way by a secret path; they travel through the night to hide their exploits, until vengeance should suddenly be upon their shameful throats. Just so Ulysses, accompanying the steps of Diomedes, sought the Dardanian camp as a night stalker choosing a path fraught with peril (no shrill trumpet blast battered their ears with the signal for war, but treading lightly, in silence, breathing lightly they boldly went forth from the Greek ships, the brave son of Oeneus and Laertes’ ingenious hero); like this did the young men from Athens make for Mycenae.

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As they continue on their path, Orestes’ au pair Dorylas suddenly appears, filling them with terror. 640 ‘Where are you from, young men’, he said. ‘Who are you, friends? Where are you going?’ They said nothing and made ready to pass him by when Dorylas recognized Orestes 60

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and eagerly threw arms around his dear neck crying ‘Do you live my child? If you live, then we all live! We have bowed to treachery while an adulterer runs riot: he indulges all pleasures, dominates and debauches your mother, shames the temples of our triumphs, the great estates, the shrines of the gods and the couches of kings, which he has happily turned into brothels. But we go out to the tomb of your great father in constant grief; we cling to his promise (yet Cassandra’s prophecy was earlier still) that swift punishment awaits the guilty. Hurry on, friends, with Cecrops’ spirit: the gods will favour you; the palace staff pray that you punish this crime. Don’t hesitate, men, to inflame your minds, to arm your hands with swords, to hold the iron fast: let a father’s love spur you on, and you the pact of friendship, let grief rise up in you, and a noble love of fame in you. It will be no struggle to slay that loathsome woman, And what could then delay you from crushing that peasant’s limbs?’ The old man had said these things. This hope inflames the friends to quicken their step: each of the young men groan that Mycenae is not already near, but ‘We are seeing it through’ said Orestes, ‘let us travel faster!’ Pylades came forward and said ‘Go first old man; we have to hurry: let the slaves who love us hear these things in secret and suddenly hope for our appearance at dawn’s first light.’ He spoke and the old man departed, going on ahead to the city: his joy gives him the speed that his age would deny him, and now his journey is over, he arrives at the city exhausted. He speaks discretely with a few men: Orestes lives, he will come one day in vengeance for the father of his bloodline; he urges and warns them all to stay quiet and spread the word in stealth to any servant they encounter. Everyone can know, let only the accomplices in crime remain ignorant of this, so they cannot escape, fight back fully armed or save their lives. 61

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When the master comes, some of the staff will keep the gates shut, some will occupy the palace, some will hold the walls.

680

The murder of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra (682–802) Meanwhile, the stars had set and nature returned the day she had entrusted to the howling waves, pouring out her golden light: the sun shone more brightly to redress Thyestes’ loss. Atrides had seen the walls he had left as a child and remembering them now, he stretches out his hand and says ‘Hail, former household, hail Mycenean homeland, formerly accursed but soon to be venerated, if I sate my father’s ashes with my mother’s blood. His powerful shade will know he has been avenged by his son when he sees Clytemnestra struck down by a murderous blow, like the wife of the augur Amphiaraus.’ He had spoken, and looked at the walls, trembling, now a visitor, he took the route he remembered with his friend accompanying him. After he had entered, the palace staff recognize Agamemnon’s face, his gait, his eyes and hands; with joyful approval they mutter without open speech. ‘Now let the gates be closed’ said Pylades to Orestes. Locks bar the entrances, Mars’ trumpets blare. The guilty pair, so carefree, are stunned; terror grips Aegisthus. ‘Did I not promise the Danaans peace through the ages? There is no-one left to stir up war against the Argives now that Hector is dead and Troy has been destroyed under arms.’ The queen mad with rage kept saying to her servants ‘I free you: let me live and let Aegisthus grow old with me!’ While she says such words, one of the slave girls ran in, headlong and breathless, and as if it were the threat of a cruel avenger 62

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she says, ‘Orestes has come!’ but she is not at first believed. While they doubt, and think this is just a dream and empty words, Pylades appears in the palace, savage and dreadful, just like immovable Ajax, pitiless amid the enemy ranks, when he sought Hector, protected by his sevenfold shield; roaring, his face threatening, his blade glittering, he thunders at the perpetrators ‘You who rule by your savage outrages, did you hope until now to evade the dread hand of justice? Now you will pay a bitter price for your crimes and both of you will suffer death.’ He spoke, and turned to the palace staff with avenging words ‘Hurl down this criminality and drive it from the royal throne! Let him go dragged by his feet, an unruly victim for the Atreid king. Let executioners’ axes shatter his hardened limbs and may that shepherd die the same death he brought upon our king; but first let him drench our hands with his blood!’ He spoke, drew his sword and sunk it deep into his ribs. The staff chain and drag the wounded body by the foot out past the double doors where Atrides had lay slain; a thousand axes massacre his body, shattering its bones, and his limbs spasm, butchered by wounds.

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But his mother, since her death is delayed, thinks her son has spared her, so sure of her safety, she already mourns her shepherd, 730 when suddenly he is there: ferocious, crueller than any enemy, intent upon his mother’s death, supported by a horde of staff and inspiring terror; Orestes seizes her and drags her by the hair, berating her: ‘So you hoped your criminal lover would rule unpunished after my father’s death and you wanted to join the fate of his two children to their father’s tomb? But I live (you see!), accursed mother; you’ll die a bloody death slaughtered by my hand over the bones of your husband.’ His parent, now deranged with fear, bared naked breasts and begged her son ‘By these breasts, child, spare me! 740 By the gods and by your father, by the loving heart of your sister, who saved you then from my madness and (what is more) by your friend Pylades, I implore you: pardon me, pity me, I pray, pity your parent, 63

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if I am worthy of the name of parent.’ Her son replied ‘You waste vain tears: my father’s waiting for you at the shadow’s edge. Trojan Cassandra mourned the death of her master; Andromache, enslaved after Hector’s death, did not strike at Pyrrhus when she went from being a Phrygian queen to a Greek captive; but you brought blood on our king’s head because you preferred a shepherd. My friend Pylades orders me to do this, my sister urges me on: you must die by my sword, savage murderess!’ When the woman could gain no quarter from her son the warning of the Phrygian prophetess came to her mind. she said ‘If you want to avenge your father on us both, let Pylades’ hand strike me down, and the same man’s sword; let me fall, collapsing on the bones of my dead Aegisthus as his partner in infamy and the instigator of our crime. Our blood, mixed together, will bear witness to all the shades that the one fate awaits us who shared in these evil crimes.’

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‘You ask to lay dying on the bones of your adulterer’, said her son, ‘But you’ll fall better on the bones of your husband; your blood will not be mixed by this threatening sword lest you find any comfort for a lover’s crimes even in death or take some reward for your misdeeds by a shared lot of punishment that links the guilty: you’ll lie apart from him.’ He spoke, and approaching the tomb of his father, he says ‘Holy father, since now you are just faint sensation and spirit accept the offerings I bring, a victim fully justified. I sacrifice Clytemnestra, wife of king Aegisthus, your own former wife (would she were not!). Take comfort: that man lies dead where you yourself were slain. This act has taken time, but the delay is justified by my age: I have long desired this.’ His Danaan mother shouted out ‘O sun, o creator, all you elements, heavens, sea, rivers, earth, o Nature, mother of all things and you, o black abyss,

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look at the reward a son returns to his mother for his birth: see the prize for mother’s milk.’ His mother had spoken these words, but they fell on deaf ears: filial love had power only to make Orestes turn his gaze. The life-giving sun once more keeps his horses back from Mycenae and heaven is obscured by a shadowy sky (and soon Greece feared this illegitimate night, nature dreaded chaos and the elements feared shade), Enyo praises his crime, an Erinys guided his hand. She clamped down her purple cloak with clenched teeth, and falls, stretching her tunic with her hands down to her feet, afraid to lie naked in death; she turns her sad eyes this way and that with modest expression; chaste only once, wretched woman, now in the hour of her death, never like this before, fearing for her fame on the pyre. Her fair limbs blush deep with red gore, her jolting body shakes the ground as she lay and, finally, summoned to die she poured out her life with blood. Then they return together to the palace threshold, fierce to behold. Just so two terrifying lions, with sandy manes return to their lair, sated with the slaughter of heifers. The royal court receives them, as bloody as they are; the Danaans assemble and greet him with royal honours, some grieve for Atrides, yet others mourn the mother but no one openly upbraids his crime, nor was there anyone who didn’t curse Aegisthus. Part three (803–962): the madness and absolution of Orestes The murder of Pyrrhus (803–19) The funereal day had passed; the sun had sunk in the waves with Ocean hissing at the touch of his wheels; and his sister, returning

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her dewy mantle, was bringing back dreamy sleep, and night’s stars were turning only midway through their course. A messenger arrives: the virgin Hermione had been abducted, taken as plunder by Achilles’ offspring, Pyrrhus. Soon Atrides rages, and speaks thus to his friend: ‘Look, another labour calls us, a new flame of love. What am I to do? This is a crime: the woman promised to my marriage bed, recklessly taken! You govern the realm; I will go, be it through swords, flames or a thousand cohorts, (as avenger of my father, it is only right that I see to my own claim), until I should rescue her calling on the name Orestes.’ He spoke, put on his sword, and went forth to his enemy. He finds Aeacides entering the temple of the gods, he attacks the young man, kills him by surprise before the altars and returns to the Greeks elated by this second kill.

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The madness of Orestes (820–61) While he revels in his father’s throne, glorious in the diadem, 820 his mother appears before his eyes, not as one unarmed but holding funeral torches and with snakes twisted around her waist. She shakes flames at him, and casts the uncoiled snakes into the young man’s face, threatening him with death. These prodigies had terrified the hero, he flees sweeping through the halls, but his dread parent follows; he looks for a retreat in the house’s inner chambers, and yet he finds his enemy there. Soon the bolts are fastened and every door is shut: yet he finds his mother in the inner sanctum of the palace. She roars, struggling to speak: ‘So cruel’, she says, 830 ‘impious one, was my bitter wound insufficient for your “duty”? Did your accursed hands have to stain the gods’ shrines as well? Shut gates made of steel, set on iron hinges, brick up your windows, as many as you have: my savage shade will be present to you everywhere, over straits, and fields, through woods, rivers and mountains.’ She spoke and unnerves his heart with the crackling funeral fire; 66

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but when he sees he can’t escape his mother threatening ruin, his hand goes to the scabbard, but with frequent thrusts he splits only air and draws back an empty hand without inflicting wounds. Even so the wretch cries out ‘Mine was the bloodied sword that struck you dead, whore; you will feel it strike again!’ He spoke; the cruel shade recognizes the sword and flees through thin air, and yet (pitiable!) his madness remained. The Inachian avenger, Agamemnon’s heir, raged in madness, just as that Lycurgus raged when Bacchus made him drunk, just as Alcides raged when cruel Megaera terrified him, just as Ajax once raged, the bravest of the Greeks: he can’t bear it; he bellows; rambles through the palace he thinks his servants are his mother, his friends are his mother; his mother is whomever he is with; he is hounded constantly by the snake and the fire; he flees these sometimes, sometimes he attacks; his friend Pylades is the only face that does not frighten him. Amid the delicacies served at royal banquets he starves and is kept from the tables by the torches. Just so are the ravenous vainly tortured in the Underworld: they look on plates piled high with food for the mighty, they groan, but this is not food, only the image of food that a swooping Fury forbids them from touching. What shall he do? Invoking what gods, what divine powers will the suppliant call to his aid? Or will he burden the third realm?

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Molossus seeks revenge, Orestes in Tauris (862–86) While all are weeping and the whole palace mourns, another cause for sorrow comes, with grim pain and great fear. Molossus, the offspring of Pyrrhus and Andromache, had come seeking vengeance for his father. Pylades takes Orestes away, removing him and sends him to a foreign land. He had touched the shore where Diana’s Temple stood. The custom there was savage: to make poor strangers victims of the blade. Soon he stands by the altar, adorned in wool. He sees the priestess ritually arm herself with iron: 67

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his madness is expelled by fear, approaching death restores his mind and the crisis itself partly saves him, for groaning in misery he calls and calls on Agamemnon. Resourceful Iphigenia had heard Atrides’ name: ‘Victim, say who you were or why you call on Agamemnon.’ In his distress he replies ‘I am pitiable Orestes: my mother was Clytemnestra and the royal son of Atreus was my father.’ She did not allow him to say any more but cast down the knife, and struck her brow: ‘Executioners, untie this captive’s trembling limbs, his heart is bloodless: this is not a welcome victim.’ She spoke, removed the wool adornments and took him from the altar, and when they were alone she reveals she is his sister; but she sees his mind is faltering, that he rages and and rambles unintelligibly. That night in prayer she purges him and leaves with her brother, taking Diana’s image with her.

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The trial of Orestes (887–962) When they returned to his homeland, rumour quickly informs Molossus: he accuses Orestes of a double crime; he leads him to Athens to arraign him before the laws. The fathers take their seat, Minerva provides the temple; 890 Achilles’ offspring rises, urged on by paternal love and thus begins to speak: ‘Chief men, fountainhead of law, I accuse murderous Orestes, a man of sinful mind, forgetful of his blood ties, devoid of human rights, a profaner of the gods, drenched in his mother’s blood, which his own right hand has spilled. But perhaps it will be said that his mother was an adulteress. Was Pyrrhus then another Aegisthus? As that man brought holy offerings in the temple, he killed him: the destroyer of Asia, the son of valiant Achilles. Perhaps he will say that his mother was an impious criminal 900 who made her adultery worse by the murder of her husband. This great criminal should have been condemned by a just judge, but not by his sword. What offence will he repent now whose first crime was against his mother? Judge harshly, chief sons of Cecrops; such vengeance suits Athens. One mere sack will not be enough for his destruction: he needs to be wounded in every limb, 68

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his extremities amputated, and he should yet be kept alive for some time, torn asunder as a living corpse.’ He said these things and fell silent. Orestes replies: ‘Danaan lords, wise men, guiding lights of intellect, supreme men of Athens, honourable censors of the law, I rejoice, assured, that my case is being plead before you, you who have wives, who have cherished loved ones and, I think, remember the prime years of their life: the love of a promised bride, the vows taken for marriage. I thank the gods above that after such damage to my mind I am now of sound mind as I stand accused in this court. In good health I honour this tribunal sanctified by laws and I can tell a crime from a lawful act. Consider, revered judges: it is not on my case that your sentence must be passed, but on the ruling of the gods, who are proved to have absolved me, since they applied a healing therapy to my mind. None of heaven’s gods, I think, would wish to save an unjust man: Pyrrhus was an abductor: I avenged his abduction after the war. I am more just than this ‘avenger’ who defends my mother, for if a guilty mother must be avenged, what of an innocent father? What blasphemer, I ask, what madman would dare accuse the kindly gods, whose power is complete? Well, let him accuse them, let him call the gods to a contest, let him object to their deed, let him fight a gigantomachy! Perhaps someone will object: why then was there madness? It was the distress of grief, chief men, not the punishment of a crime: disgust afflicts the soul and fatigues the mind. One feeble man accuses me, whom the host of heaven approves. I implore you, leaders of the laws, acquit by your sentence a man absolved by the authority of the gods and favouring destiny’. He spoke and imposed a modest silence on his tongue. Deliberation follows; the deeds of Orestes are debated. The custom of deciding was by casting diverse pebbles: white favours life, but red urges death. 69

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Their judgment was contested, opinions divide and disagree, and the coloured stones are equal on each side. Minerva’s right hand held a white pebble, and this is added to the count in favour of life: ‘Orestes must be freed’ is proclaimed, and this ruling of the chief men is published: ‘If man were permitted to dispute the gods’ decrees, Orestes’ actions could be tried by legal means; but since we are bound by this rule, divine clemency is not up for discussion, let law’s appraisal hold its peace. Who will be so bold as to dispute heavenly law? That arbiter of goddesses, Paris, was not unpunished, nor was Teiresias unpunished when he judged the Thunderer. The abductor Pyrrhus died, cut down by a righteous sword; and since he fell in a temple, there was a perfect opportunity for the gods to punish if they had wished. Let Orestes be secure, let him go back to his homeland acquitted of all charges’. It had been decided. The people welcome him with favouring cries, joyful Pylades hugs his friend when he emerges and his sisters hold him close in their embrace on left and right, all four make for Mycenae, returning home in joy; the palace is refilled with the riches now returned.

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Epilogue (963–74) Gods, to whom the kindly Thunderer has conceded authority over air, sea and land, and power over the heavens, piety that deserves compassion asks you; gentle integrity, good simplicity and the affection of relatives beseech you; the human race, the holy communion of kin, our genealogies and family ties all pray to you: let the Lemnian women’s crimes be enough, and the feast of the Danaids who turned marriage torches into pyres, and the deeds of Thyestes and countless other evils it would shame me to narrate. Look! The triple tragedy of Mycenae now desecrates the fame of the Greek-born race: now spare your world and keep the poor Pelasgians from experience of such crime.

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3 NOTES

Proem (1–24) 1–12 Dracontius announces his subject matter as an allusive sequence of paradoxes and oxymora (this style of highly rhetorical opening is familiar, e.g., from Lucan’s Civil War 1.1–7). Both paradox and oxymoron were favoured by Dracontius and Late Latin poetry more generally. As Bright (1987: 140) notes, paradox is intrinsic to the poem’s subject matter, defensible matricide; it was also a natural rhetorical medium for Christian poets (such as Dracontius) who used it very frequently to explore the mysteries of their faith. These lines allude to the murder of Agamemnon (1–6) and to Orestes: his character, his resolve to kill his mother (7–8), his hounding by the Furies (‘the Sisters’) for this crime and his salvation and purification at Tauris (9–12). His sister Iphigenia was priestess of Artemis at Tauris; as such she was compelled to preside over the human sacrifice of all strangers arriving there: see lines 862–86. 1 ‘I shall sing’ canam: the first verb of the Aeneid 1.1 Arma uirumque cano ‘I sing of arms and the man’. Dracontius places the verb in the same position as Virgil (third word, prior to the main caesura of the line) and the first line shares the same rhythm as Virgil’s first line (which would be represented as follows: —|—u u |—//—|—|—u u |— —). Dracontius immediately signals that his poem is an epic in the tradition of Virgil’s. 2 ‘a victor’: Agamemnon. ‘bloody feasts’: the celebrations attending Agamemnon’s return, during which he is murdered. 4 ‘his Ilian wife’: Cassandra was not Agamemnon’s wife. Clytemnestra sarcastically calls her Agamemnon’s ‘slave-wife’ at Seneca Agamemnon 1002. ‘Ilian’ is ‘Trojan’. ‘Atrides’: Agamemnon (‘the son of Atreus’). 5–6 These macabre details evoke the horror of the assassination.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003227786-3

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6 ‘spattered with his brains’ foedatum tabe cerebri: adapts Statius, Thebaid 8.760 perfusum tabe cerebri ‘soaked in brain matter’. Statius describes the cannibalism of the dying Tydeus, who eats the brains of his killer, Melanippus. 7 ‘mindful and oblivious of a parent’: a compressed and paradoxical way of framing Orestes’ matricide as an act of duty owed to his father, Agamemnon, which at the same time required him to disregard Clytemnestra’s status as his mother. 10 ‘an innocent defendant’: Orestes. ‘the Taurian temple’: the Temple of Diana at Tauris in the Chersonese (modern Crimea). 11 ‘the Sisters’: the Furies, or Erinyes, divinities who exact vengeance for blood-guilt, especially for crimes committed within the family: see OCD s.v. ‘Erinyes’. ‘a virgin’: Iphigeneia, who as priestess of Diana at Tauris saves Orestes from being sacrificed at lines 874–86. Dracontius’ term uirginitas ‘virginity’ substitutes an abstract term for a concrete one: a feature of the high style of poetry. Her virginity is appropriate both to her service of Diana and her former status as sacrificial victim at Aulis. 13–24 Dracontius invokes Melpomene, the Muse of tragedy, to forgo her regular genre and inspire his epic version. In epic poetry it was common to invoke a Muse or the Muses immediately after announcing one’s theme (compare, e.g., Virgil, Aeneid 1.8–11). In this section, Dracontius foregrounds his own partiality in retelling his version of the myth. He intends to exculpate Orestes (16), in the manner of a criminal defence lawyer. Lines 22–24 allude to the killing of Agamemnon in his own bedchamber. The ‘instigator of crime’ who cuts Agamemnon down is Aegisthus, while Agamemnon himself is described as ‘crime’s avenger’, ‘champion of marriage’ and ‘lover of the marriage bed’: terms that frame the Trojan War as retribution for the abduction of Helen and underscore Agamemnon’s innocence as opposed to Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. 13 ‘regalia’: the Latin term cothurnus refers to a particular kind of boot worn by tragic actors; in Latin poetry it is often made a symbol of the genre of tragedy. 14 ‘iamb . . . dactyls’: the metres used in tragedy (iambic trimeter) and epic (dactylic hexameter) respectively. 16 ‘[the Sisters damned]’: this phrase (damnauere sorores) was supplied by Haase 1875, since A omits line 16 altogether and B give an incomplete line. 23 ‘as the bedchamber watched’: metonymy for Clytemnestra. 72

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24 ‘a lover of the marriage bed lay dead before its feet’: I have varied Dracontius’ repetition of the word torus ‘marriage bed’ in this line (a literal translation of the line is ‘that famous lover of the marriage bed (i.e., the institution of marriage) lies dead before his marriage bed’). Compare Seneca Agamemnon 298 (Clytemnestra to Aegisthus) subripere doctus fraude geniales toros ‘you are skilled at stealing marriage beds (i.e., married women)’.

Agamemnon in Tauris (25–107) Lines 25–40 give a backdrop narrative to set the scene. We see Agamemnon at the height of his power after the fall of Troy, devoted to the gods and to his family: both are aspects of his pietas. This first section (25–40) corresponds well to what Servius called the ‘narratio’, a section of the introduction following the statement of the subject matter and the invocation of the Muse: it was meant to set out the essential background to the plot or give a summary of the important facts and equip the audience with all the information they needed for the plot proper to begin as clearly as possible (Aristotle Rhetoric 1415a, Quintilian, The Orator’s Education 10.1.48, Servius On Virgil’s Aeneid 1.8; on Dracontius see Aricò 1977–8: 422–3, Bright 1987: 141–3). Agamemnon does not visit Tauris (41–107) in any other retelling of the myth. Here he is presented as a devout suppliant of the gods (48–52, 85–101) and a loving father of Iphigenia (53, 60–7). His relief at her survival is emphasized and their reunion is described tenderly. At the same time, Agamemnon’s complicity in the sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis is clearly acknowledged (‘memory of his crime’, 53; ‘my recrimination’, 66), and the implacable anger of Diana points to his part in the sacrifice of Iphigenia. 25 ‘The lord of lords, king of kings, the general Agamemnon’ ductorum ductor, regum rex dux Agamemnon: compare Seneca, Agamemnon 39 rex ille regum, ductor Agamemnon ducum ‘That king of kings, lord of lords, Agamemnon’. 26 ‘returning after ten years’: this chronology is traditional (compare Aeschylus, Agamemnon 40). ‘two wars’: an allusion to the war in Mysia (see Apollodorus Epitome 3.16–18) and the Trojan War. 28 ‘Pergamum’: Troy. 29 ‘Ilian’: Trojan. 30 ‘Asia’: Troy was in Asia Minor, modern Turkey. 30 ‘reviewing in his silent heart’: Verhelst 2022: 135 observes that by telling us Agamemnon’s silent thoughts, Dracontius is demonstrating his narrator’s omniscience, a hallmark of epic poetry. 73

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31–3 ‘god of thunder . . . Juno . . . Minerva’: the Capitoline triad, worshipped in the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitol at Rome, the centre of Roman state religion. 34 ‘the Danaans’: this is one of a number of terms for the Greeks which goes back to Homer (along with, e.g., Argives, Achaeans, Pelasgians). 38 ‘a father’s love’ pietatis amor: literally ‘piety’s love’. Pietas means ‘father’ by metonymy, as at 357 and 775 (see notes on these lines). 39 ‘actions and emotions’: Orestes’, not Agamemnon’s; this is a reference to his later matricide. 40 ‘his modest daughter’: Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, sister of Orestes. Her role in Dracontius’ plot is much reduced by comparison to that of Aeschylus’ Libation-Bearers: see lines 284–304. 42 ‘the goddess angered’: Dracontius’ vague term deus ‘god’ can describe a goddess or a god, but it is unclear who he means here. It could be Diana, angered by the sacrifice of Iphigenia, for which she is still unappeased at 102–4; compare Seneca Agamemnon 172–3 ‘the fleet was not released with divine favour: Aulis cast the unnatural ships out of its harbour’. On this interpretation, just as Diana had stilled the winds at Aulis, she now raises a storm to drive Agamemnon to Tauris. An alternative possibility is that the goddess is Athena, who was responsible for the larger storm that assails the victorious Greek fleet on the way home from Troy (compare Euripides, Trojan Women 48–94): whether this is meant to be that same storm, or a lesser sequel, is unclear. 42–5 A destructive sea-storm is a set-piece of epic narrative, but Dracontius forgoes a fully-elaborated version. Immediately after the Aeneid’s introduction, Juno arranges a storm that likewise drives an armada from Troy offcourse to a strange land (Virgil, Aeneid 1.34–156). Dracontius has a more developed description of a sea-storm at Romulea 8.385–435. There, as here, it is a device to move the hero from one scene to another (Bright 1987: 117–18). 43 ‘wave-wandering winds blew taut the white sailcloth’ candida fluctiuagi tendebant carbasa uenti: adapts a scene of seafaring from Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica 4.422 placidi tendebant carbasa uenti ‘placid winds blew taut the sailcloth’. 45 ‘Pelasgian fleet’: the Greek fleet. Homer mentions the Pelasgians as Trojan allies from Thrace; they came to be associated with the original inhabitants of the Aegean and the term then became used by metonymy for Greeks more generally. 74

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46–7 ‘undaunted’: compare Aeneas’ fragile state of mind during and after the storm that drives his fleet to Africa (Virgil, Aeneid 1.94–101, 208–9). ‘bids the plunder on to Mycenae’: thus allowing Cassandra to meet Clytemnestra alone at lines 133–52 and Agamemnon to meet Iphigenia alone in the present scene. 54 ‘and the memory of his crime’ et mens sibi conscia praui: inverts Virgil, Aeneid 1.602 et mens sibi conscia recti ‘and a mind conscious of doing the right thing’. This is one of the rewards that Aeneas prays that Dido will receive for offering the Trojans hospitality. 55 ‘Danaan’: see note on line 34. 56 ‘this must be chance resemblance’: literally ‘he thought someone similar to her could have been borne’, that is, by chance. 64 ‘and sobs cut short their kisses’ singultus oscula rumpunt: adapts Lucan, Civil War 4.180 singultibus oscula rumpunt ‘with sobs they cut short their kisses’. Lucan describes the fraternization of civil war enemies who have reconciled. 67 ‘are you really alive, or are you some flitting apparition?’: Compare Virgil, Aeneid 3.310–12 (Andromache to Aeneas) ‘uerane te facies, uerus mihi nuntius adfers, | nate dea? uiuisne? aut, si lux alma recessit, |Hector ubi est?’ ‘do you bring yourself to me as a real image, a real messenger, son of the goddess? Do you live? Or if the life-giving light of day has departed, where is Hector?’. 75–83 Does Iphigenia know that Agamemnon helped orchestrate her sacrifice? Lines 76–8 may hint at her knowledge (‘in your name . . . as if you were bidding me’). In other versions of the plot Iphigenia plainly knows her father’s involvement: compare Euripides Iphigenia in Tauris 15–25. 79 Ulysses (Odysseus) brought the letter to Mycenae, and so it is to him that Clytemnestra entrusted Iphigenia. 83 ‘the goddess’ ward’: literally ‘I serve as the ward of incense (seruio turis alumna)’, in which ‘incense’ is a metonymy for the goddess in whose rite it is used. 85 ‘incense and a heartfelt prayer’: neither A nor B makes sense here, and so I translate Vollmer’s suggestion prece, pectore, ture, literally ‘with prayer, with heart, with incense’. 88 ‘Sister of the plectrum-bearing god, Leto’s daughter, Phoebe’: for Diana, identified with Artemis and called ‘Phoebe’, the sister of Phoebus 75

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Apollo, see OCD s.v. ‘Artemis’. Dracontius’ adjective ‘plectrum-bearing’ (plectrifer) is not found in any other work of Latin literature except his own Romulea 10.285 (Medea), where the first half line is identical; this is his own high-register compound adjective of a kind favoured in epic poetry: elsewhere he has letifer and mortifer (twice), both mean ‘death-bringing’, astrifer ‘star-bearing’, as well as planctiger ‘grief-bearing’, belliger (twice) ‘war-bringing’ and sominger ‘sleep-bringing’. 88–9 ‘Phoebe . . . radiant goddess’: ‘Phoebe’ means ‘radiant’ in Greek. 89–93 The translation follows the sequence of lines as preserved in the manuscripts. Some editors (Schenkl, Zwierlein) place line 93 before 89 (to read ‘(93) You saved a living soul from the altar, from ritual death | (89) and, proving yourself mild and sated with sacred blood, | (90) you took away our sorrows and spared grieving parents’). In this passage Agamemnon speaks about these past events in a vivid present tense, which has been changed to the past tense. 92 ‘of human blood and made do with cheaper fare’: I have varied the repetition of the word sanguis ‘blood’ in this line (a literal translation is ‘of human blood and made do with cheap blood’). The word ‘fare’ picks up the eating metaphor of 91 ieiunus ‘starved’. 95 ‘Delian goddess’: the Island of Delos was the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. 98–9 ‘Nothing was achieved at Troy if I don’t return to Mycenae with my daughter in tow’: the first part of this sentence, nil actum Troiae est, si non, adapts Lucan, Civil War 5.287 nil actum est bellis, si nondum ‘Nothing was achieved in our battles if [Caesar does] not yet [believe we’ll do anything for him]’. Julius Caesar’s troops complain that their services in the civil war are not appreciated by their general. 102–3 Diana’s refusal to hear Agamemnon’s prayer is modelled on Virgil, Aeneid 1.482 ‘with averted face the goddess kept her eyes fast upon the ground’, where the goddess is Athena; the Trojan women had brought her an offering of a robe (like Agamemnon) and had begged as suppliants that she protect Troy. 104–7 The abrupt ending of the scene is characteristic of Dracontius. 105 ‘he neither speaks nor approaches further’ retroque pedem cum uoce coercet: a partial quote of Virgil, Aeneid 2.378 obstipuit retroque pedem cum uoce repressit ‘he was struck dumb and checked both speech and step’. The Greek hero Androgeus realizes he has mistaken his Trojan enemies for Greek allies. 107 This line varies line 41 in ring-composition, closing the panel. 76

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The fleet returns from Troy (108–32) This scene moves the action to Mycenae, where it will remain until Agamemnon’s shade travels to Athens at lines 515–625. It also introduces us to Clytemnestra, whose opening scene of rejection by the women and psychological complexity is as programmatic for her character as Agamemnon’s opening scene is for his. Note that Dracontius separates the return of the fleet from that of Agamemnon himself. In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, the fire signal at the play’s beginning and the herald at 489–680 prepare the way for Agamemnon’s return with the fleet. In Seneca’s Agamemnon a herald announces his return at 395–6, and Cassandra arrives with Agamemnon and the Trojan women at line 659. 108 Another echo of line 41, here contrasting Agamemnon’s voyage to Tauris with his voyage home to Mycenae. Dracontius often uses ‘meanwhile’ (interea) and ‘while’ (dum) to begin new scenes in the Orestes. ‘through the cresting waves’ spumantibus undis adapts a scene of seafaring from Virgil, Aeneid 3.268 fugimus spumantibus undis ‘we flee over the cresting waves’. 109 A personified Fama (Rumour, Renown) was a common device in epic: see Hardie 2012. As with the storm at lines 42–5, Dracontius foregoes an elaborate description of Fama such as occurs at Virgil, Aeneid 4.173–97. 110 ‘the general had returned’ aduenisse ducem: Dracontius’ verb is in the perfect tense: we can either take it as used with some looseness for ‘the general was returning’ (because Agamemnon is still on Tauris at this stage), or we can take it literally, as translated here, and then Rumour’s report that Agamemnon has returned with the fleet is false. Virgil’s Fama ‘holds fast to false and wrong reports as much as she announces the truth’ and ‘sings alike of fact and falsehood’ (Aeneid 4.188, 190). If Clytemnestra has heard that Agamemnon has already returned, that would sharpen both her apprehension (such as we see at line 115) and her relief at his absence (as at 124–8). 111–15 In these lines Dracontius may be flirting with another epic setpiece, the teichoscopia or a scene of ‘watching from walls’, which usually involves identifying heroes on the plain below the city: compare Homer, Iliad 3.127–67. 111 ‘plunder comes in festooned ships’: here and at line 233 Dracontius imagines Mycenae (a hilltop town) as having a harbour. 113 This image of the city’s women gathered collectively on the walls sets the scene for Clytemnestra’s isolation. Scenes of collective women in the city are common in both epic and tragedy: compare Homer, Iliad 6.237–41 or Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes 78–286. 77

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114–32 Clytemnestra goes to the walls and is rejected by the Mycenaean women who cede their place to her immediately. Dracontius develops a vivid psychological portrait of her variable emotional state. 119–23 I keep the order of the lines as they appear in the manuscripts, but some editors prefer to re-arrange lines 119 and 121 so that the passage reads ‘(121) fear takes control, her eyes dart everywhere, (120) thinking she’d pay for her crimes when her husband returns; (119) (her anxious heart trembling with a restless fear, (122) blood drains from her cheeks, fresh from love’s fervour, (123) and yet she is still fixated on her lover, the cause of her misery’. 124 ‘when she does not see the king descend from the stern’: Agamemnon is in Tauris still; compare the detail of line 46–7. 124–8 Clytemnestra will similarly assume with misguided haste that she is safe from punishment after Aegisthus is killed: see lines 729–30. 127 ‘a radiant blush suffuses her pallid cheeks’: literally ‘a blush mixed with her pale complexion, with her pallor displaced’ (permixtus candore rubor pallore fugato). Dracontius may be adapting the description of Medea at Seneca, Medea 858–9 flagrant genae rubentes, | pallor fugat ruborem ‘her cheeks blaze forth blushing, then the red is displaced by pallor’, but some of these details also occur in Cicero and Ovid.

Cassandra’s prophecy (133–52) In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon this prophecy comes at 1072–1330, in dialogue with the chorus, immediately before the killing of Agamemnon, who has already entered the house. In Seneca’s Agamemnon the prophecy comes at 867–909 and is spoken as the killing takes place in the house. In Dracontius the prophecy is separated from the murder by over 100 lines. Its immediate impact is thus not dramatic, but psychological: it destroys Clytemnestra’s fragile mood of optimism described at lines 124–32. Note how Dracontius’ Cassandra ‘sees’ the plot of the Orestes itself: Agamemnon’s murder (143–5, narrated at 256–70), the vengeance of Orestes and Pylades on Clytemnestra and Aegisthus (146–50, narrated at 706–94) and Orestes’ madness and purging (151, narrated at 820–962). For a similar prophecy that sketches the structure of the poem it is in, see Lucan Civil War 1.678–94, where a Roman matron foresees the course of the civil war that Lucan will narrate (and further events beyond the plot of his epic). Dracontius omits to mention here or in the murder scene that Cassandra is killed at the same time as Agamemnon. 133 ‘the first lot assigned to the king’: the Trojan women were divided by lot among the Greeks after Troy was captured. 134 ‘Dardanian’: Trojan. 78

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135 An oblique allusion to Agamemnon’s love for Cassandra (see line 4 note), which reads as though Agamemnon’s treatment of Cassandra was honourable. The muting of this aspect of the mythic plot simplifies the morality of Agamemnon’s murder by his adulterous wife and her lover. 138 ‘solace of captured Troy’: Seneca’s Cassandra also sees the murder as recompense for the destruction of Troy at Agamemnon 867–71 and 1008. 139–41 Cassandra’s repeated emphasis on Aegisthus’ lowly status moves in step with the narrator’s indignant emphasis upon this same characteristic: compare, for example, line 270. 143 ‘lest the joy of your love should soon perish’ ne pereat uestri cito fructus amoris: adapts the agonized parting of Pompey and his wife Cornelia from Lucan, Civil War 5.794 perit tam longi fructus amoris ‘she loses the joy of such a long love affair’. 150 ‘his friend Pylades’: the friendship is fully described at lines 291–304; Pylades’ murder of Aegisthus is described at lines 709–28. 151 ‘more madness possesses the wretch!’: An allusion to Orestes’ murder of Pyrrhus at lines 803–19. 152 Cassandra collapses after her prophecy, which was a common touch in such scenes (compare, e.g., Lucan, Civil War 5.224 ‘down she falls’, describing the Delphic priestess Phemonoe). In this line Dracontius seems to imagine Cassandra as tied by ropes (presumably as a prisoner) to the rowing benches of the ship. He does not follow Aeschylus in having Cassandra killed along with Agamemnon. She does not appear again in the Orestes, but characters will refer back to her prophecy (511–13, 653, 754).

Clytemnestra plans the murder of Agamemnon (153–231) This scene is dominated by the two speeches of Clytemnestra in which she convinces Aegisthus of the need to murder Agamemnon and then outlines how the murder will proceed. Clytemnestra is here solely motivated by her own adultery and the fear of its consequences. Her first argument is that (i) Agamemnon will seek revenge (163–72); (ii) Agamemnon must be killed immediately upon his arrival (173–7); (iii) the adultery has dishonoured her but they will both be punished and killing Agamemnon is Aegisthus’ only path to safety (178–89); (iv) it will be easy to surprise Agamemnon; there is no-one to avenge him, and in killing Agamemnon Aegisthus will become king (190–203). Her second speech outlines the ruse of the tunic and restates that killing Agamemnon is their only path to safety. 79

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159 ‘stifled the groans in her heart’ corde premens gemitus: adapts Virgil, Aeneid 10.465 corde permit gemitum ‘he stifled a groan in his heart’. Virgil describes Hercules, who cannot avert the fate of the young hero Pallas who will die in battle. 160–1 Note that Aegisthus does not appear in public with Clytemnestra before the murder. 165–6 ‘morality laws with heavy strictures | on our Argive ways’: an anachronism from Dracontius’ Roman legal context. The emperor Augustus had made adultery a criminal offence in 18 BCE and the emperor Constantine added further legislation in 326 CE. In late antiquity, adultery could be punished by exile, confiscation of property or even death (see ODLA s.v. ‘marriage, adultery, divorce, and remarriage, Roman, Germanic barbarian and post-Roman’). 168 ‘We’ll die unavenged’ moriemur inulti: compare Virgil, Aeneid 2.670 numquam omnes hodie moriemur inulti ‘never this day will we die unavenged!’. Aeneas is preparing to defend Troy even to his death. Perhaps closer in context is the final speech of Virgil’s Dido before she commits suicide at Aeneid 4.659–60, which begins ‘moriemur inultae, | sed moriamur’ ‘we’ll die unavenged | but let us die!’. 171–2 ‘There is no hope of safety | unless we both despise the safety of our lives’: compare Virgil, Aeneid 2.354 una salus uictis nullam sperare salutem ‘the one safety for the conquered is to hope for no safety’. Here Aeneas encourages a band of Trojans to fight to the death as Troy burns. 175–6 ‘success in war [has] made him arrogant’ prospera bellorum quem sic fecere superbum: compare Lucan’s Pompey at Civil War 7.683–4 nec te uidere superbum | prospera bellorum nec fractum aduersa uidebunt ‘success in war never saw you arrogant, nor will defeats see you broken’. 194–5 ‘one of my daughters’: Iphigenia. ‘the other’: Electra. 200 ‘The Laconian woman’: Helen (Clytemnestra’s sister, but this is not acknowledged in the Orestes). Laconia was the larger geographical region around Sparta. 203 ‘I shall not fear the Greeks’ nec metuam Danaos: a reversal of Laocoon’s famous apophthegm at Virgil, Aeneid 2.49 ‘timeo Danaos et dona ferentes’ ‘I fear the Greeks, even those bearing gifts’. ‘I slay Thyestes’ heir’: Thyestes was the son of Pelops and the brother of Atreus. He committed adultery with Aerope, his brother’s wife, and Atreus in vengeance killed Thyestes’ children and served them to their father, who unknowingly ate their flesh. Agamemnon (the son of Atreus) drove Thyestes from the throne of Mycenae (see Apollodorus, Epitome 2.10–15). It is in this last 80

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sense that Clytemnestra refers to Agamemnon as ‘Thyestes’ heir’, and it also associates Agamemnon more generally with Thyestes as an impious and bloodthirsty tyrant. Some editors emend sterno ‘I slay’ to seruo ‘I am saving’: in this reading Clytemnestra refers to Aegisthus, who was Thyestes only’ surviving son, as his heir. However, Thyestes is consistently characterized negatively: it is less likely that Clytemnestra is calling Aegisthus ‘Thyestes’ heir’ either as a compliment or as a part of Aegisthus’ legitimate claim upon the throne. 209–10 ‘drenched in stains of war and clotted blood’: in Seneca’s Agamemnon the king is asked to change out of Priam’s robes, which he is wearing in triumph (879–83). Dracontius instead opts for military garb still sporting the stains of battle: Clytemnestra predicts the appearance of Agamemnon at 240–41. 211 ‘I’ll give him a tunic with the neck sewn shut’: a famous motif that will be elaborated at 250–7. At Aeschylus Agamemnon 1382 Clytemnestra says she cast ‘an endless net .  .  . an opulent garment’ over Agamemnon before killing him. Orestes ruefully remembers the garment at LibationBearers 980–4 and 997–1004, as does Apollo at Eumenides 633–5. It featured in other fifth century tragedies, such as Euripides Orestes 25–6; in iconography, such as the Dokimasia Painter’s krater (460s BCE; Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 63.1246); and in Hellenistic versions of the myth, such as Lycophron Alexandra, 1099–102. Seneca has a full description at Agamemnon 881–9, where Agamemnon is persuaded to change into the tunic, as happens in Dracontius’ version. 214 ‘his head, his neck, his brains!’ caput ceruicem colla cerebrum: literally ‘head, neck, neck, brain’. I  cannot replicate the alliterative sequence and synonyms that convey Clytemnestra’s agitation here, so I have repeated ‘his’ three times for emphasis. 219 ‘She bathes her face with tears’ lacrimis simul ora rigabat: adapts an expression from Virgil, Aeneid 9.251 uultum lacrimis atque ora rigabat ‘he bathed his cheeks and face with tears’. 220–3 Aegisthus’ agitated practice blows at an absent enemy will be repeated by Orestes at 619–21. 223 ‘invisible enemy’: literally ‘the enemy whom she does not see’ quem non uidet hostem: Dracontius quotes the phrase from Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.548 where a lioness tracks an animal that has stolen one of her cubs. 224–6 Fully developed similes are a feature of epic narration; this simile recalls Virgil, Aeneid 2.471–5, where the glittering armour of the Greek hero 81

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Pyrrhus (the degenerate son of Achilles who will feature in the Orestes) is likened to a snake that has sloughed off its old skin. Here the primary point of comparison is between the threatening flicker of the tongue and Aegisthus’ thrusting of his weapon. 229–31 A contrastive echo of the chaste affection of Agamemnon and Iphigenia at 60–1.

The return and murder of Agamemnon (232–83) As Agamemnon returns, Dracontius emphasizes the splendour of his ship, his glory in war, the affection of his children and his concern to see Clytemnestra, all of which will set his treacherous murder in sharp relief. The murder itself happens with little build-up and Dracontius focusses our attention on the trauma suffered by the king’s body, developing the violence of Seneca Agamemnon 897–905. 233 See note at 111. 234 ‘they assume a bolder purpose for their crime’ magis audaces animos de crimine sumunt: compare Juvenal, Satire 6.284–5 nihil est audacius illis | deprensis: iram atque animos a crimine sumunt ‘There’s nothing bolder than those women who are caught in the act: they assume anger and purpose from their crime’. 240–1 Compare Clytemnestra’s prediction at 209–10; the narrator is concerned to cast the same bloodied appearance positively in these lines. 240 ‘glistening red with the grime of war’ bellorum maculis rutilabat: compare a weapon inspected by Achilles at Statius, Achilleid 1.853–4 saeuis et forte rubebat | bellorum maculis ‘and by chance it was glistening red with the savage stains of war’. 242–3 ‘just like Jupiter’: this simile refers to the Gigantomachy, the mythical event in which earth-born giants attacked and were defeated by the Olympian gods led by Zeus/Jupiter. In epic the Gigantomachy is often used to allegorize unauthorized assaults on legitimate authority: here Agamemnon is strongly endorsed by his comparison to the victorious Jupiter, and this simile contrasts with his imminent assassination by the usurper Aegisthus. The detail of Jupiter’s celestial garland is not found in other extant versions of the myth (earlier editors suggest that Dracontius may have found it in a lost work of Claudian); the garland both stresses Jupiter’s victory and points to his status as a personification of the sky itself.

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245–6 Compare the affection of Agamemnon and Iphigenia at 60–2. Agamemnon’s children were Orestes, Iphigenia, Electra and Chrysothemis. Dracontius here refers only to Orestes and Electra since he does not mention Chrysothemis (compare the gifts prepared at lines 35–40) and we know that Iphigenia is on Tauris. 250 ‘put off those menacing clothes’ cultus depone minaces: compare Seneca Trojan Women 883 (Helen to Polyxena, tricking her into the sacrifice: see notes line 476) ‘depone cultus squalidos, festos cape’ ‘put off those squalid clothes, wear these festive garments’. 255 ‘in her treachery she covers his body with the fatal cloak’ callida funereo perfundit corpus amictu: this line adapts Statius, Achilleid 2.35 callida femineo genetrix uiolauit amictu ‘did your crafty mother defile you with women’s apparel?’, where it describes Thetis’ attempt to keep Achilles from the Trojan War by hiding him, dressed as a young woman, on the Island of Scyros. 256–70 The murder scene is modelled on Cassandra’s vision of Agamemnon’s murder at Seneca, Agamemnon 887–909. The key differences are (i) Dracontius reduces the amount of space devoted to narrating Agamemnon’s struggle inside the tunic; (ii) Seneca’s Aegisthus first ineffectually stabs Agamemnon as he struggles in the tunic; (iii) in Seneca it is Clytemnestra who arms herself with an axe and delivers the death blow; (iv) Seneca has only one death blow: Dracontius multiplies the number of hits with the axe; (v) Seneca has both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus further mutilate the dead body of Agamemnon. 259 ‘the unmindful head’: I’ve tried to keep the English as compressed as is the Latin phrase incautum caput, literally ‘the unaware head’, meaning ‘the head of the man caught unawares’. 262 ‘three and four times he strikes the skull, pouring out its brains’ terque quaterque ferit, diffundit testa cerebrum: it is likely from context that Dracontius is adapting Ovid, Metamorphoses 12.288–9 on the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs: terque quaterque graui iuncturas uerticis ictu | rupit, et in liquido sederunt ossa cerebro ‘three and four times he broke through the plates of his skull with a heavy blow and the bones sunk down into the cerebral matter’. 265–8 Seneca has a simile likening Agamemnon’s attempt to extricate himself from the tunic to a hunted boar at Agamemnon 892–4 ‘Just as in deep woods a bristling boar caught fast in a net still attempts to escape, tightening his bonds by his movements and raging in vain’. Dracontius delays the

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simile until after the murder is complete; at this point in the narrative, it describes the violent spasms of Agamemnon’s body. 269–70 For an example of a more developed ‘death notice’ of a major character compare Virgil Aeneid 2.554–8 ‘This was the end of Priam’s destiny, this death carried him off by his lot, as he watched Troy burning and the fall of Pergamum: Priam once the ruler of Asia and lord over so many peoples and lands. A huge trunk lies on the shore, a head torn from its shoulders and a corpse without a name’. 269 ‘the conqueror of Asia’: a reference to the Trojan War. 271–83 The narrator reflects on the unpredictability of fate and the impermanence of the gods’ favour. These were common topics in rhetoric and moralizing literature: compare, for example, Seneca, Trojan Women 1–7, where Hecuba reflects on her own fate and the fall of Troy: Whoever trusts in kingship and acts as a powerful despot in a grand palace, and does not fear the inconstant gods and gives a credulous heart to his own happiness: let him look at me, and at you, Troy. Fortune never gave greater proof of how fragile the place is where the proud stand. The summit of mighty Asia, the outstanding work of the gods, has been cast down and has fallen. 271 ‘Cruel lot of humankind! Minds ignorant of the future!’ aspera sors hominum uel mens ignara futuri: compare Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe 2.14 o miseras hominum mentes, o pectora caeca! ‘o wretched minds of humankind, o hearts that are blind!’; Lucretius laments the misguided behaviour of human beings who are without the guiding help of philosophy. 272–4 These lines allude to the oracle of Apollo at Delphi. The innermost sanctuary of the site was built over a vaporous chasm. The Pythia, Apollo’s priestess, sat nearby on a cauldron set on a tripod and was thought to be possessed by the god, through these vapours, to make prophetic utterances. In late antiquity, an emissary of the emperor Julian (361–3) consulted the shrine on his behalf: this was perhaps its last oracle; Theodosius I banned oracular activity in 391. By the fifth century the city of Delphi had a bishop and a basilica near the Temple of Apollo; Delphic oracles were still in circulation at this time (ODLA s.v. ‘Delphi’, Gregory 1983, Athanassiadi 1989–90). 274 ‘wearying the plectrum’: the lyre was associated with Apollo (‘plectrum’ is ‘lyre’ by metonymy), as at line 86; Dracontius may believe that the Pythia’s utterances were accompanied by the lyre, but there is no evidence to substantiate this. 84

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275 ‘the destroyer of Asia’ euersorem Asiae: a grand phrase borrowed from Statius, Achilleid 1.530, where it used of Achilles (Statius had borrowed it from the even grander ‘Achilles, destroyer of Priam’s realms’ at Virgil, Aeneid 12.545); it contrasts strongly with ‘smallholder’ (cultor agelli) at the end of the line. 276 ‘a feeble deserter’: Aegisthus didn’t desert the forces at Troy, he never went in the first place; compare Aeschylus Agamemnon 1625–6 (the chorus, to Aegisthus) ‘you, the stay-at-home, did this to those who had just returned from the battle’. 277 ‘he lacks the fire of a funeral pyre who gave Pergamum to flames!’ caret igne rogi, dederat qui Pergama flammis: compare Seneca Trojan Women 55–6 caret sepulcro Priamus et flamma indiget | ardente Troia ‘Priam lacks a tomb and funeral fire | while Troy burns’. 278 ‘Learn, fortunate ones, never to trust the fates’ discite felices non umquam credere fatis: compare Reposianus The Nuptials of Mars with Venus, 1 discite securos non umquam credere amores ‘learn never to trust that love affairs are secure’. Reposianus is thought to be a near contemporary of Dracontius. 279–81 The tragic principle that Dracontius alludes to is a peripeteia, a sudden, unexpected reversal of fortune. At Seneca, Agamemnon 928, Strophius is prompted to lament the transience of all happiness when he learns of Agamemnon’s murder. 279 ‘the gods readily give the greatest gifts, and yet they first desert us’ sunt faciles dare summa dei, tamen ante relinquunt: Dracontius adapts the indignant narrator of Lucan’s Civil War 1.510–11 o faciles dare summa deos eademque tueri | difficiles! ‘o gods so ready to give the greatest gifts and so unready to preserve them!’ He expresses this when an undefended Rome is first ‘captured’ by Julius Caesar. 282 ‘Priam’s fate’: Priam’s death was commonly invoked as illustrating a reversal of his former great fortune, see note on 269–70, 277.

Electra saves Orestes (284–304) In Aeschylus’ play, Orestes is being raised in Phocis by Pylades’ father, Strophius, and so is already out of harm’s way (Agamemnon 877–85). In Seneca, Electra urges Orestes to escape after the murder of their father, and she convinces Strophius to take her brother with him to Phocis (Agamemnon 910–43). Dracontius may be influenced by such versions as Euripides, Electra 14–18, where Orestes is saved by an old servant as Aegisthus is about to 85

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kill him and sent away to Phocis, and by Homer, Odyssey 3.306–7, where Nestor says that Orestes returned from Athens to slay Aegisthus. Electra is largely absent for the rest of the poem (in Aeschylus’ Libation-Bearers she disappears from the play after 584 and does not return); she is mentioned at 751 as urging Orestes to matricide and she appears briefly with Iphigenia after Orestes’ trial at line 960. 284 ‘The virgin Pelopid’: ‘Pelopid’ (‘descendant of Pelops’) is a patronymic alluding to Electra’s great-grandfather. 287–91 This arrangement of the verses, which prints line 288 after line 290, gives a better and more logical sequence of information: lines 289–90 now follow on immediately from the mention of the ship at 287, and the enrolment of Orestes in the study of wisdom at 288 moves directly to the description of Pylades’ friendship with Orestes in Athens. Electra’s flight with Orestes to Athens, his enrolment in the study of philosophy and his time with Pylades in Athens are all innovations in the mythic plot. Dracontius anachronistically imagines Athens in the era of the Trojan War (late bronze/early iron age) as a centre of learning and philosophy. In late antiquity, Athens and Alexandria were the two preeminent centres of learning; the study of philosophy was revived at Athens in the late fourth century and lasted until 529. 287 ‘put him on a ship and took him off to Athens’: compare 856–6 where Pylades puts Orestes on a ship bound for a foreign land in order to save him from Molossus. 290 ‘and the Trojan treasure’: Aegisthus will look in vain for this treasure at 311–15 and it will be restored to the palace at the end of the poem, line 962. 291 ‘ever-faithful Pylades’: Pylades was the son of Strophius, the king of Phocis; he was cousin to Orestes via his mother Anaxibia, Agamemnon’s sister. Traditionally, Pylades grows up with Orestes: the friendship of Pylades and Orestes was proverbial in antiquity. 292 ‘A ready wit and love of language’: Orestes and Pylades are imagined as receiving instruction in rhetoric in Athens, as would be typical in Dracontius’ world. In the final phase of a student’s education, they were taught rhetorical argument and delivery, skills that were deemed practical and essential in key careers like administration and law. See ‘The Poet and his Works’ in the introduction and ODLA ‘education and schools, Latin’, ‘rhetoric and rhetoricians, Latin’. 293 A common definition of friendship in antiquity: compare, for example, Sallust Catiline’s War 20.4 ‘wanting and not wanting the same thing—that ultimately is firm friendship’. 86

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294–5 Greek youths traditionally underwent physical training in the palaestra as a complement to the other branches of their education (this physical practice was not incorporated in the same way in Roman education). The palaestra itself was a wrestling ground, often surrounded by a colonnade and one part of a larger gymnasium complex: see OCD s.v. ‘palaestra’, ‘gymnasium’. 294 ‘when these youths exercised in the palaestra’ exercebat opus iuuenes si forte palaestrae: compare Virgil Aeneid 3.281–2 exercent patrias oleo labente palaestras | nudati socii ‘the comrades stripped and sleek with oil engage in their native wrestling bouts’; in Virgil’s Aeneid the Trojans are wrestling as part of games they offer to Jupiter at Actium. 295–6 Dracontius is influenced by the fact that skill in hunting for sport was a desirable attribute of a Roman aristocrat. 300 ‘robbers’: the Latin word ‘calculus’ refers to a piece used in the board game ‘latrocinii’, ‘robbers’ (OLD 4). The object of the game was to move markers of different value in an attempt to capture one’s opponents’ pieces. Ovid refers to the game at Art of Love 2.206–7. 302 ‘Pollux . . . and . . . his brother Castor’: the sons of Leda (Pollux by Zeus and Castor by Tyndareus), and brothers of Helen and Clytemnestra. When Castor had been killed, Pollux requested to share his immortality (as son of Zeus) with his brother, and they were permitted to spend alternate days among the gods and on earth (Apollodorus, Library 3.11): OCD s.v. ‘Dioscuri’. 303 This repetition serves to underscore the reciprocity of their affection. In this line I have translated uotis ‘vows, prayers, desire’ as ‘feelings’, but it may allude to the prayer of Castor (see note on line 302) and convey that Pollux was equally committed to the proposal of an alternating life and death. 304 ‘by alternate deaths paying for their loss of life’ mortibus alternis et uitae damna repensant: compare Claudian The Abduction of Proserpina 1.58, where Pluto, the god of the Underworld, is told ‘nascendique uices alterna morte rependis’ ‘you weigh out the alternation of birth and death’.

Clytemnestra and Aegisthus rule over Mycenae (305–49) There is no equivalent scene like this in either Aeschylus or Seneca after Agamemnon’s murder. However, this passage has a more distant relationship with the end of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (1577–1673), where Aegisthus comes into conflict with the chorus of elderly citizens and the play ends 87

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with Clytemnestra assuring her lover that she and he are in control and will set affairs in order. Within that scene, Aegisthus declares ‘with the help of this man’s [Agamemnon’s] wealth I shall rule over the citizens’ (1638–9), and this chimes with both the search of Dracontius’ Aegisthus for the Danaan wealth and Clytemnestra’ speech on corrupting the Mycenaean women with gold. The other element of Aeschylus’ play that may be refracted here is the subversive murmuring of the citizens; in Aeschylus they accost Aegisthus with open defiance that escalates to the brink of violence (1649–53). 305 ‘Tyrian garments’: clothes that were dyed purple. Tyre in Phoenicia produced the most expensive and best regarded purple dye in the ancient Mediterranean. Purple dye extracted in a labour-intensive process from the murex shellfish, it was phenomenally expensive and often associated with luxury and power. In late antiquity silk garments dyed with purple that had been produced in this way were the exclusive preserve of the emperor: see ODLA s.v. ‘purple’, ‘sumptuary laws’. 307 ‘Thyestes’ heir’: see note on line 203. 308 ‘through each [room]’: per singula literally ‘everywhere’, as at Virgil Aeneid 6.888. There is at least one line missing after 309 since we hear nothing about the Danaan wealth at mentioned 310. 310 ‘depleted’: reading defessas ‘exhausted’ not defossas ‘buried’, since this fits better with the meaning of lines 313–15. 317 ‘his wavering commitment to their plan’: it is typical of Aegisthus’ unheroic character that he vacillates even at this stage. 318 ‘shows him all the feminine wealth at her disposal’ femineas ostentat opes, quas sexus habebat: Dracontius seems to imply here all the wealth that she had acquired as the wife of Agamemnon. The model is Virgil’s Dido, who at Aeneid 4.75 Sidoniasque ostentat opes ‘shows him [Aeneas] all her Sidonian wealth’. 331 ‘Gold is quite beautiful, but a woman is more beautiful than gold’ pulchrius est aurum, sed femina pulchrior auro: a perversion of Horace, Epistles 1.1.52 uilius argentum est auro, uirtutibus aurum ‘silver is cheaper than gold, but gold is cheaper than virtue’. In Clytemnestra’s version virtue is conspicuously absent. This kind of general statement is (in Latin) called a sententia (pl. sententiae). These could take the form of a pithy truism or a pointed moralizing statement that often drove home one’s point, appealed to common knowledge or expressed paradoxes in concise and memorable ways. They were very popular in the oratory and literature of the Roman

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empire and were one consequence of the highly rhetorical education that predominated. For a good discussion and survey of sententiae see Bonner 1966. 340 ‘the citizens suppress such thoughts about their prince in silent hearts’ et tacito sub corde premunt de principe ciues: compare Virgil Aeneid 4.332 obnixus curam sub corde premebat ‘with a struggle he suppressed the anxiety in his heart’. The reference is to Aeneas, struggling to respond to Dido’s accusations that he plans to desert her. There is a tradition in epic of a silent multitude suppressing hostile thoughts about their ruler (these thoughts are reported by the narrator): compare Lucan Civil War 1.247–61 and Statius Thebaid 1.168–96. 342 ‘impious Lachesis’: one of the three sister Parcae or fates (along with Clotho and Atropos) who controlled destiny; see OCD s.v. ‘fate’. 344–5 Penthesilea: she led a contingent of Amazons to assist in the defence of Troy against the Greeks after the death of Hector. She was eminent in battle, and this period of her martial success is referred to here (compare, e.g., Propertius 3.11.13–14, Dares of Phrygia On the History of the Fall of Troy 36). There is no account of a battle between Penthesilea and Agamemnon (and some earlier editors suggested changing the reading Atrides to Achilles), but there was a long tradition of wishing that a hero had been killed by Penthesilea or Amazons more generally rather than by an unworthy or unmanly opponent: especially important is Aeschylus’ Eumenides 625–8 (Apollo speaking about Agamemnon) ‘the death of a noble man, honoured with a royal sceptre granted him by Zeus, and that too at the hands of a woman and then not by the far-shooting martial bow of, say, an Amazon’ (trans. Sommerstein); compare also Ovid Metamorphoses 12.610–11 (Achilles) and Seneca Hercules on Oeta 1184–85 (Hercules). Moreover, at Seneca Agamemnon 217–18 the nurse criticizes Clytemnestra for plotting to kill Agamemnon when a long list of worthy opponents including Penthesilea had not been able to do so. Penthesilea was killed by Achilles, who fell in love with her as she lay dying: a motif that was very popular in Greek and Roman art in all periods: a famous example is the black-figure amphora by Exekias, now in the British Museum (1836,0224.127). See OCD s.v. ‘Penthesilea’. 348–9 Dracontius includes details that derive from the death of Homer’s Hector, and perhaps also from the death notice of Virgil’s Priam: Virgil Aeneid 2.557–8 iacet ingens litore truncus, | auulsumque umeris caput et sine nomine corpus ‘there lies a huge trunk on the shore, the head torn from its shoulders, a body without a name’.

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The ruse of Dorylas (350–81) Dorylas and his ruse are found only in Dracontius. In Aeschylus’ LibationBearers (674–90) Orestes, disguised as a stranger, tells Clytemnestra that Orestes is dead without elaborating how. He does this in order to secure the trust of his mother and gain admission to the palace. In Sophocles’ Electra (660–763), again as part of Orestes’ plan of vengeance, an old slave of his tells Clytemnestra that Orestes has died in a chariot accident at the Pythian Games. Later in the same play (1098–1118, before the two siblings recognize each other) Orestes himself tells Electra that Orestes has died. In Dracontius, Dorylas formulates his plan independently of Orestes and lies in order to dissuade a search for the children of Agamemnon (compare line 351 ‘fail to find’); he is presumably imagining a search overseas. As in Aeschylus and Sophocles, the goal is to allay the concerns of Clytemnestra, but here the ruse does not directly assist Orestes’ plan of vengeance. 350–2 ‘Tell me, Muse’ Dic mihi, Musa: a second invocation of the Muse (compare 13–24 and see note on these lines). Compare Horace Art of Poetry 141 dic mihi, Musa ‘Tell me, Muse’: Horace is translating the beginning of Homer’s Odyssey 1.1–2 ‘Tell me, Muse, of the man of many devices, driven far astray after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy’ (trans. Murray rev Wyatt). 350 ‘maternal stepmother’: Clytemnestra was their biological mother, but Dracontius is appealing to an abiding cultural prejudice against step-mothers and mother substitutes, who could often be cast as murderous in Roman thought and literature: see Dixon 1988: 155–9, Watson 1994, especially 140–6 on the murderous step-mother. 352 ‘Dorylas’: no character of this name features in any earlier version of the myth. A number of incidental characters in earlier epic bear the name Dorylas (two characters in Ovid’s Metamorphoses; warriors in Statius’ Thebaid and Silius Italicus’ Punica). ‘freedman’ libertus: this term evokes the Roman institution whereby emancipated slaves continued to observe obligations and duties to the person that freed them, typically the paterfamilias of the family: see OCD s.v. ‘freedmen, freedwomen’, ODLA s.v. ‘familia’, ‘family life’. 353 ‘au pair’: nutritor (literally ‘nurturer’) refers to someone of a socially inferior status to the parents who was involved in the rearing of a young child: this could involve childcare, helping the nurse prepare food or being a parental substitute more generally: see Bonner 1977: 41, Dixon 1988: 32, 149–59. 90

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357 ‘caring father who created the world’: literally ‘piety (pietas) and origin of the heavens’. Pietas seems here to be a metonymy for ‘father’: the same use occurs at line 38 and 775. 360 ‘let me be heard and believed as I lie in his honourable defence’: Dorylas’ ‘pious impiety’ should be viewed as part of the poem’s theme of ethical conflicts and moral paradoxes (as expressed at, e.g., lines 7–8). In epic a character will often make an elaborate prayer before undertaking some significant course of action: one example is Virgil, Aeneid 9.625–9, where Aeneas’ son Ascanius makes an elaborate prayer to Jupiter (‘give assent to my bold undertaking!’) before killing his first enemy in battle. 377 ‘cruel Aegisthus’: Dorylas is speaking in the city, so this reproach of Aegisthus is not as jarring as it would be if he were speaking to the royal couple in the palace.

Clytemnestra addresses the people of Mycenae (381–412) Clytemnestra’s speech corresponds most closely with Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1654–61, where she intervenes in a rapidly escalating conflict between the chorus and Aegisthus and asks them to refrain from violence because there has been sufficient grief already. In Aeschylus she repeatedly refers to Agamemnon’s sacrifice of Iphigeneia (1412–18, 1521–29, 1551–9) and the avenging spirit of Atreus (1497–1504) as motivating the murder. In Dracontius, these concerns are suppressed, and Clytemnestra instead presents the murder as a consequence of the death Agamemnon has caused Mycenae more generally. Her speech divides into two main sections, followed by a brief conclusion: (i) Agamemnon’s commitment to the war has caused many unnecessary casualties in Mycenae; his murder is suggested but not stated plainly as vengeance for these deaths (384–93); (ii) the Mycenaeans should now look forward to the blessings of peace (394–409); (iii) Clytemnestra announces Aegisthus as her husband (410–12). 388 ‘Bellona’: a Roma goddess of war, who in literature is often portrayed as a Fury; see OCD s.v. ‘Bellona’. 389 ‘drained the city of its citizens’ exhausit ciuibus urbem: this is how Lucretius described the effect of the plague upon Athens: On the Nature of the Universe 6.1140 exhausit ciuibus urbem ‘it drained the city of its citizens’. 394 ‘Now, I swear, it stops’: this is a central problem interrogated by the mythic plot: how does a cycle of violence and revenge come to an end? In 91

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Aeschylus the problem Clytemnestra faces is first expressed at Agamemnon 1560–74, where the chorus reminds her of the principle that ‘the doer suffers’, and she in turn expresses the wish that she not now be punished in turn and offers to pay blood-money to the daimon of the house. 395–6 ‘let the trumpet call not wake you from your beds at night, nor let the bugle batter your ears’: a common poetic image: compare, for example, Tibullus 1.1.3–4 (comparing his peaceful life as a lover to that of a soldier) ‘whom continual exertion terrifies when the enemy is nearby, whose sleep the martial trumpet routs and puts to flight’; Dracontius’ last phrase comes from Lucan, Civil War 7.24–5 (on Pompey, the night before the battle of Pharsalus) ne rumpite somnos, | castrorum uigiles, nullas tuba uerberet aures ‘Do not break his sleep, watchmen of the camp, nor let the bugle batter his ears’. 398–400 The conversion of (usually iron) farm implements into weapons of war and vice versa was another common poetic image to mark a transition from peace to war or from war to peace: compare, for example, Virgil Georgics 1.508 ‘curved sickles have been forged into straight blades’ and Isaiah 2.4 ‘they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruninghooks’. 392 ‘And so that cruel man met his death’: Clytemnestra represents Agamemnon’s murder as a consequence of his destructive commitment to war. 403–8 Dracontius adapts details from Lucan Civil War 5.281–2 ‘unique paratum | scire rogum. Liceat morbis finire senectam’ ‘to know that the pyre is prepared for one body only; let it be permitted to end old age in sickness’. Here Caesar’s soldiers describe the blessings of being allowed to retire from campaigning. 411 ‘Aegisthus will be a citizen king’: that is to say he will obey the laws like a regular citizen, not like a tyrant, who sets himself above the laws. The early Roman emperors generally tended to emphasize their ciuilitas, their ‘quality of acting like a citizen’; in the later Roman empire it was more typical for the emperor to stress his supremacy over his peers. For a good survey see Kelly 1998: 139–50.

Aegisthus acts the tyrant (413–26) These lines mark a change in the characterization of Aegisthus, who was previously fearful while Agamemnon was alive and then dejected and discouraged after his murder (220–1, 313–15, 335); now he acts as an upstart 92

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tyrant, lording his new power over the palace staff. The narrator’s indignant comments about Aegisthus’ rule 419–24 re-echo the defiant murmuring of the citizens at lines 340–9. 415 ‘conceitedly plays up to his own self-image’ ipse sibi genium fastu facit: literally ‘in arrogance he makes a genius for himself’. The Latin term genius, which I have translated as ‘self-image’ is the ‘male spirit of a gens (family) existing in his lifetime in the head of the family, and subsequently in the divine or spiritual part of each individual’ (OLD 1a); it can also describe ‘the personification of one’s natural appetites’ (OLD 1b) and can be used metaphorically about one’s vigour, or their sense of authority or majesty. 424 ‘men who had no fear for Hector’s rage’: Dracontius imagines soldiers returned from Troy in Agamemnon’s army. 426 ‘the comrade of valiant Achilles’: Agamemnon.

Paradigms of infamous and honourable love (427–52) Dracontius sets Clytemnestra against a host of other mythological figures: at lines 427–39 she outdoes in infamy examples of women who killed their husbands and at lines 440–52 Dracontius lists examples of spousal piety that Clytemnestra could have emulated but did not. Bouquet put these lines after line 540 and made them part of Agamemnon’s speech to Orestes and Pylades, but they appear here in the manuscript and make good sense as an epilogue to the first major section of the poem. In Aeschylus, LibationBearers 602–52, the chorus seek paradigms for the crimes of Clytemnestra: Althaea (who killed her son Meleager), Scylla (who killed her father Nisus) and the women of Lemnos (see note on line 432). Dracontius invokes Tamaris and Evadne as examples of the daring crimes of women at De Laudibus Dei 3.501–11. 427 ‘Tamyris’: Herodotus, Histories 1.205–14 first tells the story of Tomyris (a variant spelling of her name), the queen of the Massegatae who killed the Persian king Cyrus and mutilated his body in vengeance for the death of her son. She became a famous paradigm of revenge (compare Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings 9.10 ext. 1). 429 ‘Medea’: she famously killed the children she had with Jason when the latter abandoned her for the daughter of Creon, the king of Corinth; his daughter’s name is sometimes given as Creusa, sometimes as Glauce. In some versions of the myth Medea sends Glauce a robe steeped in a poison that consumes her and her father in fire when she put it on (see Apollodorus, Library 1.28); in other versions she secretly burns down the palace with 93

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Jason, Creon and Glauce inside (see, e.g., Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, 4.54.5). 432 ‘The Lemnian women’: these women neglected the rites of Aphrodite/Venus and so in punishment the goddess afflicted them with an offensive smell. When the men of Lemnos then spurned their wives and showed affection for Thracian captives, the women massacred all the men, with the exception of the queen, Hypsipyle, who saved her father and thus became a paragon of filial duty: see Apollodorus, Library 1.17; OCD s.v. ‘Hypsipyle (1)’. The massacre could be cast as a divine madness or as an act of jealousy: Dracontius favours the former explanation. The Lemnian massacre will be invoked again at lines 969–70. 435 ‘the Scythian women’: it is likely that Dracontius means the Amazons. In some traditions (e.g., Justin, Epitome of Pompeius Trogus 2.4) they were originally Scythian women who settled in a community near the river Thermodon in Asia Minor. When the majority of their husbands were killed in battle, the Amazons killed the rest of their menfolk and governed themselves. 436–41 Dracontius completes the section of negative examples and begins the positive mythic paradigms by means of apostrophizing Clytemnestra directly. This is a narrative strategy that communicates the heightened emotions of the narrator and was made popular in the first century CE by authors such as Lucan and Statius. 440 ‘Alcestis’: when Apollo struck a deal with the Fates that Admetus would not have to die if someone offered themselves in his stead, his wife Alcestis offered herself to be sacrificed. She was later brought back from the dead by Hercules (or in some traditions, by Persephone). The myth was popular and was the subject of a tragedy by Euripides: see OCD s.v. ‘Alcestis’. 441 ‘pious wife, impious to herself’: echoing the description of Orestes at line 8 as ‘pious in impiety’. 442 ‘What should I say of’: this rhetorical strategy is called a praeteritio or praetermissio, literally a ‘passing by’. The author introduces subject matter by the pretence of not mentioning it: it was a useful forensic strategy for introducing material which would otherwise be inadmissible, and it could also be used as a narrative strategy to vary and enliven a catalogue. ‘Evadne’: she threw herself on the pyre of her husband, Capaneus, one of the seven heroes who besieged Thebes in order to restore Polynices to its throne. Evadne was often invoked as a paradigm of devotion in Greek and Latin literature, and Dracontius devotes ten lines to celebrating her example. 94

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Mycenae grieves under the tyranny (453–514) The opening scene and the setting for much of Aeschylus’ Libation-Bearers is the tomb of Agamemnon, situated near the royal palace. The chorus in that play is comprised of a band of elderly palace serving-women, who enter the play by processing to Agamemnon’s tomb with Electra; they correspond to Dracontius’ palace staff in this scene. Orestes’ au pair, unnamed here, but presumably Dorylas (see 352–81), dominates this scene with an impassioned speech to his deceased king. A lengthy invocation of a dead hero’s ghost also occurs at Aeschylus, Persians 623–80 where the chorus calls upon the ghost of Darius. The equivalent speech in Aeschylus’ Libation-Bearers is made by Electra at lines 165–51 (the first line is transposed, hence the strange line numbers). Electra first prays to the infernal gods and chthonic powers for help (165–28); she then addresses her dead father to ask him to make Orestes return home, and she laments the present condition of his house and the state (129–41). Electra ends with a prayer to Agamemnon to send someone to avenge his murder (142–51). In contrast, Dorylas here begins by addressing Agamemnon and deploring his murder (462–70); he then asks Agamemnon to rise up and avenge his own death (471–82); next, he addresses the infernal powers to send Furies as avengers (483–93); he ends by asking that the punishment of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus in the Underworld be enhanced to reflect the gravity of their crimes (494–99). Regarding the response of Agamemnon’s ghost (500–14), it was not uncommon in tragedy for the dead soul to reply to an invocation from the living. For example, at Aeschylus, Persians 681, the ghost of Darius responds to the invocation of the chorus and converses with them at length. Ghosts as speaking characters of tragedies were very common in both Attic and Roman drama, as well as in epic poetry. 453 ‘(an indictment against the Parcae!)’: Dracontius’ interjection, Parcarum crimina, seems to voice the complaint that the Parcae allowed Aegisthus’ rule to take place. On the Parcae see note on line 342. 455 ‘seven years and eight months’: compare Homer, Odyssey 3.305–8 ‘Seven years he (Aegisthus) reigned over Mycenae, rich in gold, but in the eighth came as his bane the noble Orestes back from Athens, and slew his father’s murderer, the guileful Aegisthus, because he had slain his glorious father’ (trans. Murray rev. Dimock). 460 ‘skilled au pair’: on his domestic function as nutritor see the note on line 353. 469 ‘Did you take such pains to stop a shepherd having Helen?’: the reference is to Paris, who was exposed as a child and brought up as a shepherd 95

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on Mt Ida before returning to Troy: see OCD s.v. ‘Paris’ and the note to lines 952–3. 470–3 Dorylas here alludes to two prominent, pre-Christian positions on the survival of the soul after death. The Epicureans believed that the soul was cut off from the body at the point of death and that therefore there was no post-mortem sensation (e.g., Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe, 3.839–42). Plato and the Pythagoreans believed that the soul was immortal but was imprisoned by the body, which it escaped at the point of death (e.g., Plato Gorgias 493a, Phaedo 64c, 67d). 471 ‘if the dead have any feeling’ si sensus post fata manent: comes from Lucan Civil War 8.749 si quid sensus post fata relictum est ‘if any feeling after death remains’. 471–2 ‘if the soul exists when released from the body’ post membra solutae | si remanent animae: compare Statius, Thebaid 12.264–5 si . . . errantque animae post membra solutae ‘if the soul roams when released from the body’. 476 ‘Just as once before Achilles rose up from his tomb’: after the fall of Troy, Achilles’ ghost demanded the sacrifice of Polyxena, the daughter of Priam and Hecuba: this myth was told in Sophocles’ Polyxena (now lost), Euripides’ Hecuba, Seneca’s Troades and Ovid’s Metamorphoses 13.439–532. 479–81 A second allusion to the sacrifice of Polyxena (the ‘innocent virgin girl’) to the ghost of Achilles (the ‘hero of Thessaly’): see note on line 476. 484 ‘Slash its throat, smash the jaws of Tartarus’: the use of ‘jaws’ (fauces) to describe the narrow entrance to the Underworld (and other topographical passes) was common: Dracontius vividly embraces the metaphor here. 487 Dracontius borrowed the idea of the Furies travelling along ‘known paths’ to places on earth associated with great sin from Statius, Thebaid 1.100–1 arripit . . . notum iter ad Thebas (Tisiphone, one of the Furies) ‘hurries along her familiar path to Thebes’. 488–9 ‘you are not Furies . . . if you don’t come of your own free will’: Dracontius had expressed the same idea at Romulea 10.457–8 (Medea). 492 ‘so near to Thebes’: another geographical error: see note on line 111. 492–3 ‘once vowed to hellish shade and deprived of daylight amid the clear light of day’: the reference is to the darkening of the sun in response 96

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to an unnatural crime, such as happened when Thyestes consumes the flesh of his own children (Seneca, Thyestes 784–7). 490 I follow Zwierlein in transposing this line to follow 493: it follows on awkwardly after 489 but reads sensibly and smoothly introducing lines 494–9. 494–99 It is important to stress that punishment of the guilty in the Underworld has a long and rich pre-Christian tradition; these lines would not evoke the Christian conception of Hell for Dracontius’ readers: see OCD s.v. ‘death, attitudes to’, ‘Tartarus’. 498 ‘cruel Enyo’: the name of a Greek goddess of war, here imagined as being one of the Furies. Enyo was also the name of one of the Graeae, sisters of the Gorgons, which may have facilitated the association between Enyo and the (Gorgon-like) Furies for Dracontius or his source. 501 ‘Spare me from the torment of this funereal grief’: the torment is the reminder of his assassination at 462–70. 507 ‘avenging my brother’s love’ fraternique ultor amoris: quotes Lucan’s description of Agamemnon at Civil War 3.286. 509 ‘nor did she fear to pollute our home, to stain our household gods’ nec timuit foedare domum, maculare penates: compare Catullus 64.404 impia non uerita est diuos scelerare penates ‘the impious woman did not fear to stain her family gods’. Catullus describes an incestuous mother sleeping with her unwitting son amid a general indictment on the morals of his age. The Penates were divine spirits associated with the inner parts of the house, Aeneas originally brought them to Italy from the ruins of Troy (see OCD s.v. ‘Penates, di’). 511 ‘I shall be avenged’: literally ‘I shall not be unavenged’, but in Latin a double negative is often used for a positively emphatic statement (this is called ‘litotes’). 512–13 ‘Cassandra spoke the truth: believe Cassandra, Cassandra the truthful prophetess’: compare her prophecy at 137–51, especially 146–50. Agamemnon’s triple emphasis upon the truthfulness of Cassandra’s prophecy may well express his surprise. Apollo gave Cassandra the power of prophecy in order to seduce her, but when she denied his advances, he cursed her so that her prophecies were never to be believed: see Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1202–13, Apollodorus Library, 3.12.5. 514 Bright 1987: 167 may be right that this ‘clear[ing] of the stage for the next scene’ shows the influence of his dramatic model. 97

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Orestes and Pylades in Athens (515–625) The appearance of a ghost to a sleeping hero was common in epic, although its appearance to two people in the one dream is very uncommon (see lines 553–6). The ultimate model for this scene is the apparition of the ghost of Hector to Aeneas, who appears to Aeneas in a dream at Virgil, Aeneid 2.270–9. In a dream, look, Hector seemed to stand before my eyes, most sorrowful and pouring forth great tears, as he looked once before when dragged by the chariot and blackened with gore and dust, his swollen feet pierced through with straps. Ah, his appearance! How changed he was from that Hector who returned cloaked in the armour of Achilles or threw Trojan fire onto the Danaan ships. He wore a ragged beard, his hair matted with dried blood and showed those many wounds he received around his fatherland’s walls. Agamemnon’s speech at lines 527–51 divides into three sections: (i) 527–36: he attempts to rouse the shame of the two young men; (ii) 537–46: he argues that the matricide will be a crime for Orestes; and (iii) 547–51: he exhorts them to go and promises them the support of the household staff. 518–19 I have translated the sentence so that the Latin text of 518 comes after that of 519 for clarity in English. ‘worn out by his love of the Palaestra’: see note on lines 294–5. ‘breathing loudly in and out in the act of sleeping’ flatibus alternis perflans commercia somni: literally ‘blowing out in alternate breaths, the exchange of sleep’. The meaning is clear enough, but the Latin phrase is quite obscure; I follow Wolff in interpreting commercia somni as meaning ‘the vital manifestations of life’. 520–6 Compare Agamemnon’s pitiful appearance here with his majestic appearance at lines 239–43. 534 ‘the sons of Cecrops’: the Athenians, who traced their descent from Cecrops a legendary king of Athens: see OCD s.v. ‘Cecrops’. Agamemnon’s question is indignant, and it may be that he refers to Orestes and Pylades themselves as ‘sons of Cecrops’ here: that is, that they are in Athens when they should be in Mycenae avenging him: compare line 548 ‘angry only that you’ve come so late’. 535–6 Patroclus: Achilles’ personal attendant whose death at Hector’s hands in Homer’s Iliad precipitates Achilles’ return to battle, Hector’s death and the end of the poem. Patroclus was an exemplary model of friendship in antiquity: see HE s.v. ‘Patroklos’. Pirithous: the king of the Lapiths often 98

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associated with Theseus, with whom he fought the Centaurs and descended to the Underworld: another common paradigm of devoted friendship: see OCD s.v. ‘Pirithous’. 548 ‘angry only that you’ve come so late’: compare Orestes at line 773 ‘This act has taken time, but the delay is justified by my age’. 552 ‘their groans broke the peace of sleep’: may well allude to Aeschylus, Eumenides 124 ‘you moan, you are still sleeping—won’t you quickly get up?’. Clytemnestra is addressing the Furies who have let Orestes escape from the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. 553–6 It was not historically uncommon for a dream epiphany to appear to more than one person at once. For example, on the night before the Battle of the River Frigidus in 394, the emperor Theodosius and a common solider both dreamt they saw John the Evangelist and Philip the Apostate, who told them they would fight on their side (Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 5.24.5–7); other examples at Harris 2009: 42. 557–79 Orestes deliberates whether to kill his mother in a speech to Pylades: he focusses upon the obligations he owes to Clytemnestra as his mother (561–73) and declares an intention to kill Aegisthus and let his mother live (575–9). 559–60 The piling up of abstract subjects is part of the highly rhetorical style that found favour in imperial literature and is especially common in the poetry of late antiquity. In Dracontius’ own work another example is at Romulea 6.60–5; compare Avitus, De Spiritalis Historiae Gentis 5.477–81 (with a good discussion by Roberts 1989: 30–32); examples could be multiplied. See also lines 965–8 and ‘The Style of the Orestes’ in the introduction. 561 ‘Do I strike deadly iron into my mother’s womb’: this line may well have recalled Nero’s matricide of Agrippina. When the assassins arrived at her villa to carry out the order, she ordered them to strike her in her womb, as the origin of her son (Tacitus, Annals 14.8). Dracontius had used the striking of one’s mother’s womb as an image of cruelty at Romulea 5.272–3. 563 ‘for ten long months’: ancient sources commonly referred to ten months of pregnancy, either by counting lunar months or because of their method of counting inclusively. 565 Mähly (1866) first moved this line to follow 561, where it elaborates rhetorically on the word ‘womb’. In my opinion this sequence works better than to have it follow 564 where it seems to fall flat after the lengthier description of Clytemnestra’s pregnancy. 99

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567–8 At Aeschylus, Libation-Bearers 896–8 Clytemnestra bears her breast to Orestes during the attack in order to arouse his pity: ‘Stop, my son, and have respect, my child, for this breast, at which you many times drowsed while sucking the nourishing milk with your gums!’ (trans. Sommerstein). She will make the same gesture at lines 739–45. 571 ‘She was my father and mother both when my father was at war’: the conceit of telling someone they are both mother and father (and often further kinship relations) was not uncommon in pathos-laden contexts. At Homer, Iliad 6.429–30 Andromache tells her husband Hector ‘Hector, you are to me father and queenly mother, you are brother, and you are my vigorous husband’ (trans. Murray rev. Wyatt); she is trying to convince Hector to stay on the wall of Troy with her and not fight the Greeks in case he should be killed. Similarly, at Aeschylus, Libation-Bearers 239–43, Electra says to Orestes ‘I must needs address you as father, and the affection I owe to a mother falls to you—for her I hate, with every justification—and also that of the sister who was pitilessly sacrificed; and you were a faithful brother, the only person who has shown me respect’ (trans. Sommerstein). 573 ‘Shall I show myself unmindful of my mother’s great blessings?’: recalling line 7 ‘mindful and oblivious of a parent’. 578 ‘that foolish woman’ muliercula: this diminutive form of ‘woman’ (mulier) is contemptuous. 581 ‘gnashed his teeth’ dentibus infrendens: the phrase occurs three times in Virgil’s Aeneid, the closest in context is 3.664 when the Cyclops Polyphemus gnashes his teeth and groans (as Pylades will do) after being wounded by Ulysses. 581–2 ‘drew long, angry sighs from the depths of his chest’ suspiria traxit ab imo | pectore: Dracontius transforms the desire of Ovid’s Myrrha at Metamorphoses 1.402–3 suspiria duxit ab imo | pectore ‘she drew long sighs from the depths of her chest’. 583–615 The reply of Pylades. In Aeschylus, Libation-Bearers 899–903 Pylades encourages Orestes to go through with the matricide when Orestes hesitates, but this happens during the confrontation with Clytemnestra just before the killing itself. Pylades’ response is organized into three sections: (i) 583–91, a rejection of Orestes’ plan to spare his mother on the grounds that she is worthy of punishment and that Orestes will be judged by the people of Mycenae for his actions; (ii) 591–602, a speech in the character of Agamemnon, shaming Orestes and predicting that he will be killed by his mother if he doesn’t kill her first; and (iii) 603–15, an

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exhortation to action on the grounds that it is (paradoxically) virtuous not to spare his mother, and the promise of his help and the help of the palace staff. 588 ‘by the punishment of the gods?’: this is the first mention that the vengeance is divinely sanctioned. This argument will become important in the final third section of the poem. 589–91 Pylades’ point is that Orestes will appear not to be Agamemnon’s son if he does not exact vengeance upon his father’s murderer. 591–5 Pylades’ image of Agamemnon besieging Orestes will be partially and ironically realized in Clytemnestra’s haunting of her son at 820–44. If Pylades is correct, Orestes will be haunted whether he avenges Agamemnon or not. 593–602 Pylades upbraids Orestes in the voice of Agamemnon. Rhetoricians called speaking in the voice of absent, personified or abstract figures ‘prosopopoeia’. Cicero provides two famous examples when he speaks in the voice of Italy (Patria, ‘Fatherland’) in his First Speech against Catiline (18, 27–9) and when he accuses Clodia in the character and imagined words of Appius Claudius Caecus, her distant ancestor at In Defence of Marcus Caelius 34. Quintilian On the Orator’s Education 11.1.39–41 suggests that speakers take on the manner of the person they are quoting, and so we can imagine Pylades imitating the tone and delivery of Agamemnon in these words to drive home his point. 595–7 ‘Is this how . . . is it right . . . is it like this . . . ?’: in the Latin sic (‘in this way’) is repeated at the start of three consecutive clause (called ‘anaphora’) and no conjunctions like ‘and’, ‘or’ or ‘but’ come in between the clauses (asyndeton): both features are emphatic and mark the highly emotional tone of this part of the speech. 597 ‘Is it like this that you’ll bring offerings in vengeance to my shade?’ sic dabis inferias nostris tu manibus ultor?: Agamemnon may be adapting the curse of Virgil’s Dido at Aeneid 4.625 ‘exoriare, aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor’ ‘Spring to life, unknown avenger from my bones’. 601 ‘you’ll fall as a victim if your mother is not made a victim first’: this is the same reasoning used by Clytemnestra upon Aegisthus at lines 186–9. 616–25 Orestes’ reaction is remarkable in that it follows Pylades’ speech rather than his father’s apparition. It is also striking that Orestes is compared to Pyrrhus—whom he will murder later in the poem—when Achilles’ ghost appeared to him and demanded the sacrifice of (the completely innocent) Polyxena (see note on line 476): a demand for murder with no morally redeeming dimensions to it.

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616 ‘Inflamed to bitter grief by such words’ talibus alloquiis accensus felle doloris: compare Virgil, Aeneid 8.219–20 Alcidae furiis exarserat atro | felle dolor ‘the grief of Alcides blazed forth with black bile’. Virgil describes Hercules’ fury at the monster Cacus. 619–21 It is worrying that we have seen this ‘shadow-boxing’ from Aegisthus at lines 220–3 as he anticipated killing Agamemnon. The repetition of this behaviour may underscore the cyclical nature of the violence.

The return of Orestes and Pylades (626–81) There is no equivalent scene of Pylades and Orestes setting out in Aeschylus since they have already arrived (from Phocis) at the tomb of Agamemnon at the beginning of Libation-Bearers. Dracontius uses the scene to describe the pair in heroic terms: previously they have been characterized as youths. Near Mycenae, they have a chance encounter with Dorylas on the road. Such random meetings between travellers are not uncommon in tragedy: compare for instance, Oedipus’ chance encounter with his father at the three ways in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King 800–13. The present encounter is not crucial to the plot but allows Dorylas to encourage the young men and to restate the support for them at Mycenae. 627 ‘take with them only swords’: that is, they don’t take javelins or protective equipment such as shields or body armour. 629 ‘they travel through the night’ ibant obscuri (literally, ‘they were going, obscure’): adapts a famous line of Virgil, Aeneid 6.268 ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbram ‘They were going along dimly, beneath the lonely night amid the gloom’. Virgil describes the approach of Aeneas and the Sibyl to the entrance of the Underworld. 631–7 Orestes and Pylades are compared to the heroes Ulysses and Diomedes during the ‘Doloneia’, the night-raid scene that is told at Homer, Iliad 10. The two heroes set out to raid the camp of the Trojans during the night. They capture and kill a Trojan spy, named Dolon, who gives them information that allows them also to kill the Thracian King Rhesus while he sleeps and to steal his horses: see OCD s.v. ‘Rhesus’. In the comparison Dracontius is most interested in the secrecy of the night journey through hostile territory. ‘Dardanian’: Trojan, from Dardanus, the son of Zeus who founded Troy. ‘the brave son of Oeneus and Laertes’ ingenious hero’: Diomedes (the son of Oeneus) and Ulysses (the son of Laertes). In epic it is very common to refer to someone by reference to their father or a male ancestor (‘patronymics’). 102

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639 ‘they continue on their path’ iter inceptum peragunt: quotes Virgil, Aeneid 6.384, where it describes Aeneas and the Sibyl travelling through the Underworld (compare note on line 629). 641–2 ‘Who are you, friends? Where are you going?’ quiue estis, amici, | quoue tenetis iter?’: compare Virgil, Aeneid 9.376–7 ‘quiue estis in armis? quoue tenetis iter?’ ‘Who are you in arms? Where are you going?’. In Virgil’s version of the Doloneia (see note line 631–7), when the Trojan youths Nisus and Euryalus are seen leaving the Italian camp at night, the Latin commander Volcens accosts them with these questions. 649–50 These details recall Juvenal, Satire 6.132, where Messalina, the promiscuous wife of the emperor Claudius takes back to the emperor’s couch (puluinar) the stench of the brothel (foeda lupanaris) she has been in. 652–4 These lines look back to the speech of the ghost of Agamemnon at lines 501–13 (see note at lines 512–13). 655 ‘with Cecrops’ spirit’: Dorylas means ‘with the qualities you acquired while at Athens’ (on Cecrops see note on line 534). 661 ‘It will be no struggle to slay that loathsome woman’: adapting Clytemnestra’s encouragement to Aegisthus from line 190. 666 ‘let us travel faster!’: translating acceleremus (B), not acceleramus ‘we are travelling faster’ (A). An exhortation fits the context much better than a plain statement of fact. 672 ‘and now his journey is over’ iamque iter emensum: adapts a Virgilian phrase (iter emensi ‘they had traversed their way’) used to describe the arrival of Trojan emissaries to the city of Latinus (Aeneid 7.160) and, later, Latin emissaries arriving at the city of Diomedes (Aeneid 11.244).

The murder of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra (682–802) In Aeschylus the murder and matricide are arranged quite differently. The disguised Orestes and Pylades are already within the palace, into which they have been welcomed by Clytemnestra as part of their ruse (see notes to lines 350–81). Aegisthus is summoned to hear the news of Orestes’ death and is murdered offstage (869). A servant warns Clytemnestra just before Orestes emerges to confront her (875–91). She pleads with Orestes, who hesitates but is convinced to go through with it by Pylades (892–907). A stichomythic exchange (a dialogue of alternating lines) between Orestes and Clytemnestra proceeds the moment that Orestes and Pylades force her offstage to kill her (908–930). 103

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In Dracontius the murder is arranged in the following sequence: (i) sunrise and their arrival at Mycenae (682–94); (ii) Orestes’ recognition by servants, the signal for attack and the first reaction of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra (695–705); (iii) Pylades appears at the palace and slays Aegisthus (706–28); (iv) Orestes appears and confronts Clytemnestra (729–66); (v) Orestes takes his mother to Agamemnon’s tomb and murders her there (767–94); (vi) Orestes and Pylades return to the palace amid the reactions of the court and the people of Mycenae (795–802). 682–3 Elaborate descriptions of sunrise were a standard feature in epic, and tragedies typically narrated the events of just one day: this day will see the killing of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra and will conclude at 803. ‘howling waves’: not rough seas but the contact of the super-heated wheels of the sun’s chariot with the water at sunset on the previous day (compare lines 803–4): Lucan, Civil War 9.866 has exactly the same phrase (stridentibus undis) describing the sun setting in the ocean. 684 ‘to redress Thyestes’ loss’: the conceit is that, because the sun darkened over the Thyestean feast, it will now shine all the more brightly, ‘redressing’ the shortfall of earlier light: see notes on line 203 and 492–3. In fact, when Orestes is at the point of murdering his mother, the sun will once again withhold its light at lines 781–4. 685 ‘Atrides’: Orestes, the grandson of Atreus. ‘the walls he had left as a child’: Orestes returned eight years after Agamemnon’s murder. See note on line 455. 686 ‘he stretches out his hand and says’ dextram cum uoce tetendit: compare Virgil Aeneid 2.688 caelo palmas cum uoce tetendit ‘he stretched out his palms to the sky and says’. In Virgil Aeneas is about to pray to Jupiter to ratify an omen. 687–92 At Sophocles, Electra 67–72 Orestes similarly addresses his homeland at dawn before entering the city: ‘But do you my native land, and you, gods of the place, receive me in good fortune on this mission, and you, house of my fathers! For I come in justice to cleanse you, sped on my way by the gods. And do not send me from the land dishonoured, but let me control my riches and set my house upon its feet!’ (trans. Lloyd-Jones). 691 ‘struck down by a murderous blow’: literally ‘struck down by the blow of a wound’. 692 ‘Like the wife of the augur Amphiaraus’: Eriphyle was bribed to vote that her husband Amphiaraus join the expedition against Thebes, even though she knew this would cause his death. Their son, Alcmaeon, avenged 104

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Amphiaraus by slaying Eriphyle, either at his father’s urging or on the advice of the Delphic oracle: see OCD s.v. ‘Alcmaeon’. 695–6 ‘the crowd of servants recognize Agamemnon’s face, his gait, his eyes and hands’: compare Andromache’s pathos-laden observation of the physical similarities between Aeneas’ son, Ascanius, and her own dead son, Astyanax, at Virgil, Aeneid 3.490 ‘his eyes, his gestures, his expressions were just like yours’. In Seneca’s Trojan Women 464–8 Andromache tells Astyanax ‘My Hector used to have this appearance, he used to walk and carry himself in just this way: that’s the way he used to move his strong hands; he had the same noble shoulders, that fierce, threatening brow; his hair flowed like that with a toss of his neck’. 697 ‘joyful grief’: the paradox recalls the first words of the poem ‘sorrowful joys’ and Agamemnon’s ‘joyful weeping’ when he recognizes Iphigenia (line 63). 705 ‘I free you: let me live and let Aegisthus grow old with me!’: Clytemnestra is trying to strike a bargain with her servants, at Aeschylus, Libation-Bearers 908 Clytemnestra begs mercy from Orestes by saying ‘I reared you and I want to grow old with you’. 706–8 At Aeschylus, Libation-Bearers 875–91, Clytemnestra is told of Aegisthus’ murder by a servant who rushes to find her; in contrast to this scene, the servant in Aeschylus is immediately believed by Clytemnestra. 709–28 Pylades initiates the killing by murdering Aegisthus: this appears to be an innovation by Dracontius, since it happens in none of the extant versions of the mythic plot. 710 ‘Pylades appears . . . savage and dreadful’ apparet uiolentus atrox Pylades: compare Lucan, Civil War 8.599 on the assassin of Pompey: immanis, uiolentus, atrox ‘wild, savage and dreadful’. 711–12 Pylades is compared to Ajax in the midst of his battle fury. At Homer, Iliad 7.206–312 Ajax fights and wounds Hector in a duel which is interrupted by nightfall. Ajax’s ‘sevenfold shield’, made of seven bull’s hides, was famous and is mentioned frequently in Homer and other authors. 714–17 ‘you . . . your . . . you . . . you’: note that these are plural pronouns in the Latin: Pylades is addressing both Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. 715–16 ‘did you hope until now to evade the dread hand of justice?’ nunc usque truces euadere iustas | sperastis uos posse manus? Pylades echoes the fury of Virgil’s Turnus, who at Aeneid, 9.560–1 taunts one of his victims in battle with the words ‘nostrasne euadere, demens, | sperasti te posse manus?’ ‘Madman, did you hope to evade our hands?’. 105

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717 ‘and both of you will suffer death’: literally ‘destroyed by not (just) one death’. 720 ‘Let him go dragged by his feet’: echoing the disgrace visited upon Agamemnon’s body at lines 348 and 526. 722 ‘die the same death he brought upon our king’: emphasizing the cyclical nature of the violence and distantly echoing the Aeschylean principle that the ‘doer suffers’: see note line 394. 727–8 The hyperbole and gory details match the importance and highly emotional register of the scene. 729–84 The death of Clytemnestra. 731 ‘crueller than any enemy’: this paradox draws the reader’s attention to the blood relation of Orestes and Clytemnestra. 738 ‘over the bones of your husband’: in Aeschylus, Libation-Bearers 904–7 Orestes tells Clytemnestra he will slay her next to Aegisthus, since she thought him better than Agamemnon. 739–45 On Clytemnestra’s gesture, see note lines 567–8. 741–2 ‘by the loving heart of your sister’ per cara sororis | pectora: compare Virgil, Aeneid 11.216–16 cara sororum | pectora maerentum ‘the loving hearts of grieving sisters’. In Virgil, the families of slain heroes curse the war as they bury their dead. 742 ‘who saved you then from my madness’: Clytemnestra desperately disavows responsibility for her actions by invoking madness. Similarly, Agamemnon blames Atē, a goddess of delusion or recklessness, for his theft of Achilles’ gifts in the Iliad (19.85–144). 744 ‘pity your parent’ miserere parenti: at Virgil, Aeneid 12.43–44, the Latin king Latinus attempts to dissuade the hero Turnus from meeting Aeneas in battle by pleading ‘miserere parentis | longaeui’ ‘pity your aged parent’. 745–52 At Aeschylus, Libation-Bearers 899, Orestes hesitates after his mother’s gesture and asks Pylades whether respect should prevent him from going through with the matricide. 745–6 ‘Her son replied “You waste vain tears” ’‘inanes | perdis’ ait ‘lacrimas’: compare Statius, Thebaid 2.655–6 ‘inanes | perdis,’ ait, ‘lacrimas’ ‘he replied “you waste vain tears” ’. This is the implacable response of the warrior Tydeus to an enemy combatant who begs for his life. ‘my father’s waiting for you at the shadow’s edge’ genitor te expectat ad umbras: at 106

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Statius, Thebaid 3.86 a lone survivor of battle commits suicide with the words ‘comites feror exspectatus ad umbras’ ‘I am carried off to the friendly shades that await me’. 747 ‘Trojan Cassandra mourned the death of her master’: a difficult statement to corroborate. In Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1100–29 she foresees his murder with horror but makes no statement after the murder; in Seneca’s Agamemnon she is positively happy at 1004–11. In the Orestes she speaks only at 137–51 and expresses no emotion at the murder of Agamemnon. 748–9 After the death of Hector and the fall of Troy, Andromache became the slave and concubine of Neoptolemus (Pyrrhus), to whom she bore three children (including Molossus, who will feature in the final section of Orestes): see OCD s.v ‘Andromache’. 751 ‘My friend Pylades orders me to do this, my sister urges me on’: Pylades had ordered Orestes to kill Clytemnestra and Aegisthus at lines 607–8; in Aeschylus he encourages Orestes to go through with the matricide at Libation-Bearers 900–2. Electra has been absent since 284–8 and has not featured in the vengeance plot. Dracontius may well be thinking of the end of Virgil’s Aeneid 12.948–9 when Aeneas says to Turnus ‘It is Pallas, Pallas who sacrifices you with this wound’. 754 ‘The warning of the Phrygian prophetess came to her mind’: Cassandra, at lines 146–5. 757 ‘on the bones of my dead Aegisthus’: see note on line 738. Dracontius uses the simple form of the verb spirantis (which literally means ‘breathing’) to describe Aegisthus, in place of the compound form exspirantis ‘to breathe one’s last, to die’: a potentially confusing substitution (had we not been told of his death at lines 724–8), but such use of the simple for compound form is part of the epic style. 760 ‘who shared in these evil crimes’: this is not to be taken as an indication of her remorse. 767 ‘the tomb of his father’: see note on line 738. 769 ‘a victim fully justified’: compare line 880–1 where Orestes as victim is deemed to be non grata ‘displeasing’. 770 ‘I sacrifice Clytemnestra, wife of king Aegisthus’: a sardonic touch at the end. The word matrona ‘wife’ was a respectful term for a married woman. 773–4 At Aeschylus, Libation-Bearers 464, the chorus observes ‘what is fated has delayed long’. 107

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775–8 Clytemnestra’s invocation of the elements adapts Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound 88–92 ‘O bright Sky, and you swift-flying winds, and riversprings, and you countless twinkling waves of the sea, and Earth mother of all, behold what I, a god, am suffering at the hands of the gods!’ (trans. Sommerstein). 775 ‘o sun, o creator’: literally ‘o sun, o piety (pietas)’, but as an epithet of the sun, I accept Wolff’s point that pietas is likely to be a metonym for ‘father’ and in this context connotes his role as creator; compare lines 38 and 357. 781–4 The sun once again withholds its light from Mycenae, as it had done during the Thyestean feast: see notes on line 203, 492–3 and 684. ‘nature dreaded chaos’ extimuit natura chaos: a quote from Lucan, Civil War 5.634 describing a titanic sea-storm. 785 ‘Enyo’: see note line 498. ‘an Erinys’: see note line 11. 786–94 Dracontius accords Clytemnestra a noble death scene, which borrows details from the sacrifice of Polyxena (Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.479–80), the suicide of the Roman noblewoman Lucretia (Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.833–4) and from her own murder of Agamemnon. 786 ‘She clamped down her purple cloak with clenched teeth’: the purple cloak is a reminder of her royalty; she bites it in an effort to preserve a stoic dignity in the face of the pain. I have tried to replicate the alliteration of p- in this line (pallia purpurea praestricto) with cl-. 789 ‘she turns her sad eyes this way and that with modest expression’ maesta uerecundo uoluebat lumina uisu: compare Ovid Metamorphoses 14.840 illa uerecundo uix tollens lumina uultu ‘barely lifting her gaze with modest expression’. Ovid describes Hersilia’s reverent greeting of the goddess Iris. More generally compare Seneca Trojan Women 1137–9 on Polyxena: ‘she held her gaze low in modesty, and yet her face shone forth, and her beauty radiated more than usual at the end’. 791 ‘her fame on the pyre’: literally ‘her fame in death’; I have varied the repetition from ‘in the hour of her death’ at 790. 792 ‘Her fair limbs blush deep with red gore’ candida puniceo rutilantur membra cruore: compare Ovid Metamorphoses 2.607 on the death of Coronis, shot with an arrow by Apollo: candida puniceo perfudit membra cruore ‘her fair limbs were flushed with red gore. 793 ‘her jolting body shakes the ground as she lay’: recalls details from Agamemnon’s death: 263–4 ‘the innocent king collapses from his wound and shakes the earth, his body in spasms’. 108

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794 ‘summoned to die’ iussa mori: used at Virgil, Aeneid 3.323 by Andromache of Polyxena. ‘poured out her life with blood’ uitam cum sanguine fudit: with the same phrase Virgil describes the death of Polites at Aeneid 2.532 and Ovid uses it to describe the death of Coronis at Metamorphoses 2.610. 797 ‘sated with the slaughter of heifers’: ‘heifers’ may be disparaging in reference to Aegisthus. 798 ‘The royal court receives them, as bloody as they are’: compare Agamemnon, covered in the blood of battle when he returns to Mycenae and to the palace at 240–1 and 250.

The murder of Pyrrhus (803–19) The abduction of Hermione and the murder of Pyrrhus (in Greek Neoptolemus) do not feature in Aeschylus’ Oresteia. Here these events are dealt with quite perfunctorily, given that the murder is the pretext for Molossus’ vengeance and is debated at the trial at Athens. Hermione was the daughter of Menelaus and Helen. In Homer (Odyssey 4.1–9) she is promised by Menelaus to Pyrrhus. In another tradition she is betrothed to Orestes before the Trojan War but is then promised to Pyrrhus by Menelaus during the war and is abducted by Pyrrhus during Orestes’ madness (e.g., Euripides, Andromache 967–81, Apollodorus, Epitome 6.14); in some variations she is married to Orestes (Virgil, Aeneid 3.330–1, Ovid, Heroides 8). Dracontius follows this latter tradition. In Euripides’ Andromache (999–1008, 1073–5) Orestes orchestrates the murder of Neoptolemus/Pyrrhus at Apollo’s temple in Delphi by spreading rumours about him among the people of Delphi; Virgil has Orestes kill him with his own hand (Aeneid 3.332). Other traditions have Neoptolemus/Pyrrhus killed at Delphi without any involvement by Orestes (e.g., Pindar Nemean 7.34–47). 804 ‘his sister’: the Goddess of the moon, Luna (also called Diana), who was identified with Artemis, the sister of Apollo, who was associated with the sun. 807 ‘A messenger arrives’: that the arrival of a messenger to introduce new information or a plot development is a hallmark of tragedy; since there is no tragic messenger-scene to which this one corresponds, we may assume that Dracontius is self-consciously evoking the tragic genre by this detail: see Verhelst 2022: 136. 809 ‘Atrides’: Orestes, the grandson of Atreus. ‘rages’ may nod at the tradition in which Hermione was abducted during his madness. 109

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810 ‘Look, another labour calls us’: nos alius uocat ecce labor; compare Statius, Achilleid 1.539 nos uocat iste labor ‘this labour calls us’: so, Diomedes speaks to Odysseus about going to find Achilles and recruiting him for the Greek army. 813–14 In quick succession Orestes foreshadows the implacable ghost of his mother (compare lines 834–5) and echoes the description of his father as the avenger of the marriage bed (compare, e.g., lines 23–4). 815 ‘calling on the name Orestes’ clamantem nomen Orestis: Orestes ‘quotes’ Ovid’s Hermione from Heroides 8.9, where she writes to Orestes, asking him to come and rescue her: she tells him that Pyrrhus, her abductor is surdior ille freto clamantem nomen Orestae ‘deafer to [my pleas] than the sea as I call on the name Orestes’. 817 ‘Aeacides’: Pyrrhus, the great grandson of Aeacus. 818–19 The sacrilegious killing of Pyrrhus in a temple (the altars are those at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi) and Orestes’ elation at the murder are both disturbing details in the otherwise morally positive characterization of Orestes. ‘kills him by surprise before the altars’ securum obtruncat ad aras: compare Virgil Aeneid, 3.332 on this same event: incautum . . . obtruncat ad aras ‘he kills him unaware before the altars’.

The madness of Orestes (820–61) In the final scene of Aeschylus’ Libation-Bearers 1048–76, Orestes is driven off stage by the Erinyes of his mother, women who look like Gorgons and are wreathed in snakes. Dracontius opts for a more personal version (at lines 931–3 Orestes will even describe this as a psychological state), in which the ghost of Clytemnestra pursues him in the guise of a Fury: hence her torches and snakes. When she accosts him, she will focus as much on his murder of Pyrrhus as on her own murder. In the second half of this section (lines 845–61) Dracontius compares Orestes’ madness to that of a sequence of famous mythological examples and draws upon descriptions of the Underworld to convey his tormented state. 821–2 Compare Virgil, Aeneid 4.471–73, where Dido’s madness is compared to ‘Agamemnon’s son, Orestes, hounded across the stage, when he flees from his mother, armed with torches and black serpents, while on the threshold sit the avenging Dirae’. ‘not as one unarmed, but holding funeral torches’: literally ‘not as one unarmed, but armed with torches of the funeral pyre’. I have varied ‘unarmed . . . armed’. 827 ‘his enemy’: his mother. 110

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832 ‘to stain the gods’ shrines as well’: an allusion to the murder of Pyrrhus in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. 835 ‘my savage shade will be present to you everywhere’ omnibus ipsa locis adero tibi saeuior umbra: compare Virgil, Aeneid 4.386 (Dido says to Aeneas) ‘omnibus umbra locis adero’ ‘as a shade I will be present to you everywhere’. 836 ‘over straits, and fields, through woods, rivers and mountains’: at Aeschylus Eumenides 75–7 Apollo tells Orestes ‘[the Furies] will drive you right through the length of the mainland, as you go ever forward over the land you tread in your wanderings, and over the water to sea-girt cities’ (trans. Sommerstein). 839–40 Perhaps drawn from Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris 296–9 (a herdsman reporting the madness of Orestes) ‘he unsheathed his sword and, rushing into the midst of the cattle like a lion, thrust and stabbed their flanks and ribs, thinking that by so doing he was warding off the Erinyes’ (trans. Kovacs). 845 ‘The Inachian avenger’: Orestes. Inachus was the first king of Argos and so ‘Inachian’ can mean ‘Greek’ more generally by metonymy. 846–8 These lines draw on Lucan, Civil War 1.574–7 where the Fury who circles Rome is compared to the Furies in famous episodes of myth: Lucan cites Lycurgus, immediately followed by Hercules (whom he also calls ‘Alcides’) and also names Megaera. 846 ‘Lycurgus’: this Edonian king attacked and expelled Bacchus from his land; in revenge Bacchus drove Lycurgus mad during which state he tried to rape his own mother and killed his wife and son. ‘made him drunk’: Hyginus, Fabulae 132 also records the detail that Lycurgus’ madness was brought after drinking wine. See OCD s.v. ‘Lycurgus 1’. 847 ‘Alcides’: Hercules (the grandson of Alceus) killed his wife and children in Thebes in a fit of madness induced by Hera: this was the plot of tragedies by Euripides and Seneca the Younger. See OCD s.v. ‘Heracles’. ‘Megaera’: the name of one of the Furies. 848 ‘Ajax’: the Greek warrior Ajax went mad with rage and killed himself after Achilles’ armour was adjudicated to Odysseus rather than himself: this episode was most famously told in Sophocles’ Ajax. See OCD s.v. ‘Aias 1’. 854–61 Dracontius adapts Virgil’s description of the Underworld and the punishment there suffered by the Lapiths, Ixion, Pirithous and Tantalus (Aeneid 6.603–7): ‘gold gleams on the heads of lofty festive couches, and a feast is prepared before their eyes in regal luxury. But the greatest of the 111

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Furies reclines next to them and with her hands she stops them touching the tables, she jumps up waiving a torch and roars loudly’. 855 ‘and is kept from the tables by the torches’ et facibus prohibetur tangere mensas: compare Virgil, Aeneid 6.606 et manibus prohibet contingere mensas ‘and with her hands she stops them touching the tables’. 856 ‘Just so are the ravenous vainly tortured in the underworld’: this line more or less tells the reader that Dracontius is alluding to Virgil’s description of the Underworld: see note on lines 854–61. 858 ‘They groan, but this is not food, only the image of food’: these details better suit the Underworld than Orestes’ palace. 860–1 ‘What shall he do? Invoking what gods, what divine powers will the suppliant call to his aid?’ quid faciat? quos ille deos, quae numina poscens | eliciat supplex?: compare the Ilias Latina 970–1 quid agat? quae numina supplex | inuocet? ‘What shall he do? What divinity will he invoke as a suppliant?’. This remark is made by the narrator about Hector, about to face Achilles. 861 ‘Or will he burden the third realm?’: The third realm is the Underworld. Dracontius alludes to the division of power between the sons of Cronos: Zeus had dominion over the sky, Poseidon ruled the sea and Hades had power over the Underworld. At Virgil, Aeneid 7.312 Juno says ‘flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta mouebo’ ‘if I cannot influence the gods, I will stir up Acheron!’. It is a low point of Orestes’ characterization that the narrator entertains the possibility of Orestes calling upon the infernal powers.

Molossus seeks revenge, Orestes in Tauris (862–86) This is the only version of the Oresteia-plot in which Molossus accuses Orestes in the final trial. In Aeschylus the chorus of Furies make the case for the prosecution against Orestes, and Molossus does not feature in Aeschylus’ Oresteia. In other versions the accuser is Tyndareus, the father of Clytemnestra, or Erigone, the daughter of Aegisthus (Hyginus, Fabulae 119, Hellanicus, fragment 169; Marmor Parium 40, Dictys 6.4). Orestes’ near sacrifice and rescue at the Temple of Diana in Tauris is the subject of Euripides’ tragedy Iphigenia in Tauris, in which these events come after the acquittal of Orestes. In the Euripidean plot, Orestes (accompanied by Pylades) seeks out the temple to steal the statue of the goddess on the advice of Apollo: this is to appease the Furies who continue to hound him after his acquittal. Ovid also tells the story in his Letters from Pontus 3.2.45–96. Dracontius makes the arrival of Orestes at the Temple of Diana an accident and changes the manner in which Iphigenia recognizes 112

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her brother (see note on lines 874–8) but preserves the detail of stealing the statue at line 886. 864 ‘the offspring of Pyrrhus and Andromache’: Andromache was originally the wife of the Trojan hero, Hector. When Troy fell, she became the concubine of Pyrrhus and bore him three sons, one of whom was Molossus (Apollodorus, Epitome 6.12). 865–6 A structural echo of line 287 where Electra saves Orestes by putting him on a ship to Athens. 867 ‘the shore where Diana’s Temple stood’: Tauris in Thrace. 868–9 ‘The custom there was savage: to make poor strangers | victims of the blade’: compare, for example, Herodotus, Histories 4.103 ‘the Tauri have the following customs: all ship-wrecked men, and any Greeks whom they take in their sea-raiding, they sacrifice to the Virgin goddess’ (trans. Godley); Herodotus thought the goddess to whom they were sacrificing was actually Iphigenia (4.103). 869 ‘adorned in wool’: sacrificial victims wore woollen filaments (called uittae) around their heads. 873 ‘For groaning in misery he calls and calls on Agamemnon’ nam miser ingeminans Agamemnona saepe uocauit: compare Virgil, Aeneid 2.269–70 maestusque Creusam | nequiquam ingeminans iterumque iterumque uocaui ‘groaning in sadness I  called in vain, again and again, on Creusa’. Virgil describes the desperate search of Aeneas for his wife amid the destruction of Troy. 874–8 This is a tragic ‘recognition scene’ (anagnorisis), a plot device involving a change from ignorance to knowledge. Aristotle discusses Euripides’ version of this moment in his Poetics (1455b—15). At Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris 769 Orestes’ identity is revealed when Iphigenia reads out to Pylades and Orestes the contents of a letter she has written to her brother. ‘who you were’: the tense may reflect that Orestes as a sacrificial victim is no longer considered to exist as the individual he was in his former life. 879 ‘casts down the knife’: in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris 617–24 it is made clear that Iphigenia does not perform the sacrifices herself; Dracontius opts for a more dramatic set of circumstances in which she does slay the victims herself. 880–1 Iphigenia uses her role as priestess to convince the attendants that Orestes is an unacceptable sacrifice on physiognomic grounds. In Roman sacrificial practice this was usually determined after the killing of the victim, 113

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when an extispicy would take place: an inspection of the animal’s organs to see if they were in good shape. Organs that were in poor shape indicated an unacceptable sacrifice and a replacement victim would then need to be killed. A detailed and macabre passage treating this process is Lucan, Civil War 1.608–38. Iphigenia’s instructions and the observation that ‘the victim’s heart is bloodless’ would be appropriate for someone actually performing this inspection. See OCD s.v. ‘sacrifice, Roman’. ‘this is not a welcome victim’ non est haec hostia grata: the technical religious phrase would be ‘non perlitatum est’ ‘there has been an inauspicious sacrifice’. 886 ‘taking Diana’s image with her’: see note on lines 867–86.

The trial of Orestes (887–962) In Aeschylus’ Eumenides Orestes has fled, pursued by the Furies, as a suppliant to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. He is then told by Apollo to go to Athens for his case to be judged so that Orestes will be released from the Furies’ punishment. In Athens, the goddess Athena summons ‘the best among her citizens’ to adjudicate the case and she convenes a trial. In the trial itself (566–777) the chorus of Furies prosecute, Apollo bears witness and Orestes responds to questions as the accused. For the prosecution, the Furies do not make a speech but cross-examine Orestes (585–608); for the defence, Apollo testifies that the matricide was justified in a dialogue with the Furies (609–73). Aeschylus’ Orestes does not make a speech until he is acquitted and during the trial only responds to questions posed to him by the Furies. Dracontius’ account of the trial is organized into three sections: (i) a brief setting of the scene and Molossus’ speech (887–909); (ii) Orestes’ reply (910–38); (iii) the vote of the jury and their proclamation, the celebration of Orestes and his supporters and their return to Athens (939–62). In Aeschylus, the Furies ask whether, how and with whose advice Orestes killed Clytemnestra; Dracontius’ Molossus rather concentrates upon the impiety and extra-legal nature of Orestes’ two killings as well as his lack of remorse. In Aeschylus, Apollo insists that the killing was justified and sanctioned by Zeus, which he knows at first hand as a god, but Dracontius’ Orestes deals in human proofs: his present sanity is evidence of divine approval for both crimes, and his duty to his father demanded his vengeance. An ancient reader would recognize the influence of declamation upon this scene, which is organized as a controuersia (see the section ‘The Poet and his Works’ in the Introduction). We see this in the paired speeches of Molossus and Orestes as well as in their setting and context, their subject matter, reciprocity and in their style, in which multiple arguments are made 114

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in a pointed manner, enlivened by sharp antitheses and paradoxes. A largerscale controuersia in verse can be found at Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.1–398 where Ajax and Ulysses each argue as to which of them will inherit Achilles’ armour, and Dracontius himself had published a full-scale verse controuersia (of 329 lines): Romulea 5, the Controversy of ‘The Statue of the Courageous Man’. 890 ‘fathers’: may evoke the Roman senate, who were addressed by the honorific title ‘conscript fathers’ (‘patres conscripti’). ‘Minerva provides the temple’: the trial takes place in the Temple of Athena Polias on the Acropolis. The Roman goddess Minerva was identified with the Greek goddess Athena (compare ‘Minervan Athena’ at line 33). 891 ‘urged on by paternal love’: Molossus is motivated by the same obligations driving Orestes. 892–909 Molossus’ speech comprises (i) an exordium in which he declares that he will accuse Orestes and negatively characterizes him as an impious matricide (892–6); (ii) Orestes’ murder of Pyrrhus, in which the latter’s position within the temple and his status as a war hero are stressed (896–9); (iii) Orestes’ matricide, where the argument is that Clytemnestra should have been punished by a court of law rather than murdered by Orestes (900–3); (iv) an exhortation to punish the unrepentant Orestes severely (903–9). 906 ‘one mere sack’: an allusion to the punishment of the sack (poena cullei), which could be inflicted upon those condemned of parricide, defined as the deliberate killing of close relatives or patrons. The victim was put into a sack with live animals (e.g., dogs, roosters, snakes or monkeys) and thrown into the sea, into a river or to wild animals. Late Roman law prescribed severe penalties for serious crimes as a deterrent and the poena cullei had been reintroduced by Constantine. See ODLA s.v. ‘parricide’, ‘punishment and Roman theories of punishment’. 907 ‘wounded in every limb’: literally ‘let his wounds equal his limbs’ (aequentur uulnera membris): this hyperbole is from Lucan, Civil War 2.177–8 aequataque uulnera membris | uidimus ‘we saw wounds equal in number to his limbs’ (describing a scene of torture). 908 ‘extremities amputated’: literally ‘the parts of his body cut off’. 909 ‘as a living corpse’ uiuax . . . cadauer: Dracontius had explored this arresting oxymoron in greater detail at De Laudibus Dei 1.647–9 Mortua pars hominis quotiens, pars uiua iacebat, | funera uiua gemens, uiuax in morte cadauer | ac sine morte tamen uitali in morte perempta? ‘How often has part of man been dead while another part lay alive, lamenting a living 115

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death, in death a living corpse, and although not actually dead, annihilated in a living mortality?’ (trans. Irwin 1942, adapted). 910–38 Orestes’ speech is tightly structured as (i) an exordium to the judges (911–920); (ii) the main defence argument, in which his recovery is proof of the gods’ absolution of his actions (920–4); (iii) an attack on Molossus as one who fights against the gods’ ‘ruling’ on this matter and a justification of his crimes (925–35); and (iv) a peroratio (936–7). The equivalent speech at Aeschylus, Eumenides 442–69 is very different: Orestes declares that he has been ritually purified; tells of his origin and family, Agamemnon’s death and his vengeance upon Clytemnestra; and claims that Apollo shares responsibility for his deed because he ‘foretold painful suffering’ for Orestes if he did not do something to the perpetrators of his father’s murder. 911–16 Orestes begins his speech with an elaborate captatio beneuolentiae, an attempt to win the audience over by praising or honouring them. Five complimentary terms of address lead to an expression of his utmost confidence in the jury, because (as he claims) they remember and value the bonds of marriage and familial affection. These are qualities that recall both Agamemnon as the avenger of adultery who was killed by his adulterous wife and Orestes’ motivation in taking vengeance for his father and against Pyrrhus. 912 ‘censors of the law’: Dracontius’ term ‘censores’ evokes the Roman republican institution of the censorship. Two ex-consuls were elected once every four years to be censors for 18 months: in this role they reviewed the membership of the senate and acted as supervisors of the community’s morals: see OCD s.v. ‘censor’. 917–20 Compare Aeschylus, Eumenides 281–3 (Orestes) ‘the pollution of matricide has been washed out: at the hearth of the god Phoebus, when it was still fresh, it was expelled by means of the purification-sacrifice of a young pig’ (Sommerstein). Aeschylus’ Orestes (here and at 443–52) emphasizes the lifting of a religious pollution; Dracontius’ Orestes stresses the return of his health and mental capabilities. 918 ‘accused in this court’: Dracontius’ uses the alliterative phrase ‘inter subsellia sospes’ ‘safe amid the benches’ (i.e., of the courtroom), which I have tried to replicate with assonance of ‘c’. 919 ‘tribunal’: this was the dais from which a Roman magistrate sat to give judgment in a public form. 920–4 The crux of Orestes’ argument: if he is no longer mad, then the gods have cured him, and if they have cured him, then they approve of him, and if the gods approve of him, then no human jury should contradict their ‘verdict’. 116

NOTES TO DRACONTIUS’ ORESTES

923 ‘a healing therapy’: literally ‘a medicinal safety’. I have tried to keep the medical register of the phrase. 934 ‘Pyrrhus was an abductor: I avenged his abduction after the war’: see note on line 807. I follow Zwierlein in printing this line after 924, since it gives the best sense following on from ‘an unjust man’. 929–930 see note on lines 242–3. 929 ‘let him call the gods to fight’: compare Virgil Aeneid 6.172 ‘he calls the gods to a contest’. Virgil describes the Trojan trumpeter, Misenus, who challenged the gods and was cast into the sea by Triton as punishment. 936–7 Orestes ends by restating the central premise of his argument. 940–1 ‘The custom of deciding was by casting diverse pebbles: white favours life, but red urges death’ mos erat arbitrii quod dispar calculus iret: | albus adest uitae, nam mortem russeus urguet: compare Ovid, Metamorphoses 15.42–2 mos erat antiquus niueis atrisque lapillis, | his damnare reos, illis absoluere culpa ‘it was the ancient custom to use white and black pebbles, | the latter for condemning criminals, the latter for absolving guilt’. Ovid describes the trial of Myscelus, in which the jury’s urn full of black pebbles—a unanimous vote to condemn—is miraculously transformed by Hercules into all white pebbles and thus a verdict to acquit. 942–5 At Aeschylus, Eumenides 734–43 Athena casts her vote in favour of Orestes and draws attention to the principle that an equal vote will mean acquittal. The votes are then counted, and both the equal vote and Orestes’ acquittal are revealed at 752–3. Dracontius presents a tied vote by the human jury, which is broken by Minerva’s vote. 943 ‘the coloured stones are equal on either side’: in both Athenian and Roman law an equal vote would mean acquittal for the accused (see, e.g., Aristotle, Constitution of Athens 69.1, Seneca the Younger, Epistles 81.26). 947–57 The judges’ decree shows that they accept the terms set by Orestes in his speech at lines 920–4. 949 ‘divine clemency’: this is the only appearance of the virtue clemency (clementia) in the Orestes. Seneca, On Clemency 2.3.1 had defined this as ‘restraint of the mind when it is able to take revenge’, or ‘the leniency of the more powerful party towards the weaker in the matter of setting penalties’. 952–3 Neither example offers an exact parallel for contravening divine judgment, but both allude to mythic figures who adjudicated disputes between divinities. ‘that arbiter of goddesses, Paris, was not unpunished’: a 117

NOTES TO DRACONTIUS’ ORESTES

reference to the judgment of Paris, in which he was chosen to decide who was the most beautiful out of the goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite; he was offered Helen by Aphrodite as a bribe and his choice thus lead to the Trojan War, the destruction of Troy and his own death. ‘Nor was Teiresias unpunished when he judged the Thunderer’: Teiresias was a Theban Seer who settled a dispute between Hera and Zeus as to which gender enjoyed sex more (Teiresias had spent time as both a man and a woman). Teiresias decided in favour of women and thus displeased Hera, who blinded him; he was, however, compensated by Jupiter, who gave him the gift of prophecy (Apollodorus, Library 3.7). 958 ‘It had been decided. The people welcome him with favouring cries’ actum erat. excipiunt populi clamore fauentes: compare Statius, Thebaid 12.587–8 dixerat; excipiunt cunctae tenduntque precantes | cum clamore manus ‘She had spoken; all echo her words and stretch out their hands with favouring cries’. Statius describes the rapturous support of the Argive women for Evadne’s speech to Theseus, in which she asks for his help in overthrowing Creon’s edict against burying their dead Argive warriors. The ‘people’ here are the crowd watching the trial. 960 ‘his sisters . . . on left and right’: Dracontius seems to borrow a detail from Claudian’s description of the Idalian sisters of Venus, the Graces, who stand to the left and right of the goddess’ throne in his Marriage Hymn for Honorius and Maria (100–1). 960–1 ‘returning home in joy’: in Aeschylus the acquittal means Orestes can return home from banishment and exile (Eumenides 754–66); in Dracontius he is not in exile, he merely travels to Athens to plead his case (889). 962 ‘is refilled with the riches now returned’: this translates the verb replentur ‘they are filled again’, the conjecture of Müller; the manuscripts have repetuntur ‘they are sought again’ (B) and implentur ‘they are filled’ (A). The reference is to the treasures which were brought back from Troy by Agamemnon (30–40, 46, 50–1); Electra sent these from Mycenae to Athens 290 and Aegisthus searches for them in vain at lines 311–15.

Epilogue (963–74) A final prayer offered one means of closure in epic, such as happens at Ovid, Metamorphoses 15.861–70 and in Dracontius’ own Medea (Rom. 10.587–601). In Statius’ Thebaid 11.574–79 the narrator makes a similar prayer (albeit not at the very end of his epic), just after the mutual fratricide of Eteocles and Polynices: 118

NOTES TO DRACONTIUS’ ORESTES

Go, grim souls, pollute funereal Tartarus with your death and use up all the punishments of Erebus. And you, o Stygian goddesses, now spare the human race of such evils. In all lands and for all time let one day only have laid eyes on this kind of crime. Let the infamous monstrosity be forgotten by future generations and let only kings remember this battle. Dracontius similarly prays that the gods spare the present world of the kinds of transgressions that take place in Greek tragedy, such as the massacre at Lemnos, the crimes of Thyestes, and the events of his own Orestes. He preserves the Hellenocentric viewpoint of the poem and makes this prayer on behalf of the Pelasgians, the Greeks. 963 ‘Gods, to whom . . . authority’ Di, quibus imperio: adapts a solemn phrase used three times in Virgil’s Aeneid (2.352, 5.235, 6.264). 965–8 ‘piety. . integrity . . . simplicity . . . affection . . . the human race . . . communion . . . genealogies and family ties all pray to you’: on the accumulation of abstract subjects see note on lines 559–60 and ‘The Style of the Orestes’ in the introduction. 969–70 ‘the Lemnian women’s crimes’: see note on line 432. ‘the feast of the Danaids’ the 50 daughters of Danaus slaughtered the 50 sons of his brother Aegyptus on their wedding night at the order of their father; only Hypermnestra refused. In accounts of the Underworld in Latin literature the Danaids are punished for this action by having to fill leaking jars with water for all eternity. See OCD s.v. ‘Danaus’. ‘the deeds of Thyestes’: see note on line 203. Here the allusion is especially apt because Agamemnon and Orestes are son and grandson of Atreus and thus continue his familial conflict into the next generations. 972 ‘triple tragedy’: there are more than three famous crimes in the Atreid saga: the most important are (i) Tantalus’ kills his son Pelops and serves his flesh to the gods to eat; (ii) Atreus’ kills Thyestes’ children and serves them to their father to eat; (iii) Clytemnestra kills Agamemnon; (iv) Orestes kills Clytemnestra. Dracontius is thinking only of the last three, since he has just mentioned Thyestes and does not treat the earliest of these crimes. At the end of Aeschylus’ Libation-Bearers 1065–6, the chorus also observes that Orestes’ matricide is ‘the third tempest that has blown like a squall upon the royal house’, counting Thyestes’ consumption of his children and Agamemnon’s murder as the first two disasters. 974 ‘Pelasgians’: the Greeks; see note on line 45.

119

A P P E N D I X: T E X T U A L VA R I AT I O N S

The following table sets out which variants have been translated in this edition, compared to the three most recently published editions of the text. Its purpose is to allow readers to compare the English translation to Dracontius’ Latin more easily.

4

5 11 20 39 64 68 70 72 78 85 88 93 94 101 119 121 129

This edition

Bouquet and Wolff Grillone

Iliacae non quae iugularet Atridem laurea Taurica . . . cui sanare suis gemitus crebris singultibus si diuis non es

Iliacae non quae Iliacum nam Iliacae non quae iugularet Atridem quae iugularet iugularet Atridem Atridem laurea Thracia . . . qua sanantque simul gemitus crebris singultibus si barathro non es

aurea Taurica . . . qua sanare simul gemitu crebro singultus si barathro non es tactusque actusque actusque post aspera postremum tempora postremum tempora uitae uincta tempora uincta Achillis Achillis Achillis prece, pectore, prece, pectore, ture prece, pectore, ture ture tribuis praestas praestas [after 92] [after 92] [after 92] regi regi reduci luctus planctus planctus [after 118] [after 118] [after 118] [after 120] [after 120] [after 120] aequoreis . . . in aequoreas . . . in aequoreas . . . in undis undas undas

120

Zwierlein

laurea Taurica . . . cui sanare suis gemitu crebro singultus si diuis non es tactusque post aspera tempora uitae Achilli prece, prole reperta tribuis [after 88] regni luctus [after 120] [after 118] aequoreis . . . in undis

A ppendix : textual variations

145 151 179 180

amputet heu deperdere at . . . extorpeo factis

iam amputet uae reperdere at . . . extorpeo factis

234 242 289–90 300 340

hinc referens caelo [after 287] ibat [follows lacuna] haec spe et uocat tot nisus atque sua decerpite me profitente

plus referens caelo [after 288] ibat [no lacuna] haec

uernis probro [after 426] occidit regem turpis obire fremit scaeua Hector remaneret huc sponte uenitis [after 493] nec Furiis . . . mortale uenenum erro uacanti sic fama noster Danais . . . duorum [after 561] pericla portare patrios aetas me oro uestri minatur

seruis nouo [after 540] praecidit regnum dulcis auere premit saeua rectum est remanens est et sponte nocetis

350 366 367 390 393 397 411 416 423 427–52 427 430 445 459 463 467 468 489 490 497 507 525 533 546 565 562 563 570 572 587 610 617

re et boat conisus atque sua recerpite me profitente

[after 489] sed Furiis . . . mortale uenenum erro uaganti non fama? noster Danais . . . duorum [after 564] peracto portare proprios me aetas oro uestri minatus

121

iam amputet uae reperdere an . . . extorqueo factis plus referens caelo [after 288] esset [no lacuna] haec spe haec boat tot nixus atque sua recerpite me profitente

amputet heu deperdere at . . . extorpeo factis

hinc caelo referens [after 287] isset [follows lacuna] et spe et uocat tot nisus quo sua cum decerpite me 〈iam〉 profitente seruis uernis nouo probro [after 426] [after 426] possedit regnum occidit regem dulcis turpis habere obire tremit fremit saeua scaeua rectum Hector remanens est remaneret et sponte huc sponte nocetis uenitis [after 489] nec [after 493] sed Furiis . . . flagris . . . mortale furiale ueneni uenenum praedo praedo uacanti uacanti non fama? sic fama noster Danaum uester Danais . . . duorum . . . deorum [after 564] [after 561] peracto pericla portare portasse patrios patrios me aetas aetas me ora ora nostri nostri minatus minatur

A ppendix : textual variations

619 620 624 656 666 669 678 686 697 699 719 738 763 785 814 822 834 836 838 859 870 909 920 934 926 950 962 969

adulterium caperet matris deposceret regia familia acceleremus orta possint et planctu Martis actum sic minaci copulabat quippe facibus calcem [after 835] matrem cohibente de more sit nefas [after 924] rea non replentur festa

adulterium caperet matris cum posceret regia familia acceleramus quarta possent sed planctu Mortis ictum sic minaci capulabat quoque faculis chalybem [after 835] matris cohibente more sit negas [after 933] rea non replentur facta

122

adulterium caperet matris cum posceret regia familia acceleramus quarta possint sed planctu Martis ictum sed minaci capulabat quippe facibus calcem [after 835] matris accumbente more sit nefas [after 933] rea non repetuntur facta

adulterio cuperet mater deposceret regales famuli acceleremus orta possint et plausu Martis actum sed nec uno copulabat quippe facibus calcem [after 813] matrem accumbente de more sub nefas [after 924] rea nec Repetuntur Festa

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INDEX

Achilles 4, 14, 82, 83, 85, 89, 96, 98, 101, 106, 110, 111, 112, 115 adultery in late antiquity 80 Aegisthus 11, 14, 19, 20, 22, 25, 29; affair with Clytemnestra 13, 15, 16, 21, 22, 24, 26, 27, 32; characterisation 8, 14, 23, 26 – 7, 30, 87, 88; lowly status 79; his murder 78, 79, 103 – 4, 105 – 6; murder of Agamemnon 72, 82; name 27; rusticity 27, 33 – 4; Thyestes’ son 81; tyrant 12, 17, 27, 35, 87 – 8, 92 – 3; urged by Clytemnestra to kill Agamemnon 79 Aeneas 13, 14, 74, 75, 80, 89, 97, 98, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 111, 113 Aeschylus 2, 9, 12 – 13, 15, 21, 25, 26, 34, 103, 112, 114; Agamemnon 77, 78, 81, 85, 87 – 8, 91, 91 – 2; Eumenides 12, 81, 89, 99, 111, 114, 116, 117, 118; Libation-Bearers 13, 74, 81, 90, 93, 95, 100, 102, 105, 106, 107, 110, 119; Oresteia 11, 12 – 13, 81, 109, 112; Persians 95; Prometheus Bound 13, 108; Seven against Thebes 77 Agamemnon: champion of marriage 16, 19, 24, 30, 72, 73, 110; characterisation 23 – 4, 30, 82; family 16 – 17, 22, 23 – 4, 30, 32, 73, 83; ghost 12, 16, 19, 31, 95, 98, 103; gods and 18, 23, 73; king and general 17, 23; murder (lines 232 – 83) 16, 11, 13, 14, 17, 25, 26, 27, 71, 82 – 5;

sacrifice of Iphigenia 2, 17, 18, 22, 24, 25, 73, 75; on Tauris (lines 25 – 107) 11, 12, 73 – 6 Agrippina (mother of Nero) 99 Ajax 105, 111, 115 Alcestis 94 Alcmaeon 104 alliteration 81, 108, 116 Althaea 93 Amazons 89, 94 Amphiaraus 104 – 5 anaphora 101 Andromache 75, 100, 105, 107, 109, 113 Anthologia Latina 4 – 5 Apollo 73, 76, 81, 84, 94, 97, 99, 108, 109, 111, 112, 114, 116 apostrophe (direct address) 3, 8, 25, 94, 95, 104 Aristotle, Poetics 113 Ascanius 91, 105 asyndeton 101 Athena see Minerva Athens 12, 19, 20, 22, 26, 77, 86, 91, 95, 98, 103, 109, 113, 114, 118 Bellona 91 Cassandra 15, 17, 18 – 19, 22, 24, 33, 71, 75, 77, 83; her prophecy (lines 133 – 52) 78 – 9, 97, 107 Cato (poet) 4 Catullus 97 Cecrops 98, 103 censors, Roman 116

129

INDEX

Enyo 18, 97 epic poetry as a genre 7 – 8 Epicureanism 96 ‘epyllia’ 9 – 10 Erigone 112 Eriphyle 104 – 5 ethopopoeia see prosopopoeia Euripides 94, 96, 111; Andromache 109; Electra 85; Iphigenia in Tauris 11, 75, 111, 112, 113; Orestes 81; Trojan Women 74 Evadne 93, 94, 118

characterisation 8, 5, 13, 21, 24 – 5, 77, 78; death scene 14, 25, 29, 30, 34, 108; dominant female character 9, 21, 22, 24 – 5; ghost 19, 101, 110; mother to Orestes 16 – 17, 26, 72, 99 – 100; motivation 19, 25, 79; murder of Agamemnon 17, 19, 25; her murder 11, 17, 103 – 4, 106 – 9; mythic paradigms and comparisons 93 – 4; plans the murder of Agamemenon (line 153 – 231) 79 – 82; ruler of Mycenae 12, 16, 17, 87 – 9, 91 – 2; speech to people of Mycenae 91 – 2 Christianity 5, 10, 34 – 5, 71, 96, 97 Claudian 10, 82; The Abduction of Proserpina 87; Marriage Hymn for Honorius and Maria 118 Clytemnestra 11, 12, 13, 15, 16; adultery with Aegisthus 15, 16, 24 – 5, 26, 30, 32; as Fury 110 Codex Neapolitanus 1, 7 Codex Salmasianus 4, 5 Colluthus (poet) 10 controuersiae 2, 4, 114, 115 Danaus, daughters of 119 declamation 2, 13, 27, 29, 114 Delos 76 Delphi 18, 79, 84, 105, 109, 111 Diana 16, 18, 22, 23, 24, 30, 32, 33, 34, 72, 73, 74, 75 – 6, 109, 112 Dido 13, 14, 75, 80, 88, 89, 101, 110, 111 Diomedes 102, 103, 110 divine causation 9, 18 – 19, 32 Dorylas 11, 12, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 34, 90 – 1, 95, 96, 102, 103 ‘double motivation’ 18, 32 Dracontius: Christianity 2 – 3; De Laudibus Dei 3, 115 – 16; education 2; imprisonment 3, 35; knowledge of Greek 2, 12 – 13; life 1 – 3; name 1; Romulea 2, 3 – 4, 5, 6, 32 – 4, 74, 99, 115, 118; Satisfactio 2, 3; social prominence 2; works 3 – 4 dreams 7, 98, 99 ecphrasis (description) 8, 9, 29 Electra 11, 12, 15, 21, 30, 74, 80, 83, 90, 95, 100, 107, 118; saves Orestes (lines 284 – 304) 85 – 7, 113

Fama 77 family bonds 11, 15 – 17, 21, 23, 24, 27, 116 family in Dracontius’ poetry 32 fate 5, 9, 18 – 19, 32, 34, 84, 89, 94 Felicianus (grammaticus) 2 Felix (poet) 4 Florentius (poet) 4 freedmen 90 free will 18 – 19 Fulgentius of Ruspe 4 Furies 71, 72, 95, 96, 97, 99, 111, 112, 114 Gelimer (Vandal king) 5 gender stereotypes 21, 24, 25 genius (‘divine spirit’) 93 gigantomachy 82 Glauce 32, 93 – 4 gods in Dracontius’ poetry 32 grammaticus 2 Gunthamund (Vandal king) 3 Hector 4, 13, 89, 98, 100, 105, 107, 112, 113 Hecuba 32, 84, 96 Helen 4, 6, 7, 10, 19, 21, 25, 32, 33, 34, 72, 80, 83, 118 Hell see Underworld Hercules 3 – 4, 14, 80, 94, 102, 111, 117 Hermione 16, 20, 109, 110 Herodotus 93, 113 Hilderic (Vandal king) 5 Homer 7, 9, 26, 27, 74, 89, 106; Iliad 77, 98, 100, 102, 105; Odyssey 86, 90, 95, 109 Horace 7; Art of Poetry 90; Epistles 88

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INDEX

hubris 8 human and divine motivation see ‘double motivation’ Huneric (Vandal king) 3, 4 Hylas 4, 32 hyperbole 14, 15, 106, 115

Muse, invocation of 7, 8, 33, 72, 73, 90 Mycenae 8, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 29, 30, 75, 77, 91, 95, 98, 102, 104, 108, 109, 118 Myscelus 14, 117 mythological narrative poetry 9 – 10

Ilias Latina 112 Iphigenia 11, 12, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 30, 32, 33, 71, 72, 75, 83; discovered by Agamemnon on Tauris 73, 105; rescues Orestes 112 – 13

narratio 73 necromancy 7 Nonnus of Panopolis 10

Jason 32, 33, 93, 94 Judgment of Paris 117 – 18 justice 18, 20 – 1, 25, 31, 114, 116 Juvenal’s Satires 82, 103 knowledge and ignorance 8, 22, 113 late antiquity: literary culture 13, 27 – 8, 99; visual culture 13 Latin poetry in Vandal North Africa 4 – 5 Lemnian women 93, 94, 119 litotes 97 Lucan, Civil War 6, 8, 14 – 15, 71, 74, 76, 78, 79, 80, 85, 89, 92, 94, 96, 97, 104, 105, 108, 111, 114, 115 Lucretia 108 Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe 84, 91, 96 ludi magister 2 Luxorius (poet) 5 Lycurgus 111 madness 14, 15, 19, 20, 22, 26, 33, 78, 94, 106, 109, 110, 111 marriage 32, 72, 73, 80, 110, 116 Medea 4, 6, 7, 32, 33, 78, 93 – 4 Megaera 111 Melpomene (Muse of tragedy) 72 metonymy 72, 74, 75, 84, 91, 111 Minerva (Athena) 18, 21, 115, 117 Misenus 117 Molossus 12, 20, 21; prosecution speech 20, 114 – 16; seeks revenge on Orestes 20, 112 – 14 Musaeus (poet) 10

Odoacer 3 Odysseus see Ulysses Orestes (poem): antithesis 30 – 1, 115; authorship 6; contrastive style 15, 17, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 30 – 1, 33, 82, 85; Dracontius’ Christianity 34 – 5; Dracontius’ other poetry 32 – 4; enumeration 31 – 2; epilogue (lines 963 – 74) 11, 15, 18, 33, 118 – 19; episodic 28; family theme 11, 15 – 17, 21, 23, 24, 27, 116; gender 21; genre 7 – 10, 72, 109; gods 73, 82, 84, 116, 119; innovative features 11, 12; justice theme 18, 20 – 1, 25, 31, 114, 116; models and influences 12 – 15; narrator 8, 14 – 15, 73; politics and the state 17, 35 – 6; prominent motifs 22 – 3; religion and the supernatural 18 – 19; revenge 13, 14, 16, 17, 19 – 20, 22, 24, 25, 26, 91 – 2, 78, 79, 80, 90, 91, 93, 95, 101, 104 – 5, 107, 109, 111, 112 – 13, 114, 116, 117; speeches 13, 16, 20, 23, 28 – 9, 30, 79, 88, 91, 93, 95, 98, 99, 100 – 1, 114 – 15, 116, 117, 118; style, summary of main features 27 – 31; summary and structure 10 – 12; themes, summary 15 – 21; title 6 – 7; transmission 5 – 6; unifying motifs 11 – 12; Vandalic allusions 35 – 6; vivid description 29 – 30 Orestes (character) 8 – 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 25 – 6; in Athens 86 – 7, 98 – 9; characterisation 25 – 6, 71; compared to Pyrrhus 101; defence speech at trial 116 – 17; deliberates killing his mother 99 – 100; duty 15, 16, 19, 25 – 6, 72; friendship with Pylades 16, 26; madness 14, 20, 26, 110 – 12;

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INDEX

matricide 18, 26, 72, 103 – 4; murders Pyrrhus 109 – 10; ‘pardoned’ by Dracontius 20, 72; returns to Mycenae 102 – 3; saved by Electra 85 – 6; in Tauris 112 – 14; trial 12, 18, 19 – 20, 20 – 1, 26, 114 – 18 Ovid: Heroides 110; Letters from Pontus 112; Metamorphoses 14, 81, 83, 89, 90, 96, 108, 115, 117, 118 oxymora 30, 31, 71, 115 paradox 14, 15, 16, 21, 22, 25 – 6, 28, 30, 31, 71, 72, 88, 91, 101, 105, 106, 115 Paris 4, 25, 32, 33, 34, 95 – 6, 118 Patroclus 98 Pelasgians 74, 119 Penates 97 Penthesilea 89 Phocis 85 – 6, 102 pietas (‘dutiful respect’) 15 – 16, 23 – 4, 26, 73, 74, 91, 108 ‘pious impiety’ 21, 22 – 3, 25, 91, 94 Pirithous 98 – 9, 111 Plato 9, 96 Polyxena 11, 34, 83, 96, 101, 108, 109 Priam 4, 13, 32, 81, 84, 85, 89, 96 proem (lines 1 – 24) 15, 71 – 3 progymnasmata 2, 13 Propertius 6 prophecy 7, 15, 18 – 19, 22, 33, 78 – 9, 84, 97, 118 prosopopoeia 3 – 4, 101 pudor (‘shame’) 15, 34 punishment of the sack 115 Pylades 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 22, 26, 78, 85, 86, 98, 100 – 1, 102, 103 – 4, 104, 105, 106, 107, 112, 113 Pyrrhus 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 26, 28, 30, 79, 81 – 2, 101, 107, 109 – 10, 111, 113, 115, 116 Pythagoreanism 96 Quintus Smyrnaeus 10 recognition (anagnorisis) 8, 113 Reposianus, The Nuptials of Mars with Venus 85 reversal (peripeteia) 8, 85

rhetor 2 rhetoric, rhetorical style in poetry 3 – 4, 14 – 15, 27 – 8, 30, 31, 35, 71, 84, 86, 89, 94, 99, 101 ring-composition 76 Roman law 80, 115 sacrifice 2, 11, 17, 18, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 30, 33, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 83, 91, 94, 96, 100, 101, 107, 108, 112, 113, 116; Roman sacrifice 113 – 14 Scylla 93 Scythian women see Amazons Seneca, Senecan tragedy 9, 15, 21, 87, 111; Agamemnon 71, 73, 74, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 85, 89, 107; Hercules on Oeta 89; Medea 78; On Clemency 117; Trojan Women 83, 84, 85, 96, 105, 108 sententiae 88 – 9 Silius Italicus 90 similes 7, 14, 81 – 2, 83 – 4 Sophocles 12, 90, 96; Ajax 111; Electra 90, 104; Oedipus the King 102 ‘sorrowful joys’ 22, 30, 105 Soterichus (poet) 10 Statius: Achilleid 82, 83, 85, 110; Thebaid 7, 14 – 15, 72, 89, 90, 94, 96, 106, 107, 118, 118 – 19 stepmothers 90 storm at sea 8, 18, 34, 74, 75, 77, 108 Strophius 85, 86 suasoriae 2, 4 Tamyris 19, 93 Tauris 11, 12, 16, 18, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28, 29, 32, 34, 71, 72, 73, 74, 77, 78, 83, 112, 113 teichoscopia 8, 77 Teiresias 118 Temple of Apollo, Delphi 84, 99, 110, 111, 114 Temple of Athena Polias, Athens 115 Temple of Diana, Tauris 30, 72, 112 Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Rome 74 Thrasamund (Vandal king) 3, 4, 35 Thyestes 26, 80 – 1, 97, 104, 119 Titan (sun god) 18 togatus 2

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INDEX

tragedy 2, 6 – 7, 8 – 9, 13, 14, 15, 25, 33, 72, 77, 95, 102, 109, 119 tragic flaw (harmatia) 8 Triphiodorus (poet) 10 Turnus 14, 105, 106, 107 Tydeus 72, 106 Tyndareus 87, 112 Ulysses (Odysseus) 75, 100, 102, 110, 111, 115 Underworld 14, 34, 87, 95, 96, 97, 99, 102, 103, 110, 111 – 12, 119

Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica 74 Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings 93 Vandals 2, 3, 4, 5, 35 – 6 Virgil 5, 9; Aeneid 7, 8, 13 – 14, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 91, 98, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 117, 119; Eclogues 7; Georgics 92 Zeno (Eastern emperor) 3

133