Emotional Trauma in Greece and Rome: Representations and Reactions (Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies) [1 ed.] 9780815373476, 9781351243414, 0815373473

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of figures
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Contributors
Introduction
Note
Works cited
Part 1 War trauma
Chapter 1 Aspects of violence, trauma, and theater in Sophocles’ Ajax
Trauma core pattern and theoretical perspectives
The “core trauma pattern” of Sophocles’ Ajax
Conclusion
Notes
Works cited
Chapter 2 Combat trauma in Vergil’s Aeneid
Aristeia, berserk state, and survivor’s guilt
Peri-traumatic dissociation: Turnus and the boulder
“Return” of trauma and the end of the Aeneid
The epic as testimony: present, past, and future
Notes
Works cited
Part 2 Women and trauma
Chapter 3 Repetition, civic status, and remedy: Women and trauma in New Comedy
Separation from family
Slavery: traumas past, present, and future
Rape of citizen women
Conclusion
Notes
Works cited
Chapter 4 Subaltern women, sexual violence, and trauma in Ovid’s Amores
Rape trauma syndrome, tonic immobility, and victims’ experience of sexual assault
Expression of rape trauma in Ovid’s Amores: Corinna the Meretrix
Expression of rape trauma in Ovid’s Amores: Cypassis the ancilla
Conclusion
Notes
Works cited
Part 3 Collective trauma
Chapter 5 The Acropolis burning!: Reactions to collective trauma in the years after 480/79 BCE
Notes
Works cited
Chapter 6 Historiographical trauma: The case of Polybius
Trauma in/as history
Truth and the “life drive”
Notes
Works cited
Part 4 Natural disasters, exile, captivity
Chapter 7 Non est facile inter mala magna consipere: Trauma, earthquakes, and bibliotherapy in Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones
Educating the reader
Language of trauma
Part and parcel
Trauma and sublime
Trauma theory in the Naturales Quaestiones
Conclusion
Notes
Works cited
Chapter 8 Ovid and the trauma of exile
Notes
Works cited
Chapter 9 Philo’s Flaccus: Trauma, justice, and revenge
The fall of Flaccus
Flaccus’ speeches, authorial comments, and mental disintegration
Conclusion
Notes
Works cited
Part 5 Communicating trauma
Chapter 10 Learning to bear witness: Tragic bystanders in Sophocles’ Trachiniae
The first level: a witness to oneself
The second level: a witness to the testimonies of others
The third level: a witness to the process of witnessing itself
Notes
Works cited
Chapter 11 Oedipus’ lament: Waking and refashioning the traumatic past in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus
The sound of the nightingale
Oedipus’ choral lament in the kommos: the integration of Oedipus
Oedipus’ choral lament in the kommos: the creation of social memory
Traumatic memory and narrative memory: Thebes and Athens
Notes
Works cited
Chapter 12 Troy as trauma: Reflections on intergenerational transmission and the locus of trauma
Introduction
Lament, time and prophecy: Achilles and Cassandra
Time, ruins and transmission of trauma
Post-memory, relic trauma and the haunting of trauma
Place of trauma, relic trauma: conclusion
Notes
Works cited
Index

Citation preview

Emotional Trauma in Greece and Rome

This volume examines emotional trauma in the ancient world, focusing on literary texts from different genres (epic, theatre, lyric poetry, philosophy, historiography) and archaeological evidence. The material covered spans geographically from Greece and Rome to Judaea, with a chronological range from about 8th c. bce to 1st c. ce. The collection is organized according to broad themes to showcase the wide range of possibilities that trauma theory offers as a theoretical framework for a new analysis of ancient sources. It also demonstrates the various ways in which ancient texts illuminate contemporary problems and debates in trauma studies. Andromache Karanika is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of California, Irvine, U.S.A. She is the author of Voices at Work: Women, Performance and Labor (2014) and has co-authored a textbook on Modern Greek. Vassiliki Panoussi is Professor of Classical Studies at William & Mary, U.S.A. She is the author of Vergil’s Aeneid and Greek Tragedy: Ritual, Empire, and Intertext (2009), and Brides, Mourners, Bacchae: Women’s Rituals in Roman Literature (2019).

Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies

Titles include: The Bible, Homer, and the Search for Meaning in Ancient Myths Why We Would Be Better Off With Homer’s Gods John Heath Fantasy in Greek and Roman Literature Graham Anderson Piracy, Pillage, and Plunder in Antiquity Appropriation and the Ancient World Edited by Richard Evans and Martine de Marre Romans at War Soldiers, Citizens, and Society in the Roman Republic Edited by Jeremy Armstrong and Michael P. Fronda The Discourse of Kingship in Classical Greece Carol Atack Emotional Trauma in Greece and Rome Representations and Reactions Edited by Andromache Karanika and Vassiliki Panoussi The Representation of Slavery in the Greek Novel Resistance and Appropriation William M. Owens Memories of Utopia The Revision of Histories and Landscapes in Late Antiquity Edited by Bronwen Neil and Kosta Simic The Making of Identities in Athenian Oratory Edited by Jakub Filonik, Brenda Griffith-Williams and Janek Kucharski Homicide in the Attic Orators Rhetoric, Ideology, and Context Christine Plastow Underworld Gods in Ancient Greek Religion Ellie Mackin Roberts For more information on this series, visit: https://www.routledge.com/classicalstudies/series/RMCS

Emotional Trauma in Greece and Rome Representations and Reactions

Edited by Andromache Karanika and Vassiliki Panoussi

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Andromache Karanika and Vassiliki Panoussi; individual chapters, the contributors. The right of Andromache Karanika and Vassiliki Panoussi to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, 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 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-8153-7347-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-24341-4 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Contents

List of figures Acknowledgments Abbreviations Contributors Introduction

vii viii ix x 1

ANDROMACHE KARANIKA AND VASSILIKI PANOUSSI

PART 1

War trauma 1

Aspects of violence, trauma, and theater in Sophocles’ Ajax

9 11

TRIGG SETTLE

2

Combat trauma in Vergil’s Aeneid

30

VASSILIKI PANOUSSI

PART 2

Women and trauma 3

Repetition, civic status, and remedy: Women and trauma in New Comedy

47 49

SHARON L. JAMES

4

Subaltern women, sexual violence, and trauma in Ovid’s Amores JESSICA WISE

71

vi Contents PART 3

Collective trauma 5

The Acropolis burning!: Reactions to collective trauma in the years after 480/79 bce

93 95

MARION MEYER

6

Historiographical trauma: The case of Polybius

111

SUSAN C. JARRATT

PART 4

Natural disasters, exile, captivity 7

Non est facile inter mala magna consipere: Trauma, earthquakes, and bibliotherapy in Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones

123 125

CHRISTOPHER TRINACTY

8

Ovid and the trauma of exile

143

SANJAYA THAKUR

9

Philo’s Flaccus: Trauma, justice, and revenge

160

PHILIP R. BOSMAN

PART 5

Communicating trauma

175

10 Learning to bear witness: Tragic bystanders in Sophocles’ Trachiniae 177 ERIKA L. WEIBERG

11 Oedipus’ lament: Waking and refashioning the traumatic past in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus

192

LAURIALAN REITZAMMER

12 Troy as trauma: Reflections on intergenerational transmission and the locus of trauma

210

ANDROMACHE KARANIKA

Index

227

Figures

  5.1 The Persians on the Acropolis in 480 bce as imagined by Manolis Korres (Korres, M. 1992. Vom Penteli zum Parthenon. Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek: München. 51)   5.2 The Tyrannicides (Roman copy). Naples, Museo Nazionale 6009+6010 (photo M. Meyer)   5.3 Column drums and entablature of destroyed temples in the north wall of the Acropolis (photo M. Meyer)   5.4 Model of the Acropolis (ca. 400 bce). Athens, Acropolis Museum (photo M. Meyer)   5.5 Location of the Parthenon (on the podium of the Pre-Parthenon), the Old Temple and the spolia in the north wall (Di Cesare 2015, 326 Figure 15)   5.6 Plan of the Acropolis ca. 485 bce. 1 Altar; 2 Old Temple; 3–7 cult sites and marks; 8 Pre-Parthenon (plan H. R. Goette, adapted by Marion Meyer)   5.7 Model of the Acropolis ca. 485 bce. Athens, Acropolis Museum (photo H. R. Goette)   5.8 Plan of the Acropolis ca. 470 bce. 1 Altar; 2 remains of Old Temple; 3–6 cult sites and marks; 7 naïskos for Athena; 8 theatron; 9 Pre-Parthenon (plan M. Meyer; drawing A. Sulzgruber)   5.9 Model of the Acropolis, Imperial times. Athens, Acropolis Museum (photo H. R. Goette) 5.10 Cult site for Erechtheus (“altar of Thyechoos”) in the North porch of the Erechtheion. Model in Basel, Skulpturhalle (photo M. Meyer) 5.11 Erechtheion, east and north side (photo H. R. Goette) 5.12 Erechtheion, west side, with Pandroseion in front (photo M. Meyer)

96 97 98 98 99 100 101 101 102 104 106 106

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our editor at Routledge, Amy Davis-Poynter, who enthusiastically supported this project from the beginning. Our editorial assistant, Elizabeth Risch, expertly guided us through the manuscript preparation process, while Ella Halstead shepherded it through production and publication. Jayanthi Chander, Project Manager at Deanta Global, oversaw the copy-editing process, while Kate Mertes carefully prepared the index. We would also like to acknowledge our institutions, University of California at Irvine and William & Mary, for providing us with funds in the stages of both research and publication of this collection. Special thanks to John Donahue, Associate Dean at William & Mary, for securing funds for the book’s index. Many of the discussions and reflections in this volume began at an international conference we organized in June 2016 at the European Cultural Centre of Delphi, Greece. We wish to thank the academic coordinators of the ECCD, the staff at Delphi, and especially Ms. Maro Nikolopoulou, Head of Conferences & Artistic Programmes Department, whose meticulous help and good cheer helped make that event a success. We are also grateful to all the participants for the collegiality and intellectual stimulation they provided, and which gave the impetus for this publication. The two editors worked closely at every stage, from organizing the conference to the selection of topics and essays. Some papers delivered at the conference are not included in this collection, while others have been added. The conference papers that have been included were heavily revised. Both editors read every chapter and provided joint feedback to the authors. The three anonymous reviewers for the press helped improve this volume with their insightful comments, for which we are grateful.

Abbreviations

DSM-III

American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 3rd ed. Arlington: American Psychiatric Association, 1980. DSM- IV American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th ed. Arlington: American Psychiatric Association, 1995. DSM-V American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 5th ed. Arlington: American Psychiatric Association, 2013. IG I3 Inscriptiones Graecae I: Inscriptiones Atticae Euclidis anno anteriores (Attic Inscriptions before the year of Eucleides). 3rd ed. 3 vols. Berlin: DeGruyter, 1981, 1994. OCD Whitmarsh, T. ed. Oxford Classical Dictionary. 5th ed. https:// oxfordre.com/classics/ OLD Glare, P. G. W. ed. Oxford Latin Dictionary. London: Oxford University Press, 1968-1982. The consonantal ‘v’ and ‘j’ in the Latin texts have been printed as ‘u’ and ‘i’ and ‘V’ and ‘I’ in capitals. Abbreviations for ancient authors and works are according to the OCD. Periodicals have been abbreviated according to L’Année Philologique.

Contributors

Philip R. Bosman is Professor of Classics at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He is a specialist in the traditions and influences of the Cynic movement in antiquity, on which he has written numerous articles. His interest in emotional trauma stems from studies in the notion of conscience in ancient literature, and depictions of pangs of conscience in particular. Among his numerous publications are a monograph, Conscience in Philo and Paul: A Conceptual History of the Synoida Word Group (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2, Reihe 166, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003) and three edited volumes, Alexander in Africa (Acta Classica Supplementum V, 2014, Pretoria), Corruption and Integrity in Ancient Greece and Rome (Acta Classica Supplementum IV, 2012, Pretoria), and Mania: Madness in the Greco-Roman World (Acta Classica Supplementum III, 2009, Pretoria). Sharon L. James is Professor of Classics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She has published Learned Girls and Male Persuasion: Gender and Reading in Roman Love Elegy (California University Press, 2003) and many articles on elegy, New Comedy, rape, gender, and women in antiquity. She co-edited the Blackwell Companion to Women in Antiquity (2011) and Women in the Classical World (Routledge, 2017). She co-directed the NEH 2012 Summer Institute, “Roman Comedy in Performance,” and her forthcoming book, Women in New Comedy, studies all the female characters in Menander, Plautus, and Terence. Susan C. Jarratt is Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Rereading the Sophists: Classical Rhetoric Refigured (Southern Illinois University Press, 1991; paperback reprint 1998) and numerous articles and chapters on ancient Greek rhetoric. She has published recently on the late lectures of Michel Foucault with an interest in parrhêsia. Her current project, Chain of Gold: Greek Rhetoric in the Roman Empire, analyzes Second Sophistic rhetoric through topoi of geographic displacement, cultural memory, and tactical political agency, finding in the orations of Dio Chrysostom, Aristides, and Philostratus intricate negotiations with imperium.

Contributors 

xi

Andromache Karanika is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of California, Irvine. She has published articles on Homer, women’s oral genres, lament, pastoral poetry and, recently, on Homeric reception in Byzantine literature. She is the author of Voices at Work: Women, Performance and Labor (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014) and has co-authored a textbook on Modern Greek. She is currently working on a book on wedding songs and poetics and the interactions of lyric and epic poetry and articles on the reception of ancient myth and literature in contemporary fiction. She is the editor of TAPA (formerly known as Transactions of the American Philological Association). Marion Meyer (Ph.D. Bonn; habilitation in Hamburg) is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Vienna, Austria. She previously taught at the universities of Munich, Hamburg, Florida, and Bonn. Her main research interests are ancient Greek culture, ancient Athens, visual communication; the creation, tradition, use, function, and significance of images; and phenomena of acculturation in the Eastern Mediterranean. Her recent publications on these subjects include Athena, Goddess of Athens. Cult and Myth on the Acropolis until Classical times (2017, in German). She currently works on public and private commemoration of the dead in Athens. Vassiliki Panoussi is Professor of Classical Studies at William & Mary. She is the author of Vergil’s Aeneid and Greek Tragedy: Ritual, Empire, and Intertext (Cambridge University Press, 2009, paperback reprint 2014) and Brides, Mourners, Bacchae: Women’s Rituals in Roman Literature (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019). She has also published articles on various Roman authors such as Cicero, Catullus, Vergil, Propertius, Ovid, Lucan, and Statius, as well as on the reception of Classical myth in youth literature. Her work in progress is a book project on the role of the Egyptian goddess Isis in Roman literature. Laurialan Reitzammer is Associate Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her interests are in Greek literature, Greek mythology and religion, and gender and sexuality. Her first book,  The Athenian Adonia in Context: The Adonis Festival as Cultural Practice (Wisconsin University Press, 2016), examines visual and literary representations of the Adonis festival. She has published articles on the Adonia in Journal of Hellenic Studies and Classical Antiquity, and she has contributed a chapter on Euripides’ Bacchae to the Blackwell Companion to Euripides (ed. L. McClure, 2016). Her current book project concerns theoria and gender in classical Athenian tragedy and she has recently published essays connected with this book. Trigg Settle is currently completing a Ph.D. in Classics at Brown University. His dissertation titled, Trauma and the Interpretation of Tragedy: Studies in Greek Theater and Drama, asks how viewing Greek tragedy’s violence, death, and loss through the modern discourses of trauma can inform our understanding of Greek drama and its historical recurrences.

xii Contributors Sanjaya Thakur is Associate Professor of Classics and Chair at Colorado College. His research interests are in Latin poetry of the Augustan age and Ovid in particular. His published work includes articles on Livia’s portrait in Ovid in Eugesta: Journal on Gender Studies in Antiquity (2014), on “Tiberius, the Varian Disaster, and the Dating of Tristia 2” in Materiali e Discussioni per l’Analisi dei Testi Classici (2014), and on “Dido and Gift-Giving in Vergil’s Aeneid” in Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica (2013). Christopher Trinacty is Associate Professor of Classics at Oberlin College. His research focuses on Seneca, Horace, and Greek tragedy. He is the author of Senecan Tragedy and the Reception of Augustan Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2014), and of several articles on Roman authors such as Horace, Propertius, Seneca, and Lucan. He is currently working on a commentary on Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones Book 3. Erika L. Weiberg is an Assistant Professor of Classics at Florida State University. She has published articles on trauma in Greek tragedy and is completing a book manuscript on wives of soldiering heroes on the home front in Greek drama. Jessica Wise is a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Classical Studies at Wellesley College. She received her Ph.D. in Classical Philology at the University of North Carolina. Her research interests include Latin literature of the Augustan age, particularly Roman elegy, women in the ancient world, and the intersection of gender, class, and politics in ancient societies. She is currently engaged in several projects that investigate the relationship between gender, speech, and power in the early Roman Empire, with forthcoming articles on female speech in Propertian elegy, and the complex representation of gender in Roman foundations in Ovid’s Fasti.

Introduction Andromache Karanika and Vassiliki Panoussi

Trauma theory and trauma studies permeate a great spectrum of different disciplines, from philosophy and history to social studies, media studies, and clinical studies in psychology and medicine. While the concept of trauma originates from a Greek word that denotes the visible wound inflicted on one’s body, contemporary usage explores mental processes and the complexity of psychological reactions involving personal or collective catastrophic events that radically alter external circumstances and internal balances. The early Greek use of the term trauma, especially in Euripides (e.g., Heraclidae 684; Iphigenia In Tauris 313 and 1374; Troades 1152), is often associated with a physical disfiguration that is visible and may cause pain. Greek tragic poetry is the genre that presents some of the most intriguing applications of the word, always connoting communicable physicality through the sense of sight. The Freudian use of the term in studies on hysteria in the 1890s brought the force of the visible ancient wound into the hidden processes of human reactions to what is lived and experienced as calamity. The term thus entered psychoanalysis and appears in subsequent philosophical and historical works. While it is entirely possible that a pseudo-etymological link was conjectured between the Greek trauma and the German word traum (“dream”), the concept of trauma studies originates at the intersection of neo-classical and romantic eras. The events of the twentieth century that followed, and swept much of the world to different directions, dramatically influenced the philosophical renderings and understanding of historical time and of the sense of temporality. Trauma informs life beyond its historical conscience and lurks as a factor shaping human behavior and existence. Much of current work in the humanities, history, and literature, in particular, follows different trends in understanding emotion as an abstract but deeply nuanced and complex aspect of humanity, possibly at once unchanging and ever-changing. Trauma theory, a term encountered in the leading work of Cathy Caruth (1996: 72), has been largely informed by Holocaust studies and the increased awareness of the clinical symptoms around abuse, sexual abuse, and torture. Anything that threatens bodily integrity or constitutes a close personal encounter with violence or death at an individual or collective level can cause trauma. Neurological studies emphasize the traumatic stressor and excitations in the brain, which, often not fully able to assimilate or “process” the event, resorts to different reaction

2  Andromache Karanika and Vassiliki Panoussi mechanisms. One of the most contested areas of trauma studies is the relationship between memory and trauma. In one view, the more horrific and prolonged the trauma, the more the individual tends to dissociate from it at a conscious level. Repression and re-digression are common (see, e.g., Van der Kolk 1997). Other practitioners and theorists follow the opposite, anti-repression memory camp (see, e.g., MacLeod et al. 2003). Trauma studies focus on key debates that include the unfathomability of traumatic experience, the vicissitudes of memory, the level and type of representational affinities (realist, anti-realist, unrepresentable). Moreover, different aspects of trauma theory have often received criticism as possibly Eurocentric and racially, economically, and ethnically exclusive. Cathy Caruth’s work (1995, 1996) has been foundational for trauma studies. Caruth places the idea of “belatedness” at the center of her theory of trauma, arguing that a traumatic event is accessible only in its return. Caruth explores different artistic expressions, including an analysis of Alain Resnais’ and Marguerite Duras’ film, Hiroshima mon amour; but as this volume attests, her theoretical framework and analysis can be deeply useful to classicists as well, especially as it emphasizes revisiting the traumatic event in order to understand, embrace, analyze, uncover, and recover from trauma. Other contemporary studies highlight the precarious relation between traumatic memory and accuracy (Laney and Loftus 2005), the fabrication of traumatic memory (as for example the alien abduction narratives in American studies), and even the making of imaginary trauma, further complicating the understanding of what constitutes trauma (Luckhurst 1998). Ruth Leys points out that the very concept of trauma is characterized by lack of stability and fluctuation. Her work (2000) brings the making of post-memory to the front focus and examines how photographic evidence of calamitous events becomes the locus of memory. Informed by Leys’ and similar studies, this volume addresses trauma as fragmentation, fear, frenzy, and an originary cause of narrative and character staging across literary genres and archaeological evidence. Part of our contention is that, unlike the physical wound, which is the result of a specific and temporally framed act of violence, trauma manifests itself not as a moment, but as a continuum. Arguably, part of the reaction to trauma is the attempt to hide the fragment or time of fragmentation and restore an earlier condition. The theme of restoration is an integral part of many ancient narratives, rituals, and representations of mythical or other storytelling. This volume asks further how different types of narratives represent the effects of calamity and what kind of cultural structures they leave as their trace. Narrative is an empowering mechanism in therapeutic processes of dealing with trauma, but how does it absorb ancient social behaviors and attitudes? How can we detect ancient attitudes as emotional responses to trauma? Is trauma transmittable through storytelling and mythological re-enactment on different media, and, if so, how does it generate knowledge or shape ideologies? Does it change our cultural norms of understanding and coping with trauma? Much of the scholarship in classics has focused on post-traumatic stress disorder. From Jonathan Shay’s Achilles in Vietnam (1994) to the work of Crowley

Introduction  3 (2012) and Meineck and Konstan (2014), several theoretical and performance perspectives focus on the warrior hero. In addition, the work of Doerries (2015) proposes to extend the study and performance of ancient Greek texts with an eye toward clinical and therapeutic uses.1 This volume explores these and other questions further, examining how we discuss, use, and analyze ancient texts as refractions of the human experience and historical reality. We seek to offer a register of possible reactions to trauma, one that extends from an ancient text to a lived emotion. We investigate whether the individual experience can be metamorphosed into a common experience, and whether this may constitute part of a process to manage trauma. Moreover, we inquire how we may uncover trauma in our often deeply fragmented or cryptic sources, and how those represent or help inform contemporary approaches and even healing practices. The collection covers a wide range of materials, literary texts from different genres (epic, tragedy, comedy, philosophy, lyric poetry, historiography), oral genres, such as lament, theatrical performance, and architecture. Geographically, it spans from Greece and Rome to Judaea with a chronological range from about 8th c. bce to 1st c. ce. As a result, we examine the many facets of emotional trauma and the ways in which Greeks and Romans understood it and expressed it in literature, history, theatre, art, or philosophy. The volume brings together a variety of ancient perspectives on trauma, demonstrates the rich possibilities of this line of inquiry, and affirms the continuing resonance of Greek and Roman culture on important issues of our own times. It is organized according to broad themes to showcase the wide range of potential of trauma theory as a framework opening up not only new angles through which we can view ancient sources but also ways that make ancient texts illuminate critical thinking in trauma studies. The main question we pose is how trauma presents itself in ancient sources, how do characters in ancient narratives manage it, and how it informs and transforms historical experience. The chapters discuss personal trauma, but also communal or collective trauma with an aim to trace its diverse facets and how these are registered in the textual and archaeological evidence from the ancient world. As a result, some chapters query how ancient literary and performative genres refract trauma and how ancient perceptions of trauma inform or shape literary genres, such as tragic discourse, oral genres like the lament as recorded in literature, or highly self-conscious genres, like Roman elegy or epic. The approaches to trauma and the methodologies employed differ considerably in the various chapters of this collection. Some authors engage deeply with trauma theory, probing notions that have long occupied trauma studies in literature, such as the function of memory, the search for testimony, the concepts of repetition and belatedness, and trauma’s vexed relationship with the process of representation. Other chapters treat trauma as a useful concept to think in fresh ways about various ancient narratives and a lens through which we can read that body of literature more productively, raising our awareness of the deeper social contexts that were created or affected by catastrophic experiences.

4  Andromache Karanika and Vassiliki Panoussi Although we have divided the contents of the volume in five separate sections, each focusing on a different aspect of trauma, some broader common themes emerge. First and foremost, we encounter the concept of repetition. Trauma as an experience to which the victim returns is a thread present in the majority of the chapters. Repetition in many literary texts is used as a means to express trauma (James) but also as an attempt at healing (Thakur). This repetition of trauma is often motivated from a desire to produce a witness, to overcome the isolation imposed by the event (Caruth 1995: 10–11). Representations of traumatic occurrences, as Kaplan (2005: 20) argues, construct a witness, thus surmounting the impossibility of representation and transmission of the traumatic experience. Greek tragedy in particular represents and constructs several levels of witnessing, from the chorus and other characters (Weiberg) to the audience itself (Settle). Traumatic behavior can be detected in epic and tragic discourse as entrenched in specific heroes’ presence therein, starkly revealing how trauma permeates ancient perceptions of heroic behavior such as that of Aeneas (Panoussi) or Oedipus (Reitzammer). Trauma also blurs the lines between past, present, and future, as the traumatic experience defies the time continuum. This has repercussions for the transmission of trauma, which looks back to the past, retracing it, recasting it, shaping individual memory, as Reitzammer shows in the case of Oedipus, as well as the collective, as Karanika demonstrates in the case of Troy. Other times victims seek to preserve the physical evidence of trauma, memorializing it in the collective memory as a means of constructing a new identity (Bosman and Jarratt). So, for example, Meyer argues that the Athenians preserved the physical traces of the destruction the Persian wars wrought in order to recast themselves as winners, or, as Karanika suggests in the case of Cyprus and Armenia, communities or ethnic groups use the memory of trauma in order to focus the construction of their identity around the loss they have endured. Another theme permeating several chapters is that the narratives exploring trauma incurred by individuals belonging to traditionally disenfranchised social groups of the ancient world, such as women and slaves, call into question the dominant ideological points of view that enabled trauma in the first place. James discusses how New Comedy dramatizes the plight of women and slaves onstage; Wise reveals that the genre of Roman elegy, written by and for a male audience, showcases the trauma of the female “beloved,” and Panoussi argues that Rome’s national epic, the Aeneid, exposes war trauma as shared by victor and defeated alike and forces the reader to view Rome’s empire under a new light. Ancient literary works are highly self-conscious, and especially cognizant and reflective of their place within their generic tradition. Time and again the chapters in this collection reflect on the way different authors engaging in different genres use literary topoi to explore the contours of representing trauma. Jarratt demonstrates a progression in Polybius’ historiography whereby rhetorical devices are first rejected then put in the service of the author’s point of view—a Greek writing a history of the Roman conquest; Bosman traces the traditional concept of justice in Philo’s portrait of Flaccus to explain and account for the

Introduction  5 latter’s traumatic experience; and Trinacty argues that Seneca puts to work not only philosophical tenets but also allusions to literature in order to instruct his reader in dealing with the fear and anguish produced by natural disasters such as earthquakes. Having thus mapped out the larger intellectual and critical context within which this book operates, as well as the greater themes emerging from the individual chapters, we turn to an overview of the contents in a more linear fashion. Part I, “War Trauma,” proposes new ways of examining and interpreting the trauma of war. It examines specific representations of combat trauma (Greek tragedy, Roman epic) and through them addresses ancient modes and perceptions of narrating trauma and their significance for individual and collective narratives. Settle explores how in Sophocles’ Ajax violence is a catalyst for not only the hero’s trauma but that of other characters as well. He introduces the concept of the “core trauma pattern,” arguing that this pattern structures violence in a way that mirrors trauma symptoms such as belatedness, deferral, and repetition. The hero is alienated from his own actions, and fully comprehends the violent acts he has committed only after the fact. Consequently, the experience of violence in the play is always secondary, always deferred. The tragedy masterfully merges the staging of spectators of Ajax’s “performances” within the play with the witnessing of trauma by actual spectators, namely the audience or readers of the play, ancient or contemporary. Panoussi examines combat trauma in Vergil’s canonical Roman epic, the Aeneid, arguing that it is used both as a trope and as a reality for characters and audience alike. Like the previous paper, this chapter, too, assesses the constraints but also the possibilities of the genre’s representation, proposing that the text delves deeply in the psychology of Aeneas as a warrior suffering trauma. In this light, Aeneas’ final act of killing Turnus is cast as violence sparked by the return of a traumatic experience, expressed in the “return” of the memory of Pallas’ death when Aeneas gazes at Pallas’ sword belt now worn by Turnus. More broadly, this chapter seeks to examine the intersection between conventions of representation and the importance of trauma in understanding Aeneas as a model warrior and leader. The next section, “Women and Trauma,” explores the variety of ways in which women and their socio-cultural roles as portrayed in ancient art and literature relay emotional trauma. It addresses separation from family, displacement, sexual and physical violence against women as complex experiences that have left their mark in Greek and Roman sources in ways that also reveal how contemporary perceptions of trauma have been shaped. James’ detailed typology of the various types of trauma in New Comedy demonstrates the incredible amount of work that needs to be done on these texts. She sketches out the evidence in the following categories: gendered violence and threats against women of all social statuses; rape; physical abuse and torture of female slaves; anxiety over children; physical alienation from family, social status, and natal country; fear of enslavement in prostitution or concubinage. This overwhelming amount of evidence demonstrates that New Comedy (Greek and Roman) puts trauma on display, despite the

6  Andromache Karanika and Vassiliki Panoussi genre’s light-hearted nature, and impacts the various members of the audience in different ways. Freedwomen, aristocratic women, slave women saw their own experiences represented onstage. Additionally, the men in the audience, who likewise comprised all strata of the population, were forced to face the harsh realities enacted in the plays. Wise’s chapter narrows the focus on rape and the power structures disadvantaging subaltern women, courtesans, and slaves. She demonstrates that Ovid’s Amores repeatedly showcases the victim’s reactions, whether she is a courtesan or slave, illustrating a deep awareness of the rape victim’s psychology and reactions, which modern theory has just begun to acknowledge and understand. Wise argues that Ovid often adopts the victim’s perspective, not only offering a surprising turn of pathos and sympathy but also questioning established mores, legal statutes, and social and gender hierarchies. Part III, “Collective Trauma,” investigates cases of reactions to trauma from the point of view of groups, whether it is a city monumentalizing trauma for its citizens or a historical narrative describing traumatic events experienced by its audience. By focusing on specific historical accounts, we seek to move beyond literary representations and address the reality of personal and cultural loss constructed as a traumatic event. Meyer’s chapter studies a range of actions after the destruction of the main sanctuary in the Acropolis at Athens during the final phase of the Persian wars, a traumatic event for Athenians that left its trace in the archaeological record. In examining the archaeology of the transfer of the cult statue of Athena, the installation of new monuments, and the city’s refusal to rebuild at the site of the destroyed temple, she proposes that the Athenians both kept a visual record of their traumatic experience and aimed to recast it. These actions of great symbolic value aimed at coping with the trauma the Athenian people suffered by the devastation of their city and the desecration of Athena’s sanctuary. Jarratt explores Polybius’ history of the Roman conquest, most of which he composed during the period of his “soft” captivity in Rome (167–150 bce). She suggests that Polybius’ rhetoric reveals a traumatic subtext, attributable to his experience as a Greek hostage composing under conditions of Roman subjugation and, later, to his experiences of the Roman decimation of Carthage and Corinth. In the earlier parts of his narrative, Polybius employs the rhetorical topos of integration and wholeness, resisting the fragmentation of the traumatic experience. He also rejects the expression of emotion in graphic accounts of destruction. In later parts of his history, however, both historian and reader become witnesses to the suffering and loss so carefully contained earlier on. The fourth part, “Natural Disasters, Exile, Captivity” continues the earlier analysis on loss and trauma and examines their impact on various other contexts, such as natural disasters (in Seneca), a prolonged exile (in Ovid) or a hostage situation (in Philo). Like the previous section, it focuses on themes of time and temporality and the passage from the personal to the collective experience of trauma. Trinacty characterizes Seneca’s work as deeply aware of the post-traumatic stress victims of natural disasters undergo. Seneca proposes a remedy through the practice of philosophy and the reading of other literary texts. As in modern trauma

Introduction  7 therapy, for Seneca, too, the recall of past traumatic experience constitutes a working through and helps healing. As a result, Seneca suggests that reading past works and authors helps the reader come to terms with trauma, and eventually the ultimate form of fear, fear of death itself. Thakur reads Ovid’s exilic poetry as both describing the symptoms of trauma and searching for a witness to the traumatic experience of exile. The chapter explains the repetitive nature of the exilic poetry that has both baffled scholars and has resulted in negative assessments of this body of poetry and proposes that for Ovid, the poetic act constitutes an attempt at therapy. While the poems do not revisit the initial trauma, the repetition enacted therein attests to the poet’s continuous “working through” of the traumatic experience of exile. Next, grappling with the problem of captivity, Bosman demonstrates that Philo was a keen observer of mental health and trauma symptoms, which he attempts to classify within a larger framework at once medical and moral. In his portrayal of Flaccus, Philo submits that the representation of Flaccus’ mental condition in captivity within the moral framework of justice and retribution helps render trauma intelligible. The collection’s final thematic unit, “Communicating Trauma,” refines the discussions about surviving and communicating trauma and looks further at the transmissibility of trauma. When trauma sufferers tell their stories, they are often not believed. The failure of the witness to share the weight of the victim’s complex moral knowledge is at times more damaging to the survivor than the original trauma. From this theoretical perspective, Weiberg’s chapter focuses on the roles of Hyllus and the chorus in Sophocles’ Trachiniae, who survive traumatic events that result in the deaths of Deianeira and Heracles. Weiberg closely analyzes the demanding and painful process of learning to bear witness, suspending preconceived judgments, and engaging the tragic audience. Reitzammer brings new insights to earlier discussions of personal and collective trauma by considering Oedipus as a tragic character who negotiates the trauma of his existence. With a focus on lamentation as a genre that manages trauma and its portrayal in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, Reitzammer further suggests that it is by means of lament, by waking the past and refashioning one’s own narrative through mourning, that Oedipus becomes a dweller in Colonus and negotiates his earlier trauma in a new setting as he creates a new sense of self and a new identity in a new city. Lament is thus seen as part of not only the emotional response but also the healing process through which past and present, hero and community come together. While time can be blurred in attempts to narrate trauma, theorists increasingly argue that the notion of place becomes the anchor of trauma in narrative. Karanika’s chapter closes the volume, discussing lament and its relationship with the idea of place, focusing on Troy as the locus of trauma. Like a character, the place becomes an agent that permeates thinking about collective trauma. Troy is an example of “intergenerational” trauma, projected from the mythical realm and perpetuated onto the historical time. Through a diachronic lens, Karanika reads Troy as an exemplum of a “relic” trauma steering ideology. Ancient perceptions can influence contemporary approaches to understanding the depths of traumatic experience. Both individual and large-scale or historical

8  Andromache Karanika and Vassiliki Panoussi trauma, ancient or modern, often lie under the radar. This volume offers new views on trauma that is hidden, refracted, or exposed in a diverse body of literary and archaeological evidence from the ancient world. Intersecting with studies of emotion, violence, lament, as well as building on the application of trauma theory on different types of works from antiquity, our aim is to provoke further study on trauma as a factor that shaped definitively ancient literature and art.

Note 1 Doerries’ Theater of War project has presented to different groups, including veteran groups, as well as academic, school, and other audiences, performances and recitations of ancient tragedy, such as Sophocles’ Ajax. These performances have received attention from the mainstream media and the general public.

Works cited Caruth, C. ed. 1995. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Caruth, C. 1996. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Crowley, J. 2012. The Psychology of the Athenian Hoplite: The Culture of Combat in Classical Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Doerries, B. 2015. The Theater of War. What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today. New York: Vintage Books. Kaplan, E. A. 2005. Trauma Culture. The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Laney, C. and Loftus, E. 2005. “Traumatic Memories are not Necessarily Accurate Memories.” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 50: 823–38. Leys, R. 2000. Trauma: A Genealogy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Luckhurst, R. 1998. “The Science-Fictionalization of Trauma: Remarks on Narratives of Alien Abduction.” Science Fiction Studies 25: 29–52. MacLeod, C. M., Dodd, M. D., Sheard, E. D., Wilson, D. E., and Bibi, U. 2003. “In Opposition to Inhibition.” The Psychology of Learning and Motivation 43: 163–214. Meineck, P. and Konstan, D. eds. 2014. Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Shay, J. 1994. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. New York: Atheneum. Van der Kolk, B. 1997. “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Memory.” Psychiatric Times 14 (3). https​://ww​w.psy​chiat​ricti​mes.c​om/pt​sd/po​sttra​umati​c-str​ess-d​isord​er-an​d-mem​ ory, accessed June 28, 2019.

Part 1

War trauma

1

Aspects of violence, trauma, and theater in Sophocles’ Ajax Trigg Settle

Violence and death are central to tragedy as a genre. Sometimes they are threatened and narrowly averted, other times they are fully realized with devastating effect; yet they constitute a constant feature of tragic storytelling (Aristotle, Poetics 1453b.14–1454a.16). From at least the mid-twentieth century to the present day, the widely accepted explanation for the avoidance of violence on the ancient stage is that it was prohibited by rules or conventions.1 But viewing its violence through the negative lens of prohibition has limited our understanding of Greek tragedy. If we can step away from the idea that the ancient tragedians avoided onstage violence because they were constrained or prohibited from doing so, or even the larger assumption that they would have put violence on the stage absent such constraints, we will be able to understand tragedy and its violence even better. Trauma studies provide different ways of conceptualizing and discussing Greek tragedy’s extreme events and their emotional impact. In this chapter, I discuss Sophocles’ Ajax and argue that there is a striking resemblance between the pattern of representation surrounding Ajax’s killing and torture of the Argive flocks and patterns of traumatic experience analyzed by contemporary trauma theory. My argument focuses on identifying the immediate pattern of repetition and deferral, what I call the play’s core trauma pattern, which surrounds Ajax’s killing of the animals. Tracing this pattern helps us see how Greek tragedy’s displaced violence integrates the representational elements of theater writ large, a medium defined by its uniquely focused and singular use of space and time into an emotional and psychologically complex depiction of violence.

Trauma core pattern and theoretical perspectives Influenced by the work of Jonathan Shay, studies on trauma in the ancient world have focused heavily on clinical, pathological notions of trauma.2 By turning to literary and historical accounts of war and violence in the ancient world for signs of trauma in specific individuals according to generalized notions of post-­traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or related pathologies, such studies have sought to affirm the universality of the disorder with fruitful results. I should acknowledge here at the outset, however, that my approach to trauma is different even from many others in this volume: I do not attempt to claim that any individual, figure, or group

12  Trigg Settle was “traumatized” or suffered from some form of PTSD. Furthermore, while PTSD and trauma are related and mutually derivative concepts, I trace important distinctions between them—the former represents a specific symptomology designed to aid the highly trained specialist in the task of diagnosis; the latter is, at its heart, a philosophical and cultural response to the implications of that pathology, especially its wide-ranging influence on how we, in the broader culture beyond the clinic, view ourselves, our capacities, and our experiences. Whether the ancient Greeks had a concept of trauma is a key question. But here again the debate has been limited by our thinking about trauma in clinical terms, which has led to disagreements about the propriety of such projects, and how we should interpret the considerable differences between ancient and modern societies and warfare, and especially our attitudes toward violence, be it martial and statist or inter-personal, sexual or gendered, and so on. In his introduction to one of the first scholarly volumes dealing with trauma in the ancient world, David Konstan argues for an apparent “absence of a concern with combat trauma” among the Greeks because they would not have recognized violent or antisocial behaviors associated with PTSD as abnormal, and therefore would not recognize the disorder and its causality (Meineck and Konstan 2014: 8). Peter Meineck, on the other hand, speaking of the Athenian theater as a theater of veterans for veterans, has argued that Greek tragedy as we know it offered a “‘catharsis’ or form of ‘cultural therapy’ by providing a place where the traumatic experiences faced by the spectators were reflected upon the gaze of the masked characters performing before them” (2012: 6).3 Meineck’s argument is attractive to anyone who studies Greek theater; Konstan’s argument, however, demonstrates the downside to the model from pathology—its rigidity and inability to account for differences and similarities between distant cultures makes it an easy target for wholesale dismissal, while the tendency of the diagnostic model to think in stark “yes” or “no” binaries can frame our thinking about complex cultural representations in black and white terms. To say that Greek tragedy possessed a concept of trauma is to say that it demonstrates a cultural awareness of two essential notions. The first is that communities tend to define themselves through shared histories, defined by recognizable traumas—events impart a sense of a common peril, suffering, disaster, victimization, or even shame and remorse. The second notion is that cultural performances, narratives, and literature are an essential repository for such shared histories or “traumas,” a communal space where they are processed, memorialized, marked, and re-marked, not only as worth remembering, but also as “our own.” When we think about trauma in this way, it does not seem too far-fetched to say that some notion of trauma is clearly recognized in Greek tragedy. But such a claim doesn’t appear remarkable either, given the vast body of scholarship on the social and civic functions of Greek tragedy, especially in the formation of civic identity in fifth-century Athens. Instead, what is remarkable is how stories like the Ajax structure the experience of their central “trauma,” which is similar to the way that traumatic events are marked, processed, and discussed in modern literature and culture. As such, reading tragedy through trauma not only enables us to explore the discourses that distinguish certain events as tragic, traumatic, or both, but also allows us to see how aspects of the ancient theater are uniquely suited to the representation of violence as trauma.

Violence, trauma, and theater in Ajax  13 Theater’s relationship to live performance imbues it, as an artform, with its own elusiveness.4 A theatrical performance is a singular event that is wholly unique: it cannot be paused, replayed, or reproduced without some essential aspect of that event or experience being lost or altered. The drama, on the other hand, can be subject to numberless performances and productions, endless repetition. As such, the spatial and temporal contingency of theater as an artform approximates the immediacy and elusiveness of trauma in several key ways. From the perspective of archival history, the attempt to reclaim a theatrical event or production yields only hints or traces; it appears that nothing else remains.5 Paul Woodruff’s invocation of theater as “the art of watching and being watched” reminds us that it cannot escape its fundamental reliance on living bodies in the present, and that the living bodies in the audience are just as vital as those on the stage (Woodruff: 2008).6 The nature of theater, then, is inherently two-fold: it is, first of all, a meeting of two worlds in one place, the historical or “real” world of the theater and the audience, and the performed or fictional world of the play, each of which inhabit their own space within the theater. Similarly, in assuming a role, the actor or performer is neither completely herself nor entirely the character, but something in-between, retaining and discarding aspects of both identities in the same body at the same time. Space and time undergo a similar doubling. A stage in Athens becomes the Argive camp in Troy, or the city of Thebes; three hours in the theater can become a day, and so on. But the “real” dimensions of place, time, and duration do not disappear; rather, they mingle with and mirror their dramatic doubles in our experience. We should not overlook, then, when plays like the Ajax take a specific, definitive event and then double it, investing it with two competing visions of that single event—one marked as “real” and the other as “not real”—and then explicitly locate that event elsewhere beyond the visible stage. In doing so, the audience is made to experience that event through an additional temporal doubling: the restoration of the moment on the stage against a distinctly other and unseen time and place, beyond the stage but within the drama’s fictive world. In all its liveness, immediacy, and duplicity, the theater is well suited to the depiction of traumatic violence, a violence that is at once immediate and overpowering despite, or perhaps because of, its fundamental elusiveness and its representation in terms that consistently underline its repeated, restored, and belated nature.7 I argue that the offstage violence in the Ajax, and much of Greek tragedy, is established through a focused and comparatively literal pattern of repetition—a staging that draws attention away from itself in its persistent gesturing toward another place and time. In defining this sequence as the core trauma pattern, I draw from the work of Cathy Caruth as it expands upon and is corroborated by the clinical definition of PTSD and related disorders.8 While contemporary scholarship provides different ways of understanding and defining trauma, one common thread, and a central feature of my analysis, is the element of repetition. “Re-experiencing symptoms” or “intrusion symptoms” are an essential element of the diagnostic criteria for PTSD and the basis of what Caruth describes as “the peculiar temporal structure” of traumatic experience, its “belatedness.”9 In observing that trauma can neither be reduced to the “nature of the traumatic

14  Trigg Settle event itself” or to an internal “reaction or distortion” of that event, Caruth argues that “the pathology consists, rather, solely in the structure of its experience or reception: the event is not assimilated or experienced fully at the time, but only belatedly, in its repeated possession of the one who experiences it” (1995: 4).10 The opening scenes of Sophocles’ Ajax exhibit much of the “structure and reception” of the traumatic experience described by Caruth. In the Ajax, a central act of violence is subject to a spatial and temporal displacement or doubling; it is only felt in juxtaposition with the moment onstage. Unseen and located offstage before the play begins, the slaughter of the animals is at the center of a perseverative process of repetition in which the violence is reexperienced by the audience who, alongside and through different characters and interpretive groups within the play, bears witness to the disturbing violence again and again. In the Ajax, this immediate pattern of removal, deferral, and repetition centers on the elaborate narratives of Athena and Tecmessa as they are accompanied or offset by the intervening reactions of Odysseus and the chorus, respectively. As the immediate aftermath of the violence becomes the site of its recurrence, the boundary between the event and its impact becomes blurred. The aftermath takes on its own aspects of elision and deferral. Thus, characters and audience, indeed the play itself, seem possessed by the violence.

The “core trauma pattern” of Sophocles’ Ajax Sophocles’ Ajax is a tour de force in its exploration of the role and limits of human knowledge and perception because it interrogates so fully the assumption that sight is the most direct and reliable form of perception and knowledge. Structurally unusual among Sophocles’ extant plays, it is divided somewhat unevenly by Ajax’s death scene, which is isolated in the text by the exit (813) and reentrance of the chorus (866). The latter is marked by a second choral entry song or epiparodos (866–90).11 The first movement contains most of the plot (1–866), up to and including the hero’s climactic death; the second features a cast of largely ancillary characters (Teucer, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Odysseus) in a literal and figural debate over the hero’s corpse. In receptions of the play, Ajax’s suicide has the tendency to completely overpower the rest of the plot, especially its ending. For modern scholars, the insoluble conundrum of Ajax’s death scene, and the question of whether Ajax actually falls on the sword in full view of the audience, has been the focus, reflecting the ebbs and flows of scholarly consensus regarding the depiction of violence in Greek tragedy and its conventionality.12 A deeper look at the play as a whole, however, corroborates the importance and interdependence between violence and dramatic structure, especially as they heighten our awareness of what we as the audience actually see. Well before Ajax’s suicide, the specter of violence in the play consistently calls Odysseus, Tecmessa, the chorus, and us as spectators, to constantly turn back, to grasp backward for some image or trace of the violence that might explain it. The play’s fragmented and recursive ordering of events amplifies and multiplies the violence and the confusion that surrounds it. It is its idiosyncrasies that make the

Violence, trauma, and theater in Ajax  15 Ajax useful in developing an interpretative paradigm. Aspects of its violence— the extent and intensity of the trauma pattern and its fixation, its establishment and subsequent subversion of structural and visual boundaries, the ultimate failure of our senses, and above all, the repetition and return of violence are so extensive in the Ajax that they allow us to discern integral elements of many representations of violence in tragedy, which may be more subtle or hidden in other plays. Three basic building blocks constitute the core trauma pattern in the Ajax: a central act of violence, its location offstage, and its belated repetition. When referring to an “act of violence” in the context of this play, I mean a single, overt event that ends in one or more killings, and which occurs or is conspicuously repeated within the time frame of the play’s onstage action. But this narrow definition of violence only clears things up slightly, because, even if we ignore the titular hero’s intended killing and torture of Odysseus, the Atreids, and the other Greek commanders, the play still contains two overt acts of violence: Ajax’s slaughter of the Argive livestock and his suicide. Of the two, Ajax’s killing of the livestock stands out for many reasons, not least for its connection to madness. The manner and extent of the removal and deferral of that central act of violence, which eludes even the direct experience of its perpetrator, elicits a recursive, almost compulsive discourse: it reverberates and rebounds back on itself, the play’s principal characters, and the chorus as they are forced to confront its dual realities. The killing of the livestock, then, precisely because it stands at the center of such a perseverative process, is the play’s central act of violence. To illustrate this idea further, here is a summary of its instantiations in the following chart: The core trauma pattern: Sophocles Ajax 1–333 1. (1–134): Athena informs Odysseus of Ajax’s madness and killing of the livestock, including his intended torture of Odysseus. Ajax appears from the door of the skene, mad and covered with blood. At Athena’s questioning, Ajax insists that he has killed the Greek commanders, and that he will torture Odysseus before killing him despite Athena’s objections to the torture. 2. (135–200): The Chorus, having heard a report of the night’s events, responds with great emotion, blames Odysseus, and calls to their leader to emerge from within the skene and dispel the rumors himself. Tecmessa comes out instead. 3a. (201–56): Tecmessa gives a first graphic account of Ajax’s violence and madness in dialogue with the chorus, who reacts with dismay. Her first account begins with his return to their tent with the flocks and the killing and torture of them within. (257–83): Discussion of Ajax’s mental state. Is he still mad or has the fit subsided? 3b. (284–329): Tecmessa gives a second, longer description of the events, from the moment when Ajax becomes no longer able to contain his rage during the restless night and sets out to attack the Greek commanders. She then again describes, from her perspective, his return to the tent and his torture and killing of the animals, this time also describing the moment when Ajax addresses Athena from the door of the tent (300–4), previously viewed by the audience at the beginning of the play. The account ends with his gradual return to sanity and, finally, the moment when Ajax realizes with horror the true nature and implications of his actions (306–33).

16  Trigg Settle The core trauma pattern in Ajax contains three major instantiations of the central act of violence: Athena’s revelation of the killing to Odysseus, the spread of the news to the chorus and their initial reaction, and Tecmessa’s repeated and expansive testimony. The pattern itself spans a little less than a quarter of the play, from the prologue scene between Athena and Odysseus, through the parodos and Tecmessa’s expansive testimony, and ends with Ajax’s entrance halfway through the first episode—where the focus of the play begins to turn away from the past and what Ajax has done, to what he will do next.13 While these successive instantiations give the vague impression of turning back, of starting over again, they also bleed into and overlap with one another. With the passage of time, the perspective changes. From the prologue scene to the entrance of the chorus and Tecmessa’s harrowing confirmation of Ajax’s downfall, the story is evolving. But at the same time, it also seems to be standing still, stuck in the same psychic territory, characterized by an insistent return to ignorance, shock, and disbelief that compels the replay of the narrative. The dual and contradictory sense of movement and fixation in the opening scenes are exacerbated by smaller and more granular divisions and repetitions, structural or thematic, within the specific scenes of the core trauma pattern and beyond. Aided by Ajax’s altered reality, Athena’s competing dialogues with Odysseus and Ajax highlight essential inversions and juxtapositions between the two heroes. The distorting lens of Ajax’s madness and its exposure are rendered a spectacle for his enemy’s consumption. At center stage is Ajax’s delusion, the most direct image of the central act of violence, which takes on many aspects of belatedness and deferral. Athena, in fact, appears to stage Ajax’s madness in several ways, first by framing it as a show that she is putting on for Odysseus. The importance of spectatorship and interpretation is grafted onto the many references to sight and seeing in the scene from the beginning. These themes are especially explicit in Odysseus’ reaction to Athena, when she calls Ajax to appear before the skene for the first time (74–86). The exchange reveals their contrasting attitudes, defining them specifically in terms of what should be seen or staged. Athena sees Ajax’s predicament and his destruction as a cruel joke, deepening the general sense of menace and power attached to unequal viewing relationships throughout the scene. Odysseus, on the other hand, shrinks from looking upon Ajax in his madness, once again asserting a latent violence in the act of seeing. Later, after Ajax returns inside the skene (116–33), Athena will again invite Odysseus to gloat over Ajax’s misfortune, but he refuses, saying that he pities Ajax (121–26) and sees all mortals as somehow less substantial, less real, as a result of his deceit and downfall (125–26). The shock of Ajax’s introduction to the visual milieu of the theater alters the complex dynamics of seeing already at work in the play. Odysseus, the erstwhile critic and now the hidden spectator, becomes something of a cipher for the audience. Together with him, we see Ajax, still raging in his madness, tell us that he is in the process of actively torturing “Odysseus,” who is in fact doubled by a

Violence, trauma, and theater in Ajax  17 ram. We also witness Ajax’s hubris and anger when he refuses Athena’s request to spare the victim of the indignity of torture. His refusal proclaims the disturbing irony of the scene, the utter distance between Ajax’s perception of his actions and their reality, and his complete inability to question his perceptions even despite Athena’s cues. If Athena plays the patron goddess, then Ajax enthusiastically plays the conquering hero. He revels in glory before the goddess (90–100), returning her address to him as an ally, and thanking her for her support. He refers to his activities as a hunt (τῆς ἄγρας, 92), an echo of Athena’s ominous descriptions of Odysseus as a hunter, but the metaphor takes on new resonances in Ajax’s unknowingly literal application of it to actual beasts. Athena immediately steps into Odysseus’ role as questioner. In the short exchange, she asks Ajax three different times whether he has in fact killed the Argives. The questions begin with “Did you really?” (97),14 an explicit verbal gesture that points, when taken with Ajax’s responses, to his unknowing performance. But it also points to Athena’s previous exchange with Odysseus, who uses the same expression repeatedly (44, 48) to state his own insistent ignorance, which eventually gives way to amazement at the goddess’ revelations. In her dialogue with Ajax, Athena’s questions point to the artificiality of her posture, establishing a tone of mocking disbelief, of which Ajax is wholly unaware. They also point to the many ways that Odysseus is reflected in the exchange: he is the foil to Ajax’s unquestioning faith in his perceptions, he is reflected in Athena’s “role” as skeptic, and he is doubled by the beast that sits in his place inside the tent. The overall effect is one of double vision, a dialogic image in the pervasive sense of doubling and interchangeability between men and animals, the starkest illustration of the rupture between Ajax’s perceptions and the “reality” of the violence. Athena, the ultimate manipulator, not only lets us peek inside Ajax’s mind, or at least his perceptions of the violence, but also appears as a player on a stage that she herself has set. Ajax’s physical violence, deferred specifically from his sense of sight, will eventually rebound back on him with disastrous consequences. Odysseus, a vehicle for the themes of seeing and knowledge from his first appearance onstage, becomes even more directly associated with witnessing and spectatorship, his own gaze even further endowed with a figurative violence. Here, he is able to see Ajax as he is, while not being seen himself. The deep irony in the disingenuity of Athena’s questioning and Ajax’s total break from reality also demonstrate how divinely inspired madness produces an additional layer of doubling and deferral into the play’s violence by inserting a demonstrable difference between the real and the not real into the play’s contrived world. Ajax’s “performance,” his questionable relationship to the truth first established here, will become a central theme of the play in the lead up to his death, where we will see him evolve from a mad actor to a knowing actor who consciously misleads those closest to him in order to die on his own terms. While Ajax’s recognition of his own violence is deferred, only to be related by

18  Trigg Settle Tecmessa, Odysseus’ ultimate reaction is delayed, and will be fully revealed in the final movement of the play after Ajax’s death. Once the basic facts and the layers of “reality” surrounding Ajax’s violence have been established, the play moves on. The end of the first scene (133) is clearly marked by mutually reinforcing signals of closure, first by the clearing of the stage with the exit of Athena and Odysseus (133), and then by the ensuing parodos (134–200), whose status as a standard, recognizable set piece of the genre makes it not only structurally distinct, but also a signpost of forward movement. However, in many ways this progress is contradicted by the turns of the trauma pattern. Just as the opening scene was bifurcated by the discontinuities of perspective between Odysseus and Ajax, the choral entry song also seems to fall into two (albeit uneven) halves, marked by a distinct change of meter.15 The chorus’ song presents a new beginning. Not only do we encounter a new group of dramatic figures with an entirely different perspective on violence, but we are also asked to make sense of the violence, turning back to the beginning. Although Athena speaks the first lines of the play (1–13), the action onstage seems to begin before she speaks, when we see Odysseus enter from one of the side entrances and move toward center stage, searching and probing the ground like someone hunting or tracking a quarry. As he approaches the skene, he stops and begins to circle around, no longer able to read the signs on the ground. At a loss, he glances cagily toward the skene and back again to the ground. Unable to move forward for fear of being seen, he becomes increasingly frustrated, perhaps even desperate.16 Eventually Athena, whom Odysseus cannot see, cuts off this failed search by addressing him directly in the first lines of the play. She then reveals little by little what he could not discern for himself, starting with whether Ajax is inside his hut or not (9–10). Odysseus’ first lines indicate that the Greeks have discovered the murdered herdsman and some of the slaughtered livestock; that an eyewitness told Odysseus that he saw Ajax fleeing the scene with a bloodied sword; and that everyone is confused and does not know what has happened (14–35). Throughout the ensuing exchange, Athena is full of playful menace, while Odysseus clings to his ignorance. He takes nothing for granted, forcing Athena to explicitly confirm nearly every detail of what has befallen Ajax. As with Odysseus at the play’s beginning, the moment when the chorus actually hears of the violence is also elided, set offstage before they enter. This is a subtle echo or doubling between the first two scenes that connects Odysseus and the chorus, their crucial moment of first contact with the violence now twice elided, the aftermath taking on its own aspects of repetition and deferral. Like Odysseus, the chorus goes straight to Ajax’s hut. From the beginning, they address their song directly to Ajax, driving home how closely their fortunes are entwined with his in forceful, emotional, and vivid language. They declare that they have been beset or oppressed (κατέχουσ’, 142) by rumors of the killings, and have incurred disgrace (ἐπὶ δυσκλείᾳ, 143). They then directly accuse Odysseus (148–49) as a slanderer

Violence, trauma, and theater in Ajax  19 and source of the rumors. Finally, they round out the anapests with an appeal for Ajax to appear and dispel the rumors: ἀλλ’ ὅτε γὰρ δὴ τὸ σὸν ὄμμ’ ἀπέδραν, παταγοῦσιν ἅτε πτηνῶν ἀγέλαι· μέγαν αἰγυπιὸν ὑποδείσαντες τάχ’ ἄν, ἐξαίφνης εἰ σὺ φανείης, σιγῇ πτήξειαν ἄφωνοι.

(167–71)

But indeed when they escape your eye, they make a clatter like flocks of birds, but if you should appear, then, fearing the great vulture, they would cower in voiceless silence. In their use of animal imagery, this time of birds, the chorus stumble into exceptionally prescient language that has deeply ironic resonances with what we just saw in the opening scene, which heightens the already mounting tension between the chorus’ ignorance and our own knowledge as spectators (for the role of the chorus, see also Reitzammer, this volume: 194–98). The chorus resorts to bird imagery for the first time near the beginning of their song, describing themselves as “afraid like the eye of the winged dove” (139–40), a vivid image that heightens our sense of what is at stake by appealing colorfully to their current emotional state. They return to bird imagery when they appeal to Ajax to emerge, beginning with the somewhat auditory image of birds cackling or clamoring to describe the chattering of those spreading rumors hostile to Ajax. This explicit men-as-beasts metaphor follows a curious appeal to Ajax’s gaze: they imagine they will emerge as a powerful and restorative force, silencing the chattering birds merely by looking on them. The audience knows, however, that not only are they completely mistaken, but also, in placing an unquestioning faith in Ajax and in his vision, they are reproducing his ultimate failure. By invoking Ajax’s gaze, the chorus also points once again to the skene, a place of hiding where he cannot see or be seen. The chorus goes on to describe Ajax as “a great vulture” (μέγαν αἰγυπιὸν, 169), one that will strike the chattering birds with fright, causing their silence. It is an ominous image, through which the chorus, at least tangentially, conjures the specter of death. But they also conjure the slippages and inversions between beasts and men that have already begun to define Ajax’s violence.17 For all we know, Ajax could very well still be in the throes of his madness, and we know for certain that he can provide neither the comfort nor the denial that the chorus wants. Therefore, the prospect of Ajax’s emergence in the midst of the bestial images and the other doublings and ironies at play adds up to a sense of sickening dread, a growing tension focused on the door of the skene. But the questions of when and in what state Ajax will emerge linger as the chorus proceeds to the next part of their song.

20  Trigg Settle The tenor of the chorus changes suddenly from the chant-like recitative quality of the anapests to something much more like a full-blown song, and so does its subject. The chorus, with exceptional prescience once again, begins to consider the possibility that some god may have played a trick on Ajax (172–86), going so far as to name Artemis and Ares as possible candidates, before proclaiming that he never would have attacked the livestock in his right mind (183–86). They then turn back to their original subject of the jealousy and rumors against Ajax among the Argives. They invoke the great kings (οἱ μεγάλοι βασιλῆς, 188) and Odysseus specifically (189), whom they describe altogether as “uttering secret, stolen words” against Ajax, (ὑποβαλλόμενοι/ κλέπτουσι μύθους, 187–88). The parodos has thus come full circle: the circularity or ring composition, their progress from slanders and rumors to the power of the gods and back, again gesturing toward closure, marks the parodos off as an instantiation of the core trauma pattern. Though far shorter than the other two instantiations, it focuses and foregrounds the initial sense of erasure, ignorance, and aftermath that accompanies the first contact with the violence. The chorus completes the circle by calling once again, this time directly, Ajax to come out (192–95). For a second time within a short period (the parodos is only seventy-six lines) the chorus points to the skene and its doors amidst a mounting sense of tension, with the expectation, more explicit here than before, that Ajax will emerge, with all the potential horror that might entail. But here we experience repetition upon repetition, because the chorus’ dual summons doubles that of Athena in the opening scene. There, she first calls Ajax to appear following her intensely detailed description of his original attack upon the livestock (51–60) and their removal to his hut, where she tells us he is torturing them (61–65). Telling Odysseus that she wants to show him Ajax’s sickness in full display (περιφανῆ νόσον, 66) so that he can report it to the rest of the army (ὡς πᾶσιν Ἀργείοισιν εἰσιδὼν θροῇς, 67), she addresses Ajax directly (71–73). As we saw earlier, Odysseus, overwhelmed by the descriptive onslaught and the sudden shift of the goddess’ attention toward the skene, vehemently objects, interrupts Athena’s summons, and begs her not to bring Ajax outside. This exchange elevates what is seen (or not seen) onstage to the level of a theme, especially as it relates to the sense of fear, pleasure, impropriety, or excess that the prospect of Ajax’s emergence and exposure elicit. Provided further assurances that he will be hidden and protected from Ajax’s gaze, Odysseus acquiesces, and Athena calls Ajax out a second time, explicitly acknowledging the repetition: Αθ. ὦ οὗτος, Αἴας, δεύτερόν σε προσκαλῶ./ τί βαιὸν οὕτως ἐντρέπῃ τῆς συμμάχου;  (89–90, “You there, Ajax, I summon you a second time. Why do you pay so little regard to your ally?”). In both instances, Athena suddenly shifts between the different “roles” demanded by the conflicting realities of the violence that she is invoking. By indulging Ajax’s alternate reality from the moment she addresses him, she appears to be inhabiting a part already—for her the exchange is restored, she is no longer merely herself, she is playing a version of herself in a contrived reality, and one of her own, continual or repeated creation. It is quite possible that even before Ajax emerges from the skene, we might be shown or detect some element of her

Violence, trauma, and theater in Ajax  21 transition between these roles, perhaps an explicit affect of gesture, inflection, or tone of voice that would mark the difference between Odysseus’ Athena and Ajax’s Athena. But even lacking such a token, her distinct movement between conflicting realities reveals her to be an adept and knowing actor. Later as the chorus performs its own repeated gestures toward the skene, calling for Ajax to emerge, it is their complete lack of archness, their sincere ignorance that provides a poignant counterpoint to Athena’s cruel and manipulative farce. But the many doublings and repetitions of the parodos—the offstage revelation of the violence, their sickeningly ironic references to Greeks as beasts and Ajax’s unwavering eye, their dual summons for Ajax—all draw us back to the first scene, deepening the sense that we are viewing the aftermath again for the first time, unsure what to expect if Ajax emerges from the skene doors.18 But, when the doors open, Tecmessa comes out instead. Her presence, the need for her to stand in for Ajax and speak for him, bears witness to the utter deferral of the violence, alienated even from its perpetrator so fully that he can lay no claim to any direct experience of his actions and cannot speak for himself.19 Because it comes last in the core trauma pattern, Tecmessa’s scene is a natural site for the return of themes and images from the previous instantiations. The singular divine insight provided by Athena that so dominated the prologue section has given way to the limited vantage points of Tecmessa and the chorus. Their knowledge is fractured, divided between their respective positions inside (Tecmessa) and outside (the chorus) the skene. This dynamic is first revealed through the gaps in Tecmessa’s knowledge, emphasized by her dismay upon realizing, with the aid of the chorus, that the animals slaughtered by Ajax came from the Greek herds (229–34). Both Tecmessa and the chorus use the interjection “Alas!” (Ὤιμοι, 229, 232), a repetition that reflects a mutual sense of dismay and establishes the highly emotional nature of their experience and involvement.20 With Tecmessa’s confirmation, the chorus can no longer deny the reports of the violence as mere rumor, while Tecmessa seems to realize the full extent of Ajax’s disgrace. The gaps in her knowledge indicate that Ajax does not share his intentions and keeps her at a distance, eliciting our sympathy for her. Moreover, Ajax’s menacing words toward her (293, 312), explicitly connected to her status as a woman and a captive, adeptly inform her perspective, her image of Ajax going into the event, which seems somehow comprised of equal parts distance and intimacy, but above all of fear. The complicated status of her testimony in the instantiation of the violence forces us to question whose story is being told and why. Tecmessa’s viewpoint is limited, external, but those limitations are what make it so affecting. Like the previous instantiations of the core pattern, Tecmessa’s testimony falls into two distinct movements (201–56; 284–330). The conspicuous repetition of her story divides the scene. In the first section (201–56), a lyric dialogue with the chorus leader, Tecmessa confirms the chorus’ fears by relating in a general way what she saw, focusing on Ajax’s madness or sickness and the brutal slaughter of the livestock within the skene. As the chorus struggles to process the weight of Tecmessa’s revelations, they urge her to repeat the story from the beginning.

22  Trigg Settle Switching to iambics, she then goes through the story again in an unbroken narrative, very much like a messenger’s speech. She begins from the moment when Ajax embarked on his ill-fated mission in the middle of the night, describes his appearance in the first scene, continues through his eventual return to sanity, and finally brings us to his state of utter despair at the realization of his violence (284–330). Her narrative begins by emphasizing speaking and hearing in a way that punctuates the extreme nature of the events, which is further supported by the gruesome image of Ajax’s bloody victims: Πῶς δῆτα λέγω λόγον ἄρρητον; θανάτῳ γὰρ ἴσον πάθος ἐκπεύσῃ. μανίᾳ γὰρ ἁλοὺς ἡμὶν ὁ κλεινὸς νύκτερος Αἴας ἀπελωβήθη. τοιαῦτ’ ἂν ἴδοις σκηνῆς ἔνδον χειροδάικτα σφάγι’ αἱμοβαφῆ, κείνου χρηστήρια τἀνδρός

(214–20)

How am I to tell an unspeakable tale? You will hear of a calamity equal to death. Seized by madness, our one and only Ajax incurred dishonor in the night. You would have seen such things inside the tent, bloody victims slaughtered by his hand, that man’s offerings. Much as Odysseus describes Ajax’s actions as incomprehensible (ἄσκοπον, 21), Tecmessa describes her tale as unspeakable (ἄρρητον, 214), a sentiment amplified by the chorus’ response to her revelations, calling them unbearable and unavoidable (ἄτλατον οὐδὲ φευκτάν, 224). The relative commonality of this type of construction in tragedy and the idea that its violence is beyond description and comprehension encapsulate in miniature the genre’s approach to violence, death, and loss. These devices also poignantly capture the elusiveness of the traumatic experience, which, in its overwhelming immediacy, lies beyond us, exceeding our ability to make sense of it and the capacity of language to convey it. But despite this lack of capacity, Tecmessa at least attempts to put her unspeakable tale into words and, as often in tragedy, the language rises to meet the demands of its subject. Curiously, she begins to describe the event in second person singular, “you would have seen” (ἂν ἴδοις, 218), inviting the listener inside the skene, as if we could see through her eyes. This appeal to the gaze highlights the limitations of Tecmessa’s gaze and our ability to access it and drives home the fact that the most detailed and extensive representation of the violence in the play is still secondary, still belated. In The Body in Pain, Elaine Scarry (1985: 8) observes that “physical pain does not simply resist language but actively destroys it.” We only have words, albeit words that can be uttered by fully embodied characters on the stage, to fulfill and transmit the apparent pain of the central act of violence, the traumatic event, and its incitement to the multiple forms of repetition and expression it undergoes

Violence, trauma, and theater in Ajax  23 on the stage. In this tragedy and others, the emphasis on the unutterability and incomprehensibility of violence in its aftermath is a manifestation of the active rivalry between intense pain and its verbal expression. By pronouncing something unspeakable, and then bearing witness to its expression, tragedy both defies and verbalizes Scarry’s view of inflicted pain. In this regard, instances of personal testimony are the essential discourse, not only of the core trauma pattern, but of tragedy at large: although we are able to approach tragedy’s violence and loss through these repeated narratives and their embedded verbal images, in the end the events escape us all the more through the excess of those repetitions—the accumulation of viewpoints, the similarities and differences of detail represented in each telling. But, ultimately, theater escapes us in the same way, until we return to those latent characters or images (and especially the ghosts of their emotion and pain), expressing them once again through our living bodies in the present. In both iterations of her narrative, Tecmessa builds on the foundation laid by Athena, repeating many of the same images, but going into greater and more personal detail. Tecmessa’s version of the narrative conveys her heightened sense of terror and loss through the sheer weight of its detail, which seems to come pouring out of her, confronting us again and again with vivid and disturbing images. She first describes Ajax as ailing, sick (νοσήσας, 207), and lying stricken by a terrible storm (θολερῷ/ κεῖται χειμῶνι, 206–7). The image of Ajax hewing and breaking his victim’s backs, first provided by Athena (56), is repeated in each of Tecmessa’s reports, twice in the first section (219, 233–44) and once in the second (296–300). Ajax presented us with his sense of achievement and euphoria at what he perceived to be the cruel and sadistic torture of Odysseus; Tecmessa describes its counterpoint, his shameful torture and killing of defenseless animals. But because we have already viewed the event through Ajax’s perspective, the images of animals described by Tecmessa undergo an exceptionally uncanny doubling: we see them now as beasts, now as men, and every image reveals disturbing new dimensions to each respective “act.” We are confronted by a terrible incongruity—Ajax’s exceptional capacities and physical prowess, the force of his fury and rage, and his glee in performing feats of violence suited only for men is visited upon helpless animals. The image of Ajax leading animals chained up like prisoners into the tent is bizarre, almost laughable. But when he beheads a ram and cuts out its tongue, the image is all the more horrifying for its resemblance to sacrificial practice; the victims are viewed as animals as from Tecmessa’s perspective—the slaughter seems out of place and lacking in reverence. Furthermore, our horror is by no means mitigated when we imagine a human victim being beheaded and de-tongued, let alone a man we recognize, like Menelaus or Odysseus. But the uncanny doubling between beasts and men can go both ways. The image of Ajax, tying a ram to a pillar, laying into it with a horse strap, and hurling abusive language, seems cruel when we imagine Odysseus in its place; but directed against an animal, Ajax’s violence seems gratuitous, obscene. Thus, the images of men and animals haunt each other, and their doubling enhances the horror of Ajax’s actions exponentially, making them all the more terrible,

24  Trigg Settle inaccessible, and unfathomable. Perhaps it is the verbal medium of each image that allows this uncanny sense of doubling to remain intact, leaving them to oscillate between bodies human and animal, reaching the viewer with the full power of all that multiplicity. At the insistence of the chorus, Tecmessa embarks on a second, longer and unbroken narrative that takes us back to the beginning of the episode when Ajax sets out against Odysseus and the Atreids. She describes again his return, moving rapidly, almost cinematically, through image after vivid image of Ajax’s actions: he returns to the hut bringing chained animals (bulls, dogs, and “fleecy prey,” 296–97). He cuts the throats of some (ηὐχένιζε, 298), turns upside down others (ἄνω τρέπων, 298), slaughters them (ἔσφαζε, 299), and breaks their backs (κἀρράχιζε, 299). Some he “tortures like men” (ᾐκίζεθ’ ὥστε φῶτας, 300). She then drives home the strikingly complex temporality of her experience when she moves on to the next phase of the incident: τέλος δ’ ἀπᾴξας διὰ θυρῶν σκιᾷ τινι λόγους ἀνέσπα, τοὺς μὲν Ἀτρειδῶν κάτα, τοὺς δ’ ἀμφ’ Ὀδυσσεῖ, συντιθεὶς γέλων πολύν, ὅσην κατ’ αὐτῶν ὕβριν ἐκτείσαιτ’ ἰών· κἄπειτ’ ἐνᾴξας αὖθις ἐς δόμους πάλιν ἔμφρων μόλις πως ξὺν χρόνῳ καθίσταται, καὶ πλῆρες ἄτης ὡς διοπτεύει στέγος, παίσας κάρα ’θώυξεν· ἐν δ’ ἐρειπίοις νεκρῶν ἐρειφθεὶς ἕζετ’ ἀρνείου φόνου, κόμην ἀπρὶξ ὄνυξι συλλαβὼν χερί.

(301–10)

In the end, he darted away through the doors and was spewing wild words to a shadow, some about the two Atreids, others about Odysseus, laughing loudly at the count, how great an outrage he exacted upon them as payback; and then darting back into the house again, with time and difficulty he came back to his mind, and when he saw rightly his hut so full of blind outrage, he wailed, striking his head, and fallen amidst the ruins of the corpses of the slaughter, he sat, his nails grabbing his hair tightly in his hand. The physical trauma that Ajax inflicts on the animals is transferred onto the viewer who witnesses the killing and finally onto Ajax himself. In the gap left by Tecmessa’s temporizing “in the end” (τέλος, 301), all sense of time is lost. The foregoing flurry of images hangs in violent motion through untold repetitions and variations, one moment indistinguishable from the next until it finally stops. Then, for the first time in the core trauma pattern, we encounter the testimony of an event that we actually saw with our own eyes. Given what we, as audience, know about the context and substance of Ajax’s encounter with Athena, the details of Tecmessa’s narrative are startling. Through Tecmessa’s eyes, we relive that moment: we see how confusing and alarming Ajax’s actions are, how divorced

Violence, trauma, and theater in Ajax  25 from reality they appear as he goes through the door, raves at a shadow (σκιᾷ τινι, 301), and exults in his violence or outrage (ὕβριν, 304, literally, “hubris”). Because of the dissociative power of his madness, even Ajax experiences the true nature of his violence only belatedly when, freed of his madness, he comes to realize the truth of his own actions. But this crucial moment of return is also elided, hidden within the skene, and related afterward by Tecmessa. But, as in her description of the violence only a few lines earlier (301), here too, even Tecmessa’s description of Ajax’s restoration to sanity undergoes erasure and elision. She tells us only that it occurs “with time and difficulty” (μόλις πως ξὺν χρόνῳ, 306) and once again Ajax seems suspended, lost amongst the slaughtered and dismembered remains of his prey. Tecmessa then brings us to the present, emphasizing his seeing for the first time the slaughtered livestock instead of men. He turns to her, asking her with threats that she reveal the truth about what has taken place (312). The crucial moment of revelation, another iteration of Tecmessa’s testimony is again, like the violence, removed from the stage. His reaction anticipates his suicide, and we can detect the self-reflexive turn of his unresolved violence in Tecmessa’s words: he strikes his head, cries aloud, and finally, falls upon the slaughtered corpses of his victims (ἐν δ’ ἐρειπίοις νεκρῶν ἀρνείου φόνου, 307–10), a final addition to the carnage.

Conclusion Sophocles’ Ajax foregrounds fundamental elements of the theater into its depiction of traumatic violence, a violence that is at once recurrent and overpowering. Throughout the play, special attention is given to the skene and its signifying power as a visual barrier on the stage. The theatrical space is exploited to maximize the sense of mystery, elusiveness, and inaccessibility surrounding Ajax’s violence, especially the inherent tensions of his many emergences and transformations. Similarly, the emphasis on seeing, viewing, and spectatorship raises the basic viewing structures of the theater to the level of a theme, plays with the importance and valences—so essential to the theater—of what is seen and what is not, and explores the fundamental forms of power and violence invested in the gaze. But the significance of sight, sound, and language is also enveloped into the sense of belatedness and repetition that attaches to the violence from the beginning of the play, pointing to the persistence and importance of language and testimony in tragedy, the difference and tension between onstage narratives and onstage action. Gertrude Stein has said that the mixture of sights and sensations and the challenge of both seeing and hearing a play in the theater often created a sense of tension and unease between sights, sounds, and her emotional experience of a play. She used the term “syncopated time”21 to describe the sensation of being out of sync and out of time in terms of image, word, and feeling. In her description of the overall sensation, she captured the elusiveness at the heart of theater: “[t]he bother of never being able to begin again because before it commenced it was over” (1985: 115).

26  Trigg Settle This sense of syncopation fundamentally defines Sophocles’ Ajax. As we move through the play’s many repetitions, doublings, and returns, it seems that the entire world of the play is out of sync and out of time—Ajax most of all. At first exultant when he should be cautious, he comes to recognize the truth of his actions far too late. But even after he is forced from the skene to face his men and the consequences of his violence, he remains out of step with the world around him, and those who would save him from himself most of all. The messenger arrives just moments too late with his life-saving message: Tecmessa and the chorus stumble upon his “untrodden” place too late to save him; even Odysseus’ sympathetic words can only redeem him in the eyes of others. The magnifying, concentrating power of the stage to draw and direct our gaze, and the theater’s inherent qualities of elusiveness and belatedness, make it uniquely disposed to effectively engage and to communicate the incomprehensible and irrevocable nature of trauma. Accordingly, viewing Greek tragedy through trauma in the way I outline here presents the possibility of new insights and new approaches to the genre as a unique form of drama, grounded, as it often is, in death and loss, and organized around the theatrical experience. Our knowledge and understanding of Greek drama and theater has itself been subjected to seemingly endless loss, fragmentation, and forgetting throughout its long history of transmission. Of trauma’s lessons for history, Cathy Caruth (1995: 8) writes, “[t]he historical power of the trauma is not just that the experience is repeated after its forgetting, but that is only in and through its inherent forgetting that it is first experienced at all.” I can think of no more accurate way to describe the necessity and the power of bringing Greek tragedy to life, be it on the stage or in the theater of our minds, in ways that are local, communal, and exceptionally personal.22

Notes 1 Scullion (1994: 96–97), Easterling (1997: 154), for instance, argued against the orthodoxy of a conventional limitation regarding onstage violence in favor of other dramaturgical considerations, while Sommerstein (2010: 30–47) recently brought the discussion full circle, arguing that the apparent avoidance of direct depictions of violent death in tragedy was the result of a religious prohibition in the context of the Athenian dramatic festivals. Ajax’s suicide has often been a flash point for such discussions, because its location on or off the stage is ambiguous and has been seen to contravene a number of established conventions. See, e.g., Scullion (1994: 95–107); Sommerstein (2010); Most and Ozbek (2015). 2 A military psychiatrist, Shay (1994, 2002) identified common themes between the trauma narratives of the veterans in his care and the Homeric epics. By succinctly arguing that such themes are broadly indicative of PTSD, he provocatively claimed that Achilles and Odysseus, respectively, were traumatized, i.e., suffering from PTSD or a more general notion of “Combat Stress.” He also argued that the Athenian theater helped to generalize combat trauma and kept veterans from developing traumatic stress (Shay 1995). 3 This idea seems to have originated with Shay (1995: passim). See also Doerries (2015: 75–76). 4 For my purposes here the term “theater” denotes a building, complex, or space that contains the theatrical performance, as well as the general artform, while “drama” refers to

Violence, trauma, and theater in Ajax  27 the play as a text or script. As discussed, performance is a type of behavior defined by a sense of doubling or restoration, often with a sense of separation from the self. 5 This notion led Peggy Phelan (1996: 146–66) to claim that performance, or “liveness,” is defined by disappearance, while later theorists like Diana Taylor (2003: 1–52) argue that such a view is the result of the privileged position of the archive within the academy and the devaluation of embodied or performed ways of knowing or transmitting knowledge. 6 The phrase is the book’s subtitle. He goes on to further define theater in the text as “the art by which human beings make human action worth watching in a measured time and space” (2008: 39). 7 Here, I invoke Richard Schechner’s foundational definition of performance as “restored behavior,” i.e., the concept that behaviors are repeated, like a strip of film, or set against the backdrop of a known or unknown origin, model, or ideal, and therefore always “twice behaved,” allowing for a certain separation between the self and the behavior (see 1985: 35; 2002: 34–36). 8 See the introduction to this volume: 1–8. Caruth (1996: 72) and Radstone (2007: 10) offer different conceptions of “trauma theory.” For Radstone, the term “trauma theory” refers primarily to the ongoing debate sparked by Caruth’s foundational work in the 1990s, along with that of Felman and Laub (1992). 9 The definition of PTSD has changed much since the DSM–III. Despite the various changes, reexperiencing symptoms (DSM III–IV) or intrusion symptoms have been consistently defined as “persistent reexperiencing of the traumatic event,” which consists of “recurrent, involuntary, and intrusive recollections” (DSM–III, 308.89; DSM IV–V, 309.81). 10 For trauma as it relates to historical experience and literary and cultural representation, see Caruth (1996: 1–10, 116–39; 1995: 3–12, 151–57). 11 The chorus’ exit and reentrance are apparently uncommon, but not unheard of in tragedy: see esp. Aesch. Eum. (244–75, 299–396); Eur. Rhes. (675). They also entail a form of search, on which see Finglass (2011: 391). However, in the Ajax, each of the chorus’ entry songs is further marked by the inclusion of a subsequent kommos, or lyric dialogue, between Tecmessa and the chorus leader (348–429, 879–960), underlining the sense of repetition, of closing and restarting, active in the structure as a whole. Similarly functions the repeated scenario of searching for Ajax (Odysseus at the play’s beginning and Tecmessa and the chorus in the second half, 866–91). Other unusual features of the play are its inclusion of a divine character in the prologue and the ambiguity of the setting of Ajax’s death scene. 12 The question has a long history. Most recently, Most and Ozbek (2015) revisit many aspects of the scene and its iconography. 13 Segal (1989: 395–401) sees a similar change of focus, but not until Ajax’s monologue (646–92). 14 The particle combination ἦ καὶ is used, indicative of “eager questioning,” with the added caveat that the construction can carry a distinct tone of mocking or disbelief. See Denniston (1996) s.v ἦ καί. Greek text by Lloyd-Jones and Wilson (1990). Translations are my own. 15 The song begins with “recitative” anapests (134–71) and then changes over to a triadic choral structure at line 172, going through a single triad: (str. 172–82, ant. 183–91, epode 192–200). 16 This is according to the latent images implied by the text. How it would be staged in any given production is another question. Garvie (1998) and Finglass (2011) read a fair amount of pre-dramatic action along similar lines. 17 For trauma and omens see Karanika (this volume: 210–15). 18 I have taken the phrase “again for the first time” from Rebecca Schneider (2011: 90) who uses the phrase repeatedly to describe the ways that live performance both cites

28  Trigg Settle and acts as precedent, i.e., is made of repetition, in the larger context of her study of theatrical reenactment, and how we encounter history through performance. She states (2011: 208n.11) that she drew the phrase from Andrew Benjamin. 19 The skene continues to be an essential locus of repetition throughout the play, a critical site for Ajax, his transformations, and his fate. The pattern below lists the continued focus on Ajax’s appearances. It is unclear how the structure would have been used in Ajax’s death and display of his corpse. 1) Aj. 346. The core pattern ends with Tecmessa throwing open the skene doors, ἰδού, διοίγω· “Look I am opening [the doors].” Ajax emerges on the eccyclema surrounded by the corpses of the livestock. 2) Aj. 597. Ajax, Eurysaces, and Tecmessa go back inside the skene at the end of the first episode. 3) Aj. 646. Ajax and Tecmessa come out again after the brief chorus, he again seems completely changed, he declares that he has been persuaded by Tecmessa that he must live, and he will go to a hidden bathing place, cleanse himself, and bury his sword––the so-called deception speech. 4) Aj. 692. Ajax leaves by one of the parodoi. 5) Aj. 719–83. A messenger arrives from Teucer with orders that Ajax is not to be allowed out of his tent. He relates a prophecy from Calchas that as long as Ajax stays indoors, he will survive the day, otherwise he is still under threat of Athena’s wrath. 20 This emotionality is cultivated thickly throughout the early part of the exchange between Tecmessa and the chorus in a number of parallel exclamations: the chorus describes Ajax’s affliction, the first piece of information offered by Tecmessa (205), as a weight or burden (βάρος, 209); when asked to elaborate, Tecmessa characterizes the night’s events first as an “unspeakable tale” or a “tale beyond words” or (λόγον ἄρρητον, 214), and then as “a calamity equal to death” (θανάτῳ γὰρ ἴσον πάθος, 215); in response, the chorus then describes Tecmessa’s cursory description of Ajax’s madness and killing of the animals (216–20) as “insufferable and inescapable” (ἀγγελίαν ἄτλατον οὐδὲ φευκτάν, 224). 21 See Stein (1985: 92–135) on the unique experience of time and story in theater more generally. Stein’s lectures were originally published in 1935. Rebecca Schneider uses Stein’s notion of syncopated time in her exploration of performance and historical reenactment in a way that challenges how we view performance, memory, and the archive. See especially Schneider (2011: 87–88). 22 Many thanks to Vassiliki Panoussi and Andromache Karanika, whose hard work and insight have been indispensable, as well as to Johanna Hanink, who was instrumental in the formation and development of this project. Any infelicities are my own.

Works cited Caruth, C. ed. 1995. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Caruth, C. ed. 1996. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Denniston, J. D. 1996. The Greek Particles. 2nd ed. London: Bristol Classical Press. Doerries, B. 2015. The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Easterling, P. E. 1997. The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Felman, S. and Laub, D. 1992. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York: Routledge. Finglass, P. 2011. Sophocles Ajax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Violence, trauma, and theater in Ajax  29 Garvie, A. F. 1998. Sophocles Ajax. Warminster: Aris and Phillips. Lloyd-Jones, H. and Wilson, N. G. 1990. Sophoclis Fabulae. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Meineck, P. 2012. “Combat Trauma and the Tragic Stage: ‘Restoration’ by Cultural Catharsis.” Intertexts 16: 7–24. Meineck, T. and Konstan, D. eds. 2014. Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks. The New Antiquity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Most, G. and Ozbek, L. eds. 2015. Staging Ajax’s Suicide. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore. Phelan, P. 1996. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London: Routledge. Radstone, S. 2007. “Trauma Theory: Contexts, Politics, Ethics.” Paragraph 30: 9–29. Scarry, E. 1985. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scullion, S. 1994. Three Studies in Athenian Dramaturgy. Leipzig: Teubner. Schechner, R. 1985. Between Theater and Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Schechner, R. 2002. Performance Studies: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Schneider, R. 2011. Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of  Theatrical Reenactment. London: Routledge. Segal, C. 1989. “Drama, Narrative, and Perspective in Sophocles’ Ajax.” Sacris Erudiri 31: 395–404. Shay, J. 1994. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and The Undoing of Character. New York: Atheneum. Shay, J. 1995. “The Birth of Tragedy: Out of the Needs of Democracy.” Didaskalia 11.2. https​://ww​w.did​askal​ia.ne​t/iss​ues/v​ol2no​2/sha​y.htm​l. Shay, J. 2002. Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. New York: Scribner. Sommerstein, A. 2010. The Tangled Ways of Zeus. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stein, G. [1935] 1985. Lectures in America. Boston: Beacon Press. Taylor, D. 2003. The Archive and the Repertoire. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Woodruff, P. 2008. The Necessity of Theater: The Art of Watching and Being Watched. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2

Combat trauma in Vergil’s Aeneid Vassiliki Panoussi

Jonathan Shay’s groundbreaking work in the Homeric epics and their portrayal of combat trauma has sparked considerable interest on ancient Greek soldiers and the ways their plight is portrayed in a variety of texts, especially in Greek tragedy (Rabinowitz 2014; Sherman 2014). However, until the publication of this volume, Latin texts have not been examined from this point of view. In what follows, I consider the portrayal of warrior trauma in Virgil’s Aeneid and particularly Aeneas’ aristeia in Book 10 and his killing of Turnus at the end of the poem (Book 12). Such an approach can yield fruitful results not only for probing perceptions of combat trauma in Rome but also for deepening our understanding of the much-debated end of the Aeneid and its ideological import. In his now classic book, Achilles in Vietnam, Jonathan Shay (1994: 77–99) connects the concept or aristeia, namely the “highest manifestation of a fighter’s excellence,” with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), arguing that the warrior’s fit of killing rage is a reaction to combat trauma. Recent debate seeks to understand whether combat trauma is specific to our times (Crowley 2014) or universal (Tritle 2014). Moreover, current research on traumatic brain injury suggests that modern warfare may have different effects on the neurology of the brain than its ancient counterpart (Shively et al. 2016). Yet the ancient texts’ repeated return to the loss and trauma of war suggests the Greeks and Romans’ keen interest in the workings of such traumatic experiences and their aftermath. What is more, some of the main concerns in ancient texts bear a striking resemblance to current debates on and definitions of trauma. While the concept of aristeia indicates that combat violence is a badge of honor and source of glory for the Greek warrior, several accounts also problematize it; this is especially the case with the duel between Achilles and Hector in Homer’s Iliad. Achilles violates warfare norms by dragging Hector’s dead body around Troy for days and refusing to surrender it for burial, a scene that has had profound resonance across the ages. The inclusion of aristeia becomes a topos in later epic poetry, Greek and Roman. In what follows, I examine this topos in Vergil’s Aeneid, arguing that Vergil probes the trauma of warfare and does not merely include it because it is one of epic’s constitutive elements. My chapter aims to define not only the constraints of representing trauma in epic but also the possibilities for interpretation it opens. I argue further that the text delves deeply into the psychology of Aeneas as suffering

Combat trauma in Vergil’s Aeneid  31 from combat trauma. His final act of killing Turnus is cast as violence triggered by the return of a traumatic experience, expressed in the “return” of Pallas’ death when Aeneas gazes at his baldric now worn by Turnus. More broadly, the chapter examines the potential tension between conventions of representation and the importance of a perspective from trauma studies in understanding Aeneas as a model warrior and leader. In other words, I propose that one of the questions the Aeneid asks is the following: what happens when the leader of an empire suffers from trauma? By pointing to the fragility of the hero’s mental state, Vergil contemplates the problem of trauma and recovery for the warrior, leader, and empire. The precise nature of trauma and its relationship with memory has sparked an unresolved debate among theorists, who primarily examine the problem through the lens of the framework of mimesis, with two major schools of thought, the mimetic and anti-mimetic. Both schools share “a commitment to the idea that there is a radical separation between the affect system on the one hand, and intention or meaning or cognition on the other” (Leys and Goldman 2010: 668). The tension between these two approaches, however, revolves around the question of responsibility on the part of the trauma-suffering subject. Ruth Leys states that the concept of trauma, and the way it has been approached historically, both invites resolution in favor of the mimetic or the anti-mimetic approach and resists—and ultimately defeats—all such attempts at resolution (Leys and Goldman 2010: 659). Leys approaches the problem of trauma and the ways it affects memory as mimetic. According to this view, the victim is so immersed in trauma, experiencing it in a state analogous to hypnosis, that no distinction can be made between victim and aggressor. At the moment of trauma, the victim unconsciously identifies with the perpetrator, an identification that eventually results in survivor’s guilt. Leys’ work has shown that “the notion of survivor guilt is inseparable from the victim’s mimetic relation to or identification with the other or perpetrator” (Leys and Goldman 2010: 660). This approach has been met with resistance, mainly because it “proffered a troubling image of the victim as psychically complicit with violence” (Leys and Goldman 2010: 675). Conversely, the anti-mimetic school posits that, since the traumatic moment destroys the ordinary mechanisms of consciousness, it cannot be represented (Leys and Goldman 2010: 678). In this view, the victim cannot fully witness the event as it occurs, and the force of the traumatic experience arises from this collapse of understanding (Caruth 1995: 7). Accordingly, trauma is external to the victim, who yields to violence in the mode of spectator, someone “who can see and represent to themselves what is happening” (Leys and Goldman 2010: 658). Furthermore, trauma is experienced belatedly, “in its repeated possession of the one who experiences it” (Caruth, 1995: 6). Victims of trauma have flashbacks of traumatic events, with the patient reliving, not simply remembering, the emotions of terror, grief, and rage that they experienced during the moment of trauma. This “referentiality” of traumatic memory destabilizes the subject, who appears to lose its autonomy and responsibility (Radstone 2007: 14). Since the time of Freud, this “return” of the traumatic experience has been studied, whether it was thought to be repetition compulsion

32  Vassiliki Panoussi or repression. More recently, scholars such as Caruth and Van der Kolk focus on the quality of belatedness that accompanies trauma. These scholars, like Freud before them, note that the victim leaves the scene of trauma apparently unharmed (Caruth 1995: 9) and posit that this “inherent forgetting” is part of the way trauma is first experienced (Caruth 1995: 10). For these scholars, the re-occurrence of trauma, the belatedness of the experience itself, cannot be known or represented, thus collapsing the concepts of memory, time, and representation. As Caruth (1995: 153) states: for the survivor of trauma, then, the truth of the event may reside not only in its brutal facts, but also in the way that their occurrence defies simple comprehension. The flashback or traumatic reenactment conveys, that is, both the truth of an event, and the truth of its incomprehensibility” (emphasis original). In this paper, I suggest that Vergil’s Aeneid both embraces and defies this breakdown by making the “return” of the traumatic experience the climax of the epic, describing it as an act of foundational import for Roman society and state. Both approaches to trauma, however different they may be, can help us understand the representation of Aeneas’ behavior following Pallas’ death, as it relates to his performance of aristeia in Book 10 and the “return” of Pallas in the final scene of the poem in Book 12. In the former, Aeneas reacts to trauma by immersing himself in aggression and violence, while in Book 12 Aeneas reacts in an anti-mimetic way, through dissociation and recall of a “forgotten” traumatic experience (monimenta doloris, 12.945). As more recent trauma studies scholars have observed, the roles of victim, observer, and perpetrator in traumatic situations are not fixed (Kosicki and Jasińska-Kania 2007: 7); Aeneas can be seen as occupying all three at different moments in the epic. Vergil’s narrative thus compels us to ask some of the same questions that psychiatrists and theorists ask regarding PTSD. Trauma theory, in drawing attention to the complicated nature of victimhood, especially in cases where the victim turns into the aggressor, provides a useful lens through which we can re-examine Aeneas’ behavior in the last two books of the poem. Are Aeneas’ aristeia in Book 10 and his killing of Turnus in Book 12 a result of his trauma? Is he responsible for his actions? Whatever answer we may give to these questions, this chapter’s main contribution to the debate is that Vergil’s narrative probes the warrior’s mind and invites the reader to contemplate war’s damage to the human psyche. The epic “returns” to the traumatic experience of war, acting it out and repeating it, both constituting a testimony to the difficult process of working through the trauma (Caruth 1996: 2) and meditating on the possibility of a future after the traumatic event (Ramadanovic 2002).

Aristeia, berserk state, and survivor’s guilt In ancient Greek and Roman culture, a warrior’s prowess in battle is an invaluable asset for the attainment of social and political status. In discussing Athenian

Combat trauma in Vergil’s Aeneid  33 hoplites and PTSD, Jason Crowley argues that the most critical factor differentiating them from Vietnam veterans is the social and ideological framework of valor in war, which is distinct and separate from the Judeo-Christian value system that privileges peace and nonviolence. Athenian soldiers, he argues, did not suffer from PTSD because the social value system supported their mission in battle and was not “psychologically toxic” to them (Crowley 2014: 115); additionally, the technical nature of ancient warfare was such that it prevented soldiers from prolonged contact with the enemy and the attendant exhaustion and sleep deprivation which present today’s soldiers with adverse psychological effects (Crowley 2014: 116).1 In analyzing Achilles’ aristeia in Homer’s Iliad, Shay (1994: 82) identifies his killing spree as a dissociative state, an almost out-of-body experience, where the soldier, overcome by rage, survivor’s guilt, and grief, engages in reckless behavior, insensible to pain, and exhibiting cruelty without restraint or discrimination. This state is a crucial and distinctive element of combat trauma (Shay 1994: 75). Furthermore, research has shown “a relationship between disorders of specific brain neurotransmitter function and impulsive violence” (Shay 1994: 98). In other words, a soldier who has entered and survived the “berserk” state is subject to permanent alteration in his brain physiology which renders him vulnerable to explosive rage. Shay identifies this state as being at the heart of veterans’ “most severe psychological and psychophysiological injuries” (1994: 98). His conclusion, that entering this state permanently changes the physiology of the brain and leads to long-term PTSD in combat veterans, has been confirmed by current research on the topic (Shively et al. 2016). The main characteristic of the berserk state is that the warrior engages in an indiscriminate and violent killing spree. As Shay argues (1994: 97), it is precisely the lack of any restraint that differentiates the unequivocally praiseworthy aristeia of Diomedes from the deeply troubling berserk state of Achilles after the death of Patroclus in Homer’s Iliad. The poem marks Achilles’ actions as going beyond the norms of warfare, notably in his disrespect for Hector’s dead body (which he drags with his chariot for twelve days, 24.14–18) and his sacrificing of twelve Trojan captives at Patroclus’ pyre (“He slayed with his sword twelve noble sons of the Trojans; and he devised terrible deeds in his mind; and to it he set the iron rage of fire, so that it would spread” 23.175–78). Achilles’ treatment of Hector’s body is so extraordinary that it causes a council of the gods and an intervention to convince Achilles to allow Hector’s family to retrieve it (24.23–137). The Iliad presents a marked difference between the aristeia that is an integral part of warfare and the berserk state that Achilles enters as a result of his grief and anger at the death of Patroclus (see Karanika, this volume: 210–12). Since Vergil follows Homer so closely, mapping the relationship of Achilles and Patroclus onto Aeneas and Pallas, the question arises; do Vergil’s heroes express Roman attitudes on combat trauma, or are they literary characters whose actions simply mirror those of the Homeric heroes? Can we consider Vergil’s Aeneid as representing trauma or does the text re-enact Achilles’ trauma in the Iliad? The fact that Virgil’s Aeneid, roughly eight centuries later, uses earlier epic

34  Vassiliki Panoussi models, points toward the second interpretation. Yet I submit that the epic’s intertextual framework alone does not adequately account for the presence of combat trauma in the Aeneid. After all, Vergil lived through an extended period of war and he had undoubtedly felt its long-lasting effects in the psyche of his fellow Romans, who had populated the battle lines of the civil wars. The actual soldiers’ experience is arguably registered on the characters’ behavior in epic, who exhibit the “berserk” state or peritraumatic immobility and dissociation. Furthermore, Vergil’s reworking of the Homeric episodes focuses on notably different aspects of combat trauma. Literary precedent, important though it may be, does not invalidate the traumatic experiences represented in the Aeneid but instead aids the complicated and challenging task of their representation. Pallas’ death in Book 10 is a pivotal moment in the Aeneid, because it explicitly motivates the killing of Turnus in the final scene of the poem. Although the description of Pallas’ demise is detailed and powerful, Aeneas does not actually witness it, but hears about it from a messenger (10.510–17): Nec iam fama mali tanti, sed certior auctor aduolat Aeneae tenui discrimine leti esse suos, tempus uersis succurrere Teucris. proxima quaeque metit gladio latumque per agmen ardens limitem agit ferro, te, Turne, superbum caede noua quaerens. Pallas, Euander, in ipsis omnia sunt oculis, mensae quas aduena primas tunc adiit, dextraeque datae.2 Now not just a rumor of so great a calamity but a more reliable messenger flies over to Aeneas, announcing that his people are at the brink of death and that he’d better run to the aid of the routed Trojans. He harvests with his sword whatever is near him and, blazing through the wide battle line, opens a path with steel, seeking you, Turnus, proud in your fresh slaughter. Pallas, Evander, everything comes before his eyes, the meal at which he first arrived as a stranger then and the right hands that had been given. While the contents of the message are not relayed in the narrative, Aeneas’ reaction is extensively reported and is congruent with what we know from contemporary trauma testimonials. Initially, the text gives no information on Aeneas’ emotions, only of his course of action; he seeks Turnus and kills everything in sight (proxima quaeque metit gladio, 513). The narrative then lingers on Aeneas’ mental state, and specifically his memories of Pallas and his father. The expression “everything comes before his eyes” (in ipsis/ omnia sunt oculis, 515–16) suggests the vividness of those memories, which can be described as a flashback. Social, political, and military bonds are also paramount in his mind: the guestfriendship, the pact he forged with Evander and his people, and their military alliance. The lines reveal the importance of the cultural context for understanding Aeneas’ mental state. As Balaev (2008: 155) puts it:

Combat trauma in Vergil’s Aeneid  35 few would disagree that individuals suffer traumatic responses in the context of a culture that ascribes different value to the experience and a person’s feelings that surround the experience. If the self is conceived as both a product of culture and individual idiosyncratic tendencies and behaviours, then it follows that the meaning of trauma is found between the poles of the individual and society. Aeneas’ flashbacks at the news of Pallas’ death are thus grounded on the social and cultural norms of the reciprocity required by the institution of guest-friendship, and Aeneas’ own valuation of pietas, that is, devotion to family and friends.3 Aeneas’ sense of personal responsibility in the face of these values and norms contributes to his experiencing Pallas’ death as trauma, even though he is not present during the time of his death. Furthermore, in the moment of trauma, the victim unconsciously identifies with the perpetrator or the aggressor. The concept of survivor’s guilt proffered a troubling image of the victim as psychically complicit with violence (Leys and Goldman 2010: 675). Vergil’s passages seem to follow this line of thought in depicting Aeneas’ traumatic experience. Shay identifies several characteristics of the berserk state,4 which Aeneas’ aristeia (10.510–604) also showcases. Like Achilles in the Iliad, he displays excessive cruelty and disregard of civilized values, religious, familial, social; he immediately captures eight Italian youths to sacrifice them to Pallas’ pyre,5 an act that constitutes a most egregious violation of religious norms and flouts Roman mores (Panoussi 2010: 62). He kills the suppliant Magus, a priest of Apollo, a son of the local deity Faunus, and numerous others, often in brutal fashion.6 When he rejects Magus’ offer of ransom, he suspends the custom of reciprocal exchange operative even in battle (Coffee 2009: 103–4). Additionally, and perhaps more significantly, he shows utter contempt for the religious custom of burial, taunting the son of Faunus that he will be denied burial and devoured by wild beasts.7 Vergil highlights Aeneas’ violation of pietas, the hallmark of his heroic identity, in the last—and longest—vignette that relates the slaying of two brothers, Lucagus and Liger (575–601). In the midst of the story, the narrator refers to Aeneas with his defining epithet, pius (591), driving the irony home. The hero confirms this assessment by killing both and boasting that he does so to honor the bonds of brotherhood (morere et fratrem ne desere frater, 600; “die and let not one brother desert the other”). The aristeia narrative thus emphasizes Aeneas’ cruelty and highlights its exceptionality, even within the norms of ancient warfare that prizes excellence in battle. Midway through the aristeia, Aeneas is compared to a supernatural monster, Aegaeon, who fought the gods in the Gigantomachy. This supernatural monster at once encapsulates two sensations that soldiers in the berserk state experience, feeling like a beast (Shay 1994: 82–84) and like a god (Shay 1994: 84–86): Aegaeon qualis, centum cui bracchia dicunt centenasque manus, quinquaginta oribus ignem pectoribusque arsisse, Iouis cum fulmina contra

36  Vassiliki Panoussi tot paribus streperet clipeis, tot stringeret ensis: sic toto Aeneas desaeuit in aequore uictor ut semel intepuit mucro.

(10.565–70)

Like Aegaeon, who they say had a hundred arms and a hundred hands, and breathed fire from fifty mouths and fifty chests, when he clashed against Jupiter’s thunderbolt with as many like shields and unsheathed as many swords: thus victorious Aeneas raged over the whole battlefield when once his sword grew warm. Aegaeon is a Giant who assisted Zeus in the fight against the Titans, but Vergil here chooses a version of the story in which he fought with the Titans against Jupiter (Hardie 1986: 155). Through comparison to Aegaeon, Aeneas joins the ranks of those championing the forces of chaos against civilization, an association that is disturbing, if not deeply critical of the hero’s behavior (Harrison 1991: 215; Hardie 1986: 154–56; Putnam 2011: 39–40).8 Additionally, at the end of the aristeia Aeneas’ rage is compared to forces of nature and specifically to a torrent and a black whirlwind.9 The two similes thus express the magnitude of Aeneas’ rage, his transcendence of the norms of warfare, and the loss of his humanity. Aeneas’ bereavement triggers his berserk state, as does his survivor’s guilt. The Aeneid as a whole is a prime text for exploring the contours of survivor trauma, as the title hero survived the Trojan war, which claimed the lives of both its leading warriors from opposite camps, Achilles and Hector. Vergil’s rendition of the fall of Troy in Book 2 seeks to resolve the tension inherent in Aeneas’ double identity as a hero and a survivor. The epic crafts a new role for Aeneas, whereby he is required to abandon the Homeric ideal of dying a glorious death in battle and instead survive in order to found the city of Rome and its empire. Pulled to these two opposite directions, Aeneas struggles to find his place as a hero and a leader in the first half of the poem. Survivor’s guilt resurfaces in Aeneas’ lament for Pallas during the young man’s funeral (11.42–58).10 The first part of his speech is a variation of a staple in lamentations, where the mourners, unable to imagine a future without their loved one, wish they had died with them. Aeneas departs slightly from this topos by dwelling on his own status as survivor and winner; nevertheless, he mourns Pallas’ absence from the new kingdom, an absence rendered even more pronounced by the vivid image of the young man as a rider in a triumphal procession (11.43–44, ne regna uideres/ nostra neque ad sedes uictor ueherere paternas [so you would not see my kingdom and ride as victor to your father’s home]). He concludes with the regret that Pallas’ considerable military talents will not benefit his new city and his son and successor (11.57–58, ei mihi quantum/ praesidium, Ausonia, et quantum tu perdis, Iule! [Alas me! How great a protection you lose, Ausonia, and you, Iulus]). Aeneas appears unable to envision his city’s future without Pallas and indicates that this loss taints Rome’s glorious future.11

Combat trauma in Vergil’s Aeneid  37

Peri-traumatic dissociation: Turnus and the boulder Vergil’s preoccupation with combat trauma makes its most stunning appearance in the final duel between Aeneas and Turnus, where the narrative focalizes on each of them separately, in an intense mirroring of their experiences. Turnus’ characterization as victim of trauma occurs moments before his death, when he realizes that the cosmic order is against him (12.894–95, non me tua feruida terrent/ dicta, ferox; di me terrent et Jupiter hostis, [your hot words do not frighten me, harsh one; the gods frighten me and Jupiter as my enemy]). The hero exhibits peri-traumatic immobility and dissociation, where one perceives oneself separate from or outside of the traumatic event while it is occurring (see also Wise, this volume: 73–74). A simile highlights this reaction at the moment when Turnus picks up a giant boulder and hurls it to Aeneas, but feels his strength depleted: sed neque currentem se nec cognoscit euntem tollentemue manu saxumue immane mouentem; genua labant, gelidus concreuit frigore sanguis. tum lapis ipse uiri uacuum per inane uolutus nec spatium euasit totum neque pertulit ictum. ac uelut in somnis, oculos ubi languida pressit nocte quies, nequiquam auidos extendere cursus uelle uidemur et in mediis conatibus aegri succidimus; non lingua ualet, non corpore notae sufficiunt uires nec uox aut uerba sequuntur.

(12.903–12)

But he does not recognize himself running, or going, or raising the giant rock with his hand, or moving it; his knees buckle, his veins grow stiff with icy chill. Then the boulder itself, hurled through the empty air did not travel the whole distance nor did it carry out its blow. Just as in dreams, when sluggish rest presses our eyes with night, we seem in vain to wish to eagerly continue our course and in the midst of our effort, exhausted, we collapse. Our tongue is powerless, our body’s familiar strength fails us, nor does voice or words come out. Vergil describes in detail psychophysiological symptoms associated with peritraumatic distress, namely stress that occurs during or around the time of trauma. Turnus’ reaction is known as dissociation and threat-induced freezing, followed by fight-or-flight tendencies, a state well documented in both humans and animals: Freezing was originally referred to as crouching, a complete absence of movement except for movements associated with respiration and tense body posture that result from increased muscle tone in this defensive state. Later, well-controlled animal studies consistently observed bradycardia associated with freezing. Other features, such as reduced vocalizations and changes in

38  Vassiliki Panoussi body temperature have been described as well but have not been observed as consistently. (Roelofs 2017: 2) This representation of Turnus’ mental state is congruent with other recorded experiences of victims of trauma and has led scholars to classify trauma as mimetic, that is something that we “see” enacted before our eyes in nightmares and flashbacks. The phrase “in dreams” (in somnis, 908) is specifically used for nightmares earlier in the Aeneid (4.353 and 4.466; Tarrant 2012: 324). Turnus’ reaction indicates dissociation, a symptom recently included among the PTSD diagnostic criteria in DSM-V (Pai et al. 2017). In this instance Vergil combines several Homeric passages (Tarrant 2012: 322–26), but three stand out as most relevant to our discussion: Hector picking up a boulder and successfully smashing the gates of the Greek ramparts (Il. 12.445– 65); Patroclus losing his strength after Apollo strikes him during his aristeia and moments before his death (Il. 16.786–815); and Hector’s final duel with Achilles (Il. 22.199–201).12 Vergil transforms Hector’s successful display of strength into a moment that painfully signals Turnus’ failure and imminent fall. In discussing the passage in Iliad 12, Shay (1994: 91–92) identifies Hector’s out-of-body experience as part of the berserker’s state, the fight-or-flight instinct. This could equally apply to Turnus, who is thus identified with Hector, while Aeneas emerges as another Achilles. The mobilization of the episode detailing Patroclus’ dazed mental state while he faces Apollo furthers the sense of impending doom awaiting Turnus and underscores the inequality between him and Aeneas, since Turnus is aligned with Patroclus and Aeneas with Apollo. The intertextual contact with Homer offers yet another opportunity to appreciate the fragmentation of Turnus’ identity as a result of trauma, as he shares the experiences of Hector and Patroclus. To be sure, the same fragmentation applies to Aeneas, who at once occupies the role of Achilles and Apollo. While in Homer the dream simile emphasizes the actions of both warriors (Il. 22.199–201), Vergil narrows the focus on Turnus. Yet he simultaneously expands the Homeric text, which refers to running, to include attempts at speech, thus amplifying the contours on the out-of-body experience and intensifying the effects of Turnus’ peri-traumatic immobility. This narrowing of the narrative lens onto Turnus is accompanied by another significant change: Homer’s third person narrative gives way to first person plural. The phrase “we seem in vain to wish to eagerly continue our course and in the midst of our effort, exhausted, we collapse” (nequiquam auidos extendere cursus/ uelle uidemur et in mediis conatibus aegri/ succidimus), aptly describes the victim’s experiencing lack of control. In addition, the enjambment (uelle uidemur and succidimus) and the strong sense pause that follows succidimus have a stunning effect on the reader, because it not only conveys the intensity of this sense of failure (Tarrant 2012: 325), but also aligns the narrator, the reader, and Turnus in a shared focalization (Thomas 1998: 291). As a result, narrator and reader are witnesses to Turnus’ trauma as it unfolds (see also Settle, this volume: 22–24). Vergil’s brilliant zooming in on Turnus’ mental

Combat trauma in Vergil’s Aeneid  39 state and the narrative’s collapsing of his experience with those of the narrator and the reader with the use of the first person plural make for one of the most powerful moments in the poem. The allusive nature of the narrative underscores what literary studies of trauma have long affirmed: that literary representations of trauma invite the audience to “witness” the experience. Kaplan (2005: 20) explains that people turn to writing (and by extension to literary representations of trauma) to organize pain into a narrative that gives it shape for the purposes of selfunderstanding (working their trauma through), or with the aim of being heard, that is, constructing a witness where there was none before. The “disturbing remains” of history, inscribed in the memories of these writers, show the effects of social disaster on the individual. The representation of Turnus’ trauma also reflects, organizes, and constitutes testimony to the trauma endured by all communities involved in the Roman enterprise: Trojan, Italian, Roman. Moreover, numerous allusions to Lucretius’ didactic and philosophical epic On the Nature of Things invest the narrative with the aura of authority that a “scientific” source can bestow.13 Vergil mobilizes intertextual contact with passages where Lucretius expounds on perception in dreams (4.453–56), the transmission of sound (4.524–94), fear (3.152–58), and the fear of death more specifically (6.1213–14).14 These echoes lend further authority to Turnus’ experience while also affirming its universality. Vergil both represents and restructures Turnus’ trauma, exposes the fragmentation of the self that it causes but also validates it as universal, not particular. In addition, this universalizing creates a careful mirroring of the two main warriors, underscoring their shared traumatic experiences in combat. This remarkable dream simile is the last in the epic, soon to be followed by another flashback triggered by Turnus wearing Pallas’ baldric and to which my discussion will now turn.

“Return” of trauma and the end of the Aeneid As Turnus experiences threat-induced freezing, Aeneas gains the upper hand. Turnus supplicates him, declaring that he has won Lavinia, and asks him to spare his life. The epic’s final lines describe Aeneas’ reaction: Aeneas uoluens oculos dextramque repressit; et iam iamque magis cunctantem flectere sermo coeperat, infelix umero cum apparuit alto balteus et notis fulserunt cingula bullis Pallantis pueri, uictum quem uulnere Turnus strauerat atque umeris inimicum insigne gerebat. ille, oculis postquam saeui monimenta doloris exuuiasque hausit, furiis accensus et ira terribilis: ‘tune hinc spoliis indute meorum

40  Vassiliki Panoussi eripiare mihi? Pallas te hoc uulnere, Pallas immolat et poenam scelerato ex sanguine sumit.’ hoc dicens ferrum adverso sub pectore condit feruidus; ast illi soluuntur frigore membra uitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras.

(12.939–52)

Aeneas rolling his eyes held back his right hand; and now hesitating more and more, the speech began to move him, when the unlucky baldric came into view on his high shoulder and the belt shone with the familiar studs, the sword belt of the boy Pallas, whom Turnus had laid low, defeated, with a wound; Turnus was wearing it on his shoulders, the enemy’s emblem. Aeneas, after he had drunk in with his eyes the trophy, the memorial of his savage grief, enraged with fury and terrifying in his anger: “are you to be snatched away from me, dressed in the spoils of my people? It is Pallas, Pallas sacrifices you with this wound and exacts vengeance from your criminal blood.” Saying this he fervently buries his sword in Turnus’ chest facing him. Turnus’ limbs dissolve with chill and his life indignant flees with a moan to the shades below. Aeneas famously hesitates until Pallas’ baldric triggers his trauma, which manifests itself, belatedly, in a flashback. As many psychiatrists have observed, trauma patients lose authority over memory. Moreover, once the reexperiencing occurs, then the survivor lacks the ability to stop it (Shay 1994: 173) and therefore presents a danger to himself/herself and others. Fortunately, several techniques have been developed to help survivors reach mastery over flashbacks and similar intrusive phenomena and create a language of emotion (Shay 1994: 173). The resurfacing of Aeneas’ trauma is communicated through the text’s repetition of Turnus’ killing and despoiling of Pallas (uictum quem uulnere Turnus/ strauerat atque umeris inimicum insigne gerebat, 943–44 [whom Turnus had laid low, defeated, with a wound; Turnus was wearing it on his shoulders, the enemy’s emblem]). Vergil’s deep understanding of trauma is at work here, as Aeneas was never part of these actions in the epic’s narrative; only the reader knows. Yet the passage claims the memory of Pallas’ death as Aeneas’ (saeui monimenta doloris, 945 [the memorial of his savage grief]),15 thus exhibiting memory’s powers of transformation. Pathos is heightened further by the reference to Pallas as puer (943), emphasizing his youth and the inequality of the two warriors and focalizing the passage through Aeneas (Tarrant 2012: 335). Word order further calls attention to the flashback, as the traumatic events are enclosed between the words oculis and hausit (945–46). The metaphor of drinking, conveyed by the verb haurire (to drink), conflates different bodily senses, not only adding emotional power to the scene but also representing the body’s strong reaction to the traumatic memory. Trauma theorists describe flashbacks “as a form of recall that survives at the cost of willed memory or of the very continuity of conscious thought.” In other words, the ability to recover the past is connected to the inability to integrate it

Combat trauma in Vergil’s Aeneid  41 into consciousness (Caruth 1995: 192). As is the case with many warriors suffering from PTSD, in suffering the flashback, Aeneas reenters a state of rage and which I submit is analogous to the berserk stage he had experienced earlier: furiis accensus et ira/ terribilis.16 He no longer hesitates, he kills.17 As the hero deals the final blow to Turnus, Vergil shifts the narrative into direct speech: “It is Pallas, Pallas sacrifices you” (Pallas te…, Pallas/ immolat, 948–49). The repetition of Pallas’ name not only emphasizes the importance of trauma in this final moment of the epic, but also stands as a reminder of the constant return of the victim to the traumatic experience. At the same time, Aeneas is closer to what Leys describes as the anti-mimetic nature of trauma, a kind of dissociative state, whereby the victim experiences his own actions as performed by another. Once again, the text hints at the idea of dissociation through the use of the word ille to denote Aeneas, a pronoun that connotes distance, thus paving the way for Pallas’ “return” in the next lines. As Shay (1994: 173) observed in Vietnam veterans, during such flashbacks “the dead are more real than the living,” while the body remains conditioned to be constantly ready for battle. Aeneas emerges here as simultaneously occupying the role of victim, spectator, and perpetrator, the fragmentation of the warrior’s identity in full display. Moreover, his action—and the final action in the epic—raises the thorny problem of culpability, the issue very much at the heart of the modern theoretical debate on trauma; where does victimhood end and where does culpability begin? Additionally—and perhaps more importantly—what implications does the depiction of both antagonists as combat trauma victims have for the epic’s foundational and ideological message?

The epic as testimony: present, past, and future The experience of trauma and its aftermath, as expressed in the repetition of past trauma in the narrative’s present, collapses the distinctions between these two temporal categories of past and present, just as Vergil’s work itself with its bold movement on the narrative and temporal frameworks offers a timeless view of the Roman state. The focus on trauma in the epic, however, constitutes “a history that is itself regarded as testimony to the difficult, interminable process of working through a traumatic legacy” (Ramadanovic 2002: 180). History, memory, and literature intersect here, as the Aeneid, in this reading, offers testimony to the traumatic experience of founding and maintaining the Roman empire. How does the poem construct its hero’s (and Rome’s) identity in the wake of trauma? The relationship between trauma and literature has been increasingly the object of study and is particularly relevant to our discussion given the highly self-conscious character of the poem as epic and its unique relationship with Augustan Rome and beyond. Vergil does not simply use combat trauma because it is a Homeric or epic topos; quite the contrary, trauma in the poem repeats, acts out the experience of civil wars that Augustus purported to have ended. Individual trauma, so strikingly represented in the Aeneid, is deeply connected to Rome as both a state and an idea. The poem not only privileges the perspective of the trauma victim but also places trauma at the root of the nation’s foundational narrative,

42  Vassiliki Panoussi thus raising questions on the nature of collective trauma (see also Jarratt, this volume: 120–21 and Karanika, this volume: 215–17). Balaev (2008: 155) aptly expresses the relationship between the protagonist and ideologies in her discussion of trauma in literature: The traumatized protagonist in fiction brings into awareness the specificity of individual trauma that is often connected to larger social factors and cultural values or ideologies. We can see that the trauma novel provides a picture of the individual that suffers, but paints it in such a way as to suggest that this protagonist is an ‘everyperson’ figure. Indeed, a significant purpose of the protagonist is often to reference a historical period in which a group of people or a particular culture, race, or gender, have collectively experienced massive trauma. However one characterizes Aeneas’ final act, whatever position one holds over the problem of culpability, agency, or identity, his traumatic experience reflects, repeats, or “works through” the traumatic experiences Romans (and even Augustus himself) endured at the end of civil wars. Deeply attuned to the contours of combat trauma, Vergil’s masterpiece demonstrates that “moving forward” is fraught with problems. The audience both bear witness to Aeneas’ trauma and see their own trauma reflected in Aeneas’ (and Turnus’) experiences. The survivor attempts to understand trauma through repetition, that is a failed “translation” of the experience. But even failure to achieve this understanding eventually forges a new knowledge (Belau 2002: 175). The Aeneid offers a testimony of trauma as it affords the reader with more intimate knowledge of the harshness of wars, loss, and its consequences on survivors. Vergil’s poem is a meditation on trauma, blurring the boundaries between past and future, individual and society, failure and success, and pits his traumatized heroes against the optimistic vision of the future the epic promises elsewhere.

Notes 1 Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is caused by repetitive head trauma and is comparable to the head trauma probably suffered by ancient warriors. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) usually results from a violent blow to the head and, in the case of warriors, is the result of blast-exposure. The relationship between the two degenerative conditions of the brain is complicated and still not well understood. See McAlpine (2018); Schwarz (2017); Worth (2016); Bryant (2011). 2 Vergil’s text is by Mynors (1969). Translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 3 Aeneas expresses the same feelings of failure to reciprocate Evander’s guest-friendship and alliance in his lament for Pallas, Aen. 11.54–55: hi nostri reditus exspectatique triumphi?/ haec mea magna fides? (Is this my return, and the triumph that we expected? Is this my great pledge?). 4 Shay (1994: 82) offers a list of the characteristics of the berserk state: “beastlike; godlike; socially disconnected; crazy, mad, insane; enraged; cruel, without restraint or discrimination; insatiable; devoid of fear; inattentive to own safety; distractible; indiscriminate; reckless, feeling invulnerable; exalted, intoxicated, frenzied; cold, indiffer-

Combat trauma in Vergil’s Aeneid  43 ent; insensible to pain; suspicious of friends.” Aeneas’ rage is referenced throughout the narrative: ardens (blazing), 514; furit (raging), 545; ardenti (blazing), 552; desaeuit (rages), 569; dira frementem (roaring greatly), 572. His presence in the battlefield is almost nonhuman: he breathes fire (quinquaginta oribus ignem/ pectoribusque arsisse [and breathed fire from fifty mouths and fifty chests], 566–67), a quality he shares with the monster Cacus in Aen. 8 (Harrison 1991: 215), while his step is far-advancing (longe gradientem, 572), and his spear huge (ingens, 579). Aeneas also disregards social convention: he doesn’t respond to the pleas of a warrior with a speech, but with violence: sed non et Troius heros/ dicta parat contra, iaculum nam torquet in hostis (but the Trojan hero does not prepare words in response, but hurls his javelin to the enemy) (584–85). 5 Aen. 10.517–20: Sulmone creatos/ quattuor hic iuuenes, totidem quos educat Ufens,/ uiuentis rapit, inferias quos immolet umbris/ captiuoque rogi perfundat sanguine flammas (Here, he captures alive four young men, sons of Sulmo, and another four that Ufens raised, so that he might sacrifice them as offerings to the dead and pour the captive’s blood on the pyre’s flames). 6 For example, in the case of Magus, not only he denies his offer of ransom, but “he holds the helmet with his left hand and bending back the suppliant’s neck, drives the sword in all the way to the hilt” (535–36, sic fatus galeam laeua tenet atque reflexa/ ceruice orantis capulo tenus applicat ensem). In another instance, “with his sword he throws to the ground Anxur’s left arm, along with the whole circle of his shield” (545–46, Anxuris ense sinistram/ et totum clipei ferro deiecerat orbem). On Aeneas’ aristeia, see also Putnam (2011: 22–48). 7 Aen. 10.557–60: “istic nunc, metuende, iace. non te optima mater/ condet humi patrioque onerabit membra sepulcro:/ alitibus linquere feris, aut gurgite mersum/ unda feret piscesque impasti uulnera lambent.” (“Lie there now, fearsome man. Your excellent mother will not bury you under the earth nor will she lay your limbs in an ancestral tomb: you will be carried by wild birds, or the waves shall carry you sunk into the swirl, and the hungry fish will lick your wounds”). The passage has been long noted for its allusion to Achilles’ taunt to Hector: Il. 22.352–54; see Harrison (1991: 212–13). 8 Coffee (2009: 104) argues that Aeneas’ rejection of Magus’ offer of ransom and his reference to the image of the scale (10.531–33) aligns him with Jupiter dispensing justice with the same instrument, thus rendering Aeneas godlike in this instance. 9 talia per campos edebat funera ductor/ Dardanius torrentis aquae uel turbinis atri/ more furens, 10.602–4 (Such deaths was the Dardan leader dealing through the battlefield, raging like a torrent or a black whirlwind). Aeneas’ spear is compared to a black whirlwind at the end of the poem, as he wounds Turnus (uolat atri turbinis instar, 12.923). 10 Aen. 11.42–58: “tene,” inquit “miserande puer, cum laeta ueniret,/ inuidit Fortuna mihi, ne regna uideres/ nostra neque ad sedes uictor ueherere paternas?/ non haec Euandro de te promissa parenti/ discedens dederam, cum me complexus euntem/ mitteret in magnum imperium metuensque moneret/ acris esse uiros, cum dura proelia gente/ et nunc ille quidem spe multum captus inani/ fors et uota facit cumulatque altaria donis,/ nos iuuenem exanimum et nil iam caelestibus ullis/ debentem uano maesti comitamur honore./ infelix, nati funus crudele uidebis!/ hi nostri reditus exspectatique triumphi?/  haec mea magna fides? at non, Euandre, pudendis/  uulneribus pulsum aspicies, nec sospite dirum/ optabis nato funus pater. ei mihi quantum/ praesidium, Ausonia, et quantum tu perdis, Iule!” (“Did fortune begrudge you, pitiable boy,” he said, “when she happily came to me, so you would not see my kingdom and ride as victor to your father’s home? This was not the promise I made to your father Evander when I departed, when he embraced me as I went and sent me as a commander of a great empire and fearfully warned me that the men were fierce, that the battle was with a tough people. And now he, much caught by a vain hope, perhaps gives prayers

44  Vassiliki Panoussi and heaps the altars with offerings, while with empty honor we accompany the lifeless young man, no longer owing anything to the gods in heaven. Unlucky man, you will see the cruel funeral of your son. Is this my return, and the triumph that we expected? Is this my great pledge? But, Evander, you will not see him beaten with shameful wounds, nor will you, his father, wish for dire death with your son unharmed. Alas me! How great a protection you lose, Ausonia, and you, Iulus”). On the passage, see Horsfall (2003: 74–84); Coffee (2009: 104–6). On trauma and lament see also Reitzammer and Karanika (this volume: 194–99 and 210–12, respectively). 11 He also reiterates his regret at his failure to uphold his obligations towards Evander, on which see the previous note. 12 12.445–50: “And Hector snatched up and carried a stone that lay in front of the gate, thick at the base, but sharp at the top; not easily would two men, the best of the people, have heaved it up from the ground and on to a wagon—men such as mortals now are—yet easily did he wield it even by himself; the son of crooked-counseling Cronos made it light for him;” 16.805–6: “Then blindness seized his mind, and his glorious limbs were loosed beneath him, and he stood in a daze;” 22.199–201: “as in a dream a man cannot pursue one who flees before him—the one cannot flee, nor the other pursue—so Achilles could not overtake Hector in fleetness, nor Hector escape;” trans. by Murray [Wyatt] 1999. On the relationship of this passage with Homer, see Putnam (2011: 91–92). 13 Tarrant (2012: 323–26) identifies at least ten different Lucretian passages to which Vergil alludes. A brief introduction on Lucretius’ work and its importance can be found in Conte (1994: 155–74). 14 4.453–56: denique cum suaui deuinxit membra sopore/ somnus et in summa corpus iacet omne quiete,/ tum uigilare tamen nobis et membra mouere/ nostra uidemur… (Again, when sleep has bound our limbs in sweet slumber, and all the body lies in complete rest, yet then we seem to ourselves to be awake and moving our limbs…); 3.152– 58: uerum ubi uementi magis est commota metu mens,/ consentire animam totam per membra uidemus/ sudoresque ita palloremque exsistere toto/ corpore et infringi linguam uocemque aboriri,/ caligare oculos, sonere auris, succidere artus,/ denique concidere ex animi terrore uidemus/ saepe homines (Nevertheless, when the understanding is stirred by some stronger fear, we see that the whole soul feels with it throughout the limbs, and the sweat and pallor break out over all the body, and the tongue is crippled and the voice is choked, the eyes grow misty, the ears ring, the limbs give way beneath us, and indeed we often see men fall down through the terror in their mind); 6.1213-14: atque etiam quosdam cepere obliuia rerum/ cunctarum, neque se possent cognoscere ut ipsi; (On some, too, forgetfulness of all things seized, so that they could not even know themselves); trans. by Bailey (1947). 15 Notice the word order: the words describing grief (saeui…. doloris) enclose the word for memory (monimenta), thus emphasizing memory as completely controlled by trauma. The phrase also refers to the scene depicted on the baldric, the Danaids murdering the sons of Aegyptus on their wedding night, on which see Putnam (1998: 189–207). 16 The text emphasizes this rage in various important ways. As it has been repeatedly noted, Aeneas is here associated with furor, the cosmic force linked to Juno, opposing the success of his mission. This association is strengthened by the echoes to Juno’s mindful anger (saeuae memorem Iunonis ob iram, 1.4), which sets the story in motion. On Aeneas’ anger the bibliography is vast. I single out here Putnam (1988: 151–201); for an opposing view, see Galinsky (1988). 17 It is important here to note that Aeneas’ hesitation shows that he was swayed by Turnus’ supplication and was ready to spare him, thus acting in accordance to the Roman value of clementia (mercy). Indeed, Aeneas’ father, who in Book 6 communicates to his son the tenets of the Roman ethical code in war, specifically mentions sparing the conquered (6.853). Vergil departs from Homer, whose heroes face no such ethical q­ uandary, and

Combat trauma in Vergil’s Aeneid  45 indicates that Aeneas departs from the behavior desirable in Roman warriors. In this way, he probes the uncomfortable questions surrounding agency and responsibility on the part of the trauma victim, on which see further below.

Works cited Bailey, C. 1947. Lucretius De Rerum Natura. Edited, with Prolegomena, Critical Apparatus, Translation, and Commentary. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Balaev, M. 2008. “Trends in Literary Trauma Theory.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 41: 149–66. Belau, L. 2002. “Introduction: Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through: Trauma and the Limit of Knowledge.” In Belau, L. and Ramadanovic, P. eds. Topologies of Trauma: Essays on the Limit of Knowledge and Memory. New York: Other Press. xiii–xxvii. Belau, L. and Ramadanovic, P. eds. 2002. Topologies of Trauma: Essays on the Limit of Knowledge and Memory. New York: Other Press. Bryant, R. 2011. “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder vs Traumatic Brain Injury.” Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience 13: 251–62. Caruth, C. ed. 1995. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Caruth, C. ed. 1996. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Coffee, N. 2009. The Commerce of War: Exchange and Social Order in Latin Epic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Conte, G. B. 1994. Latin Literature: A History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Crowley, J. 2014. “Beyond the Universal Soldier: Combat Trauma in Classical Antiquity.” In Meineck, P. and Konstan, D. eds. Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 105–30. Galinsky, K. 1988. “The Anger of Aeneas.” American Journal of Philology 109: 321–48. Hardie, P. R. 1986. Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Harrison, S. J. 1991. Vergil Aeneid 10. With Introduction, Translation, and Commentary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Horsfall, N. 2003. Virgil Aeneid 11: A Commentary. Leiden: Brill. Kaplan, E. A. 2005. Trauma Culture. The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Kosicki, P. H. and Jasińska-Kania, A. 2007. “Guest Editors’ Introduction: Aggressors, Victims, and Trauma in Collective Memory.” International Journal of Sociology 37: 3–9. Leys, R. and Goldman, M. 2010. “Navigating the Genealogies of Trauma, Guilt, and Affect: An Interview with Ruth Leys.” University of Toronto Quarterly 79: 656–79. McAlpine, K. J. 2018. “Why Some People Develop More Severe CTE Symptoms Than Others.” BU Today. https​://ww​w.bu.​edu/t​oday/​2018/​sever​ity-o​f-cte​-symp​toms-​genet​ ics-i​nflue​nced/​. Meineck, P. and Konstan, D. eds. 2014. Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Murray, A. T. 1999. Homer Iliad. 2nd ed. Revised by Wyatt, W. F. 2 vols. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mynors, R. A. B. 1969. P. Vergili Maronis Opera. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

46  Vassiliki Panoussi Pai, A., Suris, A. M. and North, C. S. 2017. “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in the DSM-5: Controversy, Change, and Conceptual Considerations.” Behavioral Sciences 7. https:// doi.org/10.3390/bs7010007. Panoussi, V. 2010. “Aeneas’ Sacral Authority.” In Farrell, J. and Putnam, M. C. J. eds. A Companion to Vergil’s Aeneid and Its Tradition. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. 52–65. Putnam, M. C. J. 1988. The Poetry of the Aeneid. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Putnam, M. C. J. 1998. Virgil’s Epic Designs. Ekphrasis in the Aeneid. New Haven: Yale University Press. Putnam, M. C. J. 2011. The Humanness of Heroes. Studies in the Conclusion of Virgil’s Aeneid. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Rabinowitz, N. S. 2014. “Women and War in Tragedy.” In Meineck, P. and Konstan, D. eds. Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 185–206. Radstone, S. 2007. “Trauma Theory: Contexts, Politics, Ethics.” Paragraph 30: 9–29. Ramadanovic, P. 2002. “In the Future…: On Trauma and Literature.” In Belau, L. and Ramadanovic, P. eds. Topologies of Trauma: Essays on the Limit of Knowledge and Memory. New York: Other Press. 179–209. Roelofs, K. 2017. “Freeze for Action: Neurobiological Mechanisms in Animal and Human Freezing.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 372 (1718). https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2016.0206. Schwarz, A. 2017. “Research Traces Link Between Combat Blasts and PTSD.” The New York Times, December 21, sec. U.S. https​://ww​w.nyt​imes.​com/2​016/0​6/10/​us/pt​sd-bl​ ast-w​aves-​resea​rch.h​tml. Shay, J. 1994. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. New York: Atheneum. Sherman, N. 2014. “‘He Gave Me His Hand but Took My Bow:’ Trust and Trustworthiness in the ‘Philoctetes’ and Our Wars.” In Meineck, P. and Konstan, D. eds. Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 207–24. Shively, S. B., Horkayne-Szakaly, I., Jones, R. V., Kelly, J. P., Armstrong, R. C., and Perl, D. P. 2016. “Characterisation of Interface Astroglial Scarring in the Human Brain after Blast Exposure: A Post-Mortem Case Series.” The Lancet. Neurology 15: 944–53. https​ ://do​i.org​/10.1​016/S​1474-​4422(​16)30​057-6​. Tarrant, R. J. 2012. Virgil Aeneid. Book XII. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thomas, R. F. 1998. “The Isolation of Turnus.” In Stahl, H.-P. ed. Vergil’s Aeneid: Augustan Epic and Political Context. London: Duckworth. 271–302. Tritle, L. A. 2014. “‘Ravished Minds’ in the Ancient World.” In Meineck, P. and Konstan, D. eds. Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 87–103. Worth, R. F. 2016. “What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological?” The New York Times, June 10, sec. Magazine. https​://ww​w.nyt​imes.​com/2​016/0​6/12/​magaz​ine/w​hat-i​ f-pts​d-is-​more-​physi​cal-t​han-p​sycho​logic​al.ht​ml.38​.

Part 2

Women and trauma

3

Repetition, civic status, and remedy Women and trauma in New Comedy Sharon L. James

The rules and stage humor of ancient New Comedy both require and mask a good deal of personal trauma, much of it experienced by women. That is, the plots frequently depend upon risks and violence inflicted on women. Although New Comedy showcases comic male antics and erotic despair, its plots deploy violence that typically occurs offstage. Performance is thus a key to recognizing and reckoning with the trauma and with the traumatized women, as some are easy to miss on the page but would be unmistakable onstage. Rape of citizen daughters is surprisingly common, but other forms of trauma are visible everywhere: gendered violence and threats against women of all social statuses; rape, abuse, and torture of enslaved women; anxiety over children; loss of family, social status, and natal country; fear of enslavement in prostitution or concubinage. After sketching out the other types of trauma, I focus on trauma caused by sexual violence, including rape, and argue that New Comedy puts on display the various forms of trauma suffered by women and other disenfranchised groups.1 Some background is necessary before I proceed. Despite its absurd, repetitive plots, New Comedy was received by the ancients as virtually a mirror upon social life, as seen in the remark of the scholar Aristophanes of Byzantium (T7 Slater 1986): “Oh Menander and life, which of you imitates the other?” So familiar and widely accepted were the character types that Roman writers could draw on them without comment, as demonstrated by Cicero (Pro Caelio, Geffcken 1973), Catullus, the love elegists, and Livy, whose account of the Bacchanalia draws heavily on Roman comedy (Scafuro 1989; Walsh 1996). These plays have been much mined for information on social history; I treat them here as offering information about traumas both real and feared in antiquity. Civic status is a critical element in studying women and trauma in New Comedy. The genre shows women of all statuses: citizens both poor and well-off, the working class, free non-citizens, those involved in commercial sex, and the enslaved. Taking the perspective of citizen society and focusing on its priorities, the plays stage citizens wielding privilege and ownership over the disenfranchised, often brutally.2 The treatment of the enslaved offers much more to study than can be accommodated here. Such forms of trauma—and I define the state of enslavement as permanently, constantly traumatic—were far more common in daily life than New Comedy would suggest. The plays repeatedly reveal trauma to

50  Sharon L. James citizen women, however, often in outlandishly improbable forms. These moments stage less the actual realities of those events than the dreadful possibilities that haunt citizen society—not, that is, what citizens regularly experience, but what they fear. In this respect, New Comedy rehearses fears that threaten citizen families, while showing, peripherally, the daily traumas faced by subalterns and the disenfranchised. I argue below that the remedies for trauma, via repetition, therefore differ starkly according to civic status: citizen women can create a form of healing through repetition, but the traumas of enslaved women have no such remedy. A critical lexical marker of this permanent psychic and civic difference is that traumatized citizen women retain hope, spes, to which they cling desperately, but enslaved women do not speak of hope for freedom from slavery and from continued trauma.3 The many rape plots of New Comedy have been much discussed by scholars, with focus on the citizen girls and women affected by them.4 Ancient citizen society understood rape to happen only to citizens: its chiefly male perspective considered rape a property crime against the relevant men in the life of a woman or girl (father, husband, brother) rather than a violation of the woman herself. But citizen women are not the only ones to suffer rape. Scholarship has begun to consider rape of non-citizen women, a phenomenon unmarked but implicit in every act of sex forced upon an enslaved person, male or female: whether that act took place in a brothel or a private house, it was non-consensual and thus constitutes rape in our contemporary understanding.5 Rape of the enslaved was considered a property crime, if it was committed by someone other than their owners, but was barely worth mentioning if an owner committed it. At a few points, the Roman playwrights advert to the sexual abuse embedded in slavery. Because repetition and rehearsal of traumatic events or fears are themselves symptoms of trauma (see below), a case could be made that Roman Comedy manifests a social fear of rape so great and so widespread that the fear itself becomes a constant and living, if spectral, trauma in Roman society (James 2015).6 The Roman viewing audiences at the official performances of Roman Comedy were much smaller than the audiences in Greek theaters: temporary stages were built for each occasion and then dismantled once the festal occasion was concluded. The seating was limited to fewer than two thousand viewers (Goldberg 1998) but was socially broad, as indicated by the prologue to Plautus’ Poenulus (The Little Carthaginian), which describes audiences including not only citizen women but enslaved women (including wet nurses), prostitutes, and enslaved persons. This prologue depicts a very lively atmosphere at the plays, with distinct behavior by diverse groups. For my purposes, the audience members of interest are women, whether citizen or non-citizen, Romans or foreigners, free or enslaved. When women watched these plays, I suggest, they were far less interested in the formal plot about a boy in love and far more interested in the representation of traumatic situations they themselves either had experienced or feared. And the plays have much to show them. Even the most distressing moments could have been meaningful to women to see, as representations of dangers specific to women’s lives. Thus, mothers could have exorcised their own frustration at their

Repetition, civic status, and remedy  51 husbands’ sexual abuse of enslaved women at home. Women involved in commercial sex—whether they were independent courtesans or enslaved in brothels—saw their plights staged publicly. Foreign women brought to Rome, often as war captives, could see both their dangerous experiences represented and a fantasy of their rescue and reunion with their own lost families. I think it very likely that all women reacted to the common rape plots in ways different from those of male viewers, for whom the issue does not seem to have been critical. What they saw when they watched Roman Comedy were not lightweight love stories but depictions of dangerous and traumatic realities for women of all classes. The forms of trauma that these plays stage, or invoke without actually staging, reach outside the text to the viewers. In this respect, as in others, New Comedy does present a mirror to ancient society—and in terms of social fears, anxieties, and traumas, that group includes all members, rather than citizens alone—by showing the fearsome things that can and do happen to women. Violence is a source of fear so powerful that the fear itself can have traumatic effects, which are frequently seen on the stage (see also Weiberg, this volume: 186–87). Finally, repetition: as Linda Belau explains it, both literary theory and psychoanalysis recognize that the traumatized subject enacts repetition of the traumatic experience as an attempt to identify and heal it.7 Such traumas have usually occurred in early childhood, when they were either not understood by the child or could easily be misunderstood (often deliberately). In New Comedy, the trauma associated with early childhood is separation from family, a narrative mainstay of the genre. Only girls recall the experience of separation—by either accident or kidnaping—and they remain traumatized by it until they are restored to their families.8 The horror of rape, too, is well recalled by its victims, but they are rarely allowed on stage to articulate what they suffered. Sometimes, as I argue, they can perform their own process of healing through repetition. Belau (2002: 174) describes the significance of repetition in literary theory and psychoanalysis: repetition is not about the return of something tenable. It is about the new. This is also the significance of repetition for Freud and the field of psychoanalysis. Repetition creates the past in the present as it creates the new; it engenders the unconscious repressed as always belonging to the present (to the scene of analysis), not to the past…. In the movement of repetition, the hermeneutics of psychoanalysis opens up the possibility for reading something of the unconscious repressed. Belau goes on to explain how subjects try but fail, via repetition, to understand their repressed traumas. I argue here that New Comedy shows citizen women traumatized, either by separation from family or by rape, using repetition in just such ways. The plays are able to achieve successful healings by the alchemy of generic plots that unify families or resolve rape and scandal through belated marriage. (Again, such resolutions are not available to the enslaved.) At a few points, however, such social resolution is unable to heal emotional trauma. Notably, Terence leaves questions hanging over his audience, perhaps particularly

52  Sharon L. James among female viewers, who might notice that his plays do not whitewash the female experience of rape and do not present marriage to her rapist as a happy prospect designed to address and heal the trauma of a rape victim (James 1998).

Separation from family Generically, New Comedy depends absolutely on the temporary (though usually protracted) fragmentation of families: without children separated from parents either at birth or very young, there can be no miraculous last-minute anagnorisis to reunite a fragmented family. Such families are almost always of the citizen class, and the recovery of a lost child makes possible a legitimate citizen marriage.9 So babies are always getting lost and then turning up later, often via utterly improbable circumstances—in Plautus’ Curculio (The Weevil), for example, a localized tornado causes a nurse to lose the baby Planesium, who is scooped up, sold to a trader, and resold to a pimp—and the ensuing separations leave marks of trauma for years, in both parents and children. Thus, Chremes of Terence’s Andria (The Girl from Andros) is extra-protective of his daughter Philumena because his other daughter Pasibula was lost years earlier. He has so longed for her that when he hears she is alive, he is fearful, eager, anxious, and concerned for her: he wants someone else to go with him to meet her, as he knows she won’t recognize him. In Plautus’ Rudens (The Rope), Daemones and Daedalis have been yearning for their daughter Palaestra, kidnaped some twelve years earlier. In Plautus’ Menaechmi (The Brothers Menaechmus), the theft of the boy Menaechmus causes his father to die of grief; his grandfather then changes the name of the remaining twin, Sosicles, to Menaechmus—a way both of keeping the trauma current and of keeping the lost boy alive, if in name only. In this way, the mistaken identities can be sustained as a comic device: the adult Sosicles (searching around the Aegean for his lost brother on a mission to heal his family) comes to Epidamnus, where his lost twin resides. Likewise, Hanno, the titular Carthaginian of Plautus’ Poenulus, travels the Mediterranean, seeking his daughters, kidnaped from Carthage some twelve years before. The protective behavior of brothers with their newly rediscovered sisters, in Plautus’ Curculio and Terence’s Eunuchus (The Eunuch), suggests that the loss of those girls remained a live source of grief in their families. Citizen mothers, too, experience the loss of children, though they are usually offstage when their children turn up—staged reunions tend to feature daughters returned to a father or brother.10 Sostrata of Terence’s Heauton Timoroumenos (The Self-Tormentor) is not allowed a reunion scene, but her approach to the ill-tempered husband, who had ordered Antiphila exposed sixteen years prior, shows how hard it had been for her to give up her baby girl: she had secretly given Antiphila to a Corinthian woman she (correctly) considered respectable. Her conversation with her husband effectively replays the traumatic experience of his rejection of the baby and his order of exposure. These forms of trauma are staged only briefly or are to be inferred from very short remarks. By far the greatest staged suffering caused by separation and alienation belongs to either lost daughters or to the mothers who had borne illegitimate daughters conceived by

Repetition, civic status, and remedy  53 rape, and in both groups that trauma receives almost lavish expression. I consider the former group here; the illegitimate mothers are discussed below. Notably, all these women are citizens: they manifest a kind of natural citizen virtue that is effectively a requirement, if the entire genre of New Comedy is to stand rather than fall (because of its structural obsession with citizen family life). That is, even a long-lost citizen daughter born because of rape or brought up, because of kidnaping, by a pimp in a brothel will show both extremely improbable innate virtue (as in Curculio, Poenulus, and Rudens) and an ongoing trauma over her separation from her family. Thus, Selenium of Cistellaria (The Casket Comedy), exposed by her raped mother and adopted by a meretrix (prostitute), has no idea that she is a lost citizen girl but practices citizen female sexual virtue (e.g., she is a morigera, “compliant”), a financially impractical program that her loving foster mother Melaenis permits.11 Palaestra of Plautus’ Rudens suffers extensive emotional and physical trauma: kidnaped at the age of three, she is sold to the pimp Labrax, who brings her up intending to sell her when she becomes physically mature. She retains a small box of tokens that can prove her citizenship and her family identity. She longs to find her parents not merely because they would rescue her from slavery: she feels that they need her, that she should be starting to look after them. Her lover Plesidippus has given a down payment on her, and she is looking forward to their future bliss, but Labrax double-crosses them both and abducts her, along with her friend Ampelisca, to take them for sale in Sicily, while Plesidippus follows in another boat. The weather god Arcturus, having taken an interest, causes a storm that washes everybody up in Cyrene, where Palaestra and Ampelisca take refuge in the temple of Venus but still suffer physical threats from Labrax, who does not hesitate to use physical force even in the goddess’ sanctuary. Palaestra is especially distraught because her box of tokens has been lost at sea. The neighbor and his enslaved workers offer protection. Eventually the box turns up and proves the neighbors to be her long-lost parents, who are kin to Plesidippus. Thus she is rescued back into citizen society.12 But before then, Palaestra has suffered traumas of an extravagant nature, which she details in her first speech, an operatic canticum (aria) of woe, made amusing to the viewers both because Arcturus has assured them of her rescue and because she is dripping wet after the shipwreck.13 The fortunes of humans are so much less terrible in185 the telling than is the bitterness given to them in the suffering of it. Can it really please the god that I should have been tossed up, in this getup, and in this plight, all terrified in a strange place? Shall I say that I was born for this miserable end?189 ………………………… But my master’s evil is harassing me; his impiety makes me suffer.198 And now he has lost his ship and all his belongings in the sea: and I’m all that’s left of his goods—even the girl who came 200 with me in the lifeboat has fallen out. Now I’m all alone.

54  Sharon L. James If only she were safe, my toils would be easier with her help. But now what kind of hope, aid, or counsel can I take? For I am all alone, part of these lonely places. On this side there are rocks; on that side, the sea is sounding, 205 and not a single person has come out to find me. All I’ve got for help is what I’m wearing. I don’t know where to look for food or shelter: what hope do I have, to keep me wanting to live? ………………………………… I’m cold, I’m lost, I’m scared, everything’s got me.215 Oh, my unhappy parents, you don’t even know any of this, how miserable I am now. However freeborn I was, it was all in vain. How much less am I a slave than if I’d been born a slave? And I haven’t even done anything for the ones who bore me. Narratively, this long speech characterizes Palaestra, reviews her backstory, and sums up her circumstances: wet, cold, lost, alone in a strange place, with no idea where to go or what kind of people she may find, all because the pimp has practiced “owner’s evil” (erile scelus, 198). In addition, the speech shows Palaestra engaging in repetition: lost from her city, stolen from her sweetheart, and separated from her one friend, she reexperiences her original trauma—loss, by theft, of her parents—but with new elements. She can address the gods on the grounds of justice and fairness, and she begins looking ahead to her probable new condition in life: in her situation, she says, she might as well have been born into slavery. This speech begins with the striking comment that to tell one’s troubles is much less bitter than to live through them. Palaestra goes on to enumerate them regardless, as if to do so will legitimate her feeling of helplessness. She uses repetition, attempting to make sense of, and work through, her current circumstances: all alone, without her box of tokens, she is effectively a nobody—enslaved by a shipwreck rather than a pimp. She has lost hope and wonders if it is worth trying to stay alive (204, 209), a point to which she will return soon after.14 Rehearsing her woes, she ends by bringing her parents into them—once she is permanently lost, it cannot help or profit them to have produced her because she can no longer hope to find them and be rescued from brothel slavery. Palaestra suffers more threats, danger, and violence before the anagnorisis (recognition) that reunites her with her parents. When Labrax tries to remove his two female possessions from the temple of Venus by force, he becomes violent with Ptolemocratia, the elderly priestess. The girls shriek, and Palaestra is so fearful as to think death better than re-enslavement to the pimp: It’s all up now: we’re deprived of every resource, help, protection, aid. There’s absolutely no speck of safety, and we don’t know where to go! Now we’re both so terrified,

665

Repetition, civic status, and remedy  55 such rough and nasty treatment we suffered in there just now by our owner. That brutal old man pushed the elderly priestess headlong back and forth, all over the place, by violence! And he dragged us by force away from the statue, in the inner sanctuary! Now, by how our affairs and fortunes are going, it’s better to die. Nothing is better than death in evils and terrible troubles.

670

675

Her earlier aria rehearsed her traumas outdoors, but this speech focuses on violence and sacrilegious force indoors, in the goddess’ sanctuary. Labrax’ brutality shocks Palaestra into considering death better than whatever the pimp plans for her.15 Help is naturally at hand, in the form of Plesidippus’ enslaved assistant Trachalio, who hears the shouting. TRA. Be quiet and calm, look at me! PAL. If only I could stop fearing that I’ll suffer680 violence, violence that forces me to be violent to myself! TRA. Oh stop, you’re being ridiculous. PAL. Hey, stop trying to console us with just words: if you don’t prepare some real help, Trachalio, the whole thing is over! AMP. I’d definitely rather die than have the pimp abuse me. But I’m still a woman at heart—when I think of miserable death, 685 I shake with fear. Oh, dear me, this is bitter! Here Ampelisca joins Palaestra in fearing a future under Labrax—and it is worth noting that she too has undergone abduction, shipwreck, and violence in the temple. The two girls even fearfully contemplate death as better than being returned to the pimp. Their traumatized state would be evident in the staging, as they would be shaking and weeping. This scene is a high point of active melodramatic peril and woe, but throughout, Palaestra’s most haunting experience is her separation from her parents. Re-enslavement to the pimp, without proof of her parentage, is worse than death to her, and she speaks of violence against herself. Sharing the fear of return to Labrax’ power, Ampelisca also prefers death—but cannot muster the intention to enact suicide. Palaestra, however, returns repeatedly to the trauma of her original separation from her family. Her parents have experienced that trauma in a lasting way, as well, as seen when Daemones remarks, in an aside, that Palaestra makes him think of his lost daughter: Oh my daughter, when I see this girl, she reminds me of my sorrows; she was three when she was lost, and I don’t know if she’s still alive

(742–44)

56  Sharon L. James When she is identified, he is overjoyed: DAE. It’s her, it’s her! I can’t keep myself from hugging her! Oh my daughter! I’m your father, who brought you up, I’m Daemones, and look, here’s your mother Daedalis inside! PAL. Oh my father, I didn’t even dare hope for you! DAE. How happy I am to hug you!

(1173–75)

He immediately takes her indoors, where mother and daughter have a jubilant reunion. Daemones, seeking to marry off his newly recovered daughter and to offer formal thanks to the Lares, as a Roman father would, addresses his wife mockingly: Hey, what am I looking at? My wife is holding my daughter around the neck, hanging on to her. She’s too stupid and tedious, with all that loving! Hey, wife, take a break on all that kissing, and get everything ready so I can make an offering to the household gods when I get back, since they have increased our household. (1201–5) This remark belittles his wife, acknowledges his gratitude for Palaestra’s return, and evokes the implicit trauma suffered by both parents during the long separation. Daedalis is so overcome by emotion that she cannot let go of her daughter. In performance, the moment would have been audibly marked, as mother and daughter would be shrieking offstage. In their raucous reunion, both women vent years of repressed grief and fear while reclaiming each other. A similar moment occurs in Plautus’ Poenulus, very unusually located in the class of the enslaved. Giddenis, kidnaped from Carthage, along with the two daughters of her owner Hanno, has been enslaved in the brothel of Lycus in Calydon for some twelve years, caring for the girls. When Hanno arrives, seeking his daughters, she recognizes him. As soon as she reassures him that the girls are safe, his enslaved young assistant steps forward to speak to her in Punic, identifying himself as her own long-lost son. Hanno translates for the benefit of his newly found nephew Agorastocles (also kidnaped as a child from Carthage) and the viewers: PUER auamma illi. GID. hauon bane silli in mustine. mepstaetemes tas dum et alanna cestimim. AGOR. quid illi locuti sunt inter se? dic mihi. HAN. matrem hic salutat suam, haec autem hunc filium. tace atque parce muliebri supellectili. AGOR. quae east supellex? HAN. clarus clamor. AGOR. sine modo. (1141–46)16

Repetition, civic status, and remedy  57 BOY. auamma illi. GID. hauon bane silli in mustine. Mepstaetemes tas dum et alanna cestimim. AGOR. What are they saying to each other? Tell me! HAN. This boy is greeting his mother; she is greeting him, her son. HAN. Shush, spare us this female furniture! AGOR. What is that furniture? HAN. Loud shouting. AGOR. Oh, let them go on. A moment later, Hanno directs Agorastocles to take the entire party indoors; in the staging, it is likely that Giddenis and her son would continue embracing and shrieking joyously. The reunions of these two mother-child pairs—Palaestra and Daedalis; Giddenis and her son—focus on female and maternal expressions of emotion, very different from male reactions. It is worth remarking briefly on the two different separation tales that lead to these reunions. First, although loss of a citizen daughter to a kidnaper haunts the genre, such a thing was very unlikely to occur in reality (indeed, these losses often need absurdly elaborate narratives). The fragmentation of families that is fundamental to New Comedy represents not a social reality but a widespread fear—one hardly extinct even now—of a type that requires imaginative rehearsal for its exorcism. And the recovery of a lost citizen child, a narrative mainstay of the genre, is beyond impossible (although the myths of Oedipus and Ion suggest that it also haunted the citizen psyche in Greece). But among the enslaved, separated families were a norm, as in any society that practices slavery. In that social group, the dream of reunion could have been fantasy only. Plautus takes the trouble to insert a very brief vision of that fantasy, in a scene that is completely needless to the plot. It is a tart rejoinder to the sentimental citizen melodrama unfolding throughout Poenulus, but it offers a fleeting view of the inescapable trauma of slavery, namely complete loss of natal family and identity (Richlin 2017). For just a moment, a common trauma of subalterns occupies center stage and reminds the citizen viewers that, outside their civic status and beneath official notice, there are actual families affected by separation. The reunion of Giddenis and her son would have spoken very powerfully to the enslaved and freed persons watching, who would see one of their greatest wishes fulfilled, in a moment that would both reactivate their loss and help to comfort them by acknowledging the shattering of enslaved families as genuine trauma.

Slavery: traumas past, present, and future Generically, New Comedy trains its spotlight on citizen families, dramatizing their needs, desires, and priorities. But those families are interwoven with enslaved persons, who must be staged as actual people rather than mere functions. Their interactions with their owners and each other reveal a world of risk: trafficking, brutal violence, torture, deracination, all usually shown in high-speed

58  Sharon L. James glimpses. This section briefly reviews those types of trauma, with a focus on two case studies. The chief program of Menandrian comedy is to marry off young citizens who ideally are in love and ready to produce citizen children (Lape 2004). In his plays, the dangers and emotions of the enslaved appear incidentally: for example, in Dyskolos (The Misanthrope), the grumpy title character threatens to beat an older enslaved woman, who is staged as very fearful; in Aspis (The Shield), Daos is deeply disturbed by the death of his young owner, and the captive Lykians he has brought back are staged, in a state of confusion and anxiety, arriving at the home from which they will be sold (James 2014b). By contrast, Roman Comedy, especially Plautus’ theater, regularly showcases the traumatic experiences of the enslaved, with a particular focus on the torture that they undergo and must always fear. In Captivi (The Captives), the dispossessed son Tyndaris is seen wearing a heavy yoke, a punishment designed to make his work harder; in Asinaria (The Comedy of Asses), Libanus and Leonida trade jokes about previous experiences both of torture and of having had to perform torture on the other.17 Plautus focuses his attention on enslaved male characters, but does not omit the cruel treatment of enslaved women. In Truculentus, an unnamed ancilla (female servant) and the enslaved Syra share an important scene immediately after having been tortured offstage, still feeling both pain and fear of repeated torture. When the matrona (married citizen woman) Artemona of Asinaria expresses guilt because she wrongly accused her ancillae of theft and had them tortured, the onstage reactions of those women would have been unmistakable. In Mostellaria (The Ghost), the elderly Scapha reacts fearfully to the threat of a beating (240–46); likewise, the aged Staphyla of Aulularia (The Pot of Gold) frequently fears that Euclio, her aged miserly owner, will have her beaten. Terence, too, occasionally shows the dangers faced by enslaved women, as when the free meretrix Bacchis of Hecyra (The Mother-in-Law) offers up her ancillae for torture so that she can prove that she did not receive her former boyfriend Pamphilus after his marriage: ancillas dedo: quolubet cruciatu per me exquire (773: “I offer up my ancillae: as far as I’m concerned, you can use whatever torture you like to interrogate them”). These ancillae are on stage with her, as they would have accompanied her to the house of Pamphilus’ hostile father Laches, who suspects her of having broken up the young marriage. Their reaction to Bacchis’ offer would have shown a perspective far from the citizen concerns that dominate this play and might well have reminded the viewers of the brutal daily realities experienced by the enslaved, which were far harsher than anything suffered by a young man in love. Like these domestic ancillae, women enslaved in comedy’s brothels are often staged in fear. They face physical abuse by owners and customers, as well as the unpleasant experience of forced sex with strange men. The prospect of trafficking looms constantly, as in Terence’s Adelphoe (The Brothers), when a meretrix is abducted from the pimp, who is planning to traffic her; she knows neither her young abductor nor where he is taking her.18 When he tells her not to be fearful (158–59, a stage direction for the actor), Terence highlights her fear. The soldier Antamonides of Poenulus, furious that the pimp Lycus tricked him into paying

Repetition, civic status, and remedy  59 for lunch, plans to take his anger out on his girlfriend Anterastilis, whom he is planning to purchase, by beating her black-and-blue (1288–91). The viewers know that she has been safely reunited with her citizen father, but the scene still stages the daily reality of violence by customers against enslaved sex workers.19 Antamonides is a stock comic character: the uncouth, well-off soldier, whose brutality is generic.20 Soldiers, the standard rivals of the enamored adulescentes (young men), come well trained and ready to enact violence upon a meretrix or any man seen as interested in her. Hence the prospect of being trafficked to a soldier is fearsome to women in the business of commercial sex.21 Often, the soldier is depicted as an object of derision, but Antamonides’ readiness to beat Anterastilis, who is utterly innocent of the insult to him, shows both a standard attitude of owners and a behavior that all enslaved meretrices had to fear. As noted above, women enslaved in private homes suffer various types of abuse, including torture. A further form of repeated trauma is sexual abuse by owners. In the home of a free meretrix, ancillae had to fear sexual abuse by their owners’ clients. Terence’s Eunuchus gives an example: the ephebe Chaerea chases after the beautiful Pamphila in the streets, losing track of her before she reaches her destination—the house next to his own. She is the foster sister of Thais, the courtesan-girlfriend of Chaerea’s older brother Phaedria. Thais believes she has found Pamphila’s long-lost citizen family and hopes to restore her to citizenship. At the joking suggestion of Parmeno, the chief enslaved assistant of his family, Chaerea disguises himself as the eunuch purchased by Phaedria as a gift for Thais, to help him compete with the soldier who has brought her sister to her. Indoors, set to guard Pamphila while everyone else is out, he locks the door and rapes the helpless girl in her bedroom, the penetralia (innermost part) of the house, ignoring her resistance and refusal. Once he has finished, he exits the house. There he meets his friend Antipho, to whom he tells his exploit, boasting joyously about how much he enjoyed himself (ac lubens, he says at line 591, of his great luck imitating Jupiter’s rape of Danae—“very willingly”). Thais’ ancillae come back and find Pamphila nearly hysterical with terror, her clothing and hair torn (646, 659, 820). I will return to this point below; here I mark her physical condition because these details demonstrate the brutal force Chaerea used against her: she resisted, shouted refusal, fought back, but he ignored her will not only because he felt safe locked inside with her but because, more importantly, he considered her a mere slave. He had already established that he considers raping the ancilla of a meretrix to be no crime: when Parmeno warns him that they are committing an outrage (flagitium, 382), he rejects the suggestion angrily. Rape of a prostitute’s slave is nothing to him—paullum quiddam (“a little thing,” 856), he says to Thais, still pretending to be her enslaved eunuch. If rape of a slave by another slave in the household is a small matter, how much smaller would that rape be when committed by a privileged citizen? Chaerea feels entitled to rape Pamphila precisely because he thinks her a slave, and a slave to a prostitute at that. In this play, Terence—himself enslaved as a boy—shows the vulnerability of the enslaved to sexual assault. He also shows, far more than is usually even hinted at, the brutal physical violence involved in such rapes. Chaerea does not

60  Sharon L. James know that Pamphila is a citizen daughter on the verge of restoration to her family. His utter lack of concern with her will, her preferences, and her consent shows unmistakably the citizen attitude toward enslaved women: rape of them is a little thing, paullum quiddam. The same perspective is staged lavishly in Plautus’ Casina, which almost obsessively foregrounds the vulnerability of domestic enslaved workers, especially young women, to sexual harassment, abuse, and rape. The play refers casually to rape of enslaved men, but constantly adverts to the intent of four different men to force themselves sexually upon the title character, without concern for her preferences in the matter. The prologue speaker takes the trouble to assert emphatically, before the stage action, that the spectators need not fear on her behalf: Casina will remain chaste, suffering nothing untoward, and will be discovered a citizen girl (81–83).22 The plot of Casina, which flirts strongly with realities of daily life, is particularly unusual for New Comedy. The title character, exposed as an infant, was raised by the wealthy wife Cleostrata, effectively as a daughter. Once she matures, Cleostrata’s husband and son both desire her. Each plans to “marry” her off to his own enslaved assistant, so that he himself can have access to her. These two enslaved men assist their owners, each planning to have sex with Casina without his owner’s knowledge.23 Cleostrata bitterly opposes her husband Lysidamus. She and her son’s aide Chalinus work with the neighbor Myrrhina, dressing Chalinus up as a bride, while the clever ancilla Pardalisca terrifies Lysidamus by dramatically depicting Casina as having gone mad, threatening to kill with a sword any man who comes near. Lysidamus persists, and a mock wedding is staged. The play ends, after a significant lacuna (gap in the text), with the triumph of the women over their humiliated opponents, who may have been raped by the disguised Chalinus. An epilogue speaker announces that Casina is the neighbor’s daughter and will marry the son, Euthynicus. Casina highlights the outrage of the enslaved at the daily casual use of their bodies for enforced sex. A key point is articulated when Lysidamus insists to Pardalisca that Casina must accept the sexual fate being forced upon her: “Well, she’ll marry today, whether or not she wants to!” (700). On the surface, he is forcing her into slave-marriage with Olympio, though all parties know that he wants her for himself, but his point is clear: she has no choice. She will be forced into sex whether or not she is willing. When Pardalisca makes such hay of Casina’s own will in the matter, by inventing a fit of madness, she repeatedly drives home the resistance of any enslaved person to such rape. Casina’s spurious, offstage insanity, as Pardalisca invents it, shows the signs of trauma that an enslaved girl in such a situation would experience, told on an exaggerated and comic scale: PARDALISCA She’s acting like dangerous, wild women, threatening her husband’s life! LYSIDAMUS What? What? PAR. Ohhh— LYS. Out with it!

657

Repetition, civic status, and remedy  61 PAR. She says she wants to kill him… a sword… LYS. Whoa! PAR. …a sword… LYS. What about the sword? 660 PAR. She has one! LYS. Oh my god, why does she have it? PAR. She’s chasing everyone around the house, she won’t let anyone near her; they’re all under the couches and behind the dressers, keeping quiet in fear! LYS. I’m ruined! I’m dead! What’s gone so wrong with her? PAR. She’s gone crazy! LYS. I think I’m the unluckiest man alive! PAR. And if you only knew what she said today... LYS. I’m dying to know. What did she say? PAR. Listen: she swore by all the gods and goddesses that she would kill whoever tried to sleep with her tonight. 670 LYS. She’ll kill me?! PAR. What does it have to do with you? LYS. Argh. PAR. [aside] You’ve slipped off the highway onto a byway. LYS. She isn’t threatening me, is she? PAR. She’s madder at you than anybody else! LYS. But why? PAR. Because you’re giving her to Olympio as wife, and she says she won’t let you or herself or her husband live until tomorrow. That’s why I was sent out here, to tell you to watch out for yourself. 680 This unique scene stages one ancilla comically ventriloquizing the rage of another ancilla who is traumatized at the mere prospect of unavoidable, enforced sex. Such violence was a daily reality in the slave societies of GrecoRoman antiquity (see Wise, this volume: 79–84). Nobody in the play knows that Casina is a citizen daughter, so what is being staged here is an exaggerated version of a quotidian event: the stalking of a young ancilla as she enters adolescence and attracts the sexual desire of both citizen and enslaved men in the house.24 None of the four men seeking sexual access to her thinks of her consent, her preference, her will. Indeed, the belief that she actually has a preference and a will enrages Lysidamus, who asserts, as remarked above, that her will is irrelevant—an actual offense against him. His comic humiliation at the end of the play cannot erase Pardalisca’s brilliant opera buffa performance and the way it conjures up the traumatized rage of the domestic ancilla facing unavoidable rape.

62  Sharon L. James For freedwomen and enslaved women watching, this scene would be able both to reactivate their own similar experiences and to offer a transitory salve for unresolvable traumas. It might have also offered wish fulfillment, especially in the conspiracy to protect Casina from sexual abuse, as well as reminding them of solidarity among domestic ancillae, all of whom would have experienced the same abuse. The falsified fit of madness in the unstaged Casina is a reminder, first, that even if rape did not put enslaved and subaltern women at social risk, as with citizen women, it was a constant threat and, second, that fear of such rape caused sustained trauma. Pardalisca’s canticum, then, is a rare example of an enslaved woman’s successful repetition; she adds something new to the trauma that she too has experienced—Lysidamus has made sexual assaults on all his enslaved staff, male and female alike—and she gains vicarious revenge by practicing a comic repetition of that trauma.

Rape of citizen women Rape of citizen girls is a narrative mainstay of New Comedy: it generates melodramatic plots that fit into comedy because the rapes are always resolved with marriage, in a social and legal solution that disturbs modern readers but appears, mysteriously, to have satisfied ancient audiences. Except for the rape in Eunuchus, these rapes occur before the action of the play begins—and they always produce not only pregnancy but also a baby, whose birth is traumatic for the mother. This biological success rate, impossible in real life, is necessary for the genre, because a girl known to have been raped is considered ineligible for marriage (as Pamphilus of Hecyra effectively makes clear) and the scandal of the rape could be disastrous for the family. Hence, rape of a citizen girl can amount to a civic crisis. Although the plots and the male characters alike tend to sweep the scandal and trauma under the rug, the female experiences of trauma are regularly visible on stage. As all readers notice, the standard New Comic rape plot involves a young man, alcohol, and the cover of night. Most commonly, the drunken adulescens runs across a girl in the dark—she is generally presumed to be returning from a night-time religious ritual—and rapes her. She pulls a token from him, by which he will later be identified. He may know who she is (Truculentus, Aulularia) or be so drunk as to forget altogether that he has committed rape (Epitrepontes [Men at Arbitration], Hecyra); she almost never knows who he is (Samia [The Woman from Samos] and Truculentus are exceptions). This event usually occurs in the present time setting of the play but can also have taken place a generation before, a pattern found more often in Menander than in the Roman playwrights. I use here Scafuro’s very useful terms “younger-generation rape” and “older-generation rape” (1997: 238–39). Finding herself pregnant a few weeks later, the girl hides both pregnancy and, eventually, childbirth (Epitrepontes, Georgos [The Farmer], Heros [The Guardian Spirit], Hiereia [The Priestess], Kitharistes [The Lyre Player], Phasma [The Apparition], Aulularia, Cistellaria, Truculentus, Hecyra).25 Various methods

Repetition, civic status, and remedy  63 are employed for dealing with the babies.26 For the most part, New Comedy cannot focus on the trauma experienced by rape victims: to do so would destroy the comic, festival atmosphere. Two case studies will allow an exploration of the way the genre depicts the effects of rape trauma in women. I have discussed this subject in Menander’s Epitrepontes, which depicts the reaction of Pamphile, as ventriloquized by the hetaira (courtesan) Habrotonon (James 2014b; see also Gardner 2012), so I turn here first to Cistellaria and, then, back to Eunuchus. Cistellaria, based on Menander’s Synaristosai (Women Lunching Together), is one of two Roman plays to have an older-generation rape (the other is Epidicus). Phanostrata of Lemnos was raped in the dark by Demipho, some sixteen years before the beginning of the play. She hides the pregnancy and birth, then gives the baby to her enslaved assistant Lampadio, who puts the infant out for exposure. He sees Lena, a meretrix, pick the baby up. That woman gives Selenium to her close friend Melaenis, another meretrix. Melaenis has been seeking a baby to use in a plot to extract money from a traveling client, by pretending that the baby is his. The client apparently provides money, then travels on. Melaenis raises the girl in a fashion both loving and surprisingly in line with citizen sexual morals, by not insisting that she too become a meretrix. This indulgence, marked in the play as peculiar, functions to guarantee that Selenium will be considered acceptable to her citizen family upon her reunion with them. That reunion comes about in the following fashion: Demipho, liberated from his own marriage by his wife’s well-timed death, goes looking for the girl he had raped sixteen years earlier. By the usual implausible magic of New Comedy, he not only finds Phanostrata but weds her, and they both set about looking for the lost baby. (The same narrative pattern applies to Periphanes of Epidicus.) Phanostrata’s scenes stage her only as desperate to find her daughter. Her faith that the girl can be found is well beyond improbable, but she relies on Lampadio’s confidence that he can find Lena, as, indeed, he eventually does. At every turn, Phanostrata is torn between hope and terror. On hearing that her daughter is alive, she exclaims, “Oh gods, I beg you, save me!” (573). When Lampadio says she should go indoors while he finishes the investigation, she reminds him how important the matter is: “I’m putting my hopes in the gods and in you” (596). Upon seeing the tokens that she had left with the baby, freshly recovered by Lampadio, she becomes nearly hysterical: PHAN. Oh gods, I beseech your help! LAMP. Why are you calling on the gods? PHAN. Gods, save us! LAMP. What is it? PHAN. These are the toys with which you took my little daughter to her death! LAMP. Are you mad? PHAN. Look, here they are! LAMP. Still mad? PHAN. These are the ones!

665

64  Sharon L. James LAMP. If any other woman talked that way to me, I’d say she was drunk. PHAN. Honestly, I’m not mistaken. LAMP. Well, please, where on earth did it come from? Or what god just tossed it up in front of our door, as if helping out, just at the right time? PHAN. Oh, Hope, holy Hope, help me! (665–70) Phanostrata’s desperation, emotional oscillation, and dependence amount to a replay of her experience of the rape, pregnancy, and exposure: she relives her old trauma, constantly fearing that something similar could have happened to her daughter (particularly as the baby was picked up by a meretrix). She displaces her own past to focus on the risks that her now-adult daughter faces. In taking steps to find and save that girl, Phanostrata both relives her own protracted trauma, through displacement, and resolves it. In these scenes, she also dramatizes the way rape victims would be terribly torn at having to get rid of their babies: the experiences of rape-pregnancy and baby exposure are themselves traumatic. Whatever else has happened with her in the intervening years, Phanostrata would have been repressing these nightmares, which are revived once Demipho rescues her with marriage. To find and similarly rescue her daughter becomes her one way of coming to terms with her haunting memories, and she models repetition perfectly: marriage and saving her daughter are the “something new” that she adds to the insoluble prior trauma. She repeatedly names her hope, as Palaestra does in Rudens; in her case, that hope is extended to her daughter, who is of the age to suffer rape or sexual exploitation. To save her daughter will help to heal Phanostrata’s own trauma, and she recursively practices repetition in her quest for resolution.27 I return now to Terence’s Eunuchus, which contains the one distinctive rape of the entire genre: not night-time, drunken, outdoors, hit-and-run, but daytime, sober, indoors, premeditated.28 When Thais’ ancillae find Pamphila with torn hair and clothing (646, 820), in a state of terror (659), they know instantly that she has been raped: she bears all the marks of physical and emotional trauma, namely signs of violence and force on her hair and clothing, as well as peritraumatic silence (probably she sobs but refuses to use words, 820). As noted above, Chaerea excuses himself later, on the grounds that he had considered her a slave; indeed, he had earlier (382–85) argued that to take sex from her house would be to pay her, and all courtesans, back for their treatment of men.29 He sees no legal or social problem with raping an ancilla in the house of a meretrix.30 On learning that she is a citizen, he recognizes that he faces legal troubles, which Thais resolves by arranging for him to marry Pamphila. He is overjoyed to do so. Thais is not happy about this solution, but it is the only way to protect Pamphila from social disgrace and rejection by her brother—and to protect Thais from retribution by that same brother. Her chief aide Pythias ventriloquizes Thais’ distress and outrage at the violent rape of Pamphila and the abusive treatment of the household, herself included.31 Most modern readers find Eunuchus disturbing; students often find it deeply distressing. Numerous studies have examined legal and social aspects of rape in

Repetition, civic status, and remedy  65 the play, its depictions of citizen masculinity, and more (e.g., James 1998, 2016; Smith 1994). I limit myself here to its depiction of trauma. Terence cannot stage the brutalized Pamphila—it would be impossible to show her with torn hair and clothing, along with the blood and bruising that would result from sexual violence. To do so would violate the festive, comic occasion of the performance. But he takes pains repeatedly and at length to make clear that Pamphila is deeply traumatized: she has come on a long journey, with her sister’s suitor, to her natal city; in the innermost part of her sister’s house, where she should be safest, she is brutally raped by a boy who does not listen to her refusal, who beats down her physical resistance, who uses violence against her clothing and her person, and who takes unmistakable pleasure in forcing her. Afterwards, she behaves in ways fairly typical for victims of rape: she is distraught, weeping, unwilling to say what has happened.32 She will certainly realize that her social future has possibly been destroyed, but in the moment, she shows signs of immediate trauma. It is left for what Smith (1994: 30) calls a “more reflective portion of the audience” to wonder how she will feel upon learning, in less than an hour, that she is to marry this violent rapist. The elation of the young rapist at the prospect of constant unimpeded sexual access to her, combined with his utter lack of concern for her feelings, shows Pamphila’s domestic future as grim at best. Terence’s careful adaptation of the Menandrian original repeatedly stages the risky situations of subaltern women, whose lives can easily be destroyed by more privileged men. Unlike virtually every other New Comedy, Eunuchus does not sweep the subject under the rug: in this play, more than anywhere else in the genre, the physical brutality and psychological impact of rape are openly remarked upon, at an important public festival occasion.

Conclusion This chapter has focused on negative, alarming, upsetting, violent, and traumatic structures and episodes in a genre that is actually very funny in performance. Furthermore, I have omitted the male characters who occupy the majority of stage time: the comically desperate young lover, the brilliant enslaved trickster, the amusingly confused seruus currens (enslaved gofer), the laughably grouchy fathers, and the absurdly egotistical soldiers. Some readers may barely recognize the genre, or at least its Roman corpus. But the plots of comedy require obstacles, problems, risks—and as I noted in the beginning, those risks are typically faced and experienced by women. The plays find ways to avoid putting certain kinds of trauma on center stage, or dwelling upon them at any length, but those traumas are visible regardless, throughout the corpus.33 Because New Comedy generically represents the concerns and priorities of citizen society, it must inevitably stage the lives and experiences of non-citizens, of subalterns, who surround and prop up the lives of the privileged citizen classes. The divided audiences of these plays would have focused on different aspects and stage moments, of course. But the boy-loves-ineligible-girl plot mandates danger and brutality to subaltern women, and the common rape plot stages social

66  Sharon L. James anxiety over the risk of rape to citizen girls, as I have argued elsewhere (James 2015). Plautus and Terence take particular care to see that the mirror their plays hold up to Roman citizen society includes the kinds of trauma visited upon and feared by women of all classes, every day. Our extant evidence does not tell us how women of rank responded to what they saw in these plays. But it is certain that they observed female experiences of trauma almost everywhere on this stage and that they recognized those traumas as representing the hardest experiences of their own lives.

Notes 1 It is impossible even to cite every instance of female trauma in New Comedy. I omit far more instances than I can mention, let alone analyze. 2 Menandrian comedy is particularly focused on citizen priorities and on reproducing citizens in legitimate marriages (see Lape 2004). Too little remains of Alexis, Diphilos, and Philemon to say anything about their attitude toward citizens. In Rome things change radically; as I argue elsewhere, Plautus is uninterested in citizen procreation (James 2020) and Terence performs a very skeptical analysis of the dysfunction built into the Roman family by the anomalous power of patria potestas (James 2013). Their theater stages far more of the traumas inevitably visited upon women by the Menandrian masterplot than Menander could have dreamt of doing. 3 Traumatized citizen women speak of hope frequently (Cist. 596, 665; Epid. 531; Rud. 209, 231, 275, 278, 680, 1145, 1175). 4 See, to list only a few: Brown (1991), Gardner (2012), James (1998, 2014a, 2014b), Lape (2001), Leisner-Jensen (2002), Packman (1993), Pierce (1997), Rosivach (1998), Smith (1994), Sommerstein (1998). 5 See Andrews (2004), Marshall (2013), Witzke (2016). As my student Mahmoud Salameh once reminded me, every sex act in a brothel is a rape because the enslaved brothel worker cannot give consent. 6 Extant Menandrian drama does not give evidence adequate to support a similar argument for Athens. 7 Belau (2002: 173–75), where she cites Kierkegaard (1942) and Lacan (1981). 8 The dispossessed boys (in Menaechmi, Captivi, and Poenulus) do not recall their separation. They grow up unbothered by memory of their natal families. 9 As I discuss below, Plautus is little interested in focusing on citizen families (James 2020). He skips the marriage arrangements in Epidicus, eliminates the marriage plot altogether in Amphitryo, Captivi, and Menaechmi. He prominently marks the fragmentation of enslaved families by staging the reunion of Giddenis with her son in Poenulus. 10 In fact, the mothers are often already dead, as in Andria, Curculio, Eunuchus, Menaechmi, Phormio, and Poenulus. These mothers are a subset of the high maternal death rate in New Comedy: several daughters raised safely at home have outlived their mothers (Andria, Aulularia, Persa, Trinummus). Dead wives allow fathers to go looking for the illegitimate daughters they abandoned (along with the mothers they had raped) in Epidicus and Cistellaria. There are other sundry dead mothers in the genre; only rarely does a father die, leaving a widow behind (Adelphoe). 11 This form of virtue both demonstrates her innate citizenship and allows her to be married to her lover Alcesimarchus once she is discovered to be a citizen. 12 This summary leaves out significant sections and themes in Rudens, much of which focuses not on the melodrama of Palaestra and Ampelisca but on the rights of the enslaved.

Repetition, civic status, and remedy  67 13 All translations are my own. 14 The melodramatic nature of her song notwithstanding, Palaestra’s despair is not overblown: an adolescent girl literally alone in the world, with no protection or proof of identity, will almost certainly be enslaved, and the loss of her tokens seals her fate as surely as if she had been born into slavery rather than captured into it. 15 He has indeed been plotting to repossess the girls by force, as they are his only remaining “goods,” and he plans to sell them in order to get himself back to Athens. 16 This passage is vexed, both by the Punic speech staged in it and by the unclear interchange between Hanno and Agorastocles at 1146. The authenticity of the stage Punic is beside the point here, as my focus is on the reunion of mother and son. On “female furniture” and line 1146, see Dutsch (2004). Giddenis’ costume very likely features padding in the bosom, but she cannot still be lactating. I read line 1146 with de Melo (see also Richlin 2005), but, as Dutsch shows, the text is ambiguous. 17 It bears repeating here that freedpersons as well as the enslaved were in the audiences for these plays and thus witnessed the many scenes in Plautus that threaten, stage, or invoke trauma for the enslaved characters. The response of such viewers lies outside my scope here; see Richlin (2017, passim). 18 She may not even speak the local language (see Marshall 2013 on linguistic isolation as a common feature of sexual trafficking). 19 Indeed, Anterastilis fears him even after having been recovered by her father. 20 The soldier is ready to visit violence upon a free meretrix as well: Pyrgopolynices of Miles kidnaps Philocomasium and takes her far from home, keeping her captive for his own sexual use; Thraso of Eunuchus organizes an assault force upon Thais’ house—likewise Polemon of Misoumenos with his own house, occupied by Krateia, who has thrown him out. That both men wilt before becoming violent against the women does not mean that they are incapable of violence. Stratophanes of Truculentus shows a propensity toward force that the clever Phronesium must manage with care. Thrasonides of Perikeiromene forcibly cuts Glykera’s hair when he believes she has cheated on him. 21 On this point, it is impossible to say whether or not New Comedy is even semi-realistic: under Roman law, soldiers could not marry—but they could, and did, take women along on campaign, for long periods, often both considering those women effectively wives and then taking them as wives upon leaving the army. See Phang (2001: 197– 201). 22 Such a description, along with the following summary, does little justice to the breakneck hilarity and subversiveness of this play. 23 Indeed, Olympio eventually tries to have sex with Casina before his owner Lysidamus can get to her, on the night of the wedding: he intends to force her into sex with two different men on that night. The two citizen men are willing to share sexual access to Casina with the enslaved men they rely upon in their charades—a subject Plautus races past (along with a few others) at top speed. 24 In Eunuchus, as discussed below, Pamphila’s citizen status is known in Thais’ house, so her rape by Chaerea causes tremendous anxiety, as well as concern for her traumatized state. 25 Menander’s plays seem to have included more rapes: they are probable in at least Perinthia, Plokion, Fabula Incerta 7, and Titthe, all of which may have included second-generation rape, in which the daughter born to a raped mother is herself raped, as in Heros and Georgos. The illegitimate pregnancies of Adelphoe and Andria are not treated as resulting from violent rape, within the plays; they, and the rape in Samia, could be described as acquaintance rapes. The victims and their mothers have forgiven the young men, who are staged as desperate to marry the girls. For various reasons, the sexual misconduct of Periphanes in Epidicus is not characterized as rape, though its victim shows signs of trauma even years later. See also below.

68  Sharon L. James 26 It can be difficult to tell what has happened in Menander’s fragments, but educated guesses are possible. The older-generation rape victim of Heros seems to have exposed her twin babies, only to discover them, years later, brought into her husband’s house to work off the debt of their adoptive father. Myrrhina of Georgos appears, astonishingly, to have brought up her illegitimate twins, but it is impossible to say anything more about her situation. The raped mother in Phasma gives her daughter to neighbors for adoption, then builds a private room where she and her daughter can meet. Pamphile of Epitrepontes exposes her son, with appropriate tokens. Without exception, the girls and their babies are reunited with each other and with the fathers who engendered them by rape. Sometimes, by a device Menander seems to have favored, the parents marry sometime after the rape, not knowing that they have already produced offspring until those children turn up at a marriageable age (Heros, Phasma). Every one of these women shows signs of trauma. In this pattern, typical for the older-generation rapes, the victims care only about protecting their children by marrying the now elderly rapist and providing citizen legitimation to those children. Their anxiety, grief, fear, emotional instability, and determination to rescue their children amount to a model for the way they experienced, dealt with, and suppressed the traumas of rape, pregnancy, birth, and their aftermath (whether exposure or discreet motherhood). 27 Philippa of Epidicus, who remarkably has brought up the daughter conceived by rape, does much the same, with the added benefit of gaining personal satisfaction by shaming the now elderly rapist Periphanes, who seeks to marry her and rescue their daughter. 28 I do not take the view of Germany (2016: 28–49) and passim that this rape is unintentional, unplanned. 29 As I have remarked elsewhere (James 2016: 105), he is effectively getting a better return on his family’s investment in Thais’ household. 30 The arguable elements in this particular self-defense notwithstanding, Chaerea’s attitude represents the perspective of many privileged men and of the law: by legal definitions, rape occurs only to citizens; sexual assault of any kind on any enslaved person is at worst a property crime against the owner. Plautus and Terence dissent from this view and show sexual abuse of the enslaved as rape. 31 She cannot punish the citizen Chaerea, but she sets up Parmeno, the architect of the entire scheme, for trouble from his owner. 32 See Wise, this volume (72–74). Much the same behavior is reported for Pamphile, in Menander’s Epitrepontes. Raped at a night-time religious rite, she returns to her companions sobbing, with torn clothing. 33 Female characters are not the only ones to undergo trauma—Plautus frequently presents the brutal treatment of enslaved men, often in stunningly lavish and shocking fashion (as in his Asinaria)—but they are obviously my focus here. And throughout, from Menander to Terence, citizen families suffer the lasting and haunting tragedy of lost children; for the grief of an entire family at the (incorrectly reported) death of its young male heir in war, see Menander’s Aspis.

Works cited Andrews, N. 2004. “Tragic Re-Presentation and the Semantics of Space in Plautus’ ‘Casina.’” Mnemosyne 67: 445–64. Belau, L. 2002. “Trauma, Repetition, and the Hermeneutics of Psychoanalysis.” In Belau, L. and Ramadanovic, P. eds. Topologies of Trauma: Essays on the Limit of Knowledge and Memory. New York: Other Press. 151–75. Brown, P. G. M. 1991. “Athenian Attitudes to Rape and Seduction: The Evidence of Menander, Dyskolos 289–293.” CQ 41: 289–93. Dutsch, D. 2004. “Female Furniture: A Reading of Plautus’ Poenulus 1141–6.” CQ 54: 625–29.

Repetition, civic status, and remedy  69 Gardner, H. 2012. “Ventriloquizing Rape in Menander’s Epitrepontes.” Helios 39: 21–43. Geffcken, K. A. 1973. Comedy in the Pro Caelio. Leiden: Brill. Germany, R. 2016. Mimetic Contagion: Art and Artifice in Terence’s Eunuch. New York: Oxford University Press. Goldberg, S. 1998. “Plautus on the Palatine.” JRS 88: 1–20. James, S. L. 1998. “From Boys to Men: Rape and Developing Masculinity in Terence’s Hecyra and Eunuchus.” Helios 24: 31–47. James, S. L. 2013. “Gender and Sexuality in Terence.” In Augoustakis, A., Traill, A., and Thornburn, J. E. eds. A Companion to Terence. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. 175–94. James, S. L. 2014a. “Reconsidering Rape in Menander’s Comedy and Athenian Life: Modern Comparative Evidence.” In Sommerstein, A. ed. Menander in Contexts. London: Routledge. 24–39. James, S. L. 2014b. “The Battered Shield: Survivor Guilt and Family Trauma in Menander’s Aspis.” In Meineck, P. and Konstan, D. eds. Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 237–60. James, S. L. 2015. “Mater, Oratio, Filia: Listening to Mothers in Roman Comedy.” In Dutsch, D. ed. Women in Republican Roman Drama. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 108–27. James, S. L. 2016. “Fallite Fallentes: The Intertextuality of Rape and Deception in Terence’s Eunuch and Ovid’s Ars amatoria.” EuGeStA 6: 87–111. James, S. L. 2020.  “Plautus and the Marriage Plot.” In Dutsch, D. and Franko, F. eds. A Companion to Plautus. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Kierkegaard, S. 1942. Repetition, A Venture in Experimental Psychology. Trans. by W. Lowrie. London: Oxford University Press. Lacan, J. 1981. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton. Lape, S. 2001. “Democratic Ideology and the Poetics of Rape in Menandrian Comedy.” CA 20: 79–120. Lape, S. 2004. Reproducing Athens: Menander’s Comedy, Democratic Culture, and the Hellenistic City. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Leisner-Jensen, M. 2002. “Vis comica: Consummated Rape in Greek and Roman New Comedy.” C&M 53: 173–96. Marshall, C. W. 2013. “Sex Slaves in New Comedy.” In Akrigg, B. and Tordoff, R. eds. Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Greek Comic Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 173–96. Packman, Z. 1993. “Call it Rape: A Motif in Roman Comedy and its Suppression in English-Speaking Publications.” Helios 20: 42–55. Phang, S. 2001. The Marriage of Roman Soldiers (13 B.C.–A.D. 235): Law and Family in the Imperial Army. Leiden: Brill. Pierce, K. 1997. “The Portrayal of Rape in New Comedy.” In Deacy, S. and Pierce, K. eds. Rape in Antiquity. London: Duckworth. 163–84. Richlin, A. 2005. Rome and the Mysterious Orient: Three Plays by Plautus. Berkeley: University of California Press. Richlin, A. 2017. Slave Theater in the Roman Republic: Plautus and Popular Comedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rosivach, V. 1998. When a Young Man Falls in Love: The Sexual Exploitation of Women in New Comedy. London: Routledge. Scafuro, A. 1989. “Livy’s Comic Narrative of the Bacchanalia.” Helios 16: 119–42.

70  Sharon L. James Scafuro, A. 1997. The Forensic Stage: Settling Disputes in Graeco-Roman New Comedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Slater, W. J. 1986. Aristophanis Byzantii Fragmenta. Post A. Nauck collegit, testimoniis ornavit, brevi commentario instruxit. Berlin: De Gruyter. Smith, L. P. 1994. “Audience Response to Rape: Chaerea in Terence’s Eunuchus.” Helios 21: 21–38. Sommerstein, A. 1998. “Rape and Young Manhood in Athenian Comedy.” In Foxhall, L. and Salmon, J. eds. Thinking Men: Masculinity and Its Self-Representation in the Classical Tradition. London: Taylor & Francis. 100–14. Walsh, P. G. 1996. “Making a Drama out of a Crisis: Livy on the Bacchanalia.” G&R 43: 188–203. Witzke, S. 2016. “Violence against Women in Ancient Rome.” In Fagan, G. G. and Riess, W. eds. The Topography of Violence in the Greco-Roman World. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 248–74.

4

Subaltern women, sexual violence, and trauma in Ovid’s Amores Jessica Wise

In several poems in Ovid’s Amores (Loves), the first person narrator, the male amator (lover), describes two occasions on which he committed sexual assault. In 1.7, he seeks forgiveness after battering the courtesan Corinna. In 2.7 and 2.8, he threatens a slave girl, Cypassis, and attempts to coerce her into sex. In this chapter, I argue that Ovid dramatizes the immediate emotional reactions of both women to trauma, and, in doing so, demonstrates that impudicae—women not socially recognized as able to possess sexual modesty—experience fear, shame, and trauma as a result of sexual assault, just as citizen pudicae, sexually modest women, do. In order to explicate Ovid’s detailed accuracy in depicting the women’s victimization and trauma, I draw upon psychological research on trauma in victims of sexual assault. In describing their silence and their physical reactions to violence, Ovid illustrates two women who exhibit various peritraumatic and post-traumatic responses in reaction to a traumatic experience: fear, tonic immobility, inability to speak or cry out, numbness, sobbing, dissociation, shame, and blushing, among others. By providing descriptions of the women’s trauma that correspond to the conditions of each woman’s social status and reflect the type and frequency of the violence she encounters, Ovid encourages his readers to empathize with the female perspective and, in turn, to interrogate the power and authority of the male narrator who exploits and victimizes non-citizen women. I begin with a brief overview of rape trauma syndrome and its characteristics. In this discussion, I include recent advances in trauma literature regarding the most common peritraumatic responses to sexual assault, tonic immobility, and dissociation, as well as the relationship of these peritraumatic responses to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in victims of sexual assault. In the next section, I apply this psychological research to analyze women’s expressions of trauma in the Amores. First, I show that the meretrix (courtesan) Corinna displays signs of rape trauma syndrome and tonic immobility in response to the amator’s assault. Second, I suggest that the slave girl Cypassis displays similar signs of rape trauma, but her inferior social status, a slave rather than a courtesan, subjects her to additional levels of oppression that shape her particular expressions of trauma.1 Her traumatic responses are more controlled, indicate shame in addition to fear, and suggest that she has endured recurrent, diverse assaults as a consequence of her inferior social standing that have led to the onset

72  Jessica Wise of PTSD. Though Roman law does not protect non-citizens or even recognize their bodies as capable of being sexually assaulted or raped, Ovid’s precision in the depiction of Corinna and Cypassis’ trauma brings a voice to women from all social classes about their experience of sexual trauma. Uniting trauma studies with Ovid’s Amores, I argue, provides new insights into the lived experiences of subaltern women in Ancient Rome, highlighting the perspectives and emotions of a group widely ignored elsewhere in Latin literature. Further, this approach demonstrates Ovid’s understanding of the power disparity between citizen men and subaltern women and the exploitation that occurs in sexual encounters between these social strata. Through the depiction of the women’s suffering at the hands of the ignorant citizen amator, Ovid brings the victim’s perspective to the forefront and initiates a discourse about the abuse of power and authority by a majority over a minority group.

Rape trauma syndrome, tonic immobility, and victims’ experience of sexual assault Rape trauma syndrome was first identified by psychologists Ann Burgess and Lynda Holstrom in 1974. Analyzing a sample of 92 adult women rape victims admitted to a county hospital over a one-year period, they documented the existence of a rape trauma syndrome and delineated its symptomology (1974: 981). They defined rape trauma syndrome as first comprising an acute phase followed by a long phase reorganization process that occurs as a result of rape or attempted rape. The syndrome includes behavioral, somatic, and psychological reactions as part of an acute stress reaction to a life-threatening situation (982). The acute phase is a period of great disorganization in a victim’s life as a result of the rape, and is marked by noticeable physical reactions and, most prominently, fear (982). In studying the immediate impact reactions to sexual assault, Burgess and Holstrom (1974: 982) identified two styles of emotional reactions: the expressed style in which feelings of anger, fear, and anxiety were shown through behaviors such as sobbing, smiling, restlessness, and tenseness; and the controlled style, in which feelings were concealed or masked and a calm, composed, or subdued affect was displayed. In addition to these two immediate reactions to the trauma, victims also showed a wide variation of emotional reactions in the days after the assault, ranging from humiliation and embarrassment to anger, revenge, and self-blame (983). Fear of physical violence and death was the primary feeling described. The long phase starts as the victim begins to reorganize their life and is often accompanied by motor activity changes, nightmares, and phobias (983–84). The long phase, as identified by Burgess and Holstrom, has been redefined in more recent studies as the development of post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of trauma endured during a sexual assault.2 Although the DSM-V does not recognize rape trauma syndrome as a type of PTSD, it does include sexual violence, actual or threatened, as one of the traumatic events of exposure results in this disorder.3 Since Burgess and Holstrom’s foundational work, research in this area has developed to examine particular types of peritraumatic responses of assault

Women, sexual violence, and trauma  73 victims in greater depth. One burgeoning field of study focuses on the causes, symptomology, and effects of a peritraumatic response called tonic immobility. Tonic immobility is a natural, unlearned response to trauma that occurs when one experiences great fear in response to a perceived threat to one’s life (a threat that is often, but not always, accompanied by some kind of physical restraint; Galliano et al. 1993). Unlike the natural freezing response, which is a learned response to a threat (e.g., halting one’s movement to evade detection by a predator, or increased alertness), tonic immobility usually occurs when escaping or winning a fight is either not possible or is perceived to be no longer possible, and a threshold of sympathetic arousal has been reached. When the perceived threat to a victim comes to such an apex, the body may shut down in an attempt to protect itself from further injury, causing an inability to move or call out.4 Psychologists studying tonic immobility have recently identified its prevalence as an unlearned response to threats witnessed in animals of prey when they encounter a predator. The immobilized state includes a sustained and largely involuntary pattern of neuromuscular activity that manifests primarily as a profound but reversible physical immobility and muscular rigidity. Additional noted characteristics of the response include intermittent periods of eye closure, fixed, unfocused gaze or stare, Parkinsonian-like tremors in the extremities, suppressed vocal behavior, analgesia, and waxy flexibility (Marx et al. 2008). Though controlled studies of tonic immobility have been performed only on animals within a contained clinical environment, numerous studies of the traumatic responses of sexual assault victims demonstrate the prevalence of similar responses in humans.5 Victims describe immobility, fear, coldness, numbness, analgesia, uncontrollable shaking, and dissociation, as well as a feeling of entrapment, inescapabilty, futility, or hopelessness—all symptoms that align closely with the phenomena studied in nonhuman subjects of the freezing response. Some studies have discovered chain responses to tonic immobility that incite further trauma for victims of sexual assault. Moor et al. (2003), for example, found that self-blame and feelings of dehumanization, experienced as a result of tonic immobility, are a common and prominent response in victims of assault and rape, and, notably, much less prominent in persons who have experienced other traumatic events such as war, car accidents, or the death of a loved one. Recent studies have also analyzed the particular peritraumatic responses in sexual assault victims that mediate the development of PTSD. They have shown that experiences of overwhelming fear, dehumanization, and tonic immobility are likely to increase the development of the disorder.6 One particular peritraumatic response that has been linked to the development of PTSD in rape victims is dissociation. Dissociation is a phenomenon described as a sense of one’s mind being separate from, or outside of, the traumatic event while it is occurring. Victims report that during the event they felt confused or disoriented, numb, experienced an altered sense of time, or as though they were watching the trauma happen to them from outside their own bodies without the ability to stop the violence or even react to it.7 Griffin et al. (1997) identified peritraumatic dissociation as a common coping strategy for severe trauma. In their study of rape victims who experienced

74  Jessica Wise both low and high dissociation during trauma, they discovered a significant causal relationship between victims who experience high dissociation during trauma and the development of PTSD.8 This line of research has been critical in law courts, serving as a diagnostic explication of trauma intended to help explain to a jury the diverse reactions experienced by sexual assault victims during an attack.9 Historically, sexual assault victims face a heavy burden of proof in trials, having to prove that they did not or could not give consent to a sexual encounter. Officers, juries, investigators, judges, and others are often inclined not to believe that the victim was truly in danger or nonconsenting if she or he did not make an effort to fight back. Recent psychological studies on the process and prevalence of tonic immobility and dissociation in rape victims help demonstrate the variety of peritraumatic responses victims may experience during a traumatic experience, including freezing or memory loss. By increasing knowledge about the diversity of traumatic responses, psychologists hope to demonstrate that a freezing response or dissociative coping strategy does not, in fact, negate or disprove an assault, but rather is scientifically proven to be a frequent reaction to sexual trauma.10 Similarly, my objective in this study is to highlight the traumatic experiences of both the meretrix Corinna and the ancilla (female servant) Cypassis in order to demonstrate that these subaltern women, thought by the amator—and more generally by Roman citizen society as a whole—to be incapable of possessing sexual modesty, do indeed experience fear, shame, and trauma as a result of sexual violence that Ovid channels in his work. The amator capitalizes on the women’s silence to manipulate the narrative, exploit their bodies, and exonerate his abusive actions as inconsequential. The women’s silence, however, is not a sign of consent or acceptance. Ovid’s text bears witness to their suffering. In this chapter, I evaluate the trauma of Corinna and Cypassis separately because they belong to different social strata. Each woman’s experience of and responses to sexual trauma are shaped by her unique social position and the intersecting systems of oppression she faces in Roman society. Corinna is a meretrix, a Roman courtesan.11 She is a non-citizen and thus is not recognized or protected by Roman law.12 Her non-citizen body is not considered to be capable of being sexually violated, nor of experiencing sexual shame. Only citizen women possess sexual modesty and, therefore, it is possible that their modesty can be forcefully taken from them through assault. The courtesan cannot prosecute the amator for his violence, nor stop his advances. She is, however, a higher level prostitute, responsible for her own business and clientele.13 Though she cannot take legal recourse against the amator, she can exact punishment by denying him entrance to her home and abstaining from future sexual encounters.14 Cypassis is an ancilla, a slave girl, and belongs to the lowest Roman social stratum. Not only is she vulnerable to the citizen man, but she is also dependent upon, and vulnerable to, her mistress. Slaves of both genders were vulnerable to sexual abuse as well as to hard labor and torture. Numerous examples from Roman literature demonstrate that sexual affairs between citizens and slaves were rather frequent and that many slaves were purchased for sexual purpose

Women, sexual violence, and trauma  75 (e.g., Pasicompsa in Plautus’ Mercator [The Merchant] offers an example of sex trafficking, and the absent girl Casina, in Casina, though purchased by the domina [mistress] in the household, becomes an object of lust and desire for many male characters; see also James, this volume: 57–62). The free citizen’s protection from physical assault was one of the hallmarks of his social status: a slave’s body, however, is vulnerable to endure any kind of physical violence, from rape to beating.15 Corinna, though non-citizen, maintains a bit of autonomy as courtesan. In the game of elegiac seduction, the lover pursues her with words, striving to win access to her bedroom. The slave Cypassis, however, is not seen as even human in status, reduced to a servile object. As a result, she suffers repetitive trauma with no ability to speak back, protest, or protect herself. While both women are non-citizens and therefore are not protected by Roman law, the male lover in the poems, the amator, is a citizen man.16 He is free, under the law, to violate the bodies of both non-citizen women without fear of legal consequence. In Ovid’s poetry, and throughout elegy, the character of the male lover describes the dogged pursuit of his beloved courtesan as a life devoted to a slavery of love, seruitium amoris, in which he imagines himself as a slave, seruus, to a lower-class meretrix as his mistress, domina. But while the amator often plays with social inversion, his slavery is entirely feigned as part of his game of seduction.17 In reality, as poem 1.7 demonstrates, he has power—social, legal, and physical—over Corinna. And as poems 2.7 and 2.8 illustrate, the only character who performs forced labor under a domina is Cypassis. In his descriptions of the female experience of violence, Ovid explicates the different levels of oppression facing each woman and shows sensitivity for and awareness of sexual trauma regardless of class, status, or social position.

Expression of rape trauma in Ovid’s Amores: Corinna the Meretrix In Amores 1.7, the amator describes an instance when he struck Corinna. He curses his hands for striking his mistress, exclaims his remorse, begs forgiveness for his rash actions, and then describes the violent event and Corinna’s fearful reaction. To the reader, his admission of violence against the puella is rather jarring. In Roman love elegy, the amator engages in militia amoris (soldiery of love) to win over the docta puella (learned, sophisticated courtesan), a soldiery in which the sexual and romantic impulses entailed in the ferocity of love which the amator alleges have the potential to manifest violently. But while the other elegists hint at sexual violence (Tibullus 1.6, 1.10; Propertius 2.5), Ovid explicitly describes the amator’s physical violence and dramatizes the victim’s immediate emotional reaction.18 He yanks her hair, scratches her face, and leaves her frozen, shaking, and sobbing in fear. Scholars have interpreted the amator’s speech in 1.7 from various angles, progressing from early studies that read the poem as a serious and sincere expression of the amator’s remorse, to those that point to the poem’s playfulness and parodic qualities, to more recent feminist critiques that interrogate the ubiquitous male

76  Jessica Wise objectification and voyeurism in the poem.19 I suggest that the elegy dramatizes and highlights conflicting perspectives: while the lover aestheticizes Corinna’s injured body, he also details the traumatic aftereffect of the violence with a description of her specific physical reaction. Corinna’s responses are characteristic of those of a sexual assault victim. She shows signs of tonic immobility that occurs in reaction to a perception of significant threat to her life. Consideration of Corinna’s perspective and her traumatic suffering informs an understanding of the poem in two ways. First, it reveals the singular and short-sighted perspective of the amator as he narrates his unrealistic, fantasized desires. Second, insight to Corinna’s unique experience underscores the extent to which the citizen male exploits the body of the subaltern woman who is both suppressed and oppressed by his social and physical power over her. In his first description of Corinna, the amator’s lustful, predatory desires contrast with the viewpoint of the traumatized woman. To describe the attractiveness of Corinna’s disturbed locks, he summons images of three mythological women with hair flowing in disarray—Ariadne, Atalanta, and Cassandra—women, as Greene (1999: 413–14) has observed, who are all vulnerable to men. Ariadne lies on the shore after being abandoned by Theseus; Atalanta runs wild through the forest before being forced to submit to a husband; and Cassandra lies before the temple of Minerva begging for help in the moments before she is raped.20 Through the amator’s voyeuristic gaze, the women are rendered more vulnerable and Corinna falls prey to the amator.21 But his sexualization of her body is undercut in the following two couplets by the description of Corinna’s response to his violence quis mihi non ‘demens!’ quis non mihi ‘barbare!’ dixit?   ipsa nihil; pauido est lingua retenta metu. sed taciti fecere tamen conuicia uultus;   egit me lacrimis ore silente reum.

(19–22)

Who would not have said to me ‘mad man!’? Who would not have said ‘barbarian!’?   She said nothing; her tongue was restrained by trembling fear, but still her silent face showed her reproach;   in tears, she accused me with her silent mouth.22 The amator’s emphasis on Corinna’s silence in these lines indicates both her traumatic suffering and her victimization. Unlike any man or bystander who, the amator suggests, would speak out against such violence, the wounded meretrix is unable to utter any reproof, paralyzed by fear and pain. The construction of line 20 underscores Corinna’s paralysis: her tongue (lingua) is trapped between the adjective pauidus and noun metus, both depicting the fear that suppresses her speech. In the next couplet, the amator further underscores Corinna’s paralysis, calling attention to her voiceless reactions three times in three lines: her restrained tongue (lingua retenta, 20), her silent expression (taciti…uultus, 21), and the tears

Women, sexual violence, and trauma  77 that come from a silent face (ore silente, 22). In other words, Corinna shows symptoms of tonic immobility: she freezes before the amator, unable to protest in speech. Juxtaposed with the amator’s sexualization of vulnerable mythological women, just above, this initial description of Corinna introduces a counterperspective within the poem. The amator’s first person narrative encourages the audience to view Corinna through his desirous gaze, but his description of Corinna’s physical responses also exposes the subjective experience of the silenced, battered victim. Juxtaposition of the two characters’ perspectives continues throughout the poem. Though the reader may be seduced into the subjective, desiring viewpoint of the male narrator, his description of the assault makes explicitly clear that the meretrix experiences their sexual encounters as abuse. He briefly details the attack itself and then paints a vivid scene of the aftermath that illustrates Corinna’s trauma. First, he states that he yanked Corinna’s hair from the front of her head so violently that his nails scratched her cheeks: at nunc sustinui raptis a fronte capillis ferreus ingenuas ungue notare genas.

(49–50)

But now I held her by her hair snatched from her brow, an iron-hearted man I marked her delicate cheeks with my nail. The participle raptis, used to describe Corinna’s disheveled hair, underscores the rash force of the amator’s grip.23 Though referring to the hair and not Corinna, in the context of an assault, it casts her as a victim of sexual violence. Further, the juxtaposition between Corinna’s delicate cheeks (ingenuas…genas) and the hard-hearted amator (ferreus) highlights the unequal power dynamics between aggressor and victim. Following the assault, Corinna demonstrates multiple symptoms consistent with the peritraumatic and post-traumatic responses of a sexual assault victim. She stands stationary, out of her senses, with a pallor over her face, while she experiences catalepsy: adstitit illa amens albo et sine sanguine uultu, 51 (she stood in place, senseless and with a white, bloodless countenance); exanimis artus et membra trementia uidi, 53 (I looked up on her lifeless body and trembling limbs); suspensaeque diu lacrimae fluxere per ora, 57 (her tears, for a long time held back, flowed down her face). In line 51, the adjective amens, meaning “out of one’s senses, mad, or frantic,” suggests that Corinna experiences a form of dissociation, feeling disoriented, confused, or a sense of separation between what the mind perceives and the body experiences. The senseless Corinna is in a state of mental disarray. Unable to conceive what has just happened, she stands frozen in place. Her bloodless pallor indicates further shock and underscores her frantic, disordered mental condition after the assault. Corinna’s physical reactions align with further characteristics of tonic immobility. First, she remains frozen in place rather than fleeing or striking back

78  Jessica Wise (adstitit). The heavily spondaic meter in the first half of line 51 underscores her inability to move. Second, her body is lifeless and her limbs tremble. I interpret exanimis artus (53) as a “numbness,” and a further indication of tonic immobility. The adjective exanimis means “lifeless, dead” or “faint with fear, ‘petrified;’ frightened out of one’s wits.”24 The word thus incorporates two meanings that jointly underscore the traumatic response of Corinna’s body: she is both inanimate—immobile and experiencing a lack of sensation—and is physically impeded by fear of a perceived threat.25 In the same line, the amator states that her extremities were trembling (membra trementia). Uncontrollable shaking is an involuntary pattern of neuromuscular activity characteristic of an immobilized state. Animals in clinical studies of tonic immobility exhibit Parkinsonian-like tremors and involuntary trembling is also commonly reported amongst victims of sexual assault (Marx et al. 2008). Corinna’s trembling limbs indicate her body’s physical suspension as a result of the perception of excessive fear for her life, a fear that is enhanced by the realities of her social status. The amator, a male citizen, will face no punishment for striking a meretrix, as he acknowledges himself: an, si pulsassem minimum de plebe Quiritem,/ plecterer—in dominam ius mihi maius erit? 29–30 (If I had struck the lowest class citizen from the masses, I would have been punished—will there be a greater right for me against her?). Corinna is powerless before him, unable to fight back or to seek justice. Corinna’s silent tears in line 57 provide a final indication that she has experienced a state of tonic immobility in response to her trauma. The amator states that her tears, long held back, now flowed down her face (suspensaeque diu lacrimae fluxere per ora, 57). Weeping is a parasympathetic response that helps to calm the body (Fogel 2010). Tonic immobility sets in when there is a withdrawal of sympathetic activity, the hyper arousal of the nervous system that aids the fight-orflight response. When the body reaches its sensory capacity, as fear of a perceived threat grows more overwhelming, the parasympathetic nervous system activates the freezing response to defend itself (Kozlowska et al. 2015). With the adjectival phrase suspensae diu, modifying her tears (lacrimae), the amator implies that Corinna restrained her crying during the assault, while she was frozen. Only when the violence was completed did she release her tears in the last stages of her parasympathetic response as her body tries to decrease arousal and calm itself. Paired with the depictions of Corinna’s immobility, dissociation, numbness, and involuntary tremors, her tears represent the final stage of her traumatic response, as her body, shocked by a significant threat, begins to calm itself and cope with the pain she has just endured. The amator provides one final insight into Corinna’s perspective through a description of her physical reactions. In lines 61–62, Corinna, now released from her freezing response, has regained her strength and struggles to rebuff the advances of her aggressor. As he lies prostrate at her feet, she repeatedly pushes back his terrifying hands: ter formidatas reppulit illa manus (62). The slow rhythm of this heavily spondaic line, with a halting abundance of dental consonants, emphasizes Corinna’s struggle to drive away the amator. Even in his suppliant posture, he continues to be a threat to the injured meretrix.

Women, sexual violence, and trauma  79 I have extracted here the lines that describe Corinna’s traumatic responses in order to demonstrate that, considered together, her symptoms indicate that she has experienced rape trauma syndrome, as seen in the tonic immobility, in response to her assault. With these vivid details about the subjective, female experience of trauma, Ovid encourages his audience to consider the perspective of the vulnerable, abused woman, a perspective that disrupts a singular reading of the poem from the desirous, masculine perspective and considers the violent exploitation of the body of the meretrix, whom he repeatedly claims to love and to whom he claims to be enslaved in seruitium amoris. This depiction of female trauma reveals that his claims are mere rhetoric. The true victim of amor is the courtesan who is unable to protect herself against the violent expressions of a citizen man’s sexual desire. Ovid, therefore, provides an intentional and detailed description of the female assault victim in order to highlight a perspective that challenges the dominant, male voice in the poem and questions his authority, rhetoric, and social power. Through the victimized perspective of the underprivileged and exploited Corinna, Ovid subversively critiques overzealous power and authority in Rome.

Expression of rape trauma in Ovid’s Amores: Cypassis the ancilla In 2.7 and 2.8, the amator discloses his relationship with Cypassis, Corinna’s ancilla. These poems are one of several diptychs within the corpus of the Amores, that is, two poems linked thematically and dramatically, typically appearing in sequence.26 In 2.7, the amator indignantly asserts his high social status as he defends himself against Corinna’s accusation that he has had sex with her ancilla. He professes his fidelity to Corinna and claims that a citizen man would never deign to sleep with a filthy, low-class servant, marred by scars from the whip. In 2.8, however, the amator turns to Cypassis, revealing that she was present to hear his previous insults of her, and accuses her of revealing their sexual relationship to Corinna. In his accusations against and threats to Cypassis, he reveals that he has indeed sexually violated the ancilla on multiple occasions. As in poem 1.7, the amator attempts to control the narrative of events in 2.7 and 2.8. He presents himself as blameless and as deserving of sexual access to the ancilla’s body. But in stating his case, he simultaneously depicts Cypassis’ perspective by describing her traumatic responses to his words and actions. He provides two descriptions of Cypassis’ physical reactions to two threats. She blushes in response to Corinna and before the amator, shakes her head in refusal, and shows fear. I suggest that Cypassis’ responses indicate two expressions of trauma in reaction to the amator’s immediate sexual advances and threats: the controlled response of rape trauma syndrome and tonic immobility. Furthermore, Cypassis’ low social standing places her in circumstances in which she is consistently vulnerable to violence both from her domina, Corinna, and from the amator.27 In these two poems Cypassis endures recurrent traumatic events; her physical responses to Corinna and the amator indicate that the repeated exploitation and sexual abuse of her body have resulted in her developing symptoms of the early stages of PTSD.

80  Jessica Wise In order to analyze Cypassis’ physical manifestations of trauma, it will be useful to begin by explicating the inherent social hierarchies within poems 2.7 and 2.8 that the amator reinforces. He first delineates the social hierarchy in poem 2.7. As he defends himself against Corinna’s charges that he had an affair with her ancilla, he attempts to prove his innocence through an argument based upon social status: he is a male citizen, Cypassis is a slave, and sexual relations with a slave would be disgraceful for a citizen. As a slave, Cypassis, like Corinna, has no power with the amator: she can neither escape nor fight against his threats. The amator reinforces the social hierarchy between them by insulting Cypassis, emphasizing her low status with vivid imagery describing her enslaved body. He calls her filthy (sordida, 20) and states that she has a shameful lot in life (con­ temptae sortis, 20). He expresses disgust at her beaten body, asking what interest a citizen man might have in embracing a slave marred with scars from whipping: quis Veneris famulae conubia liber inire/ tergaque conplecti uerbere secta uelit? (What free citizen would want to take up with a slave and embrace a back disfigured by the whip? 21–22). As James (1997: 67) has noted, the slave girl Cypassis provides an unexceptional example of a social class that is forcibly devoted to domestic labor for another class. Indeed, the citizen amator only identifies her by her servile skills as a hairdresser (sollers ornare [expert in adornment], 2.7.17; perdocta … manu [skilled with her hand], 2.7.24; ponendis in mille modos per­ fecta capillis [excellent in setting hair in a thousand styles], 2.8.1), and for the sexual utility of her body (2.8.3). She is otherwise nondescript: she has no speech of her own and the amator omits description of her face. Only her body is identified as a point of focus, the object of physical violence. In differentiating the social distinction between citizen and slave, the amator asserts that his status gives him access to the ancilla’s body, should he deem it acceptable. This principle is echoed in Ars Amatoria Book 1, where the praecep­ tor (instructor) offers advice on fostering a relationship with the ancilla of the desired girlfriend.28 Although he advocates flattering the ancilla to get information about and access to the girlfriend, he warns about the risk of seducing her because getting caught might result in damaging a relationship with her mistress. But, the praeceptor acknowledges, if the readily available body of the ancilla is pleasing, the male pupil should make sure he waits to have sex with her until after he has secured the mistress: Si tamen illa tibi, dum dat recipitque tabellas,   corpore, non tantum sedulitate placet, fac domina potiare prius, comes illa sequatur:   non tibi ab ancilla est incipienda uenus. However, if the maid, while giving and carrying away messages,   pleases you with her body as much as her zeal, make sure that the mistress is first priority, her companion next:   love should not be begun by you with the maid.

(1.383–86)

Women, sexual violence, and trauma  81 Once you have the favor of the mistress, you can exploit the ancilla for sex, and her guilt from betraying her mistress will keep her from exposing your secret (tunc neque te prodet communi noxia culpa, factaque erunt dominae dictaque nota tibi, 1.395–96 [Then she will not betray you, sharing guilt for the crime, and you will know what her mistress has done and said]). Both the praeceptor and the amator exploit the social position of the ancilla by forcing her into shameful sexual encounters, but as citizens, they do not question whether they have the right to abuse her enslaved body.29 In 2.7, when the amator denies that he has had sex with Cypassis, he is heeding this exact warning of the praeceptor. He does not want sex with the ancilla to hinder his access to the meretrix. Nevertheless, in debasing Cypassis and emphasizing her low status and her physical vulnerability, he establishes the sexual power dynamics: the ancilla’s body is available to him because he is socially superior to her. Elegy 2.8 further demonstrates the amator’s social superiority and power over the ancilla Cypassis. The first few lines of the poem contain heavily euphemistic phrasing: et mihi iucundo non rustica cognita furto,/ apta quidem dominae, sed magis apta mihi, 2.8.3–4 (and a sophisticated woman known to me for her pleasing tricks, suitable to her mistress certainly, but more suitable to me). The amator claims that Cypassis is “known” (cognita) to him through pleasing (iucundo) and secretive (furto) encounters and reveals that he has had sex with her on numerous occasions. His description of her as non rustica further implies the sexual nature of their relationship. The term is used with erotic connotations to denote a sexual sophisticate, one who presumably has had numerous sexual partners, who is not a chaste, citizen woman, and who is thus sexually available to the citizen amator.30 Notably, he frames this entire couplet in relation to himself and in accordance with how Cypassis is beneficial to him. The couplet is constructed so that two instances of the first person pronoun used as a dative of reference, mihi, bookend the lines: she is known by and pleasing to him (mihi, 3), and satisfies him more than her mistress (magis apta mihi, 4). The syntax underscores the amator’s oppressive control of the situation: he encompasses Cypassis and her sexual skills. The multiple levels of social oppression Cypassis suffers are evident in her more restrained expressions of trauma, as she remains silent throughout 2.8. The amator’s description of her physical responses to his speech provide the only insights into her perspective on the threatening circumstances confronting her. Two couplets depict Cypassis’ perspective and expose her trauma. First, the ama­ tor claims that when Corinna fixed her eyes on Cypassis, presumably during the interaction described in 2.7, Cypassis blushed: ut tamen iratos in te defixit ocel­ los,/ uidi te totis erubuisse genis, 2.8.15–16 (when she fixed her angry eyes on you, I saw that you blushed over your whole face). The amator’s perspective is clear. He interprets her blush as an expression of guilt and implies that her flushed cheeks exposed their affair to Corinna. He capitalizes on this accusation, and Cypassis’ silence, to assert her indebtedness to him: while he kept a calm disposition, she failed to control her expression and thus she owes him for his quick thinking and repose (2.8.17–22). But the amator’s self-serving manipulation of her expression offers only one perspective. Captured within these lines is

82  Jessica Wise also the unspoken perspective of the ancilla, beholden to her mistress and unable to defend herself against the amator. As Cypassis remains silent, her physical reactions provide the only evidence by which to gauge her perception of this encounter. In response to the fear of physical violence, she stands quiet and motionless, but her blush indicates an involuntary expression of both shame and fear. Recent studies of the traumatic responses of rape victims demonstrate that victims frequently report feelings of shame and responsibility for the trauma they have suffered, a large number stating that their self-blame stems from their inability to stop a rape or assault. This is particularly common for victims who experience tonic immobility as a peritraumatic response because the automatic freezing response prevents them from either fleeing or fighting during an attack.31 The amator interprets Cypassis’ blush as a manifestation of guilt and an indicator of weakness. But taken into consideration with Cypassis’ circumstances—threatened by the amator, fearing the wrath of her mistress, and lacking the autonomy to defend herself—Cypassis’ blush indicates a combination of fear and shame. She is fearful of what will happen if the affair is exposed, and feels shame for having let the amator violate her body, causing her to betray her mistress. Cypassis, frozen in place and with no resources for defense, matches the profile of the traumatized, immobile assault victim, who displays a controlled response—a calm, composed affect—to impending threats. The second glimpse into the ancilla’s perspective comes in a description of her reaction to the amator’s sexual advances. The amator demands that Cypassis sleep with him again as a reward for his skillful cover-up of their affair. Cypassis silently denies him: quid renuis fingisque nouos, ingrata, timores?/ unum est e dominis emeruisse satis, 2.8.23–24 (Why do you refuse and fashion new fears, ungrateful girl? Only one of your masters has been satisfied). As the amator incredulously upbraids Cypassis for her unwillingness, he provides two insights into her experience of the sexual encounter: she is a nonconsensual partner and she is traumatized from previous encounters with him. In response to his sexual advances, Cypassis silently refuses by shaking her head “no” (renuis, 23). With this action, she effectively demonstrates her lack of consent in any sexual encounter. The amator, however, does not receive her rejection well and disregards her wishes. He proceeds to threaten her in order to force her consent, stating that he will reveal their affair to Corinna, if she does not consent to sex (2.8.25–28). His threats demonstrate that he is willing to force nonconsensual sex upon the ancilla, a further circumstance that explains her reaction. Since the amator will not respect or even entertain the right of an ancilla to refuse him, Cypassis’ silent head shaking appears, upon reconsideration, a much more fearful response. She silently attempts to refuse him, acutely aware that she has no power to stop him. Cypassis’ fear of the amator is confirmed in the next phrase: fingisque nouos, ingrata, timores? 23 (Why do you feign new fears, ungrateful girl?). His question shows that Cypassis reacts to his sexual advances with fearful expression. From his perspective, her fear is not genuine because an ancilla should not be unwilling to sleep with a citizen man.32 This sentiment is reinforced in the term “ungrateful”

Women, sexual violence, and trauma  83 (ingrata), with which he implies that he should be able to earn access to her body by performing a service for her, or, simply, as line 24 suggests, because he is her “master” (Only one of your masters has been satisfied). But from Cypassis’ perspective, the phrase nouos…timores has very different implications. Upon initial reading, the phrase “new fears” poses two interpretive possibilities, referring either to fears in addition to those Cypassis felt in regard to Corinna or to fears recalled from a similar past encounter with the amator. Placed in the context of the amator’s subsequent threats, however, the latter interpretation is the stronger. As McKeown suggests, the amator’s impatience with Cypassis indicates that he has had trouble convincing her to sleep with him before.33 The adjective nouus implies that this is not an isolated event, and that the amator has witnessed her expressions of fear in similar previous encounters. He now huffily reproaches her for responding to his sexual advances the same way she has in the past. When he becomes impatient, he resorts to using threats to coerce her into nonconsensual sex. His aggressive advances cause Cypassis to recollect episodes of past sexual violence. Her “new fears” therefore indicate that she is suppressed both by fear of the amator’s present advances and by an overwhelming fear derived from past traumatic encounters. If the term “new fears” is taken to mean that Cypassis is the victim of recurrent violence, her physical reactions show that she experiences two types of traumatic symptoms simultaneously. First, her blush in response to Corinna’s angered gaze, her physical refusal of the amator’s advances, expressions of fear, and continual silence—all are symptoms of trauma characteristic of the controlled reaction variation of rape trauma syndrome and evidence of tonic immobility. Suppressed by an overwhelming fear for her life, she maintains a calm, composed affect and betrays her fear only through primarily involuntary physical expressions, i.e., her blush, a fearful expression, head-shaking. Cypassis knows that violence is inevitable and is oppressed both by fear of that violence and by a perceived inescapability since she cannot fight against or stop either assault. Due to her status, Cypassis is vulnerable both to Corinna and the amator, while significant threats of violence confront her; her physical responses therefore indicate the development of symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of recurrent experiences of violence. If the phrase “new fears” implies that Cypassis, when approached by her aggressor, conjures up memories from past traumatic events, then it is also an indicator of the development of PTSD. Bovin et al. (2008) demonstrated that fear and perceived inescapability, when mediated by tonic immobility, are two prominent factors that lead to the development of PTSD.34 Cypassis’ fear has been well established, and her social position as ancilla legitimizes her feelings of perceived inescapability, unable to defend herself against threats from either Corinna or the amator. Upon rereading, her blush suggests that she may also experience shame for her inability to prevent prior assaults as well. Cypassis’ blush, refusal, silence, and fear are also signs that she may be experiencing flashbacks or emotional distress after exposure to a traumatic reminder. She is reminded of prior rapes first by the amator’s speech of 2.7 and then by his

84  Jessica Wise accusations and threats in 2.8. She listens to the amator’s debasing insults to and threats against her body while keenly aware of Corinna’s power over her and the amator’s power over both of them. The conjuring of past traumatic memories in these moments revives her trauma, particularly as the amator renews his sexual advances upon her. Suppressed by fear, she blushes, shakes her head in dissent, and shrinks back in fear as she recalls past assaults and anticipates their imminent reoccurrence. Throughout poems 2.7 and 2.8, the amator employs various rhetorical tactics in an attempt to exonerate himself from Corinna’s accusations of his wrongdoing, but through his posturing, lies, and threats, he reveals the full extent of his social power over both subaltern women, Corinna and Cypassis. While he feigns subservience to Corinna and endeavors to assuage her anger, his final threats to the ancilla demonstrate that his desire for immediate sex surmounts his respect for either women. The amator is prepared to coerce Cypassis into sex violently with no concern of penalty. As underscored in poem 1.7, the meretrix Corinna can take no serious action against a citizen man. For Cypassis, on the other hand, this disclosure entails certain physical repercussions. Since Corinna has little recourse against the amator, she can only punish her slave girl for the affair. Cypassis is thus trapped between the choice of enduring physical abuse from her angered mistress or submitting to the amator’s sexual advances. Willing to betray his relationship with Corinna and to expose Cypassis to physical punishment from her domina for immediate access to Cypassis’ body, he manipulates and abuses two subaltern women who are powerless against him.35

Conclusion Reading Ovid’s Amores from the perspective of the female victim necessitates a reconsideration of Ovid’s commentary on sexual power dynamics in ancient Rome. In vividly describing the traumatized bodies of Corinna and Cypassis, Ovid demonstrates that impudicae women possess the same sexual modesty thought only to belong to citizen women in Roman society. In Roman law, only a citizen woman can be raped.36 Slaves and meretrices, as non-citizen women, lack human rights and are unrecognized by the law. They possess no rights to and control over their own bodies and, therefore, cannot conceptually be violated. They have no citizen protections for one to transgress or accost and are considered not capable of being raped under the law. Ovid’s depiction of Corinna’s and Cypassis’ trauma, however, denotes the suffering of a person whose body has been attacked and violated, even though Roman law did not acknowledge it. Ovid provides not only a description of the trauma of subaltern woman but gives detailed accounts of different expressions of trauma particularized to the social position of a mer­ etrix and an ancilla. Though Roman law does not recognize the bodies of subaltern women as legally capable of being sexually assaulted, Ovid’s poetry depicts the human subjectivity of these traumatized, lower-class women. He provides an opportunity for his readers to empathize with the women’s experience of trauma and recognize their physical and social oppression.

Women, sexual violence, and trauma  85 In addition to demonstrating awareness for the trauma of subaltern women, I argue that Ovid’s incorporation of women’s trauma into these poems serves another purpose: to question the abuse of power and authority by the overzealous, lusting male amator. Throughout his works, Ovid consistently explores several intertwined themes: chaos and its resistance to order, uncontrollable passions, and overzealous power and authority. Though other poets touch upon similar ideas (e.g., Vergil), what distinguishes Ovid’s work is that his engagement with these concepts frequently manifests in mutually contradictory gendered discourses and perspectives.37 From the Heroides (Heroines) to the Metamorphoses, he explores the imbalance of power between partners, vividly portraying the ability of the stronger party to control and exploit the other by force. Ovid offers a multiplicity of voices and perspectives that speak either against each other or against a more traditional narrative, and he represents women’s speech (or silence) to underscore the disparity in power between genders. In the Amores, I suggest that Ovid depicts intimate violence to illustrate the dangers of male sexual impulse and desire and to interrogate his exploitation of power and authority. Consistently throughout poems 1.7, 2.7, and 2.8, the sexual desire of the male narrator is juxtaposed with brief insights into the women’s suffering. By introducing these dissenting viewpoints into the poems, Ovid encourages his reader to question the perspective and authority of the male lover. Ovid’s intentional juxtaposition of conflicting perspectives, male and female, predator and victim, is most explicit in the description of Corinna’s traumatic responses in poem 1.7. In a synchistic pattern, lines 49–57 alternate abruptly between a description of Corinna’s trauma and the amator’s voyeuristic gaze upon her injured body. In the drastic contrast of perspectives, Ovid underscores her victimization, demonstrating both her trauma and the amator’s failure to acknowledge—even his disregard for—her suffering as he sexualizes her vulnerability and thereby undermines the legitimacy of her traumatic experience. The amator follows each line depicting Corinna’s injury (51, 53, 57) with a metaphor comparing her physical appearance to a beautiful natural image.38 Yet also within these lines, Ovid depicts the traumatic responses of Corinna. His words tell one story and her body tells another. The poem’s construction, controlled by the first person perspective of the male narrator, facilitates a reading from the vantage point of the amator.39 Corinna’s fearful silence, wounds, and trauma, however, provide a subtle but effective counter-narrative that undermines the limited perspective of the citizen man. The amator’s rhetoric shows that he, as citizen, has free access to the bodies of the meretrix and the ancilla. He persistently demands sex, threatens violence, and acts with impunity. In describing the effects of his violence against the women, however, he undercuts his own assumptions. The women’s traumatic responses show that subaltern women do in fact possess sexual modesty: they fear the citizen man’s violent force, try to ward off his advances, and are injured by his assaults. In juxtaposing the perspective of the male amator, who is powerful, lusting, and unconcerned with (even ignorant of) the women’s point of view with the fear and suffering of the non-citizen women, Ovid in fact enhances the depiction

86  Jessica Wise of the women’s victimization. Through the conflicting perspectives of male desire and female fear, he underscores the women’s lack of physical and social agency and thereby highlights the amator’s unrelenting exploitation of their bodies and forceful seizure of their sexual modesty. Within the political subtext of the elegiac genre, Ovid’s representation of uncontrollable male desire, volatile emotions, and imbalance of power offers a commentary on political power that overreaches as well. Employing the unequal disparity of power between genders in Roman society, Ovid interrogates masculine authority and confronts social institutions of power and authority in Rome. By showcasing women’s trauma, he gives insight to the perspective and experience of nondominant groups, overshadowed and suppressed by the powerful majority. Ovid’s inconsistent amator, on the other hand, undermined both by women’s perspectives and often by himself, reveals that matters of love and sex cannot be rationalized, and that at times efforts to assert control result in the victimization of others. Through these diverse voices Ovid incorporates, if briefly, underprivileged perspectives that resist a singular, authoritative reading from the dominant male viewpoint. In this way, his commentary speaks to the Augustan principate, interrogating the overzealous power of the emperor whose laws reach into the private lives of its citizens, forcibly converting private social matters into subjects of public discourse, censorship, and law. Through the portrayal of the trauma experienced by subaltern women, Ovid explores the viewpoint of the oppressed and considers the consequences of uncontrolled imperial power overreaching into the private lives of Roman citizens.

Notes 1 On subaltern women and trauma in Roman Comedy, see James in this volume. 2 On the relationship between the freezing response in the acute phase as a cause of PTSD, see Bovin et al. (2008: 402–9) and Fuse et al. (2007: 281–82). See Moor et al. (2013) on the relationship between peritraumatic feelings of dehumanization, humiliation, freezing, and the development of self-blame and PTSD. Finally, see Griffin et al. (1997) on the link between peritraumatic dissociation and rape-induced PTSD. 3 Criterion A for PTSD defines the stressor: “The person was exposed to: death, threatened death, actual or threatened serious injury, actual or threatened sexual violence, as follows: (one required) 1. Direct exposure. 2. Witnessing in person. 3. Indirectly, by learning that a close relative or close friend was exposed to trauma. If the event involved actual or threatened death, it must have been violent or accidental. 4. Repeated or extreme indirect exposure to aversive details of the event(s), usually in the course of professional duties.” 4 Fuse et al. (2007) demonstrated that a majority of sexual assault victims reported experiencing tonic immobility during their attack. 5 One significant drawback concerning research on tonic immobility in humans is the reliance upon self-reporting to collect data. Galliano et al. (1993), for example, provided groundbreaking work in this field but their data relied primarily on self-reporting by a limited group of participants responding to an overly generalized questionnaire. Fuse et al. (2007) and Marx et al. (2008) further developed the Tonic Immobility Scale by conducting a broader study of human subjects and conducting clinical studies on nonhuman animal responses of tonic immobility to produce more measurable results.

Women, sexual violence, and trauma  87 Their studies provide conclusive research that humans display the same characteristic responses as nonhuman animals in a state of tonic immobility and that a majority of human rape and assault victims report experiencing tonic immobility during an attack. 6 See n.2 above, as well as Ozer et al. (2003) on the relationship between peritraumatic fear and PTSD. 7 See Griffin et al. (1997) for the Peritraumatic Dissociation Index and the impact of peritraumatic dissociation on PTSD. For further victim reports on dissociative traumatic responses see also Ozer et al. (2003) and Moor et al. (2013). 8 See Griffin et al. (1997). The study also demonstrated that peritraumatic dissociation, as a coping strategy, may be helpful at the time of trauma but could have damaging implications for a victim’s treatment. 9 The reliability of rape trauma syndrome as scientific evidence of rape is a highly debated topic in this field of psychology. There are some significant limitations to the data set. Because scientists cannot put humans in a controlled setting and induce symptoms by exposing them to traumatic events, they are limited either to studying animals in controlled, clinical settings or to self-reporting from victims, which can produce a wide variation of results and is often difficult to measure accurately. See Fuse et al. (2007) on the difficulties and accuracy of measuring tonic immobility as well as the development of the “tonic immobility scale.” 10 The study of immobility reactions during sexual assault have important legal and social consequences for the survivor. Extent of resistance is a factor in how rape is legally defined and tied to prosecution in legal courts (Abarbanel 1986). For example, some juries regard forceful resistance as an expression of non-consent and fail to recognize a freezing response as similarly legitimate as a defense (Wrightsman et al. 2002). See also Suarez and Gallup (1979) and Ullman (2007). 11 James (2003) has demonstrated persuasively that the character of the beloved girl in Roman elegy is a meretrix by necessity and cannot be a citizen girl or a legitimate citizen wife. 12 For a study of the social position of prostitutes and their place in Roman law, see McGinn (1998) and Faraone and McClure (2006). 13 See James (2003: 36–41). The courtesan of elegy, the docta puella (learned girl), is a fictional literary character that defies direct comparison with a specific category of Roman courtesan. Each elegiac poet, however, describes his docta puella as one who operates her own business freely, at times with the advice of an elder female advisor, e.g., the lena (madam) in Propertius 4.5 and Ovid 1.8. 14 Ovid and the Roman elegists frequently portray this exact scenario in which the ama­ tor claims to have been neglected or locked out by his girlfriend. One such standard complaint, found in all three elegists, is the paraclausithyron poem, or the locked-out lover. See Ovid, Amores 1.6, Propertius 1.16, and Tibullus 1.2. 15 For a detailed discussion on subaltern women in comedy see James (this volume). On the physical status of the body as a social distinction between free citizens and slaves see Edwards (1997). For further discussion of slave rape in Roman literature see DeBoer (2010: 1–19) and James (1997). 16 I distinguish between the historical poet, Ovid, and the narrator of the poems, the ama­ tor. The amator, male lover, is not Ovid himself, but rather a persona Ovid has crafted. He is a fictional character in the text, much like the women after whom he lusts. 17 On seruitium amoris in Roman elegy see Copley (1947), Lyne (1979), James (2003:145–50), and (Fulkerson 2013). For other embellishments upon the seruitium amoris trope see also Amores 1.2, 1.3.5, 2.17, 3.11a. 18 For another reading of 1.7, see Perkins (2015), who compares Ovid’s amator in 1.7 to Tibullus’ rusticus (country man). 19 Fränkel (1945: 18), Wilkinson (1955: 50), and Luck (1959: 149) read 1.7 as Ovid’s expression of sincere regret. Connor (1974: 18–40) and Parker (1969: 80–97) point to

88  Jessica Wise the poem’s playfulness and parodic qualities, arguing that the Ovidian coda in the final couplet reveals that the amator was fooling his audience all along with his attempts at sincerity and protestations of regret. Two commentaries, Turpin (2016) and Ryan and Perkins (2011), read the poem as a comical exaggeration by the amator overdramatizing a trivial incident with Corinna. The comedy derives from a reading of the “event” as the amator throwing Corinna’s hair into disarray, nothing more violent. His aggrandizement of a rather trivial action to the level of civic and even divine crime, therefore, is read as an overblown reaction of a man who has done nothing wrong but exaggerates his guilt as a desperate lover. Greene (1999), offering a feminist critique, states that the amator’s pleasure derives from subjugating Corinna. Thus the amator is not only violent himself, but also sanctions amatory violence by exploiting the victimized female body for his own poetic and rhetorical games. For further studies on sexual violence and voyeurism in Ovid’s poetry see Cahoon (1988), Richlin (1992), Greene (1994), Fredrick (1998), James (1997). 20 See Greene (1999: 413–15) who asserts that these mythological exempla “reinforce the speaker’s sanctioning of violence toward his mistress and the pleasure it brings.” 21 On the fetishism of Corinna’s vulnerability see Cahoon (1988: 296) and Greene (1999: 413–14). See also lines 35–48, where the amator sexualizes Corinna as his captive prize in a triumphal parade. As Greene (1999: 415) has observed, his list of sex-induced injuries, e.g., bruised lips (41), tooth indentations on her neck (42), or a ripped garment (47–48), demonstrates his sanctioning of sexualized violence. 22 Ovid’s text by Showerman (1977) (Amores); Mozley (1979) (Ars Amatoria). All translations are my own. 23 Meaning “to snatch or seize,” rapio is the verb most frequently used in the context of sexual violence to indicate an abduction or rape. OLD s.v. 4. 24 OLD s.v. 1 and 3. 25 Corinna’s petrification indicates that she experiences the rigidity (catalepsy), paralyzing numbness, and analgesia commonly reported in tonic immobility. 26 Davis (1977: 19) asserts that the dramatic pairing is defined in part by the fact that “the second poem serves not just as the thematic companion piece to the preceding but as its dramatic sequel depending on the first for its dramatic point of departure.” 27 On the hierarchical relationship between Corinna and Cypassis, see James (1997: 67). 28 The praeceptor, or instructor, is a narrative persona in Roman love poetry, who acts as an informed teacher—having learned from a life of experience in love, he offers his knowledge to a new generation of young, male lovers. Ovid’s poem, Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), is narrated by such a character, the praeceptor amoris, who farcically instructs young men where to find and how to maintain love in Rome. For more information on the praeceptor see James (2003: 82–85) and Armstrong (2015: 21–52). 29 On the vulnerability of slaves to sexual abuse see Walters (1997) and Edwards (1997). Walters (1997: 30) demonstrates that social status was largely determined on the basis of perceived bodily integrity. 30 See also Amores 1.8.44 for a similar use of this term. The lena Dipsas states that the Sabine women were perhaps rusticae, women who were not sophisticated enough to take on multiple lovers like Corinna and the meretrices of contemporary Rome. 31 Burgess and Holstrom (1974) first identified self-blame as a common response to rape. Suarez and Gallup (1979) suggest that tonic immobility contributes to feelings of self-blame and guilt. Their study was supported by Mezey and Taylor (1988), Frazier (1990), and Ullman (1997). See Marx et al. (2008) for a full history of the study of shame as a response to sexual assault. 32 See above discussion of social hierarchy and the amator’s sexual exploitation of the ancilla, echoed in the Ars Amatoria by the praeceptor amoris. 33 McKeown (1998: 166) states that the nouos timores “anticipating the explicit revelation in the following lines, may hint that Ovid [the amator] has had difficulties before in persuading Cypassis.”

Women, sexual violence, and trauma  89 34 Victims who experience tonic immobility report greater self-blame, believing they should have fought back during the attack (Bovin et al. 2008: 407). This self-blame may lead to further ruminative thinking about the experience, causing more prominent PTSD symptoms. 35 James (1997: 72) further discusses the amator’s manipulation and exploitation of both women for his ultimate objective: unimpeded sexual access to their bodies. 36 See McGinn (1998), Perry (2013), and Strong (2016) for further information on the status of female courtesans and slaves in Rome, as well as discussion of the legal definition of rape. 37 Each of Vergil’s works, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid, demonstrate different aspects of a desire for a more peaceful ordering of society after years of civil war. The Georgics and the Aeneid, in particular, consider the type of power associated with imperial order and question the complex relationship between human emotion, chaos, and the establishment of order. For discussions on the Georgics that consider the conflict between order, passion, and power in the imperial age see Griffin (2008) and Nappa (2005). On binary oppositions (e.g., control and violence, empire and chaos) in the Aeneid see Bartsch (1998), Gottlieb (2009), and Fowler (2009). 38 He compares her immobility and pallor to fine Parian marble (caeduntur Pariis qualia saxa iugis, 52); her lifeless and trembling limbs are described as a gentle breeze through the poplar trees, a slender reed shaken by the west wind, or a ripple across the tops of a wave caused by the south wind (54–56); and finally, her flowing tears are likened to snow that cascades down as it melts to water (qualiter abiecta de niue manat aqua, 58). As Fredrick (1998: 470–71) has observed, through these similes, the action pauses while the amator slowly takes apart Corinna’s body and transforms it into a trembling landscape. The amator finds her vulnerability attractive: he perceives her fear as a gentle, peaceful state, and gazes upon her like a natural wonder to be admired. And, as Greene (1999: 415–16) has noted, he is able to distract the audience from his actions and from Corinna’s suffering through his similes, as he transforms Corinna into a pictorial object in his landscape. 39 In the final couplet of 1.7, he even reveals his utter lack of concern for whether or not he injured Corinna, as he demands that she recompose her hair and remove any signs of his crime, thus eliminating the need for him to feel guilty (67–68).

Works cited Abarbanel, G. 1986. “Rape and Resistance.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 1: 100–5. Armstrong, R. 2015. Ovid and His Love Poetry. London: Duckworth. Bartsch, S. 1998. “Ars and the Man: The Politics of Art in Virgil’s Aeneid.” CP 93: 322–42. Bovin, M., Jager-Hyman, S., Gold, S., Marx, B., and Sloan, D. 2008. “Tonic Immobility Mediates the Influence of Peritraumatic Fear and Perceived Inescapability of Posttraumatic Stress Symptom Severity Among Sexual Assault Survivors.” Journal of Traumatic Stress 21: 402–9. Burgess, A. W. and Holmstrom, L. 1974. “Rape Trauma Syndrome.” The American Journal of Psychiatry 131: 981–86. Cahoon, L. 1988. “The Bed as Battlefield: Erotic Conquest and Military Metaphor in Ovid’s Amores.” TAPA 118: 293–307. Connor, P. 1974. “His Dupes and Accomplices: A Study of Ovid the Illusionist in the Amores.” Ramus 3: 18–40. Copley, F. 1947. “Servitium Amoris in the Roman Elegists.” TAPA 78: 285–300. Davis, J. T. 1977. Dramatic Pairings in the Elegies of Propertius and Ovid. Bern: Haupt. DeBoer, K. 2010. Verbera, Catenae, Concubitus: Slaves, Violence and Vulnerability in Ovid’s Amores. MA Diss. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Retrieved from

90  Jessica Wise https​://cd​r.lib​.unc.​edu/i​ndexa​bleco​ntent​/uuid​:e184​f76d-​a49b-​4548-​a88d-​f27cc​801a9​ 87. Edwards, C. 1997. “Unspeakable Professions: Public Performance and Prostitution in Ancient Rome.” In Hallett, J. P. and Skinner, M. B. eds. Roman Sexualities. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 66–95. Faraone, C. A., and McClure, L. 2006. Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Fogel, A. 2010. “Are All Cries Good for You? Some Cries Keep You Distant from Self and Others.” Psychology Today, October 22. Retrieved from https​://ww​w.psy​cholo​gytod​ ay.co​m/blo​g/bod​y-sen​se/20​1010/​are-a​ll-cr​ies-g​ood-y​ou. Fowler, D. 2009. “Opening the Gates of War (Aen. 7.601–40).” In Stahl, H.-P. ed. Vergil’s Aeneid: Augustan Epic and Political Context. London: Duckworth. 21–36 Fränkel, H. 1945. Ovid: A Poet between Two Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press. Frazier, P. 1990. “Victim Attributions and Post-Rape Trauma.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 59: 298–304. Fredrick, D. 1997. “Reading Broken Skin: Violence in Roman Elegy.” In Hallett, J. P. and Skinner, M. B. eds. Roman Sexualities. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 172–93. Fulkerson, L. 2013. “Servitium Amoris: The Interplay of Dominance, Gender, and Poetry.” In Thorsen, T. S. ed. The Cambridge Companion to Latin Love Elegy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 180–93. Fuse, T., Forsyth, J., Marx, B., Gallup, G. G., and Weaver, S. 2007. “Factor Structure of the Tonic Immobility Scale in Female Sexual Assault Survivors: An Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis.” Journal of Anxiety Disorders 21: 265–83. Galliano, G., Noble, L., Travis, L., and Puechl, A. 1993. “Victim Reactions During Rape/ Sexual Assault: A Preliminary Study of the Immobility Response and Its Correlates.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 8: 109–14. Gottlieb, G. 2009. “Religion in the Politics of Augustus (Aen. 1.278–91; 8.714–23; 12.791–842).” In Stahl, H.-P. ed. Vergil’s Aeneid: Augustan Epic and Political Context. London: Duckworth. 21–36. Greene, E. 1994. “Sexual Politics in Ovid’s Amores: 3.4, 3.8, and 3.12.” CP 89: 344–51. Greene, E. 1999. “Travesties of Love: Violence and Voyeurism in Ovid Amores 1.7.” CW 92: 409–18. Griffin, J. 2008. “The Fourth Georgic, Virgil and Rome.” In Volk, K. ed. Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Vergil’s Georgics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 225–48. Griffin, M. G., Resick, P. A., and Mechanic, M. B. 1997. “Objective Assessment of Peritraumatic Dissociation: Psychophysiological Indicators.” The American Journal of Psychiatry 154: 1081–88. Hallett, J. and Skinner, M. eds. 1997. Roman Sexualities. Princeton: Princeton University Press. James, S. L. 1997. “Slave-Rape and Female Silence in Ovid’s Love Poetry.” Helios 24: 60–76. James, S. L. 2003. Learned Girls and Male Persuasion: Gender and Reading in Roman Love Elegy. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kozlowska, K., Walker, P., McLean, L., and Carrive, P. 2015. “Fear and the Defense Cascade: Clinical Implications and Management.” Harvard Review of Psychiatry 23: 263–87. Luck, G. 1959. The Latin Love Elegy. London: Methuen. Lyne, R. O. A. M. 1979. “Servitium Amoris.” CQ 29: 117–30.

Women, sexual violence, and trauma  91 Marx, B. P., Forsyth, J. P., Gallup, G. G., Fusé T., and Lexington J. M. 2008. “Tonic Immobility as an Evolved Predator Defense: Implications for Sexual Assault Survivors.” Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 15: 74–90. McGinn, T. A. J. 1998. Prostitution, Sexuality, and the Law in Ancient Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McKeown, J. C. 1998. Ovid: Amores Vol. III. A Commentary. Leeds: Francis Cairns. Mezey, G. C. and Taylor, P. J. 1988. “Psychological Reactions of Women Who Have Been Raped: A Descriptive and Comparative Study.” British Journal of Psychiatry 152: 330–39. Moor, A., Ben-Meir, E., Golan-Shapira, D., and Farchi, M. 2013. “Rape: A Trauma of Paralyzing Dehumanization.” Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment, and Trauma 22: 1051–69. Mozley, J. H. 1979. Ovid: The Art of Love and Other Poems. Revised by G. P. Goold. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nappa, C. 2005. Reading After Actium: Vergil’s Georgics, Octavian, and Rome. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Ozer, E. J., Best, S. R., Lipsey, T. L., and Weiss, D. S. 2003. “Predictors of Post–traumatic Stress Disorder and Symptoms in Adults: A Meta-analysis.” Psychological Bulletin 129: 52–73. Parker, D. 1969. “The Ovidian Coda.” Arion 8: 80–97. Perkins, C. A. 2015. “The Poeta as Rusticus in Ovid, Amores 1.7.” Helios 42: 267–85. Perry, M. J. 2013. Gender, Manumission, and the Roman Freedwoman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Richlin, A. 1992. “Reading Ovid’s Rapes.” In Richlin, A. ed. Pornography and Represen­ tation in Greece and Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 158–79. Ryan, M. B. and Perkins, C. A. 2011. Ovid’s Amores, Book One: A Commentary. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Showerman, G. Ovid: Heroides, Amores. Loeb Classical Library. Revised by G. P. Goold. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Stahl, H.-P. ed. 2009. Vergil’s Aeneid: Augustan Epic and Political Context. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. Strong, A. 2016. Prostitutes and Matrons in the Roman World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Suarez, S. D. and Gallup, G. G. 1979. “Tonic Immobility as a Response to Rape in Humans: A Theoretical Note.” Psychological Record 29: 315–20. Turpin, W. 2016. Ovid: Amores Book 1. Dickinson College Commentaries. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. Ullman, S. 1997. “Review and Critique of Empirical Studies of Rape Avoidance.” Criminal Justice and Behavior 24: 177–204. Ullman, S. 2007. “A 10-Year Update of ‘Review and Critique of Empirical Studies of Rape Avoidance.’” Criminal Justice and Behavior 34: 411–29. Walters, J. 1997. “Invading the Roman Body: Manliness and Impenetrability in Roman Thought.” In Hallett, J. P. and Skinner, M. B. eds. Roman Sexualities. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 29–46. Wilkinson, L. P. 1955. Ovid Recalled. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wrightsman, L., Greene, E., Nietzel, M., and Fortune, W. 2002. Psychology and the Legal System. 5th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.

Part 3

Collective trauma

5

The Acropolis burning! Reactions to collective trauma in the years after 480/79 bce Marion Meyer

Facing the approach of the Persians in the summer of 480 bce, most of the Athenians could be persuaded to leave the city. The defenders took their chances with the fleet, and their families took refuge in Troizen, Aegina, and Salamis. From there, the Athenians must have seen the fires that devoured their houses and devastated their sanctuaries (Figure 5.1). When the Persian army invaded Attica a second time ten months later, the Athenians once more retreated to their ships and to Salamis, and once more witnessed the destruction of their city, which was ordered by Mardonios after he had learned that the Greeks would not give in and that the Spartans were on their way.1 The Athenians’ collective experience of evacuating their city and seeing it burn was traumatic, affecting all of them regardless of their status, age, gender, or personal situation. It was shocking and painful, causing anger, helplessness, despair, as well as a host of other reactions. The very fact that a number of activities in the aftermath of the catastrophe is attested by written and archaeological sources speaks for itself. Some reactions were pragmatic ones, dictated by necessity or fear: rebuilding houses, providing installations for the continuation of rituals, erecting a wall around the city for protection (this wall was constructed so precipitously that even grave monuments were used as building material).2 Other reactions were political, reclaiming Athenian sovereignty over the city and its monuments, such as the commissioning of new statues of the Tyrannicides. The Great King had deprived Athens of the statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, which, just a decade or two earlier, had been set up in the Agora as the very first honorific monument. Being aware of the significance and importance of these statues for the Athenians, Xerxes, following traditional Near-Eastern practice, had treated them in the way Persians treated images of the enemy’s gods: he looted them and displayed them as booty in Susa. The decision to commission a new group of the Tyrannicides must have been among the first ones taken after the Athenians returned home because the new statues were set up only two years later (Figure 5.2).3 The replacement of the monument was tangible proof of the Athenians’ determination to demonstrate their regained agency. It was no longer left to the Persians to decide what the Athenians would see—or not see—in the heart of their own city! The statues of the Tyrannicides were not the only visible reaction to the enemy’s past activities. Turning from the Agora towards the Acropolis, one could

96  Marion Meyer

Figure 5.1 The Persians on the Acropolis in 480 bce as imagined by Manolis Korres (Korres, M. 1992. Vom Penteli zum Parthenon. Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek: München. 51).

see another example. The northern part of the Mycenaean circuit wall around the Acropolis was remodeled in the decade following the sack. It was the first major construction work on the Acropolis after the end of the war. Into this section, well visible from the Agora and the adjacent quarters of the city, the Athenians systematically incorporated column drums of the Pre-Parthenon, as well as part of the entablature of the so-called Old Temple, thus creating a permanent reminder of both sacred buildings that had been vandalized by the invaders (Figure 5.3).4 These fragments of architecture were not simply used because they were available as building material; they were arranged as they would have been in the original buildings: column drum on top of column drum forming two layers, reaching just the height that the peristasis (the row of columns surrounding the cella) of the Pre-Parthenon had attained at the time of the sack;5 and an architrave supporting a metope-triglyph frieze, topped by a cornice, as in the regular sequence of an entablature of the Doric order. The positioning of both “reconstructions” was telling: in the east, the row of column drums originally ended at a point behind which the eastern façade of the Pre-Parthenon would have been situated (Figure 5.4);6 in the west, it ended in line with the western (back) wall of the naïskos (small temple) built for the archaion agalma (ancient statue) after the Persian wars (see discussion below, pp. 100–107). The column drums thus marked the position of the entrance side of the destroyed temple and outlined the area of the altar and the seat of the archaion agalma. The remains of the Old Temple,

The Acropolis burning!   97

Figure 5.2 The Tyrannicides (Roman copy). Naples, Museo Nazionale 6009+6010 (photo M. Meyer).

however, which had been a completed building, were not placed alongside this ruined temple (where they would have partly overlapped with the column drums), but further to the west where the Acropolis wall turned south at a right angle. The entablature followed this course, indicating the length of the former building plus its northwestern corner (Figures 5.4–5.5).7 The arrangement of the spolia thus served several purposes; it reminded of the building’s sacrilegious destruction by the Persians (in fact, it continues to do so), recalled the physical appearance of the destroyed temples, and marked the nucleus of the sanctuary (the altar and seat of the archaion agalma). It may come as a surprise, however, that the sanctuary as such did not see substantial restoration or re-building for quite some time.8 As meticulous studies by Astrid Lindenlauf, Andrew Stewart, and others have shown, the established

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Figure 5.3 Column drums and entablature of destroyed temples in the north wall of the Acropolis (photo M. Meyer).

Figure 5.4 Model of the Acropolis (ca. 400 bce). Athens, Acropolis Museum (photo M. Meyer).

notion of a swift, systematic burial of architectural and sculptural remains in a contiguous stratum of Perserschutt (debris buried immediately after the end of the Persian wars) has to be abandoned.9 Even cleaning-up seems to have been slow and piecemeal. Fourteen votive statues vandalized by the Persians were formally buried in a deposit next to the north wall of the Acropolis when this section of the wall was rebuilt in the 470s.10 The bulk of the fragments of sculpture and architecture remained uncovered. The sanctuary lay in ruins for an entire generation—until the erection of the colossal bronze statue of the Athena Promachos and

The Acropolis burning!   99

Figure 5.5 Location of the Parthenon (on the podium of the Pre-Parthenon), the Old Temple and the spolia in the north wall (Di Cesare 2015, 326 Figure 15).

the Parthenon. The most conspicuous remains were the western part of the cella of the Old Temple and the abandoned platform of the Pre-Parthenon. All actions described above were, in one way or another, reactions to the experience of the Persian sack with distinct motivations and purposes—but is it justified to speak of reactions to trauma? In psychology, trauma is defined as damage to the psyche caused by severe distress. According to the handbook for psychotraumatology by Gottfried Fischer und Peter Riedesser, trauma is an experience of helplessness due to the exposure to a threatening situation that has a lasting effect on one’s self-confidence (1998: 79). As a non-psychologist, I would be reluctant to refer to trauma for interpretations of historical phenomena, but I would consider trauma as a potential cause in cases when decisions and actions taken in the aftermath of a catastrophe are not in line with the usual, attested behavior and habits and do not serve apparent purposes. Complex situations such as an invasion or war, among others, can be the cause of collective trauma that leaves archaeological traces deserving study and interpretation.

100  Marion Meyer From this perspective, the Athenian people’s decision to mark a space in ways that one would not normally expect can be examined from a different light and understood as a result of the community’s traumatic experience. One remarkably unusual reaction to the shock of occupation and destruction was the exposition of remains of the destroyed temples in the north wall of the Acropolis. Another was the placement of the statue of the city goddess, both physically and symbolically. Before the Persian sack, the wooden cult image of Athena (the archaion agalma) had been kept in the Old Temple on the main terrace of the Acropolis (terrace III), facing the altar at its eastern end (Figures 5.6–5.7). In 480 bce, the house of the agalma, the east cella, was destroyed and never reconstructed. Instead, the image was given a new seat on the narrow, lower terrace to the north (terrace II, Figure 5.8), where the Erechtheion, the last temple erected for Athena on the Acropolis, was eventually built (Figure 5.9). The cult image of Athena was considered one of the oldest in the Greek world, made of olive wood and presumably of moderate size. Every year it was dressed in a new peplos dedicated as a collective offering of the Athenians.11 We do not know anything about its fate during the war or its aftermath. It is a fair assumption that the agalma was evacuated. According to various sources, the goddess’ snake that served as a phylax (guardian) on the Acropolis was said to have refused its honey cake, an indication that the goddess had left the sanctuary (Hdt. 8.41; Plut. Them. 10.1). It was also said that the gorgoneion of the agalma (an apotropaic face on the aegis) got lost in the turmoil of evacuation (Plut. Them. 10.4). When the Athenians left for Troizen, Aegina, and Salamis, they could not certainly take with them all the sacred paraphernalia from all the sanctuaries, but if they took any, the ancient image of Athena would surely have been their prime choice. However, in the unlikely case that the Athenians had not evacuated the wooden

Figure 5.6 Plan of the Acropolis ca. 485 bce. 1 Altar; 2 Old Temple; 3–7 cult sites and marks; 8 Pre-Parthenon (plan H. R. Goette, adapted by Marion Meyer).

Figure 5.7 Model of the Acropolis ca. 485 bce. Athens, Acropolis Museum (photo H. R. Goette).

Figure 5.8 Plan of the Acropolis ca. 470 bce. 1 Altar; 2 remains of Old Temple; 3–6 cult sites and marks; 7 naïskos for Athena; 8 theatron; 9 Pre-Parthenon (plan M. Meyer; drawing A. Sulzgruber).

102  Marion Meyer

Figure 5.9 Model of the Acropolis, Imperial times. Athens, Acropolis Museum (photo H. R. Goette).

image and it had been lost, new proof of the goddess’ presence would have materialized in a new object, which would function as the agalma. The Athenians would have accepted that it was the archaion agalma, because they would have wanted—and needed—to believe that the goddess’ presence in the Acropolis was continuous (see Hölscher 2001: 153–58). This desire is clearly revealed in the narrative of the resistant olive tree reported by Herodotus. According to his account, the day after the sack, the Great King ordered the Athenian exiles who had joined him to go to the Acropolis and sacrifice; when they entered the sanctuary, they saw that a shoot of about a cubit’s length sprung from the trunk of the goddess’ olive tree (Figure 5.6 no. 3) that had been burnt down the day before (Hdt. 8.54–55). Since the Athenians had invented a tale demonstrating the continuity of the goddess’ presence on the Acropolis, they would have acted accordingly and provided for Athena’s lasting presence by bringing her cult image back to the Acropolis. While there is no evidence regarding the fate of the agalma during these years, the tale about the survival of the olive tree constitutes compelling proof of Athenian determination to ensure the cult’s continuity and maintain its traditions. In this light, it is reasonable to assume that after the Persians’ departure, the cult image was re-installed in its previous place, in the ruins of the east cella (Figure 5.8), close to the altar and protected by

The Acropolis burning!   103 a temporary shelter. There is no way of knowing whether this re-installment lasted for some months or some years, but it did not last for decades. Sooner or later the archaion agalma ended up on the narrow terrace that lined the temple terrace in the north, at a level of about two meters lower than the main terrace. In 409/8 bce, the construction of the Erechtheion, which had been interrupted for several years, was resumed. The inscription recording the work done and the work still to do calls the new building the “temple on the (acro)polis in which the archaion agalma (is)” (IG I³ 474 line 1). According to this inscription, in 409/8 bce the Erechtheion did not yet have a roof, even though it already served as the seat of the archaion agalma.12 The cult image, then, must have been housed in a naïskos that predated the Erechtheion and was ultimately incorporated into its east cella (Figure 5.8 no. 7).13 The construction of this naïskos must have occurred after the agalma had lost its previous seat (in 480 bce) and before the Erechtheion was planned (ca. 440 bce).14 As the westernmost column drums inserted into the renovation of the north wall of the Acropolis mark the rear wall of the naïskos (see Figure 5.4), the building must have been at least planned (if not actually built) at the same time. I suggest some time around 470 bce as a hypothetical date that allows for a short period of re-installation in its previous house. The site of the Old Temple remained a ruin for two generations. Its rear part was mentioned by Herodotus (5.77) as the megaron facing west. Accordingly, the west cella had either survived the sack or had been restored. Large parts of the peristasis had gone into the north wall of the Acropolis.15 Inscriptions and votive monuments were placed on the empty stylobat.16 When the remains of the building burnt down in 406 bce, the area was turned into an open space that was never again covered by a temple (Figure 5.9).17 The Old Temple was succeeded first by the naïskos, then by the Erechtheion, or, as we mentioned above, the “temple … in which the archaion agalma is.” Neither of them looked like a successor of the Old Temple. In contrast, the Parthenon, built in the third quarter of the fifth century, presents itself as a true successor of the previously planned temple (the Pre-Parthenon): built on the same platform, designed likewise as a peripteros, with the same length, just a little wider, with eight columns on the short sides instead of six. The preceding analysis raises two critical questions: why did the Athenians transfer the goddess’ image, and why did its new seat, the Erechtheion, differ so conspicuously from its predecessor and all other Greek temples? Both issues are intertwined. We might get an answer if we ask: what was gained by the new position of the agalma? The arrangements made on terrace II in the aftermath of the Persian wars apparently foreshadowed the constellation that was to be forever perpetuated by the Erechtheion towards the end of the fifth century. Its east cella incorporated the naïskos with the agalma (see above). The area west of this naïskos comprised several sacred places (Figure 5.8): a site for libations at some cracks in the rock (later framed by an altar in the North Porch of the Erechtheion, Figure 5.10), the tomb of Cecrops (later bridged by the southwest corner of the Erechtheion), a cavity containing salt water (seen by Pausanias in the west cella of the Erechtheion),

104  Marion Meyer

Figure 5.10 Cult site for Erechtheus (“altar of Thyechoos”) in the North porch of the Erechtheion. Model in Basel, Skulpturhalle (photo M. Meyer).

the sacred olive tree of Athena (in the Pandroseion, an open-air precinct adjacent to the west wall of the Erechtheion).18 The section of the foundations for the Old Temple facing the later south wall of the west cella of the Erechtheion had been dressed, suggesting that it served as the back wall of an open-air precinct that preceded the west cella of the later temple.19 Erechtheus was the principal cult recipient in the area west of the naïskos, as Herodotus claims to have seen the martyria (evidence) of Poseidon’s strife with Athena (the salt water and the olive tree) in his neos (Hdt. 8.55). As the olive tree never stood inside any closed structure, neos cannot be taken to mean “temple” in the sense of a building but must denote a sacred space. The libation site was one of the oldest cult places on the Acropolis, as the primordial site (cracks in the rock) and the appellation of the altar, recorded in the building inscription of 409/8 bce, as the “altar of Thyechoos” attest (Figure 5.10). It probably marked the grave of Erechtheus. In the fifth century, it was thought to have been created by Poseidon who drove Erechtheus into the rock.20

The Acropolis burning!   105 The precinct between the naiskos and the Pandroseion was a temenos for the joint cult of Erechtheus and Poseidon. Pausanias later saw an altar that served both cult recipients in the west cella (Paus. 1.26.5; Meyer 2017: 65–66 Figures 32, 89). Some of these institutions had a very long tradition, like the libation site at the cracks; some were recent innovations, like the joint cult for Erechtheus and Poseidon, founded in the context of Cleisthenes’ reforms, according to my reconstruction; some were of unknown date, like the Cecropion. All of them had been close to the temple of Athena, albeit situated on the narrow terrace at a lower level. When the archaion agalma—that is, the one essential element for the cult of Athena that was mobile, as opposed to the altar—“moved in” after the Persian sack, it made a powerful statement: Athena, the protector of the city, now conspicuously resided side by side with the local cult recipients who were intrinsically linked to the acropolis. This staged “cohabitation” demonstrated the indissoluble bond between Athena and the (acro)polis by physically linking the protagonists of the charter myths: the cult image, as a transportable object, moved close to the immobile marks and signs: the old libation place for Erechtheus, which had probably been regarded as his grave before Poseidon joined as a cult associate; the olive tree in the sanctuary of Pandrosos; and the thalassa. The latter were both mentioned by Herodotus as the martyria for Poseidon’s strife with Athena over Attica, while the grave of king Cecrops is a reminder that he had served as a judge in that conflict. The thalassa had probably been a cult site for Erechtheus, maybe the place of his birth, before it was ascribed to Poseidon (Meyer 2017: 261–64, 299–301). Bringing the agalma physically closer to all these sacred places made a powerful statement and served as a means of reassurance. The concentration of visible proofs of the goddess’ connection with the local figures and with the rock itself enriched the etiological myths with conspicuous elements of reference and a promise of permanence and durability. The tangible link of the goddess to the site and her local cult associates proved a point that cult and myth could not make in such a concrete, persuasive way.21 The statue’s later staging substantiates the hypothesis that this was indeed the motivation behind the transference of the agalma. The design of the Erechtheion building combines various, distinct components that continue to be recognizable as such. The diverging height, level, and structure of the short sides persuasively convey that the west façade cannot possibly be the rear wall of the east cella (the seat of the agalma). The entrance levels in the eastern and western part differ by almost three meters (Figures 5.11–5.12).22 The west cella was the so-called “Erechtheion,” a designation used by two late authors for premises containing evidence of the cult of Erechtheus and Poseidon, as well as for the cult of Hephaistos, the father of Athena’s foster child Erechtheus/Erichthonios, and Boutes, the eponymos of the genos that provided the priestesses of Athena and the priests of Poseidon and Erechtheus.23 The halls attached to the long sides differ in size and design. The larger one in the north, roofing the grave of Erechtheus, protrudes to the west and thus unites the building with the adjacent Pandroseion. The smaller one in the south marks the grave of Cecrops, with the six caryatids, called korai in the building inscription of 409/8 bce, represented as choephoroi (libation

Figure 5.11 Erechtheion, east and north side (photo H. R. Goette).

Figure 5.12 Erechtheion, west side, with Pandroseion in front (photo M. Meyer).

The Acropolis burning!   107 bearers), perpetuating his cult. The architecture conspicuously showcases its single elements and thus demonstrates that this building served more purposes than housing the archaion agalma in the east cella. The Erechtheion is not the only Greek temple built for more than one cult recipient, but it is the only one that demonstrates this so emphatically. I would like to emphasize that neither the transfer of the agalma nor the subsequent staging of the goddess’ attachment to her cult associates was necessary. Cult and myth had linked Athena to Erechtheus, Pandrosos, and Aglauros early on, and only the inclusion of Poseidon was fairly new. The agalma had stood in short distance to the cult sites on terrace II all along. At first sight, the transfer of the agalma does not seem to have altered or achieved much. It could be interpreted as Athenian overreaction. Yet I argue that this is precisely why it is indicative of a reaction to a traumatic experience. It was not a rash action taken under shock, but a far-reaching decision, congruent with other decisions, such as to reconstruct the north wall, to incorporate spolia, and to bury the vandalized sculptures. The transfer of the agalma, which lies at the heart of the configuration of sacred space, can be read as evidence of collective trauma and as an attempt to cope with it. Most of the various activities that took place in the sanctuary during the course of its long history did not leave any traces, as the evidence is irretrievably lost. Remarkably, two of the Athenians’ reactions to the traumatic experience of the Persian sack in 480 bce are manifest to this day: on the one hand, the remains of both temples the barbarians destroyed are still visible in the Acropolis wall (Figure 5.3), and on the other, the Erechtheion, which ultimately housed the cult image of Athena for a longer period than any of its previous seats, is still standing (Figures 5.11–5.12), catching the eye of the visitors, who will search in vain for the altar,24 the nucleus of the cult for more than a thousand years. In conclusion, two phases of the Athenians’ reactions to the shock experience of occupation and destruction of their city can be observed: immediately after the departure of the Persian army, the Athenians needed monuments marking their regained agency as a means of reassurance. The erection of the statues of the Tyrannicides defied the enemy’s looting and proved their own sovereignty in the most important public space, the Agora. The repair of the Acropolis wall with the conspicuous insertion of parts belonging to the destroyed temples testified to the barbarians’ sacrilege and the Athenians’ initiative as an act of respect and piety in the most important sacred space, the sanctuary of the city goddess. Subsequently, the next generation radically remodeled the sanctuary and presented the victims as victors. The first monumental structures erected on the Acropolis after the end of the Persian war, the colossal bronze statue of Athena (“Athena Promachos”) and the Parthenon, celebrated the past victory over the Persians and manifested Athens’ claim to leadership in the Delian league. Sacred space thus records trauma and progressive attempts to cope with it. Trauma may provoke immediate reactions but is often registered with delay (Caruth 1995: 9). It does not only affect those who experienced it personally, and it is not just part of the past. It might become an integral part of a collective identity, and it might instigate negotiations that create visible memory, as the actions of the Athenians eloquently demonstrate.

108  Marion Meyer

Notes 1 Hdt. 8.40–41; 9.3–6; 9.13. Persian sack: Lindenlauf (1997: 82–93); Kousser (2009: 265–69); Di Cesare (2015: 35–37, 133). 2 On the Themistoclean wall of 478 bce, see: Thuc. 1.89–93; Stroszeck (2014: 56–61, Figures 11.1–8). 3 Tyrannicides: Kansteiner et al. (2014: 292–97, 475–79, nos. 382–88, 558–62); Fehr (1984: 6–54, Figures 1–11, 17–24); Hölscher (2010: 244–58); Shear (2012: 27–55); Azoulay (2014: 29–68); Di Cesare (2015: 74–76). 4 Korres (2002: 179–86, Figures 1–2); Kousser (2009: 270–71, Figures 9–10); Di Cesare (2015: 125–29, 134, Figures 15–27); Meyer (2017: 431–33, Figures 90–92). 5 See Tschira (1940: 251); Korres (1997: 241, 243n.96) considers three layers. For the Pre-Parthenon see Korres (1997: 236–43); Meyer (2017: 111–13). 6 Two column drums that had been placed furthest to the east fell off, see Di Cesare (2015: 128) and compare Figures 3 and 5. In the model (Figure 4), the column drums extend farther to the east than they ever had. 7 Korres (1997: 226, Figure 2); Di Cesare (2015: 326, Figure 15). The entablature inserted into the wall corresponded in length (43 meters) to the length of the original building (Figure 5). 8 Replacements for at least one of the destroyed votive monuments (for the victory over the Boeotians and Chalcidians in 506 bce, see IG I³ 501A+B) and an inscription recording the punishment of the Athenians who supported the Spartan Cleomenes in 506 bce, Sch. Aristoph. Lys. 273) were set up in the sanctuary, probably within the first decade after the sack. Meyer (2017: 426–30, Figure 404). 9 Lindenlauf (1997: 46–115); Stewart (2008: 377–412, Figure 18); Kousser (2009: 263– 72); Greco (2010: 138) (M. C. Monaco). 10 Korres (2002: 184); Lindenlauf (1997: 54, 70–71 pl. 7, 1–3); Meyer (2017: 80n.574). 11 On the cult image, see Ridgway (1992: 120–27); Platt (2011: 92–100); Meyer (2017: 147–55). It is highly disputed when the dedication of the peplos was introduced and whether it occurred annually or every four years at the Great Panathenaia. Meyer (2017: 210–43). 12 For further clues to the location of the agalma and elaboration of the argument, see Meyer (2017: 49–53, 59–64). 13 Greco (2010: 132–33) (M. C. Monaco). See further Meyer (2017: 49–53, 59–64). 14 Manolis Korres convincingly argued that the construction of the Erechtheion was not begun during the Peace of Nikias (421–415 bce), as is commonly thought (see Greco 2010: 133 [M. C. Monaco]), but contemporaneously with the construction of the Propylaia, in the early 30s, because blocks from the older Propylaia were reused for both buildings. Korres (1997: 243n.99); Meyer (2017: 48). 15 In addition to the column drums mentioned above (nn. 4–5, Figure 3), more fragments of this temple, among them at least sixteen column capitals, were used for the construction of the north wall further to the east (not visible from the outside). See Korres (2002: 179–86 with n.11, Figures 1–4). 16 Meyer (2017: 92n.667). 17 Xen. Hell. 1.6.1. Gerding (2006: 389–401, Figures 1–2) suggested that the transfer of the agalma was motivated by the wish to provide more space in front of the altar. However, the further development of this arrangement demonstrates that a more complex issue was at stake; ultimately, the unique design of the Erechtheion monumentalized Athena’s close association with the other cult sites. 18 For the situation before the Erechtheion was built, see Greco (2010: 132, Figure 57); Meyer (2017: 59–70, Figures 26–27, 32, 89). 19 Dressed wall: Meyer (2017: 61–63, Figures 86, 89, 94). The door giving access to the Pandroseion had a predecessor, on which see Stevens (1927: 120–27, Figures 71–72); Meyer (2017: 65–66, 69n.492). This means that the eastern border of the Pandroseion/

The Acropolis burning!   109 western border of the adjacent precinct roughly corresponded to the west wall of the later Erechtheion (and the dimensions of this precinct corresponded to the ones of the west cella of this temple). 20 On this site, see Kron (1976: 43–48); Meyer (2017: 56–59, 299–301, Figures 31–32, 49, 52, 56, 66–78). 21 Athena’s relationship with Erechtheus, Aglauros, and Cecrops is explicated in the two charter myths of Athens, the birth myth (of Erechtheus, the earthborn foster child of Athena) and the invasion myth (of Erechtheus’ defense against invaders from Eleusis). In the course of time these myths were told in modified versions. The birth myth was to include Hephaistos (as the father of the child), and, when Erechtheus became one of the Eponymous Heroes, the child was called Erichthonios. The later version of the invasion myth included Poseidon (and his strife with Athena). See Meyer (2017: 313–20, 349–51, 362–95). 22 On the Erechtheion, see Paton 1927 passim; Greco (2010: 132–36, Figures 58–61) (M. C. Monaco); Meyer (2017: 45–59, Figures 34–49). The difference of levels is disputed, see Meyer (2017: 51–52). 23 A joint altar for Poseidon and Erechtheus, one for Hephaistos, one for Boutes, paintings of the genos of the priests and priestesses, the thalassa (Paus 1.26.5), as well as a pinax listing the priests of Poseidon and Erechtheus and statues of Lycurgus and both his sons who had held this priesthood (Plut. Vit. Dec. 843e–f). 24 Gerding (2006: 392–94, Figures 1–2); Greco (2010: 62, Figure 5; 127–28, no. 13, pl. I §1.16) (M. C. Monaco); Meyer (2017: 34–35, Figures 19–20, 31–32, 34).

Works cited Azoulay, V. 2014. Les tyrannicides d’Athènes. Vie et mort de deux statues. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Caruth, C. 1995. Trauma. Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Di Cesare, R. 2015. La città di Cecrope. Ricerche sulla politica edilizia cimoniana ad Atene. SATAA 11. Athens: Pandemos. Fehr, B. 1984. Die Tyrannentöter, oder: Kann man der Demokratie ein Denkmal setzen? Frankfurt: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag. Fischer, G. and Riedesser, P. 1998. Lehrbuch der Psychotraumatologie. München: Reinhardt. Gerding, H. 2006. “The Erechtheion and the Panathenaic Procession.” American Journal of Archaeology 110: 389–401. Greco, E. ed. 2010. Topografia di Atene. Vol I. Con la collaborazione di F. Longo e M. C. Monaco. SATAA 1. Athens: Pandemos. Hoepfner, W. ed. 1997. Kult und Kultbauten auf der Akropolis. Berlin: Wasmuth. Hölscher, F. 2001. “Wo war Athena während der Schlacht von Salamis?” In Böhm, St. and von Eickstedt, K.-V. eds. Ithake. Festschrift für Jörg Schäfer zum 75. Geburtstag am 25.4.2001. Würzburg: Ergon-Verlag. 153–58. Hölscher, F. 2010. “Die Tyrannenmörder—ein Denkmal der Demokratie.” In SteinHölkeskamp, E. and Hölkeskamp K.-J. eds. Die griechische Welt. Erinnerungsorte der Antike. München: Beck. 244–58. Kansteiner, S., Lehmann, L., Hallof, K., Seidensticker, B., Stemmer, K. eds. 2014. Der Neue Overbeck. Die antiken Schriftquellen zu den bildenden Künsten der Griechen. Vol. I. Berlin: De Gruyter. Korres, M. 1997. “Die Athena-Tempel auf der Akropolis.” In Hoepfner, W. ed. Kult und Kultbauten auf der Akropolis. Berlin: Wasmuth. 218–43.

110  Marion Meyer Korres, M. 2002. “On the North Acropolis Wall.” In Stamatopoulou. M. and Yeroulanou, M. eds. Excavating Classical Culture: Recent Archaeological Discoveries in Greece. Oxford: Archaeopress. 179–86. Kousser, R. 2009. “Destruction and Memory on the Athenian Acropolis.” Art Bulletin 91: 263–82. Kron, U. 1976. Die zehn attischen Phylenheroen. Geschichte, Mythos, Kult und Darstellungen. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung, Beiheft 5. Berlin: Mann. Lindenlauf, A. 1997. “Der Perserschutt der Athener Akropolis.” In Hoepfner, W. ed. Kult und Kultbauten auf der Akropolis. Berlin: Wasmuth. 46–115. Meyer, M. 2017. Athena, Göttin von Athen. Kult und Mythos auf der Akropolis bis in klassische Zeit. Wien: Phoibos Verlag. Paton, J. M. ed. 1927. The Erechtheum. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Platt, V. 2011. Facing the Gods: Epiphany and Representation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature, and Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ridgway, B. S. 1992. “Images of Athena on the Akropolis.” In Neils, J. ed. Goddess and Polis: The Panathenaic Festival in Ancient Athens. Hanover: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College; Princeton: Princeton University Press. 119–42. Shear, J. L. 2012. “Religion and the Polis. The Cult of the Tyrannicides at Athens.” Kernos 25: 27–55. Stevens, G. P. 1927. “Description of the Erechtheum. Notes on the Construction of the Erechtheum.” In Paton, J. M. ed. The Erechtheum. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 3–231. Stewart, A. 2008. “The Persian and Carthaginian Invasions of 480 B.C.E. and the Beginning of the Classical Style: Part 1. The Stratigraphy, Chronology, and Significance of the Acropolis Deposits.” American Journal of Archaeology 112: 377–412. Stroszeck, J. 2014. Der Kerameikos von Athen. Möhnesee: Bibliopolis. Tschira, A. 1940. “Die unfertigen Säulentrommeln auf der Akropolis von Athen.” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 55: 242–61.

6

Historiographical trauma The case of Polybius Susan C. Jarratt

To consider the historian Polybius (c.200–c.118 bce)1 in relation to trauma may at first strain the imagination. This well-educated Greek aristocrat from the Peloponnese was on his way to becoming a successful diplomat in the path laid out by his father, Lycortas, when the Romans took the young man hostage in 167 along with a thousand others suspected of sympathizing with the Macedonians. Polybius landed on his feet in Rome: befriended by an influential family, he seems to have lived comfortably in “soft captivity,” with freedom of movement, intellectual contact, and the presence of mind to begin a daunting historical project. The fact that Polybius authored, among other works, a forty-volume history of the rise of the Roman empire leads Arthur M. Eckstein to remark that the very act of writing the Histories under captivity is evidence that Polybius “had not been broken psychologically by political catastrophe” (1995: 8). But what does it mean to suffer trauma? Is it a matter of being “broken” psychologically? Under what terms would a contemporary scholar be justified in assigning such a condition to an ancient figure? These are the questions this volume sets out to address, and for these purposes, Polybius provides a provocative case study. A fuller account of his circumstances provides a necessary starting point. By the third century, the Romans had moved into Africa, Spain, and ultimately east to Macedonia, sacking the city of Acanthus in 200, possibly the year of Polybius’ birth. A native of Megalopolis in Arcadia, Polybius was born to a father who played an important role in the consolidation of the Achaean League. This family background along with his traditional education put Polybius in a position to serve as a military and political leader for Achaea at the time when Rome, having defeated Macedonia to the north, swept through many Greek cities to the south. When the Romans decided that some Achaean leaders had been working against Roman interests, they conducted a political purge and deported a thousand of them to Italy, Polybius among them. He, along with his compatriots, was held in detention without accusation or trial for sixteen years (167–150). Unlike others, however, who were sent to small towns around Italy, Polybius was befriended and taken in by the general Aemilius Paullus who had led the Roman army at Pydna, the decisive battle leading to Polybius’ detention. In time, he became a friend and adviser to the general’s son, Scipio Aemilianus. Through this family, Polybius had access to other influential Romans and was allowed freedom of movement in

112  Susan C. Jarratt the city. After his return to Greece, Polybius served as an intermediary between the Romans and the Achaeans, keeping in touch with the remaining detainees (only 300 left of the original 1,000). He served as political and military adviser to Scipio in Spain and Africa, witnessing the destruction of Carthage in 146. In that same fateful year, Polybius became aware of another violent demonstration of Roman conquest, the razing of the city of Corinth.2 From the biographical information available to us, we know that Polybius experienced some of the most violent and disruptive events in the history he was narrating. Thus, the Histories provide one of the first and most extensive commentaries on imperial power from the perspective of a colonized subject. And yet the work has not often been recognized for this perspective. Scholars inevitably comment on Polybius’ Greek identity and the Greek/Roman encounter, but they less often raise the question of the impact of political subjection and loss of freedom on the author. In part, the reason for this scholarly lacuna derives from Polybius’ own historiographical principles. Polybius self-consciously places himself in the line of pragmatic historians, Thucydides standing as the primary exemplar. Taking an impartial stance and seeking truth over dramatic effects, Polybius seeks to “discover by what means and under what system of government the Romans succeeded in less than fifty-three years in bringing under their rule almost the whole of the inhabited world” (1.1).3 His work represents a massive effort to apply reason and order to loss. We might consider this work the first example of what Laurent Pernot (1998) terms the Greek “invention” of the Roman empire: an imposition of Greek historiographical order, perhaps in service of, but undeniably in response to, Roman geopolitical domination. The task Polybius set himself in the face of what F. W. Walbank terms the “terrifying and disheartening experience” of Roman conquest was to explain pragmatically, in terms of cause and effect, how this massive world domination could have happened, and to help his countrymen learn to live with changed circumstances (Walbank 1979: 9). Polybius scholars have carried on a lively debate concerning the historian’s stance toward Roman power. Emphasizing the advantages of his close associations with powerful Romans and the admiration he often expresses in the Histories for Roman military organization and tenacity, some scholars read Polybius as an accommodationist, reconciled to Roman conquest, or even an apologist for the Romans.4 Positions on this question are shaped, of course, by Polybius’ abundant discourse about his intentions, but they are complicated by the structure of the work. Books 1 and 2 set out the original scope of the project: Polybius intends to account for the rise of Rome from the start of the Second Punic War in 220 through the conquest of Macedon in 167. But in Book 3 readers learn that Polybius has expanded the project. In a famous second preface, the historian announces that he will now include the period of great turmoil of the 150s and 140s (3.4.12–5.6) culminating in the destructions of Carthage and Corinth, events he personally witnessed or participated in (Eckstein 1990: 184; Eckstein 1995: 10–11). The aim of this new section will be not merely an account of the causes of Rome’s success but an evaluation of the empire’s actions, especially in terms of the treatment of conquered peoples.

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Scholars have responded to this rift in the narrative in several ways. Some attempt to read over or through it, still seeking a unified perspective on the project. While a thorough review of the scholarship is beyond the scope of a single chapter, a look at some current projects will provide a few points of reference. Craige B. Champion, for example, has an interest in Polybius’ “narrative techniques as evidence for the ideological forces operating in his work” (2004: 23). Characterizing Polybius as an “indirect” historian, Champion discovers evidence of “cultural assimilation, alienation, and indeterminacy” throughout the work (2004: 10). While he acknowledges the case for “a qualitative change in narrative technique” in the last ten books, particularly in Polybius’ shift to first person, Champion nonetheless treats the Histories as a unity of which Polybius as narrator is in full control (2004: 9–10). Other recent treatments operate in a similar fashion, posing a particular research question and tracking it through the whole project. Lisa Irene Hau, for example, offers a rigorous inquiry into Polybius’ moral didacticism, in contrast to studies emphasizing his pragmatism and his supposed “collaboration” with Rome (2016: 23).5 Concentrating on the prefaces and programmatic statements, Hau illuminates the many occasions of moralizing throughout the work, and for her purpose, Polybius’ experiences, changing plans, and stance are not really of interest. A third project brings us closer to Polybius as an active participant in political deliberation. Stephen Usher analyzes the speeches in the Histories, exposing the contradiction between Polybius’ criticism of Timaeus, a historian who, like Thucydides, imagines what ought to have been said on a particular occasion when he was not present (12.25), and Polybius’ own practice of doing exactly that (2009: 487–88). Setting aside this contradiction, Usher finds a pattern in the speeches, which often begin in indirect discourse (oratio obliqua) and then shift to direct discourse (oratio recta), creating a “crescendo effect” (2009: 512) and increasing the sense that Polybius was actually present for the speech. Usher’s primary interest in this fascinating study is the rhetorical success of the speeches based on the editorial criteria of timeliness and applicability of arguments to the issue at hand. In a tantalizing remark at the close of his chapter, Usher (2009: 513) speculates: it is probable that the fulsomeness of certain speeches in Oratio Recta is to be ascribed to their bearing on themes which interested Polybius personally. The two most important of these were the relationships between his own political base of Achaea and the rest of Greece, and the decisive interaction between the Greek and Roman worlds. Regrettably Usher does not pursue this provocative speculation, but his comment suggests another mode of access to Polybius’ psychic life as it enters into the text. Each of the projects mentioned above deals with Polybius’ relation to Rome; it would be impossible to enter into the work without doing so. Champion especially takes up the question of political subordination. The manner of reading, however, in these admirable works assumes the authorial control of a fully aware subject.6 My interest in this chapter can be linked to an alternative strand of scholarship

114  Susan C. Jarratt that creates the possibility of viewing Polybius as a colonized subject, in the strong sense of subjection as a psychological manifestation of political reality. This perspective has gained traction in the last decade and suggests a fruitful connection with trauma theory. Modes of reading emerging from these theories take radically different points of departure from those examined above. What is at stake in giving up on a unified vision of a classical text and author? Page duBois’ reflections on the work of classicists are pertinent here: Classicists receive antiquity in pieces, as fragments. There are various attempts to come to terms with the material of the past, both to break it up further, into more manageable entities, and to recover an imagined lost unity. Paradoxically, both those attempts to reunite lost parts and to break down the past can deter readers from the act of interpretation … One way of responding to this recognition is to pursue a dream of wholeness, transparency, perfect access. (1988: 63–64) In psychoanalytic terms, a dream of wholeness could be considered a defense mechanism, a way of denying the pain and frustration of fragmentation, disintegration, and incompleteness—in the personality, in the political unit, and in the archive. For Polybius, these observations are particularly apt. The construction of wholeness—or using duBois’ language, a “dream of wholeness and transparency”—is the driving force of his historiographical principles. Polybius sought to accomplish the “weaving together,” sumplokê, of discrete histories into a universal account of Rome’s conquest of the oikoumenê, the whole of the civilized world (3.32). The contemporary reader is often induced by these claims to respond by discovering a textual whole, which requires setting aside or ignoring evidence of rupture, alienation, and other potential effects of the colonial violence experienced by the author. The indispensable work of F. W. Walbank lays the groundwork for such an approach. Some decades ago he developed a provocative thesis about Polybius’ attitude towards the Romans and the shape of the Histories. Walbank posited that, when Polybius was in Rome, he was more critical of the Romans, “reflecting the bitterness and the cynicism of the Achaean exiles” (1979: 1), while in the later period, after he had been released and was accompanying Scipio in Africa and Spain, Polybius presented a more positive view of the Romans. Although Walbank’s thesis is not grounded in psychoanalytic theory, it does open the door for readings that relinquish the idea of unity as it pertains to both authorial presence and form. Two later pioneering chapters on Polybius have explicitly resisted the critical pull of a unified reading, emphasizing instead the “tensions and torsions” of Polybius’ era and experience (Henderson 2001: 29). John Henderson’s bravura performance, “From Megalopolis to Cosmopolis: Polybius, or There and Back Again,” insists on the “historicality” of Polybius’ writing—the force of evolving events that “altered the sense of what he wrote as he wrote it,” and “dramatize[s] his writing as a context-sensitive, revolutionary or repressive, process” (2001: 30, emphasis in original). Henderson refers to Polybius’ “many lives,” his “contrary

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allegiances … [and] disjoined personae” (2001: 33), thus bringing to life through his vivid and idiosyncratic style the violence inflicted on Polybius—the force that exploded his, and his father’s, existence in a single stroke: As his father’s group of guerrillas-turned-diplomats persevered with dignified right to neutrality and fingers crossed, when the Romans came to smash Macedon and brought their characteristic demand of enthusiastic obedience as the minimum threshold of loyal alignment (30.6–9), Polybius was kidnapped, for History. (2001: 37) Henderson asks, “can reading ‘entwine’ the traumatic rifts in the thread of Polybius’ textualized life into ‘one single’ continuous fabric (3.32.2)—at what cost to personal and cultural identity?” (2001: 46). The language of repression and trauma here are suggestive. Perhaps it is not identity as a self-conscious formulation but rather the subject itself which is at stake. Carrying further the project of seeking to understand Polybius’ experience at the hands of the Romans, Andrew Erskine’s chapter, “Polybius among the Romans: Life in the Cyclops’ Cave,” confronts directly the historian’s circumstances under captivity, challenging anodyne assumptions about the experience on the part of other scholars. Erskine calls attention to the “context of intimidation and violence” surrounding the deportation (2012: 19); it appears that the Roman legate initially intended to execute the pro-Macedonian faction before deciding to send them to Rome instead (2012: 18). Erskine highlights the desperation of men who had been summoned and accused but, over the course of seventeen years, never tried (2012: 21–23): “on being brought to Rome in 167 their lives froze” (2012: 22). Although Polybius begins his work with the observation that history enables its readers to bear their own misfortunes by being “reminded of the disasters suffered by others” (1.1), Erskine sheds light on the fact that the colonial violence the historian tracks was visited not only on others but on the author himself (2012: 19).7 I hope to contribute to this approach by imagining Polybius as a victim of two traumas and the Histories as the record of his evolving responses to colonial violence. This project requires, first, a review of some relevant twentieth- and twenty-first-century theories of trauma, and then a reading of selected passages from both the earlier and later halves of the Histories. The result, it is hoped, will not only illuminate under-recognized aspects of Polybius’ writing and circumstances but also highlight a range of responses to trauma predicted by contemporary theory.

Trauma in/as history In her “Introduction” to Trauma: Explorations in Memory, Cathy Caruth defines trauma as “a response, sometimes delayed, to an overwhelming event or events, which takes the form of repeated, intrusive hallucinations, dreams, thoughts, or behaviors” (1995: 5). “To be traumatized,” Caruth continues, “is precisely to

116  Susan C. Jarratt be possessed by an image or event” (1995: 5–6). It would be hard to deny that Polybius was possessed by the event of Roman world conquest. He externalized that possession through writing a highly rational study aimed at containing the Roman conquest through causal explanation, but at points in the text, a repressed, unassimilated force bubbles up. The connection Caruth makes between trauma and history is a crucial one: trauma is “not so much a symptom of the unconscious, as it is a symptom of history”: The traumatized, we might say, carry an impossible history within them, or they become themselves the symptom of a history that they cannot entirely possess. (Caruth 1995: 6) Caruth is giving new expression to an idea introduced by Freud in his final work, Moses and Monotheism (1939). Earlier in his career, Freud explored trauma at the level of personal experience, particularly sexual violation, as do the chapters of James and Wise (this volume: 49–70 and 71–91). But in his final work, he made the bold historical claim that Moses, legendary founder of the Jewish religion, must have been an Egyptian whose role in the Jewish captivity and escape was collectively repressed over the ages. The application of psychoanalytic thinking to historical events has served as a powerful resource because it requires reading the “unconscious” aspects of a text, its rhetorical features such as figurative language, digression, and structural anomalies, for evidence of a repressed content. So masterfully did Polybius weave the events of the fateful fifty-three years together that one might think he successfully repressed the trauma of his seventeen-year detainment. But evidences erupt in the form of violent images of dismembered bodies, reminding us of the Greek definition of “trauma” as wound (Karanika and Panoussi, “Introduction”). As he makes the case for his historiographical method in Book 1, Polybius contrasts his “one synoptical view” (sunopsidzô) of the way fortune has carried out her design with that of those historians who treat single events whom he criticizes. They behave like a man who, when he has examined the dissected parts of a body which was once alive and beautiful, imagines that he has beheld the living animal in all its grace and movement. But if anyone could reconstruct the creature there and then, restoring both its shape and its beauty as a living being and show it to the same man, I believe he would immediately admit that his conception was nowhere near the truth, and was more like something experienced in a dream. (1.4) This disturbing passage is striking and unusually complex, especially given the prosaic or even plodding style Polybius typically uses. The figure of the dissected body, “once alive and beautiful,” calls to mind the physical violence of the battle Polybius himself witnessed and now seeks to rationalize through his history. Page duBois has noted the prevalence and force of the dissected body in Greek culture

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from the classical period. In Sappho is Burning, she brings together a number of such references: the sparagmos—the dismemberment and devouring of animals in Bacchic celebration; Athenians burying the broken bodies of the korai, the cult statues of Athena, after the Persian invasion; and in myth, the fragmented body of Actaeon and severed head of Orpheus. DuBois proposes that “the Athenians in particular seem to have seen their existence as a community as haunted by a dialectic between integrity and disintegration” (1988: 57). Polybius’ comment suggests that this topos continues to exert a powerful influence on the post-classical Greek imaginary in the wake of Roman conquest. In a kind of return of the repressed (Freud 1939: 197–201), Polybius brings into view the damage to bodies, homelands, and cultural property that the Romans will wreak on the Greeks, not to mention Polybius’ personal experience of deracination and loss of freedom.8 The work of the “eye-witness” historian, Polybius asserts, is to animate (empsuchou), to bring the parts back together as a living whole. But at the outset of the work, he projects the brokenness that must be restored onto the bad Greek historian rather than laying it at the feet of the Romans. Polybius alone is capable of the god-like act of reassembling the beautiful body, “restoring its shape and beauty,” while the other historians are the ones dreaming. He simultaneously denies and performs the imaginative or rhetorical acts required to reconstruct a whole person, history, or political body, displacing the project onto the realm of historiographical contestation and away from actual experience. The passage calls to mind an aspect of traumatic witnessing for some victims: the traumatic event cannot be remembered but must rather be enacted. Other images of the broken body break through the workman-like prose in Book 1. At another point of historiographical commentary, Polybius criticizes other historians of the First Punic War—Philinus of Agrigentum and Quintus Fabius Pictor—for their partisan representations (Scott-Kilvert 1979: 54n.1). Because of their “persistent devotion” to one side or the other (Fabius justifies Roman actions; Philinus writes from a Carthaginian standpoint), the two historians “behaved the way men do when they are in love” (1.14). This is a fascinating observation coming from a Greek who was spending enormous amounts of emotional and intellectual energy suppressing his own love for Megalopolis, the Achaean league, and his Greek countrymen/fellow detainees, funneling it into the grand historical project of truth-telling. Polybius continues: “A good man ought to love his friends and his country, and should share both their hatreds and their loyalties. But once a man takes up the role of the historian he must discard all considerations of this kind” (1.14). A straightforward historiographical principle becomes something other when Polybius introduces an analogy at this point: “For just as a living creature which has lost its eyesight is wholly incapacitated, so if history is stripped of its truth, all that is left is but an idle tale” (1.14). Again, we find the damaged body—a wound to the eyes—as a figure for the flawed historian. Eyes and vision have here a more primal function than the types of vision analyzed by Amy Russell in discussing Polybius’ account of Aemilius Paullus’ trip around Greece in 168: imperialist possessive vision against a more respectful sense of Greek theoria (2012).9 One could find in these passages the notion

118  Susan C. Jarratt that historiographical practice is more than an intellectual or even moral choice; rather, the totalizing and truth-telling approach is for Polybius a matter of survival, of sustaining the living creature. A third, and more commonly cited, moment of historiographical reflection early on is found in Polybius’ vigorous argument against “tragic history” (see, for example, Walbank 1972: 34–40; see Marincola 2013 for a nuanced interpretation of the term). We find this polemic in the final section of Book 2 (37–71), the consolidation of the personality around “truth” and pragmatics in the interest of denying historical trauma. Here Polybius narrates the fortunes of his home city and region (Megalopolis in Arcadia) during a period of time when he himself comes on the scene. He argues with pride that the various peoples of the Peloponnese joined the Achaean League because of its superior political system, one which allowed equality, freedom of speech, and true democracy (2.38). On his account, the Achaeans were driven not by fate but by principle in relation with other states: their policy was “to invite other cities to share in their equality and freedom of speech, and to make war on and subdue all those who either on their own account, or with the help of the Kings [of Macedonia] tried to enslave any of the states within their borders” (2.42). Polybius takes the opportunity to comment on historical styles at this point—the breathing room before Rome descends on the region—criticizing the sensational descriptions of another historian, Phylarchus, who describes the calamities of Mantineia, a city destroyed during this period: In his eagerness to arouse the pity and attention of his readers he treats us to a picture of clinging women with their hair disheveled and their breasts bare, or again of crowds of both sexes together with their children and aged parents weeping and lamenting as they are led away to slavery. This sort of thing he keeps up throughout his history, always trying to bring horrors vividly before our eyes. (2.56.7–8) For Polybius, such an approach is not just bad history but an “ignoble and womanish” treatment. This critique comes from one whose own city, during the same period, was destroyed “in so savage and vindictive a manner as to leave no prospect that it could ever be inhabited again” (2.55) and who himself was taken into captivity. The contradictions in Polybius’ presentation in this section bring vividly into view a tension and a topos of rhetorical performance. Self-consciously staging his history as fact-based and pragmatic, in contrast with the overly dramatic histories of others, Polybius places his project generically under the mantel of “free speech,” a frank assessment of facts, dismissing the emotional responses one might feel in the face of such events. Vigorously rejecting what he terms “tragic” histories, Polybius sanctions those historians who try to bring horrors (ta deina) vividly before the eyes: Phylarchus simply narrates most of such catastrophes and does not even suggest their causes or the nature of these causes, without which it is impossible in any case to feel either legitimate pity or proper anger. (2.56.13)

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Such “exaggerated pictures” (ton suggraphea terateuomenon), presented without a discussion of causes, make it impossible to feel legitimate (eulogôs) pity or proper (kathêkontôs) anger (2.56.13–14). For Polybius, the expression of emotion is associated negatively with drama and rhetoric. It is the “legitimate” historian who should be able to contain these emotions. Again we are presented with bodies in disarray, not precisely dismembered but in distress, without the protection of clothes, and weeping—an action that performs a breach of the barrier of the self, like bleeding. The negative feminization of this style of historiography is notable; a properly masculinized historian will not feel nothing but will rather channel his emotions into appropriate forms, legitimate and proper.10 A psychoanalytic reading here would note that Polybius defends himself against a kind of hysteria experienced by the victims and represented without adequate censoring by the “tragic” historian. We find in the language here another evidence of a textual unconscious: the pragmatic historian and truth-teller who sets himself against the rhetorical excesses of a description that replays his own experience, the memory of which he seeks to suppress.

Truth and the “life drive” To use psychoanalytic methods in such a way—to find evidence of repression in a historical text and identify such repressed content as evidence of trauma— may in some way pathologize the subject who produces the text. But major trauma theorists have made clear that repression is not solely or always a pathological response to trauma. Freud’s discussion of the return of the repressed in Moses and Monotheism, for example, acknowledges a range of responses, from pathological to “normal” (1939: 197). Four decades later, when the American Psychiatric Association acknowledged the existence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (1980), the language describing the condition included considerable qualification when it came to designating responses to trauma as pathological (Caruth 1995: 3–4). Nor do responses to trauma always emerge from the dream world: the realm of the figurative, imagistic, and nonrational. It seems that a commitment to a truthful account of what was experienced can also be indexed to war-related trauma, according to the later Freud and his interpreters. Caruth explains this shift in Freud’s theories as follows: “By modeling the mind on the encounter with war trauma, Freud appears to shift the center of psychoanalytic thinking from the individual struggle with internal Oedipal conflicts of childhood to the external, collective activities of history” (2013: 7). This shift, driven by what Caruth terms the “life drive,” produces the idea of the human being as “a perpetual survivor” (2013: 7 quoting Robert Jay Lifton). The language associated with this “life drive” is creative and future directed (2013: 9). The witness/victim, by insisting upon and producing truth to the event in recounted experiences, thus demonstrates the “possibility of witnessing and making history in creative acts of life” (Caruth 2013: 5). The insistence on truth by the traumatized subject not only offers a way of explaining Polybius’ driving principle throughout the project but also illuminates the change in stance in the later books.

120  Susan C. Jarratt By the end of the project, we understand that Polybius has undergone two traumas: the original hostage-taking and the (perhaps even more disturbing) developments of 146, the culmination of what he calls “troubled times.” He was present with Scipio at the destruction of Carthage; and later he was absent, but informed of the “ruination of his homeland,” the razing of Corinth (38.14; Henderson 2001: 42). Unable to rationalize Roman aggression under the same principles as earlier in his career, Polybius after 146 shifts his historiographical stance and poses the question of whether Rome should be praised or blamed for its imperial actions: I am bound, therefore, to add to my statement of facts a discussion on the subsequent policy of the conquerors, and their administration of their universal dominion: and again on the various feelings and opinions entertained by other nations towards their rulers. And I must also describe the tastes and aims of the several nations, whether in their private lives or public policy. The present generation will learn from this whether they should shun or seek the rule of Rome; and future generations will be taught whether to praise and imitate, or to decry it. (38.3) In the fragments of Book 38, Polybius contrasts the two devastations: “And again the Carthaginians, having been utterly exterminated by the calamity which overtook them, were for the future insensible of their sufferings, but the Greeks, continuing to witness their calamities, handed on from father to son the memory of their misfortune.” Polybius once more attends to the pain of others, but here he is less the detached historian: he refers to memory and witnessing as sustaining acts for the survivors. Concerning his method, he remarks that “It should not surprise anyone if abandoning here the style proper to historical narrative I express myself in a more declamatory and ambitious manner.” (38.4) No longer is Polybius throwing a veil over the suffering of the Greeks. And no longer does he cast his history as ordered and contained: “I am not unaware that some people will find fault with this work on the ground that my narrative of events is imperfect and disconnected.” Commentators have interpreted this shift in perspective variously: Henderson’s overview includes terms such as “confusion” and “split personality” (2001: 46n.40). He himself, however, sees in the conclusion of the work “a case against repression in the teeth of lasting outrage” (Henderson 2001: 48–49), a perspective compatible with this psychoanalytic reading. That Polybius never answers the question he posed about evaluating Rome (Hau 2016) we could read as a kind of figured discourse, a subtle critique through silence. Or, calling on the psychoanalytic concept of “life drive,” we could see Polybius referring the question forward, imagining the ways future generations may use his work for survival in the face of Roman control. Associated with this shift is a changed relationship to rhetoric over the course of these examples. The denial of rhetoric—of putting suffering vividly before the eyes (enargeia) and the solicitation of emotions—early on is linked with the repression of trauma; later, its embrace seems less a self-conscious staging than an authentic account of the truth of the trauma, pain, and loss suffered by the Carthaginians, the Corinthians, and, we understand, those who will continue to suffer under Roman aggression.

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To return to Henderson’s figure (2001: 46), rather than attempting to entwine threads into a continuous fabric, the reader will learn more by using trauma theory to question the interpretive assumption that a history must necessarily be tightly knit and consistent, especially one seeking to give an account of the violence of imperial conquest. The rifts and inconsistencies in Polybius’ long work offer valuable evidence of the historian’s psychic evolution under circumstances that, regrettably, still command our attention and best efforts at understanding. An ancient text can become a contemporary resource in the face of the continuing traumas of geopolitical aggression and neocolonial violence.

Notes 1 All subsequent dates are bce. 2 Although the details of Polybius’ life are sketchy, scholars agree on the key elements. See, for example, Baronowski (2011: 1–3); Champion (2004: 15–18); Edwards (1922); Walbank (1979: 12–15). 3 Translations are by Scott-Kilvert unless otherwise indicated. See Walbank (2002: 6–10) on pragmatic history. 4 For a useful overview of scholarly approaches, see Baronowski (2011: 5–11). Walbank (2002: 258–76) explores the issue in a fascinating comparison with Josephus. 5 See also Hau (2018:107–9). 6 Champion (2004: 26) acknowledges at least some of a historian’s choices “are most certainly beneath the author’s conscious threshold.” But his aim is to get at “the political import of disguised and encoded messages in Polybian historiography,” a fascinating and important project related to current work in the “figured discourse” of disempowered rhetors. See Jarratt (2016); Jarratt (2019); (Pernot 2015). Such a method assumes a high degree of intention and rhetorical strategy on the part of the author. 7 Eckstein’s (1990) comparison of Polybius and Josephus emphasizes the special status of the historian who has witnessed and even participated in the events he narrates. 8 Polybius comments in the fragmentary Book IX on Roman plundering of Greek cultural objects in the conquest of Syracuse in 211. His direct criticism of the practice stands out because it goes against the grain of his overall admiration of Roman power and practice throughout the first part of the project. Not only will the display of Greek art in Rome violate native Roman values of simplicity, Polybius argues, but also such objects, viewed by “those who were robbed of them,” will inspire “passionate hatred for the favourites of fortune” and awaken memories in the viewers of “their own disaster” (IX.iii.10.10, Paton 1922–27). Despite the direct critique, we still see Polybius here distancing himself from the emotional impact of Roman conquest. The third person style obscures the fact that it is he himself and other Greek hostages in Rome who would be the spectators of triumphs at which such spolia would be displayed and whose “passionate hatred” could be provoked. See Miles (2008: 60–87) for a full discussion of Polybius’ text and of the Roman plunder of Greek art more generally. 9 See also Davidson (1991) on the gaze in Polybius’ Histories. 10 Marincola (2013) makes the intriguing suggestion that these appropriate emotions are ones managed so adroitly by rhetors.

Works cited Baronowski, D. W. 2011. Polybius and Roman Imperialism. London: Bristol Classical Press. Caruth, C. 1995. “Introduction.” In Caruth, C. ed. Trauma. Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 3–12. Caruth, C. 2013. Literature in the Ashes of History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

122  Susan C. Jarratt Champion, C. B. 2004. Cultural Politics in Polybius’s Histories. Berkeley: University of California Press. Davidson, J. 1991. “The Gaze in Polybius’ Histories.” JRS 81: 10–24. DuBois, P. 1988. Sappho is Burning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Edwards, H. J. 1922. “Introduction.” In Polybius. The Histories. Vol. 1. Trans. by W. R. Paton. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. vii–xvi. Eckstein, A. M. 1990. “Josephus and Polybius: A Reconsideration.” ClAnt 9: 175–208. Eckstein, A. M. 1995. Moral Vision in the Histories of Polybius. Berkeley: University of California Press. Erskine, A. 2012. “Polybius among the Romans: Life in the Cyclops’ Cave.” In Smith, C. J. and Yarrow, L. M. eds. Imperialism, Cultural Politics, and Polybius. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 17–32. Freud, S. 1939. Moses and Monotheism. Trans. by K. Jones. Letchworth, UK: Hogarth Press. Hau, L. 2016. Moral History from Herodotus to Diodorus Siculus. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hau, L. 2018. “Being, Seeming and Performing in Polybius.” In Miltsios, N. and Tamiolaki, M. eds. Polybius and His Legacy. Trends in Classics. Supplementary Volumes (60). De Gruyter: Berlin. 103–13. Henderson, J. 2001. “From Megalopolis to Cosmopolis: Polybius, or There and Back Again.” In Goldhill, S. ed. Being Greek under Rome. Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic, and the Development of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 29–49. Jarratt, S. C. 2016. “An Anti-Imperial Sublime: Aristides’ Roman Oration (or. 26).” In Pernot, L., Abbamonte, G., and Lamagna, M. eds. Aelius Aristide Écrivain. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols. 213–30. Jarratt, S. C. 2019. Chain of Gold: Greek Rhetoric in the Roman Empire. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Marincola, J. 2013. “Polybius, Phylarchus, and ‘Tragic History’: A Reconsideration.” In Gibson, B. and Harrison, T. eds. Polybius and His World. Essays in Memory of F. W. Walbank. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 73–90. Miles, M. M. 2008. Art as Plunder. The Ancient Origins of Debate about Cultural Property. New York: Cambridge University Press. Paton, W. R 1922–27. The Histories of Polybius. 6 vols. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pernot, L. 1998. “La Rhétorique de l’Empire ou Comment la Rhétorique Grecque à Inventé l’Empire Romain.” Rhetorica 61: 131–48. Pernot, L. 2015. “Greek ‘Figured Speech’ on Imperial Rome.” Advances in the History of Rhetoric 18: 131–46. Polybius. 1979. The Rise of the Roman Empire. Trans. by I. Scott-Kilvert. London: Penguin Books. Russell, A. 2012. “Aemilius Paullus Sees Greece: Travel, Vision, and Power in Polybius.” In Smith, C. J. and Yarrow, L. M. eds. Imperialism, Cultural Politics, and Polybius. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 152–67. Usher, S. 2009. “Oratio Recta and Oratio Obliqua in Polybius.” GRBS 49: 487–514. Walbank, F. W. 1972. Polybius. Berkeley: University of California Press. Walbank, F. W. 1979. “Introduction.” In Walbank, F. W. ed. Polybius: The Rise of the Roman Empire. Trans. by I. Scott-Kilvert. London: Penguin Books. 9–40. Walbank, F. W. 2002. Polybius, Rome and the Hellenistic World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Part 4

Natural disasters, exile, captivity

7

Non est facile inter mala magna consipere Trauma, earthquakes, and bibliotherapy in Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones Christopher Trinacty

On February 5 in the year 62 or 63 ce, a strong earthquake (approximately magnitude 5.5 on the Richter scale) struck the area of Pompeii.1 Seneca, hard at work on his Naturales Quaestiones, felt that it made a wonderful test-case for an inquiry into the physical causes and mental effects of earthquakes.2 He begins the sixth book of this work by detailing how the town and region were devastated and, in addition, “a flock of hundreds of sheep was killed, and statues were split apart; afterwards some people wandered around in a state of shock and deranged” (sexcentarum ouium gregem exanimatum, et diuisas statuas; motae post hoc mentis aliquos atque inpotentes sui errasse, 6.1.3).3 The shell-shocked survivors of the earthquake are similar to those who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), classified as occurring to those who experience “fear, helplessness, or horror” (DSM-V).4 For Seneca, this is only part of the story. In Naturales Quaestiones, he stresses that such experiences (essentially brushes with the sublime),5 often leave the observers and victims in a state of shock. His work aims to remedy such feelings of hopelessness and fear primarily through educating the reader and modifying negative impressions into edifying stimuli. The Naturales Quaestiones proposes that an understanding of the physical principles and laws of nature will cure such anxieties and distress. Book 6 offers an exemplary illustration of the way that Seneca blends physics and ethics (especially in the opening and closing sections) with an eye to the ethical benefits of seeking and achieving knowledge of the physical world.6 This happens, primarily, through the rhetoric of his account, and this chapter treats the language and literary devices that Seneca employs in this book. Careful consideration of Seneca’s meticulous deployment of intertextuality, quotation, and intratextuality indicates that the author models a hermeneutic approach for his reader to follow. The close reading and inquiry that Seneca expects his reader to do resembles the search for meaning that he expects a traumatized individual to undertake.7 In this way, intertextual reading becomes part of the therapy that Seneca recommends. The literary and philosophical strategies of Naturales Quaestiones 6 embody how Seneca actively constructs an enlightened observer and participant in the natural order of things.8 Trauma theory can aid the reader’s understanding of the construction of the book, the language utilized, and Seneca’s conception of possible therapies for

126  Christopher Trinacty the mental suffering earthquakes cause. The language at the beginning of the book recalls previous works of Seneca on anger and madness and, through these intertexts, Seneca connects his findings here to earlier treatises. This is important because it establishes Seneca’s view of what constitutes trauma therapy. The earthquake is described as a sublime event, a startling reminder of man’s insignificance when faced with nature’s power. Intertextual contact or direct quotations of authors such as Vergil highlight that these types of events are part of a literary tradition, which Seneca interprets and contextualizes to be part of the therapy. At the book’s conclusion, the Pompeii earthquake is mentioned again, but now the trauma is converted into its underlying fear, namely the fear of death. This textual evocation of previous memories is akin to contemporary trauma therapy, whereby memories of the traumatic experience are recalled and transformed.9 As Van der Kolk and McFarlane (1996: 19) claim, “[m]erely uncovering memories is not enough; they need to be modified and transformed (i.e., placed in their proper context and reconstructed in a personally meaningful way).”10 Literary memories of Vergil or Seneca’s own works lead the reader to position the experience of earthquakes within a larger literary cosmos that will influence their significance. Seneca’s consolatio at the book’s conclusion indicates how “the earthquake…may serve…as a metaphor for life’s more traumatic experiences and challenges, and the philosophical and psychological methods of coping with trauma that Seneca rehearses here may prove to be flexible in their applicability to so many other aspects of our existence” (Williams 2006: 124). Trauma theory, which stresses both the unspeakable nature of the trauma and the way in which signifiers can be changed because of it, will be useful for showing how Seneca alters the valence of certain terms.11 Stampfl writes, “Car wrecks and armed assaults impact upon the nervous system through signification, resulting in cases diagnosed as PTSD, in a pathogenic ‘alteration of prior reactions to signs’” (Stampfl 2014: 31).12 In the course of this book, Seneca leads his readers to understand what causes earthquakes, and, subsequently, incites them to adapt their reaction to the signs and impacts of earthquakes.13 Exploring the causes of the earthquake and exploring the causes of fear will get to the root of each: the ratio of inquiry leads to the ratio that douses excessive passion. In effect, Seneca trains the readers as to how to react to the “trigger” of an earthquake—no longer should it lead to stupefaction and terror, but now to reflection on scientific causes and an acceptance of death, no matter in what form. While trauma “unsettles and forces us to rethink our notions of experience, and of communication” (Caruth 1995: 4), Seneca utilizes the trauma of the earthquake of 62 ce to encourage the reader to contemplate death and the secrets of the nature of things.

Educating the reader Book 6 opens with a description of Pompeii and the Campanian coast. This “pleasant nook” (amoeno sinu, 6.1.1)14 quickly becomes a place of terror with the onslaught of the earthquake, leading Seneca to propose the need for remedies and ways to lessen this great fear (“Comfort needs to be found for the fearful,

Non est facile inter mala magna consipere  127 and their great terror needs to be eradicated,” quaerenda sunt trepidis solacia, et demendus ingens timor, 6.1.4). He claims that this will be particularly important because earthquakes, unlike other evils, can happen at any time and anywhere (“We are wrong if we believe that any part of the earth is exempt and immune from this danger…nature has created nothing to be immovable,” erramus enim, si ullam terrarum partem exceptam immunemque ab hoc periculo credimus … nihil ita ut immobile esset natura concepit, 6.1.12), and there is not any defense from their dire consequences. What can help, however, is reason. Reason can diminish the fears we feel, especially because we often only grasp the natural world with our eyes, not with our mind.15 Seneca asks, “Since the cause of fear is ignorance, is it not worth acquiring knowledge in order to remove your fear?” (cum timendi sit causa nescire, non est tanti scire, ne timeas? 6.3.4). Eradicating fear is one benefit from such an endeavor, but the primary reward in studying the causes of earthquakes is to understand nature (nosse naturam, 6.4.2).16 Seneca explains this in language that looks forward and backward in the work as a whole: “The investigation of this subject has many benefits, but none is finer than the fact that it captivates people with its own magnificence, and their motives for studying it are not gain but wonder” (quam quod hominem magnificentia17 sui detinet, nec mercede sed miraculo colitur, 6.4.2).18 Here Seneca promises philosophical growth to his readers if they continue with the work. If alleviating fear is the first impetus, the pursuit of knowledge becomes a reward in itself.19 This leads to his doxography in which he surveys the “community of scholars” who have written about earthquakes in the past (see Hine 2006). Seneca writes how early scholars should be lauded, even if their findings now seem crude (6.5.2): Everything was new to the first investigators (noua omnia erant primo temptantibus). Later those same views were refined, and if any progress was made, it should nevertheless be credited to them. It took great courage (magni animi)20 to prize open nature’s hiding places, and, not content with her outward appearance, to look inside, and to immerse oneself in the secrets of the gods. Anyone who was optimistic that discovery was possible, made a major contribution to the search…21 The attitude of those first investigators parallels the position of Seneca’s readers, while the predicament outlined here presents a similar challenge for those who have only cursory knowledge of earthquakes—i.e., everything is new to them as well and they will need great courage in their own investigation. It also restates one of the goals of the Naturales Quaestiones as a whole: “to dig out the causes and secrets of nature and publish what ought to be known to others.”22 Seneca himself mentions that he wrote about earthquakes when young and is now tackling the topic again “to test himself” (temptare me) and see if age has added anything to his knowledge or, at least, his thoroughness (6.4.2). As is true for most books of the Naturales Quaestiones, the doxography makes up the majority of this book, as Seneca tours the theories of philosophers such as Thales, Anaximenes, Aristotle, and others. The causes are decidedly elemental (that is, not divine), whether fire,

128  Christopher Trinacty air, earth, water, or a combination of these elements, the true cause of the earthquake is natura.23 Ultimately, he comes down in favor of wind (spiritus)24 as the primary culprit for earthquakes, making fine use of the analogy that the earth is like a human body. Our own bodies tremble, he says, when our spirit has been “contracted by fear” (cum timore contractus est, 6.18.6), so if something blocks or impacts the spirit in the personified earth, it will likewise cause it to tremble.25 The use of fear here is important for the analysis of trauma in this book, in that there is a sympathetic connection between fear and the body, earthquakes and the earth. In the final chapters, Seneca consciously (through ring composition) revisits the physical and mental effects of the Campanian earthquake and offers a vigorous tirade about the fear of death. Chapters are devoted to the death of sheep (6.27), as well as to the statues cleaved in half (6.30), which were mentioned as particularly notable effects of the quake. The survivors will suffer, some for a lengthy period of time (6.29.2): It is not easy to stay sane in the midst of great disasters. So the weakest temperaments generally reach such a pitch of terror that they lose their heads. No one can panic without some loss of sanity, and anyone who is afraid resembles a madman. But fear soon restores some people to their normal selves, while it disturbs others more deeply and drives them mad. Study, however, will make one more courageous because “the mind gains strength solely from liberal studies and the contemplation of nature” (animo uenit robur quam a bonis artibus, quam a contemplatione naturae, 6.32.1). This will be put to use in challenging death (“So we must challenge death with great courage,” ingenti itaque animo mors prouocanda est, 6.32.3), because fear demeans us and makes natural phenomena like earthquakes and lightning bolts into something they are not (6.32.9). If all places are under the same law and can be moved by earthquakes (“everywhere lies under the same law,” omnes sub eadem iacent lege, 6.1.12), so all people are under the same law as concerns death (“death is the law of nature,” mors naturae lex est, 6.32.12) and one must welcome it: “By constant reflection make death a friend of yours, so that, if it allows, you can go out and meet it” (effice illam tibi cogitatione multa familiarem, ut si ita tulerit possis illi et obuiam exire, 6.32.12).

Language of trauma Seneca artfully constructs this book choosing his language purposefully to evoke his previous works as well as earlier literature. He describes the emotional reaction to the earthquake to contextualize this language within both the Naturales Quaestiones and his work as a whole. Seneca’s initial report concentrates on the distress individuals suffered: “afterwards some people wandered around in a state of shock and deranged” (motae post hoc mentis aliquos atque impotentes sui errasse, 6.1.3). Of course, moueo is often used to indicate earthquakes, with terrarum motus being the most common way of referring to them (e.g., 6.25.2, 6.27.2).26 This sort of

Non est facile inter mala magna consipere  129 connection between linguistic terms is a typical move for Seneca in the Naturales Quaestiones, since he often connects physical and ethical qualities through repetitions of language.27 In this line one can see a similar use of errasse which elsewhere in the book is used to mean “to make a mistake of judgment” whereas here it is simply “to wander.”28 The divide between the physical and ethical is elided at such moments, and Seneca suggests that the connections between the physical and ethical worlds are stronger than may appear at first glance. In addition, the formulation impotens sui was also famously found at the opening of de Ira (On Anger), where Seneca wrote (Dial. 3.1.2): quidam itaque e sapientibus uiris iram dixerunt breuem insaniam; aeque enim impotens sui est, decoris oblita, necessitudinum immemor, in quod coepit pertinax et intenta, rationi consiliisque praeclusa, uanis agitata causis, ad dispectum aequi uerique inhabilis, ruinis simillima, quae super id quod oppressere franguntur. Certain wise men, therefore, have claimed that anger is temporary madness. For it is equally devoid of self-control, forgetful of decency, unmindful of ties, persistent and diligent in whatever it begins, closed to reason and counsel, excited by trifling causes, unfit to discern the right and true—the very counterpart of a ruin that is shattered in pieces where it overwhelms. It is telling that Seneca in this passage identified this emotion as being “the very counterpart of a ruin” (ruinis simillima), because he calls earthquakes exactly that at 6.1.13 (“Tyre was once notorious for earthquake destruction,” Tyros aliquando infamis ruinis fuit) and elsewhere as well.29 Additionally, an intertext with Horace suggests that this behavior is anathema to that of a sage, or at least a contemplative man: “that man has self-control and happily will pass his time/ to whom it is permitted to have said at the end of the day, ‘I have lived’” (ille potens sui/ laetusque deget, cui licet in diem/ dixisse ‘uixi,’ C. 3.29.41–43).30 In the Naturales Quaestiones then, Seneca is revisiting themes important to his earlier works including anger and madness and, if the goal of de Ira was a methodology for controlling excessive fury, so here a similar ethical goal is in place.31 Earthquakes can cause another type of emotional excess, in this case fear,32 but in this book Seneca is interested in outlining a “scientific” cure. If before such control was attainable primarily through philosophical self-training and ethical learning, now it will be achieved through the knowledge of physics.33 This is one of the more important developments in Seneca’s thought in the Naturales Quaestiones. There is no great division between physics and ethics, but rather they form and shape one another in a reciprocal process and, therefore, should not be kept separate.34 This is not to say that he has completely moved away from those ethical examples—after all he is writing the Epistulae Morales concurrently with the Naturales Quaestiones— but that the latter work constitutes another avenue for such discipline and can be equally effective as the use of exempla, praemeditatio futurum malorum (thinking beforehand about future disasters), and other Stoic practices.35

130  Christopher Trinacty I believe such intertexts and intratexts not only evoke the contexts and meanings of those works but also, on a deeper level, are part of the therapy that Seneca offers in this book.36 The language used to describe and understand earthquakes and the fear they instigate is transformed through the act of reading intertextually. Those who suffer trauma are often said to be “possessed by an image or event” (Caruth 1995: 5) and Seneca connects this event with previous works in order to hint at the larger world and alternative responses to such a catastrophe. The memories evoked by Seneca’s language help to move the reader away from the terror of the trauma into a different narrative (whether his own previous works or those of others). As Van der Kolk and van der Hart emphasize in the case of PTSD therapy, “By imagining … alternative scenarios, many patients are able to soften the intrusive power of the original, unmitigated horror” (1995: 178). Seneca ultimately is acting to rewrite the story of this trauma in part through the recollection of previous works and to engage the memory of his readers to move them away from any gap or break in meaning (which, for Whitehead 2009: 117, “constitutes traumatic experience”). He does so by supplementing that meaning or bridging those gaps with his own narrative. The rhetorical and literary features (repetition, intratextuality, ring composition, intertextuality) not only spark the readers’ memories of previous moments in Latin literature and the Naturales Quaestiones, but also double down on the learning imparted by the doxography contained in the book—one must create a new perspective about earthquakes, from their physical and mental effects to their causes and their place in the larger rerum natura. Seneca is fostering the creation of the memories to counter trauma and does so through the literary and rhetorical framework of this book. As Galinsky (2014: 3) writes, “So far from being archival, static, or a hard drive, the memory of individuals is a continuing process of creation and recreation.” In this way, one can speak of a therapy of intertextuality, precisely in the active construction of meaning that the reader must perform when probing this work (on this process, see also Bosman, this volume: 168–69).

Part and parcel Recent critics have proposed renumbering the books of the Naturales Quaestiones beginning with Book 3. If we accept this numbering, Book 6 is in the middle of the work and functions as a fulcrum linking the previous books with those to come. The book is rife with intratextual connections that ensnare the active reader in the larger web of physics and ethics that Seneca is spinning. The reader that has made his way through the Naturales Quaestiones has already learned much of Seneca’s worldview and applies his learning to the doxography.37 It also forms the linguistic foundation for later topics. For instance, in 6.29.1–2, the survivors of the earthquake are described as “forgetting themselves” (sibi exciderent) and “stupefied” (attonitis), descriptions that will recur when discussing those who have been struck by lightning.38 Earthquakes and lightning bolts may cause one to forget oneself, but the reader who has read this description in Book 6 will not forget Seneca’s reaction and approach to such trauma. The reader then will be

Non est facile inter mala magna consipere  131 prepared for a similar reiteration of these points at the conclusion of Book 2 with the memory of the consolatio at the conclusion of Book 6. Language repeats in order to tie the book’s concerns to the larger problems addressed in the Naturales Quaestiones. For example, in the preface of Book 3, Fortune makes sure that no gifts are stable (nihil stabile esse ab illa [Fortuna] datum, 3.pr.7); during the flood that concludes that book, the supersaturated ground is made unstable (nihil stabile est, 3.27.6). The reader understands that a similar physics is at play with earthquakes, “the very thing on which we stand is not stable” (ipsum supra quod stamus stabile non esse, 6.1.15). These disasters may be chalked up to the working of Fortune for the uninformed, but the disciple of Seneca’s work will realize that this is actually the working of natura, and Seneca’s intratextual language guides the reader to that conclusion. The finale of Book 6 introduces language that will appear later in the work as well: Seneca encourages the reader to repeat the motto moriendum est (6.32.12), to keep death in mind, which he likewise encourages at the conclusion of Book 2 (the final book of the work). There, Seneca challenges the reader to despise death (contemne mortem, 2.59.3), while realizing that “death calls all equally, one must die with adverse or favorable gods” (mors omnes aeque uocat; iratis dis propitiisque moriendum est, 2.59.4.). The end of Book 6 therefore foreshadows the conclusion of the work as a whole and acts as the first salvo in Seneca’s reconfiguration of death as part of nature and a force to be condemned by the wise man (i.e., the one who has finished this work). In addition, the final sentence of Book 6 indicates that by “pondering” (cogitatione) death, one can make it one’s friend (familiarem). Such “pondering” is also found at the close of the seventh book: only by doing so can one truly see the workings of god (cogitatione uisendus est, 7.30.3). This sort of reflection will lead one to move beyond the senses and become attuned to the intricacies of the natural world through reason (ex oculis ad rationem).39 Seneca’s language connects these books as do the sublime experiences related within, from the great flood that concludes Book 3 to the awesome flash and thunder of lightning bolts.

Trauma and sublime Throughout this work, Seneca notably equates aspects of trauma with his conception of the sublime. In the Naturales Quaestiones, he describes the survivors of the earthquake as suffering from a state of shock (motae … mentis, 6.1.3). Elsewhere Seneca uses the same language to express his views on sublime poetry and poetic creation (Dial. 9.17.11): The lofty utterance that rises above the attempts of others is impossible unless the mind is excited (mota mens). When it has scorned the vulgar and the commonplace, and has soared far aloft fired by divine inspiration, then alone it chants a strain too lofty for mortal lips. So long as it is left to itself, it is impossible for it to reach any sublime and difficult height; it must forsake the common track and be driven to frenzy and champ the bit and run away with

132  Christopher Trinacty its rider and rush to a height that it would have feared to have climbed by itself (quo per se timuisset escendere). For Seneca, a “moved mind” is necessary for sublime poetry. It is also the reaction of those excessively troubled by sublime events such as earthquakes. Seneca gives the term a different valence here that hints at the way sublime literature can be created from a sublime event.40 Therefore, one can see how Seneca is signaling the heights of the sublime that this book (and the Naturales Quaestiones as a whole) will have to reach and the fear that will have to be overcome (quo per se timuisset escendere).41 While Seneca will pointedly and poetically describe sublime events like the flood of the Nile and comets (both of which are mentioned in pseudoLonginus’ account as sublime, On the Sublime 35.4), he also strategically alludes to and quotes works of epic and tragedy (paradigmatically sublime genres).42 It is important to scrutinize how Seneca features epic quotations in this book to express his conception not only of the sublime, but also the proper reaction to such heights/depths.43 Intertextual connections with the Aeneid are pervasive in this book, as is the concept of (and reaction to) the sublime found in Lucretius (DeVivo 1992; Williams 2012: 213–57 passim; Williams 2016). Seneca purposefully and pointedly contextualizes the Vergilian text in this book as a way of incorporating the sublimity associated with Vergilian epic. Schiesaro points out how the sublime writer is often “characterized by his deeply agonistic relationship with his models” and so the references to Vergilian epic can be seen as part of Seneca’s writing strategy in this book (his citations from Ovid in the flood narrative at 3.27.14–15 serve a similar function, Schiesaro 2003: 129). Seneca further explains quotations and intertexts by repeating (or even rewriting!) their language to show how his Stoic interpretation of the evidence outguns Lucretius’ Epicurean explanations and views of death,44 as well as harnesses Vergil’s quotations from his own point of view. Intertexts and sublime topoi of nature’s power channel Seneca’s views on trauma and therapy. Early in Book 6, Seneca imagines the Trojan survivors of Aeneid 2 “stunned among the fire and enemy” (inter ignes et hostem stupentibus, 6.2.2), as they experience the catastrophe of Troy’s fall, and he muses on Vergil’s tag “the only hope for the doomed is no hope at all” (una salus uictis nullam sperare salutem, Aen. 2.354). Seneca believes this would act as a fitting sententia to their mindset, as well as the mindset of those who do not understand how the natural world (esp. earthquakes) works.45 Of course, the purpose of the book is to explain just that and so to educate the “inexperienced” (imperiti) about the way reason can alleviate such stupefaction and horror. While quotes and intertexts from Vergil appear throughout this book (e.g., 6.22.4), and are made to fit in with Seneca’s aims, the final citation of Vergil seems particularly marked to recall this initial quotation. Seneca remarks on his puzzlement that individuals were stunned because of a divided statue (“So why is anyone astonished that the bronze of a single statue… was split apart?” aliquis ad hoc stupet, quod aes unius statuae … diruptum est? 6.30.4), after quoting Vergil’s own description of an earthquake.46 Williams has pointed out how Seneca’s alteration of the quotation of Aen. 3.414–19

Non est facile inter mala magna consipere  133 “dramatically enhances the already massive Virgilian force that causes the sea to separate Sicily from Italy” and some ways in which Seneca ties this quotation into his context (Williams 2012: 252). Seneca quotes Vergil as follows (6.30.1): haec loca ui quondam et uasta conuolsa ruina (tantum aeui longinqua ualet mutare uetustas) dissiluisse ferunt, cum protinus utraque tellus una foret. uenit ingenti ui pontus et ingens [Verg. medio ui…et undis] Hesperium Siculo latus abscidit,47 aruaque et urbes aequore diductas angusto interluit aestu. [Verg. litore] The story goes that these lands were separated by the great force of an earthquake (the long ages of the past are able to make such changes), although these two countries were one then. The huge sea with huge force came in and split Italy from Sicily, with its narrow canal it washes separated fields and cities with its surge. These alterations are not a momentary memory loss, but purposeful.48 Williams points out how this passage’s connection with uis (“force”) leads to Seneca’s conception of the totum (“whole”) “partly through these verbal binds,” where we learn that the force of earthquakes is so strong because “it comes from the whole universe” (ex toto uis est, 6.30.2).49 Seneca further ties this quotation into the larger context of the book by his willful rewriting of line 417 with the strong repetition of forms of ingens. Seneca manipulates this quotation to involve Vergil more strongly into the physical and ethical concerns that earthquakes evoke. One of the first mentions of the earthquake is as a “huge evil” (ingenti malo, 6.1.2), and the “huge fear” (ingens timor, 6.1.4) is what must be lessened by philosophy. In addition, this “huge force” is also the language used of the Nile explorers, uidimus duas petras, ex quibus ingens uis fluminis excidebat (6.8.4), and, lastly, if the human soul is a small thing, contempt for it is huge (pusilla res est hominis anima, sed ingens res contemptus animae, 6.32.4).50 The alterations of the Vergilian quotation then act to tie together these issues of the Naturales Quaestiones, but within the poetry of the sublime, namely Vergil’s epic description of the earthquake that split Sicily from the Italian peninsula. This quotation also marks a movement from a Vergilian ethical tag to the description of an act of physics, one even endorsed by an “Alexandrian footnote” (ferunt, Aen. 3.416),51 to which Seneca is appending his own book of learning. In fact, the “flood” (inundatio, NQ 6.30.3) that split Sicily and Italy “which the greatest poets celebrate” may also make the reader think back to the even greater flood that Seneca has already celebrated in Book 3 (inundationem futuram, 3.29.1; inundatio, 3.29.3), which snuffed out these very waters (nihil Siculi aequoris52 fauces, nihil Charybdis, nihil Scylla. omnes nouum mare fabulas obruet, 3.29.7).53 Seneca’s work, like the nouum mare of the flood, overwhelms previous stories, even those of Vergil. Quotations indicate how literature can be part of the therapy, if it is understood to speak to the traumatic experience, fit into the physics of

134  Christopher Trinacty the account, or offer alternative material for one’s memory to fixate upon. Here Seneca forcefully implicates and entwines the Vergilian ruina (Aen. 3.414) into his larger account of earthquakes, the huge consequences of such events, and the magnanimous mind that will be able to resist the fear such earthquakes cause. Traumatic recall is tempered by narrative memory, as Caruth (1995: 153–54) clarifies, “the transformation of the trauma into a narrative memory that allows the story to be verbalized and communicated, to be integrated into one’s own, and others’, knowledge of the past, may lose…the event’s essential incomprehensibility.” Seneca makes the sublime experience of the earthquake something quantifiable and comprehensible through his narrative. By tweaking the Vergilian lines, Seneca expects his reader to acknowledge that such subtle changes (like the repetitions of language) will steer the reader to a correct(ed) view of the world and the literature that informs the world.

Trauma theory in the Naturales Quaestiones Seneca’s account avoids the grim details of crushed bodies, broken families, and recovery efforts to focus on curing the wounds of the mind.54 What should one say or think when struck by such misfortune? Stampfl notes “the unspeakable is an ancient, highly serviceable rhetorical device classically associated with romantic love, the sacred, and the sublime. Formally, its identifying feature is the explicit admission of the inadequacy of language in a given case… In our own modern/ postmodern era, the trope of the unspeakable has attained particular prominence within trauma studies,”55 but he acknowledges its limitations pointing out that “the unspeakable may be merely a phase in the process of traumatization, not its predetermined endpoint.” Trauma theory stresses the importance of survivor accounts and the cultural memory that is created by witnessing and testimony. The cultural memory of events not witnessed directly makes us all survivors and “turn[s] history into a memory in which we can all participate.”56 Trauma, then, can be considered contagious: “it spreads via language and representation” (Crownshaw 2013: 170); Seneca can be seen as attempting to limit or redefine the possible trauma of earthquakes. Through his text, Seneca leads those who have been traumatized (even simply those who have “caught” this trauma through reading his book) through the crucible and recasts their trauma into something that is not miraculous (the repetitions of non mirum). By contrast, nature is miraculous (miraculo colitur, 6.4.2) and its study is a reward in itself. If memory is one of the most important modern idioms regarding questions of trauma, then Seneca is actively trying to (re)formulate the memories about and around this earthquake. His argument hinges on memory: the memory of earlier passages in the book, the text as a whole, the testimonies that are “important,” or the poetic memory implied by contextualizing works of Vergil and other authors.57 Trauma theory encourages us to read these artes memoriae as something more than Seneca’s typical stylistic flourishes. Indeed, they are therapy. Seneca’s remedium revolves around controlling the representation and memory of this trauma, and this book is his attempt to do so. His detailed time/place/season

Non est facile inter mala magna consipere  135 description at the start of Book 6 maps the site of the traumatic event and the specifics of it, and includes one survivor’s testimonial that is actually rather benign (it is also placed at a moment towards the book’s end, when the readers have already begun normalizing this event).58 This eye-witness, whom Seneca calls a “very learned and distinguished man” (eruditissimo et grauissimo uiro, 6.31.3) reported something “worthy of memory” (dignum memoria, 6.31.3), namely how the mosaic of his bath moved apart and came together again and how the walls swayed; in essence, these are the sorts of observations that one trained in the therapy that Seneca urges should make.59 Seneca’s normalization of earthquakes will help to assuage this experience or, at least, to provide a preferred perspective on this trauma. When Seneca manipulates the fear of earthquakes into the fear of death, he effectively rationalizes that trauma. All traumatic experiences should be looked at with sympathy and be considered part of the human experience— because it is natural that we all will die. Thus, Seneca redefines the concept of trauma and makes it more universal, while vigorously arguing for the importance of education and knowledge of the natural world in order to help in the process.60

Conclusion Seneca the Younger discusses the concept of emotional trauma at numerous points in his dialogues (e.g., de Ira, the Consolationes), and stages the suffering of such traumatic experiences in his tragedies (e.g., the reaction of Hercules to his murderous rampage in the Hercules Furens [The Mad Hercules]). While there has been fine work on the philosophical and psychological underpinnings of Seneca’s approach (Konstan 2015; Inwood 2005: 23–64), Naturales Quaestiones 6 dramatically illustrates how physics and the understanding of the physical world can act as a valid antidote to the fear and uncertainty that earthquakes produce. The language of Seneca’s account guides the reader to the larger understanding needed in order to cure the fear of earthquakes, expecting an active reader well-versed in the rhetorical and poetic methodologies of his day. The strategies employed by Seneca call attention to the importance of memory and purposeful redefinition in this therapy. If one factor that influences memory formation is “the rehearsal and (re)consolidation of the information encoded in a memory trace” (Stock et al. 2016: 385–88), then Seneca’s repetitions of language or passages of poetry strengthen the scientific associations he grants to the earthquake. Seneca is activating the reader’s memory to create a view of the earthquake that transcends the initial fear and horror. The reader’s interaction with the language of this book is paralleled with the larger search for hidden causes to answer the naturales quaestiones. Such investigation leads to connections between this book and previous works of Seneca and other Latin writers, and Seneca makes these works speak to the ethical and physical conundrums under consideration. In this instance, by supplanting the specific fear of earthquakes with a larger understanding of man’s place within the natural world, Seneca shows how the exercise of ratio will not only bring the reader closer to knowledge of himself (see homo ipse se nosset, 1.17.4) but also closer to knowledge of god (deum nosse, 1.pr.13).

136  Christopher Trinacty

Notes 1 For the date of the earthquake, see Hine (1984), Wallace-Hadrill (2003), Williams (2006): 125n.3; for the magnitude, see Cubellis and Marturano (2013) contra the 7.0 magnitude that was conjectured by Butterworth and Laurence (2005: 156–57). 2 There is also some novelty in his description, as Hine (2002: 67) notes, “The paucity of detailed ancient descriptions of earthquakes and [volcanic] eruptions is, I suggest, a literary phenomenon: no one had yet thought of writing such a thing.” 3 Throughout this paper, I use the text of Hine (1996), and the translation of Hine (2010). See Williams (2012: 12–14) for evidence that the original book order began with Book 3 (originally proposed by Hine and Codoñer Merino), and thus the Naturales Quaestiones should be ordered 3, 4a, 4b, 5, 6, 7, 1, and 2. 4 Toner (2013: 153–70) is very good on the percentages of sufferers of PTSD from catastrophe and the lingering consequences of this disorder. Caruth (1996: 58): “trauma is not simply an effect of destruction but also, fundamentally, an enigma of survival. It is only by recognizing traumatic experience as a paradoxical relation between destructiveness and survival that we can also recognize the legacy of incomprehensibility at the heart of catastrophic experience.” There is a vast bibliography about trauma and natural disasters in the modern world, see the collection by Ursano, McCaughey, and Fullerton (1995), Basoglu and Salcioglu (2011), and Halpern and Vermeulen (2017). 5 See Williams (2012: 225): “On display in the trauma pictured early in Book 6, I propose, is a Senecan version of what might be termed the negative sublime—the passive submission to nature’s power that is also glimpsed in the stupor of the awestruck remnants of humankind (cf. mirantibus, 3.27.12) who contemplate the cataclysm of 3.27–28.” I will show how these reactions to the sublime are purposefully connected to certain literary representations, whether Horatian, Lucretian, or Vergilian. 6 The opening and close of the book should not be separated from the doxography that makes up the majority of the book. Seneca connects the passages through repetitions of language and thought, as he does macroscopically throughout the work as a whole when he repeats topics (e.g., mention of the Nile in book 6 looking back to 4a) or consolatory topics (death at the conclusions of book 6 and book 2). 7 For more on intertextuality, see Conte (1996), Hinds (1998), Allen (2000), and Laird (1999: 34–43). As Laird writes, “But the crucial point about the theory of intertextuality is that resemblances or resonances between texts or discourses only exist in the eyes of the beholder. Intertexts are only there because readers see them” (36). Seneca trains his reader to makes connections between various works as well as between physics and ethics in this treatise. 8 See Seal (2015: 221) “Seneca also lays recurring emphasis on the ethic function of the activity of studying or contemplating nature…that activity sharpens and trains our intellect for ethical reasoning (NQ 3.praef.18), and it offers us escape from morally corrosive environments (NQ 4a.praef.19–22).” 9 Freud’s concept of “the return of the repressed” is key here, and theorists such as Caruth (1995) and Woodruff (2014) have expanded on these issues. 10 Note the critique of Leys (2000: 251–54). 11 See Caruth (1995) and Edkins (2003) for the interactions between trauma and memory. 12 See also Balaev (2014b: 4): “Trauma causes a disruption and reorientation of consciousness, but the values attached to this experience are influenced by a variety of individual and cultural factors that change over time.” Seneca is trying to reorient the consciousness of his reader to identify the underlying causes of their emotional turmoil. 13 See NQ 6.1.5, where Seneca wishes to alter the reaction to signs of an earthquake. 14 Seneca is consciously echoing language of a locus amoenus (a rhetorical description of a “pleasant place”) to amend it into a locus horridus (“fearful place”) here. Note how the next time sinu is used (6.1.9); it is to describe an earthquake-caused pit into which

Non est facile inter mala magna consipere  137 one could fall. The land itself is personified, “Campania had always been nervous of this threat, but had remained unharmed and had many times got over its fears” (Campaniam, numquam securam huius mali, indemnem tamen et totiens defunctam metu, 6.1.2). Securus is an important word for Book 6, e.g., some may derive securitas from the initial Vergilian quotation (6.2.1), and the sage-like figure at the end of the book who will look upon natural disasters “without anxiety” (securus, 6.32.4). In the NQ as a whole, it will define the spectatorship of the mind that has ascended to the heights, where it can view natural phenomena “without fear” (secure, NQ 1.pr.12). 15 “Because we grasp nature with our eyes, not our reason, and we do not consider what she can do but what she has done” (quia naturam oculis non ratione comprendimus, nec cogitamus quid illa facere possit sed tantum quid fecerit, 6.3.2). This is very similar to the difference between philosophy and history at NQ 3.pr.7. For the ignorant, everything seems more terrifying (6.3.2). 16 This idea of understanding/knowing nature will come to parallel knowledge of god in the preface of Book 1, “there it begins to know god” illic incipit deum nosse, (1.pr.13). Book 1 concludes with a discussion of mirrors, which are made so man can know himself (ut homo ipse se nosset, 1.17.4). Also see 2.59.1 where the contrast between fearing and knowing is tantamount: “I would rather,” you say, “not be afraid of lightning-bolts than understand them.” (“malo” inquis “fulmina non timere quam nosse.”). 17 “The virtue to which we aspire is marvelous (magnifica), not because freedom from evil is in itself wonderful, but because it releases the mind, prepares it for knowledge of the celestial, and makes it worthy to enter into partnership with god” (NQ 1.pr.6). 18 This is the only mirum that Seneca endorses as truly worthy of wonder (see Williams 2012: 219–20). Earthquakes produce “thousands of marvels” (mille miracula mouet, 6.4.1) on their own. 19 There are ways for the “inexperienced” (imperitis, 6.2.1) to become wise, and one is through reading this book (see Ep. 31.6: “Therefore what is good? Knowledge of the world. What is evil? Inexperience.” Quid ergo est bonum? rerum scientia. Quid malum est? rerum imperitia; NQ 2.42.3, 5.18.14). Seneca says this inquiry is very enjoyable (dulcis inspectio) and helps to define the wise man in Ep. 65.19. 20 See 6.1.10 for Seneca’s encouragement to the reader to assume “great courage” (magnum … animum) and the conclusion of the book at 6.32.3. 21 If Seneca valorizes the past in these sections, there is also the sense that we can continue their good works and move forward. The doxography is an example of a collective memory that deserves acclaim and acknowledgement, see Whitehead (2009: 123–52) for collective memory, in this case of the “community of scholars” identified by Hine and, implicitly, the reader. Seneca’s ethical digressions are often focused on how the current age is wretched and vice is growing—but this scholarly progress offers a counterpoint and shows how virtue and knowledge can likewise grow and expand, especially for those taking part in these studies. 22 The use of secreta would cause the reader to recall 3.pr.1 with the preface to the book as a whole and his desire “to seek out its causes and secrets and to present them for others to learn about” (causas secretaque eius eruere atque aliis noscenda prodere). It also foreshadows later usages, see 1.pr.3: “I myself give thanks to nature whenever I see her not in her public aspect, but when I have entered her more remote regions…” (Equidem tunc rerum naturae gratias ago cum illam non ab hac parte uideo qua publica est, sed cum secretiora eius intraui…). On the book order, see above, n.3. 23 The fact that he restates topics from previous books (water) and looks forward to others (fire) shows how this book builds upon previous knowledge that the reader would have gained, and also hints at its own foundational status for later books of the NQ. In this it also embodies the learning that Seneca discusses at 6.5.2. 24 This would be the Stoic pneuma. See Williams (2012: 189–90); Schiesaro (2015: 247).

138  Christopher Trinacty 25 As Seneca states earlier, “it is a great comfort in the face of death to see that the earth too is mortal” (ingens mortis solacium est terram quoque uidere mortalem, 6.2.9), see 6.32.8 for a similar idea. 26 Williams (2006: 125n.4) points out other uses of moueo for earthquakes and the connection “as the literal shaking of the fundamentum mundi is inseparable in his narrative from psychological disturbance.” Ker (2009: 107) puts it nicely, “Thus, in the course of the book, Seneca fuses scientific content (on terrae motus) with the mouere function of his consolatory rhetoric.” 27 E.g., his use of forms of metior (NQ 3.pr.3, 5.18.8 and 1.pr.17) and Wilson (2014: 176). 28 See NQ 6.1.12, 6.5.2, and in a similar sense at 6.29.3 (discussed infra). 29 NQ 6.1.7. There is a sort of connection then between anger/madness and earthquakes in Seneca’s mind so that the earthquake itself will cause this sort of stupor. 30 Seneca alludes to C. 3.29 also in Ep. 12 (probably written at the same time as NQ): “That man is happiest and has calm self-possession who awaits tomorrow without trepidation; whoever has said “I have lived.” Each day he arises he earns a bonus.” Ille beatissimus est et securus sui possessor qui crastinum sine sollicitudine expectat; quisquis dixit ‘uixi’ cotidie ad lucrum surgit (Ep. 12.9). 31 Note how often inpotens is found in Senecan tragedy a variety of emotions: love, anger, etc. (Phd. 276, Oed. 865, Ag. 801). 32 Such emotion excess, whether mourning, anger, fear, grief, occurs often in Seneca, indeed it is the very stuff of Senecan tragedy. 33 Overviews of this sort of therapy for anger can be seen in Harris (2001: 362–90). In previous works Seneca stresses how Stoic moral precepts and exempla can help one through the shock and suffering of the death of a loved one, or other ordeals (see de Prov. 3.1–14; Ep. 94). 34 See Ep. 89.9 for the division of Stoicism into its three constituent parts. The rhetorical elements that I focus on here could be seen as the “logic” element, seeing how Seneca figures logic there as essentially concerned with language. 35 See Williams (2015) for the way that these works complement each other and Hadot (1995: 81–125) for Stoic spiritual practices. Dietsche (2014) discusses Seneca’s “Therapeutische Philosophie” in his letters. 36 For more on the way Seneca utilizes quotations and intertextuality in this work, see Trinacty (2018). 37 Moments from earlier in the Naturales Quaestiones are restated in this book: the disappearance and reappearance of rivers from Book 3 (see 6.8.2), the source of the Nile from Book 4a (see 6.8.3–5), the prevalence of wind as spiritus from Book 5. 38 See NQ 2.27.3. This connection is particularly nice as it sums up much of Seneca’s writing on the sublime and fear. 39 See Williams (2012: 232–57) passim. At the very end of Book 2, one again sees how cogitatio is placed in contrast with fear (“But you will have no opportunity for such reflection: this calamity spares us from fear,” sed non erit huic cogitationi locus: casus iste donat metum, 2.59.13). See the sublime consequences in de Otio 5.6: “Our pondering bursts through the boundaries of the heavens,” cogitatio nostra caeli munimenta perrumpit. There are numerous references to this sort of meditation in Seneca’s prose works, see Vottero (1989): 660. 40 In Williams’ terms “to keep the rhetorical sublime in pace with the natural sublime” (2016: 177). For more on the sublime in Senecan prose, see Setaioli (2000: 242–54), Gunderson (2015), Williams (2016). 41 Note that the reader at the end of the book should attain a sublime perspective (see 6.32.1–5) commensurate with other descriptions as portrayed in Ep. 43 and Ep. 120.13–14. 42 For the sublime in Senecan tragedy, see Littlewood (2017), Schiesaro (2003: 127–32), Staley (2010: 42–43), passim; Gunderson (2015:105–47). There is a notable intertext with Senecan tragedy in this book: 6.1.11 ~ Ag. 698, see Parroni (2002): 574. Schiesaro

Non est facile inter mala magna consipere  139 (2003: 52–55), in regard to the poetics of Thyestes: “All sublime, grandiose poetry is nefas, is inevitably implicated in transgressive actions, since it abandons self-composure in a heady atmosphere of semi-prophetic creation” (55). One might think of the root of nefas as something “unspeakable” and the way that “the unspeakable” figures in accounts of trauma (see Stampfl 2014: 15–16. See also below, n.55). 43 As Littlewood (2017: 155) writes, “The heights of heaven and the depths of hell, worlds beyond mortal limits, are figurative representations of a grand poetic register.” 44 See Inwood (2005: 184) on the conclusion of book 6: “This discourse, surely Seneca’s self-conscious reply to Lucretius’ own impressive meditation on the fear of death….” 45 See Williams (2012: 226–28), and Mazzoli (1970: 226). Inwood (2005: 180): “Seneca recognizes a dual audience: the prudentes will be freed from fear by the use of reason, and the imperiti, those not trained in philosophy, will find comfort in the abandonment of (false) hopes.” Limberg (2007: 314) likewise sees dual audiences, but I argue for Seneca’s self-conscious creation of his model audience through the linguistic repetitions, literary flourishes, and rhetorical touches of the book, i.e., he would not want two separate audiences by the end of this book. 46 The two forms of stupere act to signpost responses to the Vergilian lines and this verb is important for reactions to sublime wonders in the NQ, cf. 7.20.2, 2.27.3, 4b.13.7, and the use of stupor at 3.27.12 (about the survivors of the flood). 47 These four words were quoted at Cons. Marc. 17.2 in a passage celebrating the wonders of Sicily (quae mirari possis). If we are meant to remember this passage, one can see how the consolatory rhetoric of that work likewise encourages a “cosmic viewpoint” to alleviate the trauma under discussion there. For more on Vergil’s lines, see Horsfall (2006): 310–13. 48 See DeVivo (1992: 72–73). A similar purposefully changed quotation is found at Ep. 90.20 where Ovid’s description of weaving has been manipulated to create a “mashup” of Posidonius and Ovid, a twosome of great men who “are diverted from the truth by the enjoyment of their own rhetoric” (etiam magnos uiros dulcedo orationis abducat a uero, Ep. 90.20). 49 Williams (2012: 253). Williams additionally suggests that ingens may be on Seneca’s mind because of Vergil’s pointed use of that adjective in the Aeneid. 50 In addition, 6.2.8 could be seen as a prose response to this image, especially as regards death: “Suppose it is split and shattered by the immense force of I know not what evil, and it drags me down to an immeasurable depth: what of it?” diducitur et ingenti potentia nescio cuius mali rumpitur et me in immensam altitudinem abducit: quid porro? Also see 6.32.3 (quoted above, p. 128). 51 See Hinds (1998: 1–5). Alexandrian footnotes indicate a larger tradition about a story or myth and Seneca has given something similar with his doxography about earthquakes. In a sense, he adds Vergil to the larger “community of scholars” by such quotations. 52 Note also the ingens aequor that the seas create during the flood (3.28.3); this may be the reason that he changes litore to aequore in the passage above. 53 The fact that Seneca has already described an “epic” inundatio and its destruction may signal how his own aemulatio would undercut Vergil’s striking description. See also DeVivo (1992: 71). 54 Butterworth and Laurence (2005: 158–65) suggestively describe the physical and psychological aftermath of the earthquake. 55 Stampfl (2014: 15–16). One can also see a concern with this in Torres (2012), especially the artistic representation of catastrophe. 56 Crownshaw (2013: 170) (referencing the works of Caruth 1996: 67 and Leys 2000: 285). If the fear is so great that it causes folks to forget themselves (sibi exciderent NQ 6.29.1), it is notable that his therapy works through memory. This gets at the heart of trauma and Seneca’s therapy for trauma, as his approach highlights the necessity of memory for the reader and those who have suffered.

140  Christopher Trinacty 57 For “poetic memory” see Conte (1996). Seneca claims that we should “imprint on our minds” (hoc adfigamus animo, 6.32.12) the mantra “we must die” (moriendum est). 58 This would be similar to the process of transference or the historicization of the act of recall. LaCapra has “identified processes of transference, avowed and disavowed, between the object of remembrance and those who remember, which illuminates the degree and nature of possible traumatization. The nature of the transference will vary according to the subject-position of the remembered…and will affect the lines of identification that inform and are informed by remembrance” (Crownshaw 2013: 174). 59 In the final chapter of the book, Seneca mentions the disappearance of cities due to earthquake, something preserved by literary memory (memoria litteris seruata, 6.32.8). 60 See Caruth (1996: 3): “If Freud turns to literature to describe traumatic experience, it is because literature, like psychoanalysis, is interested in the complex relation between knowing and not knowing. And it is, indeed at the specific point at which knowing and not knowing intersect that the language of literature and the psychoanalytic theory of traumatic experience precisely meet.”

Works cited Allen, G. 2000. Intertextuality. London: Routledge. Balaev, M. ed. 2014a. Contemporary Approaches in Literary Trauma Theory. New York: Palgrave/MacMillan. Balaev, M. ed. 2014b. “Literary Trauma Theory Reconsidered.” In Contemporary Approaches in Literary Trauma Theory. New York: Palgrave/MacMillan. 1–15. Bartsch, S. and Schiesaro, A. eds. 2015. The Cambridge Companion to Seneca. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Basoglu, M. and Salcioglu, E. 2011. A Mental Healthcare Model for Mass Trauma Survivors: Control-Focused Behavioral Treatment of Earthquake, War and Torture Trauma. Cambridge: Cambridge Medical. Butterworth, A. and Laurence, R. 2005. Pompeii: The Living City. New York: St. Martin’s. Caruth, C. ed. 1995. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Caruth, C. 1996. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Conte, G. B. 1996. The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Crownshaw, R. 2013. “Trauma Studies.” In Malpas, S. and Wake, P. eds. The Routledge Companion to Critical and Cultural Theory. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. 167–76. Cubellis, E. and Marturano, A. 2013. “Felt Index, Source Parameters and Ground Motion Evaluation for Earthquakes at Mt. Vesuvius.” Annals of Geophysics 56. DOI: https:// doi.org/10.4401/ag-6445 DeVivo, A. 1992. Le parole della scienza: sul trattato de terrae motu di Seneca. Salerno: P. Laveglia. Dietsche, U. 2014. Strategie und Philosophie bei Seneca: Untersuchungen zur therapeutischen Technik in den Epistulae morales. Berlin: DeGruyter. Edkins, J. 2003. Trauma and the Memory of Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Galinsky, K. 2014. “Introduction.” In Galinsky, K. ed. Memoria Romana: Memory in Rome and Rome in Memory. (Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome Supplementary Volume X). Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. 1–14.

Non est facile inter mala magna consipere  141 Gunderson, E. 2015. The Sublime Seneca: Ethics, Literature, Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hadot, P. 1995. Philosophy as a Way of Life. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Halpern, J. and Vermeulen, K. 2017. Disaster Mental Health Interventions: Core Principles and Practices. London: Routledge. Harris, W. V. 2001. Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hinds, S. 1998. Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hine, H. M. 1984. “The Date of the Campanian Earthquake: A.D. 62 or A.D. 63, or Both?” AC 53: 266–69. Hine, H. M. 1996. L. Annaei Senecae “Naturalium quaestionum” libri. Stuttgart: Teubner. Hine, H. M. 2002. “Seismology and Volcanology in Antiquity?” In Tuplin, C. J. and Rihill, T. E. eds. Science and Mathematics in Ancient Greek Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 56–75. Hine, H. M. 2006. “Rome, the Cosmos, and the Emperor in Seneca’s Natural Questions.” JRS 96: 42–72. Hine, H. M. 2010. Lucius Annaeus Seneca: Natural Questions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Horsfall, N. 2006. Virgil, Aeneid 3: A Commentary. Leiden: Brill. Inwood, B. 2005. Reading Seneca: Stoic Philosophy at Rome. London: Routledge. Ker, J. 2009. The Deaths of Seneca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Konstan, D. 2015. “Senecan Emotions.” In Bartsch, S. and Schiesaro, A. eds. The Cambridge Companion to Seneca. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 174–83. Laird, A. 1999. Powers of Expression, Expressions of Power: Speech Presentation and Latin Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leys, R. 2000. Trauma: A Genealogy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Limberg, F. J. G. 2007. Aliquid ad Mores: The Prefaces and Epilogues of Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones. Diss. Leiden University. Littlewood, C. A. J. 2017. “Hercules Furens and the Senecan Sublime.” Ramus 46: 153–74. Mazzoli, G. 1970. Seneca e la poesia. Milan: Ceschina. Parroni, P. 2002. Seneca: Ricerche sulla natura. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore/ Fondazaione Lorenzo Valla. Schiesaro, A. 2003. The Passions in Play: Thyestes and the Dynamics of Senecan Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schiesaro, A. 2015. “Seneca and Epicurus.” In Bartsch, S. and Schiesaro, A. eds. The Cambridge Companion to Seneca. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 239–51. Seal, C. 2015. “Theory and Practice in Seneca’s Writings.” In Bartsch, S. and Schiesaro, A. eds. The Cambridge Companion to Seneca. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 212–23. Setaioli, A. 2000. Facundus Seneca: Aspetti della lingua e dell’ideologia senecana. Bologna: Pàtron. Staley, G. 2010. Seneca and the Idea of Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stampfl, B. 2014. “Parsing the Unspeakable in the Context of Trauma.” In Balaev, M. ed. Contemporary Approaches in Literary Trauma Theory. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 15–41. Stock, A-K., Gajsar, H. and Güntürkün, O. 2016. “The Neuroscience of Memory.” In Galinsky, K. ed. Memory in Ancient Rome & Early Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 369–91.

142  Christopher Trinacty Toner, J. 2013. Roman Disasters. Cambridge/Malden: Polity Press. Torres, E. C. 2012. “Catastrophes in Sight and Sound.” In Agostinho, D., Antz, E., and Ferreira, C. eds. Panic and Mourning: The Cultural Work of Trauma. Berlin: DeGruyter. 211–32. Traina, G. 1985. “Terremoti e società romana: problemi di mentalità e uso delle informazioni.” ASNP 15: 867–87. Trinacty, C. V. 2018. “The Surface and the Depths: Quotation and Intertextuality in Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones.” TAPA 148: 361–92. Tutrone, F. 2017. “Seneca on the Nature of Things: Moral Concerns and Theories of Matter in Natural Questions 6.” Latomus 76: 765–89. Ursano, R. J., McCaughey, B. G., and Fullerton, C. S. eds. 1995. Individual and Community Responses to Trauma and Disaster: The Structure of Human Chaos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Van der Kolk, B. and McFarlane, A. C. 1996. “The Black Hole of Trauma.” In Van der Kolk, B., McFarlane, A.C., and Weisaeth, L. eds. Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society. New York: The Guilford Press. 3–23. Van der Kolk, B. and van der Hart, O. 1995. “The Intrusive Past: The Flexibility of Memory and the Engraving of Trauma.” In Caruth, C. ed. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 158–82. Vottero, D. 1989. Questioni Naturali. Turin: Utet. Wallace-Hadrill, A. 2003. “Seneca and the Pompeian Earthquake.” In DeVivo, A. and Lo Cascio, E. eds. Seneca uomo politico e l’età di Claudio e di Nerone. Atti del Convegno internazionale. Bari: Edipuglia. 177–91. Whitehead, A. 2009. Memory. London and New York: Routledge. Williams, G. 2006. “Greco–Roman Seismology and Seneca on Earthquakes in Natural Questions 6.” JRS 96: 124–46. Williams, G. 2012. The Cosmic Viewpoint: A Study of Seneca’s Natural Questions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williams, G. 2015. “Double Vision and Cross-Reading in Seneca’s Epistulae Morales and Naturales Quaestiones.” In Wildberger, J. and Colish, M.L. eds. Seneca Philosophus. Berlin: DeGruyter. 135–66. Williams, G. 2016. “Minding the Gap: Seneca, the Self, and the Sublime.” In Williams, G. D. and Volk, K. eds. Roman Reflections: Studies in Latin Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 172–91. Wilson, E. 2014. The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Woodruff, P. 2014. “Performing Memory: In the Mind and on the Public Stage.” In Meineck, P. and Konstan, D. eds. Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks. New York: Palgrave. 287–99.

8

Ovid and the trauma of exile Sanjaya Thakur

Through poetry I seek oblivion from my wretchedness: if those are the rewards I gain by my pursuit, it’s enough.1

In 8 ce, Ovid was exiled by the emperor Augustus from Rome to the Black Sea town of Tomis, as he says, for a poem and a mistake (carmen et error).2 Over the course of the next eight years, Ovid wrote more than ninety poems in which he bemoaned his plight and sought an end to his exile. He wrote to no avail. Or did he? That is one major question this chapter investigates, arguing that trauma theory can help evaluate the Ovidian poetic persona and mental state presented in the letters. Identifying symptoms characteristic of trauma victims in the poems, I use trauma theory to answer a question that has vexed Ovidian scholars—why did Ovid continue to produce epistles even though they did not lead to the end of his exile?3 The epistolary form, I assert, is reflective of, and designed to help alleviate, Ovid’s traumatic suffering as much as procure his return from exile. I begin this chapter by situating Ovid’s epistles beside definitions and symptoms that characterize trauma. Analyzing letters from across the collections, I demonstrate that Ovid identifies writing as a form of self-therapy, as he deals with traumatic suffering he presents therein.4 Finally, I reflect on the audience’s potential reception of the epistles, since the poet appears to invite his readers as witnesses to his trauma. A number of modern scholars associate the word “trauma” with Ovid’s exile, but no one has systematically developed this idea in print.5 In the narrowest sense, trauma is an unspeakable action or deed lost to memory, which precipitates a behavioral change.6 I define Ovid’s error as the traumatic incident, which precipitated a series of events that one might likewise characterize as traumatic—the decree exiling the poet, his removal from Rome, his journey to Tomis, and his continued exile and separation from the city.7 Indeed, exile exacerbates earlier trauma. The narrator of the epistles displays some of the typical symptoms of traumatic suffering—obsessiveness, repetition, the sticking to routine despite its uselessness, the failure to come to grips with the new reality.8 Sandra Bloom’s

144  Sanjaya Thakur description of the characteristics of those suffering after a traumatic event will seem relevant to anyone who has read Ovid’s exilic epistles: prolonged hyperarousal, helplessness, emotional numbing, disrupted attachment, and reenactment unfolds, people’s sense of who they are, how they fit into the world, how they relate to other people, and what the point of it all is, can become significantly limited in scope. As this occurs, they are likely to become increasingly depressed…. (Bloom 2009: 154) [T]raumatic experiences disrupt the individual’s sense of individual and cultural identity. Losing the capacity for psychic movement, they deteriorate into a repetitive cycle of reenactment, stagnation, and despair. (Bloom 2009: 155) The epistles are often labeled as repetitive;9 I propose that we should view their repetition as a response to traumatic suffering, not in any sense truly recuperative, but a means through which the poet could maintain some degree of his former self and manage to survive.10 In fact, Ovid repeatedly admits to such an interpretation himself: forsitan hoc studium possit furor esse uideri, sed quiddam furor hic utilitatis habet: semper in obtutu mentem uetat esse malorum, praesentis casus inmemoremque facit… ipse mihi—quid enim faciam?—scriboque legoque, tutaque iudicio littera nostra meo est. (Tristia 4.1.37–40, 91–92) Perhaps this pursuit may seem madness, but this madness has a certain utility: it forbids the mind to always gaze at its misfortunes, and makes it forgetful of its present woe… I write and read for myself—what else can I do? and my writing is secure in my judgement. The poet equates his writing (studium, 37) with a sort of madness (furor, 37, 38). Writing is the repetitive activity that allows the poet to focus on the same themes. It is not only a healthy distraction from his current woes but also a reminder of his status and past trauma. According to the symptoms described above, his poetry characterizes him as a sufferer of trauma. The juxtaposition of ipse mihi (91) underscores Ovid’s fixation with self and state of mind (mentem, 39), seen throughout the exilic epistles in which the poet’s mind frequently appears separated from his self.

Ovid and the trauma of exile  145 Similar are Ovid’s comments in Epistulae ex Ponto 1.5, a poem written after five years of his exile. Here, in response to a query (in all likelihood proposed by himself), “Why then do I write, you wonder? I too wonder, and with you I often ask what I seek from it” (Pont. 1.5.29–30: cur igitur scribam, miraris? miror et ipse,/ et tecum quaero saepe, quid inde petam),11 he emphasizes why he constantly writes even though the act seems like a fruitless endeavor (nil utilitatis, 54): quid potius faciam? non sum, qui segnia ducam otia: mors nobis tempus habetur iners… cum bene quaesieris, quid agam, magis utile nil est artibus his, quae nil utilitatis habent. consequor ex illis casus obliuia nostri: hanc messem satis est si mea reddit humus.

(Pont. 1.5.43–44, 53–56)

What rather should I do? I am not one to lead a life of idle leisure: I regard idleness as death… When you have pondered well what I am to do, nothing is more useful than this art which has no use. From it I win forgetfulness of my misfortune: this harvest is enough if my ground but yields it. There is, of course, an inherent danger in viewing these poems as directly derivative of Ovid’s mental state, because the Ovid we encounter in the epistles is a carefully constructed literary persona.12 Ovid makes a conscious decision to consistently present this persona. It represents one strategy that helps Ovid “represent” his traumatic experiences both while in exile and as a result of his prior trauma. Nevertheless, I contend that the application of trauma theory provides another angle to explore, understand, and further explain the composition of these epistles, regardless of whether the emotions and thoughts expressed therein are real, projected, or fictive. In other words, the “Ovid” we encounter as a character in these texts can be viewed as one who has suffered from a traumatic event, and the contents of the letters reflect that supposition. Ovid makes it appear as if the persona presented in the epistles is that of the poet himself. Thus, the letters might be characterized as quasi-autobiographical works, claiming to be written about the poet’s experiences and capture his current mental state. Silvia Pellicer-Ortín (2014: 194) notes that trauma sufferers use the “autobiographical mode to voice their traumatic experiences of suffering and alienation.”13 An autobiographical approach was not new to Ovid; he had developed a literary persona familiar to the Roman (literate) audience through his popular works (especially the elegiac Amores [The Loves] and Ars amatoria). But Ovid was careful in those poems to distinguish his poetic persona from his actual person. In the exilic poems he takes the opposite approach, repeatedly insinuating

146  Sanjaya Thakur they represent his actual self. Furthermore, by sharing accounts of his suffering, Ovid sets the stage for the audience to share in his trauma and to experience “sympathetic trauma” themselves.14 Scholars have identified a number of reasons why Ovid selected the epistolary form for his exilic compositions:15 He was influenced by Cicero’s letters from exile;16 the letters foster a sense of relationship between the reader and Ovid;17 they are an extension of ideas and a format he first developed in the Heroides, where the poet ventriloquizes the voices of the heroines;18 the meter is that of the Ars amatoria. But elegiacs were also commonly considered the meter of lament, and thus appropriate as Ovid repeatedly laments his fate, location, and loss (Nagle 1980: 122; Helzle 1989:14). In addition, the letters offer a connection between the poet and Rome, providing an Ovidian “presence” in the city that both places the poet there and emphasizes his distance and separation from it.19 Contemporary medical practice encourages dealing with trauma by talking or writing through the initial traumatic experience, typically with the aid of a therapist or clinician.20 But Ovid has no therapist; we might say he functions as his own in talking through some of his experiences in his poems. As Ann Kaplan (2005: 37) says, “telling stories about trauma, even though the story can never actually repeat or represent what happened, may partly achieve a certain ‘working through’ for the victim. It may also permit a kind of empathic ‘sharing’ that moves us forward, if only by inches.” Time does not heal trauma, but for Ovid his continued composition is both a constant reminder of his traumatic suffering and a means by which he can cope with it.21 In the following excerpt from the final poem in Epistulae ex Ponto 3, Ovid claims that Brutus (who helped publish Ovid’s exilic poetry) has written to tell him that someone in Rome is complaining that his poems are repetitive.22 Ovid admits to this charge and offers a reason why he writes. In so doing, he describes his mental state in terms consistent with the symptoms of traumatic suffering cited above. Writing epistles with the same themes, authorial attitude, self-characterization, and relationship between the poet and the wrathful Augustus (marked so frequently by ira [anger]), as well as the consistent repetition of his exilic identity of a “lesser” poet, might all be termed acts of “repetition compulsion”—at one level a conscious choice, but on another, perhaps, an unexpected outcome of his traumatic suffering. A good introduction of Ovid’s conception and presentation of his exile and exilic persona is the following: et patiar scripto crimen inesse, rogas. non eadem ratio est sentire et demere morbos: sensus inest cunctis, tollitur arte malum… ut mihi conanti nonnumquam intendere curas fortunae species obstat acerba meae, uixque mihi uideor, faciam qui carmina, sanus, inque feris curem corrigere illa Getis.

Ovid and the trauma of exile  147 nil tamen est scriptis magis excusabile nostris, quam sensus cunctis paene quod unus inest. laeta fere laetus cecini, cano tristia tristis: conueniens operi tempus utrumque suo est… cum totiens eadem dicam, uix audior ulli, uerbaque profectu dissimulata carent. et tamen, haec eadem cum sint, non scripsimus isdem, unaque per plures uox mea temptat opem… (Pont. 3.9.14–16, 29–36, 39–42) And you ask why should I allow there to be faults in my writing. It is not the same thing to feel and to cure a disease: all men can feel, misfortune is removed by skill… When I attempt to work carefully, the bitter vision of my lot always confronts me and I seem to myself hardly sane in composing poems and in troubling to edit them among the wild Getae. Yet there is nothing more excusable in my writings than that in it all there is almost one single thought. Happy was my poetry when I was happy, now that I am sad, it’s sad: each period has a type of work that befits it…   I write so often of the same things that hardly any listen, and my words, which they pretend not to understand, lack results. And though the words are always the same, I have not written to the same persons: my voice, always the same, seeks aid through many. In this passage we can observe many terms that frequently recur throughout the exilic poems and are loaded with double meaning. The passage opens with the word crimen (14), ostensibly to describe errors Ovid has made in his Latin composition. But it is also used to describe his past actions and the resulting charge by Augustus that earned him exile.23 In this sense, crimen adds another layer to the passage’s rhetorical question, as Ovid can be seen to ask, “why do I keep bringing up my wrongdoing in my poetry?” Health is one of Ovid’s main themes in the letters; in 3.9.15 he characterizes his exile, and his suffering therein, as a disease, morbus. But we should also consider health as it specifically relates to trauma.24 We might then wonder whether there really are any cures (cura, 29, 32; another word with double meaning) to traumatic events, and whether even a return to Rome would “cure” Ovid.25 Furthermore, ars is a loaded term anywhere it occurs in the exile poetry; reading it here with the Ars amatoria in mind seems to directly oppose the sense offered by a literal translation, suggesting Ovid’s inner struggle: poetry is what drove him into exile, but the act of writing now sustains him and is his constant (nonnumquam, 29) obsession. In addition, Ovid can be read to openly claim that he suffers from depression (35) and is losing his sanity (31). The use of the passive (uideor, 31,

148  Sanjaya Thakur audior, 39) makes it seem like Ovid is not in control of his actions, despite being in a moment of self-reflection. In fact, it appears that the writer of these poems is a separate entity from his self. He defines his letters as cries for help (3.9.42), but help is never granted. He admits his writing is repetitive (totiens eadem, 39) and answers the reported slight by further admitting that the epistles are not of great quality and filled with mistakes. In so doing, Ovid offers a kind of an anti-invective: instead of attacking the criticism, he embraces it and uses it to promote a persona he has created, since the accusation fits the theme of diminished talent due to his suffering in such a barbaric locale.26 In using the phrase species obstat (30), Ovid visually characterizes his fortune, but stresses that it constantly haunts him and blocks any progress.27 Both sentire (14) and sensus (15) indicate Ovid’s belief that others can empathize with him, but later in the excerpt he uses sensus (34) to describe the repetitive nature of his poetry. While in Epistulae ex Ponto 3.9, as we have seen, Ovid uses a form of ars to define the skill needed to heal, elsewhere he uses the term to speak to his loss of talent (arte, Tr. 5.1.27): si tamen e uobis aliquis, tam multa, requiret, unde dolenda canam, multa dolenda tuli. non haec ingenio, non haec componimus arte: materia est propriis ingeniosa malis. tot mala pertulimus, quorum medicina quiesque nulla nisi in studio est Pieridumque mora.

(Tr. 5.1.25–28, 33–34)

Yet if any of you asks why I sing about so many grievous things, many grievous things have I borne. These verses I compose not by innate genius, these verses [I compose] not by skill: my theme is born from my own misfortunes. So many misfortunes have I endured, for which there is no medicine or cure, except respite in the pursuit of the Pierides. Ovid here claims to be a different person (typified by the juxtaposition of ingenio [innate genius], Tr. 5.1.27 and ingeniosa [born from], 28), whose poems merely reflect the suffering he endures (tuli [I have endured], Tr. 5.1.26). We might relate this status to theories of displacement and dissociation. Ovid defines poetry as his only means of coping—not a cure or end to suffering, but merely a delay (mora, Tr. 5.1.34). Ovid’s notion of delay could be linked to the concept of belatedness in trauma theory (Caruth 1996: 91–92, Roth 2012: 99–102). Nor does the passage of time help the healing process; as the poet states in Tristia 4.6.21–22, “my mind has the sense of a misfortune still fresh (mali recentis).”28 This may be the greatest

Ovid and the trauma of exile  149 punishment of exile—it never allows the victim to heal from the initial trauma and is a constant reminder of it (Tr. 5.2.10). Ovid’s Tomis is a cultural wasteland. Frozen, violent, and barbaric, it is the antithesis of Rome.29 Most interpret this environment as Ovid’s own literary creation, but I propose that it reflects his trauma and emotional state. One might even venture to say that his images of the place are the creation of his unconscious.30 And because Tomis is not Rome, Ovid’s experience in it accentuates his past trauma, constantly forcing him to remember his loss, and thus representing an additional traumatic experience.31 In other words, Ovid’s Tomis might not be a reflection of its actual state, but is an accurate depiction of the poet’s perception of it.32 Ovid’s continued composition of poetry serves as a coping mechanism as he articulates trauma’s subsequent and ongoing effects. Bloom (2009: 153) argues that, “for healing to occur, victims must give words and meaning to their overwhelming experiences.”33 Kaplan (2005: 20) says victims of trauma write “to organize pain into a narrative that gives it shape for the purposes of self-understanding (working their trauma through), or with the aim of being heard, that is, constructing a witness where there was none before” (see also Weiberg, this volume: 177–91). And so, we can see Ovid’s epistles as therapeutic.34 Likewise, victims of trauma can feel “the need to share and ‘translate’ such traumatic impact” (Kaplan 2005: 1, see also 19). Ovid explains that, “whether stupor or insanity is the name for this pursuit, it was by this concern that my every concern was lightened” (seu stupor huic studio siue est insania nomen,/ omnis ab hac cura cura leuata mea est. Tr. 1.11.11–12). The juxtaposition of the two forms of cura (12) highlights the word’s dual nature—Ovid sees it as both cause and cure.35 Cura is also closely linked to the process of literary production.36 Ovid, thus, directly states that writing helps him deal with his traumatic suffering, even if elsewhere he admits his work does not appeal to a broad audience: “Indulge me rather, or toss away all my books, if that, reader, which helps me harms you” (Tr. 5.1.65–66: da ueniam potius, uel totos tolle libellos,/ si mihi quod prodest hoc tibi, lector, obest ). It is also significant to note that, in contrast to his own writing, Ovid claims that other people’s writing to him is not therapeutic (see also Pont. 1.3.11–26). The words of friends help, but they cannot heal. Ovid does not publish correspondence of others, even though it is clear he did receive regular updates about affairs in Rome. As a result, his poetry presents him in a static situation, despite being a diachronic exercise. His writing is one-sided, not two-sided, as in normal epistolary discourse. Symptoms of an ever-present traumatic suffering from which Ovid cannot escape recur throughout Ovid’s exilic poetry.37 These consist of repeated, unprovoked visions of family, friends, and Rome itself. Ovid consistently uses visual terms and forms of the verb subeo to introduce these images which appear to him. Such a pattern has hitherto gone unnoted and characterizing such visions as symptoms of traumatic suffering offers a coherent means to account for their frequency. In addition, Ovid attributes something visual in nature to his error, thus these exilic visions might have a doubly harmful nature in that they are unwanted,

150  Sanjaya Thakur but also relate to the sensory experience which was the source of Ovid’s trauma.38 These memories do not seem triggered by anything, appearing without warning or context, and are not merely nostalgic, but serve to exacerbate Ovid’s pain (even if he does not note that effect).39 In the initial exile poem, Tristia 1.1, Ovid uses a form of the verb subeo (subitis, 40) to characterize negative images that suddenly come to mind, unexpectedly perhaps, but regularly.40 Ovid states, “my heart is clouded by woes that come to mind. Poetry requires the writer to be in privacy and ease” (Tr. 1.1.40-41, nubila sunt subitis pectora nostra malis./ carmina secessum scribentis et otia quaerunt). The same introductory word occurs in Tristia 1.3, where Ovid recalls his departure from wife and Rome: “When the most pitiful image of that night comes to my mind (subit, 1), which marked the final time I was in the city….” (Tr. 1.3.1–2, cum subit illius tristissima noctis imago,/ quod mihi supremum tempus in urbe fuit. See also 1.3.3–4, 69–74, and 89–94). The poem is a visual depiction of the effects of traumatic suffering and memories etched in the poet’s mind.41 He recalls friends and family fondly but emphasizes the pain of that moment and his deprivation of them. Ovid’s mind frequently seems like it is in a frenzy, punctuated by memories of his past.42 The anaphora of nunc in Epistulae ex Ponto 1.8.31–38 speeds the audience through the Roman cityscape. Though Ovid’s memories of family, friends, and city might, at first glance, be characterized as nostalgic, their unexpected appearance lends credence to interpreting these visions as results and reminders of the poet’s traumatic suffering. The use of the passive in the same poem (uertor, 33) stresses Ovid’s lack of control over these memories. Even the deponent reminiscor (31) can be interpreted to split Ovid’s conscious and unconscious, a fact evidenced by the independence he grants his mind (mens, 34).43 Ovid is not in full control. It is the images that come to mind (subit, 32 and 36); Ovid himself is not the agent of the verbs. Ovid uses other visual vocabulary to describe his experiences; note the phrase ante oculos and various forms of uideo in the following excerpts. In Epistulae ex Ponto 2.4.7–8, he states: “your image [Cotta Maximus] is always placed before my eyes, and I seem to see your features in my mind” (ante oculos nostros posita est tua semper imago,/ et uideor uultus mente uidere tuos). In this couplet, semper (7, “always”) is used to show the constancy of Ovid’s visions and ante oculos (7, “before my eyes”) separates the memories from Ovid’s person and how they operate, in a sense, out of his power. The use of the passive verb form (uideor, 8) underscores this representation of himself.44 Ovid also plays with the idea of distance; his friends and homeland are far away, but memories bring them to Ovid: heu quam uicina est ultima terra mihi! at longe patria est, longe carissima coniunx, quidquid et haec nobis post duo dulce fuit. sic tamen haec absunt ut, quae contingere non est corpore, sint animo cuncta uidenda meo.

Ovid and the trauma of exile  151 ante oculos errant domus, urbsque et forma locorum, acceduntque suis singula facta locis. coniugis ante oculos, sicut praesentis, imago est; illa meos casus ingrauat, illa leuat: ingrauat hoc, quod abest; leuat hoc, quod praestat amorem, inpositumque sibi firma tuetur onus. (Tristia 3.4b.52–62) Alas! How near to me is the edge of the world! But my fatherland is far away, far away my dearest wife, and anything after these two that was once sweet to me. Yet these things are so absent that, though I cannot touch them, all are visible to my mind. Before my eyes appears my home, and the city, the outline of places, and the events, too, that happened in each place. Before my eyes is the image of my wife as though she were present; she makes my woes heavier, she makes them lighter: heavier by her absence, lighter by her gift of love and her steadfast bearing of the burden pressed upon her. The use of the passive periphrastic (uidenda, 56) again demonstrates that Ovid is not in control, as does the repetition of the phrase ante oculos (57, 59). Sic tamen (55) meanwhile attests to the repeated presence of these visions, while the enjambment of corpore into line 56 sets up a juxtaposition between Ovid’s self and his visions as distinct entities. Similarly, errant (57) stresses the spontaneity of his visions, but the word also recalls the error, which led to his exile. Sicut praesentis (59) stresses the haunting vividness of these visions. Like other memories he is faced with, those in lines 60–61 show that Ovid can feel better temporarily, but these same images also drive Ovid to greater depths of depression. In Tristia 4.6.37–48, Ovid emphasizes how suffering in exile has exacerbated his problems; this type of discourse reveals a post-traumatic narrative. Ovid’s situation continues to deteriorate (multiplicata die, 38 [multiplied by day]; sine fine, 44 [endlessly]). Ovid’s “body is sick but his mind is even more sick, engrossed in gazing endlessly upon its misfortune” (43–44, corpore sed mens est aegro magis aegra, malique/ in circumspectu stat sine fine sui). The phrase urbis abest facies (45, “the sight of the city is absent”) underscores the importance of visuality in Ovidian poetics and how the Ovidian self diminishes, leading to a lack of agency in his characterizations of these visions, as does the repetition of uideo (48, sic me quae uideo non uideoque mouent [thus what I see and what I do not see affect me]). Explicit examples of nightmares are few, but Epistulae ex Ponto 1.2.43–52 supports reading Ovid as a victim of traumatic suffering. Ovid claims that “dreams that mimic real misfortunes terrify me, and my senses wake to my own loss” (43– 44, somnia me terrent ueros imitantia casus,/ et uigilant sensus in mea damna mei). The chiasmus in that line neatly mixes real and false images, and stresses Ovid’s emotional response—terror.45 As at Tristia 3.4b.56, the passive uideor (45) makes it appear that Ovid is not in control, as he imagines himself being attacked and captured by the savage inhabitants around Tomis (45–46). The only active

152  Sanjaya Thakur verb with a personal subject occurs after Ovid is deceived (decipior, 47) by the “better” memories of family, friends, and Rome (47–50) that subsequently come to mind. Both uideor (45) and aspicio (48) emphasize the visual nature of these memories. Ovid points out that memories offer temporary relief, yet only make him more depressed in the end: “thus, when this short and unreal joy has been perceived, the remembrance of happiness renders this state of mine all the worse” (51–52, sic, ubi percepta est breuis et non uera uoluptas,/ peior ab admonitu fit status ipse boni). If Ovid presents himself in a post-traumatic state, how can we define the experience and role of his literary audience? One can be the victim or perpetrator of a traumatic event, know either party personally, or become aware of the situation and/or individuals in question. A person could be a first-hand witness or a “witness” through descriptions or accounts of the trauma at some distance.46 Kaplan (2005: 39) defines what she terms “vicarious” or “secondary” trauma as experiences of a reader or viewer of others’ traumatic situations, a status we might extend to Ovid’s readers. These could potentially suffer empathic distress, something that has been observed and studied by clinicians who treat trauma victims.47 Ovid seems aware, at some level, that since the traumatic event itself is unknowable, it cannot have a first-hand witness (Caruth 1996: 1–17)—to have witnesses, especially sympathetic ones, he must carefully craft through form and subject matter epistles that repeatedly attest to his experience, specifically his suffering. Since distance can sometimes lessen the impression of trauma on a witness, Ovid might be so hyperbolic in his writing because he feels it is the only means to capture sufficiently the attention of, and have an impact on, his audience.48 Although these may be modern concepts, they are relevant to the way Ovid figures himself as a traumatized Aeneas-like figure in the depiction of his final night in Rome in Tristia 1.3. The Aeneid presents the traumatic capture of Troy from Aeneas’ perspective in a way designed to elicit audience sympathy both within the work and externally. Thus, Ovid’s audience had been exposed to the concept of traumatic, exilic suffering through the hero of the great Augustan epic, Aeneas (see Panoussi, this volume: 36). Preconditioned, so to speak, in this way, Ovid’s readers might more easily comprehend his experience. In this view, addressees may serve the same sort of psychological role as an “imaginary” friend (or enemy): someone whom Ovid can speak to, support, or reject. The only difference is that Ovid lets the audience become part of his “imaginary” world by publishing the epistles. The scholarly obsession with identifying specific addressees can miss an important point: Ovid creates “friends” and “enemies”—groups the audience can situate themselves among, alongside, or against. An invented enemy offers Ovid the opportunity to partake in invective and serves as an outlet against which the poet can express his continued frustration, engaging in a verbal battle with one whom he can, in some therapeutic sense, defeat.49 But rather than focus on arousing audience sympathy or cogently arguing for his relegation, more often than not, Ovid cycles back to his own pain and suffering, as in Tristia 4.3.50 Ovid might be characterized as rather self-absorbed in these

Ovid and the trauma of exile  153 poems, but if we read them through the lens of traumatic suffering, perhaps we can, at least partially, explain the way in which he frames himself and others in his poetry. Likewise, the application of trauma theory offers a better way to interpret poems like Tristia 1.5. Therein, Ovid’s images are generic and tritely hyperbolic; he seems overly plaintive and frequently compares himself to Odysseus, whom he claims to outdo in suffering.51 By situating himself in this literary and mythological topos, Ovid seems to follow a practice seen in some trauma sufferers: Susana Onega argues that the form of trauma narratives responds not only to the difficulty of verbalising trauma, but also to the need to attenuate the shock of its transmission by providing a pattern of meaning capable of making it assimilable into the cultural reality of the group, without distorting the true nature of the event, and that this pattern of meaning is provided by archetypal forms of storytelling like fairy tales and myth. (Onega and Ganteau 2014: 201) Ovid draws on myth frequently in the exilic poems (Claassen 1999: 68–72, McGowan 2009: 17–36); as the mythographer par excellence, his usage of this language and imagery is a natural occurrence of who he is, as well as the circumstances of his writing, even if it is, at times, unsettling to some readers. Ovid’s exile is characterized by a “helplessness” similar to what Bloom (2009: 151) describes for trauma victims; his ongoing pleas that receive no resolution intensify a projection of an inability to act: Human beings deplore being helpless. Placed into situations of helplessness, we will do anything to escape and restore a sense of mastery. But helplessness is a hallmark characteristic of a traumatic experience…. [R]epetitive exposure to helplessness is so toxic to emotional and physiological stability that in service of continued survival, survivors are compelled to adapt to hopelessness itself, a phenomenon that has been termed “learned helplessness.” Ovid’s “escape and sense of mastery” occurs through poetry. He adapts to his situation by keeping on writing, his true cura, even if on the surface the activity remains ineffective. But the traumatic suffering of Ovid’s exile was boundless regardless of the poet’s fate; the years of exile and experiences there could never be forgotten or alleviated. Ovid’s poems are not memoir, but they do constitute a form of survivor narrative—he writes as a survivor of his ongoing relegation and Augustus’ anger (ira).52 Ovid’s readers thus become witnesses to Augustus’ actions against Ovid and the dangers to which the poet was subjected. 53

Notes 1 Tr. 5.7.67–68: carminibus quaero miserarum obliuia rerum:/ praemia si studio consequar ista, sat est. The textual editions used are as follows: Tristia, Luck (1967); Epistulae ex Ponto, Richmond 1990). Translations are my own.

154  Sanjaya Thakur 2 Tr. 2.207. Ovid repeatedly states that the poem was the Ars amatoria (The Art of Love), written a decade prior. The error is impossible to recover, though theories abound (for a discussion, see Claassen 2008: 38–39, 229–30 with further bibliography). In this chapter I argue that the “error,” the traumatic event, is less significant than the posttraumatic experience attested in Ovid’s exile poetry. After the Ars was published and prior to exile, Ovid had produced the Metamorphoses, and, likely, the Heroides (The Heroines) and a version of Fasti (The Calendar). The relationship between these works and with Augustus’ decision to exile him, if any, is also unknown. In exile from 8–16 ce, Ovid revised the Fasti and wrote the Ibis. He produced seven collections of epistles, grouped into two categories, the Tristia (Sorrows), primarily poems without named addressees, and the Epistulae ex Ponto (Letters from Pontus), with named addressees. For the dating of these works, see Syme (1978). 3 Lambek (2009: 235) poses a related question: “what edge does trauma give over other models of understanding and intervention?” Its use here can be questioned on two grounds: applicability and validity. It is applicable as a theoretical approach and interpretative path, and valid because Ovid fits the prescribed criteria of a trauma victim. Simply describing Ovid as suffering from depression does not take into account the origins and nature of his symptoms and behavior. 4 For example, see the quotation above. Surprisingly, Ovid’s poetry presents his symptoms rather than the traumatic event itself. 5 Boyd (2017: 165), Rimell (2015: 280), O’Rourke (2010: 87), Lowrie (2009: 260), McGowan (2009: 45), Claassen (2008: 216), and Radulescu (2002: 13). 6 Clinical definitions and symptoms can be found in the DSM-IV: Traumatic events are those that produce “intense fear, helplessness, loss of control, and threat of annihilation.” Similarly, van der Kolk (cited by Kaplan 2005: 34) states that trauma “produces emotions—terror, fear, shock, but perhaps above all disruption of the normal feeling of comfort.” Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is described in DSM-V. The precise neurological processes are not my concern (for a discussion, see Kaplan 2005: 38), but rather the resultant behavioral outcomes experienced by the victim—here, Ovid, and how they manifest themselves in his poetry. 7 These post-error events might all be described using the terminology surrounding PTSD. However, PTSD is a clinically and socially loaded term; I will avoid it and simply state that Ovid’s letters can be viewed as a product of an individual who has suffered a traumatic event and continues to deal with its repercussions, since exile is a particular situation defined by separation. Thus, the victim (here Ovid) can never overcome either the original trauma or escape exile; rather, his life is a daily reminder of them. 8 For a discussion of these symptoms, see Kaplan (2005: 32–38). Caruth (1995: 4) has defined trauma as not the source event, but as “a response, sometimes delayed, to an overwhelming event or set of events, which takes the form of repeated, intrusive hallucinations, dreams, thoughts or behaviors stemming from the event.” 9 Norden (1954: 75), Wilkinson (1955: 360), Wheeler (1988: xxxiii). 10 See Bloom (2009: 157): an individual “that cannot change … will develop patterns of reenactment, repeating the past strategies over and over without recognizing that these strategies are no longer effective.” I argue that Ovid recognizes that he is caught in a repetitive pattern, but does not question the epistles’ (potential for) efficacy. 11 Compare Tr. 2.3. On Ovid’s frequent use of casus (55) to refer to his exile, see Gaertner (2005: 258). The exilic epistles present Ovid’s poetic persona and self as merging into one, since his poetic first person bridges the gap between his work and his “real” life. 12 Ovid’s approach in the epistles contrasts with how the poet himself defines his relationship (rather, lack thereof) between his own character and the contents and persona espoused in his amatory works: e.g., Tr. 2.353 with Luck (1977: 131–32); see also 3.2.5 and 4.10.67.

Ovid and the trauma of exile  155 13 In Tr. 5.2.7–10, Ovid expresses the same thought even more explicitly, emphasizing his mental state: mens tamen aegra iacet, nec tempore robora sumpsit,/ adfectusque animi, qui fuit ante, manet;/ quaeque mora spatioque suo coitura putaui/ uulnera, non aliter quam modo facta dolent. “But my mind lies ill, nor has time given it strength; my state of mind remains the same as it was before; the wounds that I thought would close with passing time pain me, not otherwise than if they had just been made.” PellicerOrtín (2014: 194) uses the term “liminal autobiographies,” defined as those that “blur the boundaries between autobiography and fiction,” which aptly characterizes Ovid’s exilic epistles. 14 For a discussion of “sympathetic trauma,” see Kaplan (2005: 7–12). 15 See Nagle (1980: 19–68), Hinds (1985: 16), and Claassen (1999: 110–19). On the exilic poems showing continuity and disjuncture from Ovid’s earlier works, see Helzle (1989: 10–18). 16 Nagle (1980: 33–35); Helzle (1989: 9–21); Degl’Innocenti Pierini (1998); Citroni Marchetti (2000) and Gaertner (2007). 17 Kenney (1965: 39); Evans (1976: 105); Helzle (1989: 8). These letters are composed for public consumption masked as private communication, especially the Epistulae ex Ponto, with their named addressees. As such they create a further bond between Ovid and his audience, since they (are manipulated to) feel that they are seeing personal correspondence. 18 See Rosenmeyer (1997) and Larosa (2013: 2–3). On the influence of the elegiac genre in general, see Videau-Delibes (1991, esp. 528–40). On ventriloquism, see Lindheim (2003: 7–8, 78–79). 19 E.g., Tr. 3.10.1–4, Tr. 1.1, 3.1, and Pont. 2.6. See Lowrie (2009: 259–61); McGowan (2009: 3). Ovid’s poems remind the audience, even those who knew of his exile and had gotten over it, that Ovid continues to suffer, exist, and resist: e.g., Pont. 2.6.3–4: exulis haec uox est; praebet mihi littera linguam,/ et, si non liceat scribere, mutus ero; “an exile’s voice is this; letters furnish me a tongue, and if I may not write, I shall be mute.” Indeed, Ovid considers his poems his surrogate self: see Tr. 1.1, 3.1, 3.10.1–4. 20 Belau (2002: xvi): “By working-through his or her resistances, the analysand, the one traumatized, can begin to uncover how his or her resistance both exposes and covers what is most intimate.” See also Freud (1907: 438). On trauma and medical practices, see Bosman (this volume: 166–68). 21 Bloom (2009: 159) reveals why Ovid can never be cured in exile: “[P]sychological healing requires safety and protection from further injury…. [Trauma sufferers] must learn to alter their attitudes towards authority figures and other people in their lives.” 22 Block (1982) offers an analysis of Pont. 3.9. Compare Pont. 3.7.1–4, where Ovid answers a similar charge of repetitiveness. 23 Tr. 1.1.23, 1.2.96, 1.9.64, 3.2.5, 3.5.49, 52, 3.6.26, 35, 3.11.33, 4.1.26, 4.3.47, 4.9.26, 4.10.88, 5.6.18, 5.13.26; Pont. 1.7.44, 2.3.91, 3.3.75, 4.1.20, 4.3.1, 23, 24, 4.14.42. For a discussion, see McGowan (2009: 55–61). Ovid uses crimen 18 times in Tr. 2, contextualizing his crime versus others in the mythic-historical tradition. Ovid uses the same word at Ars 1.34 to disavow the charge of impropriety in that text. The term arte (15) perhaps further recalls the Ars amatoria. 24 By Ovid’s own admission he suffers from a sickness in mind (mens) and comments on his continually deteriorating mental state, mentioning the visions that haunt him: Tr. 3.8. 25, 4.3.21, 4.6.22, 5.2.7, 5.13.3; Pont. 1.1.67, 1.3.7, 1.5.18, 1.6.15, 2.11.11, 4.11.19. On the recurring association between exile and death, see Grebe (2010), Helzle (1989: 13 n.41), Doblhofer (1987: 166–78); compare Tr. 3.3.74. 25 This would be clinically impossible, for it would not address the original traumatic event, nor erase the subsequent experiences Ovid has endured. 26 For refutations of Ovid’s self-evaluation, see Nagle (1980: 107–33), Williams (1994: 50–59), Gaertner (2007), Claassen (2008: 8–10).

156  Sanjaya Thakur 27 Later in this chapter I examine the frequency and significance of these visions, defining them to be evidence of his continued traumatic suffering. 28 I cite here the full text: Tr. 4.6.21–22, nec quaesita tamen spatio patientia longo est,/ mensque mali sensum nostra recentis habet. “And yet the long time has not made me able to tolerate [exile], my mind has the sense of a misfortune still fresh.” These lines follow Ovid’s admission that two years have passed since he has been in exile. 29 See Tr. 3.10, 4.4, 5.2, 5.7, 5.10 and Pont. 1.2, 1.3. For discussions, see Claassen (1999: 190–97), Grebe (2004) and Helzle (1989: 14–15), who argues that Ovid is influenced by Vergil’s depiction of Scythia. 30 Stern (2010: 108) describes the imaginative process: the “mind contains unconscious symbolized meanings…that influence [the subject’s] living in profound ways.” Psychoanalysts might prefer using the term “fantasy.” Freud, e.g., 1907: 437, might define Ovid’s activity as a form of “play.” For related thoughts on sensory perception, see Freud (1911: 302–3). 31 Topographic changes can be traumatic, as Kaplan (2005: 12) argues with respect to the loss of the Twin Towers: “Their visual absence was traumatic.” 32 One could interpret the “otherness” of Ovid’s Tomis as representative of its status as an anti-Rome. 33 Onega (2014: 216) describes a “memoir as a healing narrative.” Pellicer-Ortín (2014: 196) characterizes writing as a product of the “need to find an ethical form to articulate and heal.” Thus, Ovid is not unique in this respect. 34 Kaplan (2005): 19 speaks to the “importance of…finding ways to make meaning out of, and to communicate…. Trauma can never be ‘healed’ in the sense of a return to how things were before a catastrophe took place…; but … its pain can be worked through in the process of its being ‘translated’ via art.” And for Ovid there is one art—his ability to write poetry. 35 Of course, in the process of trying to forget (obliuia, Tr. 5.7.67) Ovid remembers and dwells on his current situation and the past traumatic situation that has led to it. 36 TLL s.v. 1463.71–1464.19, OLD s.v. 3B. 37 Roth (2012): xviii: “memory becomes a charismatic wound, an injury that attracts everything to it. In trauma, the recollected past causes suffering….” 38 Ingleheart (2006) offers an extended discussion on the visual nature of the error in Tristia 2; here I want to investigate that concept across the exilic corpus. 39 The term “flashback” is inapplicable to these visions, as they are not violent or, as far as we can tell, of the traumatic event itself: Bloom’s (2009: 152) term “traumatic memories” seems applicable: “Unlike other memories, traumatic memories appear to become etched in the mind, unaltered by the passage of time or by subsequent experience” (see also Freud 1911: 305). 40 Other examples of forms of subeo: Tr. (3.2.21–22): “Rome and my home come to mind, and the places I long for, and something of me is left in the city from which I have been sent away” Roma domusque subit desideriumque locorum,/ quidquid et amissa restat in urbe mei; Tr. (3.3.13–14): “Weary I lie among far off peoples and places, and everything that is not here now comes to me in my weakness” lassus in extremis iaceo populisque locisque,/ et subit adfecto nunc mihi quidquid abest. 41 At the same time it must be acknowledged that Ovid’s imagery perhaps seems too “perfect” and could cause some readers to question its authenticity and faithfulness. But this situation too can be explained by applying trauma theory. Roth (2012: 91) argues that a “‘successful’ representation (a representation that others understand) of trauma will necessarily seem like trivialization, or worse, like betrayal.” The degree of Ovid’s trauma is beyond the scope of this discussion, but I think we should consider whether framing it in literary terms and references “distances” it for the audience, or helps to reduce distance. 42 Though the carefully composed poems belie this fact.

Ovid and the trauma of exile  157 43 Helzle (2003 : 59) and Gaertner (2005: 449) simply define these visions in terms of Ovid’s imagination. 44 Similar to uertor at Pont. (1.8.33). 45 Helzle (2003: 90 and 92) discusses literary influences on the way Ovid presents his dreams and nightmares. 46 On positionality in reference to how trauma is experienced, see Kaplan (2005: 2). 47 See Kaplan (2005: 41). Likewise, Roth (2012: 97): “the suffering involved in trauma provokes our compassion, that mixture of pleasure and pain that some distance from an awful event can inspire;” i.e., pain (in the form of sympathy) for the trauma victim, pleasure in not having experienced it ourselves. Freud (e.g., 1911: 305) might argue Ovid succeeds in finding an audience because others too resent Augustus. Freud (1907: 437) also states that audience members can derive pleasure from hearing about the distress of others. 48 Golden and Bergo (2009: 7): “One mode of trauma’s indifference is an insensitivity to the injuries of others made possible by distance.” 49 For an extended discussion, see Claassen (1999: 139–46). Such epistles are Ovid’s way of “acting out” and are an expression of his own ira. On emotional outbursts as a symptom of PTSD, see van der Kolk (2014: 7–21). 50 Tr. 4.3.49–56; note the anaphora of me miserum in lines 49, 51, and 52. 51 For example, Tr. (1.5 esp. 45–50, 57–58). Helzle’s (1989: 21) evaluation is pertinent: “The fact that the poet has chosen to tell his readers these details reveals something about his situation or what he wants his audience to believe is his situation. Selection and exaggeration serve as means in the overall strategy of trying to be recalled or allowed to move closer to Rome. They do not, however, invalidate the entire account.” 52 For discussions on Ovid’s relationship to Augustus in the exilic poetry, see Williams (1994: 154–92), Claassen (1999: 147–54 and 219–28), Claassen (2008: 29–39), McGowan (2009: 63–84). 53 My thanks to Marcia Dobson and John Riker for their insightful comments and stimulating discussions on psychoanalysis and trauma, and Richard Fernando Buxton for his comments and suggestions.

Works cited Belau, L. 2002. “Introduction. Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through: Trauma and the Limit of Knowledge.” In Belau, L. and Ramadanovic, P. eds. Topologies of Trauma: Essays on the Limit of Knowledge and Memory. New York: Other Press. xiii–xxvii. Block, E. 1982. “Poetics in Exile: An Analysis of Epistulae ex Ponto 3.9.” ClAnt 1: 18–27. Bloom, S. L. 2009. “An Elephant in the Room: The Impact of Traumatic Stress on Individuals and Groups.” In Golden, K. B. and Bergo, B. G. eds. The Trauma Controversy: Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Dialogues. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. 143–68. Boyd, B. W. 2017. Ovid’s Homer: Authority, Repetition, and Reception. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Caruth, C. ed. 1995. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Caruth, C. 1996. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Citroni Marchetti, S. 2000. Amicizia e potere nelle lettere di Cicerone esule e nelle elegie ovidiane dall’esilio. Firenze: Università degli Studi.

158  Sanjaya Thakur Claassen, J-M. 1999. Displaced Persons: The Literature of Exile from Cicero to Boethius. London: Duckworth. Claassen, J-M. 2008. Ovid Revisited: The Poet in Exile. London: Duckworth. Degl’Innocenti Pierini, R. 1998. “Ovidio esule e le epistole ciceroniane dell’esilio.” Ciceroniana 10: 93–106. Doblhofer, E. 1987. Exil und Emigration: Zum Erlebnis der Heimatferne in der Römischen Literatur. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Evans, H. B. 1976. “Ovid’s Apology for ex Ponto I-III.” Hermes 104: 103–12. Freud, S. 1907 [1989]. “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming.” In Gay, P. ed. The Freud Reader. New York: Norton. 436–43. Freud, S. 1911 [1989]. “Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning.” In Gay, P. ed. The Freud Reader. New York: Norton. 301–6. Gaertner, J. F. 2005. Ovid Epistulae ex Ponto Book I. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gaertner, J. F. 2007. “Ovid and the ‘Poetics of Exile’: How Exilic is Ovid’s Exile Poetry?” In Gaertner, J. F. ed. Writing Exile: The Discourse of Displacement in Greco-Roman Antiquity and Beyond. Leiden: Brill. 155–72. Gay, P. ed. 1989. The Freud Reader. New York: Norton. Golden, K. B. and Bergo, B. J. eds. 2009. The Trauma Controversy: Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Dialogues. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Grebe, S. 2004. “Rom und Tomis in Ovids Tristia und Epistulae ex Ponto.” In Hornung, A., Jäkel, C., and Schubert, W. eds. Studia humanitatis ac litterarum trifolio Heidelbergensi dedicata. Festschrift für Eckhard Christmann, Wilfried Edelmaier und Rudolf Kettemann. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. 115–29. Grebe, S. 2010. “Why did Ovid Associate his Exile with a Living Death?” CW 103: 491–509. Helzle, M. 1989. Publii Ovidii Nasonis Epistularum ex Ponto liber IV: A Commentary on Poems 1 to 7 and 16. Hildesheim: Georg Olms AG. Helzle, M. 2003. Ovids Epistulae ex Ponto Buch I-II Kommentar. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Hinds, S. 1985. “Booking a Return Trip: Ovid and Tristia I.” PCPS 31: 13–32. Ingleheart, J. 2006. “What the Poet Saw: Ovid, the Error and the Theme of Sight in Tristia 2.” MD 56: 63–86. Kaplan, E. A. 2005. Trauma Culture. The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kenney, E. J. 1965. “The Poetry of Ovid’s Exile.” PCPS 11: 37–49. Lambek, M. 2009. “Terror’s Wake: Trauma and its Subjects.” In Golden, K. B. and Bergo, B. G. eds. The Trauma Controversy: Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Dialogues. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. 235–62. Larosa, B. 2013. P. Ovidii Nasonis Epistula ex Ponto III 1: Testo, traduzione e commento. Berlin: De Gruyter. Lindheim, S. 2003. Mail and Female: Epistolary Narrative and Desire in Ovid’s Heroides. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Lowrie, M. 2009. Writing, Performance and Authority in Augustan Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Luck, G. 1967–1977. P. Ovidius Naso Tristia. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. McGowan, M. M. 2009. Ovid in Exile. Power and Poetic Redress in the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto. Leiden: Brill. Nagle, B. R. 1980. The Poetics of Exile. Program and Polemic in the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto. Brussels: Latomus. Norden, E. 1954. Die römische Literatur. 2nd ed. Leipzig: Teubner.

Ovid and the trauma of exile  159 Onega, S. 2014. “Hybridity, Montage, and the Rhetorics and Ethics of Suffering in Anne Michaels’s Fugitive Pieces.” In Onega, S. and Ganteau, J.-M. eds. Contemporary Trauma Narratives: Liminality and the Ethics of Form. New York: Routledge. 210–29. Onega, S. and Ganteau, J.-M. eds. 2014. Contemporary Trauma Narratives: Liminality and the Ethics of Form. New York: Routledge. O’Rourke, D. 2010. “Review of J-M. Claassen, Ovid Revisited: The Poet in Exile.” Hermathena 188: 86–88. Pellicer-Ortín, S. 2014. “‘Separateness and Connectedness’: Generational Trauma and the Ethical Impulse in Anne Karpf’s The War After: Living with the Holocaust.” In Onega, S. and Ganteau, J.-M. eds. Contemporary Trauma Narratives: Liminality and the Ethics of Form. New York: Routledge. 193–209. Radulescu, D. ed. 2002. Realms of Exile: Nomadism, Diasporas, and Eastern European Voices. Lanham, MD: Lexington books. Richmond, J. A. 1990. P. Ovidius Nasonis, Ex Ponto libri quattuor. Leipzig: Teubner. Rimell, V. 2015. The Closure of Space in Roman Poetics: Empire’s Inward Turn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rosenmeyer, P. A. 1997. “Ovid’s Heroides and Tristia: Voices from Exile.” Ramus 26: 29–56. Roth, M. S. 2012. Memory, Trauma, and History. Essays on Living with the Past. New York: Columbia University Press. Stern, D. B. 2010. “Unconscious Fantasy versus Unconscious Relatedness.” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 46: 101–11. Syme, R. 1978. History in Ovid. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van der Kolk, B. 2014. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. New York: Penguin Books. Videau-Delibes, A. 1991. Les Tristes d’Ovide et l’elégie romaine. Une poétique de la rupture. Paris: Klincksieck. Wheeler, A. L. 1988. Ovid, Tristia, Ex Ponto. Revised by Goold, G. P. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wilkinson, L. P. 1955. Ovid Recalled. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, G. D. 1994. Banished Voices. Readings in Ovid’s Exile poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

9

Philo’s Flaccus Trauma, justice, and revenge Philip R. Bosman

Psychologists have seen evidence of what has come to be known as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in ancient Greek literature as early as Homer (Shay 1994, 2002; Manguno-Mire and Franklin 2010: 353). The disorder only entered the American Psychiatric Association’s authoritative Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in its 3rd edition (1980) and has since undergone substantial critique, revision, and repositioning.1 Classicists are in general too aware of the complexities of cultural patterning, oral transmission, literary convention and generic mediation, authorial intention, and audience expectation to join in with bold claims. Still, they are eager to stress a common humanity with the ancients and would readily accept commonality also in reactions to traumatic events and, by extension, how authors tended to describe such responses to traumatic life events. In this chapter, I shall present a reading of Philo’s In Flaccum (Against Flaccus) as having its roots in literary topoi infused by observations—if not personal experiences—of symptoms that overlap with those combined under this disorder category. But Philo’s literary aims and his psychopathology complicate the picture: he does not describe Flaccus’ mental anguish dispassionately or from sympathy with the afflicted, but as the just visitation from God for his collaboration in attacks on the Jews in the 38 ce uprisings in Alexandria. The text entitled Εἰς Φλάκκον (Against Flaccus) is one of only two historical treatises in the extensive corpus of Philo, the first-century philosopher-exegete of Alexandria.2 The work has attracted attention for being the only transmitted source of these clashes between Greek-speaking and Jewish inhabitants of the author’s native city, and scholars have attempted to extract from Philo’s account not only what exactly happened but also information on Jewish citizenship and legal status in the city during that time.3 Such attempts are complicated by the author’s explicit bias towards the Jewish side of the conflict, but also by the text’s abrupt beginning, which may indicate incompleteness.4 What remains of Philo’s narrative frame, supplemented by rich authorial comments throughout the text, is enough for us to be sure that a balanced historiographical or biographical account was not his aim. The Flaccus is notable for another reason, namely for Philo’s description in the second part of the treatise of his protagonist’s demise, in particular his mental anguish as the result of his traumatic fall from grace. Scholarship is divided on

Philo’s Flaccus  161 what exactly is at play here; Völker (1938: 95) claimed it to be the most extensive description in ancient literature of the conscience-stricken soul, with Klauck (1994: 39n.25) objecting that it is less about Flaccus’ remorse than about his regret and shame (see also Bosman 2003: 124–27). Also in question is Philo’s aim with the description; some accuse him of Schadenfreude, while others stress his message of consolation and hope to his fellow Jews.5 I here revisit Flaccus’ mental afflictions to show how Philo employs various literary topoi for a composite picture of psychological symptomatology. I argue that the protagonist’s mental regression is accompanied by progress towards recognizing personal culpability. Though it would be difficult to demonstrate, I would suggest that, in addition to consoling the Jews with God’s continued pronoia (providence), the vindictive text may by itself be read as a form of trauma therapy, both by its production and its intended effect. Philo’s description certainly shares the heterogeneity of responses and emotions incorporated into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ treatment of PTSD, even if the narrowed definition of trauma in DSM-V would exclude Flaccus’ particular traumatic event.6 It should be borne in mind that Philo did not compose the syndrome from any medical interest, and it is highly unlikely that he compiled it from personal observation of the historical figure. But the literary topoi that Philo employs may be regarded as social repositories of some sort, capable of reflecting accumulated experience, even if lacking diagnostic precision and circumscription. The question may thus be asked how, and indeed if Philo’s syndrome has bearing on current debates on emotional trauma in general and on PTSD in particular. It may be argued that Philo’s utilization of traditional literary material at least supports Ruth Leys’ polemics against non-cognitivist or nonintentionalist theorists (Leys and Goldman 2010). Philo certainly does not detach bodily experience from cognition, thus demonstrating an awareness of the link between affect and cognition. Furthermore, he provides an additional cognitive layer by emphasizing divine causation: Flaccus’ sufferings are in the final event the result of God’s retributive actions, executed by a personified Justice. This constitutes a way in which Philo and his audiences could categorize and interpret the depiction of a coherent, moral system.7 At the same time, it might illuminate debates on the complexity of emotions outside those of anxiety disorders related to PTSD that contributed to its move to the new category of trauma and stressorrelated disorders in DSM-V (Pai et al. 2017: nn.13 and 14).

The fall of Flaccus The Flaccus is constructed in two parts.8 The first part (1–96) deals with events in Alexandria, detailing the atrocities against and humiliations of the Jewish section of the city’s populace in which Philo implicates the Roman prefect at the time, a man by the name of Aulus Avillius Flaccus.9 The second part (104–91) continues with the subsequent trial, exile, and eventual death of Flaccus. There are indications that Philo wished the second part of his treatise to echo aspects of the first.10 Between the two parts, a passage dealing with the Alexandrian Jews’ ψήφισμα

162  Philip R. Bosman (decree) to Gaius is anachronistically inserted—the prefect did not forward the document to Rome, in Philo’s view a deliberate act to cast the Jews in a bad light (97–103). This passage contains the text’s pivotal point (Flacc. 101–2), where Philo by means of a rhetorical question summarizes the first section, and then anticipates the unfolding of God’s providential justice in the second part: ταῦτ’ οὐ διηγρυπνηκότος ἦν ἐκ πολλοῦ καὶ περιεσκεμμένου τὴν καθ’ ἡμῶν ἐπιβουλήν, ἀλλὰ μὴ κατ’ ἀπόνοιαν αὐτοσχεδιάζοντος ἀκαίρῳ φορᾷ καὶ παραγωγῇ τινὶ λογισμοῦ; θεὸς δ’ ὡς ἔοικεν, ᾧ μέλει τῶν ἀνθρωπείων πραγμάτων, τοὺς θῶπας αὐτοῦ λόγους καὶ κεκομψευμένους ἐπὶ φενακισμῷ καὶ τὸ τῆς ἐκνόμου διανοίας βουλευτήριον, ἐν ᾧ κατεστρατήγει, προβαλλόμενος, λαβὼν οἶκτον ἡμῶν, ἀφορμὴν οὐκ εἰς μακρὰν ἐμπαρέσχε τοῦ μὴ ψευσθῆναι τῆς ἐλπίδος. (Flacc. 101–2) Do not these actions show long unsleeping vigilance and careful preparation of the insidious attack against us and that it was not improvised in a fit of insanity, in an ill-timed outburst due to some perversion of the reason? But God, it is clear, who takes care of human affairs, rejected his flattering words so elegantly framed to cajole and the treacherous counsels against us debated in his lawless mind, and in His compassion before long provided us with grounds for thinking that our hopes would not be disappointed.11 Philo gives no information on his sources in addition to what he would have seen and experienced himself. It seems possible, however, that he polemicizes against a view that Flaccus’ out-of-character behavior during the attacks against the Jews was to be attributed to momentary madness. In Philo’s view, the calculated nature of his actions speaks against any attempt to exonerate him. His orchestrations of events behind the scenes prove him guilty, and thus God proceeded to set in motion his retribution. This occurs by way of the avenging (personified) Dike (Justice) exacting punishment: ἐπὶ δὴ τούτοις ἤρξατο κονίεσθαι κατ’ αὐτοῦ ἡ ὑπέρμαχος μὲν καὶ παραστάτις ἀδικουμένων τιμωρὸς δ’ ἀνοσίων καὶ ἔργων καὶ ἀνθρώπων δίκη (Flacc. 104, “For it was at this juncture that Justice, the champion and defender of the wronged, the punisher of unholy deeds and men, began to prepare for the battle against him”).12 Philo now starts to relate the prefect’s reversal of fortune (καινοτάτην ὑπέμεινεν ὕβριν καὶ συμφορὰν, 104 [he was subjected to an unprecedented indignity and disaster]). A substantial section is devoted to Flaccus’ arrest and trial in Rome (108–50), where two former collaborators gave testimony against him—treachery which in Philo’s reckoning was a ploy of Justice to amplify his afflictions, and which was accompanied by numerous other κακοπραγίαι (misdeeds/sufferings). The latter term in the course of the description gradually moves in reference from calamities befalling Flaccus to his own crimes. The part of the treatise of particular interest to this paper starts at his sentencing (151). Here Philo pulls out all rhetorical stops to make Flaccus’ plight seem the

Philo’s Flaccus  163 most horrific imaginable for a man of his station. He is stripped of all his (considerable) possessions and sentenced to exile—first to the island of Gyara (“the most miserable of Aegean Islands,” 151) and after an intercession of Lepidus to the slightly more hospitable island of Andros. The journey to Andros becomes an extended humiliation when the same people who previously saw him as newly appointed prefect now lined the moorings on route to his exile (153). Philo compares Flaccus’ mental agony with the recurring symptoms of a disease as new misfortunes rekindled his memories of what happened before (153): …he was oppressed by the heavier afflictions caused by the change which had overwhelmed him, for his misery was ever renewed and rekindled by the accession of fresh troubles which also forcibly brought back, like symptoms recurring in sickness, recollections of past mishaps which seemed for a while to have been dulled. Philo’s comparison with a medical condition prepares the reader for a “clinical” treatment of the case. Indeed, the recurrent and intrusive distressing recollection of the traumatic event is a major sign (Criterion B) of PTSD, under which are included nightmares, reliving the event, hallucinations and dissociative flashbacks, and overwrought reactions to internal and external cues that reactivate the traumatic event.13 Philo returns repeatedly to this category of symptoms, but here they form part of a larger drama and are echoed by the forces of nature when, during a terrifying passage from Corinth, Flaccus gets “swept along” (κατασύρεται), finally arriving in Piraeus severely storm-tossed. On Andros his escort just announces him to the islanders before leaving again, and Flaccus is left to his own devices in unfamiliar surroundings. Philo seems to hint at the lack of social support as exacerbating Flaccus’ fragile mental state, and turns to other tell-tale PTSD symptoms, namely avoidance and negative alterations in cognitions, including withdrawal (DSM-V Criterion C); he becomes more and more reclusive until an ominous party arrives on the island (in Philo’s report sent by Caligula).14 On the mere sight of them, Flaccus responds with what in DSM parlance is referred to as hyperarousal (“exaggerated startle response”): he flees in blind panic and when the posse eventually catches up with him, contributes to his own death by a selfmangling effort to resist: διατμηθεὶς δὲ καὶ διακοπεὶς χεῖρας, βάσεις, κεφαλήν, στέρνα, πλευράς, ὡς ἱερείου τρόπον κρεουργηθῆναι, ἔκειτο, τῆς δίκης σφαγὰς ἰσαρίθμους τοῖς φόνοις τῶν ἐκνόμως ἀναιρεθέντων Ἰουδαίων ἑνὶ σώματι βουληθείσης ἐργάσασθαι. καὶ ὁ μὲν τόπος ἅπας αἵματι κατερρεῖτο διὰ πλειόνων φλεβῶν, αἳ κατὰ μέρος διεκόπησαν, κρουνηδὸν ἐκχεομένῳ· συρομένου δ’ εἰς τὸν ὀ ρωρυγμένον βόθρον τοῦ νεκροῦ τὰ πλεῖστα μέρη διελύετο, τῶν νεύρων κατεσχισμένων, οἷς ἡ κοινωνία συνεδεῖτο πᾶσα τοῦ σώματος. τοιαῦτα καὶ Φλάκκος ἔπαθε γενόμενος ἀψευδεστάτη πίστις τοῦ μὴ ἀπεστερῆσθαι τὸ Ἰουδαίων ἔθνος ἐπικουρίας τῆς ἐκ θεοῦ. (Flacc. 189–91)

164  Philip R. Bosman Finally, he lay there, his hands, feet, head, breast, and sides gashed and smashed, ready as it were to be cut up like a sacrificial animal. For Justice wanted that single body to receive wounds as numerous as the number of the Jews who had been unlawfully murdered by him. The whole place was running with blood that poured forth like a fountain from the many veins, which had been gashed one after the other. When the corpse was being dragged into the pit which had been dug, most of the parts fell asunder since the ligaments by which the whole body was kept together had been slit…. (transl. by Van der Horst 2003: 87) Philo’s almost aestheticized description of Flaccus’ torture and death emphasizes its parallel with the mangling of Jewish bodies in the streets of Alexandria (65– 71); his dismembered body echoing his mental disintegration.15 The concluding sentence of the treatise, which immediately follows this gruesome scene, neatly conveys the theme for the second part of the treatise and the overt aim of the work as a whole: τοιαῦτα καὶ Φλάκκος ἔπαθε γενόμενος ἀψευδεστάτη πίστις τοῦ μὴ ἀπεστερῆσθαι τὸ Ἰουδαίων ἔθνος ἐπικουρίας τῆς ἐκ θεοῦ (Flacc. 191, “Such was the fate of Flaccus also, who thereby became an indubitable proof that the help which God can give was not withdrawn from the nation of the Jews”). Apart from framing the whole narrative with the reference to the ἐπικουρίας τῆς ἐκ θεοῦ (help from God), the final sentence has the further function of concluding the whole extended treatment of the exile’s suffering, both mental disintegration and physical destruction.

Flaccus’ speeches, authorial comments, and mental disintegration We now turn in greater detail to Philo’s description of Flaccus’ mental anguish (152–80). It consists on a structural level of two main components: invented first-person soliloquies revealing the subject’s own experience, framed by thirdperson comments on his behavior and mental state. In both of these the author avails himself of a range of topoi: literary lament, inner/mental retribution, the punishment of the god-scorner. All of these may be regarded as reflecting accumulated social knowledge of the effects of intense emotions such as grief, regret, remorse, and the inner torments of an activated conscience. But in Philo’s case, there seems to be a more solid body of knowledge to which these topoi are related, namely observations of mental disease contained in medical case reports. The section has as background Flaccus’ journey to Andros, his arrival, settlement, and stay on the island until his death. It consists of descriptions of his condition, interspersed by four monologues revealing his state of mind. Devising speeches and inner monologues are, of course, a constant feature of Greek literature. Thucydides’ famous statement (1.22) that speeches should be what the author considers contextually apt has been the yardstick of embedded speech-writing, although in Philo’s case it probably entailed considerable imagination and invention.16 Speeches may divulge personal experiences and intimate information with

Philo’s Flaccus  165 a semblance of authenticity. In the first speech (157–60),17 Flaccus addresses his accompanying guards and escorts; the second (162–65) is not directed to anyone in particular, underscoring his isolation and increasingly deranged mind. The longest monologue (169–75) is fashioned as a prayer addressed to the supreme God, in which Flaccus draws parallels between his own sufferings and those of the Jews. In the final direct speech (178–79), Flaccus expresses his paranoia and the inevitability of his fate. Meiser (1999: 428) notes a progression towards the true insight in the third speech, which should be coupled with Philo’s sustained interest in the social isolation and mental regression of Flaccus. A detailed analysis focussing on Philo’s use of topoi illuminates how Philo goes about composing his protagonist’s plight. The first speech, set on the boat towards Andros, has elements typical of a lament.18 In general, the actions and emotions are those of someone who recently suffered a major setback: grief, even disbelief, coupled with shame about his fall into dishonor. Before he starts to speak, Flaccus performs typical wailing gestures, crying and chest beating,19 while the speech itself contains metaphors of day and night and of life and death to express the contrast between his former happiness and his current misery and impending doom. His opening words are bitterly sarcastic, referring to “this beautiful land, Andros” (καλήν γε χώραν Ἄνδρον) which, however, immediately becomes the “unfortunate” (οὐκ εὐτυχῆ) island, for which he has had to leave “happy” (εὐδαίμονος) Italy. He ponders the meaning of his “great reversal” (τίς ἡ τοσαύτη μεταβολή) from his former high standing in Rome (an intimate of the imperial family since he was a child) and in Egypt (Rome’s greatest possession) to being on this journey as if “carrying his own corpse” (νεκροφόρος) into a “tomb” (τάφος, ἠρίον). He experiences what is happening to him as an eclipse (night in daytime), and himself as already dead but, even worse than death, still capable of perception (σὺν αἰσθήσει). The speech contains numerous evaluative terms associated with a dysphoric state, stressing Flaccus’ current misery (ἀτυχῆ, κακοδαίμων, ἀθλία ζωή, ἀνίαι), but it does not have the ritualistic, constructive, and therapeutic potential of the literary lament, which is not Philo’s current interest (Šijaković 2011: 87–89). The direct speech is framed at the end with another physical expression of intense grief: alighting from the boat, his body is stooped, as if his circumstances (συμφοραί) have become a physical weight on his neck. The term συμφορά can ambiguously refer to either “mishap” or “misdeed,” and Philo describes his conduct as reflecting both: he can muster neither the power nor the courage to lift his head and look people in the eye. Avoidance, we have seen, is a typical trauma response, but in antiquity avoiding eye contact was also associated with being weighed down by conscience. Flaccus’ grief slowly starts showing signs of remorse. As if alluding to pre-traumatic factors, Philo already at the start of the work (9–18) shows Flaccus as prone to violent emotions and depression. When he hears of the death of his champion Tiberius, he reacts in similar fashion with “tears flowing like a fountain,” “continuous dejection,” (ἐκ τῆς συνεχοῦς κατηφείας) and “falling down speechless” (καταβαλὼν ἑαυτὸν ἀχανὴς ἔκειτο). In Philo’s

166  Philip R. Bosman view, the cause of his dislodged reason was the loss of hope (ἐλπίς, 16),20 so there is justification to claim that Philo wishes to portray Flaccus as prone to mental volatility in reaction to adverse circumstances. Would it be possible to link his description closer to a mental condition identified in ancient medicine? While Philo certainly took cognizance of medicine and medical practice,21 his familiarity with diagnostic theories is uncertain. Flaccus’ condition would have fallen within the range that includes (reactive) depression, despondency, excessive grief, and melancholia. Regular terms such as ἀθυμία (despondency) and δυσθυμία (dispiritedness) are absent from his text, but Philo’s description shows considerable overlap with patient cases recorded in the Hippocratic corpus: Thumiger (2017) refers to emotions of sadness, pain and grief, hopelessness, silences or refusals to talk, fear, and despondency, often accompanied by physical symptoms such as screams and tears, compulsive movements and insomnia.22 Another candidate for an identifiable condition is melancholia, which in antiquity was closely linked to humoral theory and an excess of “black bile.” The term itself, however, is absent from the Flaccus. Philo furthermore never uses χυμός (humor) in its technical sense, so that when μελαγχολία does occur, it is not linked to humor theory.23 But again the similarities in symptoms are striking. Philo’s native city was home to some of the most prominent doctors of the early Roman empire, among them Soranus of Ephesus, who in the later 1st/early 2nd centuries ce practiced medicine in Alexandria.24 Soranus belonged to the Methodist school of medicine who rejected the humoral theory of the Hippocratics.25 They also restricted melancholia to animi anxietas (mental anguish), not including alienatio mentis (impairment of mental capacity) itself—thus able to account for Flaccus’ growing insight (McDonald 2009: 117). It seems plausible that the melancholia in Philo’s portrait could have been influenced by Methodists residing in Alexandria. But the city was also for a time the home of another famous physician by the name of Aretaeus of Cappadocia, who belonged to the Pneumatic school of medicine (supporting humoral theory) but whose view of melancholia also has parallels with that of Flaccus.26 Whereas Soranus held mania and melancholia as two distinct conditions, Aretaeus saw them as belonging to the same illness (arising from black bile), with melancholia an early stage of mania; when melancholia worsens, it turns into mania, with an accompanying loss of reason. Both schools linked melancholia to a range of symptoms such as depression and sadness, suspiciousness, avoidance of public places, superstition, irrational fears, a longing for death alternating with a fear of death.27 Before letting Flaccus speak for the second time, Philo continues with enumerating symptoms: Flaccus became delirious with even more vivid φαντασίαι (imaginings), he craved for death and presented with “uncontrolled movements”: οὕτως ἐσφάδᾳζεν, ὡς μηδὲν τῶν μεμηνότων διαφέρειν· ἐπήδα πολλάκις ἄνω κάτω διαθέων, τὰς χεῖρας συνεκρότει, τοὺς μηροὺς ἔπαιε, κατέβαλεν εἰς τοὔδαφος ἑαυτόν, ἐξεφώνει πολλάκις· (Flacc. 162–63)

Philo’s Flaccus  167 He made such spastic movements that it was impossible to see any difference with a lunatic. He ran around, frequently jumping up and down, clapping his hands, smiting his thighs, flinging himself on the ground, often shouting. (transl. by Van der Horst 2003: 83) The second speech, addressed to nobody in particular, is presented as occurring during such fits. In contrast to the first speech, Flaccus now looks at his former life as a happy illusion, a figment of his soul that evaporates as soon as he awakens to his very real current misery: “ἐγὼ Φλάκκος εἰμί, ὁ πρὸ μικροῦ τῆς μεγαλοπόλεως ἢ πολυπόλεως Ἀλεξανδρείας ἡγεμών, ὁ τῆς εὐδαιμονεστάτης χώρας ἐπίτροπος Αἰγύπτου … (164) ἀλλὰ μὴ φάσμα ταῦτ’ ἦν, οὐκ ἀλήθεια; καὶ κοιμώμενος ὄναρ εἶδον τὴν τότ’ εὐθυμίαν, εἴδωλα κατὰ κενοῦ βαίνοντα, πλάσματα ψυχῆς ἴσως ἀναγραφούσης τὰ μὴ ὑπάρχοντα ὡς ὄντα; διηπάτημαι·…” (Flacc. 163–65) “I am Flaccus, who until recently was the governor of a great city, or rather multi-city, Alexandria, and the ruler of the most blessed land of Egypt! … (164) But was all this just an illusion, not reality at all? Was it only when I slept that I saw in my dreams that former happiness, images disappearing into a void, figments of a soul which perhaps depicted non-existing things as reality? Yes, I have completely deceived myself! (transl. by Van der Horst 2003: 84) Philo seems to be alluding to what is known as the dissociative symptoms of depersonalization and derealization, also associated with PTSD. The enumeration of symptoms reminiscent of patient case reporting continues after the speech (166–67): he shunned company even more due to his shame and lack of courage, and he hated whatever time of day he found himself in: night time because of visions haunting him, and daytime because the gloom (ζόφος) surrounding him detested its brightness.28 But Philo now introduces a new symptom not found in medical writings, namely that his soul was tormented and devoured by the lingering memories of his κακοπραγία, thus making explicit, on the one hand, the link to the traumatic mishaps but also, on the other, to his own misdeeds of the past. The third speech elaborates on the latter connection when Flaccus addresses the supreme God, whom he now acknowledges as the προαγωνιστής (champion) and ὑπέρμαχος (defender) of the Jews. Before the prayer starts, Flaccus experiences something of a Corybantic spell with prophetic illumination, by which he looks up to the sky to clearly perceive “beholding that veritable world within a world” (τὸν ἐν κόσμῳ κόσμον ὄντως ἰδών, Flacc. 169), that is, true reality including God’s righteousness at work.29 This is the inspired (Platonic) madness by which the truth can be perceived. In this trance, Flaccus suddenly understands

168  Philip R. Bosman that everything that has been happening to him has a parallel in the atrocities he “madly committed” (κατεμάνην) against the Jews. These parallels are consequently listed in the remainder of the prayer (170–75), before Flaccus mentions the Ποιναί, dreaded avengers of blood who are already waiting in the wings and causing him “to die in anticipation” (προαποθνῄσκω) and “to suffer many deaths” (πολλοὺς θανάτους ὑπομένων) while waiting for their final onslaught (Flacc. 175). In a final list of symptoms, Flaccus presented first with shivering, panting, and palpitations caused by recurring fear and panic attacks; and second with various manifestations of paranoia, letting him slip into an animalistic existence and causing him to both dread and long for his own death.30 Philo concludes his drawn-out description of emotional trauma by noting how “uninterrupted sorrows went on to disturb and confuse his soul” (transl. by Van der Horst 2003: 85). It is customary to situate the agonies of Flaccus within the topos of the death of the god-scorner, of which Euripides’ Pentheus is an early and Lactantius’ On the Deaths of the Persecutors a much later example.31 Second, it has been suggested by Gerschmann (1964: 126) that Flaccus’ lament could have been borrowed from lamentations in the Greek novel, which, however, also postdates Philo (see also Van der Horst 2003: 11). In light of this, I argue that Philo tapped into medical case histories and symptomatologies.32 Were there any other sources for his portrayal? Scholarship remains uncertain about Philo’s sources for the life of Flaccus, especially for the second part (Van der Horst 2003: 11–12). But Philo must have obtained a basic narrative from somewhere about the trial in Rome, the journey, the change of destination from Gyara to Andros after Lepidus interceded; his buying some land at a later stage, and his eventual murder rumored to be on command of the emperor. It seems probable that in such a report Flaccus was portrayed as in the grips of severe melancholia, a disease already observed during his tenure as prefect of Egypt. Melancholia is not an obvious choice for divine retribution, and it seems more likely that, if the choice was wholly Philo’s, he would have opted for a more severe condition. So Philo goes on to amplify these symptoms from a different source, namely the topos of mental retributive justice. The idea of an avenging Dike had a long and venerable history, already recorded in a fragment ascribed to Solon (4 West 1992).33 Here Dike is the one “who in silence observes what happens and what has been,/ and in the course of time comes without fail to exact the penalty” (ἣ σιγῶσα σύνοιδε τὰ γιγνόμενα πρό τ᾽ἐόντα/ τῷ δὲ χρόνῳ πάντως ἦλθ’ ἀποτεισομένη). For Philo, the personified Dike is a perfectly acceptable agent to execute the will of God, although in the mouth of his pagan protagonist the Poinai are responsible (175). But Philo entangles Dike with a further topos, namely that of the tormenting conscience. The quoted Solon fragment has one of the very first occurrences of the verb σύνοιδα, here in a non-reflexive verbal phrase “to know with” another person of crimes and committed misdeeds; in Greek literature the verbal phrase gradually made way for the substantive forms συνείδησις and συνειδός (conscience), of which Philo favored the latter. Those who suffer from the pangs

Philo’s Flaccus  169 of conscience show symptoms similar to those of Flaccus, as the following example of the topos from Polybius illustrates:34 ἥ γε παρὰ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀνθρώποις φήμη τιμωρὸς αὐτοῖς ἕπεται παρ’ ὅλον τὸν βίον, πολλοὺς μὲν φόβους ψευδεῖς, πολλοὺς δ’ ἀληθεῖς παριστάνουσα καὶ νύκτωρ καὶ μεθ’ ἡμέραν, πᾶσι δὲ συνεργοῦσα καὶ συνυποδεικνύουσα τοῖς κακόν τι κατ’ ἐκείνων βουλευομένοις, τὸ δὲ τελευταῖον οὐδὲ κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους ἐῶσα λήθην αὐτοὺς ἔχειν τῶν ἡμαρτημένων, ἀλλ’ ὀνειρώττειν ἀναγκάζουσα πᾶν γένος ἐπιβουλῆς καὶ περιπετείας, ἅτε συνειδότας ἑαυτοῖς τὴν ὑπάρχουσαν ἐκ πάντων ἀλλοτριότητα πρὸς σφᾶς καὶ τὸ κοινὸν μῖσος. (Polyb. 18.15) their evil name among other men clings to them for their whole life, producing many false apprehensions and many real ones by night and by day, aiding and abetting all who have evil designs against them, and finally not allowing them even in sleep to forget their offence, but compelling them to dream of every kind of plot and peril, conscious as they are of the estrangement of everybody and of men’s universal hatred of them (text and transl. by Paton 1922–27) In Philo, the conscience operated within an inner court of law, where it becomes not only an accuser, but also an internal avenger.35 The term συνειδός occurs twice elsewhere in the Flaccus (Bosman 2003: 120–24). Already at the start of the work (Flacc. 7), Philo notes that Flaccus stood already convicted in the court of the συνειδός for having knowingly (ἐξ ἐπιστήμης) committed the crimes against the Jews. Philo wishes his readers to realize that Flaccus’ mental afflictions were not merely due to depression but were the result of that inner awareness of having done terrible things. Again, this is still not enough punishment to Philo, so he adds a further element, namely the fear of punishment to come and the anguish, suspicion, and isolation accompanying such fear. When the day of reckoning inevitably arrives, Philo notes that Flaccus immediately recognized the inevitable unfolding of fate with the infallible prophetic ability of the soul, especially of those in the grip of distress (186).

Conclusion Philo’s description of Flaccus’ mental disintegration shows clear similarities with what has become known as post-traumatic stress disorder, not only because it is formally triggered by traumatic events, but also because of remarkable similarities with the DSM-listed symptoms. If it may be accepted that the ancients also suffered from such disorders, Philo’s treatment suggests that he had access to medical records of such cases. In antiquity, however, the disorder was not circumscribed, and would have been categorized as a form of melancholia brought about by the traumatic loss of former prosperity and status. Initially, the patient

170  Philip R. Bosman presents with lamenting gestures and depressive ruminations, and displays dissociative behavior: first experiencing his current existence as a nightmare, then his former existence as an illusion. At stages his condition slips into behavior akin to madness with an inability to restrain body or mind. At further stages of negative alterations in cognitions, the patient links his suffering to wrongdoing in his former life, which increases his anxiety, paranoia, and social isolation. But the Flaccus syndrome is, in fact, not a mere mental affliction, and the truth of his conclusions, fears, and suspicions is finally confirmed when he dies a gruesome death by the hands of the agents of Dike and of God. The possibility exists that Philo wrote the In Flaccum as itself a form of therapy, not only by way of the consolation it offers of the providence and continued care of God, but also through the very act of dwelling on Flaccus’ mental and physical suffering. In terms of trauma theory, it might be considered as an attempt at healing by means of representation. It would be impossible to establish whether the author relied on either personal experience or clinical observation, and Philo distinguishes clearly between the situations and culpabilities of the Jews and of Flaccus. While they are presented as parallel, Flaccus gradually comes to realize that his sufferings are the result of his personal crimes, and hence a playing out of justice. Philo’s picture of Flaccus’ disintegration is composed of a series of literary topoi to indicate a worsening of symptoms as his culpability dawns on him. His insight, however, does not lead to redemption, but to fear, isolation, and paranoia, and finally to physical destruction.

Notes 1 Literature is extensive; see for example Burstow (2005) and Manguno-Mire and Franklin (2010) on DSM-IV (2003); Pai et al. (2017) on DSM-V. 2 A recent discussion of the In Flaccum and the Legatio ad Gaium in Gambetti (2009: 13–21); for the Flaccus’ place in the Philonic corpus, see Van der Horst (2003: 1–6), who dates it to just before or shortly after Gaius’ death, i.e., 40–41 ce. 3 A brief reconstruction of events in Gambetti (2009: 17–21 and a detailed elaboration in 2009: 137–94). See also Atkinson (2006). For surveys of the history of scholarship on the In Flaccum, see Van der Horst (2003: 38–49). On the rights of the Jewish community in Alexandria during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, see Gambetti (2009: 22–76). 4 On the untenability of Philo’s version of the conflict, see Gambetti (2009: 19–21). A summary of Reiter’s detailed treatment of the text in Van der Horst (2003: 49–51), who suggests that the appearance of incompleteness at the start—δεύτερος μετὰ Σηιανὸν Φλάκκος Ἀουίλλιος διαδέχεται τὴν κατὰ τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἐπιβουλήν (Flacc. 1, “The policy of attacking the Jews begun by Sejanus was taken over by Flaccus Avillius”)— implies the loss of a complete preceding treatise rather than merely the beginning of the Flaccus itself. 5 See Colson (1941: 301): “He gloats over the misery of Flaccus in his fall, exile, and death, with a vindictiveness which I feel to be repulsive.” Against this view, Nikiprowetzky (1996: 96–109); Van der Horst (2003: 202 on Flacc. 121): “So the ‘Schadenfreude’ is not a goal in itself, it stands in the service of the creation of hope and faith among God’s people. Their joy is not about the misery of an individual person, it is about the meaning and implication of this, namely the merciful intervention of God…. What he aims at in this treatise is not to demonstrate a triumph of revenge but of divine justice.” On the theme of hope, see below, nn.20, and 30.

Philo’s Flaccus  171 6 Traumatic events in DSM-V are narrowed down to “actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence” (DSM-V: 271), thereby excluding psychosocial stressors of the kind experienced by Philo’s Flaccus; see also Pai et al. (2017). 7 I thank the editors of this volume for assistance in articulating the connections between the literary depiction and current trauma theory. 8 A structure of the Flaccus in Van der Horst (2003: 6). 9 The level of Flaccus’ involvement in the uprising against the Jews is less clear than might be expected in a text dealing with the divine punishment of a “Jew-hater” (Van der Horst). Compare Gambetti (2009: 20): “In short, Flaccus stood by more than he acted.” See also Gruen (2002: 57–58). 10 Van der Horst (2003: 6) sees the Flaccus “like a diptych,” with its two parts mirror images of each other. See also Van der Horst (2004: 96), Alston (1997: 165–66). 11 Translation of the Greek text of Flaccus are from Colson (1941), unless otherwise ­indicated. 12 Translation by Van der Horst (2003: 73). See also “evil-hating Justice” in Flacc. 107. 13 See Manguno-Mire and Franklin (2010: 355) on DSM-IV-TR; DSM-V: 271. 14 DSM-V: 271 interprets PTSD-related dissociative behavior as “1. Avoidance of or efforts to avoid distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings about or closely associated with the traumatic event(s)” and “2. Avoidance of or efforts to avoid external reminders (people, places, conversations, activities, objects, situations) that arouse distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings about or closely associated with the traumatic event(s).” 15 While Philo focuses on bodies in the whole section, the most striking parallel of bodily disintegration is at Flacc. 70–71: πολλοὺς δὲ καὶ ζῶντας τοῖν ποδοῖν τὸν ἕτερον ἐκδήσαντες κατὰ τὸ σφυρὸν εἷλκον ἅμα καὶ κατηλόων ἐναλλόμενοι θάνατον ὠμότατον ἐπινοήσαντες· καὶ τελευτησάντων, οὐδὲν ἧττον ἀτελεύτητα μηνιῶντες βαρυτέρας αἰκίας τοῖς σώμασιν ἐπέφερον, διὰ πάντων ὀλίγου δέω φάναι τῶν τῆς πόλεως στενωπῶν κατασύροντες, ἕως ὁ νεκρὸς δοράς, σάρκας, ἶνας ὑπὸ τῆς τῶν ἐδάφων ἀνωμαλίας καὶ τραχύτητος περιθρυφθείς, καὶ τῶν ἡνωμένων μερῶν τῆς συμφυίας διαστάντων καὶ διασπαρέντων ἀλλαχόσε ἄλλων, ἐδαπανήθη (“They inflicted worse outrages on the bodies, dragging them through almost every lane of the city until the corpses, their skin, flesh and muscles shattered by the unevenness and roughness of the ground, and all the parts which united to make the organism dissevered and dispersed in different directions, were wasted to nothing”). The reader may be reminded of the DSM-IV definition of the traumatic event as “a threat to physical integrity,” see Manguno-Mire and Franklin (2010: 355). 16 Van der Horst (2003: 11) considers the Greek novel as Philo’s literary example. 17 A direct speech attributed to Flaccus also occurs in the first part, Flacc. 98–99. See Meiser (1999: 427). 18 See Flacc. 160: καὶ ὁ μὲν τοιαῦτα ἀπωδύρετο (in such wise did he lament). Further instances of laments in Philo De Iosepho 16–18 and 22–23. 19 Philo’s tone is from the start hyperbolic, with Flaccus issuing “a strong flow (φορά) of tears down his cheeks as if from a fountain,” Flacc. 157. 20 Flaccus’ loss of hope returns after the third speech, 176–77: ἅτε τοῦ μόνου παρηγορεῖν τὸν ἀνθρώπινον βίον ἐκ φύσεως δυναμένου στερόμενος, χρηστῆς ἐλπίδος, “He lacked the one thing naturally capable of consoling human life, good hope” (my translation). This is in contrast to the hope of the Jews (102) which Philo tries to restore by writing this treatise. 21 A brief excursus on Philo’s medical background in Hogan (1992: 191–207). On ancient medical theories and emotional trauma, see also Thakur, this volume: 143–59. 22 Thumiger (2017: 62–67) notes the lack of differentiation between mental and physical symptoms; e.g., Epid. 3.17 of a patient who suffered “a grief with a reason for the grief” and “presented at nightfall with fears, much rambling, depression and slight feverishness, and many spasms in the morning” (ἀρχομένης νυκτὸς φόβοι, λόγοι πολλοὶ, δυσθυμίη, πυρέτιον λεπτόν, πρωὶ σπασμοὶ πολλοί).

172  Philip R. Bosman 23 Μελαγχολία: Cher. 69.3, 116.3; Leg. Al. 2.70.5; Quis 249.4; Confus.16.3; Som. 2.85.3; see Hogan (1992: 198). 24 On Soranus’ relationship with Caelius Aurelianus’ On Acute and Chronic Diseases, see McDonald (2009: 110 and n.26). 25 To Soranus, melancholia is named so because patients tend to vomit black bile. 26 On Aretaeus and the Pneumatic school, see McDonald (2009: 107–9). 27 On the symptomatology, see McDonald (2009: 112–17). Both schools included spells of cheerfulness in between the more negative symptoms, clearly describing bipolar conditions or “manic” depression. 28 Colson (1941: 393) notes the parallel between Flaccus’ dread of both night and day, and the curse of Deut. 27:67. 29 On the expression with parallels in Philo, see Van der Horst (2003: 234). Meiser (1999: 422n.25) also notes the Platonizing nature of this section. 30 Flacc. 176–77: πολλάκις δὲ ἐδειματοῦτο καὶ διεπτόητο καὶ φρίκῃ μὲν τὰ μέλη καὶ μέρη τοῦ σώματος κατεσείετο, φόβῳ δ’ ὑπότρομον εἶχε τὴν ψυχὴν ἄσθματι καὶ παλμῷ τινασσομένην, ἅτε τοῦ μόνου παρηγορεῖν τὸν ἀνθρώπινον βίον ἐκ φύσεως δυναμένου στερόμενος, χρηστῆς ἐλπίδος. ὄρνις αἴσιος οὐδεὶς αὐτῷ προυφαίνετο· πάντες δυσοιώνιστοι, κλῃδόνες παλίμφημοι, ἐπίπονος ἐγρήγορσις, περιδεὴς ὕπνος, ἡ μόνωσις θηριώδης (“He often was so frightened that he panicked, and then the limbs and members of his body shivered and shuddered and his soul was atremble with fear and quivering with panting and palpitation, knowing that he had lost the only thing that can naturally comfort human life, hope of something good. No favorable omen ever appeared to him. Everything seemed to bode ill, presaging sounds and voices were sinister, his wakeful hours were hard to bear, his sleep full of fear, his solitude that of a beast,” transl. by Van der Horst 2003: 85). In the final direct speech (178–79), Flaccus expresses his paranoia and his dread of the ills destiny still has in store for him. 31 Meiser (1999: 425) and Van der Horst (2003: 11–15), both referring in particular to Nestle (1936). See Eur. Bacch. 45. 32 On mental health in the Hippocratic corpus, with literature, see Thumiger (2017: 55–72). 33 For a brief discussion of the personified Dike and its function in Philo, see Van der Horst (2003: 191–92). 34 On Polybius and trauma, see Jarratt (this volume). 35 On conscience in Philo, see Bosman (2003: 106–90).

Works cited Alston, R. 1997. “Philo’s In Flaccum: Ethnicity and Social Space in Roman Alexandria.” G&R 44: 165–75. Atkinson, J. 2006. “Ethnic Cleansing in Roman Alexandria in 38.” Acta Classica 49: 31–54. Bosman, P. R. 2003. Conscience in Philo and Paul. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Burstow, B. 2005. “A Critique of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and the DSM.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 45: 429–45. Colson, F. H. 1941. Philo, with an English Translation in Ten Volumes, Vol. 9. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gambetti, S. 2009. The Alexandrian Riots of 38 C.E. and the Persecution of the Jews: A Historical Reconstruction. Leiden: Brill. Gerschmann, K. H. 1964. “Gegen Flaccus.” In Theiler, W. ed. Philo von Alexandria, Die Werke in deutscher Übersetzung Vol. 7. Berlin: De Gruyter. Gruen, E. S. 2002. Diaspora: Jews amidst Greeks and Romans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Philo’s Flaccus  173 Hogan, L. P. 1992. Healing in the Second Temple Period. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Klauck, H.-J. 1994. Alte Welt und neuer Glaube. Beiträge zur Religionsgeschichte, Forschungsgeschichte und Theologie des Neuen Testaments. Freiburg Schweiz: Universitätsverlag. Leys, R. and Goldman, M. 2010. “Navigating the Genealogies of Trauma, Guilt, and Affect: An Interview with Ruth Leys.” University of Toronto Quarterly 79: 656–79. Manguno-Mire, G. and Franklin, C. L. 2010. “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.” In Carsted, R. A. ed. Handbook of Integrative Clinical Psychology, Psychiatry, and Behavioral Medicine. Perspectives, Practices, and Research. New York: Springer. 355–77. McDonald, G. C. 2009. “Mapping Madness: Two Medical Responses to Insanity in Later Antiquity.” In Bosman, P. R. ed. Mania: Madness in the Greco-Roman World. Acta Classica Suppl. 3. Pretoria: Classical Association of South Africa. 106–29. Meiser, M. 1999. “Gattung, Adressaten und Intention von Philos In Flaccum.” JSJ 30: 418–30. Nestle, W. 1936. “Legenden vom Tod der Gottesverächter.” ARW 33: 246–69. Nikiprowetzky, V. 1996. Études philoniennes. Paris: Cerf. Pai, A., Suris, A. M. and North, C. S. 2017. “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in the DSM5: Controversy, Change, and Conceptual Considerations.” Behavioral Science 7: 7. https://ww​w.ncb​i.nlm​.nih.​gov/p​mc/ar​ticle​s/PMC​53717​51/ (accessed 29/11/2018). Paton, W. R. 1922–27. The Histories of Polybius. 6 vols. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Shay, J. 1994. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. New York: Scribner. Shay, J. 2002. Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. New York: Scribner. Šijaković, D. 2011. “Shaping the Pain: Ancient Greek Lament and its Therapeutic Aspect.” Glasnik Etnografskog instituta SANU 59: 71–96. Thumiger, C. 2017. “Grief and Cheerfulness in Early Greek Medical Writings.” In Bosman, P. R. ed. Ancient Routes to Happiness. Acta Classica Suppl. 6. Pretoria: Classical Association of South Africa. 55–72. Van der Horst, P. W. 2003. Philo’s Flaccus: The First Pogrom. Introduction, Translation, and Commentary. Leiden: Brill. Van der Horst, P. W. 2004. “Philo’s In Flaccum and the Book of Acts.” In Deines, R. and Niebuhr, K.-W. eds. Philo und das Neue Testament. Wechselseitige Wahrnehmungen. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. 95–106. Völker, W. 1938. Fortschritt und Vollendung bei Philo von Alexandrien: Eine Studie zur Geschichte der Frömmigkeit. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs. West, M. L. 1992. Iambi et elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati. Vol. 2. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Part 5

Communicating trauma

10 Learning to bear witness Tragic bystanders in Sophocles’ Trachiniae Erika L. Weiberg

Sophocles’ Trachiniae is often characterized as a play of late-learning.1 As in Oedipus Tyrannus, the protagonists learn the true meaning of an oracle and understand the consequences of their actions too late, when it no longer does them any good. Yet unlike Oedipus Tyrannus, which centers its plot on the late-learning of the author of violence, Trachiniae focuses on the late-learning of its witnesses.2 This focus on witnessing begins in the prologue, when the protagonist, Deianeira, is unable to describe a violent event from her past. From this moment, the thematic thread of bearing witness, or failing to bear witness, stitches together the play’s various parts. This chapter investigates the different levels of witnessing to traumatic experience in Sophocles’ Trachiniae and argues that this play dramatizes the complexities of learning to bear witness to trauma, a type of learning that always occurs too late.3 Although a concept as old as the Homeric poems and Hesiod,4 the act of bearing witness has been theorized primarily in relation to twentieth-century struggles to appropriately acknowledge and commemorate the Holocaust. As a result, I deploy the insights of post-Holocaust trauma theory as scaffolding for my reading of witnessing to trauma in Trachiniae, and in Greek tragedy more broadly. This detour into twentieth-century historical experience provides a framework for understanding the ways in which a different cultural context addressed both the need for and the difficulty of bearing witness to trauma. The Holocaust challenged its witnesses to account for the complexities of survival after an event that defied both understanding and representation. In confronting the magnitude of the atrocities, many twentieth-century philosophers, artists, writers, and survivors claimed that representing these experiences, in art or in narrative, was simply impossible. Perhaps the best known writer of the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel, wrote, “There is no such thing as a literature of the Holocaust, nor can there be.”5 With this statement, Wiesel captures the central paradox of trauma; it simultaneously demands and defies witness.6 Survivors need to tell their stories to a supportive audience in order to understand and recover from a traumatic past. Yet many survivors find that few are willing to listen, since the process of listening and believing demands that the witness share the burden of the survivor’s complex moral knowledge of human behavior in extremity. It is always easier for witnesses to side with the perpetrator’s version of events, since the perpetrator

178  Erika L. Weiberg often occupies a more powerful social position. Despite these obstacles, survivors continue to search for an audience willing to believe and bear witness to their stories. Dori Laub, a child survivor of the Holocaust, has chronicled other survivors’ struggles witnessing and testifying to the Holocaust. He identifies three levels of witnessing: “the level of being a witness to oneself within the experience; the level of being a witness to the testimonies of others; and the level of being a witness to the process of witnessing itself” (1995: 61). This chapter analyzes these three levels of bearing witness to traumatic experience in Greek tragedy, a genre preoccupied, as Sheila Murnaghan has shown, with the complexities of survival (1999: 107).7 Focusing on Sophocles’ Trachiniae, a play about a woman whose traumatic past returns to haunt her and her family in the dramatic present, this chapter argues that tragedy is attuned to the complexities not just of surviving trauma, but of bearing witness to it. In particular, the first two thirds of Sophocles’ Trachiniae dramatizes Deianeira’s struggle to understand and share her past traumatic experiences and her present fears. The first part of this chapter details Deianeira’s inability to bear witness to herself within her experience of trauma. The second and most substantial part of this chapter focuses on the Chorus of young Trachinian women and on Hyllus, Heracles’ and Deianeira’s son, as witnesses to Deianeira’s emotional trauma. Each represents a different type of witness to Deianeira’s story: the Chorus is overly naïve, whereas Hyllus is overly harsh. Both the Chorus and Hyllus learn too late the whole truth of Deianeira’s story, and bear witness to Deianeira’s trauma in the final scene of the play, after her suicide. By structuring the play as a double narrative of belated learning, first for the victim and then for the witnesses, Sophocles demonstrates the importance of understanding and supporting victims’ communities, who must also grapple with the moral complexities of these extreme events. The third level of witnessing occurs outside of the dramatic action. As witnesses and survivors of these events, the audience confronts not just the physical and emotional pain of Heracles and Deianeira, but also the complexities of surviving trauma and bearing witness to it. Applying observations about the use of film after the Holocaust, I argue that Hyllus and the Chorus function like a screen through which the audience is able both to understand the sufferings of the main characters and the complexities of bearing witness to those sufferings. In discussions of modern productions of Greek tragedy staged for veteran audiences by Peter Meineck’s Aquila Theater and Bryan Doerries’ Theater of War projects, the emphasis has been on the ways in which the heroic protagonists’ articulation of moral injury and emotional pain directly reflect the experiences and responses of modern audience members. Doerries reports that one audience member, Major Jeff Hall, responded in the following way to Ajax: “My God, that’s exactly how I feel. That’s exactly how I acted. And it dawned on me that this has been something, an issue, that’s been going on for twenty-five hundred years, and the Greeks, this is the way they dealt with it” (Doerries 2015: 118). These projects, alongside Jonathan Shay’s Achilles in Vietnam (1994) and Odysseus in America (2002), have demonstrated that something about the human response to

Learning to bear witness  179 trauma has persisted, or, at the very least, that soldiers today can still find meaning in the way that a mythological character created in a very different time and place speaks about and responds to trauma.8 In this chapter, I aim to expand the humanist conversation begun by Shay, Meineck, and Doerries by addressing the ways in which tragedy models for the audience the difficulties and complexities of bearing witness to trauma, in addition to the complexities of experiencing and surviving it.9 In order to bear witness to the traumatic experience of others, we need a reflective surface through which to view our own responses as bystanders. By staging the complex responses of internal witnesses, tragedy asks its audiences to dissect how witnesses fail. At the same time, tragedy demands that its audiences remain sympathetic to the struggles of both survivors and witnesses. I conclude this study by examining the third level of witnessing described by Laub (1995: 61) as “the level of being a witness to the process of witnessing itself.” I argue that tragedy urges its audiences, ancient and modern, to learn to bear witness both to the suffering of others and to the act of witnessing itself. This is, as Major Jeff Hall said, one way that the Athenians dealt with trauma.

The first level: a witness to oneself The first two-thirds of Sophocles’ Trachiniae depicts the struggle that its protagonist, Deianeira, undergoes first being a witness to her own emotional trauma and then sharing it with others. In the opening scene of the play, Deianeira tells the story of her “unfortunate and grievous” (δυστυχῆ τε καὶ βαρύν, 5) life to no one in particular.10 She is alone onstage, except for the Nurse, whom she does not address and does not seem to recognize.11 In this opening scene, therefore, the external audience watches Deianeira as she begins to engage in the first level of witnessing, “the level of being a witness to oneself within the experience” (Laub 1995: 61). In her soliloquy, she recounts a past experience that was too frightening for her to confront at the time, the contest between Achelous and Heracles for her hand in marriage: καὶ τρόπον μὲν ἂν πόνων οὐκ ἂν διείποιμ’, οὐ γὰρ οἶδ’· ἀλλ’ ὅστις ἦν θακῶν ἀταρβὴς τῆς θέας, ὅδ’ ἂν λέγοι· ἐγὼ γὰρ ἥμην ἐκπεπληγμένη φόβῳ μή μοι τὸ κάλλος ἄλγος ἐξεύροι ποτέ.

(21–25)

As for the manner of their struggles, I could not describe them, for I do not know them. Whoever was sitting unafraid of the sight could tell this story instead. For I was sitting struck senseless from fear that my beauty would win me pain at some point. At this moment, Deianeira grapples with the difficulty of bearing witness to her own experience, even many years after the event took place. Instead of relating

180  Erika L. Weiberg the details herself, she imagines an unafraid spectator—a bystander—who could tell the story and reflect indirectly the horror of the scene. Later in the play the Chorus of young Trachinian women fulfills this role of bystander, relating the details of the contest between Achelous and Heracles (497–530). Deianeira’s inability to describe the “manner of their struggles” showcases her failure to be a witness to what frightened her most. However, by attempting to describe these moments to herself, she sets in motion the possibility of sharing her suffering with others. Later in the play, Deianeira describes a second traumatic experience from early in her married life.12 This experience also defied understanding. On the journey from her father’s house to Heracles’, a centaur offered to transport the young bride across a river for a fee. Heracles agreed, but in the middle of the river, the centaur assaulted Deianeira, groping her with “rash/lustful hands” (ματαίαις χερσίν, 565).13 She shouted out, and Heracles killed the centaur with a poison-tipped arrow. As the centaur died, he told Deianeira to collect the blood from his wound, which would act as a love-charm on Heracles. She did so, preserving the lovecharm in secret until she decides that she must use it, as a “remedy” (λυτήριον, 554) for Heracles’ erotic “pain” (λύπημα, 554). Deianeira’s story about her sexual assault contains gaps in understanding that belie her presentation of the blood as a remedy that will benefit her and Heracles.14 Nessus assaults Deianeira and is killed by Heracles in turn; it is clear to any external observer that the poison blood Nessus offers is not intended to help but rather to harm.15 Yet Deianeira insists on calling the blood a “gift” (δῶρον, 555, 692), and hides the charm, both literally in the depths of the house and metaphorically by not speaking of it (684–92). These details indicate that she has not yet fully understood this traumatic event. Rather, it has been preserved in the dark corners of her mind, etched there as on a tablet (683), never exposed to the light (ἀλαμπὲς ἡλίου, 691) of understanding, of narration, and of moral judgment and critique.16 Deianeira recognizes the truth about the love-charm only after she sees its deleterious effects on a piece of wool and then, crucially, relates what she has seen to the Chorus. When she begins her narrative, she acknowledges the difficulty of bearing witness to her own experience. She tells the Chorus that she saw “an unspeakable thing, unintelligible to human understanding” (δέρκομαι φάτιν/ ἄφραστον, ἀξύμβλητον ἀνθρώπῳ μαθεῖν, 693–94). These lines capture the paradox of traumatic experience: the sight of the wool, which evokes a wound,17 is an “unspeakable thing that must be spoken” (φάτιν ἄφραστον), an unintelligible thing that must be understood. The process of witnessing the wound and speaking the unspeakable allows Deianeira to understand, if too late, the truth about the centaur’s harmful intentions. In this speech, she moves from fearful doubt (οὐκ οἶδα, 666) to certainty (οἶδα, 714) that the charm will kill Heracles as soon as it touches him. She concludes, “I gain understanding of these things too late, when it is no longer helpful” (ὧν ἐγὼ μεθύστερον,/ ὅτ’ οὐκέτ’ ἀρκεῖ, τὴν μάθησιν ἄρνυμαι, 710–11). By narrating her experience of witnessing the bubbling, clotted piece of wool, Deianeira finally sees with utter, tragic clarity both the damage that was done in the past and the damage that will be done in the future.18

Learning to bear witness  181 In his discussion of testimony, Dori Laub (1995: 64–65) tells the story of a Holocaust survivor who was imprisoned by her perception of herself as a person “with a heart of stone.” He relates that “her previous inability to tell her story had marred her perception of herself. The untold events had become so distorted in her unconscious memory as to make her believe that she herself, and not the perpetrator, was responsible for the atrocities she witnessed” (1995: 65). Sophocles likewise explores the destructive collusion of trauma and silence through the character of Deianeira.19 Her inability to be an authentic witness to herself in her experiences of past trauma causes her to mistake bad intentions for good ones, and ultimately to attribute blame for this partial understanding solely to herself. After her pivotal recognition that she has learned too late, Deianeira remarks, “For I alone, miserable, will be his ruin” (μόνη γὰρ αὐτόν […] ἐγὼ δύστηνος ἐξαποφθερῶ, 712–13; emphasis mine). Sophocles has carefully shown, however, that Deianeira is not the only one responsible for Heracles’ death—traumatic past events in her life, her alienation from family members and friends, her panicked reaction to Iole, and the centaur’s deception all contribute to the decision that she makes. Indeed, even Heracles eventually recognizes that she was not the sole or even primary cause of his painful death (1159–63). Yet Deianeira fiercely blames herself, as many survivors do, for repeating the mistake of trusting a known perpetrator of violence despite her own misgivings.

The second level: a witness to the testimonies of others Judith Herman’s groundbreaking book, Trauma and Recovery (1992), called attention to the importance of the survivor’s social context for recovery from a traumatic event. Precisely because trauma shatters one’s connections with others, the people in the survivor’s social circle are of paramount importance for recovery. However, not all responses from friends and family mitigate emotional trauma. A supportive response can help, but negative responses can seriously aggravate the damage and hinder the process of recovery. Even well-meaning responses can be misguided, if the friend or family member fails to understand what kind of support the survivor requires. Herman explains, “from those who bear witness, the survivor seeks not absolution but fairness, compassion, and the willingness to share the guilty knowledge of what happens to people in extremity” (1992: 69). This “guilty knowledge” is difficult both for the victim to relate and for the witness to share. Despite the picture of loneliness that Deianeira paints in her speeches, the Trachiniae furnishes the heroine with at least two internal witnesses, Hyllus and the Chorus, who are eager to understand her situation and offer their support.20 Each of these witnesses, however, fails in different ways to provide Deianeira with the kind of social support that she requires in order to arrive at a reasonable assessment of her experiences. At the beginning of the play, Deianeira believes that both Hyllus and the Chorus are too immature and inexperienced to understand her pain.21 Indeed, each makes a pivotal mistake in their assessment of Deianeira’s decision to send the poisonous love-charm: the Chorus is overly

182  Erika L. Weiberg naïve in its judgment, whereas Hyllus is overly harsh. Mirroring Deianeira’s latelearning, each of these characters learns too late how to bear witness to the “guilty knowledge” of the heroine’s past trauma and its influence on her decision to send the love-charm.22 The unexpected arrival of Iole, Heracles’ concubine, makes the support of Deianeira’s social circle even more pivotal than before, since she fears that she has been replaced as the object of Heracles’ affection.23 Whereas previously she had rejected the Chorus’ sympathy (141-52), Iole’s arrival prompts her to seek out both sympathy and advice: τῆμος θυραῖος ἦλθον ὡς ὑμᾶς λάθρᾳ, τὰ μὲν φράσουσα χερσὶν ἁτεχνησάμην, τὰ δ’ οἷα πάσχω συγκατοικτιουμένη.

(533–35)

I have come out of doors to you in secret, to tell you what I have devised with my hands, and also to lament with you for the sorts of things I suffer. The compound verb συγκατοικτίζομαι emphasizes Deianeira’s desire for the Chorus to share knowledge of her suffering.24 In this speech she narrates both her feelings of despair about Iole and the assault by Nessus, from whom she acquired the supposed love-charm. She concludes the speech by explaining her plan to use the charm, “unless you think that I am doing something rash. If so, I will abandon the plan!” (εἴ τι μὴ δοκῶ/ πράσσειν μάταιον· εἰ δὲ μή, πεπαύσομαι, 586–87). By ending her speech in this way, she makes clear that she seeks not merely pity for her predicament, but also a fair judgment of her decision at this crucial moment. As Judith Herman has shown, survivors need realistic judgments from friends, neither too harsh, nor too accepting, in order to diminish their feelings of shame and guilt. The Chorus’ inexperience, however, prevents them from recognizing the potential harm in Deianeira’s story of benefit arising from violence. They affirm Deianeira’s plan immediately (588–89).25 Despite their approval, Deianeira has a nagging feeling that she is doing something shameful: “Only let us be covered well by you; for in darkness, even if you do shameful things, you will never fall to shame” (μόνον παρ’ ὑμῶν εὖ στεγοίμεθ’· ὡς σκότῳ/ κἂν αἰσχρὰ πράσσῃς, οὔποτ’ αἰσχύνῃ πεσῇ, 596–97). Some critics have taken these lines as evidence that Deianeira knows in advance the harm the robe will cause.26 This request for silence, however, attests not to her malicious foreknowledge, but rather to the shame she feels both from the assault, which continues to haunt her, and also from her use of a love-charm, an underhanded method of regaining the love of her husband.27 In this exchange, Deianeira does not delve into the question of whether it is right—or even possible—to achieve a good outcome through means that are shameful.28 Because of their naïveté, the members of the Chorus allow her to avoid confronting this moral dilemma. Judith Herman characterizes this type of unhelpful response from the survivor’s community as follows: “naively accepting

Learning to bear witness  183 views attempt to dismiss questions of moral judgment with the assertion that such concerns are immaterial in circumstances of limited choice. The moral emotions of shame and guilt, however, are not obliterated, even in these situations” (1992: 66). The Chorus argues that Deianeira cannot know whether the charm is a bad idea until she tries it; they do not address the moral implications either of using the charm or of keeping the plan—and the traumatic past—a secret. By avoiding these difficult moral judgments, the Chorus fails to provide the support and discernment required of them as witnesses to Deianeira’s traumatic experiences. Much more damaging to Deianeira, however, is her son Hyllus’ vehement blame. He has just witnessed the terrifying sight of his father eaten alive by the robe that Deianeira sent.29 His observation of his father’s physical trauma makes him call into question his relationship with his mother, who apparently caused this pain: ὦ μῆτερ, ὡς ἂν ἐκ τριῶν σ’ ἓν εἱλόμην, ἢ μηκέτ’ εἶναι ζῶσαν, ἢ σεσωμένην ἄλλου κεκλῆσθαι μητέρ’, ἢ λῴους φρένας τῶν νῦν παρουσῶν τῶνδ’ ἀμείψασθαί ποθεν.

(734–37)

Mother, I would have chosen one of three things: either that you should no longer be living, or if saved, that you should be called someone else’s mother, or that you should get a better mind from somewhere in exchange for the one you have now. This judgment is also overly simplistic, but in a different way. Without knowledge of the assault by Nessus, Hyllus echoes the unqualified blame that Deianeira had leveled against herself, thereby giving weight to her worst fears. In denying her the name “mother,” moreover, Hyllus calls into question her core sense of self and her connections with those closest to her. By assuming her guilt before knowing her side of the story, he fails in his role as witness to her emotional pain. Both the Chorus and Hyllus survive the traumatic events of this play. They remain onstage in the final episode, facing an uncertain future after Deianeira’s suicide and Heracles’ imminent death. In the process of surviving, they learn an important lesson about bearing witness. Although too late to save Deianeira’s or Heracles’ lives, each becomes an effective witness to the moral complexity of Deianeira’s decision. Since she confided most in the Chorus, they are the first to recognize the cruel ambiguity of the oracle, in which Heracles’ release from pain really meant death (828–30). They are also the first to provide a nuanced judgment of Deianeira’s actions, performed in the same ode in which they mourn for Heracles: ὧν ἅδ’ ἁ τλάμων ἄοκνος, μεγάλαν προσορῶσα δόμοισι βλάβαν νέων ἀίσσουσαν γάμων τὰ μὲν αὐτὰ

184  Erika L. Weiberg προσέβαλεν, τὰ δ’ ἀπ’ ἀλλόθρου γνώμας μολόντ’ ὀλεθρίαισι συναλλαγαῖς ἦ που ὀλοὰ στένει, ἦ που ἀδινῶν χλωρὰν τέγγει δακρύων ἄχναν.

(841–48)

All this the wretched woman, unshrinking, applied, on the one hand, herself, because she saw the great harm of the new marriage rushing upon the house, but on the other hand, these things came about from another’s intention at a destructive meeting; surely somewhere she laments the destructive things, surely somewhere she wets her pale face with dewy, thick-falling tears. In this ode, the Chorus finally captures the moral complexity of the situation, attributing responsibility both to Deianeira, for applying the charm, and to Nessus’ intentions (ἀπ’ ἀλλόθρου/ γνώμας, 844–45) in giving it to her. At the same time, they sympathize with Deianeira as she laments the “destructive things” (ὀλοά, 846) that she took from the “destructive meeting” (ὀλεθρίαισι συναλλαγαῖς, 845) with Nessus. These destructive things are both physical—the charm itself—and emotional, as Deianeira’s earlier testimony to the Chorus made clear. Alone with this knowledge, the Chorus is tasked with bearing witness to the complex story behind Deianeira’s decision to send the charm. Their testimony is too late to save Deianeira’s life, but it will be crucial for the play’s survivors, who struggle to make sense of the violence that has occurred and needs to be reported. Hyllus’ process of learning to bear witness takes place more gradually: he learns his mother’s side of the story from the Chorus only after her suicide. The Nurse reports: ἰδὼν δ’ ὁ παῖς ᾤμωξεν· ἔγνω γὰρ τάλας τοὖργον κατ’ ὀργὴν ὡς ἐφάψειεν τόδε, ὄψ’ ἐκδιδαχθεὶς τῶν κατ’ οἶκον οὕνεκα ἄκουσα πρὸς τοῦ θηρὸς ἔρξειεν τάδε.

(932–35)

Her son cried out when he saw her. For he, wretched boy, recognized that he had brought this deed about in his anger, having learned too late from those at home that she did these things unwillingly, under the influence of the beast. Hyllus’ lesson as a witness is marked by the Nurse’s comment that he “learned too late” (ὄψ’ ἐκδιδαχθείς, 934). The theme of late-learning links Hyllus’ recognition (ἔγνω, 932) here with Deianeira’s earlier recognition of her disastrous mistake (710–11).30 Just as his mother had done, he blames himself for acting before knowing everything. The Nurse reports that he embraced his dying mother and groaned “that he had cast evil blame upon her rashly” (ὥς νιν ματαίως αἰτίᾳ βάλοι κακῇ, 940). The rashness (ματαίως, 940) of Hyllus’ condemnation echoes the language used to describe the rash hands of the centaur (ματαίαις χερσίν,

Learning to bear witness  185 565) and Deianeira’s rash decision to send the charm (πράσσειν μάταιον, 587). Through this repetition, the audience hears the centaur’s violence rebounding in rash decisions committed by one character against another, as trauma experienced in the past is relived to disastrous effect in the present. The true test of Hyllus’ lesson as witness, however, occurs when he attempts to testify to his father about his mother’s experiences. As the recipient of Deianeira’s story, and the eyewitness to her violent suicide, Hyllus has been directly affected by her emotional trauma. His relationship with his father is shaken by this newfound understanding of his mother’s side of the story. Indeed, Heracles tries to make Hyllus forget his mother’s story, to silence his knowledge of her trauma. He refuses to understand the “complexities” (ποικίλλεις, 1121) that Hyllus puts forward in his judgment of his mother. Hyllus, however, persists, convinced that “her situation is such that it is not right to silence it” (ἔχει γὰρ οὕτως ὥστε μὴ σιγᾶν πρέπειν, 1126). This attempt to complicate his father’s judgment succeeds only when he names a male agent behind Deianeira’s actions, the centaur Nessus (1141). Suddenly Heracles can make sense of his death as perpetrated by a man, not a woman, and as prophesied by his father, Zeus (1157–78). In this way, Heracles erases Deianeira—and testimony of her suffering—from the play altogether. She is replaced, as she feared, by her double, Iole, whom Heracles forces Hyllus to marry, despite his vehement protest. The play ends on this unsettling note, with Hyllus perplexed by his father’s requests and angry with the uncaring gods. Nonetheless, the concluding lines of the play return to the theme of the difficulty and necessity of bearing witness: λείπου μηδὲ σύ, παρθέν’, ἐπ’ οἴκων, μεγάλους μὲν ἰδοῦσα νέους θανάτους, πολλὰ δὲ πήματα καινοπαθῆ· κοὐδὲν τούτων ὅ τι μὴ Ζεύς.

(1275–78)

Do not be left, maiden, in the house, since you have seen great deaths recently, and many newly suffered miseries, and none of these things that is not Zeus. I interpret the speaker of these lines as Hyllus and the maiden as the Chorus leader, since these two figures have been the most important witnesses of the “unheardof sufferings” (πήματα καινοπαθῆ, 1277) described here.31 By ending with what the Chorus has seen, and asking them to accompany him, Hyllus reinforces the community of witnesses to his mother’s pain and death as he prepares to observe his father’s. These closing lines reinscribe the importance of bearing witness to the sufferings of others, a lesson that Hyllus and the Chorus learned too late.

The third level: a witness to the process of witnessing itself Sheila Murnaghan has argued that survival is presented as a “disturbing, serious condition” in tragedy (2009: 324). Faced with the challenge of surviving the deaths

186  Erika L. Weiberg of others, tragic heroes like Deianeira reject typical human strategies of survival. The difficult task of surviving and responding to trauma is instead undertaken by characters at the margins of these events. These minor characters include the messengers who report violent events that have taken place offstage (as Hyllus does in Trachiniae), and, most prominently, the Chorus, composed of nameless bystanders who react to and sing about the violence and human suffering that they have witnessed (see also Settle and Reitzammer, this volume, 11–29 and 192–209). In their role as witnesses and survivors, these characters on the fringe of the action provide a model for the external audiences of tragedy, who also witness the traumatic events of the play and depart from the theater as survivors.32 As I have argued, the models offered by the Chorus and Hyllus are not simple ones, but are rife with the complexities of bearing witness to trauma. In Trachiniae, both Hyllus and the Chorus confront deep emotional and physical pain, and through their responses the audience sees, as through a reflected image, that the task of bearing witness is both immensely important—a matter of life and death—and almost impossibly difficult in the moment. As the Chorus says of Heracles’ pain, trauma is an “unspeakable sight” (ἄσπετον θέαμα, 961). It both demands and defies witness. In its attempts to address this central paradox of trauma, Athenian tragedy can be compared to film after the Holocaust, at least as theorized by certain twentieth-century thinkers. After the Holocaust, film emerged as an important device through which to bear witness to the unspeakable. A philosopher of the Frankfurt School, Siegfried Kracauer used a metaphor from Greek mythology to describe how film allows the viewer to confront trauma indirectly. Like Perseus, who cannot look at Medusa except through the reflection of his shield, “we do not, and cannot, see actual horrors because they paralyze us with blinding fear […] we shall know what they look like only by watching images of them which reproduce their true appearance” (1960: 305). Kracauer argues for the importance of film as a tool for bearing witness to trauma: by watching footage of Nazi concentration camps not from behind a lens, but reflected before us on a screen, “we redeem horror from its invisibility behind the veils of panic and imagination” (1960: 306). In this way, Kracauer argues, the spectator “beheads” the horror projected onscreen. In the 1974 documentary film The Eighty-First Blow, Holocaust survivor Haim Gouri experiments with Kracauer’s vision of film as a tool for bearing witness to trauma. In this film, Gouri juxtaposes video footage of Nazi concentration camps with the testimony of witnesses at the trial of Adolf Eichmann. By interweaving the testimony of survivors with projected video testimony, Gouri asks the viewer to reflect on the process of representing and bearing witness to the sufferings of others, a task more difficult than merely standing behind the lens of a camera.33 Athenian tragedy, I argue, performs a similar kind of triangulation, requiring the spectator to confront the sufferings of others through a screen of internal witnesses, who react and respond to the disastrous events depicted, often indirectly, onstage. As the Trachiniae demonstrates, bearing witness to trauma involves more than merely watching or hearing suffering take place. Rather, it demands a deeper engagement with the sufferings of others, in which the witness offers sympathy

Learning to bear witness  187 and a willingness to share the unspeakable knowledge of what happens to humans in extremity. Through its bystanders and survivors, tragedy challenges its audiences to reflect upon this deeper engagement by learning how witnesses fail and how they survive, speaking their unspeakable truths.34

Notes 1 On the theme of late-learning in this play, see Whitman (1951: 103–21), Lawrence (1978), Scodel (1984: 27–42), and Levett (2004: 92–102), among many others. 2 Allen-Hornblower (2016: 96) has called attention to the importance of spectating in this play, arguing that the act of spectating is “defined by a powerlessness which the audience shares.” I focus more here on the act of bearing witness as a response that requires the witness’ observation, judgment, and narration of the event or of the testimony of others. 3 Trauma theorist Cathy Caruth explores the theoretical implications of the belatedness of trauma in her work. Drawing on Freud’s concept of Nachträglichkeit, she argues that direct experience of a traumatic event overwhelms understanding, so that “the immediacy, paradoxically, may take the form of belatedness” (1996: 92). Belatedness is a kind of late-learning. 4 The language of witnessing (μαρτυρία and related words) appears in the earliest surviving Greek texts, but not frequently. Cf. Hom. Od. 11.325, 16.423; Hes. Op. 282, 371. The language of witnessing is especially frequent in certain tragedies, like Aeschylus’ Eumenides, which confront traumatic experience through the language and processes of the law court. See Aesch. Eum. 318, 461, 576, 594, 609, 643, 664, 798. 5 Wiesel’s remark is quoted by Felman (1992: 95n.6). Theodor Adorno also famously remarked, “nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch” (1977: 30). 6 This idea is central to the work of many trauma theorists. See, for example, Cathy Caruth (1996: 5), who writes, “If traumatic experience, as Freud indicates suggestively, is an experience that is not fully assimilated as it occurs, then these texts, each in its turn, ask what it means to transmit and to theorize around a crisis that is marked, not by a simple knowledge, but by the ways it simultaneously defies and demands our witness.” 7 On the Chorus as bystanders and survivors, see also Murnaghan (2009). 8 Crowley (2014) has argued against the idea of the “universal soldier.” I agree that social and historical context is important for any interpretation of trauma in antiquity, but the genre of tragedy, at least, treats the crisis of survival in a way that purposely transcends its specific circumstances. On the same issue in Vergil’s Aeneid, see Panoussi, (this volume: 30–46). 9 I am expanding on a suggestion by Murnaghan (2009: 333) that the Chorus provides to the audience “a model for its own experience as survivors. But it is not a comfortable one, and it provides relief only through looking away.” Shay (2002: 152–53) views Athenian tragic theater as “a theater of combat veterans, by combat veterans, and for combat veterans,” which offered a kind of “cultural therapy, including purification.” For an elaboration of Shay’s comment, see Meineck (2016). I think the intended audience of tragedy was much wider, including also family members of combat veterans, who needed to understand and bear witness to their suffering. 10 The text of Sophocles’ Trachiniae is from Easterling’s 1982 edition. Translations are my own. 11 Commentators have often noted that no other extant play of Sophocles begins with a monologue delivered by a single character without an internal audience. See, for example, Kamerbeek’s (1959: 31) comments: “Although it becomes clear at 49 that the Nurse is onstage and has been listening to her words, D. shows no awareness of the

188  Erika L. Weiberg Nurse’s presence until she hears her speak.” Heiden (1989: 21) argues that Deianeira is her own audience. With this unusual opening, both Deianeira’s desire to tell her story and her isolation are emphasized. 12 Deianeira specifies that she was still a girl (παῖς ἔτ’ οὖσα, 557) when she was assaulted by Nessus, since she had not yet made the full transition from girl to wife. 13 Easterling (1982: 144) suggests that ματαίαις be translated here as “wanton.” 14 On Nessus as a force of “malignant eros” in the play, see Parry (1986: 108): “The hostile intentions of Nessus infuse themselves into the image of deceptive, malignant eros that dominates the Trachiniae, an image to which he himself contributes as rapist, beguiler and persuader.” 15 Some scholars argue that Deianeira does, in fact, understand that the love-charm is a poison. See, for example, Errandonea (1927), LaRue (1965), Ryzman (1991), Gasti (1993), and Carawan (2000). Scott (1995 and 1997) posits that Deianeira’s unconscious mind knew exactly what she was doing and that she is, therefore, culpable. Faraone (1994) states that Deianeira knew that there was poison in Nessus’ blood, but believed that it would function in small quantities as a love charm. 16 On the motif of light and darkness in Trachiniae as symbolizing understanding and ignorance, see Holt (1987). 17 Deianeira reports that clotted foam bubbled up from the piece of wool (ἀναζέουσι θρομβώδεις ἀφροί, 702), and that it was the color of dark wine (703–4). θρομβώδεις is used in the Hippocratic corpus to describe clotted blood. See Hipp. De mulierum affectibus 11. 18 Allen-Hornblower (2016: 128–29) calls attention to the verb of seeing in this passage and argues that her “vision of the tuft of wool being destroyed provides that bridge [between virtual and actual knowledge of the future], giving Deianeira a graphic view of Heracles’ destruction to come.” 19 On “the negative synergy of trauma and silence, abuse and secrecy,” see Brown (1986: 15). 20 In addition to the Chorus and Hyllus, the Nurse is also a witness, but her low social class complicates her ability to bear witness, and I do not have space to discuss her role here. 21 Hyllus is so accustomed to Heracles’ absences and successful homecomings that he feels no anxiety for him while he is gone (Trach. 88–91). This business-as-usual perspective contrasts sharply with his mother’s anxiety. Similarly, Deianeira dismisses the Chorus’ sympathy for her, since they are too young and inexperienced to understand her pain (Trach. 141–52). 22 See also the interconnectedness between trauma and deferral of expression in tragedy in the paper by Trigg Settle (this volume: 11–29). 23 Many scholars have noted parallels between the characters of Iole and Deianeira. See, for example, Segal (1977: 115), Wohl (1998: 18), and Ormand (1999: 45–46). On their status as battle prizes, see Rabinowitz (2014: 195): “both women are similarly battle prizes, whether married or not. The potential rape of Deianeira and the actual rape of Iole are not so different; men in war take women, and sometimes they call this prize their wife. The family structure is contaminated by the sexual dynamics of war.” 24 This compound occurs only here in extant Greek literature. Compare also the hapax συγγνωμοσύνη (“sympathy,” 1265) at the very end of the play. 25 Solmsen (1985) argues, by contrast, that the Chorus in fact advises caution in this scene, and that Deianeira fails to understand them, since their process of deliberation is interrupted by Lichas. See also Hall (2009: 70–71, 86–87), who argues that the crisis of the play is caused by “Deianeira’s incompetence at deliberation,” which she connects with fifth-century Athenian views about women’s inability to deliberate on their own.

Learning to bear witness  189 26 Errandonea (1927: 157) views Deianeira’s statement at 596–97 as tantamount to a confession of guilt. See also Albini (1968: 262–70) and LaRue (1965: 216–33). 27 On Deianeira’s shame, see Gellie (1972: 65–66), who writes: “Her shame begins in the very need for artfulness in her attempt to hold Heracles.” 28 On Deianeira’s “fudging of the moral issue” here, see Lawrence (2013: 133): “Deianeira then, like Neoptolemus under the influence of Odysseus in Philoctetes, is prepared to fudge the moral issue, allowing the end to justify the means, provided that all’s well that ends well. She does not specifically argue that what she sees as the probable success of the attempt morally justifies the interference; her emotional commitment to the successful outcome is sufficient” (emphasis original). 29 Hyllus calls attention to his position as eyewitness in his report: “I saw my father’s grievous misfortune with my own eyes and did not hear it merely reported” (αὐτὸς βαρεῖαν ξυμφορὰν ἐν ὄμμασιν/ πατρὸς δεδορκὼς κοὐ κατὰ γλῶσσαν κλύων, 746–47). 30 Roselli (1982: 26) adds that Hyllus’ tragic late-learning reverses the optimistic notes of his first appearance in the drama. 31 The ascription of these lines is a notorious crux, since the manuscripts are divided. See Easterling (1982: 232–33), who attributes these lines to the Chorus. 32 This section is influenced by Murnaghan (2009). 33 On the ambivalence of archive footage from the Holocaust, see Ebbrecht-Hartmann (2016). Klindienst (1996) also discusses The Eighty-First Blow in her epilogue to “The Voice of the Shuttle is Ours,” one of the foundational chapters on trauma in classical literature. 34 I am grateful to Andromache Karanika and Vassiliki Panoussi for organizing the conference at which I first presented this research and for their insightful comments on my paper. Thanks also to my fellow panelists at the conference and to Sharon L. James and William H. Race for feedback on an earlier version of this paper.

Works cited Adorno, T. W. 1977. “Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft.” In Adorno, T. W. ed. Gesammelte Schriften. 10. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Albini, U. 1968. “Dubbi sulle Trachinie.” La parola del passato 23: 262–70. Allen-Hornblower, E. 2016. From Agent to Spectator: Witnessing the Aftermath in Ancient Greek Epic and Tragedy. Berlin: De Gruyter. Brown, L. S. 1986. “From Alienation to Connection: Feminist Therapy with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.” Women & Therapy 5: 13–26. Carawan, E. 2000. “Deianira’s Guilt.” TAPA 130: 189–237. Caruth, C. 1996. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Crowley, J. 2014. “Beyond the Universal Soldier: Combat Trauma in Classical Antiquity.” In Meineck, P. and Konstan, D. eds. Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 105–30. Davies, M. 1991. Sophocles: Trachiniae. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Doerries, B. 2015. The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today. New York: Knopf. Easterling, P. E. 1982. Sophocles: Trachiniae. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ebbrecht-Hartmann, T. 2016. “Three Dimensions of Archive Footage: Researching Archive Films from the Holocaust.” Apparatus 2–3: 1–10. Errandonea, I. 1927. “Deianira uere ΔΗΙ-ΑΝΕΙΡΑ.” Mnemosyne 55: 145–64. Faraone, C. A. 1994. “Deianira’s Mistake and the Demise of Heracles: Erotic Magic in Sophocles’ Trachiniae.” Helios 21: 115–36.

190  Erika L. Weiberg Felman, S. 1992. “Camus’ The Fall, or the Betrayal of the Witness.” In Felman, S. and Laub, D. eds. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York: Routledge. 165–203. Gasti, H. 1993. “Sophocles’ Trachiniae: A Social or Externalized Aspect of Deianeira’s Morality.” A&A 39: 20–28. Gellie, G. H. 1972. Sophocles: A Reading. Netley, South Australia: The Griffin Press. Hall, E. 2009. “Deianeira Deliberates: Precipitate Decision-Making and Trachiniae.” In Hall, E. and Goldhill, S. eds. Sophocles and the Greek Tragic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 69–98. Heiden, B. 1989. Tragic Rhetoric: An Interpretation of Sophocles’ Trachiniae. New York: Peter Lang. Herman, J. 1992. Trauma and Recovery. New York: Basic Books. Holt, P. 1987. “Light in Sophokles’ Trachiniai.” CA 6: 205–17. Kamerbeek, J. 1959. The Plays of Sophocles: The Trachiniae. Vol. 2. Leiden: Brill. Klindienst, P. 1996. “Epilogue to ‘The Voice of the Shuttle is Ours’.” VoS. http:​//old​site.​ engli​sh.uc​sb.ed​u/fac​ulty/​ayliu​/rese​arch/​klind​ienst​2.htm​l. Accessed 6 February 2018. Kracauer, S. 1960. Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. LaRue, J. A. 1965. Sophocles’ Deianeira: A Study in Dramatic Ambiguity. Diss. University of California, Berkeley. Laub, D. 1995. “Truth and Testimony: The Process and the Struggle.” In Caruth, C. ed. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 61–75. Lawrence, S. E. 1978. “The Dramatic Epistemology of Sophocles’ Trachiniae.” Phoenix 32: 288–304. Lawrence, S. E. 2013. Moral Awareness in Greek Tragedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levett, B. 2004. Sophocles: Women of Trachis. London: Duckworth. Meineck, P. 2016. “Combat Trauma and the Tragic Stage: Ancient Culture and Modern Catharsis?” In Caston, V. and Weineck, S.-M. eds. Our Ancient Wars: Rethinking War through the Classics. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. 184–210. Meineck, P. and Konstan, D. eds. 2014. Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Murnaghan, S. 1999. “The Survivors’ Song: The Drama of Mourning in Euripides’ Alcestis.” ICS 24: 107–16. Murnaghan, S. 2009. “Tragic Bystanders: Choruses and Other Survivors in the Plays of Sophocles.” In Cousland, J. C. R. and Hume, J. R. eds. The Play of Texts and Fragments: Essays in Honour of Martin Cropp. Leiden: Brill. 321–34. Ormand, K. 1999. Exchange and the Maiden: Marriage in Sophoclean Tragedy. Austin: University of Texas Press. Parry, H. 1986. “Aphrodite and the Furies in Sophocles’ Trachiniae.” In Cropp, M. J., Fantham, E., and Scully, S. E. eds. Greek Tragedy and Its Legacy: Essays Presented to D. J. Conacher. Calgary: University of Calgary Press. 103–14. Rabinowitz, N. S. 2014. “Women and War in Tragedy.” In Meineck, P. and Konstan, D. eds. Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 185–206. Roselli, A. 1982. “Livelli del conoscere nelle Trachinie di Sofocle.” MD 7: 9–38. Ryzman, M. 1991. “Deianeira’s Moral Behaviour in the Context of the Natural Laws in Sophocles’ Trachiniae.” Hermes 119: 385–98. Scodel, R. 1984. Sophocles. Boston: Twayne Publishers.

Learning to bear witness  191 Scott, M. 1995. “The Character of Deianeira in Sophocles’ Trachiniae.” AClass 38: 17–27. Scott, M. 1997. “The Character of Deianeira in Sophocles’ Trachiniae.” AClass 40: 33–47. Segal, C. 1977. “Sophocles’ Trachiniae: Myth, Poetry, and Heroic Values.” YCS 25: 99–158. Shay, J. 1994. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. New York: Atheneum. Shay, J. 2002. Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming. New York: Scribner. Solmsen, F. 1985. “ἀλλ’ εἰδέναι χρὴ δρῶσαν: The Meaning of Sophocles Trachiniai 588– 93.” AJP 106: 490–96. Whitman, C. 1951. Sophocles: A Study of Heroic Humanism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wohl, V. 1998. Intimate Commerce: Exchange, Gender, and Subjectivity in Greek Tragedy. Austin: University of Texas Press.

11 Oedipus’ lament Waking and refashioning the traumatic past in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus Laurialan Reitzammer

What makes it possible for Oedipus, who has committed the most serious crimes imaginable—parricide and incest—to settle in Attica in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus? This chapter argues that the chorus’ collective lamentation with Oedipus in the kommos (510–48), a performance that revisits past trauma, enacts the crucial work of integrating Oedipus into a new community.1 About a quarter of the way into the play, Oedipus sings a lyric dialogue (kommos) with the chorus of citizens of Colonus in which he narrates his traumatic past (510–48). Immediately after this exchange, Theseus, king of Athens, arrives and announces that he will make Oedipus a dweller in the land (636–37).2 Theseus’ character is marked by a humane attitude, typified by his magnanimous response to Oedipus, despite Oedipus’ past. Yet Theseus is not the one who can single-handedly integrate Oedipus into Attica. The chorus create the conditions necessary for Oedipus’ integration, being deeply involved in the action of the play (more than most of Sophocles’ choruses) and endowed with both political authority (as advisors to Theseus) and ritual authority (as keepers of the grove).3 The unnamed native stranger emphasizes that only the citizens of Colonus will judge whether Oedipus is to remain or depart (77–80). Indeed, the incorporation of Oedipus has already occurred before the arrival of Theseus; by the time he arrives, Oedipus has won over the chorus as a collective body, and they have accepted him in their community (Slatkin 1986: 219; Scott 1996). As we shall see, the lyric dialogue is reminiscent of the representation of mourning in tragedy elsewhere, since it includes antiphony along with other stylistic features and topoi typically associated with lamentation. While Aristotle characterizes the kommos in the Poetics as a song of lamentation (Poetics 1452b24), modern scholars frequently use the term kommos in a broader sense to describe any formal lyric exchange between actor and chorus (Cornford 1913; Broadhead 1960: 310; Taplin 1977: 474–76). This paper proposes that the kommos (510–48) in Oedipus at Colonus is not only a lyric dialogue, but also shares characteristics with threnodic kommoi, in Aristotle’s sense of the term, and that this thrênos addressing Oedipus’ trauma brings him into the fold at Colonus. Modern trauma theory can illuminate further his song of mourning (510–48), which I will refer to as the kommos throughout this chapter. The “lament” sung between Oedipus and the chorus in the kommos is atypical in many ways. Although most dirges in tragedy are prompted by death and usually

Oedipus’ lament  193 appear at the end of the play, the kommos in Oedipus at Colonus is distinctive: no death has occurred, and the lament takes place early in the tragedy. Furthermore, Oedipus (a man) sings with a male chorus, and, although men do mourn in tragedy, mourning tends to be associated more (although not exclusively) with women (Suter 2003 and 2008a). For these reasons, this kommos has not been discussed as representative of the lament genre (Wright 1986; Suter 2008a). The more typical mourning takes place when Antigone and Ismene begin to sing dirges at the end of the play after Oedipus’ death. Yet both passages—the kommos and the mourning song of Antigone and Ismene—share similar language. As the kommos begins, the chorus members remark that they wish to hear of Oedipus’ crimes: “it is terrible to rouse the long sleeping evil, stranger; but, I desire to learn” (δεινὸν μὲν τὸ πάλαι κείμενον ἤδη κακόν, ὦ ξεῖν’, ἐπεγείρειν·/ ὅμως δ’ ἔραμαι πυθέσθαι, 510–11).4 Oedipus subsequently cries ὤμοι and φεῦ φεῦ (519), exclamations associated with mourning, as he details his past and the trauma that engulfs his existence. In Antigone’s and Ismene’s scene of mourning at the end of the play, the same verb, “to rouse” or “to waken” (ἐγείρειν), appears again in connection with lamentation (this second time without the prefix ἐπι-). As the daughters mourn the death of their father, the chorus members command: “cease and do not rouse further your dirge” (ἀποπαύετε μηδ’ ἐπὶ πλείω/ θρῆνον ἐγείρετε, 1777–78).5 In both cases the chorus determine whether or not mourning is permitted. They actively encourage Oedipus to engage in antiphonal lamentation in the kommos, together awakening the sleeping evil through their lamentation. By contrast, at the end of the play the chorus insist that the daughters must not awaken their dirge.6 This verb is significant because, as we shall see, “rousing” the lament is precisely what allows Oedipus to be welcomed into the community of Colonus, emphasizing that Colonus is a place of “narrative memory” (in modern trauma theory terms, discussed below). It has been suggested that the end of Oedipus at Colonus is one of several tragic texts where we see the suppression of female mourning (Foley 2001: 42). After all, classical Athenian literature underscores the notion that female lamentation has the potential to upset civic order (Foley 2001: 21–55). Oedipus’ lament with the chorus, by contrast, reveals a contrary pull regarding lamentation within the culture. The song of mourning in the kommos performs two important functions. First, it serves to integrate Oedipus into the community of Colonus and Attica; second, it offers a new narrative about Oedipus’ past as Oedipus and the chorus, in effect, reframe—if not erase—the traumatic self. The two functions that the kommos in Oedipus at Colonus serves, namely, integration and providing a distinctive and novel commentary on past events, are associated with representations of lament in archaic and classical literature elsewhere.7 In general, lamentation (especially male lamentation) has the potential to reintegrate the mourner into his proper place in society, as Ann Suter has convincingly argued (2008a: 164, 166). Building on her arguments and exploring in detail what the passage as a lament signifies within the context of the play as a whole, I offer a reappraisal of this scene from the perspective of trauma theory.

194  Laurialan Reitzammer The views expressed by the mourner have the capacity to become a part of social memory. For example, at the end of Homer’s Iliad, Andromache, Hecuba, and Helen each offer a distinctive commentary on the action of the poem, sealing Hector’s memory for the future in their own idiosyncratic ways (see also Karanika, this volume: 210–14). Furthermore, laments, it seems, are antiphonal not for aesthetic reasons but because the chorus, when they amplify the mourner’s words, make them part of the social world.8 The choral lament in the kommos in Oedipus at Colonus serves a similar function, as they sing together, Oedipus and the chorus create a new narrative concerning Oedipus’ past. The chorus (and all of Greece) are familiar with the well-known tale of Oedipus’ parricide and incest, but the kommos includes a dialogue where Oedipus pushes back against this narrative, allowing the memory of his past to live on differently. A story in which Oedipus is free from blame enters the collective discourse. In what follows, I first examine the programmatic appearance of nightingales in Oedipus at Colonus—a songbird that in archaic and classical literature is emphatically associated with mourning, the creation of narrative poetry, and choral lament—to suggest that Oedipus and the chorus channel such features of the songbird during the kommos. Next, I offer a close reading of the kommos to argue that the work of mourning and the production of a distinct, exculpatory narrative regarding Oedipus’ past crimes enable Oedipus to settle in Colonus. Finally, I draw on modern theories of trauma to argue that Athens is figured as a site of narrative memory while Thebes is imagined to be a site of traumatic memory. Ancient Greek notions of trauma are different from our own, and applying trauma theory to a tragic character from Greek antiquity is decidedly different from discussing the experience of post-traumatic stress disorder of twentieth or twenty-first-century war veterans;9 nevertheless, modern theories of trauma can shed light on Oedipus’ integration into Attica. Oedipus rewrites his former past and reframes his narrative through lamentation; meanwhile, the play represents Athens and Thebes as places that negotiate past trauma in very different ways.

The sound of the nightingale The setting of the grove at Colonus is of crucial import to Oedipus at Colonus, and nightingales play a programmatic role in this setting.10 In the first lines of the play, Oedipus asks his daughter where they are, and Antigone responds that she can just make out the towers of a city (Athens) off in the distance. The space where they find themselves is holy, she explains, teeming with laurel, olive, and the vine; it is also filled with “many-feathered nightingales singing sweetly” (17–18).11 Later, in the first stasimon, the famous ode to Colonus (668–719), the melodious sound of the nightingale is the first aspect of the land that the chorus stresses when it begins to sing (672–73).12 In archaic and classical Greek literature, the nightingale is associated, above all, with mourning.13 The songbird comes into existence when Procne, lamenting for her deceased child, Itys, is transformed into the bird.14 After this metamorphosis, the nightingale is imagined continuously to narrate her sufferings through her plaintive song. Female characters in tragic plays frequently liken themselves to the songbird to

Oedipus’ lament  195 emphasize their mourning; for example, Antigone in Euripides’ Phoenician Women (1514–18) and Electra in Sophocles’ Electra (107–09). But the nightingale does not simply sing an inarticulate song of sorrow. Rather, as she mourns, the songbird crafts narrative, reframing her past into a poetic tale. The nightingale is emblematic of the figure of the poet in archaic and classical literature (e.g., Theognis and Bacchylides).15 In Aeschylus’ Suppliant Women, the chorus explain that the nightingale “composes the doom of her child” (65–66). Here, of course, in killing her child, the nightingale brings about the destruction of her offspring, but its actions are described with a verb (ξυντίθησι) that is used elsewhere to signify the framing of narrative, the crafting of a story (Friis Johansen and Whittle 1980, vol. 2: 62–63).16 Although the nightingale is frequently represented as solitary, nevertheless in Athenian tragedy, groups of mourning women liken themselves to the songbird while its mention often brings about choral lament. In Aeschylus’ Suppliant Women, the chorus compare their mournful tunes to those of the nightingale, explaining that if someone with familiarity with birdsong (οἰωνοπόλος) were to hear their piteous wailing, he or she would suppose it was the voice (ὄπα) of the wife of Tereus (58–62). The chorus perform the nightingale’s dirge, and in so doing, they refashion the solo song as choral lament (Weiss 2018: 162–63). A similar movement from solo song to choral lament appears in the first stasimon of Euripides’ Helen, where the chorus ask the nightingale to join with them in their mourning song (1106–12).17 Likewise, in Aristophanes’ Birds, the nightingale precipitates choral song and dance.18 Tereus urges it to awaken and to begin mourning (211).19 He then describes what happens when the songbird’s melodies reach Zeus’ realm: Phoebus Apollo hears the mournful tunes, strums his lyre, and establishes choroi (ἵστησι χορούς, 219).20 The evocation of the nightingale at the start of Oedipus at Colonus, thus, must have resonated with an Athenian audience at the end of the fifth century, calling to mind a songbird strongly associated with mourning and traumatic narrative more broadly. Although frequently represented as solitary, this bird has the potential not only to express individual trauma but also to bring about choral lamentation and make it a collective experience. Like Procne, Oedipus has committed terrible crimes, including murder, and has been exiled from his home. When Oedipus arrives at the grove, like Procne, he is praying for refuge.21 Oedipus, however, does not explicitly liken himself to the nightingale, as so many female tragic characters and choruses do. Instead, nightingales populate the setting; they characterize the place where this polluted man will find integration. As seen above, in classical drama the evocation of the nightingale may initiate choral song (sometimes antiphonal lamentation), and such a precipitation of lament happens before the eyes of the audience of Oedipus at Colonus during the kommos in response to the presence of Oedipus.

Oedipus’ choral lament in the kommos: the integration of Oedipus Oedipus is not mourning the death of a loved one in the kommos, but the passage includes features of typical lamentation as represented in archaic and classical literature.22 Indeed, Ann Suter (following Elinor Wright) has, in passing, classified

196  Laurialan Reitzammer the passage as a lament.23 The kommos may also be profitably compared with a famous passage representing ritual mourning, the end of Aeschylus’ Persians (908–1077), a play that represents a series of dirges for the loss of Persian lives at the Battle of Salamis, that also alludes to Athenian trauma (see Meyer and Karanika, this volume: 216). The closing scene of Persians, in which Xerxes laments with a male chorus of Persian elders responding antiphonally, presents the same gender dynamics as the scene in Oedipus at Colonus, where Oedipus laments with a chorus of male elders.24 The lament in Persians (908–1077) is a true kommos in Aristotle’s sense of the term, that is, a lyric dialogue of threnodic character. The chorus’ words explicitly describe their own performance of actions typically carried out at a funeral—the beating of the breast, rending of garments, and antiphonal song—and the passage contains features that are common to tragic representations of mourning, namely, antiphony (a defining feature of lament), a question-and-answer format (956–85), repetitive cries, and repetition of verbs.25 Although the kommos in Oedipus at Colonus does not describe Oedipus and the chorus beating their breasts and rending their garments, nevertheless, elements similar to the passage in Persians appear: antiphony, a question-and-answer format, repetitive cries, repetition of words, and stylistic features like anaphora and polyptoton.26 Taken together, these elements would evoke the context of mourning for an Athenian audience. A short portion of the kommos from Oedipus at Colonus conveys the effect: Χο. ἰώ. Οι. ἰὼ δῆτα μυρίων γ’ ἐπιστροφαὶ κακῶν. Χο. ἔπαθες— Οι. ἔπαθον ἄλαστ’ ἔχειν. Χο. ἔρεξας—Οι. οὐκ ἔρεξα… Chorus: Ah! Oedipus: Ah! The turnings of myriad evils! Chorus: You suffered— Oedipus: I suffered unforgettable troubles. Chorus: You acted – Oedipus: I did not act–

(536–39)

The lament in Oedipus at Colonus integrates Oedipus into the community of Colonus, a function that lament—and more specifically, male lament—has the potential to serve in tragedy. The dirge at the end of Persians permits Xerxes to rejoin the chorus of elders who suggest that daimones have caused the disaster (1005–7). They call him master (δέσποτα, 1049), as they escort him to the palace (Bachvarova and Dutsch 2015).27 Unlike the situation in Persians, Oedipus’ incorporation into Colonus is not a re-integration. Oedipus is not returning home to resume leadership. Instead Oedipus is a foreigner (he is repeatedly called xenos) and as such an outsider from the perspective of the elders of Colonus.28 As the play progresses, however, the chorus of old men of Colonus identify more and more with Oedipus, eventually emphasizing, for example, that he shares their

Oedipus’ lament  197 old age (1239; Singh Dhuga 2005: 334). After strong initial suspicion, the chorus become decidedly well-disposed toward him. Despite his status as a foreigner, Oedipus’ careful attention to the customs and rituals of Colonus denote his willingness to become a member of the community (e.g., 12–14, 124–27, 171–72, 184–87, 188–91). He is clearly amenable to instruction in the local ritual for the Eumenides, asking many questions (468–85) and becoming, by the end of this scene, educated in the local customs. Ultimately successful, Oedipus finds a home in Colonus. Within the logic of this play, however, Oedipus must tell his story in order to gain full acceptance. Initially, he is adamantly opposed to discussing his identity or his past, although the chorus repeatedly demand that he reveal who he is, using imperatives (204, 212, 217, 219; see Singh Dhuga 2005: 359). At first glance, Oedipus’ interactions with the chorus appear to be motivated by mere gossip on their part.29 As they explain, Oedipus’ story is widely known and “never ceases” (μηδαμὰ λῆγον, 517), but they wish to hear the authoritative version (518). Despite their familiarity with Oedipus’ history (e.g., 303–7, 517–18), they demand that Oedipus relate the gory details of his past. In this capacity, the chorus become, in effect, the therapeutic agents to address Oedipus’ past trauma. Oedipus characterizes the insistent questions of the chorus as physically distressing, which further underlines that he experiences his past as trauma. When the chorus inquire about the murder of his father, Oedipus exclaims, “Alas, you struck a second blow, suffering upon suffering (παπαῖ, δευτέραν/  ἔπαισας, ἐπὶ νόσῳ νόσον, 544–45).30 The choice of words is revealing: Oedipus makes clear that narrating his past results in painful suffering, as if reliving them (and this time in full consciousness). The language of disease alludes not only to the opening of Oedipus the King, but also frames Oedipus’ past as a disease that needs treatment. This sentiment seems to be shared by his daughter, Ismene. When Ismene first appears, after greeting Oedipus and Antigone, she states that she will not describe the troubles she faced in her attempts to find them. As she explains, “I do not want to endure pain twice, suffering and then speaking of it in turn” (δὶς γὰρ οὐχὶ βούλομαι/ πονοῦσά τ’ ἀλγεῖν καὶ λέγουσ’ αὖθις πάλιν, 363–64).31 It is better, Ismene suggests, not to speak of past events. Oedipus too begs the chorus not to force him to discuss his personal history. In the name of xenia (ritualized hospitality), he exclaims: “do not ruthlessly disclose what I have suffered” (μὴ πρὸς ξενίας ἀνοίξῃς/ τᾶς σᾶς ἃ πέπονθ’ ἀναιδῶς, 515–16).32 It seems, however, that in order for Oedipus to settle in Colonus, he must revisit his wounds, offering a narrative of his past. Like Xerxes in Aeschylus’ Persians, Oedipus has committed shameful deeds and he must rehearse those deeds again. The chorus do not explicitly and formally accept Oedipus but they create the conditions necessary for Theseus to do so. After the kommos they turn to announce the arrival of Theseus who pronounces Oedipus “a dweller in the land” (χώρᾳ δ’ ἔμπολιν κατοικιῶ, 637).33 But the audience has been brought to a point where they are ready to see the integration of Oedipus move into its next phase, namely, Theseus’ formal acceptance of his supplication. Once Oedipus has been integrated, the chorus are emphatically committed to him. An attack against the

198  Laurialan Reitzammer xenos and his family becomes an attack against themselves and their land, as they physically attempt to defend Oedipus and his daughters against Creon later in the play, despite their age. Through shared mourning with the chorus, Oedipus has become a member of the community of Colonus.

Oedipus’ choral lament in the kommos: the creation of social memory In Oedipus at Colonus, Oedipus’ antiphonal lamentation with the chorus serves to create a new narrative concerning Oedipus. The fashioning of a distinct cultural memory is a function that lament serves in other texts as in the Iliad, where lamenters solidify heroic memory. Although Oedipus’ narrative is known throughout Greece (597) and his tale never ceases to fascinate (517), Oedipus counters this widely shared narrative. He claims repeatedly in the kommos (and elsewhere) that he is not guilty, that he acted in self-defense in killing his father, and that he was unaware that he was marrying his mother.34 Such claims are, of course, markedly different from Oedipus’ response at the end of Oedipus the King, where he is so horrified at his actions that he blinds himself. In Oedipus at Colonus, by contrast, Oedipus asserts his moral and legal innocence to the chorus. He does so first in iambic trimeter (266–74), subsequently echoing these words in the kommos in lyric meter.35 The chorus sing, “you killed,” and Oedipus responds, “I killed… but I have a plea in my defense” (ἔκανον. ἔχει δέ μοι… πρὸς δίκας τι, 545–46). Here, Oedipus emphasizes that he is pure before the law (νόμῳ δὲ καθαρός, 548) and that he was “unaware” when he committed murder and incest (548).36 Mourning has the potential to shift the way the community views the lamenter along with the way the community views the deceased. It has been suggested, for example, that Helen’s lament at the end of the Iliad shifts the audience’s perception of her from cause of war to victim of war as she shapes not only Hector’s narrative, but also her own (Roisman 2006). So too Oedipus, through his lament in Oedipus at Colonus, shifts the audience’s perception of him (both the perception of the elders of Colonus and that of the theater audience), not as one who committed monstrous crimes, but rather as a victim of the gods and of his own ignorance. Oedipus’ ability to be integrated into Attica and find a kind of closure to his life in death, depends, at least in part, upon Oedipus’ new narrative expressed by means of mourning in the kommos. The kommos prompts an immediate welcome by Theseus. When Theseus appears, the meter changes from lyric to dialogue (iambic trimeter), that is, from mourning to speech, marking Oedipus’ interaction with Theseus as quite different from his interaction with the chorus. Although the chorus at first had refused Oedipus’ request to remain, Theseus receives Oedipus without question (he knows Oedipus’ story and, unlike the chorus, does not need to hear it again). Theseus does not require Oedipus to recount his traumatic past. But Theseus’ reception of Oedipus has less to do with Theseus’ character, and more to do with the fact that by the time the king arrives Oedipus’ story has been told and the work of integration in the kommos has been carried out. Once Theseus explains that

Oedipus’ lament  199 he intends to settle Oedipus in the land, an audience might expect the play to be over. Like the funeral scene at the end of the Iliad, and like the concluding lament in Persians, after which Xerxes returns to the palace, the kommos in Oedipus at Colonus has a strong force of closure.37 Yet the play does not end at this moment. Still to come are scenes with Creon, who appears onstage having traveled from Thebes and kidnaps Oedipus’ daughters. Polyneices also arrives wishing to consult his father. At this moment, however, Oedipus has already found a home. The lament in the kommos commemorates Oedipus and emphasizes that he will live on in memory—as does the play as a whole. After his death, Oedipus will not receive a tomb known to the citizens of Colonus, the Athenians, or even to the audience in the theater of Dionysus. Theseus is the only one who will possess the knowledge of the whereabouts of his grave. Oedipus, then, will live on for the community (and the audience) only in memory, and his final words underscore the importance of the act of civic memory: “Dearest of strangers, you yourself, and this land, and your attendants, may you be blessed, and in prosperity remember me after I am dead for your good fortune always” (φίλτατε ξένων,/ αὐτός τε χώρα θ’ ἥδε πρόσπολοί τε σοὶ/ εὐδαίμονες γένοισθε, κἀπ’ εὐπραξίᾳ/ μέμνῃσθέ μου θανόντος εὐτυχεῖς ἀεί, 1552–55). The entire community—the land and the people—will participate in the memory of Oedipus, and, in the future, the act of referring to Oedipus and his death will guarantee the prosperity of the Athenians. This hidden locus of commemoration becomes one of the channels through which Oedipus’s traumatic past is radically altered for the benefit of the community.

Traumatic memory and narrative memory: Thebes and Athens Modern trauma theory distinguishes between traumatic memory and narrative memory.38 Traumatic memory represents a situation in which the individual is unable to attain narrative mastery over, or distance from, the traumatic event; it is characterized by repetition and is a solitary activity. Narrative memory, by contrast, is a social activity in which the individual attains some sort of reconciliation with his or her own history. Others within the individual’s community respond to the memory by offering feedback (e.g., horror, sympathy, astonishment, surprise). The transformation of Oedipus’ traumatic experiences into narrative in the Oedipus at Colonus is synonymous with an attempt to represent the “traceless traces” of the traumatic event. As Cathy Caruth and others have argued, part of the problem with trauma is that it defies representation (Caruth 1995: 3–12; Van der Kolk et al. 1996; Radstone 2007: 11–13). Yet, Oedipus’ lamentation succeeds in articulating a narrative version of the events that can be channeled towards something positive, the transformation of memory in a way that is beneficial to the community. In terms drawn from trauma theory, Oedipus at Colonus suggests at first that it is going to be concerned with repetition (traumatic memory; see also Segal 1981: 366). Yet, the play, instead, turns out to emphasize repetition with a difference with the incorporation of Oedipus into Attica by means of the kommos (narrative memory).39 Oedipus goes to his death helping friends and harming enemies, and I

200  Laurialan Reitzammer would not wish to argue that he is “healed;” however, within the logic of the play, Attica is figured as a place that is associated with what modern trauma theorists would call narrative memory, as opposed to Thebes, which is associated with traumatic memory. As the play begins, Oedipus enters a feminine space (the grove of the Eumenides) where he should not tread, and whence he is expelled.40 He is led onstage by Antigone and takes a seat; an unnamed native stranger approaches and expresses horror that Oedipus has entered an inviolable space. The stranger demands that Oedipus depart at once. When the chorus arrive, the play seems to begin again, as the chorus express horror that he has dared to intrude where he should not and insist that he leave, just as the unnamed native stranger had done before them (Seale 1982: 122; Markantonatos 2007: 83). Eventually, the chorus position Oedipus in a more suitable location, and he once again takes a seat. Still, he is threatened with expulsion (ἔκθορε, 234) a third time, after the chorus realize that the blind foreigner is Oedipus, known for his crimes throughout all of Greece. Although it appears that Oedipus will reenact his past trauma when he enters into the grove of the Eumenides, he eventually finds a new home in Colonus and thus escapes the repetitive pattern that the play emphasizes at the beginning (Scodel 1984: 116). Oedipus remains in Colonus, which serves as a site of narrative memory. Oedipus’ lament represents a reinvestment in life (even as he goes to his death) as he arrives in Colonus showing recognition and consideration for the elders, as well as the social and civic life of the deme. Oedipus has distance, literally, from Thebes and stands in marked contrast to Ismene, Antigone, Polyneices, and Creon, inasmuch as they all return to Thebes, the site of traumatic memory.41 Oedipus is confronted with his Theban past, which takes the form of Creon and Polyneices; they attempt to wrest him from his seat and draw him back to Thebes. But, as he explains, “this is the place” (644) where he will have power over those who threw him out of Thebes. In contrast to Colonus, Thebes represents a site of repetition and haunting return of the repressed. It has been suggested that Antigone and Ismene are “locked in the family pattern of repeating the past” (Zeitlin 1990: 163). When Ismene declares that narrating her sufferings would make her experience them twice, she voices a sentiment antithetical to narrative memory. Oedipus at Colonus begins and concludes with the sound of mourning. After the death of Oedipus, the messenger explains that Antigone and Ismene “are not far off: for clear sounds of their lamentation indicate they are approaching” (1668–69). Antigone appears, crying “αἰαῖ, φεῦ” (1670).42 Yet, while the chorus encourage Oedipus’ song of mourning in the kommos, at the end of the play they discourage the mourning of Antigone and Ismene, exclaiming, “cease your grieving” (λήγετε τοῦδ’ ἄχους, 1722), repeating such admonitions in the closing lines of the play. The chorus decide whether or not mourning serves a civic function, and in the case of Antigone and Ismene, it does not serve such a role. Tragic representations of lament often indicate that, for classical Athenians, mourning—especially female lamentation—represents a troubling practice, a threat to the smooth running of the polis. Yet, Oedipus’ investment in

Oedipus’ lament  201 lamentation, as I have suggested, is what permits him to settle in Colonus and allows his social memory to live on in Attica. Tragedy may present male mourning as serving a beneficial civic function, as in the case of Persians, and Oedipus at Colonus, where it plays a crucial role in Oedipus’ incorporation and his ability to become a savior and protecting figure for Attica. In Oedipus at Colonus, Attica is figured as a site of narrative memory, a place where lamentation does the ideological work of incorporating past trauma for civic benefits. Thebes, by contrast, is figured as a site of traumatic memory, where lament, strongly associated with Antigone and Ismene, serves a solitary and repetitive, non-communal function. Oedipus, curiously, performs the work of mourning with the chorus before his death. Typically, of course, a death occurs, the body of the deceased is washed and prepared (by others), and finally a dirge takes place. Oedipus’ funeral rites take place in reverse order. First, he laments (for himself and his past) in the kommos. At the end of the play, Oedipus himself removes his clothes (1197) and prepares his body for death and finally dies.43 The fact that Oedipus performs funeral ritual normally performed by others (song of mourning by Oedipus himself, followed by the death of Oedipus), in effect negates the need for lament by Antigone and Ismene at the end of the play. Indeed, the messenger explains that Oedipus was sent away to his death “without lamentation” (οὐ στενακτός, 1663), even as the sounds of wailing announce the arrival of Antigone and Ismene onstage.44 Theseus and the chorus refuse to function as an audience for Antigone’s and Ismene’s mourning. Although they sing with the daughters, they repeatedly insist that their dirges must cease. This indicates that, at least in part, Oedipus’ story, his narrative lament, has already been incorporated as social memory by Oedipus and the chorus.45 While one cannot impose modern notions of psychology on this ancient text in any simplistic and straightforward way, modern trauma theory contributes to an evaluation of the significance of the kommos and the distinction drawn within the play between Athens and Thebes. Indeed, within Oedipus at Colonus, Oedipus offers a striking description of his own psychological process. Back in Thebes, when Oedipus first realized the crimes he had committed, his θυμός was boiling (ἔζει θυμός, 434): he wanted to die and to be stoned. Eventually, however, his anguish (μόχθος, 437) subsided (πέπων, 437), and he realized his θυμός had been excessive for his deeds (438–39).46 Oedipus returns to this description of a psychological shift in the scene with Creon when he explains that, when he had had his fill of anger (ἡνίκ’ ἤδη μεστὸς ἦ θυμούμενος, 768), he wished to remain at home, but Creon sent him into exile. Of course, what Oedipus undergoes is far from a “transformation” or “healing” in any modern sense of the term.47 Oedipus is still angry, uttering curses against his sons. Yet the play makes the case that the collective narrative concerning Oedipus’ past crimes has changed. The narration of Oedipus’ past as articulated by the chorus and Oedipus in the kommos imposes a structure on previous traumatic events. As an “end” with closural force it imposes a new meaning on Oedipus’ life, as he and the chorus wake and refashion the past in the grove just outside of Athens, teeming with nightingales.48

202  Laurialan Reitzammer

Notes 1 I argue that the kommos significantly affects the dramatic action. See also Scott (1996: 227). For other kommoi that have major ramifications within the context of the play, see, e.g., Conacher (1974). As we shall see, other factors aid in Oedipus’ incorporation: for example, his willingness to abide by the nomoi of Colonus and the ritual for the Eumenides. But the kommos is most significant. For discussions of the kommos in Oedipus at Colonus, see Burton (1980: 261–64); Gardiner (1987: 112–13); Scott (1996: 227); Markantonatos (2002: 39–44; 2007: 89). Oedipus at Colonus is most commonly discussed as a suppliant play; see, e.g., Burian (1974); Bakewell (1999). This paper underscores how the reception of a suppliant is connected with lamentation; Oedipus is a suppliant who reveals his past actions through a collective dirge. Zeitlin (1990) has also treated the question of Oedipus and his integration at Thebes. 2 The question of the status Oedipus receives (does he become a metic? a citizen?) has been much-discussed. See, e.g., Tzanetou (2009). Scodel (2006: 76) rightly points out that, even when he becomes an integrated figure, he retains some of his foreignness. 3 Singh Dhuga (2005) argues that, despite their old age, this chorus is extremely authoritative (in contrast to other choruses of old men who are often seen as ineffectual). 4 The verb ἐγείρειν (“to waken,” “rouse”) is frequently used to refer to waking someone or something that is (literally) sleeping; but the verb may also be used metaphorically, as here. One may, for example, wake other sorts of songs on occasions more joyous than a funeral, as in Pindar Pythian 9.104 and Nemean 10.21. Sophocles’ text by LloydJones and Wilson (1990b). Translations are my own. 5 See OC 1722, discussed below. 6 Theseus also silences Antigone and Ismene (1751) as soon as he arrives onstage, but the chorus repeat this admonition and they have the final words of the play (1777–78). 7 Although actual laments do not survive from ancient Greece, recent work has advanced our understanding of representations of lamentation. See, e.g., Foley (2001: 19–56); Dué (2002 and 2006); Karanika (2008); Martin (2008); Swift (2010). In this chapter, I focus on the representation of lamentation, not lament as practiced. 8 See Martin (2008: 125), following Seremetakis (1991). Further, Maurizio (2016: 108– 9) suggests that within the ritual context of a funeral, “a woman’s voice, her summation of the deceased, whether praise or blame, however idiosyncratic it may be, enters into communal discourse and thus becomes part of the communal memory of the deceased.” 9 See, e.g., the introduction in Meineck and Konstan (2014: 1–13). See also Settle and Panoussi (this volume). 10 For the importance of the setting, see Allison (1984); Birge (1984); Dunn (1992); Markantonatos (2002: 171n.8). For previous discussions of the nightingale, see Knox (1964: 155); McDevitt (1972: 155, 231); Segal (1981: 373 and 482–83n.34); Calame (1998: 337–38); Suksi (2001: 646). For the emphasis on place of trauma see Karanika, this volume. 11 The nightingale is, strictly speaking, better translated as “songbird.” Its etymological root is ἀοιδός (singer), ἀείδειν (to sing). 12 Certainly, other aspects of Colonus are important, as, for example, the sacred nature of the place and its connection with Athens. I have argued elsewhere that Colonus may be seen as a kind of theoric site (Reitzammer 2018). This chapter discusses the complex role of lamentation in this play and the ways in which Oedipus is deeply invested in the practice of mourning to heal his traumatic past during the kommos. 13 See, e.g., Homer Odyssey (19.509–23); Aeschylus Suppliant Women (64); Agamemnon (1143–45); Sophocles Electra (147–49; compare 107–09; 1077, 1068); Aristophanes Birds (211). For archaic and classical perceptions of the nightingale, see Nagy (1996: 7–38); Loraux (1998: 57–66); Suksi (2001: 646–53); Barker (2004: 187–91); Arnott (2007: 2); Sofaer (2011). Several other birds are also connected with lament, such

Oedipus’ lament  203 as the halcyon. For the association of birdsong with mourning, see Alexiou ([1974] 2002: 97). 14 In many accounts, Procne is daughter of Athenian Pandion and wife of Tereus of Thrace, and she intentionally kills Itys (to take revenge on Tereus for his rape of her sister, Philomela). On the myth, see, e.g., Fitzpatrick and Sommerstein (2006); Levaniouk (2008). See Loraux (1998: 57–66) for the ways in which mourning women, like the nightingale, are imagined to be responsible for the deaths of those whom they mourn. 15 Theognis, for example, remarks that he is unable to sing like the nightingale (West 939). Here, even though he dissociates himself from the nightingale, the bird is still being used to measure poetic ability. Bacchylides calls himself the “Ceian nightingale” at the end of his third epinician (Snell and Maehler III. 98). See Maehler (2004: 100). See also Hesiod Works and Days 203, where, in the fable of the hawk and the nightingale, the nightingale stands for the poet/speaker. See West (1978: 206). 16 See also Euripides’ Heracles (1021–22), where, in a striking turn of phrase, Itys seems to be sacrificed to be an object of song. 17 This takes place as they sing the sorrows of Helen and the Trojan women, referring to the songbird as “co-fashioner of dirges with me” (θρήνων ἐμοὶ ξυνεργός, 1112). In Euripides’ Iphigenia among the Taurians, the chorus also begin their lament with an address to a solitary bird of mourning, in this case the halcyon (1089–95). The parodos of Euripides’ fragmentary Cresphontes includes a chorus of old Messenians who appear to call on Procne to compare their song to hers. See also Rutherford (1995), who discusses P. Oxy. 2625 = SLG 460, a fragment of Greek lyric poetry, that includes reference to a nightingale along with a choral refrain, ἴτω ἴτω χορός. The refrain, Rutherford (1995: 43) notes, evokes Procne’s repetitive lament, Ἴτυν Ἴτυν, offering “an ornithological aetiology for processional song, and for song in general.” 18 In Aristophanes’ Birds, the chorus explain that the nightingale is “companion of all my hymns” (ξύννομε τῶν ἐμῶν/ ὕμνων, 678–79). 19 For a discussion of the representation of the nightingale and the commentary on the “new music,” see Barker (2004). 20 Weiss (2018: 167) discusses the nightingale as initiator of choreia. The Helen passage evokes Aristophanes’ Birds performed two years earlier. See Eur. Helen 1111 and Arist. Birds 213–14 and Dunbar (1995: 205); Allan (2008: 272); Ford (2010); Weiss (2018: 165). 21 Suksi (2001: 655) discusses Oedipus in connection with Procne but makes no mention of his lament in the kommos. Oedipus is an exile, an aspect of his identity he shares with the nightingale in some representations of the songbird. For example, in Aeschylus’ Suppliant Women 63–64, the Danaids emphasize their own exile from Egypt as they underscore that of the nightingale, who is grieving for her accustomed haunts. 22 Alexiou ([1974] 2002) identifies three basic categories of lament: lament for gods and heroes, laments for the fall of cities, laments for the dead. Although the kommos in Oedipus at Colonus does not fit exactly into these categories, nevertheless, the passage contains the features of tragic lament. For typology of lament, see, e.g., Alexiou ([1974] 2002: 133); Tsagalis (2004: 27–52 and 75–108); and see further below. 23 Wright (1986) offers objective criteria for identifying lament in tragedy and classifies the passage as a “reduced lament” (that is, it lacks some of the features of what she calls “full laments,” e.g., a death has not taken place). See especially 96. See also Suter’s (2008a appendix, 171–72), and Suter (2003) for further discussion of Wright. 24 For other moments when men lament and are joined by a chorus lamenting antiphonally, see Euripides’ Suppliants 770–836, where Adrastus laments with the chorus. See also Suppliants 201–23. 25 Some scholars have characterized the lamentation in Persians as the sort of unrestrained excessive lamentation that was imagined by the Greeks to be common among feminized barbarians like the Persians. See, e.g., Hall (1989: 44, 83–84, 131); Hall (1996:

204  Laurialan Reitzammer 39); Holst-Warhaft (1992: 130–33). Gruen (2011: 9–21) gives a balanced assessment of the Persians in Aeschylus’ play. For antiphony, see, e.g., Alexiou ([1974] 2002: 131– 50). For questions and lament, see Alexiou ([1974] 2002: 161–65). For repetition of verbs, see, e.g., 1008–9. For another example of verbal echoing within the context of lament, see, e.g., Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes (961–65). 26 Repetitive cries: 519, 529, 536, 543; anaphora: 521, 541–42, 546; polyptoton: 518, 538–39, 538–44. 27 For Xerxes’ reintegration, see also Griffith (1998: 62–63). See Hopman (2013), who also mentions the fact that choral song, more generally, may serve to integrate. McClure (2006) argues that Xerxes enters the palace (a site firmly associated with his mother) as a shamed and defeated man. 28 The word xenos appears dozens of times in the play (see Allison 1984: 69). All of the characters except his daughters call Oedipus xenos. See Rehm (2004: 33). 29 Knox (1964) calls the chorus “almost prurient” (152); see also Wilson (1997: 63); Kelly (2009: 55). 30 So too Oedipus emphasizes his distress when the chorus wonder if the story is true that he shared his bed with his mother, by responding, “it is death to hear it” (529). The word kommos is derived from the verb κόπτειν “to strike,” so named because the mourner strikes her body (see Chantraine 1970: 563–64). Lament brings physical pain, as the mourner beats her breasts and tears her cheeks. 31 Here, Ismene perhaps refers specifically to the sufferings she has recently endured while searching for Oedipus and not the past sufferings relating to her family history; nevertheless, the idea that by speaking about the past troubles one suffers is not unknown in archaic and classical Greek literature. Compare Euripides’ Helen where Menelaus says he does not want to talk because he will grieve twice (769–71). In the same play, Teucer expresses a similar sentiment (143). See also Odyssey (9.12–14). 32 For the reading ἀναιδῶς, see Lloyd-Jones and Wilson (1990a: 233–34). 33 ἔμπολιν is Musgrave’s conjecture. The manuscript reading is ἔμπαλιν. For a recent discussion, see Tzanetou (2012: 127–28), and see also, e.g., Jebb ([1907] 2004: 108); Vidal-Naquet (1990: 342–47); Bakewell (1999); Tzanetou (2009). 34 Zeitlin (1990: 157) remarks that Oedipus “has evolved a set of juridical principles that distinguish between legal and religious responsibility and between act and intention.” On Oedipus’ change of feeling and lack of self-reproach, see also Rehm (2004: 34) with bibliography. For Athenian law as it relates to Oedipus’ claims, see e.g., Knox (1964: 157–58); Edmunds (1996: 134–38). 35 Later in the play in conversation with Creon, Oedipus continues to insist that he should not be reproached for his actions (966–99). Burton (1980: 263) suggests that the kommos “echoes both the form and content of the argument Oedipus used in the earlier scene, especially in 267 with its juxtaposition of πεπονθότα and δεδρακότα, resumed in ἔπαθες… ἔπαθον… ἔρεξας… οὐκ ἔρεξα (538–39) and 270–74.” 36 It may be the case that Oedipus does not believe his own claims of innocence that he so emphatically asserts, as Linforth (1951: 105–6) suggests, but the fact remains that Oedipus makes the claims during the kommos. See also Rosenmeyer (1952: 96–98), on Oedipus’ attempt at vindication. 37 See Suter (2008a: 167–68) for the notion that closure does not have to occur at the end of the play. 38 For a theoretical discussion of the distinction between “narrative memory” and “traumatic memory,” see, e.g., Bal (1999: viii–x), Murlanch (2014: 121). The term “trauma theory” appears first in Caruth (1996: 72). Studies of Modern Greek lament underscore the importance of its collective nature. For example, Seremetakis (1991: 120) suggests, “by stating that they cannot properly sing laments without the help of others, Maniat women reveal that pain, in order to be rendered valid, has to be socially constructed in antiphonic relations.”

Oedipus’ lament  205 39 Compare Quint’s 1989 discussion of the Aeneid, and his distinction between the repetition of past and the repetition of past with a difference. For a very different assessment of the kommos and the play, see Reineke (2014: 127), who suggests, “the chorus’s prurient interest in rehearsing details of Oedipus’s life inserts a persistent dissonance into the tragic text, pointing toward ongoing traumatic repetition.” Reineke insists that, at the end of the play, Oedipus experiences no transformational healing, as Oedipus curses his sons. 40 See, e.g., Markantonatos (2007: 208). Polyneices refers to Oedipus’ expulsion from Thebes (ἐκβάλλειν, 1257; 646). 41 Athenian audience members that have seen Antigone in Oedipus the King might experience an especially strong sense of repetition concerning these characters. Such an audience knows the characters will go off to Thebes in order to do things they have already seen take place in the theater. 42 For a discussion of the scene, see Bernard (2001: 225–26). 43 His body is also washed and dressed by his daughters (1602–3), but he prepares his own body first. 44 The adjective may be taken in an active or passive sense, “not lamenting,” or “not lamented,” or better, in both an active and passive sense, as I have translated, “with no lamentations.” Segal (1981: 400) takes the adjective as active. 45 The chorus indicate that Oedipus died blessed (ὀλβίως, 1720–23), and for this reason the daughters should not mourn. 46 πέπων may be used of fruit that ripens (related to πεπαίνειν, “to ripen”), of an inflammation that subsides (as a medical term), or, as here, of a person whose anger abates. 47 Nor do I suggest that Oedipus experiences a transformation in the sense of apotheosis as suggested by a number of scholars. See, e.g., Burian (1974: 418, 423, 428); Segal (1981); Markantonatos (2002: 154). Often it is suggested that even before death Oedipus achieves quasi-divine status with his curse on Polyneices, see, e.g., Knox (1964: 148, 153, 161–62); Burian (1974); Rehm (2004: 48). Yet, Linforth (1951) and Easterling (2006) caution against the notion of Oedipus’ apotheosis, with their emphasis on the ambiguity of the ending. 48 I would like to thank Andromache Karanika, Vassiliki Panoussi, and Jennifer Starkey for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. I am also grateful to Pat Easterling for sharing with me portions of her forthcoming commentary.

Works cited Allan, W. 2008. Euripides: Helen (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Allison, R. H. 1984. “‘This is the Place’: Why is Oidipous at Kolonos?” Prudentia 16: 67–91. Alexiou, M. (1974) 2002. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. 2nd ed. Revised by D. Yatromanolakis and P. Roilos ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Arnott, W. G. 2007. Birds in the Ancient World from A to Z. London: Routledge. Bachvarova, M. R. and Dutsch, D. 2015. “Mourning a City ‘Empty of Men’: Stereotypes of Anatolian Communal Lament in Aeschylus’ Persians.” In Bachvarova, M. R., Dutsch, D., and Suter, A. eds. The Fall of Cities in the Mediterranean: Commemoration in Literature, Folk-Song, and Liturgy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 79–105. Bakewell, G. 1999. “εὔνους καὶ πόλει σωτήριος / μέτοικος: Metics, Tragedy, and Civic Ideology.” Syllecta Classica 10: 43–64. Bal, M. 1999. “Introduction.” In Bal, M., Crewe, J., and Spitzer, L. eds. Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. vii–xvii.

206  Laurialan Reitzammer Barker, A. 2004. “Transforming the Nightingale: Aspects of Athenian Musical Discourse in the Late Fifth Century.” In Murray, P. and Wilson, P. eds. Music and the Muses: The Culture of ‘Mousikê’ in the Classical Athenian City. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 185–204. Bernard, W. 2001. Das Ende des Ödipus bei Sophokles: Untersuchung zur Interpretation des Ödipus auf Kolonos. Zetemata 107. Munich: C.E. Beck. Birge, D. 1984. “The Grove of the Eumenides: Refuge and Hero Shrine in Oedipus at Colonus.” CJ 80: 11–17. Broadhead, H. D. 1960. The Persae of Aeschylus. Edited with Introduction, Critical Notes, and Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burian, P. 1974. “Suppliant and Savior: Oedipus at Colonus.” Phoenix 28: 408–29. Burton, R. W. B. 1980. The Chorus in Sophocles’ Tragedies. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Calame, C. 1998. “Mort héroique et culte à mystére dans l’Oedipe à Colone de Sophocle.” In Graf, F. ed. Ansichten griechischer Rituale. Geburtstags-Symposium für Walter Burkert. Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner. 326–56. Caruth, C. ed. 1995. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Caruth, C. ed. 1996. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and Experience. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Chantraine, P. 1970. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue Grecque. Vol. 2. Paris: Klincksieck. Conacher, D. J. 1974. “Interaction between Chorus and Characters in the Oresteia.” AJP 95: 323–43. Cornford, F. M. 1913. “The So-Called Kommos in Greek Tragedy.” Classical Review 27: 41–45. Dué, C. 2002. Homeric Variations on a Lament by Briseis. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Dué, C. 2006. The Captive Woman’s Lament in Greek Tragedy. Austin: University of Texas Press. Dunbar, N. ed. 1995. Aristophanes: Birds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dunn, F. 1992. “Introduction: Beginning at Colonus.” YCS 29: 1–12. Easterling, P. E. 2006. “The Death of Oedipus and What Happened Next.” In Cairns, D. and Liapis, V. eds. Dionysalexandros: Essays on Aeschylus and his Fellow Tragedians in Honour of Alexander F. Garvie. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales. 133–50. Edmunds, L. 1996. Theatrical Space and Historical Place in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Fitzpatrick, D. and Sommerstein, A. H. 2006. “Tereus.” In Sommerstein, A. H., Fitzpatrick, D., and Talboy, T. eds. Sophocles: Selected Fragmentary Plays 1, with Introductions, Translations, and Commentaries. Oxford: Oxbow Books. 141–95. Foley, H. 2001. Female Acts in Greek Tragedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ford, A. 2010. “‘A Song to Match My Song:’ Lyric Doubling in Euripides’ Helen.” In Mitsis, P. and Tsagalis, C. eds. Allusion, Authority, and Truth: Critical Perspectives on Greek Poetic and Rhetorical Praxis. Berlin: De Gruyter. 283–302. Friis Johansen, H. and Whittle, E. W. eds. 1980. Aeschylus: The Suppliants. 3 vols. Copenhagen: I Kommission hos Gyldendalske Boghandel. Gardiner, C. P. 1987. The Sophoclean Chorus: A Study of Character and Function. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Griffith, M. 1998. “The King and Eye: The Rule of the Father in Greek Tragedy.” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 44: 20–84.

Oedipus’ lament  207 Gruen, E. 2011. Rethinking the Other in Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hall, E. 1989. Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hall, E. 1996. Aeschylus Persians. Warminster: Aris and Phillips. Holst-Warhaft, G. 1992. Dangerous Voices: Women’s Laments and Greek Literature. London: Routledge. Hopman, M. G. 2013. “Chorus, Conflict, Closure in Aeschylus’ Persians.” In Gagné, R. and Hopman, M. G. eds. Choral Mediations in Greek Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 58–77. Jebb, R. C. (1907) 2004. Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments Part II: The Oedipus Coloneus. London: Bristol Classical Press. Karanika, A. 2008. “Greek Comedy’s Parody of Lament.” In Suter, A. ed. Lament: Studies in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 181–99. Kelly, A. 2009. Sophocles: Oedipus at Colonus. Duckworth Companions to Greek and Roman Tragedy. London: Bloomsbury. Knox, B. M. W. 1964. The Heroic Temper. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Levaniouk, O. 2008. “Penelope and the Pandareids.” Phoenix 62: 5–38. Linforth, I. M. 1951. “Religion and Drama in Oedipus at Colonus.” University of California Publications in Classical Philology 14: 74–192. Lloyd-Jones, H. and Wilson, N. G. 1990a. Sophoclea: Studies on the Text of Sophocles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lloyd-Jones, H. and Wilson, N. G. 1990b. Sophoclis Fabulae. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Loraux, N. 1998. Mothers in Mourning. With the Essay “Of Amnesty and Its Opposite.” Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Maehler, H. 2004. Bacchylides: A Selection. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Markantonatos, A. 2002. Tragic Narrative: A Narratological Study of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus. Berlin: De Gruyter. Markantonatos, A. 2007. Oedipus at Colonus. Sophocles, Athens, and the World. Berlin: De Gruyter. Martin, R. 2008. “Keens from the Absent Chorus: Troy to Ulster.” In Suter, A. ed. Lament: Studies in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 118–38. Maurizio, L. 2016. “Shared Meters and Meanings: Delphic Oracles and Women’s Lament.” In Dillon, M., Eidinow, E., and Maurizio, L. eds. Women’s Ritual Competence in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean. London: Routledge. McClure, L. 2006 “Maternal Authority and Heroic Disgrace in Aeschylus’ Persae.” TAPA 136: 71–97. McDevitt, A. S. 1972. “The Nightingale and the Olive: Remarks on the First Stasimon of Oedipus at Colonus.” In Hanslik, R., Lesky, A., and Schwabl, H. eds. Antidosis: Festschrift für Walther Kraus zum 70. Geburtstag. Vienna: Böhlau. 227–37. Meineck, P. and Konstan, D. eds. 2014. Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Murlanch, I. F. 2014. “Seeing It Twice: Trauma and Resilience in the Narrative of Janette Turner Hospital.” In Nadal, M. and Calvo, M. eds. Trauma in Contemporary Literature: Narrative and Representation. New York: Routledge. 116–33. Nagy, G. 1996. Poetry as Performance: Homer and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

208  Laurialan Reitzammer Quint, D. 1989. “Repetition and Ideology in the Aeneid.” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 23: 9–54. Radstone, S. 2007. “Trauma Theory: Contexts, Politics, Ethics.” Paragraph 30: 9–29. Rehm, R. 2004. “Introduction.” In Jebb, R. C. ed. Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments Part II: The Oedipus Coloneus. London: Bristol Classical Press. 31–56. Reineke, M. J. 2014. Intimate Domain: Desire, Trauma, and Mimetic Theory (Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture). East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Reitzammer, L. 2018. “Sightseeing at Colonus: Oedipus, Ismene, and Antigone as Theôroi in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus.” Classical Antiquity 37: 108–50. Roisman, H. 2006. “Helen in the Iliad; Causa Belli and Victim of War: From Silent Weaver to Public Speaker.” AJP 127: 1–36. Rosenmeyer, T. G. 1952. “The Wrath of Oedipus.” Phoenix 6: 92–112. Rutherford, I. 1995. “The Nightingale’s Refrain. P. Oxy. 2625 = SLG 460.” ZPE 7: 39–43. Scodel, R. 1984. Sophocles. Boston: Twayne Publishers. Scodel, R. 2006. “Aetiology, Autochthony, and Athenian Identity in Ajax and Oedipus Coloneus.” In Davidson, J., Muecke, F., and Wilson, P. eds. Greek Drama III: Essays in Honour of Kevin Lee. BICS Supplement 87: 65–78. Scott, W. C. 1996. Musical Design in Sophoclean Theater. Hanover: University Press of New England. Seale, D. 1982. Vision and Stagecraft in Sophocles. London: Croom Helm. Segal, C. P. 1981. Tragedy and Civilization: An Interpretation of Sophocles. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Seremetakis, N. 1991. The Last Word: Women, Death, and Divination in Inner Mani. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Singh Dhuga, U. 2005. “Choral Identity in Sophocles’ Oedipus Coloneus.” AJP 126: 333–62. Slatkin, L. 1986. “Oedipus at Colonus: Exile and Integration.” In Euben, J. P. ed. Greek Tragedy and Political Theory. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 210–21. Sofaer, D. 2011. “The Places of Song in Aristophanes’ Birds.” In Pepper, T. ed. A Californian Hymn to Homer. Hellenic Studies 41. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. Suksi, A. 2001. “The Poet at Colonus: Nightingales in Sophocles.” Mnemosyne 54: 646–58. Suter, A. 2003. “Lament in Euripides’ Trojan Women.” Mnemosyne 56: 1–28. Suter, A. 2008a. “Male Lament in Greek Tragedy.” In Suter, A. ed. Lament: Studies in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 156–80. Suter, A. ed. 2008b. Lament: Studies in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Swift, L. 2010. The Hidden Chorus: Echoes of Genre in Tragic Lyric. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taplin, O. 1977. The Stagecraft of Aeschylus. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tsagalis, C. 2004. Epic Grief: Personal Laments in Homer’s Iliad. Berlin: De Gruyter. Tzanetou, A. 2009. “Does Oedipus Become a Citizen at Colonus? (Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus).” In Karamalengou, E. and Makrygianni, E. D. eds. Antiphilêsis: Studies on Classical, Byzantine, and Modern Greek Literature and Culture in Honour of John Theophanes A. Papademetriou. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. 171–78. Tzanetou, A. 2012. City of Suppliants: Tragedy and the Athenian Empire. Austin: University of Texas Press. Van der Kolk, B. A, MacFarlane, A. C., and Weisaeth, L. eds. 1996. Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society. New York: Guilford Press.

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12 Troy as trauma Reflections on intergenerational transmission and the locus of trauma Andromache Karanika

Introduction Uncovering and understanding the emotions of the ancients through mostly literary and archaeological evidence is a complex task, but one that can deepen our knowledge of historical consciousness and human experience. The study of emotions and emotional responses to personal and historical events can be approached from different methodological perspectives and interpretative lenses (Chaniotis 2012). Important scholarly work has focused on the genre of ritual lament and its representation in literature and art, examining how the emotion of grief, in particular, is often stylized and channeled through specific gestures, words, and actions (Loring 1982; Holst-Warhaft 1995; Alexiou 2002). Anthropological approaches have enhanced our understanding of oral genres by analyzing ritual lament as an expression of grief and an act of mourning that further negotiates social relations among survivors and their communities (Seremetakis 1991; Herzfeld 1993). While lament is an outlet for intense emotion, conversely, lamenting and wailing can be constructed as an early form of psychotherapeutic processes for grief resolution and a way to navigate death and traumatic experience (see also Reitzammer, this volume: 192–209). This chapter addresses two different “lamentation” scenes from the ancient Greek literary world, focusing on how they refract the trauma behind grief by concentrating on a specific place of trauma: Troy. My starting examples are two famous accounts from different literary genres: epic and tragedy. With these as an initial platform, I explore further the significance of place as a permanent witness of trauma, and how the mental image of a ruined city becomes a testament of perpetuated conflict.

Lament, time and prophecy: Achilles and Cassandra In Iliad 18, Achilles, dishonored by Agamemnon and having withdrawn from the war until his best friend dies in battle, laments Patroclus’ death and delivers a chilling speech act. In it, he pledges to take revenge for his companion’s death by killing his killer, Hector. Achilles knows, however, that just like Patroclus, he too is destined to die in Troy and never return home:

Troy as trauma  211 ἀλλ’οὐ Ζεὺς ἄνδρεσσι νοήματα πάντα τελευτᾷ· ἄμφω γὰρ πέπρωται ὁμοίην γαῖαν ἐρεῦσαι αὐτοῦ ἐνὶ Τροίῃ, ἐπεὶ οὐδ’ ἐμὲ νοστήσαντα δέξεται ἐν μεγάροισι γέρων ἱππηλάτα Πηλεὺς οὐδὲ Θέτις μήτηρ, ἀλλ’ αὐτοῦ γαῖα καθέξει. νῦν δ’ ἐπεὶ οὖν Πάτροκλε σεῦ ὕστερος εἶμ’ ὑπὸ γαῖαν, οὔ σε πρὶν κτεριῶ πρίν γ’ Ἕκτορος ἐνθάδ’ ἐνεῖκαι τεύχεα καὶ κεφαλὴν μεγαθύμου σοῖο φονῆος· δώδεκα δὲ προπάροιθε πυρῆς ἀποδειροτομήσω Τρώων ἀγλαὰ τέκνα σέθεν κταμένοιο χολωθείς. τόφρα δέ μοι παρὰ νηυσὶ κορωνίσι κείσεαι αὔτως, ἀμφὶ δὲ σὲ Τρῳαὶ καὶ Δαρδανίδες βαθύκολποι κλαύσονται νύκτάς τε καὶ ἤματα δάκρυ χέουσαι, τὰς αὐτοὶ καμόμεσθα βίηφί τε δουρί τε μακρῷ πιείρας πέρθοντε πόλεις μερόπων ἀνθρώπων.

(Iliad 18.328–42)

But Zeus does not fulfill for men everything they have in mind: it is fated for both of us to redden the same earth with our own blood here in the land of Troy; since neither will the old horseman Peleus welcome me in his halls, nor my mother Thetis, but here this land will keep me. But now, Patroclus, since I shall go to the underworld after you, I will not bury you until I have brought here as my spoils the armor and the head of Hector, your killer; and of twelve glorious sons of the Trojans I shall cut the throats before your pyre in my deep anger at your slaying. Until then beside the beaked ships will you lie, just as you are, and round about you deep-bosomed Trojan and Dardanian women shall lament night and day with shedding of tears, the ones we two labored to get by our might and long spears, when we sacked rich cities of mortal men.1 While lament is considered by many a genre typified in its features, it can still channel deep emotions, such as grief, anger, fear, and anxiety, and express trauma. The passage quoted above is particularly revealing as it stylizes Achilles’ speech, zooming in on his anger and quest for revenge. The anthropological perspective on lament reads it as a speech act that marks the authority of its performer; lament has been shown to be consistently linked with prophecy, for oneself and for others, in both ancient and modern Greek accounts (Seremetakis 1991). In other words, lament fuses different time dimensions: the past of one’s death, the present of mourning, and the future that one envisions to come. Achilles brings up the notion of fate that links his life and death with that of his companions, sealed in the land of Troy. There will be no return home for him, since he is fated to die in the land of Troy. While Achilles’ words relay his grief, anger, and thirst for revenge, they also connect his action with the women’s lament in a line that glosses over brutal violence against women, the destruction of cities, and trauma both personal and

212  Andromache Karanika communal (18.339–40). I label this a speech act precisely because what is uttered acts on the narrative’s “reality,” as Achilles pledges to have many Trojan women lament the death of his companion—women that he and Patroclus brought into slavery—until he reaches his final day in Troy.2 Prophetic speech and pledging to act in a certain way are often combined in archaic epic. The Iliadic plot unfolds in a way that validates Achilles’ stance here. Achilles exacts revenge through not only the killing of the Trojans but also their women’s crying—and crying that is forced on the enemy—in a moment that also acknowledges the futility of this war. He is not acting against one particular woman; instead, he enacts his revenge indiscriminately upon and through the “Dardanian” women. Jonathan Shay has read Achilles from a psychiatric angle as the epitome of a warrior suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). War veterans angry at their commander can exhibit rage, a textbook symptom of PTSD (Shay 1994; see also Panoussi and Settle, this volume). Yet, the Iliad does not leave untouched the perspective of the marginalized, defeated and conquered “other,” in this case the women, offering a gendered insight into the realities of war. Achilles meets his death at Troy, the place that defines him. Throughout Greek literature, from Homer to Hellenistic epigrams, references to Achilles and his death also often mention Troy.3 His divine mother, Thetis, prophesizes her son’s death. She too laments Patroclus’ death wailing with her sisters, the nymphs in Iliad 18. In that lament, she, too, proleptically laments her own son (18.35–69). Achilles and Patroclus are linked through not only death but also the land where they both died, and which is emphatically mentioned in the text (18.58–59). For both mother and son, trauma fuses in complex ways the temporal dimension of the present (lament, both mother’s and son’s), past (Patroclus’ death), and future (Achilles’ death), in such a way that it looks like a prophecy of an imminent death. As Thetis goes beyond the present of Patroclus’ death and brings into her lament the future of her own son’s loss, her dirge resembles a prophecy soon to be fulfilled. This temporal fusion so characteristic in lament as an oral genre is also a distinctive feature of a traumatized person’s behavior. One could argue that laments present this fusion of time as a structural element that reflects trauma. Disorders of time sequencing are not uncommon following psychic trauma (Terr 1984). As trauma carriers retrospectively look for the experiences that changed their world, some of their “discoveries” can be labeled as “omens” or, as Terr (1984: 650) puts it, “retrospective significances.” These “omens” or prophetic utterances provide a sense of control as one attempts to reclaim an experience knowing what is to happen (when, in fact, it has happened already). As Terr (1984: 651–52) writes: “‘Omens’ and ‘significances’ follow psychic trauma, sudden deaths, frights, and even major national or international emergencies.” Prophecy and trauma abound in Greek literature, but the presence of prophecy in lament renders the refraction of trauma more vivid. Oral genres and the way they are registered in the ancient literary record absorb deeper patterns of behavior. Therefore, what contemporary clinical practice sees as a “symptom” (the presence of “omens” in trauma narratives, or else “retrospective significance”) is an essential feature of a genre of speech like lament as registered in the early Greek poetic tradition.

Troy as trauma  213 Similarly, tragedy, and Euripides’ Trojan Women in particular, presents another mother, the Trojan queen Hecuba, lamenting the fate of her Troy at the moment the messenger appears to announce the captive women’s fate. The god Poseidon opens the play with a speech centered on Troy, vividly describing its destruction. Athena subsequently enters and quarrels with Poseidon, who finishes the parodos (introductory part of the play) proclaiming the following: μῶρος δὲ θνητῶν ὅστις ἐκπορθεῖ πόλεις, ναούς τε τύμβους θ᾽, ἱερὰ τῶν κεκμηκότων, ἐρημίᾳ δοὺς αὐτὸς ὤλεθ᾽ ὕστερον. (Euripides, Trojan Women 95–97) Foolish is that person of the mortals who sacks cities and then, having given over to desolation temples and tombs, sacred places of the deceased, perishes later himself. In a tragedy that focuses on the deceptiveness of the human epistemic spectrum (the Trojans mistakenly thought they were being liberated) and the elusiveness of reality, Hecuba emerges as the most tragic figure. She is a woman whose past trauma (losing her son and city) is only augmented by the present loss of her daughter Polyxena; even worse, she also loses her grandson Astyanax and her other daughter, Cassandra, priestess of Apollo. Cassandra’s prophetic powers are also elusive: Apollo punishes her for resisting him never to be believed by anyone. Onstage, Ajax drags Cassandra by force, soon to follow Agamemnon as a slave. At that moment, Hecuba explicitly addresses Troy: αἶ,αἶ. μή νύν μοι τὰν ἐκβακχεύουσαν Κασάνδραν, αἰσχύναν Ἀργείοισιν, πέμψητ᾽ ἔξω, μαινάδ᾽, ἐπ᾽ ἄλγει δ᾽ ἀλγυνθῶ. ἰώ. Τροία Τροία δύσταν᾽, ἔρρεις, δύστανοι δ᾽ οἵ σ᾽ ἐκλείποντες καὶ ζῶντες καὶ δμαθέντες.

(Euripides, Trojan Women 168–75)

Ah, ah! I beg you then, do not bring forth the maddened Cassandra to be disgraced by the Greeks, Cassandra, the maenad, and let me not have grief upon grief. Ah me, ah me, Troy, unfortunate Troy, you are gone, and unfortunate are we who leave you, both the living and the dead. Throughout the play, Troy holds a central place culminating in the second choral ode: “Sing for me concerning Ilion, O Muse, a newly made ode of mourning accompanied by tears. For now, I shall sing a song of Troy…” (Euripides, Trojan

214  Andromache Karanika Women 512–15). Similarly, in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Cassandra utters prophetic words that no one understands. Her incomprehensible words, also referring to Troy, reveal what lies in her (and Agamemnon’s) future as the result of enslavement and captivity. Troy becomes the paradigm for the place of trauma that the aggressor, Achilles, appropriates, and through his death claims as his gravesite. The two mothers’ laments, Thetis’ in the Iliad and Hecuba’s in the Trojan Women, come from opposing camps and different worlds, divine and mortal. Both underscore Troy as a place of ruin, an “unfortunate” place as it is emphatically mentioned (Euripides, Trojan Women 173). In later Greek literature, Troy becomes not only the epitome for the defeated who were forced into permanent exile but also the genesis of tragic events for the victors, since Agamemnon’s return from Troy was marked by his death. As such, the city is the place that encapsulates the irresoluble conflict that no one can solve or evade and that caused a trauma doomed to be contagious and transitive. From this theoretical angle, the notion of place transcends the physical environment of an experience (and, in this case, traumatic experience): a point of reference for exile or death, Troy becomes not only a defining place for those who connect their lives with the city but also a narrative agent that functions as a character and has its own unique presence. As Michelle Balaev (2008: 160) argues, place gains significance through “a relational dynamic between the self and non-self, as well as between the human and non-human.” The application of trauma theory can shed light onto the transformation and contagion of traumatic behavior displayed by literary characters. It can also illuminate the importance of space and time in literary expressions of traumatic experiences. Cathy Caruth’s work revolutionized contemporary literary studies by applying the lens of trauma on literary works (Caruth 1995 and 1996). She explored what she called the “unrepresentable” and “unspeakable” nature and domain of trauma. Critical theorists have used this perspective to discuss not only historical events but also literary accounts. Within this framework, one could argue that in Euripides’ Trojan Women, Cassandra’s inability to utter her prophecies and the others’ inability to comprehend them are manifestations of the intensity of trauma that defines one’s existence. Cassandra is a character with full epistemic authority on what happened in the past and what will happen in the future. She knows that Agamemnon will be murdered, and that her death will ensue. However, she cannot represent the truth, and the mythical narrative wants her semi-muted.4 Inability to speak or to be comprehended by the audience is often registered in literature as a gendered response to trauma. The prophetic element in Achilles’ speech act that was discussed earlier acquires a different texture in light of the representation of the character of Cassandra. Her prophetic powers define the boundaries of time but are subdued by the audience’s reaction, since she is doomed not to be believed. In the Iliad, Achilles’ lament for Patroclus is a powerful speech act, because the revenge articulated therein will be fulfilled. By contrast, Cassandra’s words are rendered powerless because no one can comprehend her. Her past trauma and the prophecy about the deaths that will come in the future are not communicable.

Troy as trauma  215 More recent trauma theorists have questioned the notion of unrepresentability as not doing justice to the brain processes resulting from trauma. Although critical of Caruth’s ideas, Ruth Leys (2000: 16) nevertheless acknowledges that they “have helped solidify a powerful trend in the humanities to recognize in the experience of trauma, especially the trauma of the Holocaust, a fundamental crisis for historical representation (and at the limit, for representation as such).” Both Ruth Leys and Marianne Hirsch focus on the notion of post-memory. In the vignettes I discussed briefly earlier, lament is not only about the past, but also about the present and future with a committed emphasis on the locus of trauma. It is important to note that trauma manifests itself not as a moment, unlike the physical wound that is the result of a specific and temporally framed act of violence, but as a continuum that exceeds the self, the here and now. Yet, while time can be elusive, the place cannot be. It stands in proximity or distance as a physical reminder of the space that brought the traumatic memory. In both examples, mythical narratives in epic and tragedy create a locus for memory with temporal refractions that include the projected future for the figures involved in their respective narratives. Enslavement and violence acquire a public dimension, and personal loss (as that of the mother about to lose her child in the case of Thetis or of Cassandra, who lost her city and her sense of self) is communicated orally and chorally.5 More importantly, in both scenes, the locus of trauma is clearly registered in the ancient narrative in an epigrammatic manner, namely with a phrase that could be inscribed on a tomb like an epitaph; the place needs to be mentioned.6 Lamentlike language repeats the name of the place, creating an abbreviated speech act or a one-word reference; a name that sounds and looks like an official registry of closure, a registry of deaths or an epitaph on a tomb.7 As mentioned earlier, the place becomes a character that acts like a catalyst: trauma occurred at a particular place, which serves as a reminder that perpetuates trauma for both oneself and others who share it. The place of death or birth defines a person and how posterity will remember them, imposing a kind of a template in the language of memorialization. For Achilles, Troy is the place of death, but for Cassandra the place of origin. Both figures share a journey without return, and both are defined by Troy in a pattern that brings death for the male hero and displacement for the female heroine. Furthermore, the irresoluble conflict continues for generations through the image of a city that fell. The “mythological moment” of the fall of Troy as the culmination of the Trojan War and the beginning of arduous journeys for the surviving Trojans resonate in different literary genres across different cultures and centuries.8 In purely literary terms, the name Troy, alluding to the city that fell, bears symbolic capital.9 However, from the perspective of trauma theory, the place carries the trauma and, like a genetic mutation, shapes subsequent generations.

Time, ruins and transmission of trauma All theoretical treatments of the memory of trauma hinge on one specific aspect: the fragmented and refracted reception of the past. Physical ruins or the image of the burning city are kept as the site of trauma, articulating memory through the

216  Andromache Karanika implicit refusal of a temporal continuum, while simultaneously creating a spatial unity that transcends time (Trigg 2009). Ruins can enflame imagination, desire, and can be envisioned as restored in people’s mental maps.10 Minds often capture an image of a place even though it no longer exists. The physical space which lives in a continuum of time is often rebuilt from former ruins and taken up by other populations. As a result, the image of a place once “mine” or “ours” is preserved, and trauma becomes a fixed and transmittable “relic.” As such, it is mentioned in storytelling, remembered, venerated but it also becomes a “projected” trauma, which allows for intergenerational transmission. An example of such a transmission can be seen in Herodotus’ remark (7.43) that Xerxes, the Persian king, sacrificed one thousand oxen as he passed from Troy on his way to attack Greece (in 480 bce). Herodotus refers to Troy as Priam’s citadel.11 Similarly, Aeschylus’ Persians, the earliest surviving Greek tragedy and the only extant play that deals with the historical event (the second phase of the Persian Wars, the Battle of Salamis in 480 bce), stages the news of the defeat of the Persian army in Persia, while all the play’s characters are Persian.12 The Athenians had also experienced the trauma of the loss of their city when the Persians sacked it. The play itself was performed in a theater surrounded by physical evidence of this destruction.13 Aeschylus portrays the Persians as the “other” against whom Greek identity is being forged and intensifies the juxtaposition between Greek moderation and Persian excess, thus “inventing” the conflict between Greece and the “other” (Hall 1991). Nevertheless, as Dué (2006: 21) demonstrates, the Persian dead are “heroized and lamented in terms that are thoroughly Greek, with the result that there can be little distinction drawn between the Greek and Persian soldiers. The Persians lament both equally.” At the same time, Aeschylus very possibly engaged with Anatolian lament in more subtle ways so that what was presented on stage could well reflect an Athenian translation of broader cultural interactions.14 Furthermore, the play displays a manipulation of the Trojan theme and of the idea of Troy: the Greeks first attacked Troy, the Persians now attack Greece because they want revenge (and to punish the Greek city-states of Asia Minor that seceded from Persian satrapies). Later, Philip and Alexander use the Persian wars to justify their own plan to campaign to the East. Moreover, Alexander famously stopped at Troy to pay homage to Achilles, an instance commemorated by later historical narratives, thus fusing the mythical with the historical (Arrian 1.11–12, Diodorus 17.17, Plutarch, Alexander 15). Troy’s special position as a sacred city furthers its importance as a locus of trauma. As Scully shows (1990: 6 and 137–31), a careful examination of epithets describing Troy in both the Iliad and the Odyssey reveals three defining features: the city’s wall, its sanctity, and its people. Scully (1990: 141–57) further traces the notion of Troy as a capital city of an extended kingdom and the ways it is interlocked with the idea of sanctity. Exploring what constitutes a sacred city in the Near East for the ancient imagination, he argues that cities such as Babylon, Jerusalem, and Mecca, among others, present considerable similarities and uniformity throughout the Near East across roughly two millennia: they are

Troy as trauma  217 all walled, temple-oriented cities with postulated sacred origins and protecting deities. The idea of sacredness embedded in people’s memories enhances the traumatic aspect of the fallen city.15 Like a body that can fall into death, the walled city—an emblem of stability and peace—can also fall into decay. When shattered into ruins it becomes an image that permeates poetics and rhetoric, ultimately monumentalizing not the city in its former glory but the ruins as a permanent witness to a city’s fall. In the ancient imagination, Troy is representative of a chorus of fallen cities, thus relegating personal and communal trauma to a greater temporal continuum.16 While the sense of time and temporality can be nebulous in its continuum, space is distinct. The traumatic memory discerns a fixed point where “trauma is not spatially amorphous but inscribed in place” (Kaelber 2007: 2). The image of a ruined city becomes a “relic” trauma as I term it, one that is called upon and in whose name further action can be pledged.17 Like the relic of a sanctified structure or body, a “relic” trauma can guide people from different generations and places both rhetorically and psychologically. It can also stir emotion and steer memory that is inscribed in one word, the name of a place that haunts.

Post-memory, relic trauma and the haunting of trauma Marianne Hirsch has developed the concept of post-memory applicable to Holocaust studies, which can be highly illuminating for the study of literature and history. She refers to the “received” memory that is distinct from the recall of those who witnessed trauma. As she puts it (2012: 17): [T]o grow up with such overwhelming inherited memories, to be dominated by narratives that preceded one’s birth or one’s conscious-ness, is to risk having one’s own stories and experiences displaced, even evacuated, by those of a previous generation. It is to be shaped, however indirectly, by traumatic events that still defy narrative reconstruction and exceed comprehension. These events happened in the past, but their effects continue into the present. This is, I believe, the experience of postmemory and the process of its generation. In most horrific events of a massive scale, as is the case with the Holocaust or a genocide, the narrative of the past shapes memory and the consciousness of the present. Moreover, as Hirsch rightly puts it, the effects of the past continue into the present and are transmitted into the future. More recent examples— to name just two twentieth-century ones—are the Armenian Genocide or the Turkish invasion to Cyprus in 1974. While the generations born around or after the time of the catastrophic events have not witnessed the loss and displacement that ensued, they are still defined by it, because their families’ accounts and memories shape their sense of identity in conjunction with the lost place. As time moves on, conflicts become solidified and far more difficult to resolve because more people’s lives are entwined around the same place. Like personal trauma,

218  Andromache Karanika collective trauma brings rupture to established routines in the lives of people and forces displacement, anxiety, fear, and death. It is emotionally difficult for people to abandon the memory of events that ruptured the life they took for granted. Individual experience becomes communal, shared from person to person, from generation to generation. While post-memory trauma forges communities and creates cultural ties that run through generations by means of the circulation of stories and behaviors, many would claim that some much older wounds still hurt. Such wounds find their origin in historical time, or even the mythical frame, perpetuate, and project trauma. Like a relic that stays in the cultural possession of different groups (ethnic, religious, etc.), relic trauma moves in time, is projected by some generations more than others, and informs practice and decision. Some critics might easily dismiss this as a rhetorical strategy or a literary device, but on a deeper level, a kernel of a trauma is perpetuated as it transcends the individual. An interdisciplinary approach to relic studies examines relics and relic-related behavior as an integral part of social practice in different times and places.18 Shared identity is created as community members, who may not know each other or even have the same experience, participate in the construction and perpetuation of similar emotions, thoughts, ideology, and stance vis-à-vis different matters.19 Like a relic that denotes a part from a whole that has been destroyed, this “relic” trauma is passed down in time, and, if rhetorically “scratched,” it can hurt more. The Greek term λείψανα and the Latin term reliquiae point to a remnant that is left from previous times but continues to live on. A remnant is by necessity a fragment of a once whole body, and as such, points to a specific moment of destruction, reduction, or loss. Furthermore, relics are tangible and mobile, rendering the ideology around them transmissible. Troy as the place of intersectional trauma has a long history. Its connection with Roman mythology has shaped Roman and European identity. Myth and history are interwoven in the case of Troy, the trauma that one carries as a relic.20 In 1437–38, the Spanish traveler Pero Tafur, obsessed like others to find Troy in his journeys, writes in his travel memoirs concerning the Turkish successes in the fifteenth century after visiting the greater area of Constantinople that “the Turks, have indeed avenged the taking of Troy.”21 Counterfeit letters portrayed the sultan as Hector’s avenger and the successor of Trojans;22 this counterfeit epistolography gives us a view onto what was circulating, perhaps the “fake news” of the fifteenth century, yet important as these were shaping broader ideologies percolating and intensifying conflict. The byzantine historian Critobulus, who wrote an account of Troy’s fall from the Ottoman perspective, wrote that Mehmed II nodded his head at the Trojan ruins and said: ἐμὲ τῆς πόλεως ταύτης καὶ τῶν αὐτῆς οἰκητόρων ἐν τοσούτοις περιόδοις ἐτῶν ἐκδικητὴν ἐταμιεύετο ὁ θεός· ἐχειρωσάμην γὰρ τοὺς τούτων ἐχθροὺς καὶ τὰς πόλεις αὐτῶν ἐπόρθησα καὶ Μυσῶν λείαν τὰ τούτων πεποίημαι. Ἕλληνες γὰρ ἦσαν καὶ Μακεδόνες καὶ Θετταλοὶ καὶ Πελοποννήσιοι οἱ ταύτην πάλαι πορθήσαντες, ὧν οἱ ἀπόγονοι τοσούτοις ἐς ὕστερον περιόδοις ἐνιαυτῶν νῦν

Troy as trauma  219 ἐμοὶ τὴν δίκην ἀπέτισαν διά τε τὴν τότε ἐς τοὺς Ἀσιανοὺς ἡμᾶς καὶ πολλάκις γενομένην ἐς ὕστερον ὕβριν αὐτῶν. (Critobulus 4.11.6) God kept and made me the avenger of this city and its inhabitants in so many years that passed. I defeated their enemies and sacked their cities and have made their things spoils of the Mysians. They were Hellenes, Macedonians, Thessalians and Peloponnesians, the ones who had conquered this place in the old days; their descendants, so many years later, received justice through me for the evil act, the one that happened then and many times, toward us, Asians. If Troy legitimized to the minds of some the Persian Wars and Alexander’s conquests, the longevity of the Persian war tradition has been remarkable in marking a dichotomy between east and west. From post-memory we move to construction of memory, and from post-trauma to a constructed trauma that shows how a mythical place can be topographically mapped onto actual historical places. This place can be further appropriated and embraced, while the envisioned ancient city permeates later thought and ideology. The ancient Greeks’ struggle against Achaemenid Persia has been identified with the Christian West’s adversarial relationship with Islam in the Middle ages. As Bridges, Hall, and Rhodes (2007: 13) state, the “facile identification of the entire Islamic world with the caricatured ancient Persians staged by Aeschylus has also been a factor informing the West’s crude stereotype of the eastern tyrant, Muslim despot, and the polemical terminology of Freedom and Democracy that has often played an unhelpful role by fomenting aggression on both local and global scales.” A very different perspective emerges from a nineteenth-century account written by the Comte de Marcellus, a French diplomat in Constantinople, reporting a reading of Aeschylus’ Persians in ancient Greek that took place at a literary evening held in 1820, a year before the Greek uprising against the Ottomans.23 Marcellus’ memoir describes a group of Greek intellectuals who convene in order to define a new Hellenism, infused by the spirit and glory of the Persian Wars. Marcellus’ work is indebted to the writings of the philhellene Chateaubriand and Greek intellectuals such as Adamantios Koraes and, especially, Konstantinos Oikonomos, who was responsible for proposing the recitation of Persians in the first place. Staging this particular play at this specific time and place was a strategic move. Many may consider this a rhetorical trope, a decision that echoes ideologies of the time. Certainly, several questions can arise regarding the strategic usage or even manipulation of particular narratives. This does not intend to invalidate or diminish trauma experience. Stories of trauma become part of a shared narrative: no trope can be persuasive unless it deeply resonates with a speaker and their audience. Nor is authenticity a requirement if people believe something to be “traumatic.” As Alexander (2012: 13) puts it, “such imagined events, however, can be as traumatizing as events that have actually occurred.”

220  Andromache Karanika Trauma distorts the perception of time and reality, not fully registered while it occurs, but experienced only belatedly when it resurfaces in flashbacks, repetitive reenactments, as well as subsequent verbal expressions and storytelling (Terr 1984: 633). In a critical study, Balaev examines the relationship between psychic trauma, memory, and landscape and its representation in literature. Her methodology merges trauma studies with ecological theory. In it, she introduces a new concept of trauma that focuses on place and landscape rather than the temporal aspect (Balaev 2012). Balaev promotes a “pluralistic model,” considering multiple theories and emphasizing heterogeneous responses to traumatic events, but always drawing attention to the crucial role of place and landscape. As she argues (Balaev 2012: xv), a place can become an actor, a “silent second character.” In this light, the reference to a place of trauma, whether explicit or implicit, is not futile but has a powerful effect on people and their narratives. A common sense of identity is also shaped among people who are part of a group that is often defined by their shared trauma. Traumatic events of the past become a form of a psychic or mental compass that can lead to fixed ideologies and subsequent action. The “haunting” of trauma can refer to real—or perceived as real—historical moments. Trauma is perpetuated in a “staged” form, it becomes relic trauma, as I have termed it. A relic trauma is transferable and mobile but always anchored symbolically in a place. It usually spans over generations and far exceeds the lifetime of those who actually experienced it. For those with personal or close memory of loss, the place of trauma captivates their memory and grounds it to a specific place. Often an actual relic, a remnant or a tangible object can trigger the memory that one needs in order to pass on the relic trauma to others or following generations. In a powerful poem, entitled “The Oriental Rug,” Peter Balakian discusses the Armenian Genocide. In his introduction of the poem, the author expounds his aims as follows: I would like to explore, in a way that I hope doesn’t intrude upon my poem, how a Persian rug, known as a Kashan, on which I grew up, came to be the object of a kind of reverie…The rug comes with its story and the poet comes with his personal and inherited narrative— both personal history and the past of the Armenian Genocide are part of the fall into the rug…It’s made by hand on looms by women and children, knotted with almost hypnotic rhythm, with precision and knowledge of concept and form. And then there’s the color. The fabulous part of the art. The brilliant, resonant, evocative, often variegated tonality of color. The dye-makers, like the weavers, are heroes in this art. They are assigned the task of making beautiful color that will last. If the colors don’t last, the rug loses its presence, its art. The older it gets, the richer and more complex the colors get. One might think of the dye-makers as being a bit like alchemists; they take matter from the organic world and distill it and transform it into something they hope will be permanent…. For me, this rug became a variation on a flying carpet—an unraveling carpet.24

Troy as trauma  221 Balakian uses here what one of his critics has called the “inherent latency:” always eluding conscious memory, it express a community’s trauma by focusing on an artifact as not only a metonymy of the place they lost but also the very idea of displacement (Kalaidjian 2006: 15–48). In this poem, the grandparents’ experience is woven into the “rug” that has carried the grandchild that was born and raised in New Jersey. The rug, with its patterns and colors, recalls the Armenian landscape. Tracy (2017: 58), writing on the exploration of trauma and commemoration of pain, puts it thus: The rug stands in metonymically for Armenia’s people and through its place (as artifact and household object) in Armenian culture…it is the rug that provides the speaker with his always distanced access to the geographical location and the genocide that occurred there. His association to the witnessed suffering is metonymical in that he never reaches the pain itself. The speaker can only approach that which is associated with that pain. Metonymy, then, is a trope of distance and difference but it is also a trope of association, finding a closeness that allows critical specificity in its refusal to negate difference, to blur into oneness two things that are not one. Like Armenia, many other places, cities, regions, and countries can be the place of a trauma that passes on to subsequent generations. In the modern Greek state’s recent memory, the single word “catastrophe” encapsulates the events that followed the First World War, that is, the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–22 that ended in a devastating Greek defeat and resulted in loss of life and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Asia Minor. An entire region was mapped differently. Those who survived sought to keep the memory of their trauma alive. Personal stories appropriate the national trauma as individual and the individual trauma becomes part of a national narrative. Of the many communities, the city of Smyrna became symbolic of the loss that people experienced. This loss became a national trauma which informed the people’s storytelling, ethos, and artistic expression.25 The exodus of the Greek population from Asia was accompanied not only by mourning and fear for the future but also by a sense of uncertainty about how welcome they would be to their new home. Like the rug in Balakian’s poem, a work of art that moved from one place to another, in this case, an intangible artistic creation emerged, a musical tradition that traveled to the new lands. Understood as a form of lament and foreign to many, this music found its way to the United States, where it became popular in different immigrant communities (including primarily Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, among others).26 As in the ancient world, the inherent therapeutic process of expression similarly encourages the dissemination of the genre of lament. Reductionist in role, it channels the memory of the place that defined the lives of those who used to live in it and controls cultural memory. In one case, a poetic “rug,” in another, a musical tradition, they exemplify some of the many ways with which the memory of trauma travels. Memories can attach themselves to anything;27 commemoration, however, is a more complex matter, often subject to the decisions of a community. The utterance of the city or land of loss can be powerful: Troy, Constantinople, Armenia, and Smyrna are

222  Andromache Karanika some of the many places around the world and across the centuries that have been the “locus” of trauma for personal and collective experiences.

Place of trauma, relic trauma: conclusion Recent research on veterans and their family members or people close to them who qualify for secondary post-traumatic stress disorder shows that trauma can develop horizontally through other individuals. It can also develop vertically across years, different generations in different centuries.28 Bischoping (2014) discusses the wordless expression of trauma through fear, shame, and paranoia. Trauma can inform communities beyond storytelling and shape the ethos, fears, anxieties, as well as behaviors at large. What remains becomes not just a memory or a story but an agent that forms human experience. As Fédida (2003: 63) argues, the relic “in the materiality of a remnant…of the absent body” is a sacralized object that unlike a talisman or a fetish becomes “proof of reality coming to the support—that in spite a knowledge [savoir] about separation, it is necessary to believe that something subsists.” The relic makes visible in a reduced manner what can no longer be seen. It cannot be part of a financial transaction, it is not possible to either buy or sell it, it can only be transmitted or stolen, giving “one more reason to preserve it!… [P]ut aside from the practice of exchange, they [relics] are exempt from rejection and destruction, they sustain moreover bonds of affective dependence which correspond with the archaic image of a disappeared body” (Fédida 2003: 66). This is not meant to pathologize it, as Jarratt also argues eloquently (this volume: 111–23), nor to bring any other value judgment, but simply to see how it works. Intergenerational trauma can collapse boundaries between the individual and group while shared experiences create a carrier group of the “traumatized” (Balaev 2008: 152, Brooks Bouson 2000). The representation of such trauma is often described as “haunting” and is a catalyst in the transferability and contagion of trauma. In discussing the trauma of slavery and its literary representation, Brooks Bouson (2000:  7) observes that slavery haunts subsequent generations because it mobilizes the encoding of traumatic experience and creates “an abnormal type of memory,” in which one claims the past as one’s own. Physical wounds can often heal with time and innocent interlocutors can bring the comment about trauma (physical or emotional) of the universal wisdom of time will heal (Macek 2014b: 3). But if the notion of relic (the bone of a saint or the fabric that touched a saint’s or a martyr’s body) is idealized and idolized as monument and testament of a stance (if not faith), then the relic trauma emerges as far more powerful and cannot be simply sidestepped as a rhetorical tool. Troy has not only become a literary trope but also a rhetorical tool and political weapon over the centuries. The memory of trauma inherent in the place itself made the transferability of the memory of trauma possible for many generations. Names of places thus become relics of trauma. If we treat relic trauma not as rhetoric but as the memory of trauma with all the possible constructions, even manipulations, that it entails, then we might get to the heart of old wounds and understand in more depth relations of people, communities, nations, and the shaping of identities.

Troy as trauma  223

Notes 1 Homer’s text is by Monro and Allen (1996), Euripides’ by Diggle (1981). Text of Critobulus is by Reinsch (1983). All translations are mine. 2 For a brief overview on speech acts and speech act theory, see Austin (1962), Searle (1968, 1969); for the focused application on speeches in the Iliad and Achilles’ speech in particular, see Martin (1989). 3 See for example, Anthologiae Graecae Appendix (epigrammata sepulchralia) for the tomb epigrams. Epigram 81: Ἐπὶ Ἀχιλλέως κειμένου ἐν Τροίᾳ./ Παῖδα θεᾶς Θέτιδος Πηληϊάδην Ἀχιλῆα/  ἥδ’ἱερὰ Προποντὶς ἀμφὶς ἔχει πεδίῳ (For Achilles who lies in Troy. The child of Thetis, Achilles, son of Peleus/ this sacred land of Propontis holds). 4 Many rape victims in Greek and Roman myth are muted. For example, Philomela’s rapist cut her tongue to prevent her from speaking, yet she manages to communicate her rape through weaving. On rape trauma, see James, this volume: 62–66 and Wise, this volume: 71–91. 5 On lament and the role of chorus, see also Reitzammer (this volume: 192–209). 6 A central point in this argument is that the emphasis on the place is mimicking a registry of epitaph-like language, like creating your own tombstone. 7 On epitaphs and the epigrammatic language in epic, see Scodel (1992) and Petrovic (2016). 8 For the notion of the “mythological moment” of the fall of Troy and the treatments of the fall in Imperial Greek literature with a focus on Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica Book 13, see Avlamis (2018). Avlamis (2018: 161) discusses Troy in the context of Greek Imperial Literature as “an image of a once-upon-a-time community to be read and re-read as a shifting mirror of the Graeco-Roman Imperial present.” Avlamis (2018: 194) further submits regarding Quintus’ description of the sacking of Troy that it “both foregrounds its loss and reanimates its previous wholeness; but at the same time this Troy provides a model of an urban community that is at once the mythical Troy and the contemporary urban context of its readers.” In my reading of Troy, the capacity to think of it as both mythical and having contemporary dimensions lies at the heart of understanding the locus of trauma. 9 For a discussion of the literary topos already labeled Urbs Capta by ancient rhetoricians (the fall of a city) and the particular Vergilian treatment, see Rossi (2002). On representation of trauma in Vergil, see Panoussi (this volume). 10 See Borgeaud (2010: 350) who writes that “ruins are susceptible to be reelevated, restored by memory.” 11 See Rose (1998: 407) for Troy in Herodotus’ time and onward, and the distinction between the site of Troy and the site of the legends of Troy. 12 One of the main questions about this play is how it relates to the genre of tragedy when essentially it is an Athenian play from an Athenian perspective about a Greek victory. See, in particular, Dué (2006) and Hall (1991) on this matter. 13 See Meyer (this volume) on physical remains as testaments to trauma. 14 See Bachvarova and Dutsch (2016: 80–105, and especially 89–102). Bakewell (2016: 106–113) points out that in Aeschylus’ Persians no cities fall, but the Persian army is largely destroyed, and that the play reflects laments for individuals. 15 For connections with the commemoration of the fall of cities and comparative work on the Sumerian cities of the third millennium bce, see Jacobs (2016). The sense that time is cyclical and that destruction is unavoidable is also part of the ideology that arguably informs ancient historical conceptions of time. 16 On Troy as part of the Greek collective imagination within the ancient “world” history concepts, see the excellent chapter by Bachvarova (2016), who brings the point of a larger Anatolian lament tradition (with possibly ritual elements) that have been absorbed by the Greek epic fabric and resonate in it. On Troy’s importance in civic life from Greece to Rome, and the reception of a multifaceted Trojan past in local communities, see Erskine 2001.

224  Andromache Karanika 17 I draw here from trauma studies but also lament and relic studies. 18 For a comprehensive overview of a theoretical framework on relic studies, see Hooper (2014). 19 To understand those processes it is useful to think with Anderson (2006). 20 On the tradition of lament and commemoration of the fall of Constantinople, see Karanika (2016: 226–51). 21 See Vasiliev (1932: 90). 22 See Coleman (2018). 23 See the excellent study by Van Steen (2010, especially 67–106). 24 https​://ww​w.pet​erbal​akian​.com/​orien​talru​g.htm​l 25 On the effects of national trauma see Erikson (1994: 28). On expanding trauma in space and time, see Degloma (2009). 26 See Holst-Warhaft (2016: 266), who writes: “The traumatic loss of their world and the uncertainty of their welcome contributed to the preference of those displaced Greeks to mourn in personal rather than collected terms. Like the Blues Singer Lil’Son Jackson… the refugee musicians lamented the catastrophe of their loss in personal terms in the musical forms they brought with them.” 27 Gilloch and Kilby (2005: 18): “Memories can attach themselves to anything, they are not subject to the exercise of will, are not to be bounded and contained, are not to be circumscribed, prescribed or proscribed, encouraged or erased.” 28 See Atkinson (2017: 7; 95–115) and the notion of “cyclical haunting.” For a lay version see Stillman (2014).

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Troy as trauma  225 Balaev, M. 2012. The Nature of Trauma in American Novels. Chicago: Northwestern University Press. Bischoping, C. 2014. “Identity and Mutability in Family Stories about the Third Reich.” In Macek, I. ed. Engaging Violence: Trauma, Memory and Representation. London: Routledge. 56–73. Borgeaud, P. 2010. “Trojan Excursions: A Recurrent Ritual, from Xerxes to Julian.” History of Religions 49: 339–53. Bridges, E., Hall, E., and Rhodes P. J. eds. 2007. Cultural Responses to the Persian Wars: Antiquity to the Third Millennium. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bouson, J. B. 2000. Quiet As It’s Kept: Shame, Trauma, and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Caruth, C. ed. 1995. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Caruth, C. 1996. Unclaimed Experience, Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Chaniotis, A. ed. 2012. Unveiling Emotions: Sources and Methods for the Study of Emotions in the Greek World. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Coleman, J. 2018. “Forging Relations between the East and West: The Invented Letters of Sultan Mehmed II.” In Stephens, W., Havens, E. A., and Gomez, J. E. eds. Literary Forgery in Early Modern Europe 1400–1850. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 128–44. Degloma, T. 2009. “Expanding Trauma through Space and Time: Mapping the Rhetorical Strategies of Trauma Carrier Groups.” Social Psychology Quarterly 72: 105–22. Diggle, J. 1981. Euripidis Fabulae. Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dué, C. 2006. The Captive Woman’s Lament in Greek Tragedy. Austin: University of Texas Press. Erikson, K. 1994. A New Species of Trouble: The Human Experience of Modern Disasters. New York: W.W. Norton. Erskine, A. 2001. Troy Between Greece and Rome. Local Tradition and Imperial Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fédida, P. 2003. “The Relic and the Work of Mourning.” Journal of Visual Culture 2: 62–68. Gilloch, G. and Kilby, J. 2005. “Trauma and Memory in the City: From Auster to Austerlitz.” In Crinson, M. ed. Urban Memory: History and Amnesia in the Modern City. London: Routledge. 1–22. Hall, E. 1991. Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition Through Tragedy. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Herzfeld, M. 1993. “In Defiance of Destiny: The Management of Time and Gender at a Cretan Funeral.” American Ethnologist 20: 241–55. Hirsch, M. 2012. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press. Holst-Warhaft, G. 1995. Dangerous Voices: Women’s Lament and Greek Literature. London: Routledge. Holst-Warhaft, G. 2016. “‘A Sudden Longing:’ Lamenting the Lost City of Smyrna.” In Bachvarova, M. R., Dutsch, D., and Suter, A. eds. The Fall of Cities in the Mediterranean: Commemoration in Literature, Folk-Song, and Liturgy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 252–68. Hooper, S. 2014. “A Cross-cultural Theory of Relics: On Understanding Religion, Bodies, Artefacts, Images and Art.” World Art 4: 175–207. Jacobs, J. 2016. “The City Lament Genre in the Ancient Near East.” In Bachvarova, M. R., Dutsch, D., and Suter, A. eds. The Fall of Cities in the Mediterranean: Commemoration in Literature, Folk-Song, and Liturgy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 13–35.

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Index

Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations. Achaean League 111, 118 Achilles see Iliad Acropolis, Persian sack and rebuilding of 4, 6, 95–105; Athena, old cult image (archaion agalma) of 100–102, 100–107, 108n11, 108n17; Cecropion (tomb of Cecrops) 103, 105, 109n21; devastation of 95, 96; Erechtheion and cult of Erectheus 100, 103–107, 104, 106, 108n14, 109n19, 109n21, 109n23; libation site 103–105, 104; olive tree 102, 104; Pandroseion 104–105, 106, 108–109n19; Parthenon, erection of 98–99, 103; plans and models of Acropolis before and after 98–102; Propylaia 108n14; trauma theory/trauma studies and 99–100, 107; treatment/ replacement of architectural and sculptural remains 96–99, 98, 99, 103, 107, 108n8, 108n15, 117; Tyrannicides (Harmodios and Aristogeiton) sculpture group, replacement of 95, 97; walls, building/remodeling 95, 96 Adelphoe (The Brothers; Terence) 58, 66n10, 67n25 Adorno, Theodor 187n5 Aegaeon 35–36 Aemilius Paullus 111, 117 Aeneid (Vergil) 4, 5, 30–42; aristeia or berserk state 30, 32–36, 42–43n4; flashbacks 31–32, 39–41; Iliad (Homer) and 30, 33, 36, 38, 43n7, 44–45n17, 44n12; intertextuality of Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones with 126, 132–34, 136n5, 137n14, 139n49, 139n51, 139n53; Magus, killing of 35, 43n6, 43n8; Ovid’s poetry of exile

and 152, 156n29; Pallas, death of 31, 32, 34–36, 40, 41, 43–44n10; pietas, violation of 35, 44–45n17; PTSD and 30, 32, 33, 38, 48; rage of Aeneas 30, 31, 33, 36, 40, 41, 42–43n4, 44n16; Roman civil wars, invoking trauma of 41–42, 89n37; survivor guilt and 31, 36; trauma studies/trauma theory and 30–32; Turnus, killing of 31, 34, 37–41 Aeschylus: Agamemnon 202n13, 214; Eumenides 27n11, 187n4; Persians 196, 197, 198, 201, 204n25, 204n27, 219, 223n12, 223n14; Seven Against Thebes 204n25; Suppliant Women 195, 202n13 Agamemnon (Aeschylus) 202n13, 214 Aglauros 107, 109n21 Ajax (Sophocles) 5, 11–26; Argive livestock, killing of, as central violent act 15; Athena’s revelation of killing to Odysseus 14, 15–18; beasts and men, doubling between 17, 19, 21, 23–24; chorus’ response to news of killing 14, 15, 18–21; emotionality of 21, 28n20; offstage location of violence/first news of violence 13, 14, 15, 18, 21, 26n1; PTSD and 11–12, 13, 26n2, 27n9; repetition and deferral as core trauma pattern in 11, 14–25; skene, use of 15, 16, 18–22, 25–26, 28n19; structure of play and its acts of violence 14–15; Tecmessa’s accounts of Ajax’ violence and madness 14, 15, 21–25; theatrical performance and trauma in 25–26, 27–28n18; trauma studies/trauma theory and 11–14; unusual features of 27n11 Alexander, J. C. 219 Alexander the Great 216, 219

228 Index Alexandrian footnotes 133, 139n51 Alexiou, M. 203n22 Allen-Hornblower, E. 187n2, 188n18 American Psychiatric Association (APA) 119, 160 Amores (Ovid), victim perspective in 4, 6, 71–86; ability of subaltern women to feel sexual modesty and experience trauma 71, 74–75, 81–84, 85–86; amator, as literary persona 87n16, 145; amator, self-justification of 71, 72, 74–76, 78, 79–81, 84, 85–86, 87–88n19, 87n14, 87n16, 88n21, 89n35, 89nn38–39; Corinna the meretrix 71–72, 74, 75–79, 85, 89n38; Cypassis the ancilla 71–72, 74–75, 79–84; erotization of traumatized body 76, 85, 89n38; PTSD 71, 72, 73–74, 79, 86nn2–3, 87n7, 89n35; purpose of 79, 85–86; trauma theory/trauma studies and rape trauma syndrome 71–75 Amphitryo (Plautus) 66n9 anagnorisis 52, 54 Anaximenes 127 ancillae (female servants) 58–62, 64, 74, 79–85, 88n32 Andria (The Girl from Andros; Terence) 52, 66n10, 67n25 Aquila Theater 178 archaion agalma (old cult image of Athena, Acropolis) 100–102, 100–107, 108n11, 108n17 Aretaeus of Cappadocia 166 aristeia or berserk state in Vergil’s Aeneid 30, 32–36, 42–43n4 Aristogeiton and Harmodios (Tyrannicides) sculpture group 95, 97 Aristophanes: Birds 202n13, 203n18, 203n20; Lysistrata 108n8 Aristophanes of Byzantium 49 Aristotle 127; Poetics 11, 192, 196 Armenian Genocide 4, 217, 220–22 Ars Amatoria (Ovid) 80, 88n28, 88n32, 145–46, 147, 154n2, 155n23 Asinaria (The Comedy of Asses; Plautus) 58, 68n34 Aspis (The Shield; Menander) 58, 68n34 Athena: in Ajax (Sophocles) 14, 15–18; archaion agalma (old cult image of Athena, Acropolis) 100–102, 100–107, 108n11, 108n17 Athenian Acropolis, Persian sack of see Acropolis, Persian sack and rebuilding of

Augustus (Roman emperor) 41, 42, 143, 147, 153 Aulularia (The Pot of Gold; Plautus) 58, 62 Avlamis, P. 223n8 avoidance 163, 165, 166, 171n14 Bacchylides 195, 203n15 Bachvarova, M. R. 224n16 Bakewell, G. 223n14 Balaev, Michelle 34–35, 42, 136n12, 214, 220 Balakian, Peter, “The Oriental Rug” 220–21 bearing witness to trauma see Trachiniae belatedness and trauma 2, 3, 5, 13–16, 22, 25, 26, 31–32, 40, 51, 148, 178, 187n3, 220 Belau, Linda 51, 155n20 Benjamin, Andrew 28n18 Bergo, B. J. 157n48 Birds (Aristophanes) 202n13, 203n18, 203n20 Bischoping, C. 222 Bloom, Sandra 143–44, 153, 154n10, 155n21 Bosman, Philip R. x, 4–5, 7, 130, 160 Boutes 105, 109n23 Bridges, E. 219 Burgess, Ann 72, 88n31 Burton, R. W. B. 204n35 Caelius Aurelianus, On Acute and Chronic Diseases 172n24 Caligula (Gaius; Roman emperor) 162, 163 Captivi (The Captives; Plautus) 58, 66nn8–9 captivity see Flaccus, Philo’s portrait of; Polybius’ historiography Caruth, Cathy 1, 2, 13–14, 26, 27n8, 32, 119, 130, 134, 136n4, 140n60, 154n8, 187n3, 187n6, 199, 214–15; Trauma: Explorations in Memory (1995) 115–16 Casina (Plautus) 60–62, 67n23 Cassandra 76, 213–14, 215 Catullus 49 Cecropion (tomb of Cecrops), Acropolis 103, 105, 109n21 Champion, Craige B. 113, 121n6 Chateaubriand 219 Christian adversarial relationship with Islam 219

Index  chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) 42n1 Cicero: exilic letters of 146; Pro Caelio 49 Cistellaria (The Casket Comedy) 53, 62, 63–64, 66n10 Cleisthenes 105 Cleomenes 108n8 Coffee, N. 43n8 collective trauma 6; group identity and 217–22; lamentation, collective nature of 204n38; Seneca’s doxography in Naturales Quaestiones and 137n21; see also Acropolis, Persian sack and rebuilding of; Polybius’ historiography colonized subject, Polybius as 114, 115 Colson, F. H. 170n5 combat trauma see war trauma communicating trauma 7; see also Oedipus at Colonus (Sophocles); Trachiniae (Sophocles); Troy, as locus of intergenerational trauma Connor, P. 87–88n19 Consolationes (Seneca) 135 Constantinople, fall of 218, 221, 224n20 core trauma pattern: Ajax (Sophocles), repetition and deferral in 11, 14–25; concept of 11, 13 Corinna the meretrix, in Ovid’s Amores 71–72, 74, 75–79, 85, 89n38 Corybantic spell 167 Crowley, Jason 2–3, 33, 187n8 Curculio (The Weevil; Plautus) 52, 53, 66n10 Cypassis the ancilla, in Ovid’s Amores 71–72, 74–75, 79–84 Cyprus, Turkish invasion of 4, 217 Davis, J. T. 88n26 Deianeira see Trachiniae de Ira (On Anger; Seneca) 129, 135 disenfranchised and marginal groups 4; see also slaves; women and trauma dissected body in Greek culture 116–17 dissociation 2; Aeneid (Vergil) and 32, 33, 34, 37–38, 41; Ajax (Sophocles) and 25; Amores (Ovid) and 71, 73–74, 77–78, 86n2, 87nn7–8; in Oedipus at Colonus (Sophocles) 203n15; in Ovid’s exilic poetry 148; in Philo’s portrait of Flaccus 163, 167, 170, 171n14 docta puella 75, 87n13 Doerries, Bryan 2–3, 8n1, 178–79 DSM-III 27n9 DSM-IV 27n9, 154n6, 170n1, 171n13, 171n15

229

DSM-V 27n9, 38, 72, 125, 154n6, 161, 163, 169, 170n1, 171n6, 171nn13–14 duBois, Page 114, 116–17; Sappho is Burning (1988) 117 Dué, C. 216 Duras, Marguerite 2 Dyskolos (The Misanthrope; Menander) 58 earthquake, Pompeii (62/63 CE) see Naturales Quaestiones (Seneca), on Pompeian earthquake Easterling, P. E. 26n1, 205n47 Eckstein, Arthur M. 111, 121n7 Eclogues (Vergil) 89n37 Eichmann, Adolf 186 The Eighty-First Blow (documentary film, 1974) 186, 189n33 Electra (Sophocles) 195, 202n13 emotional trauma in Greece and Rome 1–8; communicating trauma 7 (see also Oedipus at Colonus (Sophocles); Trachiniae (Sophocles); Troy, as locus of intergenerational trauma); etymology, history, and definition of trauma 1–2; exile and captivity 6–7 (see also exile, Ovid’s poetry of; Flaccus, Philo’s portrait of; Polybius’ historiography); natural disasters 6–7 (see also Naturales Quaestiones); scholarship on 2–3; scope of study of 3; themes emerging from study of 4–5; trauma studies/trauma theory 1–2 (see also trauma studies/ trauma theory); see also collective trauma; war trauma; women and trauma Epicureanism 132 Epidicus 63, 66nn9–10, 67n25, 68n27 epiparodos, in Ajax (Sophocles) 14 Epistulae ex Ponto (Ovid) 145–48, 149, 150, 151–52, 154n2, 155n17; see also exile, Ovid’s poetry of Epistulae Morales (Seneca) 129 Epitrepontes (Men of Arbitration; Menander) 62–63, 68n26, 68n32 Erechtheion (Athenian Acropolis) and cult of Erectheus 100, 103–107, 104, 106, 108n14, 109n19, 109n21, 109n23 Erskine, Andrew 115 Eumenides (Aeschylus) 27n11, 187n4 Eunuchus (The Eunuch; Terence) 52, 59, 62, 63, 64–65, 66n10, 67n20, 67n24 Euripides: Helen 195, 203n20, 204n31; Heracles 203n16; Heraclidae 1; Iphigenia In Tauris 1, 203n17; Phoenician Women 195; Rhesus 27n11;

230 Index Suppliants 203n24; trauma as term, use of 1; Troades (Trojan Women), 1, 213–14 exile, of Flaccus see Flaccus, Philo’s portrait of exile, Ovid’s poetry of 6–7, 143–53; audience for 143, 149, 152, 155n17, 155n19, 156n41, 157n47, 157n51; disease, exile framed as 147–48, 151, 155n13, 155n24; Epistulae ex Ponto 145–48, 149, 150, 151–52, 154n2, 155n17; helplessness and lack of control in 144, 148, 150, 151, 153; literary persona of “Ovid” in 145–46, 154nn11–12; myth, use of 153; PTSD in 154nn6–7, 157n49; self-therapy, epistles as form of 143, 144–53; trauma studies/trauma theory and 143–44, 154n3; Tristia 144, 148–51, 152–53, 154n2; use of epistolary form 146; visions in 149–51, 155n24, 156n39 Fabula Incerta (Menander) 67n25 family separation in New Comedy 52–57, 68n34 Faraone, C. A. 188n15 Fasti (Ovid) 154n2 Fédida, P. 222 fight-or-flight response 37–38, 78 Fischer, Gottfried 99 Flaccus, Philo’s portrait of 4–5, 7, 160–70; fall of Flaccus 161–64; guilt and remorse in 161, 164, 165, 167–69; Jews of Alexandria, oppression of 160–62, 164, 167–70, 171n9, 171n15, 171n20; justice/ divine providence in 161, 162, 164, 167, 168–69; medical interpretation of 163, 164, 166, 167, 168, 169, 172n27; mental anguish of Flaccus 164–69, 172n30; parallels between Flaccus’ mental disintegration and physical injuries to Jews 164, 171n15; PTSD and 160, 161, 163, 167, 169–70, 171n14; sources for 168; as trauma therapy 161, 170 flashbacks 31–32, 39–41 Fränkel, H. 87n19 Frankfurt School 186 Fredrick, D. 89n38 freezing response 37, 39, 73–74, 75, 77–78, 82, 86n2, 87n10; see also tonic immobility Freud, Sigmund 1, 31, 32, 117, 119, 139n9, 140n60, 187n3, 187n6; Moses and Monotheism (1939) 116, 119 Fuse, T. 86–87n5, 87n9

Galinsky, K. 130 gender see women and trauma Georgics (Vergil) 89n37 Georgos (The Farmer) 62, 67n25, 68n26 Gerschmann, K. H. 168 Gigantomachy 35–36 Gilloch, G. 224n27 Golden, K. B. 157n48 Gouri, Haim 186 Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) 221 Greece, trauma in see emotional trauma in Greece and Rome Greek independence from Ottomans and memory of Persian Wars 219 Greene, E. 76, 88nn19–21 Hall, E. 219 Hall, Major Jeff 178, 179 Harmodios and Aristogeiton (Tyrannicides) sculpture group 95, 97 Hau, Lisa Irene 113 Hector 30, 36, 38, 43n7, 44n12, 210, 211 Hecuba, in Euripides’ Trojan Women 213–14 Hecyra (The Mother-in-Law; Terence) 58, 62 Heiden, B. 188n11 Helen (Euripides) 195, 203n20, 204n31 helplessness, traumatic experience of: in Athenian experience of Persian sack 95, 99; learned helplessness 153; in Ovid’s poetry of exile 144, 148, 150, 151, 153; Senecan tragedy, use of inpotens in 138n31; in Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones 125; in trauma studies/ trauma theory 99, 125, 153, 154n6; by women in New Comedy 54, 59 Helzle, M. 156n29, 157n51 Henderson, John 114–15, 120, 121 Hephaistos, on Athenian Acropolis 105, 109n21, 109n23 Heracles (Euripides) 203n16 Heracles, in Sophocles’ Trachiniae 178, 180–83, 185–86, 188n18, 188n21, 189n27 Heraclidae (Euripides) 1 Herman, Judith, Trauma and Recovery (1992) 181, 182–83 Herodotus 100, 102, 103, 216 Heroides (Ovid) 85, 146, 154n2 Heros (The Guardian Spirit) 62, 67n25, 68n26 Hesiod, Works and Days 177, 187n4, 203n15

Index  Hiereia (The Priestess) 62 Hinds, S. 146n2 Hippocratic corpus 166, 172n32, 188n17 Hiroshima mon amour (film) 2 Hirsch, Marianne 215, 217 Histories (Polybius) see Polybius’ historiography Holocaust studies and trauma 1, 177–78, 181, 186, 189n33, 215, 217 Holstrom, Lynda 72, 88n31 Holst-Warhaft, G. 224n26 Homer see Iliad; Odyssey Horace 129, 136n5 humoral theory 166 Hyllus see Trachiniae hyperarousal 144, 163 Ibis (Ovid) 154n2 Iliad (Homer): descriptions of Troy in 216; laments of Achilles and Thetis from 210–12, 214, 215; Philo’s account of Flaccus and 160; Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus and 194, 198, 199; Vergil’s Aeneid and 30, 33, 36, 38, 43n7, 44–45n17, 44n12 In Flaccum (Against Flaccus; Philo) see Flaccus, Philo’s portrait of inherent latency 221 intergenerational trauma, Troy as locus of see Troy, as locus of intergenerational trauma intertextuality of Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones 126, 128–34, 135, 136nn6–7, 137n23, 140n60 Inwood, B. 139n43, 139n45 Iphigenia In Tauris (Euripides) 1, 203n17 Islam, Christian adversarial relationship with 219 James, Sharon L. x, 4, 5–6, 49, 80, 87n11, 89n35, 116 Jarratt, Susan C. x, 4, 6, 42, 111 Jews of Alexandria and Philo’s portrait of Flaccus 160–62, 164, 167–70, 171n9, 171n15, 171n20 Josephus 121n7 Kamerbeek, J. 187–88n11 Kaplan, E. A. (Ann) 4, 39, 146, 149, 152, 156n31, 156n34 Karanika, Andromache xi, 1, 4, 7, 42, 116, 194, 210 Kilby, J. 224n27 Kitharistes (The Lyre Player) 62

231

Klauck, H.-J. 161 Klindienst, P. 189n33 kommos see under Oedipus at Colonus Konstan, David 3, 12 Koraes, Adamantios 219 Korres, Manolis 108n14 Kracauer, Siegfried 186 Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors 168 Lambek, M. 154n3 lamentation see Oedipus at Colonus; Troy, as locus of intergenerational trauma Laub, Dori 178, 181 Lawrence, S. E. 189n29 learned helplessness 153 Leys, Ruth 2, 31, 41, 161, 215 life drive 119–21 Lifton, Robert Jay 119 Linforth, I. M. 204n36, 205n47 Littlewood, C. A. 139n43 Livy 49 locus or place of trauma: home, longing for, in Ovid’s exilic poetry 149–50, 156n40; Naturales Quaestiones (Seneca), on Pompeian earthquake 126, 136–37n14; in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus 192, 194, 199–201; Tomis, in Ovid’s exilic poetry 149, 156n32; topographic change as traumatic 156n31; see also offstage violence; Troy, as locus of intergenerational trauma Longinus, On the Sublime 132 Luck, G. 87n19 Lucretius 132, 136n5; On the Nature of Things 39 Lycortas (father of Polybius) 111, 115 Lycurgus 109n23 Lysistrata (Aristophanes) 108n8 Marcellus, Comte de 219 Mardonios 95 Marincola, J. 121n10 Marx, B. P. 86–87n5 Maurizio, L. 202n8 McFarlane, A. C. 126 McKeown, J. C. 88n33 meaning, trauma victim’s search for 35, 125, 126, 130, 149, 153, 156n34, 165, 170n5, 201 Mehmed II (Ottoman sultan) 218 Meineck, Peter 3, 12, 178–79, 187n9 Meiser, M. 165 melancholia 166, 168

232 Index memory and trauma 2; Oedipus at Colonus, loci of narrative memory and traumatic memory in 192, 194, 199–201, 202n12; Ovid’s poetry of exile and 150; Seneca’s Naturales Quaestiones on 126, 135, 139n56, 140n58; in Vergil’s Aeneid 31–32, 44n15 Menaechmi (The Brothers Menaechmus; Plautus) 52, 66nn8–10 Menander 49, 58, 65, 66n2, 66n6, 68n26, 68n34; Aspis (The Shield) 58, 68n34; Dyskolos (The Misanthrope) 58; Epitrepontes (Men of Arbitration) 62–63, 68n26, 68n32; Fabula Incerta 67n25; Misoumenos 67n20; Perikeiromene 67n20; Perinthia 67n25; Phasma (The Apparition) 62, 68n26; Samia (The Woman from Samos) 62, 67n25; Synaristosai (Women Lunching Together) 63; Titthe 67n25 meretrices (prostitutes): docta puella 75, 87n13; in New Comedy 53, 58–59, 63–64, 67n20; in Ovid’s Amores 71, 74–79, 81, 84, 85, 87n11, 88n30 Metamorphoses (Ovid) 85, 154n2 Methodist school of medicine 166 Meyer, Marion xi, 4, 6, 95 Miles (Plautus) 67n20 mimetic and anti-mimetic approaches to trauma 31–32, 41 Misoumenos (Menander) 67n20 Moor, A. 73 Moses, Freud on 116, 119 Mostellaria (The Ghost; Plautus) 58 Murnaghan, Sheila 178, 185, 187n9 Naturales Quaestiones (Seneca), on Pompeian earthquake (62/63 CE) 5, 6–7, 125–35; audience for 139n45; doxography of 127, 130, 136n6, 137n21, 139n51; fear of death, management of 126–27, 131, 135, 138n25, 138n30, 138n39; intertextuality of 126, 128–34, 135, 136nn6–7, 137n23, 140n60; on locus or place of trauma 126, 136–37n14; memory and trauma in 126, 135, 139n56, 140n58; ordering of books 130–31, 136n3; physics and ethics intertwined in 128–29, 130–31, 138n26, 138n29; PTSD and 125, 130; rationalizing/normalizing of earthquake 135; study of earthquakes, therapeutic value of 126–28, 130, 137nn15–19, 138n39; as sublime event 125, 126,

131–34, 136n5, 138–39nn41–42; trauma theory/trauma studies and 125–26, 134–35 neurological studies of trauma 1–2, 30, 33 New Comedy, female trauma in 4, 5–6, 49–66; ancillae (female servants) 58–62, 64; audience, female versus male 50–52; audience and 50–52, 67n17; citizen women experiencing 49–50, 52–53, 62–65; marriage to rapist 52, 62, 65, 66n11; meretrices (prostitutes) 53, 58–59, 63–64, 67n20; offstage, violence occurring 49, 52, 56, 58, 65; rape and sexual abuse of the enslaved 50–51, 59–62, 68n30; rape of citizen women 50, 62–65; second-generation rape 62, 63; separation from family 52–57, 68n34; slave women experiencing 49–51, 57–62; torture and physical abuse of slaves 58–59; trauma studies/ trauma theory and 49–52; youngergeneration and older-generation rape 62, 63, 68n26; see also specific comedies/ comedy authors nightingales, in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus 194–95, 202n11 Odysseus: in Ajax (Sophocles) 14, 15–18; in Ovid’s poetry of exile 153 Odyssey (Homer) 187n4, 202n13, 216 Oedipus at Colonus (Sophocles) 4, 7, 192–201; chorus, central role of 192, 193, 200; Colonus as place of narrative memory in 193, 199–201, 202n12; dirges of Antigone and Ismene and suppression of female mourning 193, 200–201, 202n8, 203n14, 204n31, 205n45; funeral rites of Oedipus in 201; kommos, as lamentation 192–99, 202n1, 203n22, 204n30; kommos, creation of social memory by 198–99; kommos, integration of Oedipus into Attica by 192, 193, 195–99; nightingales in 194–95, 202n11; psychological shift undergone by Oedipus in 201n205n47; Thebes as place of traumatic memory in 194, 199–201; Theseus in 192, 198–99 Oedipus Tyrannus (Oedipus the King; Sophocles) 177, 198, 205n41 offstage violence: in Ajax (Sophocles) 13, 14, 15, 18, 21, 26n1; in New Comedy 49, 52, 56, 58, 65; in Sophocles’ Trachiniae 186 older-generation rape 62, 63, 68n28

Index  On Acute and Chronic Diseases (Caelius Aurelianus) 172n24 Onega, Susana 153, 156n33 On the Deaths of the Persecutors (Lactantius) 168 On the Nature of Things (Lucretius) 39 On the Sublime (Longinus) 132 Ovid: Ars Amatoria 80, 88n28, 88n32, 145–46, 147, 154n2, 155n23; Epistulae ex Ponto 145–48, 149, 150, 151–52, 154n2, 155n17; Fasti 154n2; Heroides 85, 146, 154n2; Ibis 154n2; Metamorphoses 85, 154n2; Naturales Quaestiones (Seneca) and 132, 139n48; Tristia 144, 148–51, 152–53, 154n2; see also Amores (Ovid), victim perspective in; exile, Ovid’s poetry of Panoussi, Vassiliki xi, 1, 4, 5, 30, 116 Parker, D. 87–88n19 parodos 16, 18, 20, 21, 23n17, 213 Parry, H. 188n14 Parthenon (Athenian Acropolis), erection of 98–99, 103 Patroclus 33, 38, 210–12, 214 Pausanias 103 Pellicer-Ortín, Silvia 145, 155n13, 156n33 Pentheus 168 Perikeiromene (Menander) 67n20 Perinthia (Menander) 67n25 peritraumatic dissociation 87nn7–8 peritraumatic responses to sexual assault 71, 72–74 Perkins, C. A. 88n19 Pernot, Laurent 112 Persa (Plautus) 66n10 Persians (Aeschylus) 196, 197, 198, 201, 204n25, 204n27, 219, 223n12, 223n14 Persian Wars 95, 196, 197, 199, 204n27, 216, 219; see also Acropolis, Persian sack and rebuilding of Phasma (The Apparition; Menander) 62, 68n26 Phelan, Peggy 27n5 Philinus of Agrigentum 117 Philip of Macedon 216 Philoctetes (Sophocles) 189n28 Philo of Alexandria, In Flaccum (Against Flaccus) see Flaccus, Philo’s portrait of Phoenician Women (Euripides) 195 Phormio (Terence) 66n10 Phylarchus 118 pietas, violation of, in Vergil’s Aeneid 35, 44–45n17

233

place see locus or place of trauma Platonism 167, 172n29 Plautus 66, 66n2, 68n30; Amphitryo 66n9; Asinaria (The Comedy of Asses) 58, 68n34; Aulularia (The Pot of Gold) 58, 62; Captivi (The Captives) 58, 66nn8–9; Casina 60–62, 67n23; Curculio (The Weevil) 52, 53, 66n10; Menaechmi (The Brothers Menaechmus) 52, 66nn8–10; Miles 67n20; Mostellaria (The Ghost) 58; Persa 66n10; Poenulus (The Little Carthaginian) 50, 52, 53, 56–57, 58–59, 66nn8–10, 67n16; Rudens (The Rope) 52, 53–56, 57, 66n12; Trinummus 66n10; Truculentus 58, 62, 67n20 Plutarch, Themistocles 100 Pneumatic school of medicine 166 Poenulus (The Little Carthaginian; Plautus) 50, 52, 53, 56–57, 58–59, 66nn8–10, 67n16 Poetics (Aristotle) 11, 192, 196 Polybius’ historiography 4, 6, 111–21; Carthage and Corinth, as witness to Roman destruction of 112, 120; as colonized subject 114, 115; on conscience 169; dissected body image 116–17, 119; as “pragmatic” historian 112, 113, 117–18; Roman hostage, experience as 111–12, 115, 117, 120; Roman plundering of Greek cultural objects in conquest of Syracuse and 121n8; “tragic history,” argument against 118–19; trauma studies/trauma theory and 115–19; traumatic rifts in 111–15, 121; truth and the life drive in 119–21 Pompeii, earthquake of 62/63 CE see Naturales Quaestiones (Seneca), on Pompeian earthquake Poseidon: on Athenian Acropolis 104–107, 109n21, 109n23; in Euripides’ Trojan Women 213 Posthomerica (Quintus of Smyrna) 223n8 post-memory trauma 217–19 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 2–3; Achilles and 212; Aeneid (Vergil) and 30, 32, 33, 48; Ajax (Sophocles) and 11–12, 13, 26n2, 27n9; Amores (Ovid) and PTSD from sexual assault 71, 72, 73–74, 79, 86nn2–3, 87n7, 89n35; APA’s recognition of (1980) 119, 160; Flaccus, Philo’s portrait of 160, 161, 163, 167, 169–70, 171n14; from natural

234 Index catastrophes 136n4; Ovid’s poetry of exile and 154nn6–7, 157n49; Pompeian earthquake of 62/63 CE and 125, 130; secondary PTSD 222 praeceptor 80–81, 88n28, 88n32 Pro Caelio (Cicero) 49 Procne 194, 195, 203n14, 203n17, 203n21 Propertius 75 Propylaia (Athenian Acropolis) 108n14 prostitutes see meretrices Quint, D. 205n39 Quintus Fabius Pictor 117 Quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica 223n8 Rabinowitz, N. S. 188n23 Radstone, S. 27n8 Ramadanovic, P. 41 rape and sexual violence: muting/silencing of rape victims 64, 71, 74, 76, 77, 81, 83, 85, 214, 223n4; rape trauma syndrome 72–75, 87n9; in Trachiniae (Sophocles) 180, 188n23; see also Amores (Ovid), victim perspective in; New Comedy, female trauma in Reineke, M. J. 205n39 Reitzammer, Laurialan xi, 4, 7, 19, 149, 186, 192, 210 relic trauma 7, 217–22 repetition and trauma 4; flashbacks 31–32, 39–41; in New Comedy 50, 51–52, 64; in Ovid’s poetry of exile 144, 148; Sophocles’ Ajax, repetition and deferral as core trauma pattern in 11, 14–25; in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus 199, 205n39, 205n41 representation, trauma defying 2, 3, 4, 31, 32, 99, 156n41, 214–15 repression 2, 32, 51, 56, 64, 114–17, 119–20, 136n9, 200 Resnais, Alain 2 return of the repressed 117, 119, 136n9, 200 Rhesus (Euripides) 27n11 Rhodes, P. 219 Riedesser, Peter 99 Rome, trauma in see emotional trauma in Greece and Rome Roth, M. S. 156n37, 157n46 Rudens (The Rope; Plautus) 52, 53–56, 57, 66n12 Rutherford, I. 203n17 Ryan, M. B. 88n19

Sabine women 88n30 Salameh, Mahmoud 66n5 Samia (The Woman from Samos; Menander) 62, 67n25 Scafuro, A. 62 Scarry, Elaine, The Body in Pain (1985) 22 Schechner, Richard 27n7 Schneider, Rebecca 27–28n18, 28n21 Scipio Aemilianus 111–12, 114, 120 Scodel, R. 202n2 Scott, M. 188n15 Scully, S. 216 Seal, C. 136n8 secondary or vicarious trauma 152 secondary PTSD 222 second-generation rape 62, 63 self-blame, as response to rape 72, 82, 83, 86n2, 88n31, 89n34 Seneca the Younger: Consolationes 135; de Ira (On Anger) 129, 135; Epistulae Morales 129; Thyestes 139n42; use of inpotens in Senecan tragedy 138n31; see also Naturales Quaestiones separation from family in New Comedy 52–57, 68n34 Settle, Trigg xi, 4, 5, 11, 186 Seven Against Thebes (Aeschylus) 204n25 sexual violence see rape and sexual violence Shay, Jonathan, Achilles in Vietnam (1994) 2, 11, 26n2, 30, 33, 35, 38, 41, 42–43n1, 178–79, 187n9, 212 Singh Dhuga, U. 202n3 skene, use of, in Sophocles’ Ajax 15, 16, 18–22, 25–26, 28n19 slaves: ancillae (female servants) 58–62, 64, 74, 79–85, 88n32; Cypassis the ancilla in Amores (Ovid) 71–72, 74–75, 79–84; intergenerational trauma experienced by 222; New Comedy, enslaved men experiencing trauma in 68n34; New Comedy, slave women experiencing trauma in 49–51, 57–62 Smith, L. P. 65 Solmsen, F. 188n25 Solon 168 Sommerstein, A. 26n1 Sophocles: Electra 195, 202n13; Oedipus Tyrannus (Oedipus the King) 177, 198, 205n41; Philoctetes 189n28; see also Ajax;Oedipus at Colonus;Trachiniae Soranus of Ephesus 166, 172n24 Stampfl, B. 126, 134

Index  Stein, Gertrude 25, 28n21 Stewart, Andrew 97–98 Stoicism 137n24, 138nn33–35 the sublime and trauma 125, 126, 131–34, 136n5, 138–39nn41–42 Suksi, A. 203n21 Suppliants (Euripides) 203n24 Suppliant Women (Aeschylus) 195 Sureness see Trachiniae survivor guilt 31, 36 Suter, Ann 193, 195–96 Synaristosai (Women Lunching Together; Menander) 63 Tafur, Pero 218 Taylor, Diana 27n5 Terence 51–52, 66, 66n2, 68n32, 68n34; Adelphoe (The Brothers) 58, 66n10, 67n25; Andria (The Girl from Andros) 52, 66n10, 67n25; Eunuchus (The Eunuch) 52, 59, 62, 63, 64–65, 66n10, 67n20, 67n24; Hecyra (The Mother-inLaw) 58, 62; Phormio 66n10 Terr, L. C. 212 Thakur, Sanjaya xi–xii, 4, 7, 143 Thales 127 Theater of War project (Doerries) 8n1, 178 theatrical performance and trauma 13–14, 25–26, 27–28n18 Themistocles (Plutarch) 100 Theognis 195, 203n15 Thetis 211–12, 214, 215 Thucydides 112, 113, 164 Thumiger, C. 166, 171n22 Thyestes (Seneca) 139n42 Tiberius (Roman emperor) 165 Tibullus 75 Timaeus 113 time continuum, trauma disturbing 4, 5, 25–26, 41, 215–16, 220, 223n15 Titthe (Menander) 67n25 Toner, J. 136n4 tonic immobility 71, 73, 76–79, 82–83, 86–87nn4–5, 87nn9–10, 88n31, 89n34; see also freezing response Trachiniae (Sophocles) 7, 177–87; on difficulties of bearing witness to trauma 177–79; Heracles in 178, 180–83, 185–86, 188n18, 188n21, 189n27; Iole in 181, 182, 185, 188n23; late-learning, as tragedy of 177, 187n3; love-charm in 180–82, 188n15; Nessus in 180, 182, 183, 184, 185, 188n12, 188n14, 188n15;

235

oneself, Deianeira being a witness to 178, 179–81; process of witnessing, being a witness to 178, 185–87; spectating in 187n2; testimonies of others, Chorus and Hyllus bearing witness to 178, 181–85, 187n9, 188n21, 188n25, 189n29 tragedy as genre: catharsis of, as cultural trauma therapy 12; centrality of violence and death to 11; combat veterans, as theater and audience of 187n9; see also specific tragedies/authors of tragedy transference 140n58 transmission of trauma 4 trauma studies/trauma theory 1–2; Aeneid (Vergil) and 30–32; Ajax (Sophocles) and 11–14; Amores (Ovid) and 71–75; helplessness, traumatic experience of 99, 125, 153, 154n6; Naturales Quaestiones (Seneca), on Pompeian earthquake and 125–26, 134–35; New Comedy, female sexual trauma in 49–52; Ovid’s poetry of exile and 143–44, 154n3; Persian sack of Acropolis, reactions to 99–100, 107; Philo’s portrait of Flaccus as trauma therapy 161, 170; Polybius’ historiography and 115–19; Trachiniae (Sophocles) and problem of witness 177–79, 187n6 traumatic brain injury (TBI) 42n1 Trinacty, Christopher xii, 5, 6–7, 125 Trinummus (Plautus) 66n10 Tristia (Ovid) 144, 148–51, 152–53, 154n2; see also exile, Ovid’s poetry of Troades (Trojan Women; Euripides) 1, 213–14 Troy, as locus of intergenerational trauma 7, 210–23; in laments from Iliad, Trojan Women, and Agamemnon 210–15; “mythological moment” of fall of Trpy 223n8; physical ruins, intergenerational transmission of trauma through 215–17; post-memory trauma 217–19; relic trauma and group identity 7, 217–23 Truculentus (Plautus) 58, 62, 67n20 truth, traumatized subject’s insistence on 119–21 Turpin, W. 88n19 Tyrannicides (Harmodios and Aristogeiton) sculpture group 95, 97 unrepresentability of trauma 2, 3, 4, 31, 32, 99, 156n41, 214–15 Usher, Stephen 113

236 Index van der Hart, O. 130 Van der Horst, P. W. 170n5 Van der Kolk, B. 32, 126, 130, 154n6 Vergil:Eclogues 89n37; Georgics 89n37; see also Aeneid vicarious or secondary trauma 152 Virgil see Vergil Völker, W. 161 Walbank, F. W. 112, 114 Walters, J. 88n29 war trauma 5; shift in Freud’s theories and 119; tragedy as theater and audience of combat veterans 187n9; universality of experience of 178–79, 187n8; see also Aeneid;Ajax; Polybius’ historiography Weiberg, Erika L. xii, 4, 7, 177 Weiss, N. 203n20 Wiesel, Elie 177 Wilkinson, L. P. 87n19 Williams, G. 132–33, 136n5, 138n26, 139n49 Wise, Jessica xii, 4, 6, 37, 61, 68n32, 71, 116

witnesses to trauma see Trachiniae women and trauma 5–6; ancillae (female servants) 58–62, 64, 74, 79–85, 88n32; lament of Achilles in Iliad and 211–12; mourning, female, repression of 193, 200–201, 202n8, 203n14, 205n45; muting/silencing of female victims 64, 71, 74, 76, 77, 81, 83, 85, 214, 223n4; tragic history, Polybius’ negative feminization of 119; see also Amores (Ovid), victim perspective in; meretrices; New Comedy, female trauma in; rape and sexual violence Woodruff, Paul 12, 27n5 Works and Days (Hesiod) 177, 187n4, 203n15 Wright, Elinor 195, 203n23 Xen., Hellenica 108n17 Xerxes 95, 196, 197, 199, 204n27, 216 younger-generation rape 62 Zeitlin, F. 204n34