The Ancient Mediterranean Sea in Modern Visual and Performing Arts: Sailing in Troubled Waters 9781474298599, 9781474298629, 9781474298612

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part 1: The Mediterranean as a Geographical Space
1. Roman Adriatic Ports and the Antiquarian Tradition
2. Chronotopes of Hellenic Antiquity: The Strait of Reggio and Messina in Documents from the Grand Tour Era
3. The Eternal Words of the Latin Sea: Fedra by Mur Oti
Part 2: Living and Dying in Troubled Waters
4. Quod mare non novit, quae nescit Ariona tellus? (Ov. Fast. II, 83)
5. Ulysses in the Cinema: The Example of Nostos, il ritorno (Franco Piavoli, Italy, 1990)
6. A Sea of Metal Plates: Images of the Mediterranean from the Eighteenth Century until Post-modern Theatre
7. Sailors on Board, Heroes en Route: From the Aegean World to Modern Stage
Part 3: A Personal Sea: The Artist and the Sea
8. Ancient Seas in Modern Opera: Sea Images and Mediterranean Myths in Rihm’s Dionysos
9. A Mirror to See Your Soul: The Exile of Ovid in Eugène Delacroix’s Painting
10. Cinematic Romans and the Mediterranean Sea
Part 4: Sea Politics
11. Changing Their Sky, Not Their Soul: Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Vision of the Ancient Mediterranean
12. The Image of Phoenicians and Carthaginians in Modern Spanish History and Culture
13. Screening the Battle of Actium: Naval Victory, Erotic Tragedy and the Birth of an Empire
Part 5: Contemporary Uses of the Classical Mediterranean
14. Troubled Waters: Performative Imaginary in the Project PI – Pequena Infância
Annex: Nem Gregos nem Troianos
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The Ancient Mediterranean Sea in Modern Visual and Performing Arts

Imagines – Classical Receptions in the Visual and Performing Arts Series Editors: Filippo Carlà-Uhink and Martin Lindner Other titles in this series: Art Nouveau and the Classical Tradition, Richard Warren

The Ancient Mediterranean Sea in Modern Visual and Performing Arts Sailing in Troubled Waters Edited by Rosario Rovira Guardiola

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2018 Paperback edition first published 2019 Copyright © Rosario Rovira Guardiola and Contributors, 2018 Rosario Rovira Guardiola has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xv constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Clare Turner. Logo design: Ainize González and Nacho García Cover image: © José Bandeira All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-9859-9 PB: 978-1-3501-1724-2 ePDF: 978-1-4742-9861-2 ePub: 978-1-4742-9860-5 Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

To Dr Rosemary J. Barrow

Contents List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements

Introduction  Rosario Rovira Guardiola

ix xii xv 1

Part 1  The Mediterranean as a Geographical Space

1 2 3

Roman Adriatic Ports and the Antiquarian Tradition Federico Ugolini

11

Chronotopes of Hellenic Antiquity: The Strait of Reggio and Messina in Documents from the Grand Tour Era  Marco Benoît Carbone

33

The Eternal Words of the Latin Sea: Fedra by Mur Oti Francisco Salvador Ventura

55

Part 2  Living and Dying in Troubled Waters

4 5 6 7

Quod mare non novit, quae nescit Ariona tellus? (Ov. Fast. II, 83) Dorit Engster

69

Ulysses in the Cinema: The Example of Nostos, il ritorno (Franco Piavoli, Italy, 1990)  Óscar Lapeña Marchena

93

A Sea of Metal Plates: Images of the Mediterranean from the Eighteenth Century until Post-­modern Theatre  Sotera Fornaro

109

Sailors on Board, Heroes en Route: From the Aegean World to Modern Stage  Erika Notti and Martina Treu

121

Part 3  A Personal Sea: The Artist and the Sea

8

Ancient Seas in Modern Opera: Sea Images and Mediterranean Myths in Rihm’s Dionysos  Jesús Carruesco and Montserrat Reig

147

Contents

viii

9

A Mirror to See Your Soul: The Exile of Ovid in Eugène Delacroix’s Painting  Rosario Rovira Guardiola

10 Cinematic Romans and the Mediterranean Sea  Cecilia Ricci

165 179

Part 4  Sea Politics

11 Changing Their Sky, Not Their Soul: Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Vision of the Ancient Mediterranean  Quentin Broughall

197

12 The Image of Phoenicians and Carthaginians in Modern Spanish History and Culture  Antonio Duplá Ansuategui

213

13 Screening the Battle of Actium: Naval Victory, Erotic Tragedy and the Birth of an Empire  Monica Silveira Cyrino

231

Part 5  Contemporary Uses of the Classical Mediterranean

14 Troubled Waters: Performative Imaginary in the Project PI – Pequena Infância  Sofia de Carvalho, Elisabete Cação and Ana Seiça Carvalho Annex: Nem Gregos nem Troianos Bibliography Index

253 269 271 305

Illustrations 1.1

1.2 1.3

1.4

1.5

2.1 4.1

4.2

4.3

4.4

Vincenzo Tomai (1546), Porto Candiano e Suo Canale da Ravenna e Torre Farea sulla Destra. Notizia Sopra il Disegno del Nuovo Porto Fatto da Vincenzo Tomai nel 1546. Biblioteca Classense, Ravenna. Paolo Armileo (1593), Porto di Augusto o di Gaio Cesare. Biblioteca Classense, Ravenna. Tommaso Spinola (1615), Porto Candiano Antico e Candiano Aperto Verso 1615 e Canal Panfilio Regione Classense. Biblioteca Classense, Ravenna. Antonio Arrigoni, A. (1616), Pianta della Città di Rimino come si trova nell’anno MDCXI. Gabinetto delle Stampe 7128, Biblioteca Gambalunga, Rimini. Pietro Santi (1807), Ruderi di Antica Torre Rovesciata da Impetuoso Vento nel Mese di Febbrajo l’Anno 1807. Molti Argomentano, che Abbia Servito, ne Secoli Addietro, di Fanale al Porto di Rimini, Pietro Santi Disegnò. Gabinetto delle Stampe 3168, Biblioteca Gambalunga, Rimini. Unknown author, Strait of Messina with Charybdis and Scylla, 1686. www.lasiciliainrete.it. Ferdinand Bol (1616–1680), Neptune and Amphitrite, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Copyright: bpk, Gemäldegalerie, SMB, Jörg P. Anders. Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), Arion, Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle. Copyright: bpk, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Christoph Irrgang. Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480–1538), Arion, Warburg Institute Photographic Archive. This material is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 3.0 Unported Licence. Johann Friedrich Bury after Annibale Carracci, Arion, Weimar, Klassik Stiftung Weimar. Copyright: bpk, Klassik Stiftung Weimar/Mokansky, Olaf.

14 15

17

20

28 36

74

77

78

80

x

4.5

6.1 7.1

7.2

7.3

8.1 8.2 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 13.1

13.2

Illustrations

Jan Harmensz Muller (1571–1628) after Cornelis van Haarlem (Cornelis Cornelisz) (1562–1638), Arion, Warburg Institute Photographic Archive. This material is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 3.0 Unported Licence. Map of Odyssey Europa, 2010. Copyright: Raumlaborberlin. Odissea, movimento n.1 (2015), written and directed by Emma Dante, 68° Ciclo di Spettacoli Classici al Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza. Photo by Francesco Dalla Pozza. Chorus of Aeschylus’ Suppliant Women, directed by Moni Ovadia, Greek Theatre, Syracuse, 2015. Photo by Maria Pia Ballarino. Courtesy: AFI – Archivio Fondazione INDA. Nausicaa. Io sono Io (2015), directed by Giancarlo Biffi, Cadadieteatro – Meeting the Odyssey, Olbia, 13 August 2015. Photo by Ernie Li. Female dolphins – mermaids. Photograph courtesy of Ruth Walz. Lady of the Beasts, feminine chorus and mask. Photograph courtesy of Ruth Walz. Eugène Delacroix, Ovid chez les Barbars. Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée Nationale. Eugène Delacroix, preparatory drawing for Ovid chez les Barbars. Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée Nationale. Eugène Delacroix, Les Natchez (1835). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Joseph Mallord William Turner, Ovid banished from Rome (1838). The Athenaeum through Wikipedia Commons. Phoenician merchants doing business with the Spaniards. Francisco de Goya, Annibale vincitore, che rimiro la prima volta dalle Alpi l’Italia, 1770. Fundación Selgas-Fagalde-Cudillero. Francisco Domingo Marqués, Last day of Sagunt, 1869. Diputación de Valencia. Carthaginians and Romans Festival, 2014 (Cartagena). Enobarbus (C. Aubrey Smith) berates Antony (Henry Wilcoxon) before the Battle of Actium in Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra (1934). Paramount Pictures. Cleopatra (Elizabeth Taylor) consults with her advisors during the Battle of Actium in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra (1963). 20th Century Fox.

81 113

130

133

134 152 156 168 169 172 174 217 220 221 224

240

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Illustrations

13.3 Antony (James Purefoy) ponders the aftermath of the Battle of Actium in episode 22 (De Patre Vostro) of Rome (2007). HBO, BBC. 14.1 Narration with the puppets at Acreditar. 14.2 Discussing the myth and the characters at the Paediatric University Hospital Centre of Coimbra. 14.3 Performance at Lar do Padre Serra: sailing the boat.

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245 256 256 257

Contributors José Bandeira is a photographer based is Lisbon. His interest in the ancient world led him to create the project «Nem Gregos nem Troianos / Neither Greeks nor Trojans» that was presented during the conference Sailing in troubled waters that took place in Faro in 2014. Quentin J. Broughall is an independent scholar and writer. In 2015, he completed a Ph.D. in Classics at Maynooth University with a thesis entitled ‘Assuming the purple: the rehabilitation of ancient Rome in Victorian culture, 1837–1901’. His academic interests are centred on the reception of antiquity in the Anglophone world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially changing perceptions of the Roman Empire in Britain and the United States. He is currently writing his first novel and researching a book on Gore Vidal and the classical world. Elisabete Cação got her BA and MA at the University of Coimbra and she is a PhD candidate with a thesis on a manuscript of the National Library of Portugal that contains Aeschines’ speech ‘Against Ctesiphon’. She was an external scholar at University of Brasilia (2015) at Archai: Origens do Pensamento Ocidental. She has been part of the Project Pequena Infância since 2010. Marco Benoît Carbone is a PhD Candidate at University College London. He works as an Associate Lecturer at the University of the Arts, London, where he teaches Media and Cultural Studies. His research interests include the reception of ancient myth, the representations of history, and the relations between heritage and cultural identity. Jesús Carruesco is Senior Lecturer (Serra Húnter Programme) at the Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona and a Senior Researcher at the Institut Català d’Arqueologia Clàssica. He has published extensively on various subjects relating to Greek literature (epic and lyric, Presocratic philosophy and the novel), iconography, religion and Classical reception. He is currently working on an edition of Empedocles. Sofia Carvalho got her BA and MA at the University of Coimbra (Portugal) where she is currently a PhD candidate in Classical Studies with a thesis on the

Contributors

xiii

poem of Stesichorus. During her PhD research she was a visiting scholar at the University of Nottingham (2013–2016). Sofia de Carvalho has been part of the Project Pequena Infância since 2010. Antonio Duplá Ansuategui is Professor of Ancient History at the University of the Basque Country. His research is focused in the Late Roman Republic and in the Classical Reception Studies, especially in the relationship between classicism and fascism. He is now leading an international research team on ‘Antiquity, nationalism, historiography and culture in Europe and Latin America 17891989’ (www.aniho.org). Dorit Engster studied History, Classical Philology and English Philology in Goettingen and Cambridge and earned her doctoral degree with a thesis about Mystery Religions in Antiquity. Since then she has been working as a lecturer at the Seminar for Ancient History in Goettingen. Her main fields of research are the history of religion, science in antiquity, the development of political concepts and moral values. Sotera Fornaro teaches Greek Literature and Comparative Literature in the University of Sassari (Italy). She is author of many essays and books about about Homer, greek imperial rhetorik, classical reception and history of the classical scholarship. Óscar Lapeña Marchena is Professor of Ancient History in University of Cadiz (Spain); among his work stand outs El Mito de Espartaco, De Capua a Hollywood (2007), and Guida al Cinema Peplum (2009). And as editor Imagining Ancient Cities in Film, From Babylon to Cinecittá, (2015), El poder a través de la representación fílmica (2015) and Cine y Eros (2017). Erika Notti is Assistant Professor at the IULM University (Milan), in the field of ‘Aegean Civilizations’. She deals with Aegean languages and Scripts. Her research interests range from anthropology of writing, philology, epigraphy and palaeography to iconography and history of Aegean and Indo-European cultures. Montserrat Reig is Associate Researcher in Greek Language and Literature at ICAC (Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology) since 2013. Her main research topics include Greek dramatic performance, ancient literary theory and classical reception. Cecilia Ricci is Associate Professor at University of Molise. She studied in Rom and Heidelberg. The main research lines concern: Urban Troops in the first two

xiv

Contributors

centuries of the Empire the ’Memory of Rome’ and the funeral practices; Foreigners in the City in imperial times; Roman society and the territory of Italy (Latium vetus, and Sabina and Samnium). Rosario Rovira Guardiola works at the Department of Greece and Rome of the British Museum. She holds a PhD in Ancient History from the University of Barcelona and is member of the research groups CEIPAC and Imagines. Her research focuses on Roman trade and the reception of Hadrian’s Villa in literature and art. Francisco Salvador Ventura is Professor of Ancient History at the Universidad de Granada, and his research interests are Film and History, especially Ancient World on Screen, and Late Antiquity. He is editor of the e-­journal ‘Metakinema. Revista de Cine e Historia’ and editor of the monographs ‘Cine y religiones’ (2013), ‘Cine y re-­presentación’ (2014) y ‘Cine e historia(s)’ (2015). Ana Seiça got her BA, MA and PhD in Poetics and Hermeneutic at the University of Coimbra (Portugal) where she is currently preparing her post-PhD candidate in Philosophy and Dance Movement Therapy. Ana Seiça has been part of the Project Pequena Infância since 2010. Monica Silveira Cyrino is Professor of Classics at the University of New Mexico, USA. Her academic research centers on the reception of the ancient world on screen, and the erotic in ancient Greek poetry. She is the author of Aphrodite (Routledge 2010), Big Screen Rome (Blackwell 2005), and In Pandora’s Jar: Lovesickness in Early Greek Poetry (Rowman & Littlefield 1995). She has served as an academic consultant on several recent film and television productions. Martina Treu is Associate Professor in Greek Language and Literature at the IULM University, Milan (Italy). She is member of the Imagines Project and of the CRIMTA research center (Pavia University). She cooperated to seven adaptations of classical texts for the stage. Her main works (see iulm.it for a complete list) concern Classical Reception, Greek Mythology, and Aristophanes. Federico Ugolini, after a BA and an MA in Archaeology (Bologna), he received a PhD in Classics from King’s College London. His doctoral thesis examined the form, role and representation of selected Roman ports of the Northern and Central Adriatic Sea (Italian peninsula). He has been involved in archaeological projects in Italy and has taken part in the Portus Project.

Acknowledgements The Ancient Mediterranean Sea in Modern Visual and Performing Arts started as the conference Sailing in Troubled Waters that took place in Faro in October 2014. The conference was expertly organized by Adriana Nogueira of the Universidade do Algarve who created the perfect setting for the exchange of ideas between those interested in the reception of Antiquity. Marta García Morcillo provided invaluable help organizing the conference and setting in motion this publication. I warmly thank the participants that agreed to contribute to this book with their articles. Filippo Carlà-Uhink and Martin Lindner, as editors of the newly created series Imagines – Classical Receptions in the Visual and Performing Arts, provided assistance and useful feedback in reading the manuscript, as also did the anonymous external reviewers. I would also like to thank Alice Wright, Lucy Carroll and Clara Herberg from Bloomsbury for their interest and assistance with this volume. The British Museum and its Scholarly Publications Fund (SPF) provided helpful financial support. I also would like to thank my colleagues there, Charles Arnold, David Hurn and Richard Wakeman, for answering my endless questions about English grammar, coffee breaks and for their patience. Finally, finishing this book would not have been possible without the endless support and cooking skills of Ben Bialobrzycki.

Introduction Rosario Rovira Guardiola

‘We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far’ H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu (1926) Homme libre, toujours tu chériras la mer! La mer est ton miroir; tu contemples ton âme Dans le déroulement infini de sa lame, Et ton esprit n’est pas un gouffre moins amer.    . . . Et cependant voilà des siècles innombrables Que vous vous combattez sans pitié ni remord, Tellement vous aimez le carnage et la mort, Ô lutteurs éternels, ô frères implacables! C. Baudelaire, L’homme et la mer from Les Fleurs du Mal (1861)

From prehistory through to modern times, the Mediterranean Sea has been the setting for, witness to and protagonist of mythical and supernatural adventures; encounters with the Other, of legendary and historical battles, the rise and fall of cultures and empires, fortunate and tragic destinies of humans. Arising from a conference that took place in Faro in October 2014, Sailing in Troubled Waters explores how all these aspects of the sea are represented in the visual and performing arts.1 The aim of this book is not to present a comprehensive collection of everything that the ancient sea means (a vast task that would be more suited to a compendium or an encyclopaedia), but rather to collect some of the current trends on its reception. This will inevitably lead to noticeable omissions, such as the journeys of Himilco and Nearchus, or landmarks such as the Pharos of Alexandria or the Colossus of Rhodes, but it does serve to highlight the fluidity of the relationship between the ancient and the contemporary world.

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Our interest in past cultures is undoubtedly shaped by our existing political, economic and cultural problems. The current deep economic and cultural crisis within the European Union, the terrible conflicts and the dramas of migration that darken its shores, have all fomented public debate fuelled by political agendas around the growing differences between Northern European and Mediterranean countries, while the sea exposes its most spectral side as a tragic and impregnable border. Now, more than ever, it is time to return to the Mediterranean: a living entity in which the past, as with the waves that reach the shore time and again, continuously challenges the present, rather than acting as a container of fixed traditions. The Mediterranean was (and still is) a kaleidoscopic space, and those who inhabit it offer several different interpretations of the geographical spaces it contains. The ancient Mediterranean was not the same for the Romans, Greeks or Persians, who saw it from the perspective of outsiders.2 The Greeks (as well as the Phoenician and Carthaginians) are perceived as being a people who were in close contact with the sea, mainly due to the constraints on the part of the Mediterranean where they lived, which forced them to explore far from their borders in order to colonize and establish trade networks.3 Romans, however, seem to have had a more fractured relationship with the sea (see Cecilia Ricci’s chapter in this volume), though this did not stop them from understanding that any territorial expansion in the Mediterranean was controlled by that unwelcoming landscape. Quentin Broughall and Monica Cyrino’s chapters demonstrate how reception of the Roman sea has often focused on the ‘tranquillity’ that the Romans brought to Mediterranean shores; waters that were nonetheless not as calm as they might seem, based as they were on the political (and technological) changes that the Romans brought about once they had mastered the seas.4 The historiography of the Mediterranean cannot be understood without Fernand Braudel’s appeal for a long durée history in order to challenge traditional views, which often presented it as a sea fragmented and divided through epochs and periods that created a theoretical image of the Mediterranean, which could then be applied to other areas. Since the publication of Braudel’s La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen à l’Epoque de Philippe II in 1949, the Mediterranean has been widely discussed within the academic world. At the beginning of the twenty-­first century, works such as Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell’s The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (2000) and William V. Harris’s Rethinking the Mediterranean (2005) revisited Braudel’s oeuvre and reaffirmed the need to study the Mediterranean as a whole, a cross-­temporal fluid space of communication and cultural interaction. David Abulafia’s The Great Sea (2011)

Introduction

3

also took Mediterranean studies a step forward with a general history that focused on its inhabitants. He thus delineated a Mediterranean that is not reduced to a geographical framework, but becomes a space for the transmission of ideas and people. More importantly, this definition of the Mediterranean can also be applied to other seas, which could subsequently call themselves ‘Mediterranean’ too.5 The concepts of centre and periphery thus become a key element as they progressively change, not only from the development of geographical knowledge but also due to historical circumstances. Marco Carbone’s chapter on the Strait of Scylla shows how Sicily played a central role for Western travellers on the Grand Tour, appearing as an exotic Greek element of the Mediterranean, that is until Greece and Turkey became more accessible and reclaimed their role as the original Greek spaces. In Sotera Fornaro’s chapter, the traditional spaces of centre and periphery are challenged even further, the Mediterranean becoming merely a stop on the journey of the immigrants, one that recalls the Odyssean journey where the aim is no longer to return to the oikos but to find a new one. The centrality of the Mediterranean moves to Northern Europe, to Germany, as her waters no longer offer the opportunities of past times, only death. This can also be applied to ancient times, when the ongoing development of geographical knowledge gave the inhabitants of the Mediterranean a new perspective on the world that surrounded them; in consequence, the myths that had been constructed around it changed. With the expansion of the Greek colonies in the Black Sea, this area became part of the Mediterranean world, while the area where the Amazons lived got pushed progressively further away, from the Black Sea in the classical period, to the Northern Ocean in Roman times and Scandinavia in the Middle Ages.6 The Mediterranean Sea is not only the space within its geographical borders, but also the areas that surround it and that have strong connections with it. It is thus just as plausible here to include an article on the exile of Ovid to the edge of this Mediterranean world (in Tomis, on the Black Sea) as it is to recreate Troy in the deprived neighbourhood of Dafundo in Lisbon through the photographs of José Bandeira. The contributions in Sailing in Troubled Waters look at modern visual and performative reinterpretations of ancient myths, fictions and histories, while also dealing with the theme of sea travel and travellers, which since Homer’s Odyssey has become not only the epitome of the discovery of new worlds but also of cultural exchanges, as well as being a metaphor of personal development and metamorphosis. The chapters of the book are divided into sections that follow the core lines of thought on the reception of the Mediterranean Sea; chronological subdivisions have been avoided, as while there is no doubt that

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each historical period creates its own reception of antiquity, I wanted to draw attention to the subjects of reception. Nevertheless, the chronological changes are easily perceived throughout the sections of the book. In the first section, ‘The Mediterranean Sea as a Geographical Space’, we explore some of the physical landmarks of the Mediterranean and how they have been perceived over time. The classical past and the Mediterranean offered not only a degree of exoticism during the Grand Tour (that disappeared with the expansion of the world known to the European continent), but also had a political use. Federico Ugolini’s study on the Roman ports of the Adriatic, primarily Ravenna and Rimini, and how they were seen and used in illustrations in early modern Europe, demonstrates a key point in the reception of the ancient sea that often appears in Sailing in Troubled Waters. Antiquity, here in the form of Roman harbours, played an important role as the remains of a glorious past that helped to shape political identities. In this case, the Roman Empire helped to configure Italian identity during a period of turmoil, and discursively legitimized the geographical control of the Adriatic area by the dominating factions since the Renaissance period. The graphic illustrations of these harbours reflect not only a will to link contemporary landscapes with the ancient to justify this political control, but also an early interest in archaeology – an interest that, even if it went hand in hand with creating a record of the area for fiscal and economic reasons, helped to lay the foundations of later scientific research on these ports. Francisco Salvador Ventura’s chapter shows how the sea can be a protagonist to the action. Its prominent role serves as a diversion from the main plot of the film Fedra, directed by Manuel Mur Oti. The incestuous love triangle was an unsuitable topic for the Spain of dictator Francisco Franco, and turning the Roman sea into the main protagonist managed to divert attention away from the delicate storyline. The sea mirrors the complicated relationships between the characters in a way that we will encounter further on; the dualistic nature of the sea, that can bring both prosperity and destruction, allows it to mutate easily. The section ‘Living and Dying in Troubled Waters’ focuses on the influence of the Odyssean narrative on contemporary visual arts and inhabitants of the sea, from mythological creatures to travellers for whom, like Ulysses, the sea is a barrier that stands between them and a new life. Dorit Engster’s chapter focusing on one of the sea’s inhabitants, the dolphin, shows their changing portrayal. Dolphins appear as an exotic element from antiquity, and are used during the Renaissance as a way of showing the high

Introduction

5

intellectual level of those who commissioned the works of art. We can thus see the evolution of how the boy riding a dolphin is represented during the Renaissance, where it was part of decorative programmes that underlined the social status of the patron, through its changes over the centuries to portray more personal aspects that relate to the artist. As is always the case when reception is at stake, antiquity is used as a means to an end.With the popularization of classical culture, antiquity lost part of the intellectual power (and in fact lost all of its gravity with Honoré Daumier’s Histoire ancienne) to acquire new meanings. Antiquity thus became a personal subject that allowed the artist to give universality to their work by stressing their own individuality, a topic that will be developed further on. The reception of the Mediterranean has a clear starting point in the Odyssey, and as such these myths are frequently transformed and developed to reflect modern realities in which the geographical frame changes and is no longer the Mediterranean but a more ambiguous sea without name, one that symbolizes change and internal turmoil. The globalized world we live in has made distances short, which – along with the universality of its stories – has contributed to the drama of the Odyssey being translated into non-Mediterranean contexts. In these the Mediterranean is no longer a geographical space but an abstract concept, the intangible space that those in search of a new life must cross to arrive at a promised land, albeit one that often fails to fulfil those expectations. Nevertheless, Óscar Lapeña Marchena follows a more traditional reading of Ulysses’ return home through the film Nostos, il ritorno directed by Franco Piavoli. The film is key to understanding how the ‘return home’ is a universal topic; a timeless subject in which we are all Ulysses. Nature plays the role of the Gods, that through a treacherous sea attempt to delay that return. This reading of the Odyssey is shattered, however, by chapters from both Sotera Fornaro, and Erika Notti and Martina Treu. When the Odyssey is used as a parallel to discuss the modern tragedy of the refugees, there is no home to return to. A tragic Ulysses that does not seek to return home but rather find a new one, a future (sometimes even just the chance to have a future) better than the one left behind. Here the sea shows its rougher side, as a metaphor of the difficulties that this journey involves, but also as a mass grave for those who never fulfil that sought-­ after new destiny, as was the case with Ulysses’ companions. The sea is transformed into the tangled mess of German industrial cities in Fornaro’s chapter on Odyssee Europe, which demonstrates that the Mediterranean Sea can be a state of mind. Erika Notti and Martina Treu propose a different take on Ulysses’ return to Ithaca, as they start their article with the Bronze Age references in the Odyssey

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and how they relate to the known geography of Homer’s time. They trace an overarching history of the tale, following modern reinterpretations of the myth, from light-­hearted versions for children that focus on the exciting adventures of Ulysses, to contemporary plays that underline their darker aspects. These include the long journey home, along with the strain that the absence causes on those who never left, but above all the fact that Ulysses is an exception, as the rest of those who left Ithaca to fight in Troy never came back, devoured by the troubled waters of the Mediterranean. The next section, ‘A Personal Sea: The Artist and the Sea’, abandons the sea as a metaphor of social conflicts to focus on the artists’ views of the ancient sea. Here, the Mediterranean loses its original geographical identity to acquire a new one, that of the soul of the artist. Artists have long viewed the sea as a reflection of their own position and personal development within art and society. The sea became a personal matter for nineteenth-­century artists who, in its potential danger, found a reflection of the tumultuous period they were living in as well as their own position and role within society. Here the sea is not a physical presence but a metaphorical one. The sea becomes intangible; the action does not necessarily happen in the sea, although it is always present. Jesús Carruesco and Montserrat Reig explore how Friedrich Nietzsche saw Dionysus’ myth, and how this has been interpreted in Wolfgang Rihm’s opera Dionysos: Szenen und Dithyramben. Eine Opernphantasie. In Nietzsche’s work, the sea becomes a metaphor of change, of search. The sea is also a place that symbolizes the challenges that human life faces; life is juxtaposed against death, sanity against madness. Rosario Rovira Guardiola presents a typical nineteenth-­century subject, the exile of Ovid, in which the sea plays an important role as a reflection of the harsh conditions of anyone exiled. The article shows how different the literary versions of Ovid’s exile are from the visual representations.While in literary representations the sea is a clear metaphor of both the exile and the soul of the artist, in visual representations the sea is implicit. Eugène Delacroix strips the exile of Ovid away from the sea to reconvert it into a tale of acculturation. Turner’s sea (or indeed the river Tiber) is a static one, representing the magnificence of Rome that Ovid is about to abandon. The ‘Sea Politics’ section deals with the reception of empires whose success depended on controlling the sea, such as the Roman or British empires, and the political use of antiquity: the sea is well suited to creating a framework for stressing the relevance of empires and other political systems. Both Cecilia Ricci and Monica Cyrino focus on the mighty Roman Empire and its presence in

Introduction

7

cinema. Their choice of films shows how, correspondingly, the sea represents different aspects of Roman culture. The sea appears here with its full mutating character, acting as a metaphor of change, conquest and even decadence in the case of Fellini’s Satyricon. The choice of films, which range from the American adaptations of Ben-Hur and The Last Days of Pompeii to Italian films with an emphasis on the technical aspects of the cinema industry, reveals the relationship between the Romans and the sea and its representation. Cyrino details a single moment of the Roman Empire, the Battle of Actium, the key sea battle that began the Roman Principate. She focuses on three examples in order to show how the reception of the Battle of Actium is still highly influenced by Augustan propaganda. The Battle of Actium (and its aftermath) was presented as a clash between East and West: between Cleopatra, the Oriental queen that seduced Mark Antony, and Augustus; between the Roman republic and a monarchy. Nevertheless, it is also undeniable that even with the influence of Roman historiography, popular culture interprets the past according to contemporary interests. This kind of ‘historical sea’ often becomes a reflection of both political propaganda and historical events. Both Antonio Duplá Ansuategui and Quentin Broughall discuss examples of how the sea has been used for political gain. Duplá’s chapter focuses on the Other, as visualized through the Carthaginians, who as opponents of Rome also represented a threat to Spanish identity during the nineteenth century. Interestingly, such an image to represent this threat was used by both the Franquist regime and the Republican party. In the nineteenth century, the Carthaginians, characterized as a maritime people, are represented by Spain as treacherous traders (and liars), as opposed to the brave Spaniards of Sagunto. The sea almost disappears, in spite of having been an important part of their expansion throughout the Mediterranean. In contrast, the sea is clearly present in Broughall’s chapter on Alma Tadema’s painting. The artist managed, through his gentle views of the sea set in the Vesuvian area, to appeal to the British public of the Victorian period. They may have seen in these paintings not only a reflection of their own empire, but also of the social lives they aspired to. Broughall’s chapter brings the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, and Rome becomes Great Britain in Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s painting, in which a gentle view of Pompeii depicts the power of Victorian England. The Victorian Mediterranean could be one of Abulafia’s Mediterraneans; it is no longer a physical space, but an abstraction of it. The last chapter underlines the current use and undeniable validity of antiquity today. The pedagogical Project PI, which organizes drama workshops

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based on ancient myth for children in social care institutions and hospitals in Coimbra, introduces us to a different use of the Odyssey, as children in these institutions re-­enact episodes of Homer’s work in therapy sessions. The ancient myth helps them to cope with the situation they are in and, somehow, to understand it. The sea appears here as either their illness or as the tough conditions they have to face, a desert they must cross in order to find a better life. The annex discusses the story behind the image on the cover of the book. It is one of the photographs that José Bandeira took of people living in the Dafundo neighbourhood, on the outskirts of Lisbon. These photos were presented in an exhibition held in Faro during the conference Sailing in Troubled Waters, an event that gives academics who work on reception the opportunity to meet artists inspired by the ancient world. Dafundo becomes in the photographs of Bandeira a modern Troy, a desolate landscape that confirms the validity of the Homeric text in our troubled contemporary world. Sailing in Troubled Waters is about the battle that man has fought against the sea since time immemorial. It is a love–hate relationship, since the sea is both a source of happiness and of pain and hardship. The allure of the sea is such that in many ways it mirrors people’s attitude towards their own life. Throughout the chapters, we will see how the perception and reception of the Mediterranean Sea are not static; they mutate along with human perceptions of the surrounding world and the historical events they must live through.

Notes 1 The conference Imagines IV. Sailing in Troubled Waters. The Ancient Mediterranean and its Legacy in the Performing and Visual Arts took place in Universidade do Algarve, Faro (Algarve), 1–4 October 2014 and was organized by Andrea Nogueira Freire (Universidade do Algarve) and Marta García Morcillo (University of Roehampton). 2 Janni 2016, 26–8. 3 Corvisier 2008. 4 Malissard 2012. 5 The bibliography on the history of the Mediterranean Sea continues to grow every day; among the more recent titles, the following should be mentioned: Horden and Kinoshita 2014; Prag 2013; Broodbank 2013. 6 Podossinov 2014, 4.

Part 1

The Mediterranean as a Geographical Space

1

Roman Adriatic Ports and the Antiquarian Tradition Federico Ugolini

The circulation and transmission of antiquarian observations and records concerning Roman Adriatic ports between the 1500s and 1800s did much to shape the perception and reception of these structures during the following centuries. The Adriatic region experienced phases of wealth and importance in antiquity as a result of maritime trade and commerce between the first and third centuries ce.1 The fundamental role of the ports within this context of wealth and economic growth must be linked to the importance of these facilities, the location of the structures and their functions. Nonetheless, after two centuries of playing an important role, these structures were eclipsed, entering a long phase of decline that lasted until at least after the Renaissance period, when a renewed awareness of antiquities and architectural remains helped to inspire the cultural passions of a generation of pioneering scholars and surveyors. Local communities of scholars, from Ravenna to Rimini, within a multitude of environments and for diverse reasons, focused their attention on maritime structures (e.g. lighthouses and moles). The remains of these monumental infrastructures, which were spread across waters and lands within a territory characterized by danger and the struggle to dominate the commercial routes in order to control the Adriatic Sea and its boundaries, motivated antiquarians to approach the archaeological remains from a new perspective. Within these structures, the local antiquarian workers that explored the Roman Adriatic ports found an area of research that was ripe for development in order to articulate arguments concerning aspects of local identity within the Italian context of the early modern period. Furthermore, European scholars who visited these Adriatic sites during the Grand Tour boom wrote accounts and drew representations of the Roman ports, bequeathing knowledge and meaning, and consequently creating a heritage for archaeology’s pioneers and surveyors to

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follow. Roman Adriatic ports, in particular those along the northern and central coasts, such as Ravenna and Rimini, were observed, described and recorded for a variety of reasons, for example to compare and contrast the power and legacy of the Roman past with the modern age, thus providing morality for a contemporary Italian political context. Moreover, the systematic and synchronic antiquarian approach they brought to these physical structures produced a large quantity of material and data, which today forms the basis of modern harbour archaeology. This chapter seeks to address the value of Roman Adriatic ports within the fields of the history of archaeology and reception studies by exploring the local and European antiquarians’ perceptions as well as their transmission of the remains, which determined the construction of Adriatic identity and represented a pioneering phase that anticipated the modern concept of ‘harbour archaeology’. The first part of this chapter explores unpublished evidence from the 1500s to the 1800s such as illustrations, bird’s-­eye-view maps and drawings representing Adriatic port sites, focusing on the key case ­studies of Ravenna and Rimini. The second section analyses how the message conveyed by the physical remains or ruins of these Roman port structures demonstrated not only a historical and architectural element but also a means of claiming identity, power, rights and supremacy within a region that is often characterized by instability, ambition and disputes. The third part draws on the sudden growth of interest in Adriatic port remains from the 1800s onwards, assessing both data and the aspects that marked a rising interest in port antiquities and subsequent attempts at harbour archaeology.

Roman harbours and antiquarians Ravenna The Adriatic region was, during the early modern period, one of the territories of the Italian peninsula that was subject to a growing antiquarian interest in port structures, including moles, quays and lighthouses as well as Roman public buildings. Port structures caught the attention of a scholarly community comprised of local and European amateurs, collectors and academics. Antiquarians played a crucial role in building modern historiography and modern archaeology, but also in shaping a new sense of consciousness by associating the remains with socio-­political and propagandistic aspects.2 These

Roman Adriatic Ports and the Antiquarian Tradition

13

aspects revealed many things: details of the identity of local communities; a sense of parochialism; claims of territorial boundaries; and the will to emphasize the value of the lands – in other words, aspects that were characterized by political ambitions. These ambitions included (as is the case with Ravenna) a consolidation of authority and control over land and sea along this northernmost tract of the Adriatic, within a territory that was disputed by papal, French and Austrian rulers.3 The first evidence comes from the illustrations of Vincenzo Tomai and Paolo Armileo who, between the 1550s and 1590s, produced the first visual representations of the remains of the Roman military port of Ravenna at Classe. Both Tomai and Armileo were educated in law and classics and able to read Greek and Latin, as is evident from the Latin captions that annotate the maps in their creations.4 Scant information on Tomai’s and Armileo’s backgrounds makes it difficult to assess the details of their activities, though their works suggest they were local cartographers and surveyors who worked for the local ecclesiastical congregation, mapping properties around Ravenna and Classe (this territory was at that time at the northernmost boundary of the papal state, and several lands belonged to religious institutions). Tomai’s 1546 drawing provides a detailed map of the surviving remains and ruins of the Roman harbour within the territories of Ravenna and Classe (see Fig.  1.1).5 Tomai’s works probably represent a point of departure in the study of Ravenna’s port, which at that time was widely followed by early surveyors recording and mapping lands and structures. He did not simply include the spatial disposition of the ruins, but also articulated a discourse on the potential reconstruction of the site and, although very speculatively, proposed a reading on the setting of the remains. Tomai included the remains of a tower building, which he identified as a lighthouse, close to the area of the Roman harbour mouth that is also depicted and accompanied by several moles and landing points.6 The representation of broad watercourses and navigable canals also revealed connections between the coast, the inner harbour and Ravenna itself. Tomai, in fact, did not focus entirely on the landscape and the port site at Classe – he also produced the first record of potential surviving structures and their development, thus illustrating the true purpose of this representation, which was likely intended to serve as a preliminary (but updated) map of Ravenna’s hinterland. However, it would also have served the additional purpose of recording properties for fiscal and economic reasons. Tomai, who may have been inspired by unknown previous works or texts, attempted to represent the ancient site as it was during the Roman period,

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Fig. 1.1  Vincenzo Tomai (1546), Porto Candiano e Suo Canale da Ravenna e Torre Farea sulla Destra. Notizia Sopra il Disegno del Nuovo Porto Fatto da Vincenzo Tomai nel 1546.

although his work reveals innovative details when compared to other maps of his time and demonstrates a certain degree of knowledge, as he incorporates details from the Renaissance tradition. He provides a naive reconstruction of the ancient lighthouse tower and of the moles close to the former Roman harbour, depicted with features appropriate to both the Renaissance and modern period,

Roman Adriatic Ports and the Antiquarian Tradition

15

Fig. 1.2  Paolo Armileo (1593), Porto di Augusto o di Gaio Cesare.

for example a crenellated tower and multiple wooden moles.7 At the same time, he states in the captions that these structures refer to those from the Roman period. Tomai probably took into account the Renaissance accounts of Classe, as evidenced by the lettering Portus Candiano (Port of Candiano), which stresses the value of a site that still hosted large structures from the Roman past.

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Armileo’s watercolour from 1593 depicted Classe’s basin as round in form, equipped with a quay, bollards and moles that stretched towards the sea, as well as a free-­standing round lighthouse in the middle (see Fig.  1.2). This naive drawing also depicts ships anchored along the main quay, as well as the Fossa Augusta Canal, the harbour mouth, a dense network of navigable watercourses and the explicative lettering Portus Augustii o Gai Cesaris (Port of Augustus or Caesar), which confirms that the aim of this work was to represent an idealized setting of Ravenna’s harbour as it was during the Imperial period, even though most of the structures had been lost by Armileo’s time.8 The watercolour of course depicts a mostly imaginary harbour scene, which had disappeared by the time of the author. However, this early antiquarian work illustrates the port scene in an almost plausible manner, and Armileo’s attempt was likely influenced by Pliny the Elder account, seeing as the watercolour is a straightforward replica of the description of Ravenna’s port in this classical text.9 As visible in the Natural History, Pliny the Elder notes that Ravenna was provided with a monumental lighthouse, similar to those of Alexandria in Egypt and Ostia.10 Armileo was thus inspired, as is often the case with early antiquarian productions, by classical sources, which regained popularity among antiquarians during the Renaissance period and influenced later studies.11 Of the maps produced in the 1600s, Tommaso Spinola, a local surveyor and mapmaker, created a valuable piece of work that contributed a great deal of information to antiquarian port research. Spinola belonged to an aristocratic family, certain members of which were cardinals and bishops in Rome and Bologna (see Fig. 1.3). Conversely, his activity as a mapmaker is less well known due to the scarcity of records on his background and activities. Despite this, the details of his work allow us to hypothesize that he probably received a high level of education and was later involved in surveying and mapmaking activities under the fellowship of local religious institutes. This latter point is confirmed by the coloured sketches and drawings representing Ravenna’s hinterland and coastline. These contain letterings that attest to the commissioner, in this case a religious confraternity in Classe, together with an idealized visual representation of how the Roman Ravenna port would have looked, including a rich network of waterways, barely visible remains and a record of the toponym Portus, indicating the location of the harbour site.12 Spinola’s illustrations and letters share many similarities with previous productions. This is evident, for example, in his harbour mouth, which is very similar to that depicted in Tomai’s and Armileo’s drawings, suggesting that these provided the inspiration for Spinola’s work and that, although very few structures (such as the harbour wall) were even partially

Roman Adriatic Ports and the Antiquarian Tradition

17

Fig. 1.3  Tommaso Spinola (1615), Porto Candiano Antico e Candiano Aperto Verso 1615 e Canal Panfilio Regione Classense.

preserved onsite, they were worthy of mention within accounts or illustrative records. These almost contemporary antiquarian works indirectly attest to how the overlapping and multidisciplinary combination of academic and economic aims shaped the earliest antiquarian activities, highlighting how the topic of the harbour remains (although they had largely disappeared) was still central to Ravenna.13 Even though the Roman port was in ruins and the later Renaissance harbour was considered a temporary landing place, these representations reassess, albeit indirectly, the pressing need to recover parts of the port structures, as well as the importance of the former maritime role of the city. These cartographic representations, often commissioned by local religious institutes, specifically served to record the hinterland environment and to supplement written land registers that attested to properties and their owners.14 This large-­scale production of maps and accounts found fertile ground at Ravenna where, during the early modern period, the city utilized only a few renovated landing-­points located along the river mouth of the lagoon network, demonstrating the lack of a larger set of port infrastructures, which locals believed to have been there in the past.15 This is likely also the reason why antiquarians championed the representations of Roman port ruins discussed here. In fact, after the 1600s the growing popularity of sketches and illustrations commissioned by

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local companies or religious institutes largely concentrated on and documented objects and structures from Classe’s site.16 Tomai, Armileo and Spinola undoubtedly worked as cartographers, geographers and publishers throughout Ravenna and Venice from the 1550s to the 1620s. At the dawn of the early modern period, they took a considerable step forward in terms of shaping antiquarianism by taking their professional activities and marrying them to their own observations, recording and illustrating objects and physical remains that belonged to the ancient ports such as that of Ravenna. This progress in perceiving the archaeological evidence within Classe’s environment clearly implied an interest in antiquities, such as the finds and ruins of the port, as likely requested by the commissioner; it also demonstrated a need to emphasize the value of the land, namely the papal properties that recalled old, secular aspects of the identity, prestige and glory bequeathed by the legacy of these imposing structures, the massive moles and the monumental lighthouse, which they saw in the site named Porto Fuori (Outer Harbour), as they were during the imperial period. This striking contrast would also have undermined the general idea, held at that time, of the territory being no more than a marshy lagoon environment, where most of the buildings, even those from the more recent period, were buried or had fallen into decay. Thus, descriptions of archaeological evidence within the accounts and illustrations were used as a powerful means of conveying the value of the properties, thereby likely serving as a vehicle for claiming fiscal benefits and taxes or to resolve disputes between locals, real estate owners and religious confraternities. In this regard the work of Spinola, which was commissioned by Ravenna’s ecclesiastical institutes for specific fiscal and land registry purposes, clearly betrays these claims.17

Rimini Along the Adriatic, the site of Rimini was the subject of a similar antiquarian approach, and scholars have observed the physical remains of Roman harbour structures there. Raffaele Adimari, a local historian and writer, in 1617 composed a volume entitled Sito Riminese (On the site of Rimini), which is one of the most detailed antiquarian accounts produced on the Italian Adriatic in the early modern period.18 Adimari was from an aristocratic family, and had several relatives in prominent positions in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, many of whom belonged to renowned ecclesiastical circles and institutes. As is often the case in this period, knowledge is lacking on the parental background of this antiquarian, but evidence of his affiliations explains the nature and commitments of his work, which also includes antiquarian and socio-­political elements.

Roman Adriatic Ports and the Antiquarian Tradition

19

Interestingly, Adimari focused his attention on Rimini’s port due to the value of the remains, the economic importance of the area and its urban location, namely between the historical centre and the coast. Aside from the huge historical appendix, full of implications on the origin of Rimini’s settlement from the pre-Roman period onwards, much attention was also paid to the details of the life of the ancient port. Thus, this original antiquarian work, which is probably one of the first attempts to produce an up-­to-date record of the port remains, was partly inspired by classical sources, such as Pliny the Elder and above all Strabo,19 and was clearly influenced by other studies written by local antiquarians, for example Cesare Clementini. This work proposed updated details and included valuable new visual representations of the city and its ports: for example, Antonio Arrigoni bird’s-­eye view drawing (in 1616), commissioned by Adimari, gives an understanding of the volume Sito Riminese (see Fig. 1.4).20 The lettering of part of the volume is explicative of an alternative aspect that fits with the real antiquarian purpose of this work, as expressed in this quote by Adimari: Here we can see the site of the great port of the city that accommodated any type of ships. Today the port has disappeared from the site of Marecchia River . . . that it is better to plan a new one in a different location, following the ancient pattern that followed a curvilinear line as [the] Romans built up.21

Adimari described the layout of the port, which was located near the Bridge of Tiberius at the mouth of the Marecchia River, and outlined the environment at that time: the site was almost buried from the silting and depositional activities of the watercourse. He put forward suggestions for the potential restoration of the site, as the papal state officials had planned,22 provided with cartographic support from Arrigoni, who added valuable information to several elements of the ruined Roman port. For instance, both Adimari and Arrigoni believed that the tower remains represented the terminal of the harbour near the mouth of the Ausa River, also stressing how this sector remained accessible for ships to land where the side along the Marecchia was buried.23 Whereas Adimari was a renowned historian throughout northern Italy, there is very little evidence of Arrigoni’s activities; we know only that he was a draughtsman and artist who worked between Ravenna, Bologna and Rimini as an illustrator for ecclesiastical companies.24 He drew a bird’s-­eye-view map that meticulously depicted the location of the docks, the main quay, the mole over the sea and its lighthouse remains, as well as part of the harbour walls, drawn with coherence and reasonable precision, although he included part of the medieval restoration.25

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Fig. 1.4  Antonio Arrigoni (1616), Pianta della Città di Rimino come si trova nell’anno MDCXI.

The Roman port is recorded as being almost bigger than the city itself, extending over the tract of coastline, and was provided with buildings that exceeded in size those of the urban centre. It is particularly impressive, therefore, that in terms of the representation of the city, the harbour still had priority in the imagined world of the antiquarian scholars. The Roman port is presented as an extremely important one, owing to the reputation that its structures gained in the past, especially their maritime role in shipping goods. In particular, the ruins of the monumental quay, built in opus quadratum with large squared blocks of Istria stones, remained to record the prestige of the port and contribute to the growth of a new vision of fame and glory among the locals. The partnership between Adimari and Arrigoni reveals that the port elements still held priority in antiquarian research within the Adriatic region in both written and visual forms, and that even during the early 1600s, the need to record was associated with aspects of storytelling and mapmaking for historical purposes. The commissioners, as papal officers, were undoubtedly linked to the nature and scope of the work, which itself was linked to the aim of restoring the principal infrastructures in this northernmost boundary of the papal state.26

Roman Adriatic Ports and the Antiquarian Tradition

21

The ancient port remains were a symbol of power and a manifestation of prestige in the region, and the local economy would have been supported through the renovation and the utilization of the port. These examples demonstrate how, between the 1540s and 1620s, a new perception and comprehension of the ancient port ruins was aroused and shaped within the imagination of the local antiquarians, who formed the earliest scholarly tradition of observing and recording these fascinating, contradictory Roman structures. These scholars, who wrote reports on and drew representations of the key port cities and coastal landscapes, documented specific structures of the Roman Adriatic, helping almost a century later to form a reference guide for new harbour studies. These antiquarian works began to circulate in these regions as illustrations of the coastal fortifications and port buildings that influenced scholarly understanding of the Adriatic to the early Contemporary period (the end of the 1800s).27 Authors such as Tomai, Spinola and Arrigoni later influenced the work of great antiquarians such as Luigi Ferdinando Marsili (around the 1650s–1700s), who, commissioned by the papal authority, made accounts and sketches that included the entire Adriatic pontifical coastline, while cataloguing and describing Roman landing-­places and ports.28 The goal to observe and record these sites should not be related only to cultural and scholarly antiquarian purposes, but also to the ideological and symbolic aspects that in this period manifested the ongoing struggle for control of the Adriatic waters and hegemony over the region. The desire to renovate, as expressed in the antiquarian productions, emphasizes the desire to contrast the competitors (the Austrian and French authorities) and to prevail in this context through a reinforcement of some of the ancient structures along the Adriatic (for example the lighthouses converted into watchtowers),29 turning these into the bulwarks that protected locals against so-­called ‘pirate attacks’, as incursions by the Turkish flotilla of the Ottoman Empire that sailed and raided in these waters in the 1600s and 1700s were known.30 The symbolic emphasis on lighthouses, harbour walls and moles conveys the reception of Roman remains as objects and structures as tools of survival in the struggle between ‘civilized’ and ‘barbarian’ water frontiers (e.g. Papal State and Italian rulers vs the Ottoman Empire and pirates). The antiquarian maps provided preliminary historical and archaeological information on the development of Roman port life as a result of surveying activities along the coast, and by further adding artistic and naive details, such as the distorted representations of buildings or records of buildings that had already disappeared or submerged, the artists also created other reasons for recording the remains of these port structures.

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This trend appears to be visible in Thomas Nugent and Charles Thompson’s accounts, which between the 1740s and the 1780s focused unexpected attention on the condition and state of conservation of the Roman Adriatic harbours, proposing a scenario that sometimes, in the eyes of the locals, was almost unreal or paradoxical.31 These improvements in the level of antiquarian scholarship and insight are well represented in Thompson’s observation about surveying the site: The ancient Ariminum is situated near the sea coast, at the mouth of the River Marecchia. It was considerably large because of its trade and its harbour, but now it has lost both, for the sea has receded about a mile from it, and it is but thin of inhabitants. But also, I must not close my letter without observing to you that the sea appears to have run away from these towns as well as their inhabitants: the Adriatic seems no more fonder of the pope for a master than do his mortal subjects. You will recollect the situation of Ravenna, between three and four miles that sea to which once it was a port: the same is the case at Rimini. Here are the remains of a port, and the fragments of a tower, which was once a pharos or lighthouse. The water is half a mile from it; and where the waves once rose there are now cabbages. The land gained from the sea here, as at Ravenna, is particularly rich, and serves the purposes of the gardener better than almost any in the adjoining country, though all rich and fertile beyond that is common on this side of the Alps.32

Similarly Nugent, a few decades later, in surveying the port’s site, reported: It is a place of great antiquity, and said to have been built by the companions of Hercules. It was a Roman colony as well as Ravenna, and received great improvements from Augustus, who built their bridge and triumphal arch. Their harbour was one of the best in Italy, but had the misfortune of being destroyed by the last lord of Malatesta, to build the church of St. Francis with the marble taken from thence. The town at present is in a very declining condition, having neither trade nor harbour; and is very poorly inhabited, which unfortunately is the case of most of the towns in the Ecclesiastic State. The situation however is very pleasant, for it stands in a plain near the coast of the Adriatic Sea, and is surrounded with hills and vallies abounding with vines, olive and fig-­trees, corn, and other fruit of all forts . . . There are also the ruins of an amphitheatre behind the garden of the Capuchins; and five hundred paces further without the city, you see a tower of brick, which is said to be the pharos of the ancient haven, but the sea is retired about half a mile from hence, and the pharos is now surrounded with gardens . . . The cathedral was new built in the last century upon the ruins of a temple of Castor and Pollux. The above mentioned church of St. Francis, was

Roman Adriatic Ports and the Antiquarian Tradition

23

built of marble taken from the port, by Sigismund Malatesta; the design is by the celebrated Leander Alberti a Florentine, as appears by a Greek inscription on the frontispiece.33

The antiquarians observed the silting and disappearance of the structures and recorded the few remains of the lighthouse foundation, drawing considerable parallels with Ravenna, and their works were thus a great deal more reliable than those that were locally produced, likely due to the antiquarians’ unbiased view of the remains. In this context, the perception of the port ruins boosted local interest in antiquity, and the appeal of the remains led antiquarians to create new stories based on the maritime role and fame of the former structures. The original antiquarian accounts of the Adriatic demonstrate the level of interest in physically extant objects and structures among the port remains during the Imperial period, and are illustrative of the perception and reception of harbour structures. This interest affected antiquarian insight, which appears to have been influenced by several needs: the need to record harbour sites, meaning they often provided observations on remains or structures that were no longer standing in order to satisfy the desire of the commissioner, thus revealing their works to have not only an educational purpose but also socio-­economic implications. These overstated illustrations are clear manifestations of an antiquarian approach: for example, the drafts and sketches are enriched with imaginary and ahistorical elements, such as towers, moles or defensive walls that no longer stood. Thus, the purpose of recording and describing these building structures is revealed: this task was undertaken in order to reinforce the idea of these Roman sites and return them to the glory and prestige they held in ancient times, and deserved once more. The earliest productions also reveal a desire to return to the Roman setting in order to restore the coastal structures for defence purposes. Thus, we can see from these maps that renovating ports and building defensive harbour walls represented the principal method of preventing pirate raids in this region. Conversely, these local surveyors unknowingly provided valuable references for later antiquarians from the 1700s, who improved on previous works, and these marked a rapid growth in the circulation of publications and antiquarian volumes and maps. The works of European scholars, both antiquarians and geographers, are evidence that there were several points of contact with local products; the former are characterized by a high degree of reliability, and their vision of the Adriatic port remains is impartial. The aim of these individuals was to visit and survey these archaeological sites, and according to the evidence,

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Roman ports along the Adriatic were particularly in demand for this. Although this aspect is in need of further study, the evidence appears to confirm that these antiquarian works were widely circulated, and revised accounts and cartographies were updated to include new elements (see Thompson’s quote, above). The attention paid to Roman ports thus had a more academic and educational purpose, though was prompted by an antiquarian desire to expand knowledge and provide sources on antiquities for knowledge to be spread across modern Europe. It is also clear that during the 1700s, this alternative approach aspired to shed new light on scientific and social elements that contributed to shaping the birth of harbour archaeology. These antiquarian accounts attempted to give scholarly value to the Adriatic coast and the Roman remains, but they also contained multifaceted socio-­ economic and political-­military aspects. They formed, among other things, a valuable tool for shaping eighteenth-­century perceptions of the surviving remains, by giving birth to a multicultural and universally extended vision of these structures. In fact, the observations from surveying the remains, along with the antiquarians’ proposal that the fortified harbour structures were linked, formed the basis for shaping the historical context of modern Europe and contributed to the growing interest in port centres. The content of antiquarian accounts and illustrations of Roman Adriatic ports seems to suggest that these works helped to influence the spread and circulation, just a few decades later, of many of the studies and stories that emanated from European scholars and publishers. These local models were probably later considered as patterns to be explored and as starting points from which to produce up-­to-date and expanded written and visual versions of port city studies. The publications produced during the Grand Tour period reveal this tendency, while also demonstrating the link between (and the common purposes of) both local and European antiquarians.

The challenge of discovering Roman Adriatic harbours These antiquarian works reveal how several objects, structures and remains were interpreted in order to articulate new accounts and stories. The arguments and ideas within were thus developed from the dawn of the modern period, shaping the evidence and knowledge derived from the Roman Adriatic into a broader academic and antiquarian debate on themes of regional and national identity, as well as cultural and symbolic ambitions. Observations on Roman

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harbours and coastal variations evidently played a vital role in these imaginings, though we must consider how the accounts and maps of local antiquarians and European scholars were effective in challenging existing ideas, perceptions and interpretations, and linking this aspect with the need to discover and interpret the Roman past. Roman harbours and coastal sites discovered along the Adriatic were often enclosed in broader and pre-­existing contexts that shaped both academic purposes and socio-­economic implications. However, although it can reasonably be argued that these surveys and records led to historical change and, as with the port remains, also shifted political positions (e.g. as Tomai’s and Armileo’s evidence seems to suggest), it is still, at times, a challenging subject. Conversely, Roman ports were most likely used for the purposes of study, illustration and documentation during the modern period due to their ability to convey powerful messages concerning the Roman past, a past that was relevant to the present owing to the unique meaning that permeated these Roman port objects and ruins. Ravenna’s antiquarian accounts, for instance, are of great value in helping us to shape our understanding of discoveries from the 1500s onwards. These accounts were used to elucidate and highlight the setting and prestige of the Roman structures (often following Strabo’s and Pliny the Elder texts),34 and thus provided information on their existence to both local and European audiences. In these accounts, the similarities between ancient texts and modern antiquarian maps are outstanding, since textual sources represented the preliminary basis for the development and production of early modern written and visual representations. Furthermore, these representations helped those who were interested in exploring the influence of Roman structures on the urban setting of that time, allowing them to challenge, inspire and explore alternative readings of the Roman period. Visiting, surveying and recording the Adriatic coasts and maritime landscapes provided opportunities for a new understanding of the discoveries associated with the identity of the territory and how it was defended, and this latter observation would have been linked to allaying fears concerning pirate raids. Local and European antiquarian works, such as those examined here, constituted meaningful evidence that serves to remind us of the physical act of discovery, and had a significant impact on earlier interpretations. These records and illustrations rapidly became the focus of attention as, together with readings of the classics, they were documents primarily intended for the study of Roman ports in the Adriatic. Classical sources influenced the writings and descriptive accounts of antiquarian productions, such as Pliny the Elder record

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of Ravenna’s lighthouse and Strabo’s description of Ravenna’s environment and its series of navigable canals, as well as Rimini’s port structures and reputation for maritime skill.35 This antiquarian approach was applied to the Roman harbour ruins, emphasizing the idea that, thanks to these port structures, local communities were held in high esteem by Rome. Scholars were likely influenced by this perception, and developed a school of thought which subsequently shaped antiquarian insight into the Adriatic from the 1700s onwards. These surveys enabled the creation of a myth concerning ancient coastal structures which would later prompt local authorities and rulers, for example the Papal States, to build monumental neoRoman structures, such as the Arsenale, Mole Vanvitelliana (1600s and 1700s) at Ancona.36 The rediscovery of these building remains, associated as they were with the idea of the Roman legacy, had a considerable impact on the following centuries, and subsequent large-­scale scholarly productions on the Roman Adriatic ports enabled antiquarians to create new narratives, arguing that major academic and engineering works were required to recall the efforts of the Roman ancestors. Adriatic port records allowed antiquarians to imagine how the maritime structures emphasized Roman supremacy over these waters, which were infested by pirates and Turkish ships, helping locals to project a contrast between the classicism and barbarism that played out on this watery frontier. The sheer number of harbour discoveries at Ravenna, Rimini and Ancona from the late 1700s onwards prompted antiquarians to shape the role of the Roman ports, thus further moulding the contrast that was gradually emerging between the ‘civilized’ Adriatic regions and the ‘barbaric’ Ottoman territories. The excavations at Adriatic sites (e.g. Ravenna and Rimini) during the early 1800s reinforced the maritime tradition of these areas and contributed to a sudden growth of interest in port antiquities, thus permitting an accumulation of knowledge which itself led to ideas on social change that were articulated in new terms: the reappropriation of control over Adriatic waters and the unification of the regions in the broader context of the Italian peninsula. It is significant to note that these surveys and records came about because objects and structures there assisted the imagining of a challenging ancient past; whereas individual surveys did not often challenge existing perceptions, the accumulation of different evidence gradually impacted on the general view of Adriatic ports. Local antiquarians and European scholars drew on the ruins of the Roman ports, writing on them and illustrating their layouts in order to fully comprehend their scale, function and scope. Antiquarians sought to recreate elements of the Roman past in written and cartographic form through the illustration of

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buildings, such as moles and lighthouses, and coastal landscapes. Such acts helped to create the present by building on the foundations of past culture. Often, these scholars drew upon the port buildings for inspiration, or for political reasons, but on occasion individuals would study the evidence of Adriatic ports in order to create new objects, buildings and unreal landscapes. A much broader look at Roman harbours in this region demonstrates how in places such as Ancona, antiquarians used the study of remains to gain inspiration for further explorations and coastal surveys. At Rimini, a boom in written accounts expanded their horizons and prompted later research on the port’s ruins, and at Ravenna the accounts created a repository of information for future surveys. The vast scale of the discoveries, along with a growing awareness of the remains of Roman harbours at Trieste, Aquileia, Ravenna, Rimini and Ancona, permitted the articulation of ideas on cultural origins, which influenced the material representations in the form of neo-Roman coastal buildings and maritime structures. Knowledge of the physical character of the port ruins was used during the early modern period to inform proposals to manage these water frontiers, which were then divided between a variety of rulers. Roman remains across this maritime landscape, together with the classical texts that influenced locals and visitors by describing Adriatic centres and societies, were widely used across the modern Adriatic to inform a new order, either papal, Austrian or French, as in the case of Ravenna, Rimini and Ancona; this new order was based on the importance and previous glories of the remains of moles, harbour walls and lighthouses, which denoted the role of the port and recalled the legacy of these Roman structures as a vehicle for prestige and symbolic power. The physical remains of Roman harbours, together with the act of surveying and mapping, formed a powerful model for the subsequent unification of the Adriatic region. In the restoration of new port buildings, docks and coastal landscapes, the creation of knowledge concerning the Roman past of the Adriatic through writing, illustrating, mapping and building performed a fundamental socio-­political purpose, creating the basis for the subsequent growth of harbour archaeology.

Modelling harbour archaeology in the Adriatic region Studies on the history of archaeology have never proposed Roman Adriatic harbours as a dedicated subject of attention; instead, this area was exploited and developed by antiquarians later on. During the mid-1500s, locals focused on the idea that observing and surveying port remains was the only way of

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interpreting the origin of knowledge of Romans within the Adriatic.37 These maritime centres, which were remembered and renowned in antiquity for the ports and their functions, prompted antiquarian investigations that, as we have seen here, were characterized by a variety of approaches. However, this pioneering research on the structures informed the views and influenced the understanding of the earliest scholars, effectively contributing to the first attempts at archaeology. The physical evidence for maritime antiquities was now not only observed, but also partially excavated, collected, recorded and interpreted from the early 1800s onwards. This new consciousness saw the adoption of more scientific techniques in terms of surveying, planning partial excavations and publishing the results of these works; these techniques thus led to a gradual systematization of studies throughout the Italian peninsula. Along the Adriatic, the pioneering excavation of Roman port structures did not begin on a large scale until the 1800s, as exemplified by the works of scholars such as Pietro Santi and Luigi Tonini.

Fig. 1.5  Pietro Santi (1807), Ruderi di Antica Torre Rovesciata da Impetuoso Vento nel Mese di Febbrajo l’Anno 1807. Molti Argomentano, che Abbia Servito, ne Secoli Addietro, di Fanale al Porto di Rimini, Pietro Santi Disegnò.

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The heritage and legacy bequeathed by these later antiquarian accounts and visual aids serve as a valuable reference for demonstrating how these pioneering activities influenced and shaped later scientific works, such as fieldwork at port sites. Santi (1807), an illustrator and historian, focused his survey research on the extant lighthouse ruins of Rimini’s harbour: he portrayed the basement and the tower remains but also added useful information concerning the setting and dimensions of the surviving building, suggesting that it had to belong to the ancient structures (see Fig.  1.5).38 Santi’s works formed a preliminary account that encouraged later archaeologists to apply an innovative approach and conduct the first scientific survey of the archaeological site.39 Around the second half of the 1800s, Luigi Tonini, a historian, collector and pioneer archaeologist, developed an up-­to-date interpretation of the harbour’s location, following what Adimari proposed in previous centuries (and Santi more recently).40 Tonini, who studied the ancient landscape of Rimini, believed that the actual port was located further south-­east of the Marecchia, where the antiquarian maps, in particular Arrigoni’s, recorded the presence of the ancient mole. He was certain that the port and its southern warehouses were situated at the end of the cardo of the settlement, as was recorded in certain iconographic documents. Tonini’s accounts and sketches further developed previous antiquarian drawings, shaping this process of academic growth that allows us to understand not only the transformations that occurred to the arrangement of the port during Tonini’s time, but also the first attempts at archaeology. This invaluable survey, which ascertained how certain remains were located close to the two main rivers of the city, produced sensational results, as well as the first scientific archaeological map of the city, with its principal focus on the port layout and the Roman wall of the city. To summarize, earlier antiquarians in the Adriatic seem to have pioneered a more descriptive and multifaceted approach to the recording of the ancient port sites. Their works are characterized by an interpretative nature, and each of these had a different purpose, which was nonetheless linked with rhetorical propaganda and politics. However, these works served as references for later European scholars, who added their observations on the Adriatic port remains, and these studies then formed the basis for the pioneering attempts at archaeological science that were applied to harbours, as is the case with works from Santi and Tonini. This antiquarian approach to Roman Adriatic harbours, however, does not refer solely to scholarly involvement or scientific experience, but also to the use and development of the perception and reception of the ruins and remains. The history of Adriatic ports, as explored in this chapter, was used in the reception of Roman maritime structures to reflect on the identity and symbols

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expressed by the ruins. The territorial and expansionist ambitions of the locals, the Papal State and the Venetian, Ottoman, French and Austrian rulers within the variegated and multicultural context of the macro-Adriatic region of the early modern period were also mentioned. The antiquarian studies on Roman ports in the Adriatic continued to provide a powerful series of images and ideas, which had great potential for those wishing to reflect on the socio-­political and international relationships built upon and shaped by these earlier perspectives and influences. These works almost certainly featured subjective observations, which nonetheless provided several differing but connected details on regional and macro-­regional identity and ambitions, while also having a clear educational and scholarly purpose, which subsequently shaped the first experience of archaeology, as is evident in the themes and the sources we have explored.

Notes 1 Braccesi 1971; Susini 1990; Zaccaria 2001; Lenzi 2006; Augenti and Cirelli 2012; Boschi 2013; Ugolini 2016. 2 Schnapp 2014, 1–10. 3 Marsili 1682–1715; Giovannini 2006, 115–223; Marcone 2007, 39–64; Ugolini 2016. 4 Mansuelli 1990, 103–12; Susini 1990. 5 Tomai 1546, Ascra 283. 6 Tomai 1546, Ascra 283. 7 Tomai 1546, Ascra 283. 8 Armileo 1593, Ascra 281. 9 Plin., HN 3.16.119–20. 10 Plin., HN 36.18.83: ‘Magnificatur et alia turris a rege facta in insula Pharo portum optinente Alexandriae, quam constitisse DCCC talentis tradunt, magno animo, ne quid omittamus, Ptolemaei regis, quo in ea permiserit Sostrati Cnidi architecti structura ipsa nomen inscribi. usus eius nocturno navium cursu ignes ostendere ad praenuntianda vada portusque introitum, quales iam compluribus locis flagrant, sicut Ostiae ac Ravennae. periculum in continuatione ignium, ne sidus existimeretur, quoniam e longinquo similis flammarum aspectus est’ (‘Another towering structure built by a king is also extolled, namely the one that stands on Pharos, the island that commands the harbour at Alexandria. The tower is said to have cost 800 talents. We should not fail to mention the generous spirit shown by King Ptolomy, whereby he allowed the name of the architect, Sostratus of Cnidos, to be inscribed on the very fabric of the building. It serves, in connection, with the movements of ships at night, to show a beacon so as to give warning of shoals and indicate the entrance to the

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harbour. Similar beacons now burn brightly in several places, for instance at Ostia and Ravenna. The danger lies in the uninterrupted burning of the beacon, in case it should be mistaken for a star, the appearance of the fire from a distance being similar’); Deliyannis 2010, 28. 11 Ceserani 2014, 317–42. 12 Spinola 1615, Ascra 284. 13 Susini 1990, 1–9. 14 Mansuelli 1990, 103–12. 15 Susini 1990. 16 Mansuelli 1990. 17 Spinola 1615, Ascra 284. 18 Adimari 1616, 64–5. 19 Plin., HN 3.16.119–20; 36.18.83; Strab., 5.1.7; 5.4.6. 20 Arrigoni 1616, Gds 7128; Clementini 1617, 56–7. 21 Adimari 1616, 64–5: ‘Si che li qui si può considerare, che il Porto di quella città fosse buono, e cappace d’ogni forte di legni da nauigare, hora per esserli ritirato il Mare, e lasciato in secha il luoco, dou’era il Porto, non par che il Mare dia commodità di farlo in altro luoco, che nella bocca del Fiume Marecchia . . . ciò non si facesse con linea retta, ma curua, come io ho offeruato alcuna volta dall’acqua istessa, per la lecha, lasciata dietro la pallata, è come si vede hauer fatto gli antichi nel Porto restato in secha’ (‘It could be estimated that the port of that city was good and suitable for hosting all kinds of ships. Now, due to the receding of the sea, and since the location of the ancient port is now buried, we need to rebuild it in a different place, at the mouth of the River Marecchia . . . I will say that the mouth should have been placed toward the sea with good palisades (crescent-­moon shaped), in order to leave the mud and deposits behind the mole, as the ancients did in the now-­buried port’). 22 Marsili 1682–1715. 23 Adimari 1616, 64–5; Arrigoni 1616, Gds 7128. 24 Adimari 1616, 1–5. 25 Ibid., 64–5. 26 Marsili 1682–1715; Susini 1990. 27 Mansuelli 1990, 103–12. 28 Marsili 1682–1715. 29 Tomai 1546; Mansuelli 1990, 103–12. 30 Marsili 1682–1715. 31 Thompson 1744, 245; Nugent 1778, 197–200; Black 1985; Chaney 1998. 32 Thompson 1744, 245; Black 1985; Chaney 1998. 33 Nugent 1778, 197–200. 34 Plin., HN 36.18.83; Strab., 5.1.7. 35 Plin., HN 36.18.83; Strab., 5.1.7–11; 5.4.6.

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36 Marsili 1682–1715. 37 Adimari 1617, 64–5; Clementini 1617, 56–7. 38 Santi 1807, Gds 3168. 39 Tonini 1848, 21; Tonini 1864, 2. 40 Tonini 1846, 2.

2

Chronotopes of Hellenic Antiquity: The Strait of Reggio and Messina in Documents from the Grand Tour Era Marco Benoît Carbone

Few other localities, in the Mediterranean and beyond, can compete with the alluring literary reputation of the Strait of Scylla and Charybdis, the monsters from the Odyssey that have traditionally been associated with the marine passage between Calabria and Sicily. In Homer’s account, Odysseus had to cross a narrow passage, on each side of which lurked a fearsome monster. The first, Scylla, was a six-­headed predator whose waist was encircled by wailing, canine heads. The second, Charybdis, was a vast creature whose gaping maw could gulp mountains of water along with anything that sailed too close.1 Homer did not provide a specific setting for the tale, but the vagueness of the epic poem and geographical clues gave rise to a tradition that identified the Strait as the setting of the myth.2 By looking at modern written and visual accounts from the Grand Tour era, ranging from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, this chapter will illustrate how many European travellers viewed the relationship between the Homeric myth and the Strait. This relationship grew out of philhellenism and, often, from an urbanite perspective of lands they would have perceived as remote and timeless, uncontaminated by modernity and at once exotically beautiful yet subtly threatening. Focusing on a textual and visual analysis of these historical documents, this chapter traces a series of interrelated issues: first, the impact of the Greco-Roman literary tradition on inspiring re-­ enactments of the voyage of Odysseus within the Strait. The South of Italy became the setting for erudite escapism and literary travel: within the region, striking sceneries co-­existed with the disquieting rêverie of legends and myths. Second, the chapter will demonstrate how these monstrous-­feminine creatures were seen to allegorize the marvels and dreads of an area characterized by

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inspiring geographical landmarks, currents and volcanic activity, and the co-­ existence of a poetic-­romantic and rationalistic model of the reception of myth. Third, the chapter will discuss how the Strait began to be conceptualized as a counterpart to the civilized space represented by European states. Entering the area of Magna Graecia entailed an experiential motion through time. The South was thus understood as a space characterized by natural wonders, picturesque and wild landscapes, surviving myths of marine monsters, backward villages and the ruins of ancient civilizations. Moreover, the chapter offers some thoughts on the dissemination of the geo-­ cultural trope of the Strait today, suggesting a long-­lasting influence of the travelogues on local histories of the region, to the point where they have become strongly tied to its heritage, alongside the reception of Hellenism and its symbols.3 First, the Grand Tour decisively anticipated the establishment of modern tourist industries – for which the Strait can be said to have become a potential ‘myth-­place’, a leisured space of escapism.4 Second, the travel literatures elaborated through the Grand Tour experience represent some of the first historical documents in which the Strait began to circulate in modern cultural and leisure industries. The Strait was understood through commonplace ideas of ancient Greek antiquity, in the guise of a chronotope, a literary travel location informed by ‘the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships . . . artistically expressed in literature’.5 Indeed, the Grand Tour era could be said to have inaugurated a specific way of looking at the landscape of the Strait and its symbols. Depicted at once as a seemingly timeless, ahistorical setting of idyllic beauty and subtly disquieting exoticism, yet at the same time a cultural space inextricably tied to Hellenism and its myths, the Strait has maintained this image up to the present day, within a broader cultural supremacy assigned to Hellenism within Western popular histories and discourses on heritage.6

The Grand Tour and classical antiquity The fascination of artists and travellers for the Mediterranean Sea, its myths and history as transmitted through the Greco-Roman tradition7 was decisive to the reception of the area.8 For European elites, the presence of sporadic travelogues such as Thomas Hoby’s diaries from 1547–64, along with the advent of modern tourism, travelling to such destinations and re-­enacting previous explorations became a formative experience.9 The appropriation of classical culture by erudite travellers took the form of a rite of passage in which intellectuals, writers,

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artists and poets travelled to places like Florence as of the highest artistic expression of the Renaissance, or Rome and its material traces of republican and imperial history.10 Further south beyond Naples, their encounters gave rise to amazement. In Calabria and Sicily, the former glory of the Greeks seemed to be confined to a complete historical oblivion, and travel acquired an added layer of adventurous, exotic enticement.11 The Strait of Scylla and Charybdis represented perhaps the most striking landmarks of Homeric myth, along with Capri and its Sirens in Campania, the rocks of the Cyclops in Aci Trezza, and Hephaestus’ Mount Etna in Sicily. The lexical correspondence between the Scylla monster and the coastal town of Scilla, in the ancient Chalcidian region, has been a crucial element through which modern European visitors to the Strait have understood the area.12 The town’s toponym decisively reinforces an association that dates as far back as ancient Greek coinage.13 On the Sicilian coast, Cape Pelorus (‘monstrous’) also bears an etymology consistent with the Homeric tale.14 Localizations of Greek mythology, shared across travel diaries and literary accounts, can be related to a tradition of Homeric geography that can be traced back to Strabo’s accounts15 and which left its mark on works such as Eustathius’ twelfth-­century ce commentary on Homer, and Ortellius’ 1619 Sicilia Antiqua. Later, localizations were transmitted in widely available compendia of knowledge such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Jean Baptiste Le Rond D’Alembert and Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie: in the latter, Scylla and Charybdis are discussed in sections on mythology and poetry as well as those on ancient and modern geography, and mapped ‘in the Strait that separated Italy from Sicily’.16 The year 1783 saw the publication of two influential travelogues that used myth-­places as landmarks for their itineraries: the Abbé de Saint-Non’s Voyage pittoresque and Henry Swinburne’s Travels in the Two Sicilies (see Fig.  2.1), successful books that prompted later translations and reissues.17 An increasingly abundant body of travel literature had already been catering to audiences searching for books on this area of Italy – in 1771, Johann H. Riedesel had published Reise durch Sizilien und Großgriechenland. An established tendency of these texts was also to align ancient and modern sites through place names. Riedesel’s, Saint-Non’s and Swinburne’s travel books abounded in references to Greco-Roman literature. Riedesel cites the ‘Charybdis of the ancient’ close to Messina.18 Swinburne also locates the mythical Scylla within the Strait, and compares his comfortable travel to the more perilous journey of Ulysses.19 Saint-Non’s voyage dedicates several pages to the detroit of Scylla and Cape Pelorus.20 Crossing the Strait soon became an established must-­see in the rediscovery of southern Italy’s classical landmarks.21

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Fig. 2.1  Unknown author, Strait of Messina with Charybdis and Scylla, 1686.

In his 1812 Letters, Astolphe de Custine, a French aristocrat, said of travel in the region of the Strait, ‘I could not have forgiven myself had I not let myself be transported by the waves of the strait that have seen the passage of Ulysses’ boat. It was either to face Scilla’s rocks, or not come to Calabria at all’.22 Scilla’s rocks were ‘celebrated by the ancient fables’ and part ‘of classical memory’: crossing the Strait thus became a form of access through and to a space predetermined by the imaginative feeling of ancient mythology.23 Citing the Odyssean passage became a recurrent practice, a chance to display erudition, poetic flair or naturalistic and antiquarian interest. A sense of fascination with the South’s mythical toponyms pervaded re-­enactments of the ‘real’ routes of the travel of Odysseus, as travellers drew poetic and artistic inspiration from the landscape and at the same time displayed their modern, rationalist interpretations of ancient sea myths, beliefs and superstitions.

Mapping the myth-places Cartographic media such as maps or engravings, along with their visual renditions of the literary myth-places, also insisted on the Strait as an exotic

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land. Together, these media established southern Italy on the map of travel literature.24 Visual consumption of the sceneries of southern Italy was on the rise and enjoyed increasingly literate international audiences. Reisefield’s Reise had been translated into French and English in 1773, Swinburne’s Journey into French and German in 1785, and Saint-Non’s Voyage into English and German in 1789. Within the South, the Strait of the Greek legends represented an iconic, powerful landmark. Riedesel discussed the currents of the Straits in relation to the actual currents off the shore of Messina.25 Swinburne debated the toponymical relation between the mythical Scylla and Cape Scyllaeum, another locality that sat alongside traditional mythical associations.26 Saint-Non dedicated extensive attention to Reggio, Messina, Scilla and Cape Pelorus.27 His lavishly illustrated travelogue included a map of southern Italy clustered with references to myths, from Cape Pelorus in the Strait to the Lestrigonians in Sicily, and the Promontory of Hercules in Calabria (see Fig. 2.1). Saint-Non followed in the footsteps of a previous journey by ‘travelling philosopher’ Carlantonio Pilati, between 1775 and 1777.28 La Salle’s Voyage (1829) similarly describes mythical landmarks such as ‘Jaci Reale’ and its ‘rocks of the Cyclops’ (Aci Reale in Sicily, off Mount Etna) and the Strait. The latter occupies a special place: among the many hazards and wonders of the South, ‘there exist two in particular, which the imagination of poets and popular traditions have recognized under the names of Charybdis and Scylla’.29 Later on, Norman Douglas, a British writer, would describe Capri as the land of the Sirens, indulging in poetic and imaginative descriptions of the marine fauna and its relations to myths.30 Overall, these documents show a rich constellation of mythical localizations set in the Mediterranean, which found in the Strait and Scilla a consistent and well-­known place name. Along with other myth places, the Strait’s fame faded back into myth as a fascinatingly remote region, which only became accessible through the routes informed by ancient sources, but also initiated novel exploration. As a consequence, the village of Scilla and its scenery began to enjoy increasing attention in their own right. Achille Étienne de La Salle’s 1822–6 Voyage reports the Strait as a place where nature had unfolded its marvels.31 This fascination was shared by Willem Fortuyn’s artwork for an article on ‘the southern view of the town of Scilla’ from 1773. Fortuyn here epitomizes the picturesque – an aesthetic category bringing nature as an essential element together with monumental remains and the relics of the past32 – while incorporating the monsters as part of a tradition that had been widely established in media such as encyclopaedias, engravings and etchings and cartographic iconographies. In addition to contributing to the establishment of a picturesque

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landscape, Fortuyn visualized the monsters within a smaller frame in the artwork. This choice could be related to previous cartographic practices: landmarks from the Greco-Roman tradition had already populated various mapmakers’ bestiaries, such as the 1515 Schöner globe.33 However, while earlier sea monsters inhabited and symbolized unknown areas of the far seas, Fortuyn’s Scylla and Charybdis could hardly be said to represent the lurking dangers of the sea anymore, at a time when science and progress in navigation technology had made travel safer, and as the Age of Discovery pushed the uncharted areas of wilderness away from the Mediterranean. Rather, the Strait resonated with tales of ancient sailors who would risk their lives by navigating dangerous straits with primitive technology, while the monsters could serve as iconic and anthropomorphic embellishments, expressing a philological and literary form of erudition shared by writers and readers. Matthaeus Merian’s Topographia Italiae (1688) depicted the Strait of Scylla and Charybdis from the close perspective of the sea, allowing the reader to interpret the now absent monsters as metaphorical embodiments of the currents, rocks and whirlpools of the Strait. The rise of positivist thought could thus be said to have favoured the tendency – which already existed in antiquity – to explain myth as a form of imperfect, pre-­scientific thought, which concealed geographical or natural truths behind allegorized symbols, on which proper, modern rationality could finally shed light.34 Scylla and Charybdis had been related to the Strait’s unique currents that generated whirlpools, as well as the protruding rocks of the town of Scilla, ever since the accounts of Thucydides.35 Thus the myths became commonly explicable as embodying the apprehension and fears of ancient sea people dealing with the dangers of currents, unknown marine creatures or volcanic eruptions from the nearby Etna and Stromboli. The monsters stemmed from phenomena ‘exaggerated by people’s imagination to the point where they became fables’.36 And yet, while science could now explain sights that the ancients would have feared and transfigured into myth, this still did nothing to dispel the fascination with the Strait and southern Italy as a cove of mythical landmarks and scientific curiosities.

Between nature’s dread and beauty In the eyes of modern visitors, the Strait, and broadly speaking the South, belonged to a part of the world still bordering on the wild and untamed forces of nature, such as volcanoes and unique marine currents: while such phenomena were now understood by science, they nonetheless characterized the region with

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a majestic threat. Along with an appreciation of the area’s natural beauty, there lurked a sense of fear for its underlying, threatening forces of nature. It is interesting to read Fortuyn’s treatment of Scilla as if foreshadowed by such relations. Scilla is principally represented as a picturesque, idyllic place, though the monsters situated in the smaller illustration at the bottom of the print, in addition to reminding the viewer of the area’s genealogy, embody the lurking dread that the area inspired. Earthquakes and tsunamis had been feeding the imagination of European travellers for many centuries, and were largely reconnected to these ancient myths.37 In 1638, German polymath Athanasius Kircher had returned from his travels in southern Italy ‘having witnessed the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius’ – one of the two volcanic landmarks of southern Italy, together with Etna in Sicily – ‘as it creaked and groaned under the strain of its geologic rhythms’.38 This experience heavily influenced his Mundus Subterraneus, a vast compendium of symbols, curiosities and stories in which Hephaestus and Etna, as well as the whirlpools of the Strait, were portrayed as marvellous places. The book was produced in Amsterdam, ‘the centre of the European book trade’, highlighting the already strong interest of European urbanites in the images of mythical landmarks in the far-­away South.39 Several documents from the Grand Tours display similarly strong reactions to travelling in the area of the Strait, though through a rationalizing lens that set them apart from Kircher’s metaphysical peregrinations.40 Custine’s Mémoires et voyages of 1830 insists on the ‘couleur d’époque’ of southern Calabria, its delightful scenery and the sublime nature of the primordial forces that make it appear a paradise on earth.41 Yet the region also bears traces of the most terrible effects of a nature that had ‘revolted against the conquests of man, deriding his civilization’.42 Duret De Tavel, a French official, described the earthquake and tsunami which devastated Calabria and Sicily in 1783, reporting how the promontory of Campallà (Monte Pacì, south of Scilla) ‘collapsed into the sea and pushed an enormous mass of water onto the opposite shore . . . swallowing all the people who were seeking shelter from the previous earthquake on the shore of Scilla’.43 Another report on the disaster was signed by Didier, who wrote that ‘the huge mass of water flowed on the two borders of the Strait, swallowing a great number of Sicilians . . . and the Calabrese who had sought shelter’.44 These renditions were often accompanied by interpretations of monstrous figures as allegories. In 1907, Norman Douglas equated the metaphorical dread of the Sirens and Scylla and Charybdis to sinister phenomena ‘like the worst earthquake of the century’ and debated the mythical figures as signifiers of death and putrefaction. Scylla, oscillating between the utter monstrosity of her Homeric

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form and the accursed femininity of some of her variants, embodied both the beauty of Scilla’s landscape and the suffering inflicted by nature upon its inhabitants.45 The destruction and wholescale suffering brought about by the 1783 earthquake that devastated the region (with Scilla as one of the epicentres)46 bewildered literate visitors, who would relate to the place through a combination of beauty and horror encapsulated by the symbols.47 Aside from the historical event of the 1783 tsunami, poetic enjoyment and rationalizing interpretations went hand in hand with traditional versions of the tale. Charles Didier rehearsed the notorious etymological explanation of the dogs’ heads of Scylla as the hissing winds through the rocks that produced a deceitful barking sound;48 Arthur John Strutt also noted in 1842 that the rocks in Scilla seemed to be eternally fighting a marine war with the ‘barking waves’.49 Edward Lear reported, with a hint of disappointment, expecting howls and screams but being unable to perceive even a small ‘degree of romance in our researches’ (1852); however, he was still awestruck by the ‘wide expanse of sea’ and the ‘very magnificent’ rocks of Scilla, ‘rising above the boiling current of dark blue foamy water’.50 All sorts of suggestive elements contributed to inspire poets and intellectuals: the cliff dominating the sea, the rocks, the view of Sicily and the Aeolian islands, the peculiar customs, and even the fishing techniques that allegedly corresponded to those described in the Odyssey: the travelling aristocrat Custine noted, while passing ‘through Charybdis and Scylla’, that the hunt for swordfish, a peculiar ‘species of notorious monsters’, could be found in ancient texts.51 Elements of atavistic fear could be elicited by a plethora of suitably inspiring elements in the eyes of the rationalizing visitors. Marine animals like sharks and whales roamed the Strait with threatening, massive mouths – the identification of monsters and marvels through science, including those found in curiosity cabinets, were another penchant of positivist explanations. Protruding sea rocks would serve as a danger for boats, and winds would hiss and wail through the cliffs, sounding like packs of dogs. Strong tides and whirlpools would appear, spurred by the meeting of the Ionian and the Tyrrhenian seas at different sea levels and temperatures, generating turmoil and dangerous eddies.

‘Southernizing’ the landscape: nature and civilization The scenery of the Strait, separating the mainland from Sicily and with the Aeolian islands in sight, certainly inspired literary appreciators with its combination of idyllic beauty and threatening natural phenomena. Visitors to

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the Strait came not only from philhellenic cultural backgrounds, but also from latitudes with relatively less welcoming climates, and were thus inclined to idealize the scenery. Still, the power of the landscape’s seemingly objective, pre-­ cultural marvels was also largely prepared and fostered by a series of grand narratives on civilization and nature. The myth of Scylla and Charybdis served, in this light, as a suitable symbol for one of the European continent’s peripheries, and for untamed nature. Partly, the reception of the landscape was caused by the region’s insularity. Even by the early sixteenth century, when the cartography of Europe ‘was very well established’, and when ‘that of the New World and the coasts of Africa was evolving rapidly’, the Strait still functioned as a border for access to the East and South.52 Even as new continents were discovered and colonized, and the unreachable poles of the Earth conquered by daring explorers, the area around the Strait remained relatively inaccessible to European travellers: Mediterranean Sea routes had declined in favour of transatlantic exchanges and, paradoxically, modern visitors to the region could choose to ‘play Ulysses’ after tortuously reaching southern Calabria by land from the Italian peninsula.53 In addition to being hard to reach, in the eyes of the travellers the Strait was certainly neither urbanized nor European, though nor was it quite Oriental either; at the same time, it was not entirely archaic, though definitely not completely civilized. Such a perspective was underpinned by a selective view on the area – a binary between urban and country life that could be transposed into a North/ South narrative, itself part of a ‘complex interplay between the ancient and the modern in Renaissance humanist culture’.54 The fact that the Strait served as a passage to foreign cultures reinforced the tendency to overanalyse the landscape’s exceptional nature and pit it against modernity’s culture. For instance, phenomena that were supposed to be unique to the area, such as Charybdis’ whirlpools, in fact occurred elsewhere, in much more geologically striking ways, close to the Scandinavian Lofoten islands. Still, due to the cultural influence of Hellenism, the term ‘Charybdis’ had become a signifier for these phenomena, as can be seen in a print of the ‘Charybdis Muscana’, representing the Moskstraumen whirlpool (in which erupting columns of water artistically recall the heads of Scylla).55 The impact of the so-­called Age of Discovery on the understanding of the world certainly contributed to the exoticized, awestruck reception of the Strait within the South of Italy.56 Dynamics of centre and periphery – and consequently of culture and nature, familiarity and foreignness – took centre stage in binary representations of Europe and its borders.57 In the case of southern Italy, this perspective was further reinforced by the aforementioned tendency of seeing the region as the site of a ‘stark contrast between present-­day isolation and the

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lost glory of the past’.58 This view of Italy became a constant in foreigners’ depictions of the region, even if it had earlier origins – Italian Dominican Leandro Alberti (1479–1552), who lived between Bologna and Rome, had already drawn abundantly from ancient tropes in describing Calabria as an extension of ancient Greek history, and disseminated them in print decades earlier.59 As his Descrittione of Italy ventured into uncharted territory, Alberti relied on ancient texts, maintaining an ‘eerie silence on contemporary political and religious upheavals’, while displaying ‘garrulity in relating myths, legends, and anecdotes from the long-­lost past’.60 Alberti’s obliviousness on Byzantium, or other histories from the region, displays a highly selective focus on the South of Italy as an ideal extension of the topos of Hellas that could be reclaimed as essentially Western, even though it bordered on the Orient. This perspective reflected the South’s ‘imaginative destiny at the margins of Europe’, which could be understood ‘in relation to that of Eastern Europe, itself a link between modernity and backwardness’.61 The former, however, benefited from the classical tradition: Aristocrat Custine wrote on both the Strait (1830) and the ‘East’ of Europe in 1843, considering both areas primitive and underdeveloped, but only the latter populated by savages with not a hint of taste or civilization.62 One can thus understand the selective gaze that determined the visitors’ frequent choice to focus less on urbanized centres like Reggio and Messina and more on depictions of small villages and the countryside. Mythical place names worked as ‘a culturally dense access to ancient history’, even though their reception, as in all cases, was being obviously influenced by and ‘intimately connected with present coordinates and interests’.63 While effective differences existed in the level of development between southern Italy and the fast-­developing northern countries affected by the Industrial Revolution, visitors’ representations still exasperated socio-­cultural differences. A descent to southern Italy seemed to equate to an utter temporal regression, towards an Orient/South that was also the Past. Natural and cultural wilderness could merge into one as the Strait began to acquire narratives that connoted uniqueness and nostalgia. Travel experiences usually came with an infatuated or patronizing lens that could turn to scorn when vestiges of the former glory were rare or non-­existent, since the mythical landscape could also be profitably commoditized. Saint-Non marketed southern Italy in his travelogue after realizing that north of Rome, Italy was not such a novelty to his audience. He asked the artist Denon to turn empty plains into powerful views of ‘rustic’ bridges with added vegetation growing out of the ruins to enhance the picturesque effect. Saint-Non also quickly capitalized on the 1783 earthquake – occurring almost at the same time the Voyage was about to go to press, destroying

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Reggio, Messina, Scilla and other places. Saint-Non went back to print and used an illustration of Messina – represented as a torn page – as the cover. The experience of colonialism provided another grand, underlying narrative. Colonial parallels, as noted by Ceserani, ‘would soon take centre stage in the writing of ancient history, affecting views of Magna Graecia . . . imagined as a colonial territory of the ancient Greeks’: ever the pragmatic Briton, Swinburne produced a scrupulous account of motives for interest in the South, refraining from merely dramatizing the ruins of Magna Graecia but instead noting that ‘a situation blest with so delicious a climate and so fine a haven, must have attracted the early notice of the eastern navigators, who, like Christopher Columbus, Francis Drake and James Cook of modern times, sailed from home in quest of new worlds, and unexplored coasts’.64 Prominent travelogues mostly ‘fail to mention the work of early geographers and topographers who had written on Magna Graecia, presenting instead their trips to South Italy as novel explorations of unknown lands’, showing a ‘widening gap between local and foreign approaches to the region’ at that moment in history.65 The new travelogues stepped into territory conceptualized as uncharted, as reflected in their narrative style, publishing history and their fixation on ruins and landscape. Early modern travellers made sense of the new worlds that they encountered on their travels through their own ethnocentric views: borders were imagined and manufactured as territories where meanings were created and transformed.66 Attached to Italy’s ‘ankle’ on its southernmost border, forming a progression of high mountains descending to steep cliffs, the landscape of Calabria afforded vistas of the Strait only after tortuous mountain paths: crossing was an exciting and potentially profitable act that could be framed as a narrative of world discovery. Naturally, there were exceptions to this narrative. British explorer Thomas Hoby had admired Messina’s neoclassical ‘fountaine of verie white marble’ in his 1547–64 Travels (representing Neptune, Scylla and Charybdis, commissioned by the Senate in 1557 and dedicated to Michelangelo’s assistant Giovanni Montorsoli), and had praised the city as quite lively.67 The fountain – receiving and amplifying a tradition of illustrations, maps and art while signalling the relation between myth and the city – was an expression of the wealthy elites’ power within the harbours of the Strait, though most European visitors tended to essentialize the whole region as archaic. Custine’s visit to Reggio in 1830 almost ruined his uchronic wanderings into the lost past of Greater Greece as he was forced to acknowledge that the urban centre was actually, like the Messina of Montorsoli’s statue, modern – a busy and well-­connected harbour. In time, though, he resumed his previous accounts on pre-­modern vistas and the rural

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and isolated world of the southern spirit, romantically celebrating Arcadian life and the pre-­cultural wilderness of the picturesque.68 The new genre of travel writing was in some ways ‘divisive almost by definition, as foreigners . . . claimed the right to treat the South as an unknown region’.69

The tourist gaze In some respects, travelogues preconized the fascination for otherness and experiential loss of the modern tourist. As early as 1176, John of Oxford, the Bishop of Norwich, had behaved like an ill-­suited traveller today, complaining about the ‘excess of heat’ during his trip to see ‘the rocks and the whirlpools of Scylla and Charybdis’.70 Like a modern tourist, albeit with a scarcely adaptive spirit, the bishop wanted to bridge over to the disembodied mythical materials by touching the place ‘with both feet on the ground’.71 While merely an anecdote, this episode sits well with the series of socio-­cultural historical dynamics through which the exoticism of the Strait was framed and transmitted from elite travellers into modern tourism. Riedesel, Saint-Non and Swinburne were highly influential in perpetuating the mythical fame of the Strait in such a perspective. Subsequent visitors did not refrain from commenting on the Strait of Ulysses as one of the main attractions to the symbolic consumption of the area, even if they were only passing on a boat on their way back to Naples. Goethe, with Riedesel’s guide in hand in 1768–88, was one of these visitors.72 This perspective preconized an onset of tourism in which commonplace sights of the South were formed exactly ‘as economic and political might in Europe shifted northward’, and the status of Italy and Greece diminished, while their allure grew as comparatively distant lands that attracted interest from seekers of exoticism.73 Novelty became a recurring motif during the eighteenth century, a time of discovery and new beginnings that also saw the emergence of new forms of antiquarianism. Revolutions in taste and social formations meant that ‘traveling gentlemen replaced armchair scholars as the main figures of innovation’.74 With the Napoleonic Wars, southern Italy had progressively become a destination for travellers in search of traces of ancient civilizations, though most of them stopped at Naples, since roads and facilities were generally very poor.75 When in 1705 the English playwright, essayist and poet Joseph Addison praised Italy as a travel destination, ‘he was referring to a country whose southernmost point, as far as the tourists were concerned, was still Naples’.76 The majority of early

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eighteenth-­century visitors did not foresee even brief excursions off the beaten track and probably assumed that ‘l’Europe finit à Naples . . . La Calabre, la Sicile, tout le reste est de l’Afrique’ (Europe finishes in Naples . . . Calabria, Sicily, all the rest is part of Africa).77 Towards the nineteenth century, however, travelling was no longer a prerogative of the élites, and tourism in the South became gradually more widespread among the lower classes that mimicked the aristocrats.78 In the same period, there was a growth in the production of travel accounts, which stimulated foreign travel. The popularization of the routes ran parallel to the establishment of mythical monsters as recognizable signifiers of the area, a trend already well established by media such as maps and illustrations. Gissing’s By the Ionian Sea, ending with an image of Etna and the Strait of Scylla and Charybdis, featured an attached map of southern Italy and Sicily.79 Travel literature ‘provided an opportunity for autobiography and literary amateurism, not least in the readable context of a heroic or mock-­heroic journey’.80 An influential textbook already existed in the form of Joseph Addison’s Remarks on Several Parts of Italy which concerned the ‘antiquities and curiosities’ to be found in Italy, depicting southern Italy, in orientalizing fashion, as a trekking ground for reliving the landscapes and stories of Greek civilization.81 Works like the 1819 Classical Tour through Italy and Sicily by Richard Hoare further demonstrated the blend of literary interests and leisure that would, at a later point, be labelled as literary tourism.82 An antiquarian, Hoare set off to little-­documented areas of the South and Sicily, guided by classics like Pliny and Horace. Murray’s 1863 Hand-Book for Travelling in the Continent was embraced, along with similar books, as a model for touristic behaviour. The archaic civilization of the South held the romantic promise of an escape from modernity and its grip on the individual. The uchronia of the South, the continent’s original cradle as part of Greater Greece (and thus Hellenic history) could mean losing the self in intellectual, historical or poetic contemplation. A form of escapist movement anticipated the leisure industries’ subsequent catering to tourists seeking ‘personal adventure’ and a ‘crossing of boundaries’, defined in reference to the ‘distressingly remote’ landscapes they sought, as well as by ‘the demand for alterity’ that the industry produced and quenched.83 One example may be found in George Robert Gissing’s affectionate re-­enactment of the classical voyage, which seemed to project him back to the moment when myth ‘first occurred’, through a form of mythical reactivation.84 Thus Gissing spoke about the Strait in 1901 in his travelogue By the Ionian Sea: Alone and quiet, I heard the washing of the waves; I saw the evening fall on cloud-­wreathed Etna, the twinkling lights come forth on Scylla and Charybdis;

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Ancient Mediterranean Sea in Modern Visual and Performing Arts and, as I looked my last towards the Ionian Sea, I wished it were mine to wander endlessly amid the silence of the ancient world, to-­day and all its sounds forgotten.

Such was the fame of the Strait among some travellers that the images of myth were not separable from geography. In The Dialogic Imagination, Bakhtin defines a chronotope (or ‘time space’) as ‘the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature’.85 For Bakhtin, the chronotope was a formal, constituent category of literature. In this context, I am borrowing his definition to define the Strait of classical myth as a conflation of historical and temporal otherness, a discourse that could be extended to southern Italy at large. In the body of documents explored by this study, Hellenic Italy, seemingly virgin and undiscovered, became an ideal setting for travelogues.86 Books such as Lenormant’s La Grande Grece (1881) widely advertised and capitalized on Magna Graecia’s unfulfilled potential as ‘an alluring, little-­known destination and subject of study’. Elisabeth Décultot’s likening of Winckelmann’s history of art to a travel narrative grasped this tendency for the foreignness of place and narrative to converge on past remoteness, inviting it to be traversed.87 All in all, these experiences anticipated a sense of ‘touristic landscapes’, for which the seductive nature of these places resided not just in their ‘natural’ aspects, but also in opening up the self to an encounter with it and the ‘unknowns of the journey’.88

The Strait: chronotopes of affect With the onset of mass communications, globalized transmissions of information, along with the rise of transnational audiences and cultural industries, the Strait’s identity and its recognizable features were further disseminated. Today, across a great variety of media, the myth is still related with the Strait, and the Strait owes part of its fame to the ‘monsters’. This occurs increasingly outside of traditional, local contexts. Moreover, as a native of the area of the Strait, I have been able to observe for many years that the assumptions and ideas drawn from the mainstream, international media inevitably return to impact on the ways in which locals conceptualize the Strait. In Scilla, some people have celebrated the myth by establishing novel statues, exploiting mythical names for restaurants such as Glaucus or Le Sirene; it can be said that many consider the cultural capital of myth as an intangible yet essential form of capital to draw from, for the benefit of the tourism and hospitality sector. The Grand Tour travelogues played a part

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in these developments, since they have been incorporated into local histories of the area, becoming part of the tradition themselves. Marketing imagery, publications and promotional materials produced by institutions and publishers frequently frame them as part of their local history, along with a sense of appreciation for everything that might reinforce and exalt a sense of continuity with Greco-Roman traditions. Tourism has become increasingly reliant on images from myth, while also owing a debt to the European travellers’ historical documents. From a broader perspective, the Grand Tours also form part of an episode within a longer relation, beginning with the ancient coins bearing the mythical Scylla as a symbol and leading to today’s lexical and visual markers of ‘Greekness’, with restaurants characterizing it as a myth place.89 For a region that would fall into the category of ‘vocationally touristic’ areas, the Grand Tours have themselves become part of the broader philhellenic narrative.90 Today, promotional narratives for the town of Scilla as a coastal resort typically rely on exalting the natural beauty and wilderness of the place, within the mythical frame of the Homeric legends, and offer accounts of the famed European visitors as part of the discourses underlying souvenir production, travel guides and commodities. The Grand Tours have become as much a part of the affective relations to the past as the area’s relation with Hellas. Calabrese publisher Rubbettino republished many travelogues in a new book series, with a companion website and smartphone application designed to rediscover the ‘itineraries of myth and history’ in the region, offering extensive attention to Scilla.91 The series serves to reframe the discovery of Calabria through the lens of travel, but also provides a historical and critical analysis of the travelogues. Among the various highlights, the website features a comparison between the routes of Saint-Non (1783) and Pilati (1775–7).92 Other publishers also employed the Grand Tours as yet another proof of the South’s beauty and mythical ascendance. The weight and impact of the Greco-Roman tradition, along with the way in which European philhellenes viewed the former as both a model for and the pinnacle of civilization, has become a dominant narrative among local institutions and cultural elites in the area today. This is also true of their fetishization of Hellenism, in spite of southern Italy’s history of exposure to a much broader variety of civilizations and influences, some of which are historically perceived as belonging to the ‘Orient’.93 Mutatis mutandis, even older perceptions of the remoteness of places such as those found on the Tours, fuelled by the tension between metropolitanism and the countryside, are surprisingly enduring: until very recently, one could find Michelin guides describing Scilla as the place of Homeric myths, but also as a place where transportation is lacking

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and public services are poor. Up to the present day, the Strait is described, both from outside and in local accounts, as a destination undiscovered by mass tourism that would tend to entice the more adventurous visitor. While the idea that Scylla and Charybdis equate to the Strait of legend contributes to general historical narratives of Greekness, the idealized image of the Strait’s uniqueness contained in the travelogues, along with the fact that this affiliation is an object of local pride, is part of a broader narrative of glorification of past Greek glories within the region. The Strait plays an important role in this narrative: even the rationalizations of myth made by earlier visitors have been echoed, fundamentally untouched, by local biologists keen to divulge how a welcoming beach can turn into a dangerous undertow during storms, and how abyssal fish, washed ashore by tides, are shown to have inspired the legends.94 For some, the vistas, the whirlpools and the marine fauna have become entirely unique phenomena that contribute to the inimitable aura of the Strait. Regardless of its actual beauty, the extraordinary, unique nature of the Strait is mediated through a process of reality filtered by myth. The Strait, however, played its part in a larger claim: for somebody as affectively invested as the late Italian philologist Franco Mosino, the Odyssey was arguably the work of the poet Appa, from Reggio Calabria.95 Homeric geographies, invented and reinvented for centuries on the basis of the most diverse associations between myth and location, are heavily ingrained in this region.96 In the Strait, attempts to even question the associations between Homeric myth and the Mediterranean locations – perhaps by a reminder that the Odyssey was first and foremost a work of poetry – are usually met with lukewarm or downright hostile receptions, exposing the resistance of deeply ingrained affective histories. The mere idea of stripping Scilla from its mythical origin equates to heresy.97

Conclusion This chapter has discussed how travellers during the Grand Tours era received Greco-Roman traditions by perceiving the South and the Strait as a wild frontier of Europe, riddled with mythical landmarks. Travelogues and maps drew on landmarks to reconnect Hellas with a romantically defined South on which visitors could project their fascinations for pre-­modernity, wilderness and exoticness. Modern European travellers contrasted the region’s qualities with their nations’ modern, rational and mundane lives. Once the monsters of a frightening sea, Scylla and Charybdis became embellishments signalling an

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erudite appreciation of the past grandeur of a backward region, allegories of an ambiguously beautiful and dangerous land. In the process, myth was explained as a pre-­scientific account of the marvels and dreads of an area seen as a wild territory of whirlpools and volcanic activity, for which Scylla and Charybdis and other myths became the signifiers. At the same time, these mythical creatures established an affective attachment between landscape and literary travel that was often based on a romantic form of nostalgia for Greek glories of the past. Such conceptualizations, along with visual depictions of the Strait, anticipated modern tourism and impacted on local histories of the region. Such views hold a particular significance not just for the received histories, but also for the future of the region. Antiquity and landscape can be naturalized as powerfully symbolic badges and commodities to benefit economic growth: unsurprisingly, Hellenism and Greek imagery are widely incorporated into local merchandise, websites, institutional documents and the hospitality sector. The modern reception of ancient Greek history in the region, unquestionably its most treasured tradition of cultural heritage, began precisely with the Grand Tours. While the notorious Bronzes of Riace have come to epitomize the city of Reggio’s hopes for touristic development, even becoming the symbol of the city, the iconic landmarks of Scilla and their relation with myth – inaugurated by the European travelogues – represent ubiquitous symbols, signifiers of a heritage that can be seen in everything from traditional tourist guides to reviews and user photos on the website TripAdvisor, from the repertoire of local painters to photo collections on Tumblr and social media.98 Of course, from a historical perspective, the Strait and the Mediterranean are territories that Greek civilizations contributed to defining as much as many other peoples and civilizations. The cultural primacy assigned to the Greco-Roman tradition – see Violi’s remark on the ‘splendid’ history of the megale hellas that was ‘felt as indicative of Calabria’s poleis’99 – may in some cases be seen as working at the expense of a more nuanced understanding and promotion of the complex histories of the region, from the supposed pre-Greek presence of Iapyges, Messapii and Pelasgians to the influence of the Goths, Byzantines, Normans, Spanish, Arabs and French. A broader approach to such histories would not be incompatible with either the spirit of discovery that drew European travellers to the Strait, nor the ancient Greeks’ own synthesis of elements of many other cultures; overall, it could enact ‘new and equally legitimate forms of heritage’.100 Regardless of the future outcome of popular local histories, it is safe to view the Grand Tours as a decisive corpus of documents, as well a historical process that, in spite of the great variety and specificity of scopes in each individual work,

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could together be said to have contributed to defining the role of the region in European imagination and worldwide, while providing confirmation of modern origin myths for local histories and subjectivities. Many of the most common ideas held about this region today may be traced, in part, to the moment that the Grand Tours’ romantic focus on the glorious past was received and internalized by the locals. The Grand Tours contributed to the relentless attempts of local historiographies to confirm the region’s origins in Greek times. For many, it is as if the future could not be approached without firm roots in the past, as if ancient Hellas could forever dispel the fear of historical peripherality, while the beautiful and unforgiving calamities of nature are still aptly embodied by alluringly monstrous guardians.

Notes 1 Hom., Od., 9. 71–3; 83–5 and 101–4, c. eighth century bce. Scylla’s etymology can be read as the Snatcher, the Rock, or the Bitch; Charybdis can stand as the Whirlpool, the Swallower, or the Maw. See Aguirre Castro 2012 and Hopman 2012, 12. 2 See Stanford and Luce 1974, Romm 1994, 190–2 and Wolf 2004 on the Strait since ancient geography (i.e. from Th., 4.24.5, 5.53 onwards). 3 This research also owes a debt to the author’s doctoral ethnographic research in the area as an ‘estranged native’. 4 See Watson 2009 on modern tourism industries; see Shields 1991 on escapism. 5 Bakhtin 1981, 84. 6 This is neither a full-­fledged history of the construction of the Italian South in Europe, nor an in-­depth analysis of the monstrous figures. The focus is on the impact of the Grand Tour era in the reception and dissemination of the mythical symbols, and on literary heritage as a narrative and asset in myth-­places in the Mediterranean. 7 The term Greco-Roman is used in this chapter in two senses: first, to designate a myth which, while drawing from pre-Greek narratives and imaginaries, has been transmitted to us as prevalently associated with Greek and, later, Roman sources; second, to avoid the use of ‘classics’ as a term that has been discussed as potentially loaded with elitist assumptions of value: see Wyke 1997, 7, Budelmann and Haubold 2008, 16, Hardwick and Harrison 2013, 16–18. 8 See Hall 2012, 3 on the impact of Homer in the ‘West’. 9 On literary travel and tourism, see Black 1992 and Watson 2009. 10 Chaney 1998, xi. 11 The fascination for past Mediterranean civilizations was boosted by Schliemann’s excavations of Troy (Schliemann 1874) and Evans’ excavations in Knossos, Crete (1909). See Ziolkowski 2008.

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12 Mazza 2002. 13 Hopman 2012, 124. 14 See Louden 2011, 168. The predominant interpretation situates the Homeric Strait between Sicily and Calabria, but a narrow passage comprised within Scilla’s own cohort of cliffs – the most prominent of which sank after an earthquake in 1783 – is also often mentioned. See infra. 15 Strab., 1.2.15. On Homeric geographies, see Wolf and Wolf 1983 and Burgess, online resource: http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~jburgess/rop/od.voyage.html (accessed 20 August 2016). 16 Jaucourt, ‘Scylla’, in Diderot and D’Alembert 1751–72, Vol. 14, 845, online at: http:// encyclopedie.uchicago.edu (accessed 1 March 2014). 17 Ceserani 2012, 79. 18 Riedesel 1773, 139. 19 Swinburne 1783, 326. 20 Saint-Non 1783,131–3. 21 See Hardwick and Harrison 2013 on Western-­centric assumptions on ‘classics’ and Wyke 1997, 5 for a definition in relation to aesthetics and ideology. 22 Author’s own translation from Custine 1830. Custine’s and most other travelogues are on Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org, accessed 17 March 2017). On Custine, see Muhlstein 2001. 23 Didier 1846; Strutt 1842. 24 Ceserani 2012. 25 Riedesel 1773,138–9. 26 Swinburne 1783, 316, 333. 27 Saint-Non 1783, 132. 28 Pilati and Ceravolo 2010. 29 La Salle 1829. 30 Douglas 1915. 31 La Salle 1822–6. 32 See De Seta 1982, 167 on the picturesque. 33 Van Duzer 2010, 7 and 34–5. 34 See Hawes 2014 on the rationalizations of myth in antiquity; Detienne 1986 on ‘myth’ seen as pre-­science; Lincoln 1999 on the evolution and use of the term. 35 Thuc., 4.24.5, 5.53 (Σκύύλλαιον τεριπλεῖν); also sch. on [Plat.] Ep., 545 e. Discussed in Hopman 2012, 135n) 36 Lenormant 1881–4, 270. 37 See Zecchi 2006 on the tsunamis and earthquakes; Romm 1994, 185 on myths. 38 Findlen 2004, 20–1. 39 Stolzenberg 2013, 15. The Mundus was ‘a long-­term, lucrative collaboration’ between Kircher and the Dutch firm that published it (Rowland 2004, 199).

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40 For an example of the rationalizing turn, see Franciscan friar and cosmographer V. M. Coronelli’s explanation of the tidal flow and whirlpool in the Strait in the Atlante Veneto, Vol. 1, 1690, based on Kircher’s Mundus (discussed in Cosgrove 1999, 50–2). 41 Custine 1830, 382. 42 Ibid. 43 Duret de Tavel 1832. 44 Didier 1846. 45 Chaney 1998, 128. 46 Carbone-Grio 1884. 47 Heinrich von Kleist’s 1807 Das erdbeben in Chili (Earthquake in Chile), in which the 1647 seismic event that struck Santiago is equated to Sodom and Gomorrah and used as the setting for a story of moral redemption, is another example of the coeval modern literary interest in cataclysms occurring in distant parts of the world. As a reaction to the 1908 Reggio and Messina earthquake, see Lanucara 1949. On earthquakes and literature, see Morabito 2011. 48 Didier 1846. See, again, Hawes 2014. Also Lincoln 1999, 3–43 and Coupe 1997, 108–9 on euhemerists and allegorists in antiquity. 49 See Aguirre Castro 2012 and Hopman 2012 on Scylla’s etymology. 50 Lear 1852, 172. 51 Custine 1830, 156–9. The explanation of the passage in the Od.,12:95–7 is referred at the earliest by Eustathius, as referenced by Saïd 2011, 161. See also Luce 1974. 52 Van Duzer 2010, 8. 53 Ceserani 2012, 87. See Arnold 2002 and Spybey 1992 on the ‘age of discovery’ and colonialism. See Love 2006 on maritime exploration; Hurley 1948 and Naylor and Ryan 2010 on the Antarctic. 54 Ceserani 2012, 31. 55 Unknown Dutch illustrator, in Dissertationes de Admirandi Munci Cataractis, Amsterdam: Janssonius van Weasberge, 1678. Whirlpools are still situated both off the Lofoten islands and the strait of Saltstraumen off Bodø, Norway. In the Carta Marina (1539), Olaus Magnus described it as a horrenda Charybdis. Van Duzer 2013, 43. 56 On philhellenism, see Leontis 1995. See Arnold 2002 on travel and the onset of modernity, and Spybey 1992 on exploration, the West and colonialism. 57 See Chard 1999 on exoticism during the Grand Tours, and Hamblyn 1996 on their relations with primitivism, Orientalism, and Romantic Hellenism. 58 Ceserani 2012, 1. 59 Ibid., esp. 77–8, on the dialectic between foreigners and locals. 60 Ibid. 2012, 24. 61 Moe 2002, 6.

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62 Custine 1830; Custine 1843, 22. 63 Wyke 1997, 3. 64 Ceserani 2012, 95–7. 65 Ibid., 77–8. 66 Black 1992, 1. This resonates with Said’s critique of orientalism (1978), and anticipates what would become known as the Italian Southern Question (Ceserani 2012, 31). See Betteridge 2007, 1 and Frank and Hadler 2011, 1 on frontiers and national ideologies. See Adamovsky 2006, 251 on Euro-­orientalism as an East–West narrative. See Chaney 1998, xi for the patronization of Italy as ‘a museum set in a picturesque landscape’ and for Magna Graecia as a ‘South-­within-the-South’. See Ceserani on how Grand Tours shifted Northern European disdain for modern Italy from the entire peninsula to the South (Ceserani 2012, 79). 67 Hoby 1902, 45. 68 Custine 1830, 166. 69 Ceserani 2012, 77–8. 70 Chaney 1998, 3. 71 Crouch and Lübbren 2003, 10–11. 72 Goethe 1992, 269. 73 Ceserani 2012, 77–8. 74 Ibid., 41. 75 Black 1992, 53. 76 Chaney 1998, 102. 77 Creuzé de Lesser 1806. 78 Watson 2009, 166. 79 Gissing 1905, 235. 80 Black 1992, 3. 81 Addison 1705, 1. 82 Watson 2009. 83 Chard 1999, 17 and 20. 84 Eliade 1991, 32–6; Stewart 2012, 19. 85 Bakhtin 1981, 84. 86 Ceserani 2012, 212. 87 Décultot 2000, as noted in Ceserani 2012, 81. 88 Cartier and Lew 2005, 5. 89 Hopman 2012, 124; Shields 1991. 90 Cartier and Lew 2012, 4. 91 www.viaggioincalabria.it (accessed 5 October 2015). 92 Viaggio in Calabria, http://www.viaggioincalabria.it (accessed 5 October 2015). 93 See Winks and Mattern-Parkes 2004 on the ancient Mediterranean; Ceserani 2012 on emerging commonplaces in the ‘South’.

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94 See Reggio Calabria’s marine biology museum and the curator’s enthusiasm to explain to the public how abyssal species like the Viper Fish (Chauliodus sloani) inspired the myth of Scylla. http://www.museopaleomarino.org (accessed 5 October 2015). 95 Mosino 2007. See also Della Dora’s (2011) description of Mount Athos in Greece as a landmark endowed with inexplicable and unique mystical features. 96 Braccesi 2010. 97 See Bradford 1963, discussed in Luce 1965; Severin 1987; Bittlestone, Diggle and Underhill 2005 on this issue. See Vinci 2006 as an example of geographical revisionism. 98 Lombardi Satriani and Paoletti 1986. 99 Violi 2006, 22. 100 Chang and Huang, 262.

3

The Eternal Words of the Latin Sea: Fedra by Mur Oti Francisco Salvador Ventura

At the start of the film Fedra (1956), directed by Mur Oti, the audience is presented with a calm sea whose waves break gently on the shore. The left-­hand side of the frame is flanked by a sculpture, a reproduction of the Venus de Milo. In a style reminiscent of the narrated prologue so often used in historical films, a voice off-­screen recites the following text: Esta tragedia es tan vieja como el Mar Latino. Hija del mito, rueda por el mundo desde que Eolo movió el primer grano de arena, o azuzó los caballos de una nube sin hermana en el cielo. Todas las caracolas la cantan incansables en su rumor sin pausa. Para aquellos que no entienden la palabra eterna del mar, nos asomaremos a una playa cualquiera del Levante español. Los hombres y las cosas han cambiado, pero el amor, el deseo, el pecado y la muerte siguen teniendo el prestigio dramático y bello de los siglos de Ulises. Como el mar y el viento, como el sol y el cielo, como lo eterno.1

The current chapter will discuss the leading role of the ‘Latin Sea’ proposed in this adaptation of Seneca’s tragedy into film. By analysing this movie, it is possible to discover the symbolic dimensions of the sea during a time when Spain was, more or less consciously, willing to break international isolation in order to gain real freedom.

The filming of Fedra in the Spain of 1956 The career of the Galician filmmaker Manuel Mur Oti (1908–2003) sets itself apart from any of the prevailing models of Spanish cinema during the early years of Francoism,2 and this serves to accentuate the unique characteristics of his

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figure, as well as the exceptional nature of his body of work.3 For this reason, the recognition that both the filmmaker and his work have received has only grown over time, in reparation for the undeserved obscurity that the director fell into during the final years of his life.4 A brief glance at Mur Oti’s life shows him to be a person with a very broad range of intellectual and creative interests.5 Considering the intense activity that he engaged in throughout his career, the tangible results across the creative fields he cultivated – in particular in the literary world – are not very prolific. He published articles and poems in both Spain and Spanish-­speaking America, staged various works for theatre and in 1948 was shortlisted for the prestigious Nadal Prize for literature, nominated for the only novel he had published at that time, Destino negro. Much later in his creative career he encountered the medium of cinema, where he began as a scriptwriter. This job served as a springboard for his move into film direction. His early career was marked by great success, and the premières of his films were big events: Mur Oti was steeped in an air of expectation whenever he appeared at festivals or spoke to the press. This was a time when his reputation was such that he earned the nickname ‘Mur Oti the Genius’.6 The high point of his extraordinary career can actually be pinpointed to the première on 26 November 1956 of his film Fedra, a great success, as demonstrated by its long stint at the box office.7 But surprisingly, from this point on Mur Oti’s career as a film director entered a period of decline, and he faded into the background of the Spanish film scene. Nevertheless, he continued to direct film productions until the mid-1970s. During this time, he began to combine his work with frequent collaborations with the state TV channel Televisión Española, an activity that he later dedicated himself to full-­time. Fedra emerged onto the Spanish film scene of the time as a work that broke with existing models of cinema in many ways.8 There are numerous reasons for its uniqueness, such as the fact that its subject is Phaedra, a figure from Greek mythology who was depicted in various ancient tragedies but is an infrequent theme in cinema even today.9 Despite its singular nature, the film received much acclaim in the Spanish film industry at the time. The majority of critics classified it as a very bold project, and probably the most balanced of all Mur Oti’s works.10 In terms of public reception, it was highly successful in Spain and was also screened in various other European and American countries. For this reason, it is at the very least surprising that it does not form part of the group of significant film works highlighted within publications dedicated to the relationship between tragedy and cinema. Moreover, it does not even receive a mention on lists of films that explore such themes. It has been cited recently only in passing in a

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book by Jon Solomon,11 who refers to a group of films based on the character of Phaedra. The difference in the treatment of Mur Oti’s work compared to the film Phaedra (1962) by Jules Dassin is noteworthy,12 the latter of which is commented on in detail. This significant oversight has finally been amended with the meticulous work of Hervé Dumont that was published recently.13 The relation between classical tragedy and film has not been as fertile as might be expected; moreover, there are no earlier or later works in Spanish cinema on a similar subject. The reason for this rare depiction of Phaedra can perhaps be found in the filmmaker’s solid intellectual background and affinity for literature in general, and theatre in particular.14 Among the older versions of the Greek myth that he could potentially have drawn upon, the version used for this film was that of the Cordoban poet Seneca.15 Nevertheless, Mur Oti’s film does not intend to limit itself to being a direct transposition of the ancient tragedy to film; rather, this version is conceived of as a transposition of the story into images, set in an undefined era (at least on first sight) from contemporary times, a recognition of the plot’s timeless – and thus classic – nature. Until that time, reconstructing tragedies in film was not common practice for either international or Spanish films, not even in the format of adapting their plots to contemporary contexts.16 Despite this, Mur Oti’s film inspired by the tragedy of Phaedra’s love took a privileged position among the most watched films in Spain in 1956, and there must be an explanation for the interest this film inspired among audiences. First, we could consider the successful career of this director as the reason behind the expectations that had built up around the release of his latest work. Mur Oti’s career began a gradual decline shortly after, both in the number of films he directed and the success they met with, until his fame gradually petered out entirely, as evidenced by the relegation of his later films to the less prestigious medium of television. We must therefore seek an alternative explanation for the success of such a singular film. Spain was going through a social and political era that was characterized by the consequences of a long period of international isolation, which accentuated the disastrous situation the country had ended up in as a result of the Spanish Civil War, although more promising times did seem to lie ahead following Spain’s entry into the first international organizations. In principle, this domestic situation did not at that time appear to offer the most suitable conditions for the adaptation of tragic plots to fill cinema screens. Fedra explores a theme that was a touchy subject (at the very least) in Spain at that time, as one of the threads that runs through the film is the marriage between an older man and an exuberant

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young woman, the result of an unconventional love. In principle, nothing to object to there. The unusual aspect of the work is that the object of the young woman’s desire is not her husband but his son, a desire that is the very reason she becomes his stepmother. As narrated by the film, Juan’s marriage proposal is only accepted by Estrella at the point where it occurs to her that such a move might be a good strategy to become closer to her beloved. This is a young woman who firmly resists all the overtures of local men for many years, refusing to give in when faced with obstacles that prevent her from obtaining the object of her desire. The relationship at the heart of the film is thus not only adulterous, but also incestuous. In this difficult situation, Estrella sees and feels the sea as a horizon of hope and freedom. The story of this impulsive, unconventional, obstinate woman who refuses to fit into the narrow role assigned to her by the society she lives in was plainly far from being in line with permitted discourse, which was governed not by what was considered edifying but what was permissible by those giving spiritual guidance within the Francoist regime.17

Central characters and the sea Fedra’s plot revolves around a love triangle involving three people: Estrella, Juan and Fernando.18 The events of the film take place within a frame of reference built upon a set of well-­defined links to the sea. This is a sea which, far from providing a passive context or mere backdrop on which the action unfolds, instead takes on the most central role in the film. The main characters’ attributes, as well as the cast as a whole, are structured around their relationship with the sea. But before examining the various sides of this triangular relationship, it is worth underlining two essential elements that weave through the film’s plot. First, there is the human landscape of the setting where the action unfolds, which becomes a kind of updated version of the ancient tragic chorus. Second, we have the vestiges of the past, visible in some sequences, which are established as mute, atemporal witnesses to the passage of time. The chorus is well known as a fundamental component of ancient tragedies. It simultaneously fulfils the role of an entity that interacts with the characters, and a critical conscience that judges their actions. The chorus is an essential aspect of this film, denoted by the fact that almost no individual character exists outside the main trio of protagonists. With few exceptions, it can be said that this chorus comprises all the inhabitants of a fictitious town named Aldor, from which the three central characters are clearly picked out. Although it is stated in

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the prologue that Aldor is located on the east coast of Spain, curiously enough the location chosen for the filming is in the south – specifically, the coast of Málaga and Cádiz.19 This does not affect the verisimilitude of the work, however, since both geographical areas have very similar characteristics. The life of the local people revolves entirely around the sea. All the local men are fishermen, with the exception of the owner of the only shop (who also owns most of the town itself). The women of the town also work in activities linked to the sea, and are portrayed on the beach, making or mending nets. It is striking that there are no children in the film: we are presented with a town populated solely by adults. Thus, the town of Aldor is the sum of two well defined collectives – men and women – with two differing and clearly defined sets of activities, both forever linked to the sea. Since Estrella is established as a discordant element in the human landscape of Aldor, the collective tends to push her into a subordinate position, although her resistant attitude inevitably leads to her exclusion. The two characters that stand out among the chorus of inhabitants of Aldor (as direct agents of Estrella’s marginalization) are the brother and sister Vicente and Rosa. Vicente besieges Estrella with his constant propositions, attempting to cajole her with false promises designed to win her favour. Rosa repeatedly heaps scorn on her, accusing her of being the devil’s envoy and taking the initiative in leading the vendetta against Estrella. Ultimately, there is no room for any other ending than tragedy for a woman who chooses a way of life so different to everyone else’s and, thus represents a fierce, latent conflict with the community. To make matters worse, Estrella dares to feel a passion that does not correspond in any way to what was considered acceptable in the context. Since medieval times, the vestiges of the Greco-Roman world have enjoyed a prestigious position as a physical embodiment of the greatness and monumentality of those extraordinary times. This regard increased with the evolution of the discipline of archaeology following the great discoveries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: these remains went from being considered a testimony to the past to having the status of mute eyewitnesses to the foundations of Western culture in an idealized world. This admiration was more often than not based on circumstantial evidence in an apparently paradoxical dual dimension. These vestiges of the past can assume a value that simultaneously marks a closeness and distance: the present presence of links to a distant, erudite past, but the absence of something that cannot be recovered, whose lingering spectre serves as a reminder of that absence. They represent something like the presence of an absence, a contrast discussed by Salvatore Settis when he deals

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with the l’eternità delle rovine.20 A drama inspired by a classical tragedy such as this felt obliged to coexist alongside some of these ruins, as can be seen from the film itself. A modest collection of ruined columns, intended to allude to the corner of an ancient Greek temple, are situated next to the headland where Estrella lives with her father. The location of this place is explained by the old man’s solitary dwelling and occupation as lighthouse keeper, blowing a seashell when the fishermen are reaching dry land. The physical model of the temple being imitated is, predictably, Greek. The prestige acquired by all things Hellenic from the eighteenth century onwards, along with their strong links to the maritime world, were surely the reasons behind this choice. Added to this is the fact that Greek ruins are not as monumental in nature as Roman remains. Seeking a more specific reference for Mur Oti’s inspiration, the most obvious possibility would be Apollo’s temple in Corinth. Nevertheless, if we take into account the location on a rocky outcrop, the most likely scenario is that inspiration came from the more famous temple dedicated to Poseidon in Cape Sounion, near the city of Athens.21 This classical icon would provide the clearest model of the physical vestiges of antiquity. Apart from these ruined buildings, there is a second case of very evident identification that corresponds more to aesthetics, and whose symbolism runs throughout the work: the appearance at the beginning of the film of a clearly recognizable copy of a deity that was born as an adult from the sea, the Venus de Milo, as mentioned above. From a more general perspective, the viewer can observe that the main character in the film is not an individual but the sea, a sea that is given its own proper name at the start of the film, the Mar Latino or Latin Sea. For a start, the sea is the physical element that configures the settings where the lives of the main characters and chorus (town residents) unfold. The sea provides the principal livelihood of the inhabitants of the local town, as demonstrated by the fact that their daily life entails either fishing in the open sea or carrying out other fishing-­related activities on shore. The remnants of the past are equally present in both situations: the remains of the promontory rise above the sea, serving to guide the fishermen, and the Venus de Milo towers over the sand against the backdrop of the gentle, calm waters of the sea. The same sea is the setting that marks the position and outlines the profile of the three sides of the love triangle.22 The life of Phaedra is enacted in a dialogue with the sea. Estrella doesn’t only live physically close to the coast, she also dedicates her life to collecting shells she uses to make necklaces to sell for a little money with the aim of pleasing her father. Moreover, she is quite capable of

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diving into the sea without hesitation and in a wholly natural way if the occasion merits it, as if she were a kind of mermaid. At the same time, the sea represents a horizon of optimism for the future, since it might function as a path away from constrictive life circumstances. Ultimately, it is the sea that will take Estrella in when the circle of local residents closes in on her, ending her life among its waves. The updated version of Theseus in the film, Juan, is portrayed as a rich man whose wealth also has maritime origins. He is presented to the viewer as a shipmaster from the north, obliged to sail the seas continuously due to his profession, battling the waves when necessary. The sea also produces the young woman he will end up marrying: she emerges from the sea one ordinary day when he is fishing, approaching his boat spurred on by curiosity to meet these outsiders. By contrast, the character that represents Hippolytus shows no interest whatsoever in the sea, and his character is defined in opposition to it. Fernando shows himself to be a young man who clearly prefers the safety of dry land: his true passion is for horses. His lack of interest in the sea is precisely what magnifies Estrella’s love for him, and she tries time and time again to tempt him into the water, to persuade him of the marvels of the sea. The young man’s stubborn resistance inevitably leads to the dramatic denouement, in which Estrella will ultimately take him with her into her realm. In the end, it is the depths of the sea that serve as an eternal bed for their love, finally dragging Estrella down into the deep as she clings to the body of her young beloved.23 And so ends a drama in which all events are related to the sea; or, to put it another way, all events are governed by its decisive interventions. Perhaps the most poetic moment of the film can be found in the sequences in which the stormy sea serves to announce the climax of the tragedy and the setting where it will take place. The tempest presages that the end is near, and accompanies the dramatic events that take place before peacefully carrying off the bodies of the two central characters. The sea is the Other, the element that steers the lives of all those who reside close to and make a living from it. It is the Other that is always there, an indelible mark on their lives. But this presence is neither circumstantial nor transitory: it is a constant, a central theme that is not limited by time. The sea is omnipresent in both calm and stormy weather, buffeted at times by the wind, brimming with light, for the local people, sometimes generous and sometimes deadly. It is both a driving force for intense emotion and the setting for tragedy, a force that propitiates and provides the backdrop for stories that are repeated time and again. This Latin Sea has personality: it is the sea of the ancients. It has always been there and will endure, the witness to and agent of passions that may unfold

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anywhere along its coastline. Everyone has been and will be subject to the orders contained in the eternal words of the sea.

The Latin Sea and its eternal words Returning to the idea of the complex situation in which Spain found itself during the 1950s, as well as the opportunity for its projection internationally, it is necessary to mention the predictably negative attitude from the predominant ‘moral standards’ towards a story of this kind. We must remember that the central character marries the father of the man she truly loves with the aim of being by her beloved’s side as long as possible. It is, therefore, a story of incestuous adultery. The film classifications of the day, which provided viewers with a moral assessment of films, did not consider this work to be entirely suitable for the general public. The film was eloquently described within a Cuban, Catholic-­ leaning magazine at the time, cited by Miguel Marías, as follows: El origen clásico elimina algunas dificultades morales del tema. Actitud reprensible que en todo momento se condena. El vestuario de la protagonista resulta inadecuado, inconveniente y excesivamente provocativo . . . Mayores con reparos.24

Beyond these ethical patterns, one might suspect that the fundamental obstacle the film faced was the strict censorship exercised at the time, in spite of which the film still managed to achieve a release. Mur Oti did experience problems with censorship, being summoned before the censor for this film, which recommended he omit certain inappropriate sections. The director’s response was that it was not his place to amend the unquestionably revered classical writers – in direct and deliberate reference to the ‘Spaniard’ Seneca – whose version of Phaedra had served as the inspiration for the film: Y le remarqué que el suicidio de Fedra está latente en todas las versiones que se conocen. Añadí que yo jamás me atrevería a enmendar la plana a Sófocles o Eurípides suprimiendo el suicidio de la protagonista, pero a Séneca, como era cordobés, sería capaz de dulcificarle el suicidio, pero nada más.25

As luck would have it, the censor was a young priest who claimed to trust in the intelligence of the director to amend whatever was necessary in order to ensure that the project could go ahead. The simplicity of the changes made, no matter if today its infantile nature may make us smile, turned out to be enough to

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overcome the central objection made; namely, Estrella’s suicide following the news of her beloved Fernando’s disappearance. The strategy used to overcome this objection was to ensure that the main character does not personally end her own life; rather, she carelessly slips, falls over a cliff and is fatally injured while being pursued by the local women. As it happened, a post-­censor inspection forced a small modification to the film following its release. In the final scene, Estrella drowns in the sea having taken her lover’s head in her hands and kissed him on the lips. This sequence was omitted from the later version, in which she only swims up to him, struggling in the waves, to pull his body down with her into the depths. In any case, these changes did not alter the initial intentions of the director, given that Estrella eventually ends her life by drowning in the sea ‘on purpose’, taking the object of her desire with her before the astonished gaze of her husband.26 In contrast to what was happening in other European countries (and not only those directly linked with Graeco-Roman traditions), the presence of antiquity had not formed an essential part of the construction of Spain’s modern identity, built as it was during the nineteenth century. In this respect, references had been sought from other directions, such as the defence of Christianity, the process of the Reconquista, the prolonged Muslim presence in Spain, explorations of the Americas and so on. Nevertheless, there have been some cases in which a homage to classical themes did acquire a special significance in the definition of Spanishness. This was the case in the sixteenth century when Spain was linked to the revival of antiquity in the Renaissance, and again in the seventeenth century when the country looked back to imperial echoes in the Roman world. Thus the idea of the Greek and Roman worlds as the cradle of Western culture can also be traced in Spain (albeit to a lesser extent than in other parts of Europe), where we can also find the clear presence and survival of significant, visible ruins, including the aqueduct at Segovia and the Roman theatre in Mérida. Added to all of this is the undisputed fact of a shared geography in the form of the Mediterranean, which laps against a long stretch of Spain’s coastline. There was one (entirely trivial) circumstance that helped this film make its way past Spanish censorship, namely that Manuel Mur Oti and the producer Cesáreo González were two shining stars of the Spanish cinema scene at the time. Moreover, the former was known to have ‘acceptable’ religious beliefs, while the latter had not been known to participate in any dissident gestures against the regime.27 Nevertheless, it was the high regard expressed for the classical world as a whole and, in particular, the undisputed authority of classical writers, that definitively paved the way for this project to be realized. The short-­sighted

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rebuffs of the censor came up against the undeniable prestige of the classical author of tragedy, Seneca.28 In contrast to what might have happened had he been the author of Greek tragedies, Seneca had Cordoban roots in his favour, which provided an unshakeable link with the prevailing nationalist discourse. The ultimate authority of a classicist had the potential to halt the intentions of the all-­powerful Francoist censor, allowing this tale (considered to be so very unenlightening by the prudish guardians of ethics in the Church at the time) to make it to cinema screens. The classical world provided Mur Oti with a sufficient excuse to break through the substantial barriers established by censorship. Moreover, and above all, the classical source allowed him to go beyond the rigid discourse constructed by the Franco regime, daring to explore the realms of human passion with greater freedom. In this sense, the format of the classical tragedy was extremely useful for the director’s purposes. Furthermore, it might be said that with this experience, the director sought to fly the flag for a broader cultural universe than that found in the Spain of the time through referencing the classical world. The director delves into the ‘era of Ulysses’, using the shared platform of the Mediterranean as a springboard to the central symbol of antiquity. The Latin Sea becomes a liberating metaphor for Spain’s situation during the 1950s, circumstances that could ultimately be reduced to nothing more than a transitory condition. Spain was inscribed into and had inherited an extraordinary past that had given to the Roman Empire emperors as great and powerful as Trajan and Hadrian, as well as talented authors such as Seneca.29 Opening the door to this classical past not only served as an astute way of conquering the restrictions of censorship, but also of transcending the specific barriers of that context by framing the film in the more general setting of a Mediterranean past. Above all, this move served to take this film to screen, moving towards a future without borders in a maritime space open to all. Shared and universal, it is a space synonymous with veneration and eternity. Spain of the 1950s was still suffering the consequences of the Civil War, relegated to a situation of international isolation and poorer than other European nations at the time. The country was subjected to strict control exercised by both public and religious authorities. But this situation was not without remedy, and change seemed to be on the way, in part due to a nascent exposure to the world thanks to Spain’s incorporation into the first international organizations. There were the first flickers of a light at the end of the tunnel. Hope existed because such penuries were transitory in nature: there was a certainty to where Spain had come from, and the confidence gleaned from a knowledge of the existence and

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identity of a true frame of reference. This is how audiences must have felt when this unique film achieved such huge success in the context of 1950s Spanish cinema. These remarkable events can also be explained in other terms – the social and political atmosphere of isolation that characterized Spain at that time was challenged by the powerful symbolism of the sea in Fedra; a Latin Sea, legitimized by the prestige of its eternal words.

Notes 1 ‘This tragedy is as old as the Latin Sea. Daughter of the myth, she has travelled the world since Aeolus shifted the first grain of sand, or urged the horses of a solitary cloud across the sky. All the conch shells sing of her tirelessly in a perpetual murmur. For those that do not understand the eternal words of the sea, we shall turn our gaze to a beach like any other on the eastern coast of Spain. Men and things have changed, but love, desire, sin and death still retain the beautiful and dramatic prestige they had in the era of Ulysses. Like the sea and the wind, the sun and the sky, that which is eternal.’ 2 A brief but very useful overview of Spanish cinema during the 1950s is given by J. E. Monterde (Monterde 2000). 3 Zubiaur Gorozika 2013. 4 Marías 1992. 5 A short profile of the director is provided by Miguel Marías in the Diccionario del cine español (Marías 1998). 6 This is mentioned in a book published as part of a cycle dedicated to the director organized by the Portuguese Cinemateca in May of 1992 and repeated two months later through the Spanish Filmoteca (Marías 1992, 9–42). 7 Zubiaur Gorozika 2013, 125. 8 In those years, it was common to make movies taking place in the past, to produce light-­hearted comedies for wider audiences or to use renowned stars from Spanish folklore as protagonists (Monterde 2000). 9 Phaedra (J. Dassin, 1961), Phèdre (P. Jourdan, 1968). 10 Marías 1992, 115. 11 It happens that the cited work is a revised edition (2001), an update of a previous edition (Solomon 1978, 173) that mentioned all other versions of Phaedra except the Spanish one. 12 A more detailed commentary on this film can be found in Salvador Ventura 2008. 13 Dumont 2009, 158–60. 14 Marías 1992.

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15 In the opinion of Nekane Zubiaur Gorozika, the spirit of Mur Oti’s Phaedra has a great deal more in common with Euripides’ version than Seneca’s, given that what the viewer perceives is the Euripidean conflict between the female protagonist’s desire and the uncompromising chastity of her young lover, as opposed to the Senecan conflict between reason and desire. 16 Mackinnon 1986. 17 This is underscored by the contents of the censorship report on this work (Zubiaur Gorozika 2013, 118–25). 18 Salvador Ventura 2008, 509–10. 19 The original plan was for the shoot to take place in Brazil, but the producer, Cesáreo González, eventually persuaded Mur Oti to film in Spain. Various locations were chosen in the province of Málaga (Estepona, Fuengirola and Málaga itself) and Cádiz (Barbate and Caños de Meca) (Zubiaur Gorozika 2013, 120). Moreover, Málaga had played a significant role in various life events of the director (Torres 2000, 118–19). 20 Besides other references in the text, Settis dedicates a chapter of the book to setting out the timeless dimension of the ruins: ‘Eternità delle rovine’ (Settis 2004, 82–92). 21 Salvador Ventura 2008, 512. 22 Ibid., 509–10. 23 One article draws an interesting parallel between the character of Estrella and a siren, and Fernando and a centaur (Zubiaur Gorozika 2010, 18–20). 24 ‘The Classical origins remove some of the moral difficulties inherent in the subject matter. A reprehensible attitude condemned at all times. The main character’s wardrobe is inadequate, unsuitable and excessively provocative . . . Adults only, with reservations’ (Marías 1992, 117). 25 ‘And I remarked that Phaedra’s suicide is implicit in all known versions of the work. I added that I would never dare to find fault with Sophocles or Euripides by suppressing the main character’s suicide, although in the case of Seneca, since he was Cordoban, I might be able to soften that suicide, but nothing more’ (Torres 2000, 125–6). 26 ‘In light of which, one might say that both Cesáreo González and Manuel Mur Oti got what they wanted in the end’ (Zubiaur Gorozika 2013, 124). 27 Zubiaur Gorozika 2013, 123. 28 One member of the Classification and Censorship Board that met on 26 June 1956 to examine the film concluded his report with the assertion, ‘We cannot censor Seneca’ (Zubiaur Gorozika 2010, 27). 29 Salvador Ventura 2013.

Part 2

Living and Dying in Troubled Waters

4

Quod mare non novit, quae nescit Ariona tellus? (Ov. Fast. II, 83) Dorit Engster

This verse by Ovid refers to a story that was very widespread in antiquity – the tale of the poet Arion who was miraculously saved by a dolphin. The story of this marvellous rescue of the famous poet was as popular in antiquity as it is in modern times, though in a different manner. However, Arion was not the only ancient hero rescued by a dolphin. There were numerous other mythical characters who owed their lives to this animal. Young boys, especially, seem to have had a special connection with dolphins.1 Particularly from the Renaissance onwards, Arion and his fate became a popular subject in European literature and art, a theme revisited by numerous artists and poets. Stories of other dolphin-­riders – be it heroes or gods – were also dealt with in literature and art. The motif of a boy riding a dolphin became so common that it can now be found in varied, even very ordinary contexts. There are numerous other examples of dolphin-­riders as decorations on public fountains, on market squares or as private installations. Therefore, a discussion of the origins of this motif would appear to be useful and worthwhile. The aim of this chapter is thus twofold: the first part will discuss the importance of dolphins in antiquity, and will also present a number of myths related to dolphins, focusing especially on mythical figures who rode a dolphin. The second part of the analysis will examine and trace the motif of the dolphin-­rider in European art and literature. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate that ancient traditions could be merged and adapted to satisfy various different aims, depending on the historical circumstances and tastes of the time.

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Ancient legends of dolphin-­riders For a better understanding of these myths it is necessary to reminds ourselves of the importance of dolphins in ancient Greece and Rome. There are numerous contexts in which dolphins (or dolphin-­riders) are mentioned or depicted. Generally speaking, the dolphin is probably one of the most popular animals in antiquity – an animal consistently described as friendly to humans. The dolphin is already present in paintings from Knossos and Akrotiri.2 In later times, dolphins appeared as decorations on vases or mosaics. These depictions are related to both religious as well as profane contexts.3 Dolphins appear, for example, in depictions of sea voyages or in scenes representing marine creatures. They were also a popular decoration for vessels containing fluids, like jars or amphoroi – sometimes as a central motif, sometimes merely as an element of the rim or the handle. They are often also employed as attributes of various gods, whether Apollo, Dionysus or Poseidon. The dolphins accompany the gods and form part of their entourage. The motif of a god or hero riding an animal is also rather common in classical art. Regarding the sea, the dolphin is a popular animal to ride, for gods and humans alike. Three main types can be distinguished: the young man saved from peril by a dolphin; the boy or Cupid riding a dolphin and accompanying other gods; and lastly the (sea-)god or goddess who is represented or depicted in the company of dolphins. There are various legends about dolphins helping people – for example the story of Telemachus, the son of Ulysses, who fell into the sea and was rescued by a dolphin. The grateful Ulysses thereafter chose to have a depiction of the dolphin on his shield.4 This type of narration also appears elsewhere, and there seems to have been a special connection between dolphins and young boys.5 Plutarch, for instance, tells the story of the boy Hermias from Jasos, who befriended a dolphin,6 which even allowed the boy to ride on his back. Unfortunately, during a storm the boy fell into the water and drowned. The dolphin was heartbroken. It brought the dead boy to the beach and stayed with him until it also died. In remembrance of this, the city of Jasos minted coins depicting a dolphin-­rider.7 Another myth involving a boy and a dolphin is that of Palaemon. The complex legend of this hero forms part of a more extensive narrative centring on the mythical lore of Boeotia and the tragic fate of the members of the royal house: Queen Ino was pursued by her husband, King Athamas, who had become mad. In desperation, she jumped into the sea together with her young son Melicertes, who died. The body of the dead boy was carried to shore by a dolphin.8 Ino and

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Melicertes were then both turned into gods and were venerated under the names of Leucothea and Palaemon. As Homer reports, Leucothea was worshipped as a patron goddess of sailors.9 Melicertes – or as he was subsequently called, Palaemon – received a special kind of cult. In his honour, a mystery cult along with a series of athletic games were established in Corinth.10 In antique iconography, he is also portrayed as a little boy riding a dolphin. Finally, the hero Taras, son of Poseidon and the legendary founder of the city of Taranto, requires a brief mention. He was shipwrecked, saved by a dolphin and brought to the shore. He then founded the city of Tarent and became a local hero. His story was commemorated on local coinage.11 Aside from humans, dolphins have also accompanied a variety of gods. A dolphin is, of course, often depicted next to Poseidon.12 In general, dolphins or dolphin-­riders often form the entourage of sea gods, whether Triton, Nereus or others. Other important deities also have a special connection with dolphins, one example being Dionysus, who famously transformed the pirates who had taken him prisoner into dolphins.13 Most prominent among the gods who have a peculiar relationship with dolphins is Apollo, who was also venerated as Apollo Delphinios.14 Particularly interesting is the story concerning the founding of his central sanctuary, the temple at Delphi. Apollo himself took the form of a dolphin and appeared to a group of sailors from Crete. He took over their ship and directed it to the harbour of Delphi. There he changed back to his anthropomorphic form and claimed for himself the sanctuary of Delphi.15 Closely linked to the story of Apollo is the myth mentioned at the beginning, that of the poet Arion.16 This story touches upon the (likely) association between dolphins and their love for music,17 hence the connection with both Apollo and Arion, who was a singer and poet living on the island of Lesbos. According to Ovid, he was regarded as one of the best artists of his time. As a result, the tyrant Periander invited him to come to Corinth to help reform the cult of Dionysus. According to legend, Arion then invented the dithyramb, the sacred hymn sung in honour of the god, which allegedly gave rise to Greek drama. In this way, the figure of Arion demonstrates connections both to Apollo and Dionysus. Arion was so successful and famous that he was invited to other cities as well. After visiting the city of Tarent in southern Italy, he wished to return – now a rich man – by ship to Corinth. The crew of the ship, however, decided to kill him during the night and take possession of his riches. After they had robbed him and were about to throw him overboard, Arion begged to be allowed to play the lyre and sing once more. The sailors agreed, so Arion put on his best clothes and began his song. With this song, he begged the sea gods for help. After he had

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finished, he jumped into the sea, where he was saved by dolphins. They brought him to shore, arriving near Tanairon. There, in commemoration of his rescue, Arion dedicated a memorial. Furthermore, coins minted on Lesbos, his homeland, show him riding a dolphin with the lyre in his hand.18 Dolphins appear in a number of myths about other Greek gods, too. However, the dolphin’s significance and the associations connected with it are slightly different in these contexts. The dolphin acts not so much as a protector but a messenger, especially delivering messages between lovers. Several examples can be adduced regarding this association. The most famous one is of course the story of Poseidon, who fell in love with Amphitrite.19 He sent out several messengers to court her, but only the dolphin was able to find Amphitrite and convince her to be his consort. The grateful Poseidon elevated the dolphin to the sky, creating the constellation of the dolphin. The motif of Poseidon meeting Amphitrite was very popular in antiquity: for example, a mosaic from Constantine (Algeria) depicts Cupid standing beneath the couple, riding a dolphin.20 What all these stories have in common is the notion that the dolphin seems to be the customary animal to ride when travelling across the sea. It symbolizes power over the waves. In a way, the dolphin stands for the sea itself, or the waves. This symbolism can also be found in the representation of these myths in European art and literature. This can be demonstrated with a discussion of the reception of the different types of dolphin-­riders, and by analysing which types remained popular and which were more or less forgotten.

The reception of dolphin myths in literature and art This section will concentrate on the most prominent legends connected to dolphin-­riders, and will focus on the popularity of the myths, as well as how and in what media they were employed. However, given the amount of material gathered in the previous section, only a small selection of examples will be analysed. The hero Taras seems to have faded into obscurity, with one exception: in the city of Tarent, where he was commemorated, he became the local patron, and appeared on the city’s coat of arms. Interestingly enough, the depiction of Taras on the dolphin has also become the coat of arms for the local Tarent football club.21 Regarding the reception of the myth of Ino and Melicertes, a slightly more extensive discussion seems appropriate. Nevertheless, in doing so, it is necessary

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to note that Palaimon/Melicertes does not figure prominently in either paintings or literary works, though some aspects of the myth were important to the artists. For poets, the tragic aspect of the story of Athamas and Ino was especially interesting. To refer to just a few examples, the madness of Athamas is mentioned by Dante in his Divine Comedy (Canto XXX); Christine de Pizan wrote about the story of Athamas and Ino; Antonio Cavallerino and William Congreve composed tragedies; and Georg Friedrich Händel composed a libretto for an opera on this theme. That the story was so enthusiastically taken up in poetry or tragedy is consistent with the treatment of the story in antiquity, when the topic was covered, for example, by Euripides, Sophocles, Homer, Ovid and Nonnos.22 Melicertes is of course mentioned in these tragedies and poems, though he plays only a minor role. This is also the case regarding visual representations of the myth. The painters and sculptors concentrated on the transformation of Ino into Leucothea or, more precisely, on the depiction of Leucothea as mistress of the sea.23 She is presented as a radiant, beautiful young goddess. Her sphere of influence is implied by the addition of various animals, especially dolphins. Her son sometimes appears besides her, usually depicted as a little child, resembling Cupid. Statues of Leucothea appear prominently in the gardens or parks of kings and aristocrats. Her depictions sometimes form part of a greater ensemble that shows important gods or personifications.24 These not only served decorative purposes, but were also symbolic connections to the ancient traditions of sovereignty and erudition. As for the story of Amphitrite and Poseidon (with Cupid acting as a messenger between them), there are also numerous, in fact dozens of examples of depictions relating to this myth, which became one of the most popular themes in painting and sculpture since the Renaissance. The manner of visualizing the myth is in most cases rather similar, primarily portraying the meeting of Amphitrite and Poseidon – that is, their marriage. Many of these paintings are entitled ‘The triumph of Amphitrite’ (see Fig.  4.1). Cupid appears in most of the paintings riding a dolphin, but he is only a secondary character. The main focus is naturally on Amphitrite, who is herself often shown riding a dolphin or on a chariot drawn by dolphins.25 This form of representation is based on descriptions by Ovid, for whom Amphitrite symbolizes the sea itself,26 and Hyginus, who describes the marriage of Poseidon and Amphitrite.27 Scenes depicting Amphitrite and Cupid often appear in the context of portrayals of other mythical figures. Depictions of Galatea or, as they are often called, paintings showing the ‘Triumph’ of Galatea whose myth is presented by

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Fig. 4.1  Ferdinand Bol (1616–80), Neptune and Amphitrite.

Ovid, are very closely related to this theme.28 The context is also a love story – although with a tragic outcome. The sea nymph Galatea was the consort of the Cyclops Polyphemus, but fell in love with the handsome shepherd Acis. When the jealous Polyphemus killed Acis, the mournful Galatea used his blood to create the Sicilian river Acis, thereby making him immortal. Galatea, riding a dolphin and leaving Polyphemus, appears in ancient wall-­paintings – for example in Pompeii – and the motif was taken up by artists after the Renaissance. As in the case of Amphitrite, the dolphin is regarded as a convenient animal for a sea goddess to ride. This way of representing Galatea or Amphitrite is also visually attractive and appealing. The presence of the dolphin stresses that the female protagonists are not victims, but possess strength and power.

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As for the background of these depictions and the tradition of several of the motifs mentioned above, one can assume that the narrative of Ovid has been influential and definitive.29 Many of the first depictions of these myths stem from illustrations from editions of Ovid’s works. Since the Middle Ages, this Roman poet has been one of the most popular ancient authors.30 Numerous manuscripts and several subsequent printed editions are proof that Ovid had a wide appeal and was read not only by members of the intellectual elite.31 Accordingly, the influence of his work on European art cannot be overestimated.32 Countless pieces of art, especially paintings, refer to myths described by Ovid. Aside from this, the mythological works of other poets and mythographers were studied – for example those of Homer and Hyginus. These paintings have a primarily decorative function, but they also express (and allow us to ascertain) the education and erudition of the owner. There are also many statues of Amphitrite which served the same function.33 It is, however, noticeable that although the motif of Amphitrite and Poseidon is so popular in paintings, the story itself is only rarely the subject of literary works. In all likelihood, the narrative did not provide enough incentives for a dramatic elaboration. However, this is not the case with the myth of Arion.

The reception of the myth of Arion To begin with, Arion is the only man or boy who rode a dolphin for whom an independent literary tradition exists. It is even possible to differentiate between different phases of its reception. The development and changes in the form of the reception will be briefly outlined below. A detailed version of the story of Arion can be found in the narrative of Herodotus.34 The historian describes the rescue of Arion in the context of his account of Alyattes’ reign, while referring to the rule of the tyrant Periander. Herodotus, however, was only rarely read in medieval and early modern times, which had a consequently negative impact on his later reception.35 Nevertheless, the most important source for Arion’s story was probably Ovid, in particular a passage from the Fasti.36 As has already been stated, Ovid’s works were influential, resulting in their broad reception in the Middle Ages.37 Apart from Vergil and Horace, Ovid was regarded as the greatest ancient poet.38 Authors like Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser or William Shakespeare were inspired by his poems, and used his themes. Ovid was also read at school, and by medieval times the first commentaries on his works were published.39 In these

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commentaries the stories of the Metamorphoses and the Fasti were interpreted on a moral and allegorical level.40 From early on, translations of his works were being published41 and folk literature was based on his poems.42 Another important author, especially in the context of the reception of Arion’s myth, is Lucian. In his dialogues of the sea gods, Lucian gives a detailed account of the story of Arion. This could have been another inspiration for modern authors. Lucian’s works, especially his dialogues, were translated into Latin by Erasmus, and became ever more popular with the passing of time.43 The moralizing and satirizing dialogues were deemed useful for criticizing social injustices, and were taken up as models. Especially in the eighteenth century, Lucian was extremely popular among thinkers of the Enlightenment. His critical attitude towards religion was admired, and he was even called the ‘Voltaire of Antiquity’.44 In the following section, the tradition and instrumentalization of the story of Arion in European art will be examined. Arion appears in woodcuts that are used as illustrations to early editions of Ovid, several of which show him on a dolphin.45 He was depicted as a young man, with the lyre designating him a poet and singer.46 During the Renaissance, the figure of Arion became increasingly popular, enjoying a similar reception to that of Amphitrite and Cupid, mentioned previously. His rescue by the dolphin was a popular motif, which was also frequently used for interior decoration. Paintings and sculptures of Arion were the sign of a certain level of erudition and taste. However, in general Arion was less popular than other mythological figures, likely due to the lack of a romantic element. Furthermore, the myth of Arion was lacking a central female protagonist, making the visual representation less attractive. Accordingly, representations of the love affairs of the Olympian gods enjoyed greater popularity – be it the romance of Zeus with Danae, Leda or Europa, or the futile attempts by Apollo to win the love of Daphne. Nevertheless, depictions of Arion with the dolphin can be found in every century of the modern era. As will be shown below, representations of Arion are often assimilated with depictions of other famous poets or singers, whether Orpheus, Homer or Vergil. At the same time, the portrayal of Arion was adapted to the ideal concept of a poet that was widespread at the time. The owner of a work of art could thus prove his familiarity with ancient traditions as well as with current ideas. Among the examples of the use of this motif during the Renaissance are a ceiling fresco by Andrea Mantegna (1421–1506) (alongside a depiction of Orpheus, who is himself a symbol of music), and a painting by Lorenzo Costa

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(1460–1535), although in reality it is difficult to find Arion in Costa’s painting, as he is only a small figure shown in the centre. Arion is not the main figure of the painting; he has merely been inserted as an accessory. His depiction serves in this case as an embellishment of a mythical landscape, in the centre of which the god Comus and his entourage are shown.47 Another very early painting is that by Francesco Bianchi Ferrari (1460–1510). It shows a rather strange, Cupid-­like Arion with a fiddle. The poet is not depicted here as the adult of Herodotus’ and Ovid’s narratives. The decorative function of Bianchi Ferrari’s picture would explain why Arion was portrayed in such a way.48 There are also decorative representations of Arion in bronze, for example the statuettes by Bertoldo di Giovanni (1420–1491) and Andrea Riccio (1470–1532), from the fifteenth and sixteenth century respectively. Also rather impressive are two depictions from the early sixteenth century, by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528)49 and Albrecht Altdorfer (1480–1538). Arion is presented by Dürer as a grown, although still rather young, man. He is clinging to the dolphin, rather than riding the animal (see Fig.  4.2).50 The dolphin here is depicted not as a friendly companion, but as a monstrous marine beast. Not quite as frightening (but still bizarre) is the dolphin imagined by Altdorfer. In his copper engraving a naked, juvenile Arion is riding the dolphin. In his hand he holds not a lyre but another instrument, rather resembling a violin. In the background, a Nereid can also be seen riding a marine creature (see Fig. 4.3).

Fig. 4.2  Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), Arion.

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Fig. 4.3  Albrecht Altdorfer (c1480–1538), Arion.

This raises the question of whether there existed a specific manner of depicting Arion’s myth. Certain traits are discernible in most paintings or illustrations, but the details and the form of representation (for example, the manner of depicting the dolphin) varies. Before discussing the reception of the figure of the dolphin-­rider in later times, one general problem requires some attention: the representation of the dolphin itself is often rather strange. This raises the question of how it is possible

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that a friendly animal, such as the dolphin, could frequently be presented as a horrible monster. One possible explanation is that the artists did not know what a dolphin really looked like, especially the painters living in Northern Europe, who had to rely on paintings or descriptions. The most important account of the dolphin was provided by Pliny the Elder, whose Natural History was very influential in the Middle Ages and the early modern period.51 The description that he gives of the dolphin is not completely accurate, as is often the case with Pliny the Elder. The dolphin is characterized as a friend to men, but also as a fierce and strong animal. This may have led to the rather strange depictions in medieval and early modern manuscripts.52 Another source of information could have been the so-­called cabinets of curiosities. In these exhibitions, artefacts and antiquities, as well as natural phenomena, were displayed. Among them, animal corpses or the skeletons of fishes were also often preserved. If there were skeletons of dolphins in some of these collections and the artists had studied them, this could also have been misleading. Looking only at the skeleton, one could indeed get the impression that a dolphin is in fact a dangerous animal. When one beholds only the bones of a dolphin, its long teeth are prominent and the friendly features of the animal are not evident. It is in any case apparent that specific forms of how to depict a dolphin were established and passed on. At some point there seems to have been a prevailing type, which was then copied by subsequent artists. It is only from the eighteenth century onwards that more realistic versions began to appear, probably as a result of greater familiarity with the animal. As far as the portrayal of Arion in the paintings is concerned, a development can also be discerned. As has already been shown, Arion is usually represented as a grown man, as can be seen, for example, in a painting by Annibale Carracci (1560–1609),53 as well as one by Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem (1562–1638) (see Figs 4.4 and 4.5).54 In the latter, Arion is depicted as a rather old but muscular man with a beard, riding a huge dolphin and looking absent-­mindedly to the sky. In this case, the portrayal is apparently adapted from conventions already established in antiquity for individuals like Homer or Vergil – who are usually depicted as older, bearded men. This form of representation characterizes the poet as a wise old man, associating him with philosophers. But Arion could also be presented as a chubby little child, more reminiscent of Cupid. An impressive example is a depiction of Arion by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640):55 Arion is depicted as a plump little boy with a bow in his hand, in

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Fig. 4.4  Johann Friedrich Bury after Annibale Carracci, Arion.

many ways resembling a Cupid. This assimilation is highlighted even more by the fact that he is shown with wings on his back. The identification of the figure with Arion is again based primarily on his being shown riding on a dolphin; the only discrepancy in this case is that the boy does not carry a lyre but a bow. Hence, this could point towards an identification of the figure with Cupid in his role as a messenger of Poseidon. It is also possible that a certain ambiguity was intended. As in other examples, Arion could iconographically be merged with a Cupid or a cherub. This was especially true in the Baroque period when, according to the fashion at the time, small Cupids seemed to appear everywhere. The increasing interest in this figure may have led to his identification with Arion. In all probability, the numerous examples of representing Arion as a little boy can thus be explained by a blending of the figures of Arion and Cupid. This is partially also the case concerning the depiction of Arion on an engraving by Bernard Picart (1673–1733). Arion is represented as a young boy with a lyre, riding a dolphin. In this case, Arion as a poet is once again evident, since he seems to be playing his musical instrument.56 Generally speaking, aside from being connected with Cupid, Arion’s role as a poet and singer remained important.57 This tendency can be further observed in literary works: from the sixteenth century onwards, Arion is alluded to and

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Fig. 4.5  Jan Harmensz Muller (1571–1628) after Cornelis van Haarlem (Cornelis Cornelisz) (1562–1638), Arion.

mentioned with increasing frequency. In the following sonnet by Edmund Spenser (1552–99), the poet compares himself to Arion:58 Amoretti: Sonnet 38 Arion, when, through tempests cruel wracke, He forth was thrown into the greedy seas, Through the sweet musick which his harp did make Allur’d a dolphin him from death to ease. But my rude musick, which was wont to please Some dainty eares, cannot, with any skill, The dreadfull tempest of her wrath appease, Nor move the dolphin from her stubborn will. But in her pride she dooth persever still,

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Ancient Mediterranean Sea in Modern Visual and Performing Arts All carelesse how my life for her decayes: Yet with one word she can it save or spill. To spill were pitty, but to save were prayse! Chuse rather to be praysd for doing good, Then to be blam’d for spilling guiltlesse blood.59

Spenser devalues his own poetry, and singles out Arion as the unattainable ideal.60 He compares his poetry to that of the Greek artists, emphasizing that his art is not as effective as Arion’s and that he is incapable of moving the heart of his mistress. Interestingly enough, Spenser also refers to Arion as a member of the entourage of Poseidon and Amphitrite, again likely the result of a blending of the two traditions. The story of Arion was also the subject of plays and operas. One example is an opera by Jean-Baptiste Matho (1660–1746), although in this case the libretto is only loosely based on the tale in Herodotus and focuses on a love story: the love of Arion for a princess.61

Arion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries There thus appears to have been a remarkable change in the manner of representing Arion during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.62 Arion is now – at least in many cases – depicted as a handsome young man. Paintings usually emphasize the contrast between the beautiful youth and his dangerous environment. The focus is on the dichotomy between the poet, lost in his thoughts and his music, and the wild natural environment. Examples can be found in paintings by François Boucher (1703–1770) and Matthäus Kern (1801–1851).63 In the first case, a handsome Arion is surrounded by beautiful young women, probably mermaids. Even stranger is the depiction of Arion by Kern: the poet is dressed like a gentleman, including a wig. The depiction seems rather bizarre, but also serves as proof of the popularity and adaptability of the narrative. Arion is presented as a contemporary, according to the form of (self-) representation of poets at that time. His portrayal is adapted from the ideal image of the artist that was common at court, and was used to represent role and status. In literature, dolphin-­rider myths are referred to in various ways. In the eighteenth century, a number of authors mentioned the stories, some of them even going so far as to compose works of their own dealing with the myth. One

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example of the reception of Arion’s myth is Hermann von Hardt’s re-­narration, in which he discusses all the different versions of the myth by ancient authors.64 Sometimes mythological figures are mentioned in other contexts – for example as secondary characters in poems and plays.65 The motif of Arion saved by the dolphin obviously also appealed to poets during the time of Romanticism. They could identify with the young poet, lost in a hostile environment and threatened by vulgar people who did not care for art. This constitutes a continuation of ancient traditions, which present Arion as the prototype of the ideal poet.66 Arion is described this way in a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, referring to Arion as ‘on the dolphin’s back / ride singing through the shoreless air’.67 Another example is a poem by William Wordsworth:68 The walled city with its melody Was for belief no dream – thy skill, Arion! Could humanise the creatures of the sea, Where man were monsters. A last grace he craves, Leave for one chant – the dulcet sound Steals from the deck o’er willing waves, And listening dolphins gather round.

Arion appears as the embodiment of Greek humanitarianism and erudition. In Germany, however, Arion was judged somewhat differently – at least by certain authors.69 The figure of Arion could be employed to deal with modern – that is, contemporary – questions, especially those which highlighted the contrast between the idealistic world of the poet and the materialistic real world. Several authors dealt with this conflict, including Ludwig Tieck, Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel.70 The first to take up the story was Schlegel, who wrote a long poem in which quasi-­economic motifs constitute a central theme.71 Schlegel thus underscores the importance of earning money and restoring stolen treasures. In Schlegel’s poem, the fate of Arion symbolizes the dangers that an artist encounters when they get involved with material things.72 Following the negative reception of Schlegel’s poem, Ludwig Tieck composed a new version, in which the focus was more on the dramatic elaboration of the tale. He specifically concentrated on the moment of rescue.73 Furthermore, in Tieck’s version Arion’s motivation is characterized differently: his song was not meant to be understood as a means for his rescue, but as a token of his courage.74 His rescue is thus not a reward for his song, but for his bravery and his contempt of worldly goods. The third treatment of the subject is that of Novalis, forming part of his novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen. In this version, not only is Arion rescued by the dolphin, but the

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animal also gives him his treasures back.75 The common denominator between all three adaptations is the relationship between art and economy.76 The main question in these works is that of whether Arion should be held morally accountable for accumulating wealth and earning money with his art; or, in different terms, whether art should be commercial and whether art can be corrupted. They also discuss an important question of their time, in which the industrialization of the economy was just beginning. In their analysis of contemporary issues and questions, the three authors rather resemble Lucian, whose dialogues were popular among the intellectuals of the time. Moreover, the three poems also reflect the popularity of the myth of Arion in the nineteenth century. They were incorporated into various poetry collections, which contributed to their dissemination.77 The attractiveness of the stories of Arion and other dolphin-­riders is further illustrated by numerous explanations of images and sculptures,78 as well as extensive comments in philological or religio-­historical works.79 Arion’s rescue also found its way into mythological lexica and handbooks of the time, which indicate the importance of certain myths and also form the basis of their visual representation.80 The broad popular appeal of the story of Arion becomes apparent when considering the different media in which it was received. Not only was it omnipresent in literature, but also in the performing arts, as demonstrated by the sketch for a theatrical curtain designed by Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1810). In the visual arts, the myth of Arion was present within various genres. An example of its reception in the graphic arts is a drawing by Peter von Cornelius (1783–1867), which shows Arion in the company of other sea gods. For oil paintings, an interesting example is a depiction by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) of the singer riding not on a dolphin but a sea horse – which, once again, highlights the adaptability of the theme.81 Moreover, the long-­established tradition of presenting Arion as a young boy is taken up, for instance, in a sculpture by Ernest Hiolle (1834–1886), now in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. In general, the reception of the figure of Arion becomes more varied by the end of the nineteenth century, and there are several examples of this trend. On the one hand, Arion could now also be presented as a comic character.82 Perhaps this is a reaction to his idealization during the time of the Romantics. A good example is a drawing by Honoré Daumier (1808–1879), where Arion is depicted as a fat, middle-­aged man, wearing glasses.83 But the adaptability and popularity of the narrative also led to a certain arbitrariness: the motif of Arion on the dolphin had become so popular, and had been used so often in decorative or symbolic contexts,

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that it became somewhat devoid of meaning. The motif of dolphin-­riders became independent of the story of Arion, and the background was often forgotten. It was because of this that Arion could end up as a decoration for fountains in front gardens or in market squares, for example the Arion Fountain in Olomouc, the Czech Republic, or the public fountain in Wetzendorf, Germany. These examples signify the end of a development that extended over several centuries. The case of Arion demonstrates how the perception of an ancient myth could evolve, and how forms of presentation were adapted to the prevailing tastes. Arion could be presented as an old man, reminiscent of Homer, or as a chubby child, resembling Cupid. The manner of representation depended on the preferences of the artist, or those of his employer. If a more sophisticated reference to ancient traditions was intended, Arion was depicted as an older, venerable poet. For the owner of a piece of art, the tradition of Arion thus offered the opportunity to present themselves as a connoisseur of ancient art and culture. Parallel to this, and with increasing frequency, Arion was assimilated with the popular figure of Cupid. The two characters merged, and the reception of their stories was in these cases rather playful, intended for decorative purposes. The ancient myth thus became common knowledge, at least among the educated elite. The artists also linked their own self-­perception to the figure of Arion. Their increasing appreciation and growing self-­awareness as artists (though not as artisans) also affected the representation of Arion. Overall, the reception of this character is an example of how the use of a classical motif could change – from representing the social status of the owner of a work of art in the Renaissance, to being a decorative element suited to contemporary tastes, before also being linked to the status of the artists themselves. Furthermore, the example of Arion illustrates how the continuous merging of traditions and the adaptability of ancient myths eventually led to generalizations and a certain arbitrariness, after the motif had been employed for different purposes and in various contexts.

Notes 1 For the possible symbolic meaning of the dolphin-­rider in antiquity, see Beaulieu 2016, who attributes to them a funerary meaning. 2 These are especially interesting as they show dolphins accompanying ships; they seem to be symbolizing the sea itself. Doumas 1983a; Doumas 1983b; Pöhlmann 1999, 29–44. For the dolphin in Minoan and Mycenean art, see Kitchell 2011, 56. 3 For the dolphin as a motif in vase painting, see Vidali 1997; Stupperich 1999, 65–84.

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4 See Plut. De soll. an. 36; Lycoph. Alex. 658; Rabinovitch 1947, 11. This story, however, probably originated in later times, Stesichoros being the only attestation for the connection of Telemachos with a dolphin. The story might have originated from the desire to explain the widespread use of the dolphin as a shield-­decoration. See also the story of Enalaos, who saved a princess with the help of a dolphin (Plut. Conv. sept. sap. 20; De sol. an. 36); Stebbins 1929, 66; Rabinovitch 1947, 11–12; moreover the tale of Korainos – a fisherman who saved a dolphin that had been caught. When he was later shipwrecked, a dolphin brought him to shore and at his funeral a large group of dolphins assembled to pay their last respects to him (Ael. NA 8, 3; Athen. 13.85; Plut. De sol. an. 36; Phylarch. FGrHist II A, 26). Stebbins 1929, 62–3; Rabinovitch 1947, 12. 5 Special relationships between boys and dolphins are described by Plin. HN 9, 8, 25–8; Plin., Ep. 9,107; Ael. NA 6.15; Gell. NA 6, 7, 1–7). Kitchell 2011, 55. 6 Ael. NA 6.15; Arist. Hist. A. 631a; Athen. 13.85; Plut. De sol. an. 36; Poll. 9, 84; Plin. HN 9, 25 and 27; Gell. NA 6.8. Stebbins 1929, 70–1. 7 See, for example, BMC 10. Rabinovitch 1947, 12–13. Another version of the story exists, according to which Alexander the Great made the boy who was rescued priest of Poseidon in Babylon. 8 Apollod. Bibl. 3.4.3; Eur. Med. 1284; Pind. Isthm. 4; Hyg. Fab. 2, 4; Ov. Fast. 6. 485; Met. 4. 506–42; Paus. 1. 44. 8–11; 2. 1. 1–8; Plut. Quaest. Rom. 16; Quaest. conv. 677b; Lucian D. Mar. 8. Rabinovitch 1947, 14–15. 9 Hom. Od. 5. 333–53, where Leucothea saves Ulysses. Rabinovitch 1947, 15. According to other sources Leucothea is being deified because she nursed the infant Dionysus (Nonnus, Dion. 9. 54–91). For a detailed analysis of the myth of Melicertes/Palaemon, see Pache 2004, 135–83. In general, see Séchan 1955, 3–47. 10 Plut. Thes. 25; Rabinovitch 1947, 15. 11 For example, BMC 214. For different versions of the story, see Arist. Hist. an. 631a; Paus. 10.13.10; Stebbins 1929, 67–76. 12 Rabinovitch 1947, 16. 13 For example the famous Exekias-­bowl (Stebbins 1929, 60–2; Rabinovitch 1947, 23–5; Stupperich 1999, 66–7). For the myth see h. Hymn Bacch.; Apollod. Bibl. 3.5.3; Nonnus Dion. 43.105–68; Lucian D Mar. 8; Hyg. Fab. 134; Ov. Met. 3. 636; Prop. 3. 17. 25; also Kitchell 2011, 55. 14 See Rabinovitch 1947, 18–20, also for the role of the dolphin as an escort of the dead. 15 H. Hymn Ap. 397ff.; Stebbins 1929, 77–9; Rabinovitch 1947, 21–2. See also a vase painting showing Apollo in the company of dolphins (Museum Collection: Museo Gregoriano Etrusco, Vatican City Catalogue Number: Vatican 16568/Beazley Archive Number: 201984). 16 Ael. NA 2. 6 and 32; 6. 15; 12.45; Aristid. Or. 2.125; Clem. Alex. Protr. 1.1 and 2; Dio Chrys. Or. 1.421; 2.293–4; Hdt. 1.23–4; Lib. 8.52; Lucian Nav. 19; D Mar. 8; Opp.

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H. 5.448–52; Paus.3.25.7; 9.30.2; Plat. Rep. 5.453d; 2. Plut. Conv. sept. sap. 18; Str. 13. 618; Apul. Met. 6. 29; August. De civ. D 1. 14; Cic. Tusc. 2. 67; Fronto Ep. Arion; Gell. NA 16.19; Hyg. Fab. 194; Poet. astr. 2.17; Mart. 8.50 (51), 15; Mart. C. 9.908; Ov. Fast. 2.91–117; Ars am. 3. 325–6; Ps.-Ov. Hal. in: PLM I, 234–5; Plin. HN 9.28; Prop. 2.17–18; Quint. Inst. 6.3.39–41; Solin. 12.12; Verg. Ecl. 8.56; Stebbins 1929, 66–70; Rabinovitch 1947, 25–9; Mäche 1992. For the transmission of Arion’s story, see Perutelli 2003, 9–63; Privitera 1957, 95–110 – also for a critical discussion of Arion’s connection with the invention of the dithyramb. Soares 2002, 117–64. For the symbolism of Arion’s story in the narrative of Herodotus, see Hooker 1989, 141–6; Packmann 1991, 399–414. 17 For the dolphin’s connection with music, see Eur. El. 435–6; Ar. Ran. 1317–18; Ael. NA 2.6; 11.12; 12, 45; Plin. HN 9.8.24. This association is also present in the story of the dolphin which carried the corpse of Hesiod to shore; see Plut. Mor. 7.51–98; Paus. 9.31.6. Kitchell 2011, 55. 18 For example, BMC 35; Rabinovitch 1947, 28–9, who also stresses the connection with the mysteries. 19 Stebbins 1929, 84–6; Rabinovitch 1947, 13–14;. See Opp. H. 1. 385–93; Hyg. Poet. astr. 2.17. 20 Potvin 1994, 28–9, n 8. 21 See the website of the club’s supporters: http://www.fondazionetaras.it (accessed 17 March 2017). 22 For a discussion about the importance of Homer, see Buck 1976, 159–66. 23 See the depiction of Ino and Athamas by Niccolò degli Agostini in his ‘Ovidio Metamorphoseos in verso vulgar’, published in 1522, Bl.F3r – see Guthmüller 1986, no.26. Cf. also the woodcuts in numerous early editions of Ovid. See also Antoni van Leest (1545–1592) (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; 1937–01–01); Pieter Nolpe (1614–1653) (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; 1885–01–01); Matthias von Kinkelbach Quad (1557–1613) (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1954–01–01); Matthias von Kinkelbach Quad (1557–1613) (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; 1906–11–19); Johannes Covens and Cornelis Mortier (seventeenth century) (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1911–01–01); and Jan Wildens (1585–1653) (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; 1816–01–01). 24 Examples are the statues of Leucothea and Melicertes carved by Pierre Granier for the garden of Versailles; a statue of Leucothea by Jean-Jules Allasseur positioned at the façade of the Louvre palace; a statue of Leucothea by Joseph Rayol, also in the garden of Versailles. 25 Examples of paintings showing this subject are by Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1616); Francesco Albani (1578–1660); Jacob Jordaens (1593–1678); Nicolas Poussin (1594– 1665); Cornelis Willaerts (1600–1666); Ferdinand Bol (1616–1680); Giovanni Sagristani (1660–1731); Nicola Grassi (1682–1748); Noel Nicolas Coypel (1690–1734); Charles Natoire (1700–77); Jean Regnault (1754–1829); Hughes Taraval (1729–1785);

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Felice Giani (1758–1823); Pierre-Désiré Guillemet (1827–1878); and Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863). As for sculptures, see for instance the statues of Amphitrite by Michel Anguier (1612–86), Antoine Coysevox (1640–1720) and Jacques Prou (1655–1706), all in the museum of the Louvre, Paris, or the statue by Eugène Deplechin (1852–1926), Musée d’Art et d’Industrie de Roubaix. 26 Ov. Met. 1.14. 27 Ps.-Hygin, Poet. Astr. 2.17. 28 Ov. Met. 13. 780–897. 29 Guthmüller 1986, 35 calls the Metamorphoses the ‘Grundbuch abendländischer Mythologie’ (i.e. the ‘standard reference of Western mythology’); Hexter 2002, 431 speaks of the ‘pagan Bible of the Middle Ages’; also Fyler 2009, 412. 30 See Gatti 2014 for the commentaries on Ovid and the reception and reading of his work in schools. 31 For the reception of Ovid, see Gildenhard, Silk and Barrow 2014, 87–90; Buck 1976, 156–91. Also Moss 1982, 23–53 for early editions, commentaries and allegorical explanations of the Metamorphoses. 32 For the influence of Ovid on art since the time of the Renaissance, see Munari 1960, 34–7. Particularly influential was the De deorum imaginibus libellus, published around 1400, cf. Munari 1960, 35. For the reception of ancient myths and themes in art, see Gildenhard, Silk and Barrow 2014, 102–18, 292–305, 394–401. 33 See, for instance, paintings by Raphael (1483–1520) or Paolo di Matteis (1662–1728). Ford 2002, 331–49 for the presence of ancient gods in the decoration of buildings during the Renaissance, referring, for example, to Fontainebleau and its importance for self-­presentation and prestige. See in general Riedel 2000, 18–48. 34 Hdt. 1.23–4. Flory 1978, 411–21 for the manner of description in Herodotus. As he stresses, the courage of Arion is emphasized, while his song and the role of the dolphin are only of secondary importance; see also Hooker 1989, 141–6; Gray 2001, 11–28. For the sources on Arion, see footnote 15. 35 For the reception of Greek authors in the time of the Renaissance, see Buck 1976, 45–50. For the transmission of Herodotus, see Bichler and Rollinger 2000, 120–9. 36 See Gesztelyi 1974–5, 65–73. 37 For the importance of Ovid, see Guthmüller 1986, 3–17; Fyler 2009, 411–22, also for the influence on literature and painting. For his popularity and importance, especially in the thirteenth century, see Smolak 1995, 111–22; Richmond 2002, 452–4; for Ovid’s reception in the Middle Ages, see Munari 1960, especially 9–34; Hexter 2002, 413–42; Harris 2013, 19–35. 38 See Guthmüller 1986, 4; Munari 1960, 10–11, also for the allegorical interpretation. For free adaptations modelled on the poems of Ovid, see 11–19. For his importance to the European educational tradition, see Buck 1976, 192–209; Gildenhard, Silk and Barrow 2014, 32–51.

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39 For the earliest commentaries, see Guthmüller 1986, 9 and 37–46. 40 There also existed philological commentaries discussing specific problems. For the relevance of Ovid’s works in the time of the Renaissance, especially for the educational sector, see James 2009, 423–41. See Brumble 2007, 407–24 for an allegorical reading of ancient texts in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; for Arion, see especially 408–9. 41 For the early translations, see Guthmüller 1986, 47–61; for translations into English, see Martin 2009, 470–84. 42 Munari 1960, 11–34; Guthmüller 1986, 65–77. 43 For the attitude of the humanists towards Lucian and the early translations of his works, see Baumbach 2002, 27–51, also for the importance of satire and dialogue as media for critique, as well as for their relevance in teaching and education. For Lucian’s transmission history and his early reception among the humanists, see Robinson 1979. 44 Engels 1963, 451. 45 See, for example, the depiction of Arion in an illustration for Franciscus de Retza, De virginitate Mariae by Friedrich Walter (1470), München Staatsbibliothek Inv.-Nr. Xyl. 34. 46 For early illustrations of Ovid’s works or depictions of the myths, see Guthmüller 1986, 101–15. As he shows, the pictures were combined with explanatory poems, for instance in La Métamorphose d’Ovide figurée (1557) or the Metamorfoseo d’Ovidio, figurato & abbreviato in forma d’Epigrammi (1559). For the use of motifs from Ovid in collections of emblems, see, for example, Andrea Alciati, Viri clarissimi D. Andree Alciati Iurisconsultiss. Mediol. ad D. Chonradum Peutingerum Augustanum, Iurisconsultum, Emblematum liber, Augsburg 1531: ‘Delphini insidens vada cerula sulcat Arion,/Hocque aures mulcet frenat ora sono./Quae sit avari hominis, non tam mens dira ferarum est,/Quique viris rapimur, piscibus eripimur’. Cf. Schöne 1993, 185; see in general Buck 1976, 218–24; Brumble 2007, 412. 47 Other examples are a fresco by Baldassare Peruzzi in the Villa Farnesina (Sale delle Prospettive) dating to 1517–18. The myth of Arion is depicted on the southern side of the room, amongst representations of Apollo, Pan and Venus. 48 The identification of the figure as Arion is not verified. Depictions of Arion as a child or teenager are, however, also common in later times. 49 For references of Dürer to Lucian, see Baumbach 2002, 50–1. For his reception of antiquity in general, see also Carstensen 1982. 50 See also Johne 1983, 169–86 for the reception of ancient motifs and his attitude towards humanism; cf. in general Riedel 2000, 67–9. 51 Plin. NH 9.20–33. 52 See also the description in Ael. NA 16. 18, who differentiates between various types of dolphins, both dangerous and friendly (see Kitchell 2011, 54). For the relationship

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between men and dolphins, see also Ael. NA 2. 8; Arist. Hist. an. 631a8–b4; Opp. H. 5. 425–47; Kitchell 2011, 54–5. 53 Arion is shown as a young man with a lyre, riding on the dolphin and looking calmly back at the ship with the pirates. 54 In this respect an engraving by Jan Muller (1571–1628) after Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem, now in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. 55 For Rubens and his attitude towards antiquity, see Thielmann 2012, 95–150. 56 But see also a painting by Salvator Rosa (1615–73), showing Arion as a handsome boy or man with a lyre, not as a Cupid-­like figure. 57 See, for example, the engravings by Dancker Danckerts (1634–66) and Michel des Marolles (1600–81); and a scene in painting by Antonio Verrio (1636–1707). 58 For the references to Ovid in Spenser, Fairie Queene, see James 2009, 428–30. 59 Another example of Spenser’s view is this passage where Arion is again praised as a great musician (The Fairie Queen 4, 11, 23–4): ‘Then was there heard a most celestial sound / Of dainty music which did next ensue, / And, on the floating waters as enthroned, / Arion with his harp unto him drew / The ears and hearts of all that goodly crew; / Even when as yet the dolphin which him bore / Through the Aegean Seas from pirates’ view, / Stood still, by him astonished at his lore, / And all the raging seas for joy forgot to roar.’ 60 Also a poem by Michael Drayton (1563–1631), XLVIII: ‘Ye scaly creatures, gaze upon her eye, / And never after with your kind make war; / O steal the accents from her lips that flie, / Which like the tunes of the celestial are, / And them to your sick amorous thoughts apply, / Compar’d with which Arion’s did but jar: / Wrap them in air, and when black tempest rage, / Use them as charms the rough seas to asswage.’   See also John Dryden (1631–1700), Mac Flecknoe, 143–4: ‘Methinks I see the new Arion sail, / the Lute still trembling underneath the nail.’ Arion is the hero in a poem by Marc Antoine Gerard sieur de Saint-Amant (1594–1661); Roberts 1963. Based on this, see also a poem by Katherine Philips (1632–64), ‘Arion to a dolphin. On His Majesty’s passage into England’, in which she glorifies Charles II and his return to England; cf. Barash 1996. 61 Jean-Baptiste Matho, Arion tragédie en musique Arion, Opera, 1714 (libretto by Louis Fuzelier); see also Antoine-Louis Le Brun, Arion. Opera, in Théatre lyrique, Paris 1812. Girdlestone 1972, 170–81. 62 For the importance of Lucian’s works in the seventeenth century and a discussion of their relevance, see Baumbach 2002, 53–64. For his growing popularity and actualization in the time of the Enlightenment, see Baumbach 2002, 65–119. 63 See also paintings by Louis de Silvestre (1675–1760) and Noël Nicolas Coypel (1690–1734), showing an absent-­minded Arion with a lyre. 64 Hardt 1719.

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65 Examples are a cantata by Karl Wilhelm Ramler, with the title ‘Ino’, published 1765; an opera, Telemach. Prinz von Ithaka, by Christian August Vulpius, also featuring Leucothea, published in 1797; a drama about Ariadne by Johann Gottfried Herder in which Ino/Leucothea appears, dating to 1802. 66 Also the fountain of Arion by Barthélemy Guibal (1699–1757) in the castle grounds of Schwetzingen; in this case Arion is presented not as a boy but as an adolescent. 67 Ferris 2000, 108–33 for the reception of ancient motifs by Shelley; Raizis 1998, 297–311. See verses by Lord Byron, XXI: ‘. . . Meantime some rude Arion’s restless hand / Wakes the brisk harmony that sailors love; / A circle there of merry listeners stand / Or to some well-­known measure featly move. / Thoughtless as if on shore they still were free to rove.’ 68 The verses are from the poem ‘The Power of Sound’. Kneale 1999, for Wordsworth references to ancient themes. 69 For the reception of Lucian’s works in German literature of the nineteenth century, see Baumbach 2002, 121–49, also for the relevance of his works for teaching and research, new editions and a discussion of Lucian’s attitude towards Christianity. 70 For Schlegel’s poetry and philosophy, cf. Messlin 2011. For Schlegel and his work, see also Gildenhard, Silk and Barrow 2014, 26. For the reception of antiquity in Weimar in general, see Reed 2013, 64–81. For an extensive analysis of the poem, see Saller 2007, 97–111, emphasizing the economization of Arion’s story. Riedel 2000, 187–211, stressing the glorification of Arion as an artist. 71 The first verses being, ‘Arion war der Töne Meister, / Die Zither lebt’ in seiner Hand;/ Damit ergötzt’ er alle Geister, / Und gern empfing ihn jedes Land. / Er schiffte goldbeladen/Jetzt von Tarents Gestaden/Zum schönen Hellas heimgewandt’ (‘Arion was a master of music, / the cithara came to life in his hand, / by this he pleased the minds of everybody / and was welcome in every land. / Loaded with gold he now boarded a ship/at the coast of Tarent / to sail home to the beautiful Hellas’). The poem was published in the Musen-Almanach für das Jahr 1798 by Friedrich Schiller. 72 Saller 2007, 110. According to his interpretation, the return of Arion to Corinth symbolizes his integration into the oikos after failing to integrate into the wider economic world – the message being that the artist should keep his distance from the economy which threatens his existence and integrity. 73 Ibid., 114 stresses that Tieck concentrates on the moment of danger, the song and the rescue of Arion – in this respect being closer to the representation of the myth in paintings; Riedel 2000, 210–11. 74 Ibid., 116–17. The rescue is the result of divine mercy, courage and dissociation from economic ideas. 75 Ibid., 122–9, especially for the idealistic tendency of his interpretation. See also Roder 1997. For Novalis, see also Riedel 2000, 209–10.

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76 Saller 2007, 128–9. 77 The poems about Arion are included, for example, in Lebrecht Richter 1817; Wackernagel 1811; Hülstett 1831; Hensius 1821; Viehoff 1838; and Heinsius 1809. See also Becker 1815 for the story of Leucothea. 78 For a discussion of the portrayal of Ino/Leucothea, see the description of a bronze sculpture from Neuwied by Friedrich Ritschel 1864. Other examples of reflections on statues are the different interpretations of a female statue in the Glyptothek in Munich by Gerhard 1841 and Brunn 1867. The statue was identified by Johann Joachim Winckelmann as Ino-Leucothea while Brunn – correctly – described her as Eirene. For a compilation of depictions of the different myths, see the Mythologische Gallerie by Millin 1820. Beck 1816. The story of Ino/Leucothea is, for example, often associated with travellers visiting Greece, especially when making a journey across the sea. See, for instance, Williams 1829, 25, describing the Gulf of Corinth and mentioning Palaemon and Ino. See also Dubois de Montpéreux 1842, 250, 432, 611, mentioning a temple of Leucothea; Forchhammer 1837, 187–8; 272–9, referring to Ino and Melicertes. For an instrumentalization of the story of Leucothea in the context of the Greek struggle for independence, see Ilken 1789–1844, printed 1825. 79 See Bode 1839, where the role of Arion as the inventor of the dithyramb is emphasized; see 372–6 for the story of Arion and the dolphin. Müller and Schneidewin 1844, 361–7; Planche 1928, 333–4. For an analysis of the story of Arion, see Welcker 1844, 89–100. The myths of dolphin-­riders are also mentioned in the following works: Baur 1824; Preller 1837; Barth 1828; Foddersen Stuhr 1836–8; Herrmann 1803. For comments on dolphin-­riders in works on Greek religion, see Nitzsch 1826–40; Ersch and Gruber 1818–89; Valpy 1831; Kind 1831. 80 As, for example, Damm 1769; Chrompre and Millin 1801. Concerning Arion, see, for instance, the Gründliches mythologisches Lexicon by Hederich 1770; Saller 2007, 97–9; see also Von der Griechischen Litteratur in Deutschland by Herder 1877. Arion, Palaimon, Taras, Melicertes, etc. appear, for example, in the following lexica or works about ancient mythology: Ramler 1790; Barnier 1711; Hirt 1805–16; Meißner 1811; Wagner 1808; Böttger 1824; Nietsch 1821; Smith 1849; and Schwenck 1843. 81 Rößler 1983, 539–63; for the myth, esp. 549–6. 82 One example of a modernized version of the story of Arion is a burlesque play by F. G. Burnand (1836–1917) – in this case the main character is not the poet but the pirates. 83 Histoire ancienne (exhibition catalogue), 1 May–15 June 1975, Honoré Daumier; presented by the University of Southern California Fine Arts Department at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu.

5

Ulysses in the Cinema: The Example of Nostos, il ritorno (Franco Piavoli, Italy, 1990) Óscar Lapeña Marchena

Ithaca and Troy: names that recall far-­flung adventures and a type of geography which is not simply restrained by the boundaries of maps; a geography that was present in the minds and memories of travellers. Ulysses, Penelope, Circe, Telemachus and Polyphemus are the principal characters of a shared past, part of the cultural DNA of European identities.1 This sea may have been written, drawn, dreamed and imagined about more than any other, despite being nothing more than a pond full of frogs (if we are to believe Plato).2 Ancient myth is thus inexorably connected with the Mediterranean Sea and the idea of sea travel. One of the leitmotifs of this idea is the theme of the traveller’s return to their Oikos, to home, to their origins, to childhood, to the symbols of their own identity. This is one of the essential and truly universal traits of Western cultural traditions.3 There are countless traces of Ulysses and the Odyssey in modern cultures.4 The relationship between cinema and the Odyssey is not restricted to direct adaptations, but goes far beyond.5 Even if cinema has always been more interested in the Trojan War than the return of Ulysses to Ithaca, from the very beginning of cinema there have been attempts to translate the Odyssey into images and to bring to the big screen as many episodes as possible, most of the time in orthodox ways that respect the texts. Imaginative excesses have taken place, especially in the peplum genre, where fantasy is one of the key selling points. Television productions have made it possible to give a detailed account of the adventures of Ulysses, while at the same time popularizing them among audiences. The Odyssey is a universal and timeless plot, and as a consequence gains strength with each narration by soldiers returning from the front (this is what Ulysses does by being in charge of his men), every human that wanders in search of his origin, identity or home.

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In these pages, I will follow the traces of the cinematic Ulysses, focusing in particular on a less known production – the Italian film Nostos, il ritorno, directed by Franco Piavoli in 1990. As we will see, this movie brings us back to a primordial Mediterranean world, where heroes and the places they inhabit do not seem to have defined names, where nature overcomes any human control and language is like the sound of the untamed wind. The various adventures collected within the Odyssey, as well as its main characters, do not seem to have played a major part in the early years of silent cinema.6 They can essentially be divided into those in which Odysseus is the absolute protagonist and those in which he plays a secondary role in the story. Remarkable examples of the first trend are L’ile de Calypso: Ulysse et le géant Polyphème (Georges Melies, 1905), Le Retour d’Ulysse (André Calmettes and Charles Le Bargy, 1908) and particularly L’Odissea (Milano Films, 1911).7 The latter is a typical example of the Italian Kolossal of the early twentieth century. This movie showed the most emblematic features of the Homeric poem, essentially addressing a learned audience familiar with a story that was part of their cultural identity.8 In all these movies, especially those focusing on Ulysses’ return, the sea becomes a constant presence that accompanies and determines the destiny of the protagonist. The Mediterranean Sea here is more than just an influential geographical element, it is a natural factor that impacts on the life of humans. These Odyssean films also depict a sea that transmits a powerful cultural discourse, along with the essence of Hellenic civilization. A good example of this can be seen in two films which are nearly contemporary and belong to what is called ‘the phenomenon of Hollywood sul Tevere’. Many American films – mostly with a historical, epic theme – were produced in Italy, especially in the Roman Cinecittà Studios, taking advantage of the low-­cost production and the excellent job done by the artists and local technicians.9 The two titles referred to before the brief explanation above are Ulisse, a Lux Film and Ponti & De Laurentiis production, directed by Mario Camerini in 1954, and Helen of Troy, by Robert Wise in 1955.10 Although the film by Wise repeats the cliché of presenting Ulysses as ‘responsible’ for the strategic victory and nothing more, it is nonetheless the first in which he takes an undoubtedly leading role. In Camerini’s movie, Ulysses is shown as an almost professional adventurer – if we may use the term – someone fighting against any sort of obstacles within a hostile environment ruled by the sea and the supernatural forces that influence human fate. He rises to the challenge, and lives the most extraordinary adventures that can be imagined. He lives in a permanent state of

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battle, whether against supernatural creatures or ‘fights’ where he needs his wits and powers of seduction. In Nostos, however, the sea becomes an enemy that the hero will have to face throughout the tale. Our hero is convinced he will overcome them at any moment, and this is in fact the main message transmitted by the character to the audience. Ulisse by Camerini perfectly captures the poem by Constantinos Cavafis (1863–1933), Ithaca, where the Aegean island is not the end but the middle, the journey, the adventures before arriving at the Oikós. Furthermore, the film is renowned for using the face of the same actress – Silvana Mangano – to portray both temptation (Circe) and faithfulness (Penelope), something innovative during this period of time.11 This double role strengthens the idea of ambiguity that will also appear in Nostos, even if its hero does not really have two personalities but rather must face a world where the limits of individual personalities are not clearly defined. The character of Ulysses is a regular in peplum, where he appears in key supporting roles such as the squire of the hero, for example in the two titles that mark the start of the genre, Le fatiche di Ercole and Ercole e la Regina di Lidia (Pietro Francisci, 1958 and 1959).12 It is also worth mentioning La Guerra di Troia (Giorgio Ferroni, 1961)13 and L’Ira di Achille (Giorgio Ferroni, 1962),14 as well as Ulisse contro Ercole (Mario Caiano, 1962)15 and Ercole sfida Sansone (Pietro Francisci, 1963),16 where references to the Odyssey seem to disappear completely as the character takes part in all sorts of adventures aimed at entertaining the viewer. This very same approach can be found in other, highly diverse productions, from comedies such as The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (Edward Bernds, 1962)17 or Elena si . . . ma di Troia (Alfonso Brescia, 1971) to pornographic cinema, Ulyses (Joe D’Amato, 1998),18 and from action films like Odysseus and the Isle of the Mists (Terry Ingram, 2008) to the contemporary American epic genre developed with new digital technologies and using the language and rhythm of video games, of which Troy (Wolfgang Petersen, 2004) is probably the best example.19 Yet more appearances by Ulysses can be found on TV, with episodes in well known series such as You Are There, Doctor Who, The Time Tunnel or The Simpsons.20 The Odyssey has also been used as a source for films set in modern contexts. A relevant leitmotif from these productions is again the idea of the adventures (and misadventures) faced by the protagonists. A similar example can be seen in the transposition (presumably involuntary) of the Odyssey – or at least of some of the best-­known episodes – in O Brother, Where Art Thou? by Joel and Ethan Coen (2000), where the ungovernable sea is transformed into the depths of the Mississippi Valley.21

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The televisual format has made it possible to overcome the strict timelines imposed by full-­length films, thus making it possible to develop projects that attempt a more complete representation of the Odyssey, releasing a great number of episodes while at the same time enabling a deeper, more complex psychological portrait of the characters. It has also allowed producers to show details of the society and daily life of the Homeric world which would otherwise not have been seen on screen. The most interesting examples of approaching the filmic transposition of the Homeric texts in this way are three which vary greatly from one another. Chronologically speaking, the first was L’Odissea, a series consisting of eight chapters directed by Franco Rossi for the Italian RAI in 1969. Here we must highlight the complete description it creates for its main character, Bosnian actor Bekim Fehmiu, who represent a very human Ulysses; it should also be noted that the photography and visual effects were created by one of the masters of Italian cinema, Mario Bava.22 The second example is The Odissey (1997), a co-­production between several countries (the United States, Great Britain, Italy and Greece) with direction from Andrei Konchalovsky, where aside from the main character, adventures and frenetic pacing prevail on screen. The efficient special effects, in which the sea features prominently, help to underline the dual role of the sea as both facilitator for the return home but also an element that destabilizes, with its unpredictable power that might awake at any time to crush any hope of seeing Ithaca again. To conclude, we will look at Ulysses 31, a French-Japanese animated TV series supervised by Bernard Deyries and Kyosuke Mikuriya in 1981, where the Homeric story moves to the future and to outer space, converting boats into spaceships and servants into robots but keeping – in spite of the additions – the spirit of the work alive, thus demonstrating the universal nature of the Odyssey. In infinite space, on a cold world dominated by technology, the desire of a man to find his way back to his origins, to his home, will always be alive; Ithaca will always exist, because every man keeps it inside. Here the Mediterranean becomes the immensity of outer space: islands are now planets that continually surprise the hero; the blue of the sea waters is now the black of the unfathomable abyss of the galaxy. Within both – sea and galaxy – the hero stands alone against his fears and his wish to return, surrounded by solitude. The theme of ‘return’ that is inspired by the Homeric epic also features strongly in films not directly adapted from the Odyssey, a story that is known worldwide and as a result may be understood in a thousand ways; here we may include all the films that deal with the theme of returning home, beginning with the adaptations of the novel The Return of Martin Guerre (Natalie Zemon Davis,

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1983)23 and finishing with the accounts of soldiers returning home after the war (either the Trojan War, World War II or the Vietnam War). The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, USA, 1946), or The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, USA 1978) come to mind at this point. The universality and timelessness of the epic tale of Ulysses could explain its use in recounting the history of the Balkans (and in general, the rest of Europe) during the tempestuous twentieth century.24 In To Vlemma tou Odyssea (Ulysses’ gaze, Theo Angelopoulos, 1995), A, the principal character (who lacks a name, as is the case in Nostos, il ritorno), travels through space and time in search of the first reel of Greek cinema, filmed by the Manakis brothers, a film that provides a metaphor for the lost innocence that must be recovered by men who have seen the horrors of war. Sarajevo, hidden by the fog and destruction, brings to mind the rubble and bonfires that indicated the end of Troy; the music played by a ghostly orchestra which breaks through shreds of mist corresponds to the song of the Sirens, and the Aegean sea transforms into the Danube where the colossal statue of Lenin/Polyphemus moves in silence, as the time of the giants has already gone. There are several elements that link To Vlemma tou Odyssea with both the Homeric tale and Nostos: the anonymous protagonist, or the search for innocence, personified in the Italian film in the return to an island, to a palace, but also to a home, to children’s games or the presence of a mother. Nostos, il ritorno,25 filmed in 1990, is the first full-­length fiction film by its director, Franco Piavoli (Pozzolengo, Brescia, 1933). Piavoli studied law at the University of Pavia, and his interest in poetry began at an early age. As well as painting and music, he dedicated himself to the study of the image. His first short films, mostly documentaries, were in the 1950s and 1960s: Uccellanda (1953), Ambulatorio (1954), Incidente (1955), Le stagioni (1960), Domenica sera (1962), Emigranti (1963) or Evasi (1964). In all of these, Franco Piavoli, aside from directing, was also responsible for the script, photography, film editing and sound editing. His first full-­length film was shot twenty years later, in 1982, and the title is Il pianeta azzurro; it was entered in the 50th annual Venice Film Festival and was awarded with the Unesco prize, among others. This success was repeated with Nostos, il ritorno which featured in the Locarno Film Festival and won, among other awards, the OPL Moti Ibrahim award from the Djerba Festival (Tunisia) and the AIACE in Turin, an award given by the Associazione Italiana Amici del Cinema d’Essai, both in 1990. The film required two years of preparation and filming and an extra year for editing, since the volume of material filmed was

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sufficient to make nine films. Although the film editing was done according to the instructions of its director, Nostos is still an incomplete film.26 In the cinema of Piavoli, images are of the utmost importance, above any other consideration; the language is visual, there is little space for dialogue and words, and most of the time these end up mixed in with sounds from the environment. The camera tends to focus on details: movement, colour, light and a close, exhaustive eye for nature are typical features of Piavoli’s films. The prominence of nature relativizes the role of the hero; he could be any of us, not only because he has no name, but because throughout our lives we all experience emotions like the discovery of nature. Most members of the cast of Nostos were non-­professional actors or belonged to Laboratorio Teatro Settimo, founded in Turin in 1981, though in any case with little previous experience in cinema.27 As was the case during his first short films, though also throughout all of his work, Franco Piavoli was in charge of not only the direction of Nostos, il ritorno, but also the scripting, production, photography, film editing and sound editing; that is, he exercised absolute control over the final result that would be seen on screen. The score that accompanies the action, especially the hypnotic images, alternates between music by Claudio Monteverdi and Alexander Borodin, and other twentieth-­century composers such as the Hungarian Rudolf Maros or the Italians Luciano Berio and Gianandrea Gazzola. The locations for the film were Sardinia, Lake Garda, at the foot of the Alps, Veneto, Etruria, Lazio and the Roman ruins of Sirmione, in the province of Brescia. As an example of the level of handicraft shooting the film has, it is worth noting that the sail of the ship, which leads men back home, was made with a sheet that was previously applied with gasoline to give the appearance of being old, as well as a look which reflects material that has suffered under the constant pounding of nature.28 According to Piavoli, the inspiration for the film was book XXIII of the Odyssey, in which Euryclea, the nursemaid of Telemachus, warns Penelope of the presence of Ulysses in Ithaca after the killing of the suitors; however, she will not believe this until Minerva gives to Odysseus his previous physical appearance and after he describes in detail the bed that he built himself, to finally convince Penelope of his true identity.29 Nostos begins with the image of a boat in a calm sea in the middle of the night. Men sleep on board, exhausted and surrounded by war helmets and shields. One of them, Ulysses, dreams of a child playing, running in the countryside behind a hoop. Dreams are developed with the plot, at times even mixing one with the

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other. A flashback takes the spectator to a city – Troy – overcome by looting. There are dead bodies scattered everywhere, bonfires, tears, screams and people running away from destruction, but when the Greek squad arrives at the city, there are no soldiers to fight against. The eyes of the soldiers reflect their experience of the horror. Days of quiet sailing are accompanied by the never-­ending whistle of the wind, the hypnotic crackle of the timbers of the ship, and the enigmatic dialogues that remind spectators of memories they thought lost and hidden in the deepest part of their mind, since, as can be seen from the beginning of the film, the dialogue is inspired by ancient languages that were spoken in ancient Mediterranean regions. This use of language would suggest that the Mediterranean Sea was the origin of several cultures, and that all of them can be recognized in these primary, pure sounds. The Mediterranean Sea is an ark that guards the common memory of its inhabitants. Sea currents lead the sailors to an island, on which they find a cave. Ulysses descends into a rocky place covered by shades, fog and the naked bodies of men and women stuck to rocks as if they were not entirely able to detach from them. The increasing murmur of distant voices forces Ulysses to pronounce one of the few words the audience can easily recognize: Mater. And then, as if answering the man’s prayer, a woman materializes from the darkness to give Ulysses a shell. The next morning, Ulysses wakes up in the cave with a shell by his side, unquestionable proof that what happened to him was not just a dream.30 After the incident in the cave, the trip continues with nature in perfect harmony; the nocturnal and distant song of the whales and dolphins resembles that of the Sirens. All of a sudden the calm is shattered when a horrific tempest appears, destroying the ship and ending the life of Ulysses’ companions; he is now the only survivor of the shipwreck. The island where he has been dragged by the sea is a well-­stocked place, where nature is in all its splendour; there, surrounded by the most diverse species, including animals and vegetables, Ulysses finds harmony in the environment. A woman lives on the island, and becomes a guide and lover to the shipwrecked survivor. In spite of finding happiness with her, Ulysses is continually chased by his dream, where the child plays with his hoop, a dream that ultimately recalls his childhood and his home. This leads Ulysses to leave the island and the woman, to face the dangers of the sea once again. The rudimentary raft he sails on soon breaks into pieces, leaving Ulysses alone with his dreams and his delirium in the immensity of the swell. This is the moment when his mouth opens, to speak as an uncontrollable sigh, the word Oikós – home.

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In the end, the sea drags him to the island that he has seen dozens of times in his dreams; there he finds the palace, meets children who play unconcerned, encounters rooms where servants go about their business, and it is there he finds a woman doing household chores. Ulysses observes them in silence, and little by little he starts to be part of that world, in silence, discreetly, as with everything in the film. The links between the Odyssey and Franco Piavoli’s film are more obvious than film critics have emphasized. Some have interpreted Nostos, il ritorno as a mostly lyrical version of the Homeric work;31 others as an original, while at the same time rather unambiguous, version of his verses.32 The film has also been described as the simple representation of adventurous images and characters that recall our own culture,33 and as a simple and successful reformulation of the Odyssey.34 In any case, each reviewer has underlined the originality of the work from an author who justifiably claims to have a different way of shooting. In Piavoli’s films, emotions are more important than actions; this makes his work unique within Italian cinema.35 These reviews also highlight that the ultimate meaning of Nostos is to explore the basic sense of the journey, a journey that goes beyond a defined time or space. The journey is a desire, representing the determination of humans to follow their wishes. This idea is embodied in the film by the theme of return, recalled by the oneiric images of childhood, spaces of innocence and curiosity, by an ambition for knowledge and a longing to enjoy the most elementary affections. There is also a sense of merging with nature: a primitive, basic, nature where man is just one part of a whole, along with the sea, the earth, the flowers or the moon.36 Part of the film can be understood as an ode to the union of men with nature; there is a longing to return to a primitive state where there was harmony between man and other species. In my opinion, Franco Piavoli’s film attempts to go beyond even these ideas. Nostos seems to actually lead the viewer towards a deeper realm, a pre-Homeric world in which the poet himself might have found the original material for his own story; the source of the myth. The film thus transports the viewer to a pre-Homeric Mediterranean Sea, where facts are remembered even before having a name. This is the case with the destruction of the city in the flashback at the beginning of the film, a sequence that leads us to the final episode of the Trojan War, the surrender of the city and the destructive urges of the Greek soldiers. Interestingly, the inhabitants of Troy, those who are killed attempting to flee, are all members of civil society, anonymous people who suffer the horrors of war. The Greek crew, with Ulysses

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as leader, do not fight with their equals, as there are no warriors in Troy anymore. There is a moment in which the soldiers leave aside what the viewer sees as terrible war crimes to observe the bare and absolute horror of war in silence. The astonishment in their eyes is the very image of terror. They come face to face – as soldiers do time and again – directly with horror.37 Returning to the idea of the flashback, we can also understand the film as a desperate attempt by the Greek soldiers to escape from horror, from the long shadow of war which appears in their dreams, punctuated by the presence of abandoned helmets and shields, but never forgotten; the military armour that decorates the deck of the ship constantly reminds the sailors of their status as warriors. One of the goals of the journey can thus be seen as a desperate attempt to escape the past, the memories of blood and destruction. Nostos appears to occur in an atemporal world, far from the chronological spaces that historians use, closer to nature than to human society. The Mediterranean and the Aegean are the geographic context in which the story takes place, but without reference to Ancient Greece.38 Timelessness is also highlighted by the interchangeable order of the episodes that constitute the plot: the flashback from the beginning could well have taken place when Ulysses was on the island with the woman; the visit to the cave might have happened at the end of the story; the dream about the palace seems connected with the first dream, and so on. However, it has been suggested that the film has a more classical narrative structure, consisting of five acts. Vona has pondered that the first would be focused on the flashback and his visit to the cave, the second on the tempest and the shipwreck, the third the idyllic island episode, the fourth the return to the sea, and the last on the return to the palace.39 This feeling of being out of time, or of not having fully entered into the conception of historical time, is strengthened by the language within the dialogue. As has been indicated above, these dialogues are inspired by languages that were spoken in the ancient Mediterranean, though more precisely they are a mixture, created by the director, of words and sounds of classical Greece, with the Greek from Thessaly prevalent over the Ionian dialect. Sanskrit and Latin are also embedded in this eclectic language.40 Of all the words mentioned in the film, two are particularly distinguished and clear. To some extent, they also determine the narrative structure: Mater and Oikós. The first of these words is uttered by Ulysses in the cave he enters after landing on the first island; the descent into this cave recalls canto XI of the Odyssey, which gives account of (among other events) his visit to Hades, the blood sacrifice to the dead and the encounter of Odysseus with his mother, Anticlea. In

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Nostos, Hades is a cave full of stones, where waves of distant voices and fog emerge, and in which humans are pinned to the rock. This image suggests to the viewer a primitive place, something which has not yet acquired its shape or final identity. In my opinion, the recurrent dream of the child playing with his hoop does not particularly address the desire of reclaiming childhood as a place of certainty and security, nor the wish to experience the most primary of feelings. We should not forget that the dream continues – when Ulysses floats alone in the immensity of the sea, trapped under a huge reflection of the moon – with his arrival at the island and the palace as an adult. This scene represents the desire to regain the throne and the social position that are the birthright of his real identity. The return to the palace in Nostos takes place in complete anonymity, far away from the epic narrative, the magnificence and the violence that explode during the episode of the killing of the suitors, the subsequent reprisal against the slaves and the new encounter with Penelope. In the film, the palace reminds us of a Mycenaean construction, though also the typical cinematic depictions of Atlantis, particularly in the silent era, especially L’Atlantide (Jacques Feyder, 1921) and Die Herrin von Atlantis (Georg Wilhelm Past, 1932). The use of the same type of setting as early cinema fits within the general mood of the film and the desire to find the original world. There are children playing in the atrium and the dark corridors, members of the domestic staff and a woman engrossed in folding a colourful piece of fabric before placing it in a chest. The reference to Ulysses returning home is quite obvious, and it is not necessary to show the fabric woven during the day and unwoven through the night. The fabric traditionally emphasizes the loyalty of Penelope, but also reveals her uncertainty over what decision to take. There are a number of overt gestures and references in Nostos: to that of Penelope keeping the fabric we may add the singing of the dolphins and whales during certain nautical moments. This reminds the spectator of the episode of the Sirens and their unsuccessful attempt at seduction. Similarly, during the tempest that wrecked the boat and killed the crew, there is a moment where the sail falls over the men; here we see on screen shadows that attempt to get rid of the piece of fabric that paralyses them, an image that brings to mind Plato’s myth of the cave. After the loss of his ship, Ulysses arrives at the island where the woman lives; in Nostos, three feminine characters, all different types of women from the Odyssey, merge into one: the woman from the island is at the same time Circe, Calypso and Nausicaa. The scene that captures this mixture of identities is the

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moment in which the woman observes in silence from the top of the cliff how Ulysses makes the raft that he will use to depart. After being returned to land by the waves, Ulysses rises from the sand as if he were born again from the deepest part of the planet. This image refers to a desire to merge with nature, the film’s leitmotif. While he comes back to life, the waves move the helmets of his lost sailing partners back and forth, a reference to their death. They may have died, but Ulysses is reborn from the earth to face, alone now, the last challenge of his adventures. The anguish of loneliness and the weight of his memories reach their peak precisely after leaving behind the island and the woman as he witnesses, powerless, the easy destruction of his raft by the sea. Ulysses then finds himself alone in the middle of the huge Mediterranean Sea; but on this occasion the sea does not fight him, but nurtures his dreams, providing him with sounds from the lives that surround him. It is then that the dream becomes fully formed, as the reiterative image of the boy playing now expands Ulysses’ will to regain his palace, his throne and his position in Ithaca. When the film Troy (Wolfgang Petersen, 2004) was premiered, one of the aspects most commented upon by classicists was the absence of the Olympian gods from the movie.41 We might also ask the same question here: where are the gods in Nostos? The answer comes fast and simple – that the gods are in all the manifestations of nature: the sea that constantly rewrites the fate of humans, the animals and vegetables that occupy different spaces within the story, the earth that seems alive. All of them contain a sacred element that shows its power towards humans. The film ultimately claims that the relationships between cinema and literature extends far beyond the debate over literary adaptations; it shows how literature can coexist and benefit from cinematographic work. Cinema offers many ways of telling historical and mythological tales from ancient cultures. In Nostos, we hear the voice of its creator. The film proposes a new view of Ulysses, one that takes a closer look at another Italian production, Franco Rossi’s L’Odissea (1969). Although twenty years have passed between these films, there is a common trait they share: Ulysses’ honest desire to return home arises as a natural wish, depicted as a profound Mediterranean spirit. Nostos, il ritorno is not simply as it appears at first sight, a highly lyrical cinematic version of the Odyssey. We may instead view the film as a collection of interconnected visual materials that are essentially primitive, and that will become at a later stage what we know as the Homeric account. The film by Franco Piavoli leads the viewer to a pre-Homeric Mediterranean realm where

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we find – if the expression can be considered appropriate – the ingredients that will shape the myth: nature in all its splendour, the sea that determines the lives of men, the war, the horror, the desire of a group of men who are tired of wandering in the immense sea to return to their Oikós, the woman who reigns over nature, the world after death, the dwelling of the dead, the arrival at the palace, and the end. The moving images refer to an oral tradition that is still a work-­in-progress; this is the material that will become the literary culture of the future. The intentional timelessness that the film pursues and finally achieves, the absence of proper names, the rudimentary language, the feeling of being in a primitive world – all of these encourage us to contemplate the origins of what we know today as the Odyssey.

Notes 1 This inheritance transcends the geographical borders of the Mediterranean Sea, cf. Canterella 2004. 2 Pl., Phd. 109 a–b. 3 See, for instance, Balló and Pérez 1997, 28–33. The theme of the journey and the return from war features also in Eastern cultures, e.g. in the Japanese cinematic tradition, cf. Ugetsu Monogatari (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953), and Biruma no tate goto (the Burmese Hare) (Kon Ichikawa, 1956). Balló and Pérez 1997, 35–6. 4 It would be an almost never-­ending task – and much worse if we took into account the reduced space that we have here – to dig into the traces of Ulysses and the Odyssey in our culture, since this can be seen in practically all the existing artistic manifestations. It is seen in opera – Il ritorno di Ulisse in Patria (1640), with music by Claudio Monteverdi and the libretto written by Giacomo Badoaro; in literature – Ulysses (1922), by the Irish writer James Joyce; and in painting – Polifemo e Galatea (Annibale Carracci, 1600), Achilles discovered by Ulysses (Peter Paul Rubens, 1617–18), Odysseus in the Cave of Polyphemus (Jacob Jordaens, 1630), Ulysses deriding Polyphemus (Joseph Mallor William Turner, 1829), Penelope (WilliamAdolphe Bouguereau, 1891), Circe offering the Cup to Ulysses (John William Waterhouse, 1891) and Ulysses and the Sirens (Herbert James Draper 1909), to name but a few examples – and of course there are others in cinema. 5 We must not forget, for example, that the episode in the Odyssey where Ulysses, as host of the king Alcinous in the court of the Phaeacians, recounts his former adventures, is giving birth to what will be called some centuries later the flashback cinematic technique. On the Odyssey in cinema and on TV, see Valverde García 2003; Verreth 2008, 69.

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6 There are no more than half a dozen titles dealing with Ulysses and his return to Ithaca, cf. Salvadori 2009, 112–13; Lillo Redonet 2010, 28. 7 The first deals with the episode of the giant Polyphemus. The second focuses on Ulysses’ vengeance against the suitors, cf. Gifford 1991, 91. 8 The movie was directed by Francesco Bertolini, Aldolfo Padovan and Giuseppe de Liguoro, who also plays the Ulysses part. Bernadini and Martinelli 1996, 27; Chiti 1997, 28. See further Brunetta 2009, 193. 9 This phenomenon was developed taking as a starting point the law of Andreotti from 1949 that established, besides raising the share of the Italian films and imposing a tax on the shooting, the prohibition of American producers from taking all their profits outside Italy; in response, the studios decided to invest the money they could not take out of the country in making new movies, usually big productions, aimed at ever increasing revenues around the world. The process began with Quo Vadis? (Mervyn Le Roy, 1951), and without it the society that would appear and be wonderfully described some years later in La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, 1960) would not be understood (Brunetta 1995, 15; Argentieri 1998, 27; Russo 2007, 137). 10 Spinazzola 1955, 108; Prieto Arciniega 2004, 100; Salvadori 2009a, 114; Della Casa 2013, 48. 11 Penelope represented the feminine model – linked to the wife, fidelity and homeland – the opposite of what Clytemnestra, Calypso and Circe represented (Cimmino and Massi 1994, 42; Prieto Arciniega 2003b, 411; Prieto Arciniega 2010, 105). 12 Giordano 1988, 168; Bruschini and Tentori 1994, 8; Lapeña Marchena 2009, 87. 13 Fernández Valentí 2006, 58–9. 14 Siarri-Plazanet 1998, 34–9. 15 Lenglet 1962, 41; Bruschini and Tentori 1994, 24; Lapeña Marchena 2009, 165. 16 Giordano 1988, 177; Lapeña Marchena 2009, 191. 17 Midi Minuit Fantastique, no. 2, 1962, 63–4. 18 This film was released only for the home video market. 19 Feld 2004, 104–9; Prieto Arciniega 2005, 23–37; Winkler 2006. 20 Verreth 2008, 68. 21 Peñafiel and Beltrán 2002. 22 Salvadori 2009a, 117; Prieto Arciniega 2010, 109. 23 Le retour de Martin Guerre (Daniel Vigne, France 1982), Sommersby (Jon Amiel, USA 1993). 24 The presence of Ulysses in cinema would be endless, though as a last, brief example we can name Inside Llewyn Davis (Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, 2014). The origin of the story is a cat named Ulysses, which escapes from his house causing a series of misfortunes for the main character, an unsuccessful folk singer of the title. Eventually, Ulysses will go back to his house after experiencing many adventures; we suppose he will live in the wild New York of the1960s, though this unfortunately the

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reader cannot be sure of, so they will have to content themselves with the vicissitudes of the leading human role. 25 The nostoi were the stories that gave account of the journeys of Greek princes who played a part in the Trojan War, and once this had finished they returned to their kingdoms. 26 Film discussi insieme 1991, 221. In fact after the shooting of Nostos, Franco Piavoli has also had long gaps between directing films – since he has also been teaching cinematographic direction in the Catholic University of the Sacro Cuore in Brescia. In Voci nel tempo (1996), Piavoli shows the changing of the seasons for the inhabitants of the small village of Castellano; subsequently he filmed two more full-­length films, Al primo soffio di vento (2002) and Affettuosa presenza (2004), inspired by the correspondence between the poets Umberto Bellintani and Alessandro Paronchi, and the short film Frammenti in 2012. His most recent film as a director was the collective movie Venice 70: Future Reloaded, in 2013. 27 Only the couple who play the leading roles had some experience in cinema. Luigi Mezzanotte, the leading actor, had been performing some roles both for television and the big screen before working for Franco Piavoli: Un Amleto di meno (Carmelo Bene, 1973), Il Prato (Paolo Taviani and Vittorio Taviani, 1979), L’ultimo spettacolo di Nora Helmer (Carlo Quartucci, TV film 1980), Thor il conquistatore (Tonino Ricci, 1983), Onora il padre (Stefano Ferrari, TV film, 1986), L’assasinio é ancora tra noi (Camilo Teti, 1986), and o La Piovra 4 (Luigi Perelli, TV series, 1986). Although it is true that after Nostos he reduced his appearances in cinema considerably, appearing in just a couple of films: the comedy L’anno prossimo vado a letto alle dieci (Angelo Orlando, 1995) and Pronto (Jim McBride, USA, TV, 1997). 28 Piavoli 2011, 133. 29 Ibid., 134. 30 This sequence reminds us of the episode of the rose by Coleridge in which he wonders what would happen if a rose were left in the hand of a man who has been in paradise while dreaming (Borges 1979, 18). 31 Pesce 1990. 32 Maisetti 2006, 105. 33 MutoMito 1997, 33. 34 Ambrosini and Bartolini 2012, 167. 35 The film has been compared with the symbolic monolith of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968). Critics emphasize that Piavoli’s work seems to go in the opposite direction to where the vast majority of productions run (Brunetta 1995, 209). 36 Vona 1991; Maisetti 2006, 101; Ambrosini and Bartolini 2012, 169.

Ulysses in the Cinema 37 The scene recalls the horrors of another cinematically famous war in Vietnam, immortalized in Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979). 38 Vona 1991, 9. 39 Ibid., 10. 40 Piavoli 2011, 132. 41 Prieto Arciniega 2005, 23.

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A Sea of Metal Plates: Images of the Mediterranean from the Eighteenth Century until Post-­modern Theatre Sotera Fornaro

A trip through time and space One night in September 1786, Johaun Wolgang von Goethe left Karlsbad heading south, about to begin his own ‘hegira’.1 While sailing from Naples to Sicily, he wrote, ‘it is only when one has seen himself surrounded by the sea that one can understand the world and our relationship with it’ (3 April 1787).2 For Goethe, Sicily is ‘an unspeakably beautiful country’3 in which he encounters the ancient Greek landscape, the object of his own spiritual journey. As a sailor, Goethe comes face to face with his own anxieties and neuroses, pondering love, the relationship between generations, and the passage of time. In Sicily, the Odyssey becomes ‘a living word’:4 it mutates from literature into a real experience. In Palermo he conceives a dramatic project, Nausicaa, an epic story with tragic undertones and autobiographical details: in the surviving fragments, an aged Odysseus confronts the idea that he may be too old to return the love of a girl.5 Since Goethe, Odysseus has become an archetype for the intellectual in search of himself,6 but today this mythical figure has been reduced to obsolescence. The causes of the radical shift in the symbolic meaning of this journey through the Mediterranean are historical and philosophical, but also aesthetic. It is a journey that is seen today as traversing a border; the narrow space of the Mediterranean, claustrophobic and crowded, represents an area under continuous surveillance, over which, if nature would allow it, many walls could be raised. The Mediterranean seemed a homogeneous sea to travellers of the eighteenth century; a crossing from north to south, a bridge to the ‘Greek resorts’ that represented the roots of European culture and hence a path towards Ideal. It is for this reason that the Mediterranean represents for Hegel the brightest

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moment in history. Goethe’s Mediterranean was therefore predominantly a space of poetry and imagination, inhabited by the heroes and gods of Greek mythology; it would later be concentrated into a truly mystical, lyrical place, marked by the regret of having lost its central role in the celebratory L’Homme révolté (The rebel by Albert Camus, 1951) and the transfiguration of André Gide during his feverish journeys to Africa, of which all that remains are his diaries and reflections in novels. Fernand Braudel, in his many studies since his classic La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen à l’Epoque de Philippe II (1949) (The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II) established once and for all the significance of the Mediterranean as a historic and cultural space: however, due to the long duration of the School of Annales, it also ended up demonstrating the contradictions that live and collide in that mirror that is the sea. As Predrag Matvejević has written in his Mediteranski brevijar (1991) (Mediterranean: A Cultural Landscape), the clarity, the harmony and logic, the law and justice, each aspect of Greek, Western and Christian culture appears in the context of the Mediterranean. However, there is also the disintegration and explosion of centripetal forces: the Christian crusades, the anti-Christian Jihad. The Mediterranean nevertheless remains a metaphor for civilization, though one in which the events that have occurred since the mid-­twentieth century have dramatically revealed the violent and bloody divides, the continuous wounds, the historical discontinuity. Within the Mediterranean, the Renaissance has not always been able to defeat the Middle Ages, as the current threatening return of fundamentalisms demonstrates. One proof of this can be seen in the fact that during a time in which communications are faster than ever, the Mediterranean is littered with pontoons that look like the raft of Ulysses; boats that are not fit to cross the space; a journey that is left to fate for thousands and thousands of fugitives for whom the journey can mean death instead of the opportunity of a new life. In this way, the idea of a Mediterranean as being a marker of civilization,7 to which Romantic intellectuals gravitated in their journeys, has been fractured to the point that it has almost vanished. The Mediterranean no longer brings together cultures that look up to it and inevitably cross paths within it; nor does it give any individual person an identity they can refer to. Its function is entirely different: the Mediterranean divides and fragments. It is a border that does not rise up but instead descends, towards the abyss, and as such swallows anyone who travels around it. The cultural meaning of the Mediterranean has been distorted during the last two centuries: for Goethe it was a sea that acted as a bridge to an ideal unitary world, to a Greek culture

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that Europeans, particularly the Germans, understood as an ontological model of perfection. The fragility and elusiveness of any ideal is revealed as history progresses; to an extreme moment like today in which the Mediterranean has become a sea of refugees from the heart of Africa, or war-­torn areas of the Near East, who travel towards Europe while upending the meaning of the Romantic and Goethian journey, primarily in a geographic sense. These men do not follow an ideal; on the contrary, they are motivated by a fight for survival. Greece is no longer the aim, simply a critical point on the route. In modern times, voyages across the Mediterranean have come to represent a journey in which one does not hope for a return to ‘Ithaca’, but one of necessity and tragedy for the new fugitives.8 Through the Mediterranean pass the fragments of dislocated worlds, broken and frightened human beings that come from countries whose names have come to signify torture, persecution and imprisonment. The fate of the world, that which rests on the economy and the markets, seems to be decided elsewhere, in the Atlantic and Pacific routes. Nevertheless, it is up to the Mediterranean to rethink it owns centrality and understand what its future role might be in any future global project.9

Images of the Mediterranean Sea What are the consequences of this on art, in particular on the aesthetic images of the Mediterranean Sea? The question is too demanding for this short chapter. Nevertheless, it is possible to give a general answer, though this would still need to be verified for each individual case. The Mediterranean Sea has lost its poetry, its lyrical aura. The tradition that idealized it must today surrender to the images that appear in print, television and documentaries, that speak of a different sea and other journeys. Prose and drama are, in truth, late in representing these new historic conditions, in which the writer in no longer required to talk about himself or explain his own sentimental journey across the Mediterranean; on the contrary, he must bear witness to the journeys of others in which the Mediterranean emerges as a dangerous beast, ready to devour all. For example, in Eric-Emanuel Schmitt’s novel Ulysse from Baghdad (2008) that mirrors the Odyssey, the title,10 the sea, precisely when the coast of Sicily appears on the horizon, imposes a deadly challenge. The Iraqi protagonist is forced to leave his country and manages to board a ship after several episodes of hardship and grief. At some distance from Sicily, after a violent shipwreck, he manages to

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escape death because he can swim. The water of the sea is cold, hard as a stone, a grave that swallows his best friend, a huge beast with sharp ‘teeth’ that is only harmless while it is asleep. As I stated earlier, prose needs metaphors: photography and video are much more efficient from an aesthetic point of view, in the mimesis of this treacherous Mediterranean so different from the idealized, utopian interpretations of previous centuries. In cinema, there are excellent documentaries: from the Terraferma (2011) of Emanuele Crialese, to the documentary from the young Austrian director Jakob Brossmann, Lampedusa in inverno (2015), to Fuocoammare from Gianfranco Rosi, winner of the Festival of Berlin in 2016, in which the images that show the hard truth of reality end up creating an impossible narrative; these are only a few examples.

The Odyssey in a metaphoric sea In this chapter, I would like to highlight an artistic experiment that attempts to reconcile the metaphor of the Mediterranean with the contemporary transformation of its image. In this experiment, the Odyssiac metaphor is completely distorted: the ‘sea’ ceases to be a real space of water, sun and salt, and becomes an industrial urban landscape. The danger of crossing the sea is also interpreted by its symbolic meaning: it becomes the danger of drowning psychologically, of getting lost, of losing one’s identity. Outside of literature, therefore, the very same space becomes metaphoric: the spectator participates in an Odyssey that is actually an experience of dismay and perdition, while at the same time a reflection on the past, both individual and collective. The urban landscape becomes a text (using the title of an essay by Michel Butor) to read. Only when one starts to read it does it reveal itself to be an ancient text that seemingly has nothing to do with the city and its landscape: Homer’s Odyssey. In 2010, the six cities of the German industrial Ruhr-District were collectively nominated as the ‘European capital of culture’, with the main event entitled Odyssee Europa, for which six well-­known European theatre authors were asked to write a play that would interpret the topic of the journey of Odysseus.11 The idea was raised by an international working team, the raumlaborberlin, that deals with space from different points of view: architectonic, artistic and theoretical.12 Raumlaborberlin saw the industrial Ruhr-District as a massive theatre space, while satellite images of the region bring to mind an archipelago seen from above. The Ruhr-District also stirs memories of the mythical islands of Odysseus’ peregrination (see Fig.  6.1). The individual local realities are

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Fig. 6.1  Map of Odyssey Europa, 2010.

autonomous, though simultaneously connected to one another within a ‘labyrinth’13 marked by industrial landmarks: ‘blast furnaces, steelworks, abandoned industrial warehouses, breweries, old tyre deposits, through which wander those that are lost, misplaced, shipwrecked or defeated by other storms’.14 In order to be able to attend all six performances, the audience needed to travel from location to location in their own micro-Odyssey, a two-­day journey through the six theatres of the region, from Essen to Bochum, Oberhausen, Moers, Mülheim and Dortmund. Indeed, the journey by car, organized by the creators of the project, was part of the title: Odyssey Europa. Six performances and a pilgrimage through the space in between. The performances in the theatre spaces and the journey were thus inseparable. The journey of Odysseus (and consequently the spectators) becomes an Irrfahrt, a journey in which to lose yourself within the halfway worlds of the metropolitan landscape. The roads, motorway restaurants, superstores, industrial warehouses – all the empty spaces left behind by urbanization – create a world of cracks and transitional periods. While on the journey, it is possible to veer away from the planned stages towards other possibilities that may arise outside the programme, to give in to the temptation or danger of the in-­between spaces. Hospitality thus becomes salvation, as in the Homeric epic. During the performance, the

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spectators travelled in the cars of local residents, staying overnight in their houses; these Gastgeber (those who offer hospitality) also showed their favourite places (bars, shops, monuments) in their cities. Here the spectator has become a stranger arriving in an unfamiliar land, forced through hospitality to share the most intimate spaces, not only the house but also the car, which itself represents a modern ‘ship’ and second house, a private space. One can attempt to understand the stranger only if one experiences the unfamiliar; one can feel the displacement only if one also becomes displaced; one can perceive the pleasure and the danger of the journey only if one is travelling himself.15 Raumlaborberlin presents a surprising change of perspective: where are we? In Ithaca, a landscape of memory? Or an unknown scenario in the near future?16 Who is Odysseus? One who returns home and no longer recognizes his native island, or ‘the hero, who can return home but does not want to’?17 The previous image of Odysseus becomes ambiguous. Could he also be considered a predecessor of the exiled in our times, the refugees, the Bootsflüchtlinge? The migrant cannot return home, as forced repatriation could mean death in his case; only hospitality offers the possibility of a new life. The aim of the journey is no longer to return but to integrate into the otherness. However, a pessimist drama by the Turkish female writer Emine Sevgi Özdamar (born 1946 in Malatya) – the only author within the project who originates from the Mediterranean region – represents the impossibility of integration in European society. With the exception of Özdamar’s play, the Odyssey is used by the other authors as a background for existentialistic reflections on themes such as male identity, homosexuality and transvestism, as in Penelope from the Scottish author Enda Walsh; or with the ancient soul of our present, as in Der elfte Gesang (The eleventh canto) of Roland Schimmelpfennig, where the Homeric characters are contemporary men, trapped in their routine; or a reflection on poetry and history, as in Sirenengesang (Siren’s song) of the Hungarian Pèter Nádas; a possible and tragic continuation of the Odyssey as seen in the theatre scenes (Areteia, The demonstration of truth) of the Polish author Gregor Jarzyna, where Telemachus kills his father; and Odysseus’ pure ambition for power (who does not recognize his island anymore) from the German author Christoph Ransmayr (Odysseus, Verbrecher; Odysseus, criminal). Within this setting of the Odyssey, the play from Özdamar becomes a subversive text. First of all, Odysseus by no means represents the European man and his crisis of knowledge and identity. He is now the protagonist from a Mediterranean fable, one that circulates together with other Turkish, Greek and Armenian fables in a world where the oral tradition is still alive, set in an Istanbul not from our times but linked to the

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childhood of the author, a time in which Gone with the Wind was screened and in which music opens the play. Since it is a Traumspiel, a ‘performance of dreams’, any historic determination is transient. Regarding the other plays within this project, the tragedy of Özdamar stands apart from the literary topos of Odysseus as a man in search of himself and his past that finds in the Mediterranean culture his own roots. Furthermore, the protagonist of Özdamar’s plays is a woman – an important aspect – a young woman who must cross the Mediterranean and leave her own roots in order to find a better life in Europe. For the purpose of the subject at hand, this play is particularly significant for several reasons. Overall, it reminds us that the journey across the Mediterranean has for a long time been a painful experience for those who travel north, though not for those who travel in the opposite direction towards the ‘Greek lidos’. It also reminds us that the Mediterranean is a border for cultures and religions, a totality of cultural tessera and different worlds that does not succeed in creating a unitary and harmonic mosaic. The borders of the sea become a form of curtain that opens and closes on worlds that are different and constantly mutate, never friendly, always hostile and resistant to welcoming the travellers that venture into the liquid space that instead of connecting, divides them even more.

To Europa: the trip of Perikizi The Odyssey of Özdamar tells of a Turkish girl, Perikizi, a ‘fairy’ in love with theatre, particularly with Shakespeare, who begins a journey during the mid1960s from Istanbul to Europe in order to feed her passion for theatre. Perikizi dreams of Europe: the soundtrack to Gone with the Wind opens the drama, recalling the freedom of a world of beauty and love. But the girl in Europa finds herself lost in a labyrinth of danger and degradation.18 The drama thus recalls the immigration towards Germany of European and Turkish workers around fifty years earlier, described with the euphemism of Gastarbeiter, or ‘worker-­ guests’, a word that implies the ill-­conceived idea that they would return home. Homer’s Odyssey is completely ‘desacralized’ in the drama of Özdamar. Odysseus becomes an antihero, a negative archetype of someone who faces a journey to a strange and violent world while both economically and culturally disadvantaged. Trying to dissuade his daughter, the father tells her of Polyphemus’s story. The mythical images from the Greek tradition are altered to acquire new meanings, with Polyphemus becoming the image of Europe that destroys and belittles the others, those that are different, the foreigners. The

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atrocious European cultural pride is personified by the one-­eyed giant, with partial vision but great strength, that crushes Odysseus’ companions in a sea of blood. Odysseus may escape this fate but he pays a high price, losing his own identity and becoming a Nobody.19 The young protagonist, who wants to be an actress, will unfortunately also have to play the role that Europe imposes on her as a Turkish woman in Germany in the great European ‘theatre’. She will have to transform herself into a cleaning lady (Putzfrau), worker or beautician. Perikizi’s father stigmatizes this situation in one sentence in the text, written in capitals, as a manifesto, an epigraph, an oracular sentence: ‘The best Turk for Europe is the European that dresses as a Turk.’20 Whosoever is a stranger in Europe is worth nothing, has no means to defend himself, does not even have a name. Odysseus is still an archetype, but this time the archetype of the disappeared within society where worth is defined by economic resources. In Özdamar’s drama, Odysseus symbolizes the errans man.21 He belongs with the beggars,22 the poorest, the exploited workers, the abandoned. Europe also becomes the country of monsters, inhabited by the huge and dangerous Lestrygonians, as well as the more generous Lotus-­eaters, who do not wish the stranger to die but still offer him the fruit that causes a loss of memory, sweet as honey: those who try it ‘do not wish to go back, do not wish to go back home anymore’.23 This fear of loss of identity (and even humanity) is the cornerstone of Özdamar’s drama. In fact, those who arrive in Europe as foreigners undergo a substantial metamorphosis, from human to animal. Perikizi desperately seeks the Wohnheim reserved by the German government for the Turkish female, a ‘home’ that in time is revealed to be a cage for prostitutes, where they are transformed into sows by Circe, a supervisor of the house. The migrants are also reduced to a ‘bare life’.24 Perikizi shelters herself in memories of family members – the mother, the father, the aunt, the grandmother – who accompany the young that have been forced into their lives of exile, even if the company is only in memory. They are figures that connect the culture they have been forced to leave behind with the new world where they have arrived. Migrants bring with them objects from their world of origin: amulets and objects that may lose their meaning once they are displaced. Perikizi carries a donkey’s head, an object that functions as a bridge to her childhood and an alter ego of the protagonist, as well as a faint bond with the identity that is impossible to give up, in dream, in fantasy. This is true even when migrants lose their own name: they are ‘Nobody’. For migrants, this unfamiliarity and displacement is principally revealed through language – the impossibility of

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expressing yourself, the cross-­breeding of distorted words. They must confront bureaucracy in a foreign language, with its difficult formula and the lack of understanding of a strict social system to which they desperately wish to belong. Perikizi doesn’t speak German, and this is the highest wall that excludes her from the world she has dreamed of. The hybrid language of Özdamar, with German words contaminated by the Turkish language and vice versa, becomes the heart of her poetry as well as her theatre. In the first episode of the piece, the nocturnal sea of Istanbul rises and ‘no one knows why’;25 in the last, the sea – also without apparent reason – recedes.26 In this way the sea acts as the background of the feminine Odyssey of Perikizi. In conclusion, the destiny of Perikizi/Odysseus represents the destiny of all of yesterday’s and today’s migrants. The sea does not end with their disembarkation in Europe – for those who manage to make it, a new ‘sea’ awaits in the great cities: a sea of metal plates, of transit-­points, of solitude and of loss of identity. However, the play of Özdamar does contain a central theme, which revolves around a more or less imaginary biography, either with an ‘I’, or an ‘it’, in which the subject tells mainly about herself, and her success becomes a model for others. Furthermore, by relating an episode that occurred more than fifty years earlier, its similarity links it to the present. Theatre again manages to find, through referencing the mythical archetype of the Odyssey, an order (at least aesthetically speaking) for the way that events happen.

A sea of night and fog (Elfriede Jelinek, 2016) Everyday order, however, eludes literature and art even more. The ‘skirmishes’ between reality and representation, between truth and image, become more problematic as time goes by. How do we relate the shipwreck of 356 people off the shore of Lampedusa in September 2013? How do we tell of the countless shipwrecks that almost every day litter the Mediterranean and its coast, turning its waters into a cemetery and its beaches into a space of dismembered corpses on the rocks? One contemporary writer has tried, in a theatre play named Die Schutzbefohlenen, ‘Those who have to ask for protection’, those who ask for asylum. The German title of this play explicitly recalls the Greek tragedy The Suppliants from Aeschylus and Euripide, giving the title a completely different meaning: for those that cross the Mediterranean to request hospitality it is a necessity that they are compelled to perform, not a choice.

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This is a work in progress that the Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004, has been publishing on her website since 2013.27 There have been performances in Vienna, Berlin, Bologna and Basel. The area of interest for our subject is the image of the Mediterranean Sea that is presented in this odd play. Jelinek does not tell stories directly, instead collecting testimonies from the media (radio, television, internet) but also from literature. Words, thoughts, memories accumulate: the lack of communication becomes the dominant characteristic of this confused chaos in which we live; a continuous stream of news, publicity and consumerism, the ruins of war, stars dressed in sequins, mutilated bodies and perfect bodies, sculpted, divine. Jelinek’s writing does not offer a point of view. From these voices and sounds emerge powerful images: groups of men without a centre, oscillating, that wander erratically in a world where borders, even conceptual ones, crumble; life’s compelling needs, to eat, drink, defecate – these themes relentlessly cut through the Mediterranean, the sea of the gods of the Olympus, of myth, of a Greece that is no longer ideal or classical. We follow the journey as it goes north by land, borders have now become insurmountable barriers. Central to these unstable routes, Europe and their divinities, are the market, money, production, the cult of appearance. None of this is explained linearly by Jelinek; instead, the brief, intermittent glimpses that we are offered, in which human events drown, become an advert of a second, easily forgotten and ultimately lacking any verisimilitude. We return to conclusions about the sea. The Odyssey appears (somewhat obviously) as one of the main base texts in Jelinek’s play. However, while Odysseus is welcomed by the king of the Phaeacians (who gives him the ship that will take him home fast as a dream to his homeland, a ship that does not need a captain or a helm because it already knows the route), no one welcomes the refugees, no one asks them their name, and in any case the answer to that question would be silence, because no one wants to return to the place they are from. Suddenly, the memory of the ship of the Phaeacians appears. Jelinek quotes Homer’s Odyssey; however, the quote becomes a parody, as the immigrants do not know the miraculous ship of the Phaeacians that instantly crosses the sea and reaches its destination as if in a dream. The immigrants know only the pontoon that stops in the middle of the night, has a broken engine; where do these ships that were covered ‘by the fog and the night’ really take you? The Greek of the Odyssey offers ‘haze and fog’, eri kai nefele, but in German Jelinek writes ‘Nebel und Nacht’, uttering this terrible binomial of the German language. Nacht und Nebel (night and fog) was the phrase used by the Nazis to classify the political inmates in concentration camps, words that they wore

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written on their backs, as their destiny, two big letter ‘N’s. As with those prisoners, the journey of the refugees is lost in the fog of the sea, lost in the night, a nocturnal journey in the fog, neither knowing where they would end up but both finishing as smoke in the fog, some swallowed by a sea that offers no grave, others turned to smoke on the way to the crematorium.‘Night and fog action’ was the expression that Hitler mockingly took from the aria of an opera by Wagner to signify hunting the enemies of the regime, in order to nullify them. Auschwitz thus returns, by way of the Mediterranean. Metaphor and remembrance are joined. The images of the current Mediterranean do not heal the wounds of memory, but rather reopen them. Auschwitz: the place of victims, the place where there was no reason. The gassed prisoners return to memory with the victims from the pontoons, those that become numbers on a card in big plastic sheets, torn from the wine-­coloured sea: the monologue of Renzo Martinelli, Rumore di acque (Sound of water, 2010–15),28 allegorically speaks of a journey across the Mediterranean in which men become numbers. Writing does not judge, it simply tells. It tells of victims, and with the victims of today, the victims of yesterday return; with the fog on the sea of today, the metaphorical fog of yesterday returns, victims of a system that crushes men and does not know their rights. In this way the young Iphigenia, sacrificed by the Greeks to make the wind blow so that the ships could sail to Troy, becomes a young girl on a pontoon where the engine breaks, awaiting her sacrifice in the middle of the sea, where the ship is full of men, where rocks make it immobile and unable to continue its journey, because there is not a single breath of wind.

Notes 1 Goethe 1988a, 401. 2 Ibid., 230–1. 3 Goethe 1988b, 51 (Letter to Charlotte von Stein, 18 April 1787). 4 Goethe 1988a, 323 (‘. . . nun ist mir erst die Odyssee ein lebendiges Wort’). 5 Fornaro 1992, introduction. 6 Boitani 1994; Fasano 1999; Fornaro 2011a; Fornaro 2011b. 7 See also Horden and Purcell 2000; Abulafia 2003. 8 Schmitt 2008. 9 Cassano 1996. 10 Pireddu 2015, 267–86. 11 The texts are published in RUHR 2010.

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12 http://raumlabor.net/odyssee-­europa/ (accessed 18 October 2016). 13 Maak 2010, 430 (‘Allenfalls das Staellitenbild der Region schafft eine unmittelbare Nähe, das Auge im All sendet Bilder, die an eine weit gestreckte Inselgruppe denken lassen, von dort oben sieht das Ruhrgebiet am ehesten aus wie die mythischen Inseln der greichischen Antike; Ein Labyrinth aus Einlanden, die in einem diffusen Funkeln miteinander verknüpft scheinen’). 14 Ibid., 430. 15 The theoretical question at the core of the project comes from Derrida 1997: what does hospitality mean? Asking the name of the one who arrives? Or is it the silent welcome in which both the question and the name of the one who arrives become one? 16 http://raumlabor.net/odyssee-­europa/ (accessed 18 October 2016). 17 Maak 2010, 432 (‘Odysseus ist natürlich auch der Held, der nach Hause kann, aber nicht will’). 18 The drama, inspired mostly by The Tempest, has an autobiographical tone and recalls many of the situations mentioned in the novel The Bridge of the Golden Horn. 19 Özdamar 2010, 287: ‘. . . Odysseus hatte gesagt, er hieße Niemand. Das rettete ihm, aber in Vergleich zum geistiges Riesenformat des Kyklops ist er tatsächlich ein Nichts, ein Niemand . . . Tochter . . . wenn du in ein fremdes Land gehst . . . wirst du auch zu einem Niemand schrumpfen . . . Perikizi, mein Augenlicht, schau. Am Ende liegt Odysseus allein und nackt vor seiner Küste’ ‘Odisseo disse di chiamarsi Nessuno. Questo lo salvò, ma in confronto al fantasma gigantesco del Ciclope, egli è davvero un Nessuno . . . Figlia . . . se tu vai in una terra straniera . . . ti ridurrai anche tu ad un Nessuno . . . Periziki, luce dei miei occhi, guarda. Alla fine Odisseo giace solo e nudo davanti alla sua costa.’ 20 Ibid., 288: ‘IN WAHRHEIT IST DER BESTE TÜRKE FÜR EUROPA DER ALS TÜRKE VERKLEIDETE EUROPÄER.’ 21 Cf. for the definition and the theoretical premise of the project ‘Errans’ by the Insitute of Cultural Enquiry, Berlin (https://www.ici-­berlin.org/errans/project-­ description/, accessed 9 October 2016). Cf. Calzolaio and Pievani 2016. 22 Özdamar 2010, 303–4, with the quote of Od. 18. 26–31. 23 Ibid., 297: ‘Doch wer die honigsüße Frucht des Lotos isst, /wünscht nicht mehr zurück, wünscht nicht Heimkehr’. Cf. Od. 9. 91–102. 24 Agamben 1988. 25 Özdamar 2010, 273 (‘Das Meer steigt, wer weiß warum’). 26 Ibid., 333 (‘Das Meer hat sich zurückgezogen’). 27 http://www.elfriedejelinek.com/ (accessed 17 March 2017). 28 http://www.teatrodellealbe.com/ita/spettacolo.php?id=77 (accessed 17 March 2017).

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Sailors on Board, Heroes en Route: From the Aegean World to Modern Stage Erika Notti and Martina Treu

Stop! I wanna go home take off this uniform and leave the show. But I’m waiting in this cell because I have to know. Have I been guilty all this time? Roger Waters, Stop (The Wall, 1979)

Introduction1 This chapter presents the theme of ‘sailing in troubled waters’, focusing on the images, myths and symbols related to navigation in the Mediterranean Sea from the Bronze Age to modern reception. On the basis of philological and iconographical evidence, special attention will be paid to Homer’s ‘historical’ routes, as well as to more archaic representations of marine subjects. We will then give a brief account of the reception of these myths, and particularly of Homer’s Odyssey, within modern languages (names and words borrowed from the poem are still largely used, although with different meanings). Finally, we will compare a number of theatre productions that are either dedicated to Ulysses’s journeys2 or to his family, or to those who did not return home (all of his sailors died at sea). Today, other unnamed sailors continue to challenge the waves, as they have done since the Minoan Age, across the Mediterranean Sea, from the Eastern to the Western borders.

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Troubled waters in the Aegean3 Tradition has it that it was Minos, the mythical king of Crete, who first established a mighty navy able to dominate the ‘troubled waters’ of the Aegean,4 and Evans named the sophisticated Cretan civilization he had discovered ‘Minoan’ after him. Thanks to their advanced seafaring skills, this civilization expanded into the entire Aegean basin during the Late Bronze Age, and in the process the town of Akrotiri, on the near Cycladic island of Thera (Santorini), produced one of the most extraordinary figurative celebrations of ancient seafaring so far discovered. When the so-­called ‘Minoan Eruption’ took place, the volcanic island of Thera caved in, creating what is now the caldera. This event, one of the most terrible cataclysms ever to occur in the recent history of our planet, culminated in a tsunami.5 On the southern coast of the island, the town of Akrotiri, with all its wonderful wall paintings, lay perfectly preserved under a thick deposit of volcanic ash. The ‘Flotilla Fresco’6 was discovered in the ‘West House’, also known as the ‘House of the Admiral’, precisely for its maritime themes. This is generally considered to be part of the more complex composition of ‘the Miniature Frieze’, one of the most important and most closely studied monuments in Aegean art. The South Section (Room 5, South Wall) shows a fleet sailing from one harbour to another. The maritime subjects, such as the joyful leaping dolphins, the elaborate ornamentation clearly visible especially on one of the biggest ships, and the participation of the inhabitants of the port of arrival all seem to suggest that this represents a moment of celebration. The parade of men along the base of the Arrival Town and a bull, which is apparently being led towards the shore, have always been the subject of special attention. This scene, which is extremely fragmentary, has for the most part been restored, but it cannot be established with any certainty whether it represents a ritual or a domestic scene. However, it has been suggested that the artist may be hinting at the ritual sacrifice of the bull, within the context of a religious festival of navigation. It is well known that in the Mediterranean unpredictable storms and strong winds made it unsafe to take to sea for long periods, especially in winter.7 Obviously, as now, the ancient maritime cultures were aware of these dangers and chose the sailing season according to the reliability of the winds and the sea.8 Therefore, the generally prevailing view is that a maritime people such as that of Akrotiri might well have celebrated the inauguration or the recommencement of the sailing season at a particular moment of their ‘calendar’, perhaps also linked to the cycle of vegetation, as seems to be suggested by a

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variety of decorative motifs.9 Although the currently available evidence is of course insufficient for a confident investigation into the Minoan calendar or calendars, it may be worth looking at the Mycenaean documents, and in particular a term attested on a tablet (PY Tn 316.1) which describes a ritual procession with gifts being bestowed by the community of Pylos on major and minor deities: po-­ro-wi-­to-jo. This term has been interpreted as an indication of the time when the offerings take place, that is to say po-­ro-wi-­to-jo = *Plōwisto(h) io, ‘in the month of sailing’ (cf. πλωίζω, πλέω).10 Let us now go back to the Miniature Frieze. In the North Section (Room 5, North Wall), in stark contrast to the festive atmosphere of the Flotilla, there are partly preserved depictions of wrecks, naked bodies of men in the water and a landing party of warriors, apparently armed in the Mycenaean manner,11 marching along a rocky shore. Although it is generally agreed that the vessels are warships or at least carrying warriors, and the odd position of the men in the water was probably used by the artist to represent dead warriors, we cannot tell whether he was referring to victims of a sea battle or a shipwreck.12 There is no need here to speculate on the artist’s ‘realism’, on possible geographic identifiers in the picture, or what these warriors might be doing, but these powerful images do seem to be a visual metaphor of the impending decline and fall of the Minoan civilization. The eventual arrival of a Mycenaean king on the throne of Knossos began another story, that of the Mycenaeans and the Greek world, the setting for Homer’s memories. There are no waters more turbulent, academically speaking, than those to be found in the study of Homer, particularly when it comes to sea routes, so in order to leave out the monsters and temptations typical of Ulysses’s return, several preliminary remarks are required. As is known, the study of the ancient Aegean began with the pioneering archaeological research carried out in the second half of the nineteenth century and culminated in Michael Ventris’s extraordinary deciphering of Linear B between 1952 and 1953. Since this ‘Copernican revolution’, it has become particularly desirable to define the relation between myth and history and delimit their domains. Given the current archaeological and philological evidence, it is now generally accepted that there is a certain degree of historical truth behind Homer’s heroic age. However, it remains extremely difficult to determine its quality.13 Although this chapter’s limits of scope and time prevent us from going into such a complex discussion, which ideally started with the famous dispute between Eratosthenes and Strabo,14 it could still be considered in the light of ‘verifiability’ in the audience’s eyes. In fact, fantastic elements such as monsters

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would not be plausible in known regions, but could be acceptable in the ‘ambiguous’ spaces of the Mediterranean. As one of the authors of this chapter has explained in greater depth elsewhere,15 the question is of course strictly related to the strategies of diffusion and fruition of the story. Two main narrative nuclei emerge in the Odyssey: one embraces books I–IV and (most of) XIII– XXIV and appears more evidently ‘historical’; whereas the other, embedded inside the first and embracing books V–(beginning of) XIII, contains the more manifestly fictitious stories which Ulysses tells the Phaeacians.16 These last, naturally, remain beyond the scope of this study.

Ancient sea routes: between myth and history If we take a map and trace out the ancient mariners’ sea routes from the Troad to the Peloponnese,17 the ones which seem to be evoked by Homer, two can be easily identified: one straight across the Aegean from Lesbos to Euboea with, about halfway over, good shelter from the wind provided by the southern coast of the island of Psara; and the other going beyond the mouth of the Dardanelles, north along the coast in an arc, then turning northwest and finally southwest towards Euboea. Slight variations are possible in both cases: along the first route, for instance, a ship may also find favourable winds in the channel of Chios, but this island is located too far south to offer useful shelter, considering that from its southern shore one would have to cross the open sea. As for the second route, it was also possible to sail either past Artemision, along the eastern coast, or through the narrow straits which separate Euboea from Attica. Leaving aside the monstrous but imaginary dangers enriching the plot, which as we have said are outside the scope of this study, it is interesting to note that both these routes present two very real challenges: the tempestuous waters of Cape Malea, and Mount Athos. On the first route, if a ship succeeded in doubling Cape Malea,18 she could continue her journey protected from the wind by the Peloponnese, but if she failed, the northern wind – now called meltemi – would blow the ship into the open sea as far as Crete and beyond to the southern edge of the Mediterranean, towards Egypt. The sea around Mount Athos, nunc Akti, can be extremely dangerous too, due to the gusts of wind which sometimes churn it up. Its notoriety has passed down through the centuries: Herodotus recounts the disaster of Mardonius’s fleet in 492 bc.19 We also learn from him that Xerxes even commanded a canal to be dug precisely so as not to encounter this treacherous mountain.

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In the light of all this, no modern mariner would have any doubt about which route to take. In fact, the route going straight from Lesbos to Euboea is considerably shorter and is favoured by the meltemi, which usually – at least in our times – blows from the north and north-­east. However, the ancients notoriously mistrusted the open sea and tended to prefer to keep the coast in view. In Homer’s world, navigation ‘in sight of land’, also called ‘coastal navigation’, where orientation relies on the observation of landmarks on the coast, was very common, although there seems to be no restriction on seagoing at night. It is interesting to note that in the Odyssey all Homer’s heroes except Ulysses select the first route, even if with some hesitation. They sail towards Tenedos,20 where they offer sacrifices to the gods. At this point, however, Ulysses turns his ships back towards the Troad to satisfy Agamemnon’s will. Nestor, Diomedes and Menelaus, on the other hand, reach Lesbos, about thirty miles south. Here they have to make a decision: they can either sail around Chios to the right, past the island of Psara, or to the left, over against the stormy headland of Mimas. After obtaining a divine sign, they choose to navigate across the open sea towards Geraestus, in Euboea, instead of sailing along the coast. This is a happy choice for Nestor and – at least according to Homeric tradition21 – Diomedes, but not for Menelaus, whose pietas leads him to delay and separate from Nestor by Sunium, when his steersman, Phrontis, is killed by Apollo. After giving burial and due funeral rites to his comrade, Menelaus sets off again towards Cape Malea, but here he is caught in a terrible storm, which divides his fleet. Some of his ships are carried towards Crete, while others, including his own, are carried southwards to Egypt.22 Ulysses seems to have made a different choice, perhaps out of greed. His route along the coast is only apparently convenient. In fact, it poses two serious difficulties: it is very long, and forces the navigating of Mount Athos, which as we have said is extremely dangerous. Ulysses reaches Ismarus, the city of the Cicones. He sacks the town, but he suffers heavy losses when the Cicones who live inland gather to help their neighbours. Then he leaves with the survivors and Zeus sends him more dangers to face. Boreas blows the ships southwards, then as he is navigating Cape Malea he is blown off course23 and is lost in the unknown. Later, when Ithaca comes into view, he seems on the point of returning to the known world but the winds released from Aeolus’s bag push him back again.24 Along his second route, he is driven back towards the Greek world from the unknown far west of Ogygia, by parallel sailing and observing the constellations. High seas navigation is described with detailed indications about the starry sky at night25 – and incidentally this is the first known Greek mention of this technique. From Scheria, a ‘possible’ island where Ulysses tells his ‘impossible’

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stories,26 the transition towards a real world – where we have enjoyed trying to imagine his tracks – is finally completed when he falls asleep during the last stage of his journey27 and wakes up in the historical and ‘quite real’ Ithaca.28

A sea of images As with a ship in troubled waters, or in a time machine, we have just been taken back to the Late Bronze Age, from Santorini’s frescoes to ancient sea routes, and to Homer’s roots. From those roots, in ages past, a huge tree has grown: the reception of the Odyssey. We will explore some of its branches, tied to the images of troubled waters: first, with a survey on the terms ‘Odyssey’, ‘Odysseus’ and ‘Ulysses’; second, by analysing some theatre productions connected not only to the Odyssey, but also to ancient and modern routes across the Mediterranean Sea.29 The ancient poems called ‘Nostoi’ (the homecoming from Troy), were lost, all except for the Odyssey. Odysseus, aka Ulysses, is the one who made it: a skilful sailor and clever hero. However, his trip as a whole was not so fortunate. As previously noted, Nestor, Diomedes and Menelaus chose the straightest and shortest way from the Troad towards the Peloponnese. They decided to sail from Lesbos to Euboea, covering less than 100 miles. Ulysses, however, seems to have made a different choice. He reached Ismarus, the city of the Cicons. But what was it that pushed him so far northwards? Despite the use of the passive tense in the text, where Ulysses tells that he was carried by the wind towards Ismarus, it seems that his raid – which was in any case unsuccessful – was actually planned. Ulysses led his crew along a most dangerous route, notably unusual. He likely chose it due to his greed: he was aiming to sack rich cities on the way back home. This is what we may call the ‘dark side’ of the Odyssey, which both ancient and modern audiences tend to forget. Moreover Ulysses, a notorious liar, is the only witness to his travels. He alone carries the memories of the dead.30 He returned home alone. All those who left Ithaca with him died, in war or at sea. Later, we will focus on those who sailed and drowned, and on those who still wander with them, in the Mediterranean and on stage, until the present day. But let us first see how the current language reflects this crucial ambivalence – a fortunate sailor, an unfortunate journey – regarding the Odyssey and his hero. If we Google the name of the poem, we find references to sailing in troubled water, and to homecoming, but also to many different types of travels and experiences, as well as to a huge range of persons, events, places and objects. In

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this case, surfing the web could be as dangerous as sailing the sea: we might get lost, or sink, in a galaxy of meanings that we cannot even imagine, and which would carry us far from our focus.31 In English, for instance, we find 123 million results for ‘Odyssey’ and 6.78 million for ‘Odysseus’.32 As for the Odyssey, we first find definitions such as ‘an adventurous journey’, followed by lists which vary from one language to another, but usually include Homer’s poem and other masterpieces of art, such as Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).33 Perhaps under his influence, the name of the poem is quite frequent in science fiction, and in most cinematic genres, more or less related to Homer. In the former category, a forthcoming Odyssey was announced in August 2015, but the project is still in progress;34 as for the latter, the most interesting examples are the ‘Pilgrimage’ with a mobile cinema on wheels, promoted in 2009 by Tilda Swinton and Marc Cousins in the Scottish Highlands, entitled by journalists ‘an Odyssey’ (http://www.a-­pilgrimage.org; accessed 20 March 2017), and the beautiful documentary by the same director, Marc Cousins, called The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011).35 On television, aside from the adaptations of the poem, we find an NBC series (premiere 5 April 2015), called simply Odyssey in the UK and, quite significantly, American Odyssey in the US. It is meant as a modern-­day take on the Odyssey, according to its authors.36 The leading character is a female US soldier, the only survivor of her military unit. She must return home, alone: ‘A soldier. A mother. Betrayed. Her Odyssey begins’ says the trailer (released 6 March 2015). The series was not as lucky as the archetype; it had poor reviews and was cancelled at the end of the first season.37 We wish better luck to another Odyssey, a NASA Exploration Project (on the seas of Mars), and to the Odyssée Hostel in Berlin: a safe shelter for many ‘adventurous’ travellers. The name also refers to other hotels, sites, schools, golf supplies, cars, video games and so on.38 Across this wide range of meanings, the most common feature is a striking ambivalence between positive and negative aspects, which, as we will see, may also be found in its reception, particularly on stage. Indeed, the bad feelings are associated more with the travel (‘Odyssey’) than with the hero: Ulysses evokes, more frequently, ‘good vibrations’ connected to adventure and discovery, fortunate missions or quests of a man seeking himself. As a brand or a trademark, he gives his name to TV shows, novels, enterprises and so on. This ambivalence, both in terms and in reception, has deep roots within ancient times, and still lies in the Mediterranean. The dangers of troubled waters play an important role in the Homeric reception, and they somehow balance, as a counterpart, the hero. The sea, indeed, may be considered as the second leading

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character of the poem, though it also dominates an epic genre – the adventurous journey – that is firmly connected to our times and to the tragic shipwrecks across the Mediterranean. In our opinion, the present-­day mass movements of migrants and refugees are among the most important causes of the revival of Odyssey worldwide, which one author of this chapter has been studying during the past years.39

Troubled waters, inside and outside the theatre The reception of epics in general, and particularly of the Odyssey, is notably rapidly expanding across all genres and forms of media, from theatre to cinema. On stage, it is adapted and played so frequently – and increasingly in the past years – that it would be impossible to list all the productions here.40 Among the ones we have studied, therefore, we will cite those which show a stronger connection both to the ancient Homeric routes traced above, and to the troubled waters of present times. Most adaptations focus on partial points of view, on one (or a few) key ideas or characters, excluding others: on these premises, we have tried to classify some of the most recent productions of the Odyssey. The list which follows is a first attempt to identify the main themes or characters of each category.

The journey Many theatre productions focus on the navigation of the Mediterranean Sea, some of which share a positive attitude towards sailing and travelling, connected to adventure, the desire of knowledge and discovery, the pleasure of telling tales. In this category, for the type of narrative and the nature of its audience, we could find many examples among the most recent and successful in Italy. On one side, there are small productions for selected audiences, especially for children: we will only cite Canto la storia dell’astuto Ulisse (I sing the story of astute Ulysses) by Flavio Albanese (Piccolo Teatro, Milan),41 Odissea viaggio nel teatro (Odyssey, a journey in theatre for thirty-three spectators) and Odissea per bambini, viaggio nel teatro per venti bambini di tutte le età (Odyssey for children. A journey in theatre for twenty children of all ages) by Teatro del Lemming, Rovigo.42 On the other side, on a wider scale, a well-­known example is the Greek-Italian Odyssey directed by Robert Wilson, based on the script by Simon Armitage and translated into modern Greek. After the premiere at Athens (2012), and a sold-­out run in

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Milan (2013), the show returned to Piccolo Teatro (Milan) in October 2015. Its huge success is due to many factors: the cast, the scenes, the live music, but also Wilson’s fast rhythm and Armitage’s brilliant style.43 Here, in particular, the Odyssey becomes part of a collective heritage regarding adventurous journeys: a fascinating universe which includes many modern and ancient narratives of travel, and not only by sea (from Sinbad to Jules Verne, from comics to science fiction). The homecoming of Ulysses perhaps loses a part of its original bittersweet taste (especially the tragic death of the crew). What counts is the joyful, thrilling, even childish pleasure of storytelling. The show perfectly matches the variety of expectations and tastes of an international audience and attracts, moreover, with its ‘fantastic’ characters: dangerous women, seductive witches (Circe), bizarre creatures, hybrids (the Sirens), and monsters (the Cyclops).44

The Cyclops Another branch of tradition (indirectly connected to the dangers of the sea) was born from Homer’s Odyssey IX and from Euripides’ satyr play Cyclops. Sicily, in particular, claims to be the homeland of the Cyclops’s legend, and hosts many recent versions of the myth, including some in a Sicilian dialect: such is the case with ‘U Ciclopu (The Cyclops, 1914), by the Nobel Prize winner Luigi Pirandello, wonderfully adapted for the modern stage, directed and played by Vincenzo Pirrotta (Palazzolo Acreide, Greek theatre, 2005).45 Another Sicilian dramatist, throughout his long career, has been translating classical patterns into his own ‘personal language’: the artist Emilio Isgrò, known since the 1980s for his monumental trilogy Orestea di Gibellina (Gibellina’s Oresteia).46 Among his masterpieces are the experimental novel Polifemo (Polyphemus, 1989) and the monologue Odissea cancellata (Odyssey Cancelled, 2004).47 The most distinctive feature of his work is the ambivalent treatment of both Ulysses and Polyphemus: they both share good and bad instincts, qualities, virtues, doubts and vices. In Sicily once again, a modern version of the Cyclops’s tale was written and performed by a master of cunto (a Sicilian technique of oral performance) and Opera dei pupi (Puppet Opera): Mimmo Cuticchio.48 Another Sicilian director and actress, Emma Dante, in autumn 2014 opened the classical festival at Teatro Olimpico (Vicenza), which she directed, with a free adaptation of Polyphemus’s myth: Io nessuno e Polifemo: intervista impossibile (I, Nobody, and Polyphemus: an impossible interview).49

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Waiting One year later, the same theatre hosted a new version of the Odyssey by Emma Dante: Odissea, movimento n.1 (Odyssey, Movement 1, 26–7 September 2015).50 The title indicates the beginning of a cycle; indeed, the script is based on the first books of the poem, and opens with Penelope and Telemachus waiting for Ulysses (see Fig. 7.1). Later we see Ulysses, on a different shore, watching the sea, longing for Zeus’s permission to leave. The plot seems frozen in suspended action, as is the case with other modern plays predominantly focused on the last chapters of the poem, such as Ithaka by Botho Strauss (1996), which is set in Ulysses’s palace.51 A comparable emphasis on the mother–son couple, and on those who spend their lives waiting, may be found in other works either focused on collective figures – for instance Waiting for the rain (see below), and the poem Old Women and the Sea by Yannis Ritsos (1958)52 – or dedicated to single characters, such as three recent Italian monologues respectively entitled Penelope by Paolo Puppa (played, among others, by Laura Curino),53 Odiséa. Lettura selvatica (Odyssey, a wild reading) by Tonino Guerra,54 and Odissea by Mario Perrotta (2013).55

Fig. 7.1  Odissea, movimento n.1 (2015), written and directed by Emma Dante, 68° Ciclo di Spettacoli Classici al Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza.

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The comeback Other plays focus on Ulysses’s homecoming and on his family reunion. Three different examples of this category have recently been staged in Milan: Sbarchi_ un’Odissea (landing an Odyssey) by Michele Losi (see below); Ulisse: il ritorno (Ulysses: the homecoming, a 2013 production by Corrado d’Elia, reprised on 5–18 May 2015); and La casa – Odissea di un crack (Home. An Odyssey of a crack) by La Fionda Teatro (last staged on 13 July 2015).56

The missing ones Finally, we may cite the productions which inspired the first steps of our research. These are dedicated to Ulysses’s crew, and to all those seafarers who tragically perish in our times, while trying to go north or west from Africa or from Syria. Most of them lie under the Mediterranean, their bodies missing, their names unknown: a multitude of Nobodies. The dead ones, in the Odyssey, are not only in book XI (Od. XI 46–800); they are everywhere: around Ulysses, in the waves, in Ithaca’s palace, before their descent into Hades. In this sense, Isgrò’s Odissea cancellata (cited above) could be interpreted as a nightmare or delirium, where all voices are ghosts or visions of Ulysses’s hallucinating mind. Or perhaps even the titular hero is nothing more than a spirit, wandering with Aeolus’s winds across the waves of the Mediterranean Sea.57 In the past decade, after Isgrò, the ‘tragedies of the seas’ evoke – unfortunately – Homeric echoes in the mind of artists. They rapidly increase: not only the number of productions directly connected to the Odyssey, but also those focused on the troubled waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The first example was perhaps Mimmo Cuticchio (cited above), who created an oral performance (cunto) inspired by Homer’s poem (L’approdo di Ulisse, Ulysses’s landing, Linosa, 2011).58 The ancient model is less explicit, but ever present, in other plays which depict contemporary shipwrecks with epic tones, comparable to the Odyssey: La Nave Fantasma (The Ghost Ship) by Giovanni Maria Bellu, Renato Sarti and Bebo Storti (2004),59 Trilogia del naufragio (Shipwreck Trilogy) by Lina Prosa (2007– 13),60 and Rumore di acque (Noise in the Waters) by Marco Martinelli (2010).61 This last production deserves special attention: in 2008–9, while Martinelli was working in Sicily and sailing the troubled waters of the Mediterranean, he created his text as a nightmare, ultimately inspired by Shakespeare’s Tempest. He imagined a general, possibly similar to Colonel Gaddafi (the former Libyan dictator), but symbolically intended as a demon of the Abyss, a Poseidon or

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Hades for our times. In the original production, he is played by a young dynamic actor, Alessandro Renda, with the support of traditional tunes (from Arab and Sicilian folk music repertories) played live by two Sicilian musicians (the Mancuso Brothers). The text is a litany, a funeral oration: for one hour, the general keeps scanning numbers and names. Little by little, the audience gets to know what they mean: he is counting the missing ones, the dead corpses lying under the waters of the Mediterranean. The original production premiered in Mazara del Vallo, a maritime border town in western Sicily (2010); it was reprised several times in Italy and abroad, particularly in a symbolic place: Lampedusa, an island in the middle of the Sicilian sea, a landing point for thousands of immigrants. There, Martinelli’s show was last staged on the first anniversary of a most tragic shipwreck, while the fourth Imagines conference took place in Faro (2 October 2014). In recent years, Rumore di acque has been performed many times (in Italian, French, English, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Romanian). It is still on tour, either directed by Martinelli or by others worldwide, across Europe, in Senegal, in Chile and the US.62 It will be staged in Washington, DC, under the patronage of the United Nations, and directed by Jacopo Rampini, who asked Martinelli if in his production the general could act and be dressed as Donald Trump – and of course permission was granted! These issues, concerning migrations and refugees, become every day more and more relevant worldwide. From this perspective, the Homeric reception meets another ancient archetype: Aeschylus’s Suppliant Women, which is based on an adventurous ‘odyssey’ of female refugees travelling from Africa to Athens. In Italy, this tragedy recently inspired, among others, an adaptation directed by Gabriele Vacis (Supplici a Portopalo, Suppliants at Portopalo, with Vincenzo Pirrotta, 2009)63 and one in a Sicilian dialect, written by Moni Ovadia, Mario Incudine and Pippo Kaballà (Syracuse, Greek theatre, 2015) (see Fig. 7.2).64 Regarding the role of the Mediterranean Sea specifically, the most relevant case studies, which are still ongoing, are Odissea: un racconto mediterraneo (Odyssey, a Mediterranean Tale) created by Sergio Maifredi (Teatro Pubblico Ligure) and Meeting the Odyssey, directed by Michele Losi (Scarlattine Teatro). These are both collective projects, each covering many years, which choose the sea as their main stage: with the Odyssey, they leave theatres and recreate Ulysses’s journey on the shores and in the waters of Europe. The first director, Maifredi, has in the past few years been working with teachers and scholars to prepare a stage reading of the Homeric poem. He gathered, over time, many well-­known Italian actors, singers and storytellers: he

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Fig. 7.2  Chorus of Aeschylus’s Suppliant Women, directed by Moni Ovadia, Greek Theatre, Syracuse, 2015.

led them to read (or sing) one or more books of the poem, with music inspired by Mediterranean folk songs. They do not respect the original sequence of the poem, but rather – as in the original contests of rapsodoi – the unique nature of the open-­air, oral performance on the sea: each time different, unpredictable, inspired by the location, the art of improvisation, the personality of each performer, the feeling with the audience, the interaction with other performances. The project, so far, has travelled back and forth along the Italian coasts, from the north ­western coasts to southern Italy and Sicily.65 The second international project, even more focused on the sea, is Meeting the Odyssey. An Adventure beyond Arts, Myths, and Everyday Life in Europe (2013–16). For three summers, several theatre crews have travelled on a historical sailboat, named Hoppet (Hope). It sailed from St Petersburg across the Baltic Sea and the channels of Europe (2014), reached northern Italy, stopped in Sardinia and Malta (2015), and in the summer of 2016 headed towards Greece (where the last performances were scheduled for July). The project involved dozens of theatre companies and hundreds of participants. It included conferences, meetings, exhibitions, a few big productions (with an international cast) and ‘instant performances’ (site-­specific theatre workshops, led by professional actors, with local inhabitants).66

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Fig. 7.3  Nausicaa. Io sono Io (2015), directed by Giancarlo Biffi, Cadadieteatro – Meeting the Odyssey, Olbia, 13 August 2015.

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Each show or workshop explored a different theme of the Odyssey, in connection with local, present issues (immigration, friendship, hospitality, sexual prejudices, etc.). For instance, the 2014 production, Waiting for the Rain (which also closed the 2016 tour in Greece), premiered in Opole, a Polish town whose male inhabitants mostly left decades ago to work abroad. The script therefore focuses on the feelings of women and children who keep waiting for their relatives, like Penelope and Telemachus. For the Italian tour, the first instant performances (Milan, 23 and 24 May 2015) were based on a workshop with Italian and foreign students from various high schools: it was freely inspired by the Sirens myth, and read from the teenagers’ point of view in order to show some ambivalent aspects of today’s stereotypes on women and their relationships with men. The second Italian production, sbarchi_un’Odissea (landing an Odyssey, May 2015), featured an international cast and a rather unusual location (the first open-­air theatre built on the shore of the Navigli Channels called ‘Darsena’). The set recreates a modern disco (Ithaca’s palace) where Penelope and Telemachus dance, as Ulysses lands silently in the night, alone, on his sailboat. The third production, Nausicaa. Io sono Io (Nausicaa, I am I) by the Sardinian theatre company Cadadieteatro (July and August 2015), focuses on Nausicaa and her family, who host a chorus of refugees from past and present times (including Ulysses, but also Hector’s widow, Andromache) (see Fig. 7.3).67 Ultimately, the two projects recreate Ulysses’s journey, although in different ways: the first gathers scattered readings of the poem (Un racconto mediterraneo, A Mediterranean Tale), while the second commissions adaptations of Homer’s poem (Meeting the Odyssey). They both mirror its complexity and richness, as a joint effort from multiple artists, comparable to ancient rapsodoi.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have imagined following Ulysses’s routes and explored some aspects of his voyages across troubled waters, from ancient times to modern reception. We have selected a few examples, from various points in time, to demonstrate how these themes regarding the reception of classics, and particularly of Homer’s Odyssey, are so vital, vibrant and rich, primarily along the Italian coasts and on the islands of the Mediterranean Sea. Our hypothesis is that such a wide range of meanings and examples are connected in two ways: to the formal features typical of Homer’s poem (due to its origin, nature and

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structure) and to its specific content. Both aspects can be now recalled, at the end of our journey, in order to support our analysis. First, the Odyssey famously originated as an oral composition, intended to be sung in portions, pieces and episodes. This lack of continuity is part of its fascination and beauty: not only the theme itself (a journey), but also the facts, the characters, the very language consistently change and continuously vary throughout the poem. Every element, character or place within this poem seems to carry in itself its opposite, and at the top of this list there is of course Ulysses, the ‘man of many devices’ (‘polytropos’, as stated in Odyssey 1.1). He has inspired many modern figures, including sailors, refugees and travellers, with his ambiguous nature of hero and anti-­hero: a warrior and a brave captain, a rascal and a liar. Second, what is the destination of his journey? On the one hand, he is of course homesick and misses his island, his family, his house, his fireplace, his people: in a word, what is most familiar to him (as in the English term ‘homely’, or in German ‘heimlich’ – from ‘Heim’, ‘home’ – which shares the same root as ‘Heimat’, ‘homeland’). Nonetheless, Ulysses is constantly detained and driven away from home: not only by the god of the sea Poseidon, his main opponent, but also by a mysterious force inside him. He is always compelled to sail away, towards new lands, new discoveries, new adventures. He will leave again, soon after his return, as we are told at the end of the poem. He thus becomes a symbol of the modern man, always in search of something he cannot have. In this perspective, we may consider the entire poem (and its reception) as suspended between two poles: the certain, familiar island (home) and the uncertain/unfamiliar/unknown (sea), where Ulysses himself keeps travelling without rest. Ithaca is, ultimately, the treasure of travel itself: another Greek poet, Constantinos Cavafy, described this perfectly in a well-­known poem, Ithaca.68 For these reasons, the Odyssey ultimately encourages free adaptations that are very different from one another: even the most celebrated elements – the Hero, the Homeland, the Family, the Return – are not quite what they seem at first. The multiple aspects of Ulysses’s journey inspire artists with a variety of solutions, stimulate their creative invention, and the combinations of different medias and genres: somehow, it is a puzzle that any poet, writer, playwright or director can dismantle and reconstruct, each time in a new shape. According to their inspiration, context, media and language, they may focus on one single element, episode or character of the original poem (but also a few) in order to reach audiences of all ages and cultures. If the ambivalent legacy of Homer’s poem is still subject to different interpretations after many centuries, our main area of research – the Mediterranean

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– has always been a central character, with multiple roles, just like its symbolic counterpart Ulysses. In the past, the perils of the sea (as well as the myths concerning its inhabitants and creatures) have played an essential, symbolic, historical and tragic role. Nowadays, these myths keep inspiring modern artists, as a consequence of the nomadic mass movements across the sea, the well-­known conflicts in Middle East and the difficult political situations of many countries, such as Syria. Ulysses made his choice, when he left Ithaca, when he came home and when he charted his course. Others have no choice. They never arrive, nor return. How many? No one knows. The shipwrecks continue, and the tragic count is still rising with each passing day. On this dramatic issue, we may recall the monologue by Martinelli cited above, Rumore di Acque (Noise in the Waters): the number of casualties, the missing people listed, are not hyperbolic. They are real, and unfortunately, they keep growing, while this play (as well as others on the same subject) is translated and staged more and more. The figures evoked by Martinelli, with or without names, are celebrated, remembered, sung, as in a non-­religious funeral rite. We are well aware of the responsibility of our own countries in this situation, and the burden we all have to carry: we intended to convey this with our choice, as an epigraph, of the song cited above (although dated 1979, it seems tragically up to date). As a response to Roger Waters’s lyrics, and as a dedication, we would like to cite the words of the project manager of Meeting the Odyssey (found on their website), which express the feelings and commitment shared by most artists involved in their productions, and many others we know of: ‘We, the artists of Meeting the Odyssey, dedicate this tour and all the performances to those who, unlike us, are not able to return home nor travel further with the winds. You are the real Odysseuses of today, and we wish you will find shelter in Europe or peace in your country very soon.’69 We support these artists, and we must all do our best to prevent further shipwrecks and casualties, to give the refugees shelter, and to allow them to go back home, to their own Ithaca.

Notes 1 Both the authors are involved in this research and responsible for the contents of this chapter: in particular, section one and two have been developed by Erika Notti, sections three and four by Martina Treu. The authors wish to thank Wendy Lloyd, Adriana Nogueira and the staff of the University of Algarve, the editor of this volume and all members of the Imagines Project for their help and support.

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2 Given the targets and the themes of this book, we use the Latin name ‘Ulysses’ instead of the Greek ‘Odysseus’, as it is the most widely used in reception. See below, note 32. 3 The everlasting fascination and fear inspired by the sea through the centuries, from the past to the present, have left many traces in literature and art, with the development and permanence of a variety of motifs. As regards Aegean art, representations of ships and sea-­related subjects may be observed, for instance, in decorated pottery, jewels, sealings and wall paintings. No study dedicated to the power of images and the troubled waters of the sea can be conducted without paying attention, at least for a while, to the island of Thera (Santorini). In the light of the focus of this chapter and its purposes, in the space which is allowed to us, we shall therefore only briefly touch upon a monument of Aegean art, which provides an introduction to the main topic of the sea routes and their modern revisitation. The data that we shall mention here derives principally from the more detailed studies in Aegean philology and iconography that have been conducted over several years, mostly in close collaboration with Mario Negri (such as those discussed, for instance, on the occasion of various international conferences or during the lessons specifically designed for the students of the IULM University of Milan, held in the ambit of the courses in ‘History of Seafaring’, ‘Mediterranean Civilizations’ and doctorate lectures in ‘Mycenaean Philology’). 4 Thuc. 1. 4. 5 Notti 2009, 161–211; Doumas 2010, 2011. 6 Doumas 1992; Wedde 2000; Notti 2009, 116–30. 7 See Beresford 2013 and Nantet 2014. 8 Cf. e.g. ‘Diem, qui dies ex ista nocte nascetur . . . renuntiat sermone rituque Graeciensi πλοιαφέσια’; Isidis Navigium: Apul. Met. 9. 5. 16–17; Ploiaphesia DNP s. v. About the Mycenaean world, see more below. 9 Morgan 2005, 143–65; see also Notti and Aspesi 2014. 10 Although the brilliant interpretation provided by Palmer has prevailed and become strongly rooted in the general subconscious, this is not the only possible one. In particular, po-­ro-wi-­to-jo may also be understood as *Phlowi(s)to(h)io, ‘in the month of the blossoming’ (cf. φλέω), which is extremely interesting, especially in the light of the attestation of a Spartan month name: Φλοιάσιος (cf. also Φλυήσιος / Φλιάσιος). Pointing towards (late) spring/summer (?), these two different interpretations still might not necessarily lead us to formulate significantly divergent scenarios on the semantic level. As regards in particular calendar questions, which are worth a brief mention here, we may notice that in spring – at least on the basis of current Aegean meteorology – during April and May, periods with winter-­like characteristics or dry and warm weather may alternate (cf. Hes. Erga, 678–83: sailing is possible in spring, although not preferable). Generally, the meltemi begins to blow in June. In autumn,

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however, when the Pleiades ‘escape Orion’s rude strength’, the ancients knew that sailing became unsafe (Hes. Erga, 619–22; cf. e.g. Acts 27.44; cf. also Veg., Epitoma rei militaris, 4. 39). It is also interesting to recall Hesiod’s well-­known advice concerning the most suitable time for sailing (Hes. Erga, 630–77). However, on the basis of current knowledge, his words ἤματα πεντήκοντα μετὰ τροπὰς ἠελίοιο – fifty days after the solstice (?) – are difficult to interpret. If alternatively the interpretation of the accusative as an indication of duration in time were correct (cf. Chantraine, Gramm. Hom. II, par. 54), we would understand ‘for fifty days after the solstice’, that is to say from 21 June to c. 10 August, precisely at the height of summer. As for the interpretations of po-­ro-wi-­to (PY Fr 1218.1, 1221, 1232.1), gen. po-­ro-wi-­to-jo (PY Tn 316.1) DMic s. v. A thorough study of the tablet PY Tn 316 and its controversial linguistic and cultural implications is currently being conducted by Erika Notti; several key issues have already been discussed in Notti, Negri and Facchetti (2015). As for ancient seafaring and meteorology: Medas 2004; Ritossa 2008; Magini, Negri and Notti 2012. 11 The detailed rendering of their armour and weapons provides clues as to their identity: they wear boar’s tusk helmets, large rectangular shields, long spears and swords, which appear to be the standard armament in the Aegean at this time (Doumas 1992, 47). See also Doumas 1983, 75; Crowley 1989; Morgan 2005. 12 As is unfortunately known, and as we will discuss later, shipwrecks in the troubled waters of the Mediterranean are still tragically current. 13 As regards this line of interpretation, Finley 1954 is still a reference text. On this question in particular, see Negri 1993; 2009 and 2010; also Notti 2009, 20–6. 14 Str. 1. 2 and 8. 3. 15 See Magini, Negri and Notti 2012, 15–16 and 107–14. 16 Negri 2009, 11–12. 17 Even if a plethora of studies no longer focus on the Mediterranean waters, but elsewhere, we believe that on the basis of current knowledge, there is not enough consistency among the philological, archaeological and historical data to suggest a systematic abandonment of the traditional view in favour of a radically diverging, and less economical, perspective. Magini, Negri and Notti 2012, 104 n. 6 and 95–128; Facchetti, Negri and Notti forthcoming. As for current readings of the myth, see below sections three and four. 18 This nautical terms refers to the act of sailing around or passing beyond a cape or point or land. 19 Hdt. 6. 44. 95 and 7. 22. 37. 122. 20 Nunc Bozcaada in Turkish. 21 Od. 3. 180–2, ab silentio 11. 23. 22 Od. 3. 276–300. 23 Od. 9. 39–84.

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24 Od. 10. 19–55. 25 Od. 1. 50; Od. 5. 272–7 cf. Il. 18. 486–9. 26 Od. 6. 204–5; Negri 2009, 12. 27 Od. 13. 78–119. 28 An investigation on the vexata quaestio of the identification of Ithaca and, within a wider perspective, Homer’s geography naturally goes beyond the scope of this chapter; Hope Simpson 1981 remains a fundamental text; see also in particular Negri 1993, 2009 and 2010. 29 On the first issue, the survey on terms, see also Treu 2014b (a paper dedicated to Mario Negri, who also works on these themes: see above). On the second, the stage productions, see Treu 2009, 2014a and 2015a, Ieranò and Taravacci (eds) forthcoming. 30 See Ieranò 2015, 171–3. 31 The expression ‘surfing the internet’ was created by Jean Armour Polly (17 March 1992) by mixing ‘information surfer’ and ‘channel-­surfing’: see http://public.wsu. edu/~brians/errors/surfing.html and http://www.netmom.com/about-­net-mom/23who-­invented-surfing-­the-internet (accessed 20 March 2017). 32 As for ‘Ulysses’ (23.6 million results), Joyce and Tennyson dominate the chart (google.it, accessed 19 March 2017). A comparative study may be developed for other languages: in Italian, for instance, we find 1.12 million results for ‘Odissea’, 321,000 for ‘Odisseo’ (by typing this name, we are automatically driven to ‘Ulisse’, 6.13 million results). This survey confirms, too, how the name ‘Ulysses’ is by far the most widely used in reception. 33 About the movie, and its archetypes, see the paper by Ieranò 2010, 133–52. 34 See http://collider.com/hugh-­jackman-odyssey-­francis-lawrence/ (accessed 20 March 2017). 35 See also the new podcast series, in Spanish, of the University of Almeria (Spain) at http://www2.ual.es/redesliterarias (accessed 20 March 2017). 36 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Odyssey (accessed 20 March 2017). 37 See, for instance, https://www.theguardian.com/tv-­and-radio/tvandradioblog/2015/ sep/11/a-­bumpy-journey-­for-anna-­friel-have-­you-been-­watching-odyssey (accessed 20 March 2017). 38 See, respectively, the websites (accessed 20 March 2017) of the NASA project ‘2001 Mars Odyssey’ (http://mars.nasa.gov/odyssey/), the Odyssée hostel in Berlin (http:// www.globetrotterhostel.de/), the Odyssey hotel on the Greek island of Kephalonia, opposite to Ithaca (https://hotelodyssey.gr/), and Odyssey golf putters (http://www. odysseygolf.com/). In our list, there are also ships, and other vehicles, such as a BMX and a minivan by Honda (accessed 20 March 2017). To our knowledge, there is no evidence of any scientific bibliography on the use of such terminology on the internet.

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39 See Treu’s bibliography below, and particularly Treu 2009, 2014a and 2014b. 40 For further information on the Homeric reception in Italy, but also in Germany (such as the international project Odyssee Europa by Christoph Ransmayr, 2010), see the paper by Sotera Fornaro, L’ambiguo ritorno: sondaggi su Omero nella letteratura italiana del Novecento, in Cavallini (ed.) 2010, 9–38. See also the international surveys by Luther 2005; Graziosi and Greenwood 2010; Hall 2012; McConnell 2013. 41 See piccoloteatromilano.org/it/2016–2017/canto-­la-storia-­dell-astuto-­ulisse (accessed 20 March 2017). 42 See teatrodellemming.it (accessed 20 March 2017). 43 About Wilson’s Odyssey, see http://www.piccoloteatro.org/events/2015–2016/odyssey (accessed 20 March 2017); Tentorio 2013; Frattali and Pietrosanti 2014. 44 Wilson, in a meeting crowded with students (Università Statale, Milan, 1 October 2015), confirmed that his key idea was ‘a fantastic journey for the 21st century’, and he asked the actors ‘to tell the story to a child, to a little boy or girl in the audience, like a bedtime story with scary monsters and terrible moments’. 45 For Pirandello’s text, see Pagliaro 1967. About Pirrotta, see Treu 2006; Rimini 2015, 117–20, 130; and Treu 2016, 229–31. 46 See Isgrò 2011 and Garavaglia 2012. 47 See, respectively, on Isgrò’s Polifemo, the paper by Sotera Fornaro (cited above, n. 40); on Odissea cancellata Isgrò 2011, 79–82, 495–52, and Treu (forthcoming). 48 See http://www.figlidartecuticchio.com/cuticchio_Mostro.swf (accessed 20 March 2017), Cuticchio and Licata 1993; Rimini 2015, 131. 49 On Emma Dante, see Barone 2014; Giovannelli 2014; Piovan and Brazzale 2014, 9 and 15–41. 50 See http://classici.tcvi.it/it/eventi/2014–2015/68-ciclo (accessed 20 March 2017) and Treu 2015d. 51 On the Italian production of this play, directed by Luca Ronconi, Odissea doppio ritorno (Odyssey, Double Return, Ferrara 2007, Milan, 2008), see Iannucci 2007. 52 An adaptation of this poem, Le donne e il mare (Women and the Sea), was staged at the Venice Theatre Biennale: see Treu 2009, 177. 53 See for the text, Puppa 2000, 69–80; and for the stage production, the website lauracurino.it (accessed 20 March 2017). 54 See the website http://www.teatrodellealbe.com/eng/spettacolo.php?id=70 (accessed 20 March 2017) for the adaptation directed by Marco Martinelli, with Roberto Magnani (2009). 55 On Perrotta, see Treu 2009, 165–7. The Odyssey is also a recognizable model, although not explicit, for his new project on migration: Versoterra, 30 September–2 October 2016 (see versoterra.it and marioperrotta.com, accessed 28 February 2017). 56 See respectively for Ulisse il ritorno, Treu 2013a and Viccei 2013; for La casa. Odissea di un crack, Treu 2015a.

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57 About Isgrò’s Odissea cancellata, see Ieranò and Taravacci (eds), in press. 58 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP5tX3J7P-Q and http://www.engramma. it/eOS/index.php?id_articolo=790 (accessed 20 March 2017). 59 The play, regarding the forgotten ‘Christmas’ shipwreck (dated 25 December 1996), is still reprised on stage: see teatrodellacooperativa.it (accessed 20 March 2017). 60 This trilogy, too, is still on tour in Italy and in France: see Prosa 2013. 61 On Rumore di Acque, see Martinelli 2010, and online the Teatro delle Albe website (repertory): http://www.teatrodellealbe.com/eng/spettacolo.php?id=77 (English version) and http://www.teatrodellealbe.com/ita/spettacolo.php?id=77 (Italian version) for the updated list of performances and bibliographic references (accessed 28 February 2017). We thank Martinelli, Renda and all their staff for their splendid work and constant support. Several videos are also available online, on Vimeo and YouTube (including a movie by Alessandro Renda, Mare bianco): see https://vimeo. com/85579977 (accessed 20 March 2017), Treu 2010 and 2013b. On the same subject, the contemporary shipwrecks, see also the documentary Summertime by Marcella Vanzo (2007). 62 The English version, by Thomas Simpson, is online at http://escholarship.org/uc/ item/95d7c407#page-39 (accessed 20 March 2017). The French version of the play, Bruits d’Eaux, has been staged several times, in France and Belgium, in the past six years (see the videos online, for instance https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=TiB1Xt–7Zlc, accessed 20 March 2017); the German version, Wassergerausch, was staged in Bremen with Michael Meyer: he will also be on stage at CISIM (Lido Adriano, Ravenna) in a half-German, half-Italian text with Alessandro Renda. The English version, translated by Tom Simpson, was staged in Chicago, New Jersey, New York (La Mama) and Milwaukee, with new music by Guy Klucevsek, ‘functioning as a Greek chorus’, according to Mike Fischer: ‘In theater Gigante’s play, African refugees refuse to be counted out’, Journal Sentinel, 2 October 2015, http://archive.jsonline.com/entertainment/arts/in-­gigantes-play-­africanrefugees-­refused-to-­be-counted-­out-b99584820z1–330431851.html (accessed 20 March 2017). 63 See Rimini 2015, 146, and Pedersoli 2010. 64 See Treu 2015c and indafondazione.org (accessed 20 March 2017). 65 For updated information, see teatropubblicoligure.it (accessed 20 March 2017) and Maifredi’s paper in Ieranò and Taravacci (in press). The most peculiar location was, in 2014, the Orestiadi Festival at Gibellina: see http://www.fondazioneorestiadi.it/ orestiadifestival/calendario.html (accessed 20 March 2017). On Gibellina and its history, see also Isgrò 2011, 9–67, and Garavaglia 2012. 66 See www.meetingtheodyssey.eu (accessed 20 March 2017). See also Treu 2014a and 2015b.

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67 See http://www.cadadieteatro.com/2015/10/15/nausicaa-­io-sono-­io/ (accessed 20 March 2017). We thank the team of Meeting the Odyssey, Cadadieteatro and the staff at the Olbia performance (13 August 2015). 68 The whole text is online at http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?cat=1&id=74 (accessed 28 February 2017). 69 Meetingtheodyssey.eu (accessed 20 February 2017).

Part 3

A Personal Sea: The Artist and the Sea

8

Ancient Seas in Modern Opera: Sea Images and Mediterranean Myths in Rihm’s Dionysos1 Jesús Carruesco and Montserrat Reig

Wolfgang Rihm’s Dionysos: Szenen und Dithyramben. Eine Opernphantasie was presented at Salzburg’s Festival in 2010.2 Its subtitle hints at the unconventional character of this operatic phantasy, with a somewhat episodic structure, a collection of scenes and dithyrambs that does not attempt to follow a linear plot or tell a simple story. At first glance, the words Dionysos and dithyramb appear to indicate a direct engagement with ancient Greek religion and ritual, but the opera deals primarily with Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche’s life and work. However, this indirect approach does not negate the relevance of Dionysian ritual or Greek dithyrambs. For one thing, the work’s main character, simply called N., presents Nietzsche as an avatar of Dionysus himself – and, as we will see, also of other related figures, including the satyr Marsyas. The god is of course an essential reference in Nietzsche’s aesthetics, from Die Geburt der Tragödie to his last work, Dionysos-Dithyramben, a collection of nine poems that forms the textual basis of the libretto. Dithyramb, on the other hand, is a form of Dionysian choral performance that, according to Aristotle (and Nietzsche), lies at the heart of tragedy (Poetics 1449a), and thus of opera itself, a genre that arose from a desire to reinvent tragedy as a Gesamtkunstwerk. A further reference to the origins of opera is the prominence given in Dionysos to the poem ‘Ariadne’s Lament’, one of Nietzsche’s dithyrambs, but also the subject of Claudio Monteverdi’s pioneering opera, Arianna, of which only the famous Lamento survives.3 Beyond this allusion to the history of opera, dithyramb as a choral genre can also be related to the non-­linear mode of narration characteristic of Rihm’s work. In her recent study, Everett4 has singled out some common traits that feature in a significant number of contemporary operas, which can also be found in Dionysos: a multi-­layered non-­linear narrative; an interest in historical characters that are contemplated through, even identified with, mythical figures, stories or

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archetypes; and a multimodal approach to the creation of meaning, in which the basic layers of text and music are on the same level as other expressive mediums related to the performance, such as staging, costume, lighting and even film direction for the subsequent DVD. In the case of Dionysos, while Rihm is the author of the music and the libretto (a collage of Nietzsche’s poems, as mentioned), the staging by Pierre Audi for the Salzburg premiere, with visual settings by the painter Jonathan Meese, significantly adds to the complexity of meanings of the work as a whole (the references to the Pentheus and Marsyas myths, which are not in Nietzsche’s text, are realized strictly through the visual level of acting and staging). The performance elements will accordingly feature prominently in our analysis. As we have seen, the opera’s libretto consists almost exclusively of a selection from Nietzsche’s Dithyramben, with the sole addition of two further poems: ‘Der Wanderer und sein Schatten’ (The Wanderer and his Shadow) and ‘Ein Wanderer’ (A Wanderer), also by Nietzsche. In Dionysos-Dithyramben, Nietzsche explores the transition towards madness as a process of dissolution of the self.5 In this suppression of individual identity, the choral Dionysism of the dithyrambic ritual plays a key role. For this reason, it may be useful to recall the basic traits of the genre.6 In ancient Greece, a dithyramb was a choral poem with a narrative content which was ritually performed in the cult of Dionysus, though the protagonist in the narration was not necessarily the god himself. In classical Athens, dithyrambs were performed mainly in the theatre, alongside dramatic plays. The mode of narration is similar to that in other forms of choral lyric, such as the epinician, or in the choral odes of tragedy: a narration that functions allegorically, highlighting key moments within the story, often with violent transitions, thus requiring previous knowledge of the myth from the audience. To Nietzsche, the dithyrambic form was useful as it allowed him to capture an aspect of the self in each of the poems, which becomes simultaneously disjointed and objectivized in a dialogue between changing personae. In Rihm’s opera, the combination of scenes and dithyrambs in the title points to a similar interest in the isolation of discrete episodic moments, but also marks a distinction between both terms, the first relating more to the biographic layer, while the dithyramb emphasizes the ritual dimension of the Dionysian celebration that is opera as a performance genre. Within this general framework, the focus of the present chapter is on the meaning and function of the sea motif, as well as related subjects such as the island, the seafarer, or even the lake (in Wolfgang Rihm’s Dionysos). In such a complex work as this, various levels of referentiality must be taken into

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consideration: a) the function of the motif in Nietzsche’s work, which has two textual contexts – the poems that form Dionysos-Dithyramben and Also sprach Zarathustra, where three of them appeared for the first time; b) references to Greek Dionysism, both in the performance genre of dithyramb and allusions to the myths of Ariadne at Naxos, Pentheus’ death by dismemberment (sparagmos) and the flaying of Marsyas; c) references to the history of opera, from Monteverdi’s Lamento di Arianna, previously mentioned, to the initial scene of Das Rheingold, which is evident at the beginning of the opera. In this respect, we will also argue for the importance of Strauss’ and Hofmannsthal’s Ariadne auf Naxos, with which the new work shares not only its mythical narrative but also some central themes, such as the creative role of the artist, the status of opera as a fusion of tragedy and comedy, and the meaning of Dionysus in relation to the key concept of transformation (Verwandlung). It is thus important, in order to study the function of the Mediterranean myths in Rihm’s Dionysos, to first consider the maritime metaphors used by Nietzsche in his poems and their relationship to Dionysian myth.7 Concerning the myth of Dionysus and Ariadne – a central narrative for Nietzsche, as for Rihm – two elements are worth mentioning. First, in Nietzsche’s work the myth becomes connected to the motif of sparagmos. Thus, the dismemberment of Pentheus at the hands of the Maenads, of Dionysus by the Titans, or Apollo’s flaying of Marsyas are viewed as forms of annihilation of the self, comparable to that experienced by Ariadne in her solitude at Naxos. This leads us to the second element mentioned above: striving to surpass the mortal self, a necessity for the artist, which turns Dionysus’ journey to Ariadne’s island into an image of transformation and tragic self-­knowledge, not only for her but also for him. The god crossing the sea is Dionysus, but he is also the protagonist of a play of confusions, an unknown god, torturer and tortured, with whom a transforming dialogue is established that transforms the figure of the seafarer into a choral ‘I’, Zarathustra and Nietzsche, Christ, Apollo and Eros. Furthermore, the painful knowledge acquired through the sea journey establishes a parallel between the story of Dionysus’ arrival at Ariadne’s island and that of Odysseus’ journey and his adventures at the islands of Circe and the Sirens, a parallel in turn related to the Nietzschean themes of transformation and eternal recurrence. This connection between the worlds of Odysseus and Dionysus – as well as between them and the transformation motif – is also present in Hofmannsthal’s libretto for Ariadne auf Naxos, through the story of Dionysus’ encounter with Circe, and, though not explicit, it can also be traced in Rihm’s Dionysos.

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Our purpose in this chapter is precisely to show how in Rihm’s opera – likely as a result of the influence of Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos – the voyage of Dionysus to Ariadne’s island becomes a parallel of Odysseus’ meetings with the Sirens and Circe, before completing his homeward journey. The author uses this connection between the two seafarers, which did not exist in Nietzsche’s Dithyramben (though it does feature in other works by him), to represent the transformation that the artist must undergo to discover his true identity. The multiple and fragmented self of Nietzsche’s dithyrambs presents the sea as the sixth solitude, prior to the seventh and last, which is death. The island is a link between heaven and earth, the supreme expression of an inner solitude that leads to serenity.8 Death is compared to a journey across blue seas, to an idle ship surrounded by waves and play.9 The persona loquens is a fisherman fishing for solitary men, who lights fires on an island to guide lost ships. These images are also used to characterize Zarathustra’s quest. His last sin is his pity towards the higher man, which makes him leave the safety of the mountain or the lake and sail into open sea in order to rescue him from danger. Zarathustra describes his life’s path in the following terms: the lake is hermitic and self-­sufficient, but rivers of love draw him towards the sea to cross it and reach fortunate islands.10 The sea journey means the discovery of naked truth.11 The overman (Übermensh) is represented as the deep sea, able to receive a dirty stream without becoming unclean. In this he is juxtaposed with the poet, a shallow sea, the journey which does not lead to truth, but to a mere semblance of truth.12 Turning our attention now to the use Rihm makes of Nietzsche’s poems, we will first give a general description of the opera, before focusing on the connection between Greek myth and the sea. Whereas in the Dionysus-Dithyrambs, Nietzsche chose the figure of the poet as the point of departure (Only Fool! Only Poet! is D1), the leitmotif of Rihm’s opera is ‘Ariadne’s Lament’ (D7 in Nietzsche’s book), which opens the work and is used again near the end. This choice was likely suggested both by Nietzsche’s identification of Cosima Wagner with Ariadne13 and by the long musical tradition of the myth, stretching back, as we have seen, to Monteverdi’s Lamento. The story of Dionysus’ arrival in Naxos to meet Ariadne also functions at the biographical level for Nietzsche’s life, as the sea of the myth corresponds to the lake of Sils Maria, the epiphanic scene of his last years. In addition to this, Rihm highlights two famous moments of Nietzsche’s life: his relationship with his friend and disciple Peter Gast, pseudonym of the composer Heinrich Köselitz, and the first public manifestation of his madness, when he saw a man brutally whipping a horse in the streets of Turin and he ran to throw his arms around its neck, after which he collapsed to the ground. In the letters

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sent to Cosima and other friends during the following days, he signed himself as Dionysos or the Crucified.14 The first part of the opera (Acts  1 and 2) takes place in a natural space characterized as the lake and the mountain (the sea and the island, respectively, at the mythical level). By contrast, the scenes within the second part (Acts 3 and 4) evolve into an urban space that symbolizes the emergence of Nietzsche’s madness in Turin. The transition between the two parts takes place in a brothel, which, at the biographic level, alludes to the syphilis that could have caused his final madness. These scenes from Nietzsche’s life alternate and overlap with images (both textual and visual) from the myths of Ariadne and of Dionysian dismemberment, presented in the discontinuous, allusive mode of narration that was a feature of ancient dithyramb. Through this synchronization of mythic and biographic narrative rhythms, the scenes from Nietzsche’s life acquire a mythical dimension. The historical fact thus becomes a symbolic motif of modern myth. The complexity of the work, along with the multitude of subjects and motifs it contains, as well as being new to the repertoire, calls for a detailed description of its constituent elements. In Rihm’s Dionysus, the motifs of the sea journey and the island are not the only metaphors for the process of the discovery of truth in art, but, as we will argue, they function as a cohesive element for all the rest. We will now describe the four acts of the opera, which bear titles that correspond to four distinct spaces (A Lake, In the Mountains, Interior and A Square), highlighting in each case the most relevant aspects to our study. Before the opera begins, the curtain shows a mask-­like representation of Nietzsche’s portrait, drawn by Jonathan Meese, the set designer. When the curtain rises, a photograph of Nietzsche is projected onto a screen. This also rises, giving way to a man silently standing in the middle of the stage before a triangular parapet beneath a drawing of two large eyes. These, along with the parapet below that recalls Nietzsche’s iconic moustache, reaffirm the importance of his face and suggest the identification of the man standing – N., the main character – as the philosopher. However, these elements of the decor will change according to the requirements of the plot, while always retaining, through their multiple transformations, the function of defining the double level of biography and myth. Two women, like Sirens or Undines, appear on the parapet, taunting N. with their laughter, and a play of seduction begins, in which they and the protagonist take turns seducing and fleeing from each other, in a scene clearly inspired by the beginning of Wagner’s Rheingold. The women’s words come from a line in Nietzsche’s ‘Ariadne’s Lament’ that will be taken up at various moments during the opera: ‘Do you want me? Me? All of me?’ As the Sirens leave the stage, the

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parapet, which represented both Nietzsche’s moustache and the Sirens’ island, turns into a rocky mass on which N. rows. Ariadne enters, holding a string that recalls the story of the labyrinth, and she takes up the Sirens’ words. She goes on to sing the text of Nietzsche’s dithyramb (with only a few omissions), so that Ariadne’s exalted plea to the unknown god, asking to be both warmed and tortured, is echoed in her portrayal of binding and letting herself be bound with thread. Ariadne simultaneously provokes panic and attraction in the protagonist. He attempts to flee from the island, but she forces him to leave the boat and turns him from silence to stammering, before he finally screams: ‘I am your labyrinth.’ This identifies him with the god Dionysus in the text of the dithyramb, though without the epiphanic character of the poem, it is rather a painful discovery.15 When Dionysus reveals his identity, the rocky mass splits in two and the chorus of Sirens/Undines reappear, now turned into a form of mermaid – or rather female dolphins, in reference to the myth of the metamorphosis of the Tyrrhenian pirates16 (see Fig.  8.1). The scene ends as they sing with Ariadne, offering themselves to the god and repeating the revelation. The second scene begins with the entrance of a new character, a man clad in white. Just as the rocky mass, the island/moustache/boat has split, so too the new character can be viewed as a double of the protagonist, N./Nietzsche/Dionysus, since he too presents himself with the words ‘I am your labyrinth.’ When the two halves of the rocky mass reintegrate, a chorus of men enters holding newspapers in which we can read TOTAL NIETZSCHE and TOTAL DIONYSOS and

Fig. 8.1  Female dolphins – mermaids.

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they sing ‘The Beacon’ (D5). Rihm’s libretto closely follows the text of the poem, except for one point: it omits all references to Zarathustra. Here, unlike in Nietzsche’s book, this dithyramb comes after ‘Ariadne’s Lament’ because it praises the island and the sea as the sixth solitude. Nietzsche’s portrait has gone through several transformations: now it is the sign of infinity placed in a triangle, rotating inside a black circle on a white square, and the rocky mass takes the form of a mountain with a ladder leaning against it. The scene and the first act end with a play of musical and textual echoes and exchanges between the chorus, the man in white and N./Nietzsche/Dionysus. In a form of transition into the second act, the two male characters sing a short poem that Rihm already put to music in a lied, ‘The Wanderer and his Shadow’. There are no sea images here, but mountains and cliffs, which reappear in the next song to be used in the opera, ‘Amid Birds of Prey’ (D4). In this staging, the shadow mentioned in the first poem alludes to the man in white, the double of the solitary man (here N./Nietzsche/Dionysus), and perhaps also, implicitly, to the shadow that accompanies Zarathustra to the mountain cave and sings the poem ‘Among Daughters of the Desert’ in Thus spoke Zarathustra (D2 in the Dithyramben). In the text of the second poem (D4), a reference to a guest (Gast) introduces a further connection to the characters on stage, suggesting a link between the man in white and Peter Gast, another double figure for the protagonist. The music brings out the identity of the persona loquens in the dithyramb through repetition and syncopation. Again, the references to Zarathustra are removed from the original text, though the Dionysian connections that Nietzsche saw in that character17 remain very much in evidence here through the insistence on concepts such as the experience of the abyss, the Dionysian madness of laughter, or the god that destroys Ariadne while simultaneously destroying himself (‘Self-­knower! Self-hangman!’). The chorus, as well as lighting, stage colour effects and a new entrance from the Sirens/Undines, marks the transition to what could be considered the second scene of Act  2. In the text, the journey of the protagonist and of his shadow across the mountain heights now reaches the seventh and last solitude – death – presented as the white seas in ‘The sun sinks’ (D6) and as the seas of light in ‘Fame and Eternity’ (D8). On stage, this episode is marked by choral voices that surround the central characters, and by the two men’s difficult climb up the ladder previously mentioned towards a cross casting rays of light. The Crucified, Nietzsche’s second alternative identity – alongside Dionysus – as he entered madness, is thus alluded to exclusively through staging effects, at the moment when he discerns the seventh solitude.

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The third act, with which the second part of the production opens, takes us to an urban space. The screen on which Nietzsche’s face was projected at the beginning of the opera now presents images of people at the bar of a theatre during the intermission and, a huge pair of glasses superimposed upon it, another metamorphosis of Nietzsche’s eyes with a drawn-­on moustache and some graffiti. When the screen disappears, the stage represents a brothel where the chorus of Sirens is now a chorus of prostitutes. The décor is a still-­life made up of three-­dimensional geometric figures. These spatial changes have a double effect upon the audience: on the one hand, we recognize the space from Nietzsche’s biography, the brothel, which we can relate to the origins of his final madness; on the other, the space projected on the screen takes us to our own present as an audience at the theatre and thus requires from us a meta-­theatrical interpretation of what we see on stage, raising questions of how the artist functions (both Nietzsche and Rihm, as poet-­philosopher and poet-­composer, respectively) and of opera as a musical drama. In accordance with this self-­ referential turn, the entire second part of the production will show a tendency to the fragmentation and remix of the texts of the dithyrambs, in contrast to the generally straightforward enunciation of the text of each poem in the first part. With this new approach to his textual source, Rihm establishes a new dialogue between the poems, which is very different from the original work.18 The two male characters alternate singing ‘On the Poverty of the Richest’ (D9). The most important idea in this poem, particularly in Rihm’s version, is the relationship between truth and laughter: ‘Today the truth approaches me with a gilded smile’. This concept connects the poem with Zarathustra’s teachings on the overmen and Nietzsche’s Dionysian definition of the world, in which naked truth is a tragic discovery: namely that life-­affirmation, joy and voluptuousness are not contradictory to self-­destruction and self-­sacrifice.19 However, Rihm interrupts (D9) with the voices of the Sirens/prostitutes, saying ‘Only Fool! Only Poet!’ (D1), a reflection on the poet’s truth and its shortcomings. This counterpoint allows Rihm to dramatize both the Dionysian contradictions of the will of power in Nietzsche’s work and his biographic progression towards madness, with a violent insistence on the term Narr, fool. The close relation that exists between N./Dionysus and the Guest as a sort of Doppelgänger, in a play of simultaneous opposition and identification, becomes ever more evident. Two musical instruments, a piano and a harp, enter the stage space of the brothel. N. sings the lied ‘A Wanderer’, while the Guest plays the piano and the flute. The Sirens encourage the protagonist to commit self-­sacrifice (D9) and they resume the seduction scene from the first act (D7). A Bacchic

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dance begins between the women and the Guest while N./Dionysus sings the burlesque words of ‘Among Daughters of the Desert’ (D2), in which European decadence and reason is rejected in favour of the voluptuousness and mysteries of the Orient. The dance oscillates between violence and calm several times, until a climactic sparagmos ensues and the Doppelgänger’s body is dismembered, thus assuming new identities: the Guest/Peter Gast/Pentheus/Orpheus.20 As the scene progresses, the meta-­theatrical references increase. The tragic text of the Bacchae is entirely subverted when Pentheus’s dismemberment gives way to a comic scene in which, instead of Pentheus’s head in Agave’s hands, we see N. holding a dismembered leg, alluding to the missing leg of the persona loquens in D2 (‘It is gone, / Gone forever, / The other leg! / Oh what a shame about that lovely other leg!’). Comedy fuses with tragedy, following Nietzsche’s definition of Dionysian and tragic thought in numerous texts after The Birth of Tragedy, including Thus spoke Zarathustra and the Dionysus-Dithyrambs. The ritualistic elements of drama, and consequently also of opera, are emphasized through numerous stage effects. The chorus enters with hooded heads and with breasts and vaginas clearly exposed, as a reversed version of the phallic choruses of ancient Dionysism. The screen descends again, and upon it we see both N. and his internal organs, a definitive portrait, which prepares us for the last transformation of the protagonist. When it raises, a large mask can be seen at the back of the stage, a new avatar of Nietzsche’s portrait, with a ladder over a labyrinth that leads to its mouth. The Sirens reappear, with a different aspect: naked, holding their breasts and surrounded by animals, recalling Neolithic or Minoan idols, represented at the same time as Mother Goddess and Lady of the Beasts (see Fig. 8.2).21 Again, N./Dionysus sings parts of ‘Ariadne’s Lament’ (D7), though this time taking up the part not of the god but of Ariadne, the sacrificial victim; while on stage, he shows his final, true nature: Marsyas, the satyr. His double is now the one to take up a divine identity, as he reappears on stage in epiphanic fashion, with a laurel wreath upon his head: he is now The Guest/Peter Gast/Pentheus/Orpheus/Apollo. At this point, we may recall another concept from Nietzsche’s later revision of The Birth of Tragedy, which appears in a text contemporary to the dithyrambs, Ecce Homo, which will be taken up by Rihm at the end of his opera: Apollo is not the opposite of Dionysus, but a part of him. The protagonist plays the flute, to a rhythm marked by the god, and sings ‘my sole companion, my great enemy, my unknown one, my hangman god’ (D7). Apollo’s flaying of Marsyas, an allegory of the artist since the Renaissance, is introduced by Rihm to give dramatic and mythical expression to a key idea in the dithyrambs and, more generally in Nietzsche’s thought (as stated in Twilight

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Fig. 8.2  Lady of the Beasts, feminine chorus and mask.

of the Idols, for instance), in relation to tragedy: ‘The will to life rejoicing in its own inexhaustibility through the sacrifice of its highest types – that is what I called Dionysian’.22 The last act has a single scene. After a transition, in which the flayed Marsyas stands before the screen with the projection of his insides, the stage takes us to an open space, like a square in a city, which evokes the Turin horse incident. The man in white, with his face veiled, whips both Ariadne and the skin of Marsyas, which has acquired a life of its own as a silent character, moving independently from N.’s flayed body, a further instance of de-­doubling, conveyed here by purely visual means, with no textual support. In the voices of N. and Ariadne, we hear the words of several dithyrambs that link happiness to dissolution, before the final revelation – ‘I am your truth’ – also the last words in Nietzsche’s Dithyramben. The opera has thus led us from the first phrase of the protagonist, ‘I am your labyrinth’, to the last, which states the painful and tragic discovery of authentic identity: ‘I am your truth.’ After N. has sung these words, a purely instrumental passage follows in which Ariadne and the skin adopt a Pietà-­like position, before Ariadne closes the work with a high-­pitched vocalization, like a scream. As can be gathered from this description, Rihm’s Dionysos can be seen as an exploration of the tragic truth of identity, a metaphorical, fragmented and multiple

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form that only art can reveal. We will now focus on the mythical motif of the sea journey and its function in relationship to this general theme. For Nietzsche, as for Rihm, the main connection between Dionysus and the sea is the concept of transformation of the self, the tragic – that is, simultaneously painful and joyful – discovery of naked truth, which means the discovery of eternal recurrence. In Greek Dionysism, the idea of transformation was already present in the story of the pirates metamorphosed into dolphins, or the metaphor of wine as the sea, as painted on the vases used in the symposium, which symbolized the experience of drunkenness.23 However, the ancient myth of Dionysus and Ariadne does not seem to have been primarily focused on transformation as the essence of Dionysian experience, but rather on the limits between mortal and immortal.24 Nietzsche saw Ariadne and her island – a space of epiphany and revelation – as an image of the search for the authentic self, fragmented and enigmatic. Rihm, through a reordering of Nietzsche’s dithyrambs, further emphasizes the importance of the myth of Dionysus and Ariadne as the beginning and the end of the tragic experience of self-­knowledge represented in the opera. However, this process, while essentially Dionysian, is also characterized as Odyssean. For one thing, the text of the dithyrambs, especially in Rihm’s rewriting, presents the transforming factor in man’s quest for truth as a journey across the sea in search of an island, and these textual images are supplemented by other dramatic elements that hint at the relevance of Odysseus’ myth, such as the prominence and multiplication of feminine figures in the sea journey and the importance of the animal transformation, which suggest an identification of N./Dionysos, Ariadne and the female choruses with Odysseus, Circe and the Sirens. Both the staging and the libretto highlight the seductive power of the women encountered by the protagonist on his sea journey. N./Dionysus/Zarathustra/ Marsyas/Odysseus rejects the Sirens, only to fall at the hands of Ariadne, who forces him to speak and reveal his identity (‘I am your labyrinth’), an identity that is enigmatic and multiple, continuously changing and adapting to different contexts. This is the main characteristic of Odysseus’ identity in his return journey, as expressed paradigmatically by the self-­imposed name of No-One (Outis), a possible interpretation for the main character’s original name, N., Niemand. In the opera, however, he is not presented as an epic hero who controls his fate, but as an insecure, doubt-­ridden, solitary character in search of a revelation; in his own words, an ensphinxed man, a tragic hero in the Nietzschean sense. Both Nietzsche and Rihm conceive of the new thinker as a wanderer. The words from ‘The Beacon’ sung by the chorus state the need to pursue the journey

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in order to reach the last solitude, the seas of the future. To open one’s self to the sea is to be open to life,25 more specifically to the Dionysian life of the new man. In his chapter on Nietzsche and the sea, Isham states that the sea is a metaphor for the challenge of life in the coming age.26 The constant addition of identities that the protagonist of the opera undergoes, until he is flayed alive, may be resumed in the Odyssean figure of the Wanderer.27 The indeterminacy of the Wanderer in Nietzsche’s homonymous poem corresponds to the Odyssean rendering of the main character’s name, N., as Niemand, No-­one. Stoianova interprets this Niemand as a universalization of the character, a way in which any member of the audience can identify with the protagonist.28 Although the German Romantic traditions of the Wanderer and Jedermann should also be acknowledged, the connection with Odysseus as a wanderer is especially relevant since it is linked more specifically to the themes of the sea journey and the quest for knowledge of the human condition. Thus, at the beginning of the second act, while singing the poem ‘The Wanderer and his Shadow’, N., accompanied by his Apollonian shadow, climbs up to the mountain summit in order to experience the seventh solitude and contemplate the white seas, an image of the dissolution of individual identity, where the ship is idle and the wandering stops. In ‘Seven Seals’, a chapter of Thus spoke Zarathustra whose initial title was ‘Dionysos’, Dionysus’ alter ego (Zarathustra) states that he cannot stay for long in any land, and that he needs to pursue the sea journey in his search for eternity, his final destination, which turns out to be an eternal return,29 so that the journey becomes circular, and thus never-­ending. If the exploring delight be in me, which impels sails to the undiscovered, if the seafarer’s delight be in my delight: If ever my rejoicing has called out: The shore has vanished, – now has fallen from me the last chain – The boundless roars around me, far away sparkle for me space and time, – well! cheer up! old heart! – Oh, how could I not be ardent for Eternity, and for the marriage-­ring of rings – the ring of the return?30

Eternal return is also a key concept within Rihm’s work, and here too it is closely linked to the metaphor of the sea journey. In the second part of the opera, the stage spaces of the brothel and the square in Turin apparently take us away from the metaphorical space of the island and the sea. However, through the fragmentation, repetition and reordering of dithyrambs 1, 2, 7 and 9 – as well as the insertion of the poem ‘A Wanderer’ – Rihm emphasizes the importance of

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the concept of constant change and incessant becoming. In this respect, the reintroduction of Ariadne into the final scenes, first through the text of her lament sung by other characters and then through her physical reappearance on stage, reinstates the relevance of the sea metaphor to express continuous transformation and eternal recurrence as the ultimate truth of the elusive, labyrinthine identity that is the object of the artist’s quest. The bibliography on the significance of Ariadne in Nietzsche, as well as her connections to Cosima and Lou Andreas-Salomé, is abundant.31 In Rihm’s opera, beyond the biographical reading, Ariadne is the woman (at the same time seductress and seduced) who teaches the philosopher/artist, as a seeker of truth, that he needs to enter the labyrinth to find himself. Unlike the Cretan heroine of Greek myth, Nietzsche’s and Rihm’s Ariadne does not help the hero to leave the labyrinth. Instead, she corresponds to the mythical figure of a powerful woman who controls knowledge and gives access to the enigma. As such, she has affinities with the Sirens, the Sphinx and Circe, affinities that link the symbolism of the sea, the island and the sea journey not only to Dionysus, but also to Odysseus and Oedipus.32 Rihm feminizes the Dionysian spaces of madness and transformation. The inner space of the brothel, which becomes the sanctuary of the Dionysian sacrifice in the second part, corresponds to the island of the Sirens and Ariadne in the first. On stage, the Sirens reappear as Mother Goddesses surrounded by animals, and by suckling at their breasts the protagonist completes the process of animalization, thus revealing his final and most profound identity, the satyr, a hybrid of beast and man. This stage action is accompanied by words from D2, in which Nietzsche parodies the civilized European man encountering the cat-­women and recognizing himself as ensphinxed. Later on, as he is being flayed by Apollo, N. once more sings words from ‘Ariadne’s Lament’. Thus, while the stage action shows him as Marsyas through the musical text he sings, he also becomes Ariadne. In a previous version of Thus spoke Zarathustra, the chapter whose current title is ‘Von der grossen Sehnsucht’ was called ‘Ariadne’. In it, Zarathustra’s soul has learnt to grow in the solitude of the island like a vine charged with grapes, and now awaits the ship of Dionysus, the harvester. The island is a crucial image for the new philosopher of future times, the follower of Dionysus, because it represents the floating, unstable land, the exploration of an unknown and labyrinthine space. Del Caro cites a fragment of Nietzsche from the year 1882–3, also highly relevant in understanding Ariadne’s role in Rihm’s version: ‘A labyrinthine man never seeks the truth but always his Ariadne – whatever he may tell us.’33 Here, Ariadne takes up the place of truth:

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the object of the labyrinthine man’s quest is not the truth, but his truth – that is, Ariadne. The feminine and the animalistic, the two key symbols of N.’s final transformation in Rihm’s opera, are also connected to the figure of Circe elsewhere in Nietzsche’s work. Circe, like the cat-­women in the text (D2) or the cultic figure of the Lady of the Beasts, when evoked on stage signify the seductive lure for man to return to his animal nature and reject civilization.34 On a more abstract level, both Circe and the satyr represent the unity of Nature and the resistance to rationality.35 At the end of the opera, while the stage action presents Ariadne turning herself into a matriarchal figure as she embraces Marsyas’ skin in the iconic position of the Pietà, N. – or rather N.’s flayed body – sings the last phrase: ‘I am your truth.’ As we have seen, this is the truth of eternal recurrence, which in Rihm’s work is focused on the figure of the artist-­ musician, Marsyas. In Human, all too human 519, Nietzsche says with a sort of Darwinian irony, ‘Truth as Circe. Error has transformed animals into men; is truth perhaps capable of changing man back into an animal?’36 Now, N. represents Circe’s truth, because he has recovered the animal nature that had been robbed from him. At the end of the opera, Rihm’s N. (now standing for Niemand as well as for Nietzsche) is an Odysseus who accepts that animalization can surpass humanity. In modern opera, the story of Odysseus’ journey is usually a journey in search of knowledge, especially knowledge of the human condition. Even more crucially, the journey is also a transformative experience, and his encounter with Circe, who controls the annihilation of human identity, accordingly acquires a special importance. Thus, in Luigi Dallapiccola’s Ulisse (1968), for instance, Circe’s power of fascination over Odysseus stems from her affinity with the sea, since they both share mystery, colour and an ever-­changing character. El viaje circular by Tomás Marco (2002) plays with a similar concept. Three singers play all the characters, which creates frequent confusions of identity. Circe and Tiresias (both characters sung by the same soprano) state the central idea: everything is in perpetual transformation and there is no return to the same place. In both works, Circe’s power of transformation is directly related to the themes of identity, change and return. However, the link between Dionysian transformation and metamorphosis created by Circe, which does not come from antiquity nor the later reception, is explicitly made in an opera that arguably functions as an important subtext for Rihm’s Dionysos: Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Ariadne auf Naxos (1916).37 At the narrative level, there is an obvious coincidence

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between both works in their focus on the myth of Dionysus’ encounter with Ariadne at Naxos, which in both cases constitutes the foil to a second, non-­ mythical plot: an updated version of an episode from Molière’s Bourgeois Gentilhomme and some scenes from Nietzsche’s biography. Another, more specific parallel lies in the chorus of women presented as sea nymphs, Sirens or dolphins, that interact with the main characters at the island of Naxos, with Wagner’s Rheinmädchen as a common reference. At a deeper thematic level, both operas share a concern with the ideas of transformation and the artistic self, as well as mixing comic and tragic elements. In Ariadne auf Naxos, the most interesting moment for our purposes here is the last scene, in which Dionysus’ climactic encounter with Ariadne takes place. In a striking departure from ancient myth, Hofmannsthal represents Dionysus’ arrival at Naxos as a sea journey, which arises from an erotic relationship with Circe in which she attempts to turn him into an animal. On Ariadne’s island, after an initial encounter marked by the confusion of identities (Ariadne taking Dionysus for Hermes, Dionysus believing her to be a second Circe), both are transformed into an ecstatic union that signifies an experience of simultaneous death and rebirth for Ariadne, while Dionysus finds in it the achievement or recognition of his true identity as a god. This finale is clearly relevant to Rihm’s work. The transitions from Theseus to Dionysus (for Ariadne), and from Circe to Ariadne (for Dionysus), emphasize the central importance of the theme of transformation in Ariadne auf Naxos. This corresponds in Dionysos to the multiple transformations of the Dionysian artist – characterized as a seafaring wanderer – and to the key role of those transformations in the final revelation of truth as eternal change, a revelation of the artist’s labyrinthine identity that finds its paradigmatic expression in the mutually transformative encounter of Dionysus and Ariadne at Naxos. Rihm’s Dionysos places both ‘Ariadne’s Lament’ and the references to the sea and the island at the beginning and end of the entire opera, because it is there that the recognition of the hidden truth takes place. The female characters encountered by Dionysos along his journey express the necessity of transformation for the protagonist to reach the ultimate truth, that of eternal return. The subtle confusion between Ariadne, the Sirens and Circe, on one side, and Dionysus and Odysseus, on the other, achieved both through the mise-­en-scène and the selection and reordering of the fragments from the Dithyramben, turns N. into a suffering seafarer who, after going through multiple identities, ends up discovering his real truth, the truth of the labyrinthine man.

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Notes 1 This research was carried out as part of the project Representation of the past and dynamics of performance in ancient Greece (FFI2015-68548-P MINECO/FEDER UE). 2 The only available version on DVD is EuroArts 2072608, from the 2010 Salzburg premiere, conducted by Ingo Metzmacher. Some pictures and information can be found on the Salzburg Festival’s website: www.salzburgerfestspiele.at (accessed 17 March 2017). 3 Rihm had already put Nietzsche’s poem to music in the form of a solo aria, Aria/ Ariadne (2001). For a comparative analysis of Rihm’s two renderings of the text from the musical point of view, see Zenck 2012. Another study of the opera that focuses on the analysis of the music is Stoianova 2015. 4 Everett 2015. 5 For a commentary on Nietzsche’s Dithyramben, see Groddeck 1991 and Skowron 2007. 6 On the Greek dithyramb, see Ieranò 1997 (the ancient testimonia edition); Kowalzig and Wilson 2013 (a collection of studies on specific aspects of the genre). 7 See, for instance, Günzel 2003, especially 83–5, on the sea metaphor and the Übermensch. 8 D5, 17–21. 9 D4, 3; 8–14. 10 Thus spoke Zarathustra (henceforth Z) IV, ‘The cry of Distress’. 11 Z II, ‘Great Events’. 12 Z, ‘Prologue’, 3; Z II, ‘The Sublime Ones and Poets’. 13 All the references are collected by Kaufmann 1950, 32–4. 14 Middleton 1996, 346–8. For a complete edition of the letters, see Colli, Montinari, Miller and Pieper 1975–. 15 This way of presenting Dionysus could perhaps be based on K. H. Grüber’s Bacchae of 1974. 16 The identification with the dolphins is in the libretto, not in the staging, which highlights the aspect of mermaids. For the ancient myth, see Homeric Hymn to Dionysus VII and Ov. Met. 3. 582–691. 17 Zarathustra is the Dionysian fiend in Attempt at a Self-Criticism 22, a revision of The Birth of Tragedy. 18 These are the dithyrambs used in the second part (with the numbering in Nietzsche’s book): ‘Only Fool! Only Poet!’ (1), ‘Among Daughters of the Desert’ (2), ‘Ariadne’s Lament’ (7), ‘On the Poverty of the Richest’ (9), with the addition of the poem ‘A Wanderer’ (W). 19 Cf. Will to Power 1067: ‘This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end . . . as force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces . . . a sea of forces

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flowing and rushing together, eternally changing and eternally flooding back with tremendous years of recurrence . . . this my Dionysian world of the eternally self-­creating, the eternally self-­destroying, this mystery world of the two-­fold voluptuous delight, my beyond good and evil, without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a goal . . . This world is the will to power – and nothing besides!’ 20 Though Pentheus is surely the main reference for the sparagmos scene, due to the importance of Euripides’ Bacchae in Dionysian literature, the allusion to Orpheus’ dismemberment by the Thracian maidens could also be relevant in this context, with the presence of a harp on stage, the appearance of Apollo and Marsyas later on and, more generally, the importance of the theme of the artist. 21 For the iconography of these goddesses, see Marinatos 2000. 22 ‘What I Owe the Ancients’, 5. 23 Cf. Attic krater black-­figure, 520 bc, inv. 310, Metropolitan Museum of New York; Attic black-­figure cup, from Vulci, by Exekias, c. 530 bc, inv. 2044, Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich; Etruscan black-­figure hidria by Painter of the Vatican, 510/500 bc, inv. 238, Toledo Museum of Art (Ohio). 24 Lyons 1997, 124–33. 25 Harries 1988. 26 Isham 2004, 224–5 (the chapter titled ‘Friedrich Nietzsche and the Oceanic Image’). 27 For a detailed study of the figure of the Wanderer in Nietzsche, see Cragnolini 2000. 28 Stoianova 2015, 46. 29 Ham very effectively summarizes the meaning of this concept in Nietzsche: ‘This is the metamorphic truth of becoming, the vision of human being in a constant state of change’ (Ham 2004, 208). 30 Z III, ‘Seven Seals’; Shapiro 2008, 483–7. 31 For a biographical interpretation, see particularly Kaufmann 1950. Del Caro 1988 gives a useful status quaestionis. 32 Nietzsche assimilates Oedipus and Odysseus when he describes the correct attitude of the philosopher towards Nature in Beyond Good and Evil 230: ‘with intrepid Oedipus eyes and sealed Odysseus’ ears, deaf to the siren songs . . .’. 33 Del Caro 1988, 64. 34 For this iconographic relationship, see Marinatos 2000, 35–47 and Berti 2015, 120–2. 35 Trusso 2014 develops Nietzsche’s quotation: ‘Faced with the Satyr, cultured man shrivelled to a mendacious caricature.’ 36 On the importance of animals as a path towards the surpassing of humanity (the Übermensch), cf. Lemm 2009, especially 23–5; on truth as a veiled woman, Ham 2004, 205–8; on the satyr’s truth, Hatab 2004, 217. 37 The connection between Dionysus and Circe seems to have been invented by John Milton in his masque Comus, in which they are Comus’ parents, but in a completely different context, unrelated to Ariadne or the transformation motif.

9

A Mirror to See Your Soul: The Exile of Ovid in Eugène Delacroix’s Painting Rosario Rovira Guardiola

When Ovid was exiled by Augustus in ad 8, he probably little imagined that his misfortune would become an inspiration to artists for centuries to come.1 His work the Metamorphoses is undoubtedly one of the main sources for the depiction of classical mythology, but his own life was also no less a source of inspiration. We can already see reminiscences of his exile in Dante’s Divina commedia, and Ovid has become a paradigm of banishment, displacement and exile ever since. This was particularly relevant during the era of Romanticism – as an artistic movement that exalted the individualism of the artist faced with society, the figure of Ovid was well suited to this new approach. The physical circumstances of the exile of Ovid – sent to Tomis on the Black Sea, a place that he describes as desolate and cold – could only strengthen the idea of the artist isolated from society, either physically or metaphorically.2 Ovid wrote about his misfortune in two works, Tristia and Ex Ponto, which are a lament on the circumstances and the difficult conditions of his exile. They are partly written as letters addressed to friends and family, but are also to the Emperor Augustus, who he begs to revoke his decision and allow him to return to the life he has lost.3 *** The sea portrays the drama of the exile, becoming the background, but also at times the protagonist, of Ovid’s exile. The Mediterranean Sea appears as a place full of dangers, and Ovid fears dying before reaching his destination (although he considers exile a fate worse than death). The unwelcoming sea then gives way to the deserted landscape of the city of Tomis, on the Black Sea, where he was obliged to stay. The climate is tough and cold, and wind stops him from leading a normal life. According to Ovid, the sea freezes in winter, preventing dolphins

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and other sea life from swimming: ‘I have seen the vast sea stiff with ice, a slippery shell holding the water motionless.’4 Conditions of life on the ground are not much better; there is a constant stream of invasions, and when there is peace, its inhabitants do not feel the need to cultivate anything: ‘idle lies the soil abandoned in stark neglect’, to use Ovid’s words.5 Even when the weather improves in spring, nothing can soothe the pain of exile.6 The unwelcoming weather and hostile sea are metaphors for life in exile, but modern-­day Constanta is in fact one of the more temperate cities of Romania. Temperatures range from an average of 1 degree Celsius in winter to 23 in summer; and though it may be windy and rainy, there is nothing so extreme as the climate we find in Ovid’s words. The poet would not recognize modern Tomis, a city that is now a popular tourist resort proud of Ovid’s stay on its shores. A statue of a pensive Ovid even overlooks the square named after him.7 The whiny yet nonetheless gripping poetry of Ovid has made of him a paradigm of the damned artist, one that ends with him sacrificing his life for the sake of his art. An artist who neither willingly accepts his exile nor seems to understand the reasons for it, while continually begging forgiveness of Augustus, Ovid became a literary figure himself, and a model to many writers: condemned to exile due to his works, he inspired the Romantic artists who felt isolated from society. One of these was Victor Hugo, who went into voluntary exile in Brussels, Jersey and Guernsey between 1851 and 1870 as a protest against the regime of Napoleon III, who had obtained absolute power with an anti-­parliamentary constitution in 1851. Echoes of the Ovidian exile are also present in Hugo’s most famous works like Les Misérables (1862), but it is within his essay William Shakespeare, written in 1864 as an introduction to the edition of Shakespeare’s plays edited by his son François-Victor Hugo, that the parallels between Hugo and Ovid’s exile are explored. Here, it is the landscape that creates a link between the two authors: they both transform a temperate climate into a harsh one as, according to Fiona Cox, ‘exile is also a state of mind where the season is always winter’ and they consequently require a frozen and windy sea.8 The sea plays an important role when Hugo describes the isolation of a life lived in exile. Asked by his son what he would do during his exile on Jersey, he answered that he would look at the ocean. The sea symbolizes the distance between life in exile and life in a place that is desired.9 However, there is no need to travel far away to feel exiled – Charles Baudelaire felt in exile in the ghostly Paris of the poem Le Cygne, published in 1861 in Les fleurs du mal. He dedicated this poem to Hugo, and we find reference to Ovid and his Metamorphoses in a line where he describes the

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swan as a ‘strange and fatal myth, that rises towards the sky as Ovid’s man’.10 Even in the urban landscape of Baudelaire’s swan, the sea appears as inevitably linked to exile; the poet’s soul is akin to those of the sailors shipwrecked on an island.11 While Ovid and his exile may have been popular in nineteenth-­century literature, representations in the visual arts are scarce. Nevertheless, it did attract the attention of Eugène Delacroix and another important painter of the time, Joseph Mallord William Turner, as we will see in the later parts of this chapter. Turner was a painter deeply influenced by the classical world and his stays in Italy.12 His painting can be easily related to the poem of Ovid, and probably with the more traditional interpretation that links the exile of Ovid to the isolation of the artist, as we have seen in Hugo and Baudelaire. However, Delacroix’s reading of Ovid’s exile is much more complex and comes from a combination of sources; it is a reading that is modified depending on the location of the painting, whether in a public or a private space. Delacroix first used the subject of the exile of Ovid for the decoration of the ceiling of the library of the Senate (now the Palais Bourbon), (see Fig.  9.1) commissioned in 1838. He would subsequently use the topic in two paintings, one commissioned by Benoît Fould. Although the contexts in which the paintings were created are different (one was a public commission, the others were private), the scene that Delacroix chose to display was the same in both cases: the moment in which the Scythians offered Ovid fermented mare’s milk to drink. This scene is actually taken not from Ovid but from Herodotus, who explained some of the Scythians’ traditions.13 In the exile poems, Ovid never interacts with the Scythians; he is a mere spectator to their life. He is too immersed in his own misery to become involved with them, at least his literary self. The Ovid of Delacroix is languid, detached from the Scythians, who to his dismay seem to be making an effort to get to know him. For the library decoration, Delacroix focused on the act of offering milk, with the sea becoming merely the background of the scene. The sea would recover its prominence for the private commission, however, where the scene is set within a landscape and the sea is depicted as a greyish colour, resurrecting the idea of an unwelcoming sea that reflects the situation Ovid is in. On 30 August 1838, Delacroix was commissioned to decorate the ceiling of the library of the Palais Bourbon where the Deputies held their assembly (see Fig. 9.2).14 This was not his first commission in the building, as he had already been commissioned to decorate the Salon du Roi, or King’s reception room, in 1833. He would later receive another state commission for the library of the Palais Luxembourg, the building where the Senate met.

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Fig. 9.1  Eugène Delacroix, Ovid chez les Barbars.

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Fig. 9.2  Eugène Delacroix, preparatory drawing for Ovid chez les Barbars.

The first document we have that is related to the mural decoration of the Bourbon Palace pre-­dates the commissioning of the work,15 and is a proposal for the decoration of several rooms. For the entrance of the building, Delacroix proposed a decoration related to the glory of France, in which the country would be depicted as a source of civilization. The decoration of the library would be traditional, featuring the great men related to the disciplines of the books housed in the library. This type of decoration had been frequently used in libraries since the Renaissance, and was in accord with what Delacroix wrote to his friend François Villot on 13 of September 1838, that the decoration of such a place required a subject that could be easily understood and would please everybody.16 It would include some modern subjects, as well as some figures from modern mythology. He was not convinced by his first choice of subject for the library, and was willing to change if he found something better – which he did, as we will see.

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Delacroix was only commissioned to decorate the library, and the decorations would thus change over time due to other commitments and the long span of time that it took him to complete the work (he only finished the ceiling in 1848). Even so, the concept of civilization that originally appeared in the first design would become an important part of the overall design, as would the representation of Ovid. The first preparatory drawing in which the subject of Ovid appears is a sketch for the dome of Orpheus bringing civilization and the arts of peace to the primitive Greeks, a sketch which also mentions the subject of the other dome: Attila and his barbarian hordes trampling Italy and the arts.17 Here, Delacroix copied a fragment of an article from the Revue des deux mondes from 1 January 1843 about the arts in England, in particular concerning two paintings by John Barry in the Royal Society of Arts in London: Orpheus instructing a savage people in theology and the arts of social life and A Grecian harvest-­home.18 Barry had used the reading offered by Horace in his Ars Poetica (lines 391–3) in which Orpheus ‘tamed’ not only the animals but also the Thracians, effectively saying that he civilized them. Here, Ovid is listed as a possible subject. The subject of civilization had already appealed to Delacroix who, in a sketch dated before 1840, wrote the line ‘Orpheus taming the Thracians’ within a list of ideas for the ceiling of the library.19 According to Hopmans, the article mentioning Barry could have reminded Delacroix of the topic of civilization that, as this sketch shows, must have already been present in the original proposal for the decorations of the Palais Bourbon.20 The clash between the civilized and barbarian worlds was actually a subject of interest to Delacroix, for whom it was also a clash between the urban landscape and nature, as we have seen in the poetry of Baudelaire. Delacroix himself felt torn between the cosmopolitan Paris and the small village of Champrosay, where he felt close to nature; he would subsequently buy a house there, and as he grew older he spent progressively more time there. In fact, in a fragment from Delacroix’s diary dated 1835 he wrote some ideas, possibly for a potential novel, in which the main character finds himself on a desert island like Robinson Crusoe after having lived a mundane life; he would have to revert to nature to find himself again. The other potential plot was a painter who becomes a monk. Ovid was also present in this discourse, as next to these thoughts Delacroix wrote the line ‘Ovid in the land of the Scythes’. Here, we can see how the subject of the exile of Ovid has a positive aspect linked to a change in lifestyle.21 The sketches for the ceiling of the library of the Palais Bourbon illustrate the development of the topic. First sketches show other figures, or a mare in the

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foreground, perhaps indicating a general approach to the topic of the exile of Ovid. In the final representation, the focus is on the action of a Scythian woman offering a drink, likely mare’s milk, to Ovid. By concentrating on that scene, the artist seems intent on stressing the idea of a clash between two different worlds, a clash that mirrors the themes of the two domes: on one side, Orpheus bringing civilization to the Greeks, on the other, Attila destroying the arts in Italy. In this interpretation of Ovid’s exile, the sea is absent because it plays no role. Both in Ovid’s exile poetry and the reinterpretations by Hugo and Baudelaire, the sea (and the landscape) mirrors the mood of the writer, his inner self. When Ovid becomes a paradigm of civilization, the sea becomes almost irrelevant because it rarely plays a role in representing a clash of cultures. In an artistic context, the sea predominantly means change, inner turmoil, conflict; even if the sea could have been represented as the facilitator of those cultural exchanges, of civilization, this is not how it is intended here – or at least it was not by Delacroix. In my opinion, the sea is implicit when representing this topic; by focusing only on the representation of the act of offering milk to the one who needs it, and not on what surrounds it (i.e. how Ovid got there), the message is clearer. If we look at the arrangement of figures in the representation of Ovid in the Palais Bourbon, we see how the link between Ovid and the concept of civilization becomes even more evident as it adds a further reference point: the French writer François René de Chateaubriand. The final version of the exile of Ovid is reminiscent of another Delacroix painting, Les Natchez (1823–4 and 1835) (see Fig. 9.3).22 The subject is based on a novel published in 1826 by Chateaubriand, Les Natchez, where he speaks of the massacre of the titular tribe of Native Americans who lived in the Mississippi Valley. Here, Delacroix shows a pair of Natchez fleeing the massacre. Both paintings have the same type of classical composition, in which two figures opposing each other gaze at the central motif (the baby in Les Natchez or the bowl in the case of the Ovid painting), giving relevance to the main subject and directing the viewer’s attention to it. Not only are the scenes similar, but they perhaps also contain similarities in meaning. Chateaubriand had a great interest in depicting the clash of cultures within his novels, a topic of interest after his extensive travels through the Mediterranean and America, though also in great part because he had been witness to the political and social collapse created by the French Revolution. In addition, Chateaubriand utilized the figure of Ovid as Hugo and Baudelaire had done, portraying him as a cursed poet. The attraction to and interest in this aspect of the exile of Ovid can be seen in the search for Ovid’s grave. In Tristia,

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Fig. 9.3  Eugène Delacroix, Les Natchez (1835).

Ovid complains that he will likely die in Tomis, buried in a grave without name that will not be honoured in the Roman manner by those who pass. Chateaubriand recreated the discovery of the grave of Ovid in his novel Les Martyrs, published in 1809. He tells the story of Eudore, a Roman officer of the Flavian period who converted to Christianity. The protagonist finds himself on a journey around the Mediterranean, during which he discovers the tomb of Ovid. Chateaubriand uses the first line of the Tristia as an epitaph for the grave: ‘sine me, liber, ibis in urbem’ or ‘My book, you will go to Rome, and you will go to Rome without me’.23 Eudore finds in the exile of Ovid a reflection of his own exile, and the description of Pontus as ‘a desert’ only strengthens the idea of the pain brought on by it. Here, the literature of exile is again defined by the landscape. However, Chateaubriand transforms the hate and disdain that Ovid felt for the Black Sea into a tale of acculturation. In Chateaubriand’s reading of Ovid’s exile, the inhabitants of Tomis welcome him, as demonstrated by the fact that the epitaph on Ovid’s grave is written in Latin: Ovid becomes Orpheus, bringing civilization to the Greeks. This interpretation of Ovid fits well within the context of the library decoration in the Palais Bourbon: Ovid strengthens the main theme of Orpheus bringing civilization to the Thracians.

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For the ceiling of the Palais Bourbon, Delacroix had adopted a classical subject in a contemporary reading suitable for a public building, but how would he interpret the subject for a private commission? Fould does not seem to have asked for a specific subject, so Delacroix was able to sell him a topic of his preference.24 The composition resumes the first sketches that we have seen for the ceiling of the library: the milking of the mare in the foreground, Ovid and the Scythians in the background. In addition, and more importantly, the scene is included within a landscape, hence the sea makes a return to the theme. The grey clouds over a cold blue sea remind us of the Ovidian poetry, and the coldness of the landscape is perhaps a reflection of the hard conditions of exile. The painting was presented in the Salon of 1859, where the painter described the scene as follows: ‘some look at him with curiosity, some welcome him in their own way, others welcome him with wild fruits and mare’s milk’. His description refers to the stranger in a foreign land, perhaps a barbarian in the eyes of the Scythians, who nonetheless feel curiosity towards him. The comment reveals solitude, a sentiment close to the heart of Delacroix, who in the last years of his life experienced an increasing feeling of isolation after the death of some of his close friends, preferring the life in the country. In September 1845, he wrote to George Sand that he felt like a barbarian, and lived in isolation.25 Of course, being a barbarian was not necessarily a bad thing for someone who felt interested in other cultures, albeit predominantly as a source of inspiration for his paintings. The reception of the painting was far from positive. Even Théophile Gautier, a firm defender of Delacroix, could not help commenting that the size of the mare within the composition made it look like the Trojan horse, although he, like Baudelaire, appreciated the ‘sadness’ of the figure of Ovid.26 Delacroix felt so discouraged that he would never again present paintings to a Salon. He likely felt so close to the subject of his painting that this occasion can perhaps also be read as the solitude of the artist in front of his critics (and the public). Nevertheless, we should not forget that Delacroix seems to have viewed the subject of the exile of Ovid as a pleasing one due to its combination of landscape with figures and animals.27 One of the few positive reviews came from Baudelaire, who linked the Ovid of Delacroix with the novels of Chateaubriand. According to him, both artists successfully recreated the melancholy of exile in their works. For Baudelaire, the sea in painting represents the mood of the soul, either that of Ovid in his encounter with the ‘Barbarians’, or that of the artist and the spectator.28 Despite these criticisms, Delacroix painted another version of the subject shortly before his death, which now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

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in New York. Delacroix decreased the size of the mare, made the colours more vivid and the tone of the subject lighter than in the previous version, where the grey coldness of the landscape matched the melancholy of the life of a man who had been stripped of everything that mattered to him. Turner’s painting on the same subject (Ovid banished from Rome, 1838) provides the perfect counterpoint, as both artists had very different approaches to the classical past (see Fig. 9.4). While Turner, who was slightly younger than Delacroix, had a more ‘academic’ approach, Delacroix anticipates the idea of the modern artist, more interested in depicting the world they live in than a mythical past. In fact, when he presented his painting the Massacre of Chios in the Salon during 1824, he remarked in the description of the painting, ‘Read the current newspapers.’ Turner travelled to Italy, a country that had a profound influence on his paintings; the works of Ovid were also a source of inspiration, and his depiction of Ovid can perhaps be understood as an homage to the writer who had inspired him.29 Delacroix dreamt of travelling to Rome (after all, it was still considered an essential part of the development of an artist), but was never able to go. Other commitments (such as his trip to Morocco in 1832) and his poor health prevented Delacroix from making the journey to Italy.30 Nevertheless, he was not

Fig. 9.4  Joseph Mallord William Turner, Ovid banished from Rome (1838).

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interested in Italy because of its classical past, but because it would have allowed him to see the masters he so admired, Raphael and Michelangelo. Antiquity is present in his work, but his main inspiration came from modern subjects and contemporary events. Turner’s Ovid can be traced directly to Ovid’s exile poems. Ovid explains how he was forced to leave behind his belongings, friends and family. His wife begged him to let her accompany him to Tomis, but he refused, which only served to strengthen the idea of solitude. What made the exile even more painful was the fact that he was leaving Rome, the capital of the world. This is the moment that Turner depicts, Ovid leaving Rome or ‘the city’, as Ovid calls it on numerous occasions. At first glance, we see only the magnificence of Rome, the full splendour of its architecture under a yellow light; a reinterpreted architecture, more than an accurate topographical representation.31 On the left, Ovid appears dwarfed by the magnificence of Rome; it is only when we notice he is being dragged towards the Tiber that we understand the magnitude of the tragedy.32 Turner does not emphasize the hard conditions of exile, but rather the magnificence of Rome as the poet is about to leave, to an exile from which he will never return (as the sarcophagus with the name of Ovid in the bottom left of the picture may indicate). The bright yellow provokes a dizziness in the viewer, recalling the numbness and disbelief with which Ovid reacted to news of his exile.33 The painting had a pendant, an accompanying painting, Modern Italy: The Pifferari, in which Turner showed a gentler scene of musicians within an Italian landscape, in the very popular Tivoli and its temple of Vesta.34 The scene was thought to be linked with Ovid; it represents a procession of musicians from southern Italy travelling to Rome during the Christmas period. Travellers in the nineteenth century considered this tradition to have a pagan origin connected to Ovid, who related music to worship of the gods.35 The sea was an important aspect in the exile poems of Ovid, acting as both the landscape where the action takes place and as a character itself, highlighting the solitude and pain of exile. Nevertheless, it is an element that, to a certain extent, disappears within the visual representations of this episode of Ovid’s life, contrary to what can be seen in its literary reception. The sea plays an important role in the work of Hugo and Baudelaire, and even in that of Chateaubriand, where its hostility can be interpreted as the distance between the narrator and the world he has lost. This is also the case in Delacroix’s Ovid chez les Scythes where the sea, rough and grey, provides an ideal setting for the encounter between Ovid and his ‘hosts’. While it is not easy to prove that the painter may have felt a personal connection to the subject, he was at the time feeling progressively more isolated

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from the society he was living in, and seemed to be in voluntary exile. The element of the sea disappeared completely in his official representation of the subject in the library of the Palais Bourbon, likely because here the topic of Ovid’s exile did not have such personal significance. Here it is no longer about the exile of an artist – the dominant theme is that of contact between different cultures, here represented by Ovid and the Scythians. While the sea might be implicit, it is no longer necessary to represent the topic; the emphasis is on two worlds that collide rather than the fact that it was the sea that brought them together. This is represented by the act of the Scythians giving milk to Ovid. In the case of Turner, the sea does not represent the fate of Ovid but the life he leaves behind, magnificent Rome and its intoxicating yellow Tiber. The sea is never stationary; it changes according to the mood of the artist and his public, and also his subject: Ovid.

Notes 1 See, for example, Martindale 1988. 2 Ov. Tr. 3.13.11. 3 The bibliography on Ovid’s exile and its reception is vast: Ziolkowski 2005; Claassen 2008; Ziolkowski 2009, 455–68; Hexter 2010, 585–608; Godel 2014, 454–68. 4 Ov. Tr. 3.10.35. 5 Ov. Tr. 3.10.70. 6 Ov. Tr. 3.12. 7 A more sympathetic description of the ancient Tomis can be found here: http:// romaniatourism.com/constanta.html (accessed 14 August 2016). 8 Hugo 1864, viii; Cox 2011, 175, for the relationship between Hugo and Ovid. 9 Hugo 1864, xiv. 10 ‘Je vois ce malheureux, mythe étrange et fatal / Vers le ciel quelquefois, comme l’homme d’Ovide’, Baudelaire 1861, poem LXXXIX, ‘le cygne’ (the swan). 11 ‘Ainsi dans la forêt où mon esprit s’exile / Un vieux Souvenir sonne à plein souffle du cor! / Je pense aux matelots oubliés dans une île, / Aux captifs, aux vaincus! . . . à bien d’autres encor!’ in idem. 12 Herold 1997. 13 Hdt. Hist. 3.4.2. 14 Hersey 1968, 383–403; Hopmans 1987, 240–69. 15 Archives Nationales in Paris, box F 21.752, and Bibliothèque d’Art et d’Archéologie in Paris, M250, fols. 112 and 113. For a discussion on these manuscripts see Sérullaz 1963, 49–51; Hopmans 1987, 50, n. 36.

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16 Original in the Bibliothèque d’Art et d’Archéologie in Paris; Burty 1880a, 228–31; Joubin 1936. 17 Unpublished drawing in the collection of the Palais Bourbon published by Anita Hopmans in Hopmans 1987, 244–5, n. 17, fig. 4. 18 Mercey 1842, 899–926. 19 Angrand 1978. 20 Hopmans 1987, 246–7. 21 Carnet Héliotrope, f. 77r published in Hannosh 2009, 1552. 22 The painting was finally finished in 1835 and presented in the Salon of that year (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York). 23 Ov. Tr. 1.1.1.; Trapp 1973, 35–76. 24 Robaut 1885, no. 1376. Letter to Moreau from 11 March 1856 regarding the painting: Burty 1880b, 139–40. 25 Paris, September 1845, published in Joubin 1936, 236. 26 Gautier’s review of the Salon of 1859 is published in Gautier 1992, 34–5. For a complete list of the reviews on the painting when this was presented in the Salon, see Johnson 1989, J334. 27 See above n. 24. 28 Baudelaire 1868, 287–8. Delacroix would later send a warm letter to Baudelaire thanking him for his kind words. Nevertheless, Delacroix would also say to Morel, director of the Revue française, that he felt confused by Baudelaire’s interpretation of his work. Burty 1880, 216–19 (both letters from 27 June 1859). 29 Nicholson 1990, 144–218. 30 See, for example, the letter to Charles de Verninac from 1830 in Delacroix 1991, 14. 31 The representation of Rome almost as a capriccio might have been influenced by the friendship of Turner with C. R. Cockerell. Thornbury 1862; Gage 1983, 58–60. 32 The identification of the figure of Ovid is doubtful due to the size of the figures, but in my opinion, the fact that the character is being dragged might support that identification. Butlin and Joll 1984, no. 375. 33 The yellow colour is reminiscent of another Turner painting that deals with decline, The decline of the Carthaginian Empire. Nicholson 1990, 115. 34 For the influence of the temple of Vesta in Tivoli, see De Los Llanos, Beck Saiello and Ryaux 2011. 35 Other interpretations of this pair of paintings suggest that Turner might have wanted to contrast the Christianity of Modern Italy with an implicit degeneration of the Roman setting in Ancient Italy. Finley 1999, 43. A summary of other interpretations can be found in Butlin and Joll 1984, no. 375 (Ancient Italy. Ovid banished from Rome) and no. 374 (Modern Italy. The Pifferari).

10

Cinematic Romans and the Mediterranean Sea Cecilia Ricci1

Classical antiquity transmits powerful imageries of the sea.2 The sea is one of the ocean’s children, the source of all rivers, lakes, seas and wells. Ancient myth places the ocean’s origin as a contestant in the Titanomachia; in the aftermath of the battle, the sea and all its waters were embraced by the earth and became the realm of Poseidon.3 The most common anthropomorphized portrait of the sea is that of a mature, bearded man, emerging from water up to his neck, the rest of his body being swallowed by the sea. His rich hair is uncultivated, overrun with algae and marine animals. In mosaic depictions, the sea is accompanied by large, fanciful fishes.4 The Mediterranean is ‘our sea’, as Cicero puts it. According to the orator, the Romans did not feel truly confident with this sea, and maritime cities did not enjoy a good reputation: Corruption and mobility of habits are inscribed in the character of the harbours. Here new languages and practices are mixed and you can find new goods as new habits. And none of the native customs can remain unscathed by the attack.5

This famous passage from the De Re Publica essentially summarizes how Romans felt about port cities and their dangers, and provides a catalogue of clichés that shaped a typical Roman view of the Mediterranean Sea. Romulus, he reasons, wanted to found his city by a river, and to the river Tiber Rome tied its imagery and devotion – as well as its wealth – far earlier and more intensively than to the sea. Rome’s relationship with the sea emerged at a later stage and grew up torn and tormented, alternating between suspicion and a firm desire to dominate it. The Romans appear to have been radically different regarding the sea from other ‘Mediterranean powers’ – the Etruscans, the Greeks and the Carthaginians – with whom the city gradually developed contact. Beyond simply gaining confidence, the Romans appear to have undertaken a progressive taming of the

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sea for the purposes of commerce and war, though familiarity with these waters was limited only to those who needed to deal with it: merchants, sailors, fishermen and soldiers. In this chapter, I will discuss the ambivalent relationship between Romans and the sea as depicted in historical and epic films. The proliferation of cinematic Romans and their impact on the collective imagination, particularly from the 1950s onwards, has contributed to creating a popular timeline-­narrative of ancient history (up to the Middle Ages), which seems to run parallel to that supplied by ancient sources. The image of the Roman world and its inhabitants offered by a good many historical movies – from Cabiria to Gladiator – often lacks subtlety and sophistication. The cinematic Romans, while having many undeniable advantages, also had many defects – among them a passion for barbaric violence exemplified by the gladiators, as well as a pagan opulence that condemned them to decadence, first moral and then historical. This schematic depiction is inspired by both the spectacular language of cinema and a re-­ reading of ancient sources.6 The same view, as I will attempt to show, is also reproduced within movies in which the sea is a protagonist. More specifically, in the 1950s and 1960s, ancient history predominantly featured in blockbusters and sword-­and-sandal films as a combination of historical and fictitious characters and events. The temporal distance from more recent historical periods explains, to a certain degree, the creative licence that often turned ancient and medieval films into an opportunity or pretext for not only storytelling but also to propose a certain way of viewing history.7 From the 1970s and throughout the 1980s, a growing number of films began to showcase the artistic and ideological tendencies of the creative teams involved in making them (directors, playwrights, directors of photography etc.), while prior to this the industry, particularly in Hollywood, was largely dominated by the political and ideological agendas of the film studios. As a result of this shift, films (including those that dealt with Roman topics) tended to more explicitly express doubts and concerns about the end of certainties that had traditionally projected a one-­sided, unambiguous interpretation of historical reality, mirroring instead the instability of existence,8 when not explicitly expressing a more radical criticism of established powers.9 More recently (from the 1990s onwards, and particularly during the 2000s), films focusing on ancient topics and events seemed to be largely dominated by the language of the spectacular and/or storytelling as an end in itself. In general terms, films made in more recent years lack the didactical view of history that tended to characterize earlier productions.10

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Two exceptions to this trend among the films selected for this chapter are Pompeii (2014), a recent success that revisits a well-­known theme, and De reditu (2003), a remarkable attempt to avoid established paths and mainstream ideas of spectacle. On this occasion, I will consider a selection of films that belong to different genres and periods. Each is, in my opinion, representative of various trends and ideas – expressed in other films of the same or similar kind – which allow us to discuss Roman attitudes towards the sea, as well as the meaning and symbolism attributed to it within the medium. These aspects are summarized in the proposed headings:11 the sea as a space of conquest, as well as a context in which engineering and technical skills are showcased; the sea as a metaphor of decadence; and the sea as a medium of trade and transport for luxury goods. The order in which themes and characters occur in the following pages will hopefully provide a useful guide to reading how the depiction of ancient Romans and their interactions with the sea changed and developed according to the ‘spirit of the times’ and the cultural environment in which these movies were produced.

The sea as a metaphor and engine of change The subtitle of Ben-Hur, the famous novel published by Lew Wallace in 1880 and adapted for the screen, is A Tale of the Christ.12 This serves to clarify how doctrinal reinterpretation functions behind the seemingly harmless exercise of creative freedom by a novelist, namely as a ‘message’ that can be holistically absorbed by producers, screenwriters and directors. The ‘paradigmatic’ story of the Jew who, owing to fatal circumstances, becomes a Roman and subsequently a Christian, and the character whose most famous face is that of Charlton Heston, forms a diptych, widely looted from film and TV, along with The Last Days of Pompeii (a novel that mixes Pliny with imagination) written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1834. Both were iconic and extremely popular Roman epic novels with strong moral and Christian overtones. In the novel Ben-Hur, the sea plays a central role in the story: the sinking of the ship, where the protagonist is chained to the oars, is both a narrative pivot and the engine of the identity transformation – as in The Count of Monte Cristo – that will lead to the moment of revenge (the villain Messala run over by chariots) and the Christian conversion (Ben-Hur as a witness of Calvary). The sea scene is set in c. ad 30, in the eastern Mediterranean. Judah Ben-Hur travels as a slave in a Roman military trireme, which is on the hunt for a fleet of

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Macedonian pirates that are considered a threat to imperial trade. The battle ends with the sinking of the Roman galley, but Judah will heroically save its commander, the consul Quintus Arrius. As an expression of his gratitude, Arrius will adopt the Jewish slave as a son, and give him, in accordance with custom, his name. In the two best known colossal editions of the novel – those of Fred Niblo of 1925 and William Wyler in 195913 – the reconstruction of the hard life of the rowers on board and the heroic rescue scene represent key passages in the story, allowing the screenwriter and director to highlight the selfless nature of the protagonist and his close resemblance to Roman (and American) ideals of behaviour. The sea in Ben-Hur can be seen as a place in which the social norms and differentiations that dominated Roman society can be easily subverted by enemy attack, or by nature itself. Unlike the city and the territories ruled by Rome, the sea has its own norms. It is also the place where the virtues of the hero – loyalty, courage, generosity, a lack of vengeance – come to the fore, and help to reinforce the protagonist’s tortuous path to Christian revelation. In the 1913 version of The Last Days of Pompeii, directed by Mario Caserini and Eleuterio Rodolfi, the sea of the Campanian city is the symbolic backdrop for the presentation of Arbaces, the priest of Isis, and Ione, the beauty who falls in love with the hero Glaucus. Feared and respected, Arbaces aspires to marry the girl. Overlooking the sea from a terrace, the priest sees her cheerfully passing time on a boat with his rival. The sea on which the boat is lightly moving is quiet and friendly, in radical opposition to the menacing Mount Vesuvius. The calming sea thus creates an uncanny feeling, that of anticipating the catastrophic spectacle of terror to come. Today, after a long succession of documentaries, most notably those by the BBC and National Geographic, television audiences (along with producers, writers and directors) know exactly how the destruction of Pompeii occurred. In the audacious Pompeii, a German-Canadian co-­production from 2014 directed by Paul W. S Anderson, the audience watches the catastrophic event for the first time in a reconstruction that is likely very close to reality: the topography of the site is carefully modelled on visible excavations, and the entire eruptive pyroclastic bomb and subsequent tsunami are depicted with the most advanced computer graphics (CGI), as no documentary has done before. A superficial script that serves only spectacular action sequences substantially explains the fiasco of the film at the box office.14 A bland political motive is the background for the main story: the Romans are arrogant, unafraid of the ostentatiousness of their luxury and excess; they refuse to be stopped by anything or anyone, and are unable to recognize their limits. Consequently, they must be punished, and their

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punishment comes in the form of fire and water. Nature refuses to be subdued, and the uncontrollable explosion resets everything: all this at the cost of sacrificing the protagonists.15 Inevitably, the striking and dramatic images of the tsunami provoked by the Pompeian eruption, which was also described in the famous Plinian letters, may have reminded audiences of the 2004 catastrophe in Thailand and Indonesia.16 The sea is thus no longer a counterpoint to fire, lava and ash, but their fierce and equally wild ally. Beyond epic films,17 the sea can also transmit and embody powerful messages and metaphors. In Claudio Bondì’s De reditu, a film set in the fifth century and based on the homonym poem by Claudius Rutilius Namatianus, the protagonist Rutilius, who wishes to return to Gaul, can no longer use the legendary Roman roads: following the invasion of Alaric, the situation has changed and only the water seems able to provide him a sure way back home. Here the sea is no longer an ‘open sea’ but a coastal one; a sea which no longer hosts big battles or offers opportunities for redemption, but simply provides the chance to survive in a world that seems to be disappearing or profoundly transforming.18 Aboard a cymba19 on the Calabrian sea of Crotone, Rutilius looks at the mainland with regret and fear. He is aware that his distance from Rome is not simply a matter of miles; each time he lands, he puts himself in danger and runs the risk of unwelcome surprises. Encounters with robbers and spies and the risk of being caught are dangers that essentially come from the mainland, the realm of the ‘barbarian’ invasions that will put an end to classical civilization to inaugurate a new, more obscure, era. Land and sea, in this case, are represented as two opposing worlds: while the first is the realm of unpredictable risk, of insecurity, of cunning and threat, the second signifies the only possible method of escape. We are at the end of the Roman Empire, an era that saw the decline of the transmarine routes that had boosted economic prosperity and were made possible thanks to Rome’s military hegemony. Bondì’s film recovers and enhances the metaphorical meaning of the sea that canvases Rutilius’s poem: in late antiquity, the sea is no longer an epic backdrop to glorious conquest or commercial successes, though it does at least remain as a means of communication that welcomes and rescues those who are simply trying to survive.

The sea as a space of conflict Next to Ben-Hur and The Last Days of Pompeii, we can identify another ‘diptych’ in the history of the genre, this time composed of the same topic revisited: the

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Cleopatra(s) by Cecile B. De Mille (1934) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1963).20 In both, the influences of the nineteenth-­century painters Jean-Léon Gérôme and Lawrence Alma-Tadema are visible. The explicit debts to Shakespeare’s theatre and the famous tragedies of Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra are also recognizable.21 While the aquatic event in Ben-Hur is a creation of fantasy, in reconstructions of the story of Antony and Cleopatra the writers are faced with the so-­called Great History: the fatal Battle of Actium.22 This is the event that, after nearly a century of civil war, sealed the future balance between East and West, as well as Rome’s hegemony across the Mediterranean. The frequent reception of the Battle of Actium as a cultural clash has opened the door to some interestingly uchronic speculation. In the 1934 movie, the episode of Actium is enriched with night scenes that enhance the spectacle of launching firebombs from ship to ship.23 However, rammings, boardings and melee combat reveal how the historical information learned at school was diligently assimilated by Hollywood writers, who were clearly aware that the Romans adapted their military technique so as to subdue the previous rulers of the Mediterranean sea: the Phoenician-Carthaginians. In Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra, the waters of Actium, Egypt and Syria are those of Anzio, a coastal town near Rome, where the production reconstructed the port of Alexandria at full scale. Ischia was chosen to represent Tarsus in the scene where Cleopatra arrives on board the golden vessel. The reconstruction of the Battle of Actium for the 1963 Cleopatra matches the realistic model of the sea battle seen in Ben-Hur, with a spectacular innovation: from the terrace of the palace, Egyptian and Roman generals follow the ebb and flow of the battle. To do so, they use a futuristic miniature model consisting of a table to simulate the sea that features model ships. The image is very impressive, although there remains the question of how the representation would be possible without real-­time communications. But such is the nature of cinema, and the pact it makes with the public to suspend disbelief, as was theorized by Samuel Taylor Coleridge 200 years ago.24 Alongside the Italian economic boom, Roman-­themed movies saw an unprecedented boost, with the ‘Toga Film’ enjoying widespread popular support. During the period from 1958 to 1965, scriptwriters searched for stories from the ancient world to meet the growing demand for this seductive mix of history and adventure traditionally known as peplum. Tapping into Plutarch and Suetonius, while flavouring the ancient texts with a good sprinkling of spectacle, Maria Grazia Borgiotti wrote Giulio Cesare contro i pirati (Julius Caesar against the pirates) (1962), the only script of her career, which was then adapted into a screenplay by Gino Mangini and Sergio Grieco,

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also the film’s director. The movie unpretentiously retells the story of young Caesar’s maritime adventures: threatened with death by Sulla, Caesar leaves Rome to take refuge in Bithynia. King Nicomedes, his new patron, runs a serious risk by taking hostage Plautia, wife of the feared pirate Hamar. To avoid retaliation against Nicomedes, Caesar sails to Rhodes with Plautia, but the ship carrying the two is attacked by pirates, who take them prisoner. Caesar succeeds in saving them with the help of some friends, and they return to Rome. Grieco’s film, with Gustavo Rojo in the role of Julius Caesar, and the bodybuilder Gordon Mitchell as the antagonist Hamar, is one of the few movies entirely devoted to what we might call a ‘Roman Marine epic’, in which the sea becomes a co-­ protagonist and provides the main storyline. Interestingly, the historical episode in the movie suffers the same distortion that dominates Caesar’s maritime adventures in the comic series Asterix.25 The sea here is a place of cunning, but mostly of adventure, giving the opportunity (to both Caesar and his rival) to show their virtues and bravery, with fewer moral connotations than in Ben-Hur, for instance. The coastal sea is the location in which Hamar holds Caesar prisoner, but it is the open sea where the attack takes place. The locations for the coast and sea of Ionia are actually Tito’s Yugoslavia, where small Italian productions went to shoot with local workers in more favourable economic conditions than those that existed at home.26 The recurrence of the ‘pirate’ topic is not surprising: the fight against the Mediterranean pirates was actually a kind of periodic nightmare that the Romans came across throughout the republican period.27 At the same time, this is also a subject that lends itself to exploitation for the sake of spectacle. For this reason, famous conflicts as well as individual episodes of banditry have found a special place in film, as with the Punic Wars or the fight against the Cilician pirates. While the historical references may be clear, the reconstructions are for the most part anachronistic, as piratical wars are used as the backdrop for the exploits of protagonists from heroic fantasy.28 In creating this hybrid (pirates and Romans), the sea is represented as a theatre of adventure, of profit and gain, but also of challenges that are beyond human control and determined by the laws of nature.

The sea as an expression of engineering skill As well as being the setting for clashes and dynamic historical events, both real and metaphorical, ancient epic films often feature the sea (and also the mainland)

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as the context in which the Romans showcased their own skills as builders and planners. In the first part of Grieco’s movie mentioned above, Caesar’s ship, sailing to Rome, is boarded by pirates led by the ferocious Hamar just off the coast of Turkey, and the crew is imprisoned. Access to the raiders’ village port is protected by an ingenious and improbable security system: a large net stretched between the rocky walls to block the entry of hostile ships, which can then be lowered into the water to allow the passage of friendly vessels. It is likely that this idea was taken from Polybius and Livy’s descriptions of the slings used to lift ships (such as χεῖρα σιδηρᾶ and manus ferrea) that were invented by Archimedes during the Second Punic War.29 These passages from ancient authors were certainly not familiar to the film’s audience, but they were most likely known to authors and educated writers who, thanks to their academic experience, would have been able to locate and select suitable sources, episodes and legends in order to entertain and potentially surprise their audience. In 1914, the Italian Giovanni Pastrone began his ‘Roman Colossal’ series of films with Cabiria. These were anticipated several years earlier by the brilliant pioneers Luigi Maggi and Enrico Guazzoni. Acclaimed in cinemas worldwide, Cabiria recreates the confrontation between Romans and Carthaginians during the Second Punic War. The film, with its chauvinistic tones, strongly recalls the Italian nationalism and expansionist politics of the 1910s, marked by the ItaloTurkish War and the invasion of Libya. Cabiria also helped to spread the legend, forever attributed to Archimedes, of the invention and use of burning mirrors as a strategic weapon against the Roman fleet besieging Syracuse.30 Such fascinating devices are probably a myth, even if – as some historians have suggested – the use of mirrors would almost certainly have served to disturb and disorient crews on board the ships. For Scipione l’Africano (1937), Carmine Gallone included scenes of Roman ships departing for Africa. In 1951, the director returned to Rome in Messalina. The opening sequence shows the Emperor Claudius in his ‘studio’, struggling with a group of advisors who present a project to construct the port of Ostia. In the film, the project manager is the architect Pallas: his idea is to erect thirteen columns with torches at the entrance of the harbour to illuminate it at night. In the grip of the well-­known superstition about the number thirteen, the emperor criticizes the architect’s proposal, as does the empress, who sarcastically comments, ‘Pallas has already eaten too much.’ The grandiose project of the Claudian port did not encourage Gallone to explore the potential – in terms of visual spectacle – of the challenging construction of this gigantic enterprise,

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which demonstrated Rome’s engineering superiority and economic prosperity more than any other.31 Instead, the scene of the architects’ consultation was conceived by the Italian director as a reference to the contemporary reality of building speculation in post-­war Rome, and to the greed frequently attributed to builders and designers in that period. The emperor is therefore represented as a political megalomaniac who wants to self-­aggrandize through gigantic projects; the architect Pallas also represents a caricature of the profiteer who tries to get rich through his project, while at the same time satisfying the protector’s illusions of grandeur. The naumachia represented one of the most effective syntheses of Rome’s spectacular celebration and recreation of power. These spectacles combined gladiatorial combat, theatrical shows and spectacular confusion, all peppered with superfluous ostentation. The ‘sea’ was brought to Rome for the first time by Caesar to celebrate his fourfold triumph, in particular the African victories. In 46 bc, during Cleopatra’s visit to Rome, the dictator dug a spiral basin more than ten metres deep in the Trastevere, which was flooded by the Tiber channel. A large number of participants (something like 6,000 men, between combatants and comparse) and a large crowd of spectators were present for the performance of a battle between Egyptians and Phoenicians.32 Such was its success that every Julio-Claudian emperor (except Tiberius), along with many of their successors, was forced to replicate the spectacle, building special scenarios or adapting the arenas of amphitheatres. The most faithful reconstruction (to date) of an ancient Roman naumachia was made by the historical adventure movie expert Riccardo Freda, who shot his Spartacus in the arena of Verona (1953), staging the famous story of the rebel slave that was also told by Stanley Kubrick seven years later.33 For the occasion, the arena of Verona was flooded and occupied by a large ship. In the pivotal scene of the movie, while a ballet dances on board the ship, the scene is interrupted by the sudden arrival of lions from the mainland, who foment terror among the spectators. Rather than attempting to faithfully reconstruct a Roman naumachia, Freda chose here to merge this spectacle with those typical of amphitheatres, in order to enhance the atmosphere of pure entertainment for both modern and (fictitious) ancient audiences. In 79 ad: The Destruction of Herculaneum (Gianfranco Parolini, 1962), the boats performing the naumachia are actually rafts that move in the swamp; while in the contemporary Pontius Pilate (Gian Paolo Callegari, Irving Rapper, 1962), in a lake not bigger than a swimming pool, canoes with rostrums on the bow compete while bumping against each other. Pilate (Jean Marais) and Galba (Riccardo Garrone), who have

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bet on various contenders, attend the show with an audience thronged on the banks of the river, all waiting for the hungry crocodiles to devour the crews of sunken boats. The ‘naval battles in the cities’ were a great starting point for directors, while at the same time offering the opportunity to showcase the sophisticated engineering skills of the Romans and create remarkably spectacular effects. The Roman sea power evoked in these mini naval battles is reflected and expanded upon by the evocative power of cinema, though it could be argued that the standard inventory of cinematic Rome already had other instruments (such as chariot races, gladiatorial games, etc.) to fascinate spectators. In general, perhaps due to its challenging staging, the naval scenes were less frequent than other types of spectacle, and for this reason have not had the same influence upon classical reception.34

The sea as a metaphor of luxury and decline In 1969, Federico Fellini presented Satyricon under his own name.35 This fascinating, personal view of the world of Petronius by the Master of Rimini, who wrote the screenplay along with Bernardino Zapponi, was filmed with the help of photographer Giuseppe Rotunno, with sets and costumes by Danilo Donati. The author commented on the film: I was struck by the idea that the dust of centuries had kept the beats of an extinct heart. Being convalescent in Manziana, in the small library of a guesthouse, I happened [upon] Petronio: [and] came to feel a great emotion. It made me think of the columns, of the heads, of the missing eyes, of the broken noses, of the whole cemeterial scenography of Appia Antica or generally of archaeological museums. Scattered fragments, resurfacing shreds of what could be considered a dream, largely repressed and forgotten. Not an historical era, philologically reconstructed on documents, positivistically ascertained, but a large oniric galaxy, sunk in the darkness, among the glitter of fragments floating down to us.36

The choice of Petronius and his Satyricon as a topic for the film matches those considered by Fellini for other films, giving him the possibility to express oniric realism. In the Satyricon, water functions as a sort of amniotic fluid in which an unstable and dangerous vessel transports immature men, while the beach becomes not just a place of landing but also a frontier, in which the characters – at least in appearance – halt their procrastination and cut the cord of insecurity

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and immaturity. However, when the story advances, we see that some of the decisions are neither definitive nor helpful in untying their unresolved knots. A lengthy, central part of the film takes place at sea, the sea of the Pontine Islands. One of the two young protagonists, Encolpius, who has been taken prisoner by the extravagant Lica, finds himself in the great ship’s hold. Lica falls in love with the young Encolpius, and the wedding is celebrated. A priestess reads the future in the blood of a calf recently sacrificed. Then, remembering that ‘weddings celebrated on board are protected from Venus’, she joins the two in marriage. The rising of the goddess from the sea confers a strong symbolism on the marriage: the power of the sea serves to regenerate the young couple, who are now ready to face a future together. The short sequence in which a giant shark is caught should also be read in light of Fellini’s words: the fish is the symbol of a sea that inspires apprehension, as previously seen in the finale of the famous La Dolce Vita (1960), which ends with the image of a mysterious sea monster on Fiumicino beach. The sea was also an ideal context for enjoying simple pleasures like swimming, fishing and walks on the beach, while also providing some of the most popular luxury goods for the Romans. Preparing the table with prized fish and oysters, wearing beads or decorating and dyeing their clothes with purple were marks of distinction and wealth in Rome. Owning a fish hatchery in a villa maritima was at that point a privilege of the few.37 Large pleasure ships were also a status symbol,38 mainly inspired by those used by the Hellenistic dynasties.39 The most famous Roman luxury ships were, according to the sources, those that the Emperor Caligula himself built. As ‘small floating palaces’, they had ten oars, two sterns ornamented with precious stones and two hued sails of Tyrian purple with iridescent reflections;40 inside them were spas, porches, gardens, fruit trees, vineyards and dining rooms for banquets.41 The search for the fabulous ships of Caligula fascinated antiquarians and travellers from the sixteenth century onwards, but it was not until the nineteenth century when the bottom of the Nemi lake began to be explored that the first traces of the ancient splendour of these relics was unveiled. The recovery of the ancient vessels by the Fascist government (during the years 1928–32) required lowering the water level of the lake by means of pumps. The reliability of Suetonius’ account, together with the Fascist propaganda concerning the arduous nature of the recovery work, contributed to revitalizing the fame of the immoderate Caligula in artistic and popular imagination. From Camus’ Caligula to the psychoanalytical interpretation by Hanns Sachs, from the novels by Rodríguez and Siliato to the theatrical proposal by Marchetti (in the context of

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the inauguration of an exhibition devoted to the emperor),42 the character has attracted major attention throughout the years, some of it morbid. One of the high points of this continued interest in the son of Germanicus in modern imagination was undoubtedly the 1979 film directed by Tinto Brass. Strongly influenced by Fellini, but also by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975), Tinto Brass’s legendary Caligula was shot four years later, following complicated editorial vicissitudes and censorship troubles. Based on a screenplay by Gore Vidal, the film – which provoked a scandal surpassing that intended by the writer – sets the scene of an orgy on board the Nemorensis ship; this is a unicum in cinema, with the ship being used as a ‘visual machine’.43 The Roman emperor’s luxury, as we know from ancient sources (especially Suetonius), is here expanded on and deformed in an extreme manner.44 At the end of the 1970s, the debauched adventures of the young emperor allowed allusions to a contemporary, decadent reality; they also told a different story (private disorder as the alternate face of public repression) to that of Suetonius, where transgressions are read and presented to the audience as the inhuman side of an anthropomorphic monster.45 The maritime residences that many senators, as well as every prince of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, restored or created to enjoy uniquely inaccessible places and display their opulence were as ‘visual machines’ that lend themselves to the spectacular nature of the cinematic representation. Today’s cinema seems however not to be interested in the suggestive representations of Caesar’s villa near Miseno, nor in the many villas of Tiberius, or that of Pliny near Ostia,46 or indeed in the villa par excellence, Baiae, ‘the pearl of the maritime stations’.47 Here Marcellus died in 23 bc, as well as Hadrian in ad 138; it was in Baiae that Nero ordered his mother to be killed. Severus, in the third century, enlarged the palace so that his family could stay, and even built artificial lakes. Baiae began to disappear during the second century, swallowed by bradyseism, though many would say it collapsed under the weight of vice and debauchery represented by the metonymic.48 *** From blockbusters to B-movies, some constants can be traced – though partially influenced, of course, by our choice of examples. Whether the story is set during the civil wars or takes place in the imperial or even the late-­imperial era, the sea is never a neutral or impartial scenic element: it mirrors the feelings and virtues of the characters, while also channelling the representation of epic scenes, at times even expressing a metaphor for existence. It can also serve as a

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backdrop for the demonstration of the military or engineering skill of the Romans, and (though to a lesser extent) of the peoples that Rome meets upon the sea. For American filmmakers in particular, the sea provides a magnificent opportunity to connect the power and glory (and also the decadence and failings) of the Roman Empire with that of US society, and more generally of Western civilization as a whole. These ideas are also present in European cinema of various periods and genres. However, the image of the sea displayed in certain auteur films produced in Europe seems to particularly emphasize its insidious side, which highlights human contradictions and weaknesses while showing the other side of Roman power, revealing its tragical and/or parodistic aspects. This is the ‘primordial sea’ of Fellini’s Satyricon and the sadly dangerous, almost desperate and miserable sea of De reditu.49 Both films appear to us entirely different when regarded from their heroic/virile sets and locations. An even more different view is provided by the representation of the ‘naval expedition’ of Caligula in Tinto Brass’ movie, where the sea is depicted as a grotesque landscape, with the caricatured and perverse creatures that inhabit it.

Notes 1 This chapter has been conceived and discussed together with Carlo Pauer Modesti. The written version and any errors are mine. 2 Hes. Theog. 132–8, 207–10, 389–96, 617–735, 807–14. As for the Ocean God in Homer, see Hom. Il. 14.201 and 245–6; Od. 12.1. 3 Hor. Ep. 16.41. 4 The best examples are offered by Roman North African mosaics. Wide exemplification is found in Dunbabin 1978, 149–54; Blanchard-Lemée, in Blanchard, Ennaífer, Slim and Slim 1995, 121–46; Fantar 1995, 112–25. 5 Cic. Rep. 2.7: ‘Est autem maritimis urbibus etiam quaedam corruptela ac mutatio morum. admiscentur enim novis sermonibus ac disciplinis et inportantur non merces solum adventiciae, sed etiam mores, ut nihil possit in patriis institutis manere integrum.’ 6 Examples of this approach can be found in a great variety of movies from the beginnings of cinema to the new millennium. King Arthur (Antoine Fuqua, 2004) and The Last Legion (Doug Lefler, 2007) are illustrative instances of the idea of the decline of Rome, already extensively portrayed in The Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann, 1964).

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7 On the success of films based on the idea of spectacle as a narrative element, see Theodorakopoulos 2010. 8 See also Theodorakopoulos for the different presentations and discussions of two of the six movies selected for analysis here. In Theodorakopoulos’s view, in the films (Fellini’s Satyricon and Titus) the effort and conscious choice not to create a realistic Roman world is evident, instead presenting a grotesque and decadent image of what should not be seen, which is to say the hidden face of imperial power. 9 On Italian films of the 1970s, see for instance an impressive synthesis by Guerra 2009 (with further bibliography). On American films of this period, see Mailer 1957; King 2004; Simon 2006. Particularly interesting is Wyke’s approach to the topic (1997). 10 Despite praiseworthy efforts of interpretation, such as Daughtery 2015. 11 As is known, there are several versions of some of the films referenced here. Only a few of them will be discussed in the present contribution in connection with our topic. 12 For an autobiographical reading of the book, see Cyrino 2005, 68. 13 There is a copious amount of scholarship on this film. A selection of relevant titles in addition to the previously referenced Theodorakopoulos 2010, include Cyrino 2005, 59–88 (1959 version); Malamud 2009, especially 229–54; Scodel 2013. See also the two books edited simultaneously in 2016, that of Ryan and Shamir (with a selected bibliography on 216) and that of Solomon. 14 The movie presents an extremely functional writing that reminds us of the ‘genre’ of ‘disaster films’ such as the Airport series (1970, 1975, 1977, 1980) or the famous The Towering Inferno (1974). 15 The scholarly and historical accuracy of Pompeii, despite the inevitable licences admitted to by the director, is due to two consultants: the Brazilian volcanologist Rosaly M. C. Lopes-Gautier of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA, and the archaeologist Sarah Yeomans of West Virginia University. 16 Although, as previously stated, the tradition of catastrophe films, particularly in US cinematography, is an inexhaustible mine of blockbusters, the spectacular scenes and the intense drama of The Impossible (Juan Antonio Bayona, 2012) may be cited as a recent example. 17 Critics have variously referred to them as a ‘wave’ (Russell), a ‘genre’ (Wyke), a ‘cycle’ (Richard, Hall and Neal). See ‘Epic and Ancient History’ in Elliott 2014, 5. I do prefer the more traditional and popular second definition. On the history of the ‘bad word’ peplum, see Aziza 2009. More recently, see Lapeña Marchena 2015. On the definition of ‘Toga film’, see Preston and Mayer 1994 and their references. 18 On the use of visual language in this film, see Carlà and Goltz 2015. 19 The ships represented in the movies are mainly the war ship (navis longa or ratis) and the transport ship, or corbita.

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20 On different versions of Cleopatra, see Wenzel 2005. 21 For the Cleopatra reception, see Daugherty 2015 (the last paper dedicated to the same subject). 22 See Cyrino in this volume, 231–250. 23 This famous scene, choreographed by Busby Berkeley, has been analysed by Martin Winkler in Winkler 2004 and 2009, 264. 24 Coleridge 1817, chapter XIV. 25 Goscinny and Uderzo 1974, where the main theme is the campaign against pirates. The sea is the protagonist of the saga (and also film) of Asterix through the group of ‘unlucky’ pirates; for example in Asterix and Obelix: God Save Britannia (2012) and in the animated film Asterix Conquers America (1994). 26 In that period Italy was interested in making films in Yugoslavia primarily to strengthen the relationship with a country that was the leader of the ‘non-­aligned nations’. It was hoped that productive cultural exchanges could foster diplomatic ties between Italy and neighbouring Yugoslavia in resistance to the Soviet bloc. 27 For a useful synthesis, see De Souza 2002. 28 Vell.Pat. Hist.Rom. 2.42. 29 Pol. 8.3; Liv. 24.34. See also Curt. 4.2–3. 30 An example of burning lenses may be seen in a Tuscanian magic lantern slide (now in the Museo del Precinema, Padova) that was exhibited in Paris in 2001: http:// www.minicizotti.it/index.php/mostre/?lang=en (accessed 30 July 2016). I sincerely thank my colleague and friend Dr Marta García for this information. 31 Suet. Claud. 20.3; Cass. Dio 60.11.3–5. 32 Suet. Iul. 39.5 and 44; Cass. Dio 43.23.4 and 45.17; App. B.C. 2.102. On Caesar’s naumachia, see Coarelli 1992; Coleman 1993; Liberati 1993; Cordischi 1999. 33 On Riccardo Freda’s Spartacus, see Lapeña Marchena 2013. 34 I do sincerely thank the anonymous reader who suggested a fine response to my doubts concerning this topic. 35 On Fellini’s Satyricon, the bibliography is immense. Let me remind the reader of just a few titles: Dick 1993; Sullivan 2001; Blanshard 2011; Della Coletta 2012 (chapter IV, ‘Fellini’s “Unoriginal” Scripts: The Creative Power of the Grotesque’). 36 ‘Mi colpiva l’idea che la polvere dei secoli avesse conservato i battiti di un cuore ormai spento. Convalescente a Manziana, nella bibliotechina di una pensione, mi capitò in mano Petronio: tornai a provare una grande emozione. Mi fece pensare alle colonne, alle teste, agli occhi mancanti, ai nasi spezzati, a tutta la scenografia cimiteriale dell’Appia Antica o in generale ai musei archeologici. Sparsi frammenti, brandelli riaffioranti di quello che poteva anche essere considerato un sogno, in gran parte rimosso e dimenticato. Non un’epoca storica, filologicamente ricostruibile sui documenti, positivisticamente accertata, ma una grande galassia onirica, affondata nel buio, fra lo sfavillio di schegge fluttuanti, galleggianti fino a noi.’ The episode and Fellini’s words can be found in Grazzini 1983, 136.

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37 Lafon 2001. 38 ‘The slowness of navigation, the number and size of ships had to impress the crowds massed on the banks. The trip was systematically conceived as a sumptuous parade and as a demonstration of power and authority, ending in the evening with the prince’s entrance and his cortege in the city he had chosen as a stage’ (Malissard 2012, 84, who cites Reddé and Golvin 2005). 39 On the famous ships of Hiero II and Cleopatra, see Plut. Vita Ant. 26. 40 Suet. Cal. 37. 3. 41 As, of course, Nero (Tac. Ann. 15.37). 42 These traditions associated with Caligula were accurately explored in the numerous contributions to the fine catalogue of the exhibition, which took place in Nemi in 2013 (Ghini 2013). 43 Lafon 2001, 300. 44 Brass altered Vidal’s original screenplay, and Vidal disavowed the film. In 1979, after many cuts, the Italian censorship committee allowed its distribution with prohibition for people under 18 years of age. Brass in turn disowned the film version of the producer Guccione (who meanwhile distributed it abroad with great success), and railed against the version screened by the censors. Only after numerous appeals did Brass get justice, seeing his full version distributed in Italy. See Hawes 2009, 83–7 (Vidal); De Santis 2013, 333–6. 45 On Caligula in the movies and literature (ancient and modern), see Lindner 2013. 46 The Laurentes in Plin. Epist. 2.17. 47 Mart. 6.42.7. 48 Sen. Luc. 51.3 as other sources (see Malissard 2012, 259). On Baiae and Pompeii, see Pomeroy 2008. 49 See pages 183 and 188–190 above.

Part 4

Sea Politics

11

Changing Their Sky, Not Their Soul: Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Vision of the Ancient Mediterranean Quentin Broughall

Caelum, non animum, mutant qui trans mare currunt. (They change their sky, not their soul, who rush across the sea.) Horace, Epistles, 1.11.27

Whether they travelled on cultural or religious pilgrimage, for the good of their health, or to indulge in the unique pleasures available there, when the Victorians sought comfort and sanctuary, they headed to the South. Indeed, they have been said to have enjoyed a defining ‘passion’ for the Mediterranean region that was expressed in an unprecedented interaction with its locales.1 An explosion in British tourism there occurred from the 1830s, which was facilitated and motivated primarily by the recent revolution in transport by railway and steamship.2 Significantly, this cultural attraction to the South was expressed in many forms in the literature, painting and sculpture of the Victorian and Edwardian eras – though, crucially, these works often portrayed the ancient, rather than the contemporary, Mediterranean.3 One of the most popular visual manifestations of this trend was in the paintings of Lawrence Alma-Tadema, who produced over 400 works from the mid-Victorian period to the close of the Edwardian era that were set almost exclusively in the Roman Empire.4 Part of the late-­nineteenth-­century ‘Olympian’ movement of neo-­classicist painters, Alma-Tadema painted primarily genre works depicting intimate romantic scenes.5 Significantly, the Mediterranean seascapes that he recurrently included as the background to these created much of the distinctive leisurely tone of his canvases, owing to their attractive depiction of the Neapolitan coast, the playground of ancient Rome’s wealthy elite. But,

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while Alma-Tadema’s art has been the subject of renewed appreciation in the last twenty-­five years, few scholars have gone further than acknowledge the characteristic appearance of the Mediterranean in his oeuvre, rather than interrogating in any depth its possible symbolic meaning.6 In contrast, this chapter will explore the context, depiction and nature of the ancient Mediterranean in Alma-Tadema’s art, as well as its potential connotations for contemporary British culture. While his seascapes have always been appreciated for their scenic qualities, this study contends that they also provided a means to interact with a number of provocative issues and uncomfortable truths as pertinent to the British Empire as to its Roman forebear. Furnishing a central hallmark of Alma-Tadema’s style, the Mediterranean Sea is argued to have operated as a contextual symbol in his works that encouraged reflection about the socio-­economic circumstances that facilitated his pleasant scenes. Linking imperial conquest and labour with aristocratic leisure and luxury, the sea connected the fruits of empire with their sources – in the process, raising many questions about the relationship of overseas empire to domestic society. So, although seemingly superficial, Alma-Tadema’s consistent portrayal in his works of the Mediterranean’s calm waters and troubling horizons presented a subtle, sophisticated symbol that became a pivotal constant in his works. To many Romans, the sea represented not the pleasing natural phenomenon that it did to the Victorians or to modern society, but a terrific force of nature that seemed to hold a potential threat for all maritime travellers.7 While the Roman Republic successfully challenged Carthage for domination of the sea during the second century bc, the Roman navy developed in a halting manner, leaving the Mediterranean subject to bouts of piracy until Pompey the Great’s famous campaign against Mithridates during 67–66 bc.8 With the subsequent establishment of the Roman Empire and its Pax Romana, Rome’s navy developed into a significant support to the state’s land forces, which helped to transform the Mediterranean into the empire’s so-­called mare nostrum.9 Yet the Romans were never enthusiastic sailors; instead, they maintained a conflicted relationship to the sea that may have venerated it for the abundance that it yielded, but remained wary of its power as a natural wonder. While some contemporary writers exaggerated Roman aversion to the sea in order to emphasize political points, one can perceive this tendency displayed throughout Roman literature.10 As ancient accounts of sea voyages from Lucian to St Paul demonstrate,11 there is no doubt that the Romans felt less comfortable on the waves than on the land – one recent scholar going so far as to say that they ‘always hated and were horrified by the sea’.12 As a result, most of their poetry and

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prose portrays a largely discordant, usually negative, relationship to maritime matters. Plautus, for instance, wrote that one should never trust oneself to Neptune, while Lucretius cautioned against ‘the false, faithless sea’ and its ‘smiling, treacherous blandishments’.13 Elsewhere, in Virgil’s Aeneid, Palinurus, the pilot of Aeneas’s ship, is thrown overboard by a freak wave and lost as he navigates a calm sea; while, in his Heroides, Ovid remarks that ‘every ship that is pitched by the stormy waves left its harbour on a gentle sea’.14 As such, it is clear that the Romans maintained a largely circumspect relationship to the sea, which is expressed by the fact that their literature often tends to discuss maritime exploits in the context of their potential for misadventure.15 But, if the Romans did not seem to enjoy sea travel all that much, it is crucial to note that they valued the produce of the sea itself, as well as the goods that travelled across it to the metropole.16 In the Roman visual arts, for example, one observes that the open sea and maritime journeys are portrayed relatively infrequently, which is in contrast to the popular depiction of its flora and fauna in countless surviving mosaics and wall paintings from across the Roman world.17 In literature, too, Horace, for instance, treats the sea in mostly tangential terms in his poetry – though he employs the term ‘dissociabilis’ to describe it as an ‘estranging’18 force in human affairs – but refers countless times to the commercial products of his day, such as fish, fruit, grain and the luxury products that travelled to Rome across the trade routes of the Mediterranean.19 Moreover, as Alma-Tadema depicted in his paintings, the Romans constructed elaborate villae maritimae along the Bay of Naples and elsewhere to enjoy expansive sea views.20 So, while the Romans may not have been the most maritime of peoples, they were clearly aware that Roman power was founded ultimately upon their vital control of the Mediterranean Sea.21 In contrast, British national identity has been predicated historically on the island status of its inhabitants and their relationship to fishing, sailing and nautical activities of all types.22 While there is a long-­standing myth that Britons have seafaring in their genes, their historical interaction with the sea has been shown to have been primarily shaped by economic and military imperatives.23 Most importantly, with its maritime origins in privateering, the British Empire was founded largely upon the seaborne exploitation of colonial peoples and resources – whether, for instance, through the development of the Atlantic slave trade or the East India Company.24 In tandem with its growth, the country’s navy evolved to provide not only armed protection for Britain’s vital sea lanes, but also a sophisticated means to construct a far-­flung trade empire.25 Confirmed by its victories in the Napoleonic Wars (1799–1815), Britain’s global command of the

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high seas had become perceived as a given by the time that Victoria took the throne in 1837.26 Upheld by the Royal Navy – always referred to as the ‘senior service’ of Britain’s armed forces – the nation’s nineteenth-­century economic and military dominance came to be centred to a major extent upon its international maritime supremacy. With the Atlantic providing the maritime pivot of its empire, Britons enjoyed a different relationship to the Mediterranean to their Roman forebears, though one that still retained awareness of its strategic commercial, military and political importance. Controlling a number of key possessions in the region, including Malta, Gibraltar, Cyprus and Egypt, the British Empire kept the Mediterranean at the heart of its foreign policy – as evidenced by the so-­called ‘gunboat diplomacy’ deployed by London in incidents such as the Don Pacifico Affair in 1850 or the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882.27 Policing the region’s waters from its base at Valletta, Britain’s Mediterranean Squadron represented the largest fleet in the Royal Navy by the late-Victorian era, as well as arguably its most prestigious command.28 While the Atlantic had been a foundational locus of British trade and warfare, the Mediterranean became a strategic cockpit of European diplomacy during the nineteenth century, which gained new and vital relevance with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, as well as with the increasing decline of the Ottoman Empire during the late-Victorian era.29 So, as the Roman peace had done during antiquity, the so-­called Pax Britannica secured the tranquillity of the Mediterranean Sea for much of the ‘long’ nineteenth century.30 *** Despite the differences between the largely calm Mediterranean and the tempestuous Atlantic, in perceiving their imperial project as a potential successor to the Roman Empire, Victorians and Edwardians had an outright interest in constructing allusive parallels between their respective societies.31 Buttressed by unprecedented tourism to Italy and the South of France from the 1830s, more Britons than ever before were interacting with the reality of the contemporary Mediterranean, which led many to consider the relationship between its ancient and nineteenth-­century incarnations in imperial terms.32 Indeed, this tendency became particularly pronounced during the mid-­to-late Victorian era, c. 1870–1901, when the British imperial project entered its most active phase, though also encountered the first challenges to its international hegemony from increasingly formidable European rivals, such as Germany.33 Consequently, the contemporary paintings of Lawrence Alma-Tadema held great appeal to a

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culture at such an incongruous juncture of confidence and uncertainty, presenting Britons in a pleasing Roman guise in which their understandings of the classical and the contemporary Mediterranean could coalesce. Alma-Tadema’s idyllic vision of the ancient Mediterranean also fitted closely with the eighteenth- and nineteenth-­century cultural construction of the European seaside as a novel space providing opportunities for sightseeing and leisure.34 In addition, the Mediterranean region was alleged to represent a therapeutic locale for the recovery of health, with the volcanic environment of the Bay of Naples especially attracting invalids to imbibe its invigorating atmosphere of sea air and sulphur.35 Presenting scenes of ‘blue skies, placid seas, spring flowers, youths and maidens in the heyday of life, and a sense of old-­ world happiness’,36 Alma-Tadema’s paintings therefore matched with many new-­ found notions of nineteenth-­century leisure and well-­being. Perhaps more importantly, his Mediterranean also represented not some distant historical prospect, but one that could be discovered and visited as part of the rise in tourism to the South. For societies that sought to emulate the Romans in so many other ways, Victorians and Edwardians could follow directly in their footsteps by visiting the Bay of Naples, where they could lounge in similar marble alcoves to those portrayed in Alma-Tadema’s works. As a Dutchman, Lawrence Alma-Tadema had plenty of experience of being around water, both of the fresh and the salt variety. As such, he belonged to a long tradition of Dutch depictions of inland waterways and maritime scenes that derived from the countless canals that criss-­cross the low-­lying countryside, as well as the naval dominance that the Netherlands enjoyed for much of the early-­modern period.37 Yet it is significant that he chose to settle in London from 1870 to produce art for the new, undisputed ruler of the waves: Victorian Britain.38 There, he was patronized primarily by Britain’s leading nouveau riche businessmen and industrialists, who had grown wealthy on the commercial advantages secured for British trade by the country’s maritime supremacy.39 Going on to become not only a leading member of the Royal Academy, but a knight of the realm and a member of the exclusive Order of Merit, Alma-Tadema rose to the very summit of the British art world.40 Indeed, by the time of his death in 1912, few contemporary European artists could compete with either the success that he had enjoyed or the wealth that he had accumulated. Yet his career as artistic recreator of the Roman world began in 1863, when, during his honeymoon to Italy, Alma-Tadema first came face to face with the Roman past in an extended manner through a visit to Pompeii.41 There, he witnessed the first of Giuseppe Fiorelli’s pioneering excavations (1863–75), as

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well as some of the famous casts of the eruption’s victims that the archaeologist had begun to create.42 Shortly afterwards, starting with Gallo-Roman women (1865), he began to experiment with Roman themes, moving away from the Merovingian and Egyptian subjects that he had specialized in before, while opening the part of his career that has been termed his ‘Pompeian period’ (c. 1865–70).43 Encouraged by his art dealer, Ernest Gambart, he began to produce urban interiors and exteriors set in the Roman world that he had recently experienced first-­hand. While his paintings from this interlude differ from his later works, it was in this period that he developed much of what defined his mature style and themes. Works such as Catullus at Lesbia’s (1865), Entrance to a Roman theatre (1866) and A sculpture gallery in Rome at the time of Augustus (1867) portray Roman life, but with no visual reference to the surrounding Mediterranean. Significantly, only towards the close of this period does the sea make an appearance, when, in An exedra (1869), Alma-Tadema portrays two figures looking out to sea at a real-­life location in Pompeii.44 Indeed, this painting can be said to mark a transitional work in Alma-Tadema’s oeuvre, as it represents his first use of an outdoor marble setting, which became a commonplace of his work for the rest of his career. Bringing the inside out, his use of these exedrae allowed the intimacy of an interior scene, but beneath the famous cerulean skies of the Mediterranean. Moreover, it also allowed him to include the sea as a fundamental backdrop, which would only become more pronounced as time went on and he grew less preoccupied with depicting archaeological details. With his subsequent move to London, this Pompeian period came to an end, but not before it had established his characteristic style – along with the future constancy of the Mediterranean in his pictures. During the 1870s, Alma-Tadema’s intimate Roman scenes evolved into a successful formula, which allowed him to repeat many of the same basic images with subtle variations for much of the rest of his career. Renowned for his flawless draughtsmanship and accurate depictions of marble, he gained a reputation for hard work that clearly appealed to the many self-­made tycoons who purchased his paintings.45 But one of the constants of his oeuvre remained his regular depiction of the Mediterranean Sea, which provided the context for his visions of the leisured existence of Rome’s wealthy elite. Certainly, as an artist who also worked in theatrical set design, he knew the value of producing a beautiful and engaging background, so one must certainly perceive his portrayal of the Mediterranean in that light.46 Yet, considering the archaeological detail and historical veracity for which Alma-Tadema strived in his paintings throughout his career, it would be strange that the consistency of his portrayal of the

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Mediterranean would be meaningless. Instead, it can be shown to have functioned as a compelling symbol that possesses a number of potential meanings that must be perceived in the context of his contemporary market and cultural milieu. In an 1899 interview, Alma-Tadema claimed that he wanted to express in his pictures that ‘the old Romans were flesh and blood like ourselves, moved by the same passions and emotions’47 – a sentiment that chimed neatly with contemporary imperialist discourse, which increasingly stressed such a parallel. As his biographer Helen Zimmern explained, he departed significantly from the exemplum virtutis – heroic, inspiring images of public duty and self-­sacrifice – that had defined neo-­classical art throughout the eighteenth century:48 His is not the Rome . . . of grand public ceremonies, of battles, of the Forum and the rostrum, of actions that upheaved the world; he gives us instead the home life of this people, Rome such as we divine it to have been from Cicero’s letters to Atticus, the life of the ancients as presented to us in the plays of Terence and Plautus.49

Producing only one full-­length nude during his career – A sculptor’s model (1877) –, Alma-Tadema differed from most previous neo-­classicist artists, and even his fellow Olympians, in producing primarily genre works that welded narrative scenes onto seascapes. Presenting private, romantic scenarios, he focused upon the petty domestic passions and pursuits of the members of Rome’s wealthy elite, rather than the great events of Roman history: It is the outward seeming of life and objects that attract[ed] [Alma-Tadema], their inner deeper meaning matters to him as little as their subject. The life aim of his men and women seems to be to exist happily and placidly, untroubled by material cares or disturbing emotions.50

Significantly choosing the Mediterranean as the perennial setting for this domesticated vision of Roman antiquity, Alma-Tadema produced works that set his intimate human scenes beneath a clear, blue sky and beside wide, open seas. His lifelong friend, the Egyptologist Georg Ebers, once explained how he had ‘spent delightful sunny days with him on the shore of the Mediterranean, and witnessed how tenderly he appropriated to himself nature in the South’.51 In fact, Alma-Tadema was a regular visitor to the region and built up a large photographic archive of its locales, which gave him a deep, first-­hand acquaintance with the Mediterranean.52 Writing of a typical work, A question (1878), Ebers described the scene it presented as ‘[a] summer day, bright, clear and warm as only the happy South can bestow [with] [t]he sea a glittering expanse of the purest

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blue, mirror[ing] the cloudless sky above it’.53 In the context of such pleasant, superficial views, any subtleties with which Alma-Tadema imbued his canvases could be easily ignored or overlooked: The spectator who misses the allusions, the meaning of his subject-­pictures, nevertheless finds matter for full and intense enjoyment as he contemplates the lovely fabrics, the cool half-­shades, the clear sunlight, the exquisite flowers, the heat-­saturated sea and sky, the marbles and the bric-à-­brac that appear on almost every canvas . . .54

As such, Lawrence Alma-Tadema was able to produce paintings that contained many allusive possibilities, yet could still be enjoyed purely for the ‘limpid effects of sea and sky’55 that dominated his works. So, almost like the Mediterranean that he portrayed, Alma-Tadema’s works possessed many superficial attractions, but also numerous depths beyond those deceptively smooth, still surfaces. From his first such work, An exedra (1869), to his last, The voice of spring (1910), the Mediterranean represented a constant and unchanging feature of his oeuvre. Take, for instance, mature works, such as A coign of vantage (1895) or A difference of opinion (1896), which display the romantic scenes typical of his style. Both also portray Mediterranean seascapes that suggest from the coastline visible beyond some location along the Bay of Naples, such as one of the luxury resorts for which the region was renowned.56 Indeed, the two ships depicted in the former work seem to resemble not naval triremes returning from a military mission, but pleasure vessels carrying boating parties – just as Seneca once described seeing during a trip to Baiae.57 Yet this is a rare example of maritime activity at all for Alma-Tadema, since the sea in most of his works usually appears uniformly calm, still and undisturbed, providing a literal symbol of the Pax Romana that had turned the Mediterranean into a tranquil ‘Roman lake’.58 In this way, it is very clear that this is a specific Neapolitan view of the Mediterranean that localizes it to the perspective enjoyed solely by those who vacationed or resided along this select part of the ancient Italian coastline.59 Although we usually see only a cut-­off corner of one of the palatial villae maritimae that dotted the Bay of Naples – excepting those depicted in a rare work such as Resting (1882) – their extravagance and luxury is clearly evident from the expensive marbled exteriors on display.60 In addition, we are left in little doubt about the otium, or leisurely idleness, in which the inhabitants of these villas dwell.61 Often depicted lounging in a variety of languid poses – as in Silver favourites (1903) –, Alma-Tadema’s protagonists enjoy a carefree and privileged view of the Mediterranean that presents it as a source of passive pleasure, rather

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than as the central means of commerce, security and transport that we know it to have been for the Romans. Yet, if we look beyond the horizon of these paintings, we are compelled to realize a fresh context that exists outside the frame of these cosy scenes of affluent Roman life. Clearly, the extreme wealth on display in these scenes has some source, and it takes little historical knowledge to realize that it is Roman military supremacy that has generated and guaranteed it.62 Unlike the paintings of other Olympians such as Edward Poynter, expressions of the Roman martial spirit rarely intrude upon Alma-Tadema’s intimate domestic scenes.63 Only A silent greeting (1889) gives us a rare glimpse of a Roman soldier, and then merely in a romantic context; while a work such as Her eyes are with her thoughts and her thoughts are far away (1897) obliquely suggests from its title alone a romantic attachment to an administrator or a soldier serving in some distant province. Still, any basic understanding of Roman history will contextualize these peaceful scenes with the knowledge that they have been achieved and secured at the point of a sword somewhere far across the Mediterranean. Recent scholars have noted Alma-Tadema’s propensity to employ ciphers in his works to underscore the meaning of his paintings in a subtle fashion, whether coded through an enigmatic cut-­off inscription or an ironic piece of ancient sculpture.64 Given his attention to detail in the archaeological and photographic materials that informed all of his works, it would be therefore remarkable if he did not put as much thought into the other components of them. As he once explained, he strove for veracity in his architectural and archaeological reconstructions in order to produce art that went beyond mere theatrical staging: If I am to revive ancient life, if I am to make it relive on canvas, I can do so only by transporting my mind into the far off ages, which deeply interest me, but I must do it with the aid of archaeology. I must not only create a mise-­en-scène that is possible but probable.65

In this light, it seems reasonable to imagine that Alma-Tadema intended his background depictions of the Mediterranean to function as a key contextual symbol in his paintings, given its constancy in portrayal and pervasiveness in his oeuvre. So, while it certainly functioned as an attractive exterior setting to his intimate scenes, the consistency of its portrayal hints at a potentially deeper meaning. Crucially, even where Alma-Tadema could have easily avoided depicting a seascape, he includes one – however truncated its appearance. Take, for instance, works such as Pleading (1876) or Love’s votaries (1891), which represent the elegant and languorous romantic scenes typical of his works. But, for all that is

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seen of the Mediterranean in them, they would have worked quite easily as images without its inclusion. Elsewhere, Alma-Tadema cannot resist giving us a glimpse of the Mediterranean even in some of his interior scenes, such as An oleander (1882) or The way to the temple (1882). Though obscured almost entirely in A favourite poet (1889) or Unconscious rivals (1893), he still allows a sliver of the Mediterranean beyond to invade his canvas – bringing with it all of the cultural references that it has come to possess in the Western tradition. Neither does it matter whether he is portraying pagan or Christian Rome – as can be seen by comparing A dedication to Bacchus (1889) with The conversion of Paula by St Jerome (1898), both of which portray the Mediterranean impassively looking on at these two alternative visions of the Roman world. In this, it can be said to represent a common theme in Western art of depicting the natural world regarding the transient triumph and tragedy of human affairs with indifferent equanimity – evidenced, for instance, in a classic example by his fellow Dutchman Pieter Bruegel the Elder with The fall of Icarus (1695).66 Yet Alma-Tadema’s ancient Mediterranean also differed not only from such a traditional, sea-­green, Northern European representation, but also from other Olympians, such as Frederic Leighton, who envisioned a far more dramatic and ‘wine-­dark’ Mediterranean in his interpretation of the Icarus myth in 1869.67 Instead, Alma-Tadema’s style centred on richly detailed, pastel-­hued canvases, whose delicate greens and blues segue seamlessly into each other in the Mediterranean skies and waters that he rendered in most of his oeuvre.68 Although bright colours are not unknown in his works, and the light in his pictures is nearly always muted, rather than correlating with the strong sunshine of the region, the tone of his paintings is set primarily by their maritime context. In addition, while his use of perspective was always sound and sophisticated, it was often employed for illusionistic purposes. Rarely portraying complete buildings or monuments, Alma-Tadema concentrated on capturing an architectural world of corners, edges and details that insinuate at full forms, rather than depict them.69 As a result, this lends a somewhat two-­dimensional note to some of his compositions, but this is reflective of two defining features of his style: first, the artist’s interest in stage design and, second, the influence of ancient Roman wall-­painting on his art, especially the architectural trompe l’oeil of the Pompeian Fourth Style.70 Lastly, considering his lifelong interest in photography, his approach also betrays the influence of Gustave Le Gray, an early pioneer of maritime photography, alongside contemporary photographers who specialized in producing images of the Mediterranean region, such as Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey and William J. Stillman.71

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Still, serene and silent, Alma-Tadema’s Mediterranean presents a space that is not tranquil because it is forbidding or uninhabited, but because it has been pacified and sanitized by Roman civilization.72 As a result, the laid-­back lifestyles of Rome’s rich and powerful displayed in his works can be seen also to have been attained and assured through Roman domination of the Mediterranean Sea. Living lives of luxury, Alma-Tadema’s protagonists enjoy the fruits of Roman imperial supremacy, though far removed from the often-­brutal military means used to acquire them. Consequently, it is only the waters of the Mediterranean that literally link Rome’s distant, conquered provinces with the ultimate destination of their wealth on the magnificent, marble balconies of the empire’s super-­rich. Indeed, a graffito at the largest villa at Pompeii, the House of Fabius Rufus, deploys a quote from Lucretius to relate a sentiment of elitist schadenfreude, which at least some among this group must have felt: Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis / e terra magnum alterius spectare laborem (A joy it is, when the strong winds of storm / Stir up the waters of a mighty sea, / To watch from shore the troubles of another).73

Considering his numerous patrons among Britain’s own nouveau riche, it would not have been in Alma-Tadema’s interest to alienate his primary market by emphasizing too much the dubious links between imperial domination and capitalist wealth.74 Yet it is difficult not to draw a parallel between the luxuriating ladies who populate his canvases and the wives and daughters of Alma-Tadema’s clients, both of whom enjoyed the comfort and idleness made possible by their nations’ shared imperial hegemony. Moreover, by contrasting the transient wealth on display in his scenes with the enduring nature of the Mediterranean beyond, Alma-Tadema could emphasize the ultimately ephemeral character of all earthly power in a far deeper, more meaningful manner. So, although AlmaTadema produced seemingly neutral works, buried deep within his cosy, romantic scenes were latent, yet relevant, political messages about the nature of all imperial societies. Of course, Pompeii and Herculaneum were themselves towns on the Bay of Naples, while all evocations of ancient Rome have insinuated within them knowledge of its infamous, alleged ‘decline and fall’, portrayed most famously in Edward Gibbon’s history; so one could regard Alma-Tadema’s portrayals of Rome’s idle rich as a memento mori of sorts to Britons that their society and empire might one day go the same way.75 To read only the surface of his ‘images of comfort and self-­congratulation’,76 however, allowed one to enjoy a vision of calm and contentment that appealed directly to unquestioning Victorian and

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Edwardian egotism. As a result, Alma-Tadema’s Mediterranean offered a symbolic means to negotiate an array of topical and timeless issues that bound together the concerns of classical and contemporary society. Portraying serene seas and clear skies, his paintings offered a comforting vision of what the fruits of imperial hegemony looked like, though undercut with an awareness of its dubious sources beyond the horizon of his works. While functioning as an elaborate stage-­set for his intimate domestic scenes, AlmaTadema’s Mediterranean seascapes still provided much in the way of reflection for those who considered them more deeply. Thus, depicting superficially ­soothing images of opulent ease, Alma-Tadema’s works also covertly interrogated some of the more uncomfortable truths that lay behind imperial leisure and security, both ancient and modern. Horace once remarked that those who rush across the sea change their sky, but not their souls;77 in a similar way, the Victorians and Edwardians who took AlmaTadema’s works at face value enjoyed a pleasing vision of themselves and their own world reflected in a Roman mirror. In the context of increasingly uncertain waters for Britons during the mid-­to-late-Victorian and Edwardian eras, AlmaTadema’s images of the calm and controlled nature of the ancient Mediterranean provided a potent piece of escapism. Projecting an ideal lifestyle of civilized ease by the coast, a surface reading of his paintings allowed Britons to imagine themselves sharing a similar sense of security, which no longer existed in reality. Yet, past the smooth horizons of his canvases, lay crucial, troubling questions about the relationship of imperial conquest to domestic wealth with which Britons were finding themselves struggling like their Roman forebears – interrogating, in other words, how imperium abroad purchased libertas at home.78 So, while Britons may have made Rome’s mare nostrum very much their own in these works – exchanging the grey climes and stormy ocean of their Atlantic world for the blue skies and tranquil seas of the ancient Mediterranean –, they could not change the soul of their shared anxieties about the true cost of ruling an empire.

Notes 1 See Pemble 1987. 2 See Buzard 1993, chapter 1, 18–79. 3 On this trend in general, see Scott Fox 1978, chapter 8, 139–50 and, in contemporary art in particular, Barrow 2007b.

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4 See Swanson 1977 and Barr 2001. For a full catalogue of his works, see Swanson 1990. Alma-Tadema’s alternative portrayal of ancient Athens is explored in Tomlinson 1991, though he had begun his career with depictions of Merovingian Gaul; on which, see Barrow 2001, 15–20. 5 On the Olympians, see Gaunt 1953 and Wood 1983. On Alma-Tadema’s contribution to the movement, see Gaunt 1953, 68–76, 119–23 and 170–4. See Gerard-Powell and Robbins 2014 for a recent exhibition of Olympian works. 6 Alma-Tadema’s paintings have been the subject of scholarly reassessment during the last quarter-­century, while also gaining a popular profile through their use in shaping the cinematography of the Oscar-­winning film Gladiator (2000). A number of major academic studies, such as Rosemary Barrow’s Lawrence Alma-Tadema (2001), have presented his works as sophisticated repositories of multilayered meaning; as a result, Alma-Tadema’s reputation has largely recovered from Richard Jenkyns’ well-­known dismissal of his works as portraying merely ‘Victorians in togas’. Jenkyns 1991, 111. See also, Jenkyns 1980, 315–21. 7 See Blits 2014, chapter 1, 1–16, and, on some of the reasons behind Roman antipathy to the sea, ibid. 10–13. On Roman sea travel, see Casson 1994, chapter 9, 149–62. Many Roman attitudes were rooted more deeply in the wider relationship of the ancient world to the sea, however; on which, see Schulz 2005. 8 On the rise of Roman naval power, see Pitassi 2009, chapters 2 and 3, 43–118, and Desantis 2016; while, on Pompey’s campaign, see De Souza 1999, chapter 5, 149–78. 9 On Roman control of the Mediterranean during the imperial era, see Braudel 2001, chapter 8, 306–56 and Pitassi 2009, chapters 7 and 8, 219–84. 10 For a still-­useful primer on the sea in Roman literature, see Holland Rose 1933, 177–80. 11 See Luc., VH and Acts 27.1–28.16. 12 Blits 2014, 1. 13 Rud., II, 6, 1–2. Lucr. 2.559. 14 Aen., 5. 857–8. Her., 17. 235–6. 15 On the shipwreck narrative in ancient literature, see Dunsch 2013, 44–9 and 50–4 regarding how it was manifested in Latin poetry and prose. 16 On Roman commercial exploitation of the sea, see Marzano 2013. 17 Ibid., 21–8. 18 Od., 1.3.21–4. 19 While antiquated, on the importance of commercial products in Horace’s poetry, Knapp 1907 remains useful. 20 See Larson 2001 and Marzano 2007, chapter 1, 13–46. 21 On how Rome came to dominate the Mediterranean, see Casson 1991, chapters 12, 16 and 17, 143–56 and 184–212. 22 See O’Hara 2010. On the sea in British literary and visual culture, see the essays in Klein 2002.

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23 For the classic interpretation of this argument, see Kennedy 1976. 24 On the maritime origins of the British Empire, see Andrews 1984 and Armitage 2000, chapter 4, 100–24. On the development of Britain’s slave trade and the East India Company, see Richardson 1998 and Marshall 1998a, respectively. For a general history of the sea’s role in the British imperial project, see Black 2004. 25 On the development of the Royal Navy, see Rodger 1997 and 2004, as well as Wilson 2013. 26 On the origins of this dominance, see Morriss 2011 and, on its Victorian heyday, the essays in Killingray, Lincoln and Rigby 2004 and Taylor 2013. 27 On these respective incidents, see Whitten 1986 and White 1980. On the nineteenth-­ century context of ‘gunboat diplomacy’, see Dorman and Otte 1995. 28 On the Mediterranean Fleet’s late-Victorian height, see Parkinson 2008, 47–57. 29 See Holland 2012, chapters 1–4, 7–149. 30 On the terms of the Pax Britannica, see Parchami 2009, part 2, 59–164. 31 On their construction of comparisons between the Roman and British empires, see Vance 2000, Vasunia 2005 and Butler 2012. One must also remember that Victorian parallels to ancient Rome were activated in the context of its recent Napoleonic appropriation in France; on which, see Rowell 2012 regarding Napoleon I’s use of the Roman world and, on Napoleon III’s, Baguley 2000, 77–89; on their shared Caesarism, see Nicolet 2009. 32 See Bell 2006. 33 See Bell 2007, chapter 8, 207–30. 34 See Corbin 1994. 35 On Roman spa resorts, see Campbell 2012, 347–68, and, on the Victorian quest for health in the South, Pemble 1987, chapter 5, 84–96. 36 Zimmern 1902, 36–7. 37 On the Dutch tradition of marine art, see Keyes 1990. 38 On his move to London, see Walkley 1994, 127–8. On the popular reproduction of his works for the middle-­class market, see Verhoogt 2014, chapter 7, 427–506. 39 On the connection between imperial conquest and domestic wealth during this period, see Cain and Hopkins 2015, part 2, 117–220. On Alma-Tadema’s patrons, see Landow 1984, 38–9. 40 His status is attested by the fact that three separate biographies of him were published during his lifetime; i.e. Ebers 1886, Zimmern 1902 and Standing 1905. 41 On the influence of Pompeii on Alma-Tadema, see Barrow 2007a and RoviraGuardiola 2013. On his relationship to contemporary Italian artists also inspired by Pompeii, see Querci 2007. 42 See Harris 2007, 203 and 205. Alma-Tadema returned numerous times throughout his life; extensively exploring the parts of the city that had been uncovered to

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date – primarily the area now termed regiones VI, VII and VIII – as well as its amphitheatre and ‘Street of Tombs’. 43 See Barrow 2001, part 1, chapter 3, 28–42. 44 This was the schola or bench-­tomb of Mammia, a priestess and benefactor of the city, located on the ‘Street of Tombs’ near the Herculaneum Gate. See Campbell 2015, 157–8. 45 A connection emphasized in Alma-Tadema’s own essay ‘Art and its relation to industry’. See Alma-Tadema 1893. 46 See Barrow 2001, 165–9. 47 Dolman 1899, 607. Naturally, such comments must be read in the context of increasing imperialist comparativism between ancient Rome and the British Empire in this period, as referenced in n. 31. 48 On the exemplum virtutis, see Rosenblum 1967, chapter 2, 50–106. 49 Zimmern 1902, 39–40. 50 Ibid., 41. 51 Ebers 1886, 30. 52 Alma-Tadema’s personal archive of over 5,000 photographs has been preserved at the University of Birmingham Library; regarding which, see Alma-Tadema 1998. On the function of photography in his art, see Pohlmann 1977. 53 Ebers 1886, 86. 54 Zimmern 1902, 44. 55 Ibid., 36. 56 See Dalby 2000, 51–8. 57 Ep., 51.12. 58 Abulasia 2011, 199. 59 See D’Arms 1970. 60 See Barrow 2001, 161–2. 61 During the Augustan era, power shifted in the Roman state, which left portions of Rome’s ruling elite with less of a political role than they had formerly possessed. As a result, members of this group enjoyed increasing leisure time, which many spent at rural or coastal villas, where they could indulge in the otium secured by their position and wealth. Importantly, there were both active and passive forms of this concept, although it was its idle incarnation that Alma-Tadema chose to portray. See Toner 1995, chapter 4, 22–33. 62 A connection explored by the political economist Max Weber, among others; on whose views, see Love 1991, part 3, 156–204. 63 On portrayals of military power in Poynter’s works, see Arscott 1999, 135–8. 64 This is the central argument of Barrow 2001. For instance, in A favourite poet (1889), the cut-­off inscription represents lines 18–19 from Horace, Od. 1.31, while the ancient sculpture presents a symbolic figure of desire. See Barrow 2001, 140. 65 Quoted in Swanson 1977, 44.

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66 See Kilinski 2004. 67 See Kilinski 2006. 68 On Alma-Tadema’s painting technique, see Verhoogt 2014, 501. 69 On this tendency in his oeuvre, see Lippincott 1990, 40–2. 70 On the Fourth Style, see Ling 1991, 71–100. 71 For a general introduction to the reception of antiquity in nineteenth-­century photography, see Lyons 2005. On Le Gray, see Baldwin 2002; on de Prangey and Stillman respectively, see Stewart 2005 and Szegedy-Maszak 2005. 72 On the imperialist aesthetic in Alma-Tadema’s oeuvre, see Lippincott 1990, 81–90. 73 Lucr., 2.1. Though not a villa maritima, the house possessed a commanding view of the Bay of Naples. Interestingly, this same quotation is found inscribed on Highcliffe Castle (1831–5) in Dorset, suggesting a potential correlation between the views of Britain’s aristocratic elite and their Roman forebears. See Montagu-Stuart-Wortley 1927, 321. 74 Points emphasized in the contemporary polemics of commentators, such as J. M. Robertson and J. A. Hobson. See Robertson 1898, 8–10, 147, 150–7, 162, 182, 189 and Hobson 1902, 8, 261, 324 and 387–9. 75 On negative comparisons to Rome during the Victorian and Edwardian eras, see Vance 1999 and 2011. 76 Landow 1984, 37. 77 Horace, Ep. 1.11.27. 78 On the long, post-Roman history of attempts to bind these concepts together, see Vance Armitage 2002.

12

The Image of Phoenicians and Carthaginians in Modern Spanish History and Culture1 Antonio Duplá Ansuategui

Saguntum expressed that indomitable fierceness that so often characterised the Spanish people.2 M. Lafuente, 1850 Let us deflate these big names: Sagunt, Numancia, Otumba, Lepanto, with which our youth is poisoned in schools.3 J. Costa, 1901

Phoenicians and Carthaginians between the sea and Hannibal The last time I heard of Carthage or anything related to the Phoenicians or Carthaginians, outside the academic milieu, was in the recent struggles between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in the summer of 2014. On one of those days, Palestinian militants ambushed Israeli troops and captured a soldier. The Israeli military commanders answered by invoking the ‘Hannibal Directive’, or Hannibal Doctrine, with a massive bombardment of the area involved. The Israeli military’s Hannibal Doctrine instructs soldiers to fire heavily if a comrade is taken captive by the enemy – even at the risk of killing the captive soldier.4 The name is claimed to have been randomly generated by a computer, but it immediately evokes certain specific historic events, and the symbolism is undeniable. Similarly, the name of Carthage, in this case synonymous with its most famous leader who chose to kill himself rather than risk being taken alive by his Roman enemies, is connected with war, death and dubious legality.5 We must add that the episode of Lieutenant Hadar Golding, killed by the Palestinians, provoked a tense debate in Israel about this controversial directive

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and it seems that the Hannibal Directive has only very recently been revoked by Israeli military authorities.6 In fact, the history of Phoenicians and Carthaginians in Western historiography is one of the best examples of a history of stereotypes, prejudices and a partisan and distorted historical tradition that can be traced back to Homer and, later, to the Romans. Perhaps this history would have been very different if the Carthaginians had won the Second Punic War in the third century bc, as the well-­known science-­ fiction writer Poul Anderson invites us to imagine in a short story entitled Delenda Est within his novel Time Patrol.7 In the novel, ‘time’ police have to deal with the reshaping of the past and other potential parallel pasts, such as the one in which Hannibal conquered and burned Rome, with significant consequences for later European history. However, leaving fictional history aside and returning to more solid terrain, we can read in the Odyssey that the Phoenicians are ‘deceitful and greedy’ and, while recognized as great mariners, they are cunning traders.8 Although for Pliny the Elder they were the inventors of trade,9 in the Roman tradition Cicero called them the most treacherous of all people; the punica fides is a synonym of treacherous behaviour, and, when speaking of Hannibal, he is described in Livy as ‘cruel, perfidious, without fear of the gods or other religious scruple’.10 From this point onwards, the Phoenicians (and likely more so their successors, the Carthaginians) always had a very ‘bad press’ in history, literary fiction and in popular culture such as cinema. As the Carthaginians are seen as threatening foreigners of eastern origin, it is thus not a surprise that cinematographic Carthage looks more like an Assyrian or Babylonian city than a particular model of a polis (as considered by Aristotle in his Politics).11 We can also read in the work of a prominent historian such as Gaetano de Sanctis (in the fourth volume of his Storia dei Romani, published in 1964) that Carthage was ‘un peso morto’ (a ‘dead weight’) on classical civilization.12 The historiographical and cultural context to explain affirmations such as these is traced by Martin Bernal in his highly controversial book Black Athena.13 While it may be reasonable to give some credit to his critics, led by Mary Lefkowitz, based on the extreme radicalism of some of Bernal’s ideas,14 he was undoubtedly right when he stressed the prejudices of modern Europe (eighteenth to twentieth centuries), with its eurocentrist, anti-Semitic and orientalist prejudices. The consequences for the modern construction of our image of Phoenicians and Carthaginians, with the classical roots mentioned earlier, are also evident. One of the most extreme of these consequences is the open racism

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cultivated by fascist regimes, as can be seen in the journal published in Mussolini’s Italy, Difesa della Razza, where we find on the cover of the first issue a clear division between Semitic and black people and the classical,‘Aryan’, white model.15 Even today, in the Spanish language (as reflected in the last edition of the Dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language), Fenicio (Phoenician), in its fourth meaning as an adjective, describes someone skilled in doing business and making maximal profit, but with a clearly negative, pejorative connotation.16 Within this sad history, perhaps the only positive figure (not historical, but fictional) we can find is the Punic queen Dido, presented in a more favourable and sympathetic way in Western culture such as literature, paintings and music, from Vergil to Purcell and Turner, among many others. In Dido’s story, the sea – always the principal backdrop for the Carthaginian Empire – is also a central element, as the place where the heartbroken queen sees her beloved Aeneas abandoning her.17 If after these introductory considerations we turn to the more specific Spanish development, we are faced with an ambivalent situation. Considering that the Phoenicians were always presented as sailors and traders in our imagination, shaped mostly by the images in our schoolbooks, we inevitably see them exchanging their merchandise with natives on the beaches of southern Spain, their ships in the background. The Carthaginians, meanwhile, though they also arrived by sea and represented a powerful maritime empire, are directly equated with war, as embodied by the figure of Hannibal, his relatives and episodes of cruelty such as Saguntum.

Phoenicians and Carthaginians in Spanish historiography The dominant Spanish historiography from medieval times until the twentieth century ran along the distorted path mentioned above. In our case, the troubled waters of the Mediterranean had a double-­edged significance for historians and intellectuals during the centuries we will analyse. On the one hand, they meant the arrival of civilization, of new ‘arts’ and knowledge, of culture, of ‘progress’ in some sense, and it is here we find the Phoenicians. On the other hand, the sea was a vehicle for aggressive invaders and conquerors from various foreign lands, always attracted by the natural resources (agriculture, minerals, fishing and so on) of the Iberian Peninsula, especially in the East and the South; among the worst of those invaders were the Carthaginians. Ultimately, for the inhabitants of Saguntum, the town destroyed by Hannibal, the sea also meant the hope of a helping hand from the Roman side, which never arrived.18

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In the traditional Spanish historical narrative, the Phoenicians went to ancient Spain in search of its natural riches and, as devious traders, deceived the simple and innocent Spaniards, who lived happy and free in some sort of paradise (see Fig.  12.1).19 The Carthaginians came with similar intentions (though with more imperialistic goals), but their plans faced an unexpected obstacle in the resistance of the Saguntins, a paradigm of Spanish heroism and love of independence.20 Even as late as 1962, we can still read in a textbook for teenagers in middle school, ‘The Phoenicians rendered a great contribution to civilization, developing and expanding the ideas from other peoples and teaching their alphabet; but, dominated by their greed, they were sometimes unfair in their trade business with the Spaniards’; and, of the Carthaginians, the conclusion (alluding, of course, to Saguntum) is, ‘The courage, the heroic resistance to the death, is a permanent Spanish virtue.’21 In fact this narrative, based exclusively on the most anti-Punic ancient literary sources, remained unchallenged until the last decades of the last century.22 The only alternative voices in this story can be found among certain members of the Spanish Enlightenment (such as Pedro Rodríguez Campomanes), who in the second half of the eighteenth century did not disguise their admiration for the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, which was likely related to the importance they attributed to the promotion of trade and commerce in Spain at this time. Campomanes, a brilliant historian, member of the Royal Academy of History and politician, translated the Voyage of Hannon in 1756.23 We see similar points of view among other historians of the eighteenth century, including Juan Francisco Masdeu or the Mohedano brothers, Pedro and Rafael, all of whom venerated ancient Spain (particularly the South) as one of the oldest cultural centres in Europe, precisely thanks to the early presence of the Phoenicians there.24 It is interesting to remind ourselves of the project for a new state called ‘Nouvelle Phénicie’ (New Phoenicia) that was proposed to Napoleon by the French politician and historian Joseph Dominique Garat in 1811, comprising all the Basque provinces in Spain and France, creating a new political entity between the Napoleonic Empire and the Spanish monarchy. Garat considered the Basques to be the oldest people in Spain, direct descendants of the ancient Phoenicians who were permanently opposed to the Romans, and also represented both peoples as excellent sailors. The sea played a central role in the plan, as the Basque ports were considered a fundamental component in the French naval strategy against Britain.25

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Fig. 12.1  Phoenician merchants doing business with the Spaniards.

However, after that short interval, during the next century Romanticism and liberalism returned to their traditional interpretations. With the War of Independence being fought against a Napoleonic army, the exaltation of Sagunt and Numancia as a model of national unity against foreign invaders rose to its

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highest point. These episodes fed the nationalistic vision of the past as examples of that peculiar Spanish personality that is present from the earliest times. In both cases, Spanish people fought to the death, if necessary, against invaders who threatened their freedom and independence, a central topic in Spanish historiography, as I noted earlier, until the second half of the twentieth century.26 The highly influential History of Spain, a work of great importance written in the nineteenth century by Modesto Lafuente (1850), a paradigm of the new liberal interpretation of national history, reproduced this image. A Spanish people, clearly defined from the earliest times, fought time and time again against different invaders.27 The beginning of the twentieth century saw the academic authority of Adolf Schulten arrive in Spain as a German professor, and his vision of history as a confrontation between civilization (Greeks, Tartessians) and barbarism (Persians, Etruscans, Carthaginians) confirmed all of these theories and opinions.28 Under Franco’s regime, there was in fact nothing original, simply a deepening of the worst aspects of the traditional interpretation from an ultra-­nationalistic, militaristic and ultra-Catholic point of view. I will mention only one very interesting work by one of the most important intellectuals who supported Franco’s regime in Spain, José Ma Pemán, author of the Historia de España contada con sencillez (History of Spain narrated with simplicity) in 1938 (Third -III- Year of Victory, a Franquist era), theoretically dedicated to the youth but with a de facto wider audience. There we can read parallels between the Phoenicians and England, both of whom were enterprising people, strong sailors, always ready for trade. For Sagunt and the death of its inhabitants, Pemán had to explain that the Saguntins did not know the Christian doctrine whereby suicide is forbidden, but that their sacrifice was one of enormous dignity and courage.29 Later, he wrote that the siege of the Alcazar in Toledo in 1936, a very well-­known episode in the Spanish Civil War,30 was a ‘Christian Sagunt’. It is also possible to find examples of these opinions in popular culture, as we see in a collection of historical stories for the young published in Barcelona in 1936. In the seventh issue, The market of Gadir, we read of Galvelím, the owner of a tavern, ‘a prototype of Phoenicians, that is, first of all businessman, and, therefore, greatly adaptable, a bit deceitful, dishonest and ambitious’.31 Naturally, due to the importance that episodes such as Saguntum or Numantia have for the building of a national identity, we can also find them in the political arena; here I will give only three brief examples. Firstly, we know that the parliament that assembled in Cádiz (the so-­called Cortes de Cádiz), during the war against the French, dedicated a session in May

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1811 to the theatre of Sagunt in one of the first debates we know concerning the notion of heritage as a component of national collective identity.32 Later, in 1870, when arguing over the abolition of slavery in the colonies, a parliamentarian in Madrid, Francisco Romero Robledo, a representative from Málaga, considered the Spanish volunteers in Cuba to be ‘dignified descendants of the defenders in Sagunt and Numancia’.33 My third example, in a very different historical context, is a most interesting stamp, edited by the Spanish Republic in 1938, that honours the industrial workers of Sagunt, in a moment when the city was being heavily bombarded by the fascists. In the foreground of the picture we see the famous sculpture of Agustín Querol, dedicated to ancient Sagunt (The suicide of Sagunt, 1888).34

Historical painting Regarding the presence of the Carthaginians in modern Spanish painting, though without the nationalistic connotations we will mention below, we find a splendid work by Francisco de Goya, Annibale vincitore, che rimira la prima volta dalle Alpi l’Italia’ (Hannibal, victorious, seeing Italy for the first time from the Alps), which he presented in 1770 when visiting Italy in a competition on the topic organized by the Academy of Parma. With this work, Goya received a special mention from the jury (see Fig. 12.2).35 Setting aside this work to look at the political dimensions of historical painting, we cannot forget that – to quote the words of a specialist in this genre, Carlos Reyero – ‘the most important dimension of nineteenth century historic painting in Spain was probably the fact that it was a “mirror of national identity” ’.36 According to this assertion, as artists searched for glorious moments of the past to recreate, the sea fell into the background, as it does not act as the setting for any of those moments. However, the battles of Hannibal and other Carthaginian commanders against various indigenous peoples on Spanish soil offered more interesting possibilities. As such, and leaving aside the mythical stories of Hercules, Arganthonius and other ancient fictional figures, the Saguntine War was (strictly speaking) the first great historical Spanish episode reflected in paintings. The topic followed the dominant interpretation within the nineteenth century, with the main themes being the perfidy of Hannibal, the heroism of the Saguntins and the destruction of the city. We know of several different paintings of the event, some of them unfinished,37 while others have been forgotten or disappeared, such as the

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Fig. 12.2  Francisco de Goya, Annibale vincitore, che rimiro la prima volta dalle Alpi l’Italia, 1770.

interesting painting The sacrifice of the Saguntine women by María Soledad Garrido y Agudo, who entered this work in the National Exhibition of 1878. Critics wrote harshly of the work, one review of the exhibition commenting that it ‘sets your teeth on edge’.38 We also have another painting by Ricardo Alós y Sera, with the conventional title The final day of Sagunt, but the most famous – later reprinted in many schoolbooks – is that painted by Domingo Marqués while studying in Rome in 1869 with a scholarship from the Diputación Provincial (the County Council) of Valencia, Last day of Sagunt. It was presented to the National Exhibition in 1871, where the painter obtained a First Medal, though for another religious painting entitled Santa Clara.39 In the painting of most interest to us, Last day of Sagunt (see Fig.  12.3), Hannibal in his chariot exhorts his troops to put an end to Saguntum’s resistance; amid scattered corpses, a woman tries to stop the chariot, while smoke from the burning city dominates the background.40 As we have already noted, and aside from any discussion of the alleged casus belli of the Second Punic War, Saguntum’s name is a legend in ancient Spanish history as a splendid exemplar of the indomitable nature of the Spanish, preferring death over losing their freedom to a foreign conqueror.41

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Fig. 12.3  Francisco Domingo Marqués, Last day of Sagunt, 1869.

Here, a local tragedy was employed to represent a more general vision of heroism and the meaning of life and death. The title highlighted the city’s fate, but the most fundamental element was the characterization of the deaths as noble and heroic, an obvious parallel to the theme of Numantia, much portrayed in nineteenth-century painting. Seeing the explosion of colour, movement and romanticized tension, some critics have noted a possible influence from certain French Romantic painters, such as Théodore Géricault or Eugène Delacroix. More recently, a possible inspiration for certain elements, especially those around the figure of Hannibal on the right of the picture, has been identified in the so-­called ‘Alexander mosaic’ from Pompeii, discovered in 1830 and likely seen by Domingo Marqués.42 Quesada also mentions the difficulties for the painter in reconstructing the weapons and clothes of the Saguntins and their enemies, due to the limited archaeological knowledge about those elements in his time. Particularly anachronistic, in his opinion, is Hannibal’s chariot, which bears no relation to the Punic army in the third century bc. The painting was reproduced in many schoolbooks, as was the case with the painting of Numancia by Alejo Vera. Regarding the visual arts and our topic, it is also interesting to note the famous sculpture by Agustín Querol dedicated to Sagunt, mentioned above. Agustín Querol (1860–1909) was a renowned Spanish sculptor with several works in Spain and Latin America, among them the tympanum of the National

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Library in Madrid.43 The very melodramatic Sagunt (or The suicide of Sagunt) portrays a woman killing herself with a dagger in her hand, her dead child laid upon her body. With this sculpture, now in Buenos Aires and the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Querol obtained First Prize in the 1888 World Exhibition in Barcelona.

Literary fiction In terms of literature, there have been several dramas, particularly focusing on the destruction of Sagunt, from the sixteenth century onwards.44 There is even an epic poem written in Latin at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Saguntineida by José Manuel Miñana,45 which follows the Homeric and Vergilian model, as well as a number of historical novels. It is no surprise that many of these pieces have an explicitly didactic and patriotic intention, as is the case with the historical paintings and sculptures mentioned above, and that they are thought to be a contribution to the national sentiment. As such, the sea generally played only a supporting role. On the other hand, within the so-­called ‘neoclassical tragedies’ from the eighteenth century onwards that feature Sagunt and Numancia as central topics, the new importance given to historical accuracy is remarkable, at least when read in conjunction with what ancient authors stated on the topic. Particularly during the second half of the nineteenth century, when the rate of new archaeological discoveries was increasing fast, this new information was incorporated by the authors, as can be seen throughout the genre of Western historical novels on antiquity (Edward Bulver-Lytton, Lew Wallace, Henryk Sienkiewicz etc.). One example of this trend is the historical novel Last Days of Sagunt or Ergasto y Belenna. An original historical novel, published by Carlos Nicolás de Palomera in 1863, with prints by Eusebio Planas, which included a short historical introduction.46 Among the most well-­known tragedies that feature the destruction of Sagunt as a central topic, The Destruction of Sagunto, published by Gaspar Zavala y Zamora in 1787, presents all the usual historiographical stereotypes, including the heroism of the Saguntins, Hannibal’s cruelty and division among the Spaniards (traditionally one of the main reasons for their defeat).47 The popularity of the topic is confirmed by works such as The Tragedy of Sagunt. A tragical-­ historical piece in verse,48 written by Francisco Pi y Arsuaga in 1876 and included in a collection of short theatrical pieces directed at the young with an explicit educational intent. Of course, we also have certain pieces from Franco’s times,

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when this sort of exaltation of national heroism in the face of foreign invaders was particularly promoted by the government, as is again the case with José Maria Pemán, the author of The destruction of Sagunt, a tragedy in verse. The premiere of this drama was in fact performed at the Roman theatre in Sagunt, and, as can be read in the introduction to the text, with the sea, the Mare Nostrum, as a magnificent element of the background.49 It is important to state that very often in this kind of literature history there is a pretence of a romantic plot or love story. The two protagonists, in their highly detailed surroundings, are usually placed at opposite extremes: heroic, noble Spaniards against cruel, treacherous Carthaginians. Probably the most paradigmatic example of this is a novel published in 1901 by the extremely popular Spanish writer Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, entitled Sonnica the courtesan, whose story is set in Sagunt while besieged by Hannibal. Displaying a great deal of effort in its research, the author meticulously describes the buildings, clothes, coins, parties and so on, although the fundamental point is the love story between the protagonist couple, who are both Greek, cultured and beautiful, surrounded by heroic Saguntins, cowardly Phoenicians, the arrogant and cruel Hannibal, and so on.50 Continuing in the literary field (though within a different sub-­genre), we again find the Carthaginians presented in a negative manner by a very popular Spanish comic from the 1950s and 1960s, El Jabato. Here we have a young Iberian (and Christian) fighter, always accompanied by his friends Taurus and Fideus, who falls in love with a young Roman patrician, Claudia. In one of the first issues, El Jabato and his friends are lost in an unnamed place in Africa, when they are captured by the Carthaginians who, as usual, are a paradigm of arrogance, cruelty and unfairness; in this case, however, they are not in any way linked with the sea.51

A final consideration Historically speaking, Phoenicians and Carthaginians inevitably appear as people primarily related to the sea: as sailors, merchants and warriors, for whom the Mediterranean or even the Atlantic was the natural setting for their travels, exchanges and combats. However, if we consider their representation in paintings, drama or music within Spanish cultural history, this maritime aspect fades into the background, giving primacy to love stories, heroic struggles and intrepid adventures where brave Spaniards faced their opponents, the latter

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almost always presented in a negative light. Thus, the sea, though inextricably linked to both peoples throughout history, does not have the relevance we might expect when considering the different artistic genres they are portrayed in. Regarding historiography, as was noted earlier with the outstanding precedent of Antonio García y Bellido in the 1940s and 1950s, a new interpretative trend arose only a few decades ago, with the analysis of the archaeological record and the placing of this subject (Phoenicians and Carthaginians in Spain) in the context of a more global Mediterranean network.52 Recognizing the key role that both Phoenicians and Carthaginians played in international maritime trade, it is interesting to note that this new scientific approach highlights the importance of the sea, with Punic shipwrecks found on Spanish coasts in fact constituting one of the most promising areas of research.

Fig. 12.4  Carthaginians and Romans Festival, 2014 (Cartagena).

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Along with this new historiographical perspective at an academic level, it is possible to find in Spanish culture new interpretations of this ancient and almost constantly troubled relationship with the Carthaginians. A good example of this is the festival of ‘Carthaginians and Romans’ organized since 1990 in Cartagena, the old Kart-Hadashat founded by Hasdrubal in 229 bc, later called Cartago Nova by the Romans (see Fig. 12.4).53 Each year at the end of September, after lengthy preparations for the festival, thousands of people participate in the two armies of Carthaginians and Romans, respectively, and ‘fight’ on the city’s central streets in a very popular event, showing a postmodern approach to ancient history as a way of promoting entertainment, popular participation, local businesses and cultural tourism.54 And here, as in antiquity, the sea holds a prominent position in these celebrations, with particular focus on the port, naval battles and disembarkations.

Notes 1 I would like to thank the editor, Charo Rovira, for her patience, and Alison Keable for her assistance with English. This chapter forms part of the research project ‘Antigüedad, nacionalismos e identidades complejas en la historiografía occidental (1700–1900): los casos español, británico y argentino’ (MINECO HAR 201231736); see www.aniho.org; (accessed 17 March 2017) ORCID0000-0001-7566-0482. 2 ‘Sagunto expresó esa fiereza indómita que con tanta frecuencia ha caracterizado al pueblo español.’ 3 ‘Deshinchemos esos grandes nombres, Sagunto, Numancia, Otumba, Lepanto, con que se envenena a nuestra juventud en las escuelas.’ 4 ‘Some in Israel are questioning the military’s Hannibal Doctrine’, PRI’s The World Reporter Daniel Estrin 7 August 2014, 5.30 pm EDT, http://www.pri.org/ stories/2014-08-07/some-­israel-are-­questioning-militarys-­hannibal-doctrine (accessed 15 August 2014). 5 Liv. 39.51. The reception of the figure of Hannibal, radically negative at first but gradually considered in a more positive light (Los Llanos 1995; Barceló 2013), is more complex than that of the Carthaginians, who are almost always seen from a negative point of view. 6 See the text written in August 2014 by Ruth Margalit in The New Yorker, htpp:// www.newyorker.com/news/news-­desk/hadar-­goldin-hannibal-­directive; htpp:// www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/29/israel-­ends-the-­hannibal-directive (accessed 4 July 2016). 7 Anderson 2005, 173–225. The author even includes some opinions about ‘the frigid, unimaginative greed of Rome’ (p. 224). The story was originally published in 1991.

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8 Od. 14. 287–97 and 15.415. In Homer’s Iliad (23.740–4), the Phoenicians are referred to as ‘skilled Sidonian craftsmen’ and mention is made of the fact that Phoenicians carried the crafted objects ‘over the misty face of the water’. 9 Pliny the Elder describes a long list of inventors and inventions and then attributes trade (supposedly by sea) to the Carthaginians: Plin. NH 7. 57. 199: ‘vehiculum cum quattuor rotis Phryges, mercaturas Poeni, culturam vitium et arborum Eumolpus Atheniensis . . .’ (‘The Phrygians first taught us the use of the chariot with four wheels; the Carthaginians the arts of merchandize, and Eumolpus, the Athenian, the cultivation of the vine’). 10 Plin. NH 7. 57. 199; Cic. Scaur. 42; Rep. 2. 9; Liv. 21. 4. 9; specifically on Hannibal: Liv. 21. 1.4; 35. 19. 3; Pol. 3. 11. Nep. Hann. 2. 3–4; Val. Max. 9. 3. App. Iber. 9; Anib. 3; Flor. I, 22, 2–3; Oros. 4, 14, 3. Some more positive views of Hannibal as military commander, like that of Nepos, could be explained as aiming to underline the merit of Rome’s final victory over him. Gruen 2006, 468–70; Isaac 2004, 324–51; Liverani 1998 (and see Liverani’s contribution in Lefkowitz and MacLean Rogers 1996, 421–7). 11 Arist. Pol., 1273a; II, 11; on the city of Carthage on screen, see García Morcillo 2015. On the figure of Hannibal on screen, see Lapeña Marchena 2001. On the history of the excavations at the site of Carthage, see recently Fumadó Ortega 2009. 12 The sentence appears in the narrative around the destruction of Carthage in the third part of the fourth volume of his Storia dei Romani (IV, 3, 75), published in 1964 after de Sanctis’ death, but following Luciano Canfora, probably written shortly after the end of World War II (Canfora 1989, 265): Carthage ‘non aveva partecipato se non in misura minima e trascurabile . . . al incremento di quella civiltà classica que i Greci e i Romani hanno trasmessa, glorioso retaggio, al mondo moderno’ (‘Carthage contributed to a minimal extent, if at all . . . to the growth of that classical civilization which Greeks and Romans transmitted, glorious legacy, to the modern world’). On the debate which arose around this polemical thesis of de Sanctis, see Polverini 1973, 1061. 13 Bernal 1987, especially chapters VIII, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Phoenicians 1830–85’, and IX, ‘The Final Solution of the Phoenician Problem 1885–1945’. 14 Lefkowitz and MacLean Rogers 1996. 15 Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi leader, spoke in 1937 about the Jews as the ‘Syrian pest’, descendants of the old Carthaginians, regrettably not annihilated as a race by the Romans (cited in Giardina and Vauchez 2008, 264). 16 Fenicio, 4. adj. ‘Que tiene habilidad para comerciar o negociar y sacar el máximo beneficio’ (‘someone skilled in doing business and making maximal profit’), http://dle.rae.es (accessed 1 October 2015); at wordreference.com we can read, ‘Punic adj. 1. of or pertaining to the ancient Carthaginians. 2. treacherous; perfidious: originally applied by the Romans to the Carthaginians’ (accessed 1 October 2015).

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17 Verg. Aen. (c. 19 bc); Henry Purcell, Dido and Aeneas (1689); William Turner, Dido building Carthage; or the Rise of the Carthaginian Empire (1815) etc. For a new light on Vergil’s Dido, see now McManus 1997, especially chapter IV, ‘Transgendered Moments: Revisiting Vergil’s Aeneid’. 18 Saguntum, the city supposedly allied with Rome, but besieged and destroyed by Hannibal in 218 bc, was a well-­known historic episode, frequently considered a casus belli for the Second Punic War (Liv. 21–2; Pol. 3; App. Iber. 7; Cass.Dio in Zonaras 8.21, etc.). On the case of Saguntum and the outbreak of the war, see Beck 2011. 19 For some writers from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the old Paradise was, in fact, located on the Iberian Peninsula. 20 This historical narrative was accompanied in textbooks and encyclopaedias by many images, which constituted another important source of information. The study of these textbooks is now significantly facilitated by the Research Centre MANES, located in the Main Library of the UNED in Madrid, specialized in the study of Spanish and Latin American textbooks from the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards (http://www.uned.es/manesvirtual/ProyectoManes/index.htm, accessed 17 March 2017). I would like to thank Drs Gabriela Ossenbach and Ana Badanelli for their help in accessing and using the Fondo MANES. See Fig. 1 as an example taken from one of the textbooks compiled there (Edelvives, Cartilla moderna de Historia de España, Zaragoza, Luis Vives, 1954; the image shows ‘Phoenicians merchants doing business with the Spaniards’ (‘Mercaderes fenicios comercian con los españoles’). 21 ‘El valor, la resistencia heroica hasta la muerte, es una virtud constante de los españoles’, Nueva Enciclopedia Escolar, Burgos, Hijos de Santiago Rodríguez, 1962 (originally published in 1954 for vocational training), Lección 5. Los fenicios, 659; Lección 7. Los cartagineses, 663. 22 Ferrer Albelda 1996 specifically studies the Spanish historiography on the Carthaginians in Spain; Pasamar 2010 and Álvarez Junco 2014 deal more generally with Spanish historiography. 23 Antigüedad marítima de la República de Cartago. Con el Periplo de su General Hannon, traducido del Griego, è ilustrado por D. Pedro Rodriguez Campomanes, Abogado de los Consejos, Asesor general de los Corréos, y Postas de España &. En Madrid. En la Imprenta de Antonio Pérez de Soto (Marine Antiquity of the Republic of Carthage. With the Periplus of his General Hannon, translated from Greek, and illustrated by D. Pedro Rodriguez Campomanes, Advocate of the Councils, General Adviser of the Spanish Post Services. In Madrid. In the Printing of Antonio Pérez de Soto). M.DCC.LVI; on this work, see Gil 2003; Almagro-Gorbea 2003. 24 In Historia crítica de España y de la cultura española (1783), the Jesuit J. F. Masdeu praised the pre-Roman native Spaniards as distinguished disciples of their masters,

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the Phoenicians, and on the other hand, criticized the ambitions of the Carthaginians and the Romans. Nevertheless, he did not regret the presence of the latter in Spain, because, in his opinion, the Spaniards integrated the Romans and not the other way round (Cruz Andreotti and Wulff 1992; Wulff 2003, 84–90). See Wulff 2003, 76–84, on the brothers Pedro and Rafael Mohedano, who wrote a Historia literaria de España desde su primera población hasta nuestros días . . . (Madrid, 1776, vol. V, Gobierno, Artes y Ciencia de los Españoles, desde la venida de los Cartagineses hasta su entera expulsión de nuestra Península) (A literary History of Spain from its earliest population to our days (vol. V, Government, Arts and Science of the Spaniards, from the arrival of the Carthaginians to their complete expulsion of our Peninsula)). 25 The text is fully published and annotated in Casenave 2006; see also Agudo Huici 1983. Of course, the final defeat of Napoleon meant the absolute oblivion of the project. 26 Álvarez Junco 2001, 209; Wulff 2003. 27 Pasamar 2010, 62–89; Wulff 1994. 28 Ferrer Albelda 2002–3, 14; López Castro 1996. That was also the time when the identification of both Carthage and Great Britain as plutocratic empires, in the past as well as in the present, was spread. On Schulten, see Wulff 2004. 29 Pemán also wrote a tragedy on the topic: see below. On antiquity, the Franco regime and education, see Prieto Arciniega 2003. 30 A battle which took place at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War around that old building in Toledo, where the Franquist troops for two months successfully resisted a strong siege by Republican partisans. The event was not strategically significant, but was a highly symbolic victory for the uprising. 31 ‘Era Galvelím el prototipo del fenicio, es decir, comerciante antes que todo, y, por lo mismo, dueño de un gran talento de adaptación, mentirosillo, económico y ambicioso’, Samper Ortega 1936, 113. 32 Millón 1992. 33 DSC (Diary of the sessions of the Parliament), t. 14, n° 308, 17-6-1870, p. 8909. A colleague of the ANIHO team, Pepa Castillo, is working on a paper on the use of the episodes of Numantia and Sagunt in parliamentary speeches in the nineteenth century in Spain. 34 See below, p. 221. 35 On this painting in particular, see Urrea 2008; Sureda 2008, 115. Here Goya is not original, but he is strictly following the subject suggested for the competition, which deals with a dramatic moment in the history of Ancient Rome. 36 Reyero 1989, 109. This author, a specialist in Spanish art history, has studied Spanish nationalism in history painting. See also Duplá 2013. 37 Francisco Sainz, Destrucción de Sagunto (Reyero 1987, 22). 38 ‘Pone los pelos de punta’ in Spanish (Reyero 1987, 24). The painting has probably disappeared.

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39 Gómez Moreno 2006. 40 Reyero 1987, 22; Díez 1992, 270–3. I would like to thank Eva Lloret (Diputación de Valencia) for her help in obtaining a good image of this painting. 41 Álvarez Junco 2014, 264–71. 42 On Domingo Marqués and Géricault-Delacroix, see Gracia Beneyto 1981; on this painting and the ‘Alexander mosaic’, see Quesada 1995–6; on these paintings in schoolbooks, see Duplá 2013, 289. 43 Gaya Nuño 1966, 315–17; Gómez Moreno 2006, 103–6. The artist received many institutional commissions, in the opinion of the specialists presumably due to his friendship with the Prime Minister, Cánovas del Castillo. 44 García Cardiel 2013. 45 The poem rested unfinished when its author, a clergyman from Valencia, died in 1730; it seems that its principal inspiration derives from the poem Punica by Silius Italicus (Pérez Durà 1993). Another long epic poem is that by J. de Villarroya, Las ruinas de Sagunto (Ruins of Sagunt, 1845). 46 Ultimos Dias de Sagunto O Ergasto y Belenna: Novela Historica. Recently reprinted by Kessinger Legacy Reprints (2010) and available to read on Google Books. 47 La destrucción de Sagunto. There is a digital edition (Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-­visor/la-­destrucción-­de-­sagunto-­ comedia-nueva--0/htm; accessed 4 July 2016), with a very comprehensive introductory paper (Rodríguez Cuadros 1996), which analyses Zavala’s historical and cultural context and mentions a long range of works on the topic, including a neoclassical English tragedy by Philip Frowde, The Fall of Saguntum (1727). 48 The collection, titled ‘El Teatro de la Infancia. Galería dramática para niños y jóvenes’ (Theather for Childhood. A dramatic gallery for children and the young), was a success for the publisher Saturnino Calleja (http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/ obra/la-­tragedia-de-sagunto-cuadro-­tragico-historico-­en-verso--0/; accessed 4 July 2016). On this kind of popular literature, see Millon 2002. 49 J. M. Pemán and F. Sánchez-Castañer (1954), La destrucción de Sagunto: tragedia en verso, en un prólogo y dos partes (Vol. 1), Madrid: Escalicer (also with music by the ‘maestro’ J. Rodrigo). 50 Olmos 1994a and Olmos 1994b. This novel and its detailed description of all kinds of places and objects has prompted one scholar to speak of ‘explicit archaeological nationalism’ (Quesada 1996). Following these well-­known patterns, we find also a three-­act opera, Sagunto, by the composer from Valencia, Salvador Giner y Vidal, with libretto by Luis Cebrián Mezquita, released in 1901 at the Teatro Principal in Valencia. 51 Historical accuracy was not a main concern of the authors, and, in fact, along with the Carthaginians we encounter Hittites in the same area! The main entrance of the Hittites’ amphitheatre, where our heroes had to fight, reminds us of the temple of

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Moloch in the film Cabiria (Pastrone, 1914) (JABATO COLOR, vol. 2, Barcelona, 2010; a recent version of an earlier edition). On the comic El Jabato, see Coll et al. 2009. 52 Ferrer 2002–3. 53 The poster reads, ‘Carthaginians and Romans Festival. “A superb story”. XXV Anniversary of the Great Festival of the Mediterranean’. 54 http://www.cartaginesesyromanos.es (accessed 4 July 2016). On re-­enactment as a postmodern approach to history, see Carlà and Fiore 2016 (on this festival in particular, see p. 7).

13

Screening the Battle of Actium: Naval Victory, Erotic Tragedy and the Birth of an Empire Monica Silveira Cyrino

In this chapter, we journey to the turbulent waters of the Ionian Sea on the western coast of Greece, where the promontory of Actium opens into the Gulf of Ambracia. On 2 September 31 bc, a naval battle was fought here between the joint forces of the Roman general Mark Antony and his lover Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, on one side, and on the other side Antony’s political rival Octavian Caesar, the future Emperor Augustus, and with him the assembled might of Rome. A recent scholarly exploration of the Battle of Actium, Si Sheppard’s book Actium 31 bc: Downfall of Antony and Cleopatra (2009), promotes itself and invites eager readers to savour its contents with this breathless pitch on its back cover: In 32 bc the Roman Republic descended into civil war between the forces of Octavian in the west and the famous lovers Antony and Cleopatra in the east. In the waters off the Roman colony of Actium in Greece, the two sides met in a bloody and decisive action involving hundreds of warships, which saw Octavian’s lighter, more maneuverable ships defeat the huge galleys of Antony. Soon after their defeat, the lovers committed suicide, and Octavian declared himself Emperor. Immortalized on stage and screen, Actium is one of the most famous and important battles of the ancient world – the event that would finally seal the fate of the Roman Republic.1

In that bracing description of the extraordinary convergence of ancient history and imperial destiny, the words ‘immortalized on stage and screen’ catch the reader’s attention. Indeed, the claim can be said to be utterly true, because the Battle of Actium in 31 bc has long been recognized and acclaimed for its contribution to history, literature and popular media. The battle marked the final

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incorporation of the Greek cultural tradition into that of the Roman, while at the same time it cut short the death throes of the Roman Republic and provided legitimacy to the ensuing imperial regime initiated by Octavian/Augustus.2 The great Roman historian Sir Ronald Syme, author of the monumental work The Roman Revolution, describes the outcome of Actium as constituting ‘the foundation-­myth of the new order’,3 and we see how that mythology has persisted through the telling and retelling of the historical events in various different contexts, genres and time periods. In particular, the romantic, charismatic, even tragic personalities involved in the story have attracted the talents of poets, playwrights, artists and filmmakers for over two millennia. This chapter offers an analysis of three modern screen texts that recreate the events surrounding the Battle of Actium: Cecil B. DeMille’s film Cleopatra (1934), Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s film Cleopatra (1963) and the second season of the HBO premium cable television series Rome (second season first aired in 2007). Each of these famous screen texts is endowed with considerable cultural significance, critical success and popular affection. DeMille’s spectacular Cleopatra, a grandiose Hollywood fantasy starring Claudette Colbert, was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won the award for Best Cinematography.4 Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra remains legendary for its extravagant budget, but is perhaps most notorious for the shocking off-­screen love affair between its two principal stars, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.5 While the film almost shut down business permanently at 20th Century Fox, the 1963 Cleopatra was also one of the 1960s’ highest-­grossing movies and was nominated for nine Academy Awards, with four wins, for Best Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design and Visual Effects. The HBO series Rome (2005–7) relocates the narrative to the small screen, but with its high quality production values and unparalleled expense, the show was eventually cancelled after only two seasons.6 Yet Rome attracted an average audience of six million viewers per episode, and received numerous awards: this included fifteen Emmy nominations (with seven wins), two nominations for Golden Globes, and five nominations for BAFTAs. Furthermore, each of the screen texts explored in this chapter entered production during periods of recent history where issues of global politics, military engagement, national identity and gender paradigms were constantly being negotiated and interrogated in the popular media. Just as the back-­cover commentary of the book mentioned above highlights certain aspects of the historical record, filmmakers also tend to emphasize several specific themes and tropes to portray the Battle of Actium on screen as the momentous ‘turning point of history’ that gave birth to the Roman Empire.

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My investigation will focus on the following themes and tropes that recur in cinematic representations of Actium: (1) how the doomed passion of Antony and Cleopatra, the ancient world’s most notorious lovers, clouded their judgement during a time when cool-­headed clarity was required; (2) how the different technologies of the two navies pitted Antony’s sluggish Egyptian ships against the lighter, more agile fleet of Octavian; (3) how the strategic brilliance of an independent Agrippa surpassed the slavish obedience of Queen Cleopatra’s war staff, and how Antony’s own generals ended up deserting him; (4) and how the thematic idea of a ‘crisis in history’ infused the narrative of the sea battle with a strong sense of inevitability. The key premise of this chapter is that the mythology surrounding the Battle of Actium – which to a great extent was initiated by Octavian/Augustus himself in the imperial propaganda of the day7 – has distinctly and persistently influenced modern recreations of the battle on screens large and small. So this chapter aims to show how these cinematic and televisual representations not only respond to Augustan projections about the event as it occurred, but how onscreen recreations of the battle may also be performing an important socio-­cultural function as popular narratives of history for their contemporary audiences, beyond just being wildly entertaining.

History Since onscreen representations of the Battle of Actium confront the historical record, audiences can also pose questions about how and why the screen texts engage with the ancient sources.8 The events of the Battle of Actium are well known to history and have been told again and again, although at the time the outcome of the conflict between the two rival warlords, Octavian and Antony, for the control of Rome, did not seem like a foregone conclusion.9 While ‘the respective claims of Antony and Octavian to the legacy of Caesar made a winner-­ take-all clash between them ultimately inevitable’,10 the question of who – or what – would succeed the dying republic remained an open one. In the year before the battle, 32 bc, the confrontation between the two former triumvirs, Antony and Octavian, had finally come to a head. Octavian had intensified his invective against Antony in the ongoing propaganda war, saying that Octavian alone was the champion of Rome’s republican heritage, while Antony was the lovesick dupe of a foreign queen. But Octavian still lacked a clear casus belli – he did not want to be seen as starting another civil war – so he needed

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Antony to make an overt gesture of hostility towards Rome. Predictably, Antony soon obliged when that summer he formally divorced Octavia, the virtuous Roman matrona and sister of Octavian, in the marriage that had sealed the Pact of Brundisium a few years before (40 bc) when Antony and Octavian had stepped back from total war and agreed to divide the Roman world between them. The divorce was an extremely unpopular act: the people of Rome took this as Antony’s callous repudiation of Roman familial honour in favour of his depraved Oriental mistress, and Octavian deftly used this contrast to his advantage.11 Then, acting on intelligence from some Antonian deserters, Octavian made a ‘calculated gamble’.12 He removed Antony’s will from the Temple of the Vestal Virgins and read it aloud in the Senate, proving to the Senate and people of Rome the extent of Antony’s devotion to Cleopatra when he revealed the climax of the document: Antony’s wish upon his death to be buried next to her in Alexandria. This was the proof, written in Antony’s own hand, that Octavian’s charges were true: Antony had fallen under the spell of the Egyptian sorceress. Octavian was now in a position to assume extra-­constitutional authority in order to save Rome from the eastern threat, so he formally declared iustum bellum against Cleopatra and Egypt. ‘The utmost care was taken to define the coming conflict on Octavian’s terms: not for what it was, the showdown between two rival warlords, but as Rome vs. Egypt, Republic vs. monarchy, Latin vs. Oriental, domestic deities vs. foreign gods, male vs. female, and west vs. east.’13 Octavian slandered Antony for being drunk with toxic Oriental potions and out of his senses, enslaved by the seductive queen and in thrall to her dissolute court of eunuchs: he was no longer even Roman. The rhetoric Octavian used to legitimize his conflict with Antony at the outset was also used later to define his victory, so that Octavian could construct an image of himself as the saviour of Rome, the pater patriae, the father of his country.14 Even as this rhetoric was first echoed in the literature composed in the early Principate, for example in the works of the poets Vergil, Horace and Propertius,15 to a great extent these tropes recur in later cinematic receptions as well: the original Augustan projections are adapted and emphasized, as this chapter reveals, according to the narrative focus of the particular screen text. Octavian’s immediate reason for goading Antony into engaging in battle against him – which, when spun by Octavian’s propaganda machine, turned into ‘taking up arms against the legacy of Caesar and Rome itself ’16 – was that he needed the rich financial resources of the East and especially Egypt to pay off the many legions of veterans whose demands for bonuses and settlement lands

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threatened to explode at any time into immense social unrest throughout Italy. But ultimately, Octavian’s political agenda was guided, as it always had been, by his awareness that only one man could be princeps, first citizen, in Rome, and he was determined to assume that role himself. By the summer of 31 bc, Antony had established garrisons along the coast of the Ionian Sea, his western frontier, and stationed his fleet at Actium. His strategy was to drag out the campaign and force the cash-­strapped Octavian to come to him: because of his alliance with Cleopatra, Antony could not pre-­emptively spearhead an invasion of Italy, or else risk rallying all of Rome to Octavian’s side. Octavian’s forces, under the command of the military genius Agrippa, resolved to strike Antony at sea, and so they tightened a noose around his position.17 The relentless Agrippa approached with his fleet from the south, storming Antony’s garrisons and harassing his supply transports from Egypt, while Octavian’s ships advanced on Actium from the north and set up camp on the opposite side of the gulf from Antony’s camp. The confrontation settled into a wary stand-­off, but whatever advantages Antony had were quickly dissipated by a series of sharp setbacks: Agrippa blockaded the island of Leucas, preventing a quick turn to the south by Antony’s fleet; many of his generals and clients, sensing the tides of war were shifting, deserted to Octavian’s side; and rations were running short and the physical conditions in the marshy environment around Antony’s camp were noxious. After the demoralizing defection of his trusted general Ahenobarbus, who vehemently disapproved of Cleopatra’s influence over his commander,18 a historical trope frequently carried over to the screen texts, Antony’s situation became truly desperate. The question facing the officers left on his war council, who were increasingly antagonistic and conflict-­ridden, was not whether to break out, but how and where? Canidius, who commanded Antony’s legions, argued that they should meet Octavian in a land battle, where Antony would have the upper hand, and Cleopatra, with her treasury in her possession, should run the blockade at sea with the goal of reaching Egypt. Cleopatra, however, made the opposite case, arguing that they should put the best part of the army on board their immense fleet of richly appointed galleys and fight Octavian at sea. Her convincing case boiled down to a fundamental point: ‘If nothing else, Antony and Cleopatra still had one trump card to play: while they retained the treasure of the Ptolemies they had cash reserves to keep the war going indefinitely. Octavian did not.’19 Cleopatra’s argument won the day. The decision to meet Octavian at sea baffled Antony’s veterans: the troops were anxious and suspicious about his objectives, and there were more defections.

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On the morning of 2 September, the skies were clear. Octavian embarked about 40,000 men on 400 ships, while Antony had about half that number, 20,000 men on 230 ships. Since there was no way to cover up the reality that Antony was heavily outnumbered by the time battle was actually joined, the ancient sources tend to emphasize the imposing bulk and height of Antony’s warships, in an attempt to portray Octavian with his smaller, more manoeuvrable vessels as ‘the underdog struggling to preserve the Roman way of life against overwhelming enemy force’: while Antony did concentrate his heavier galleys at the end of each line, no doubt the majority of the fighting would have taken place between vessels of the same class.20 Agrippa lined up Octavian’s fleet in the sea facing the entrance to the gulf, and Antony’s ships came out to meet them: there were three squadrons in the front line, and a fourth with Cleopatra’s ships, and the Egyptian treasure, protected in the rear. Indeed, Antony may have intentionally clustered his most powerful ships on either end of his lines, thinning out the centre on purpose to draw Agrippa to his flanks, thereby giving Cleopatra a chance to make a break for it through the heart of the enemy fleet:21 this is a strategy often spectacularly represented in the screen texts. Each side waited for the other to initiate combat: Antony hoped Agrippa would come inshore, while Agrippa, refusing to take the bait, waited for Antony to advance into deeper water so he could attack his flanks. Agrippa doubled his line to absorb the impact of engagement. About midday, as the winds rose, Antony abandoned any hope of engaging inshore, and ordered his fleet to advance, hoping to take advantage of the strengthening offshore breeze to get as many of his ships away as he could, and far enough seaward to raise sail and break out to sea.22 Agrippa ordered his squadrons to back water to draw Antony further away from the gulf, intending to cut off his line of retreat, then encircle and annihilate his fleet. ‘Ironically, both sides now shared a common interest in Antony getting as far out to sea as possible, Antony to make good his escape, Octavian to more effectively deploy his numerical superiority and the edge his individual captains maintained in seamanship.’23 In deep water, battle was joined, and the two sides clashed heavily in prolonged fighting. While the ancient accounts are short on tactical details, they all emphasize how Octavian was able to turn the unwieldy mass of Antony’s fleet to his advantage: this striking visual image of mismatched ships battling it out in the open ocean is often exhibited in the cinematic recreations as well. But there is a great deal more at stake in this impression than just size: ‘In this manner, the valour and fighting quality of the west trumps the extravagance and folly of the east, thereby drawing parallels between Rome and Greece, Cleopatra and

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Persia, Antony and Xerxes, Octavian and Themistocles, in maintaining a tradition dating back to Salamis nearly four and a half centuries earlier.’24 As Agrippa focused on turning Antony’s flanks, the centre thinned out as ships on both sides sought strategic advantage. About two hours into the fighting, as the stiff afternoon wind reached its peak intensity, Cleopatra made her getaway from the battle. Some ancient sources blame her move on womanly cowardice,25 but in fact the breakout was most likely pre-­arranged: she coolly held her position until the wind was most favourable, then hoisted sail and broke through the centre gap with her squadron of sixty ships. Seeing Cleopatra on the move, Antony transferred his flag to a lighter vessel and followed after her, and those few of his ships that could do so disengaged and escaped with them to Egypt. Many of Antony’s diehard captains, loyal to him still, fought on until evening, but Agrippa surrounded them and fire-­bombed the desert-­dry timber of their ships, until one by one they surrendered or were destroyed. The first light of dawn confirmed Octavian’s victory was complete. Aboard Cleopatra’s flagship, Antony was distraught and refused to speak for several days: his extreme emotional reaction to his failure in the battle and the loss of his men is often dramatically depicted in the screen texts. At first glance, Antony’s strategic situation was not completely hopeless: he had managed to save a good portion of his fleet, he had secured the treasury of Egypt, and Canidius could yet march several legions from Greece back to Asia. Antony, the legendarily lucky leader who always bounced back from adversity, could yet rally and live to fight – and win – another day. But the response of his troops to his decision to leave was devastating. Confronted with the reality of Antony’s departure by sea to Egypt, the veterans, who understood well the dynamics of civil war, refused to follow Canidius over land: deserting their once-­beloved commander in the thousands, they formally swore allegiance to Octavian. ‘In choosing to break out by sea instead of fighting his way out by land, Antony not only shattered this image, but irrevocably broke the bonds of companionship he had established with men whose proudest boast had been to say they served under him.’26 Whether Antony simply failed to recognize that his obligation was to stay with his legions, or, as the hostile Augustan tradition would have it, he was besotted and enslaved by his love for Cleopatra and insisted on being by her side even at the cost of his honour as an officer and a man,27 his fatally compromised, some would say irrational, judgement in this supreme crisis of his military and political career made for ‘great drama but poor strategy’. The war was over, and Octavian had won. More importantly, and as the Augustan ideology would continue to emphasize in the coming years, it was the fierce Roman identity so

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casually forfeited by Antony that had triumphed over the eastern personality he had sought to become. The following summer, Octavian waged a brief military campaign in Alexandria, after which first Antony and then Cleopatra committed suicide: the drama and poignancy of the notorious lovers’ final days are unsurprisingly regular features of the screen texts. After their deaths, Octavian annexed Egypt to Rome, and used Cleopatra’s vast treasury to pay off the now inflated ranks of his veterans. In 29 bc, Octavian celebrated a triple triumph in which he displayed an effigy of the dead Cleopatra; cinematic recreations of the triumphal procession often show the couple’s remains together in order to emphasize the importance of their love affair in the narrative of events. Then in 27 bc, Octavian assumed the title Augustus Caesar: ‘A new generation in Rome was reconciled to the powers of the princeps being embodied in the individual, not the office itself.’28 Centuries later, historians still refer to the Battle of Actium as the defining moment of history when the Roman Empire was born.

The screen texts Cinematic recreations of the Battle of Actium story engage enthusiastically with its Augustan projections in all their spin and nuance. The story of the clash between Octavian on the one side and Antony and Cleopatra on the other has appeared on film at least fifteen times, with some version of the Battle of Actium as a crucial set piece and climactic turning point depicted in almost all of them.29 When the battle figures in the plot on film – as in the screen texts under discussion in this chapter: Cleopatra (1934), Cleopatra (1963) and Rome (2007) – it is often staged as ‘an explicatory event within the meta-­narrative of inevitable defeat’30 for the fated lovers, just as it midwives the birth of the new Roman world order under the princeps. Most of the cinematic versions feature Cleopatra as the pivotal figure in the story and present the action from her point of view,31 as indicated by many of the films’ titles; so the films tend to play down the brutal enmity between the two Roman warlords, and instead show an Antony who is conquered more by love, and later despair, than by Octavian’s shrewd political strategy. The first movie to attempt a vivid and authentic recreation of the Battle of Actium sequence was the 1912 American silent Cleopatra directed by Charles Gaskill, one of the first ‘full length’ feature films produced in the United States, clocking in at one hour and a half in duration (including six reels). Towards the end of this rather rough-­looking film, the actors playing Antony and Cleopatra

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are shown during what is supposed to be the sea battle, ‘ridiculously rocking back and forth while buckets of water are tossed at them’, as one critic has aptly described it.32 While this may arguably have been an inauspicious beginning in the history of aquatic special effects on film, its significance rests more with this early representation of the Battle of Actium itself as a major crisis point in the narrative. The first sound version of the story was DeMille’s visually sumptuous Cleopatra (1934), starring Claudette Colbert as the flirtatious, scheming Egyptian queen, and Henry Wilcoxon as a hotheaded, profligate and amiably debauched Antony.33 As the film’s title suggests, the plot focuses on Cleopatra and her shrewd attempts to secure the interests of her kingdom through her erotic alliances first with Julius Caesar and then with Antony: most cinematic versions of the Cleopatra story adopt this handy two-­act structure, implementing a kind of sequel-­effect configuration that one scholar has referred to as the ‘mimetic desire’ narrative.34 But it is only when Cleopatra realizes that the love-­struck Antony is willing to fight the Roman armies and so give up his entire world to cherish her that she too falls in love with him and surrenders to him utterly. The queen’s submission is played out in the stirring scene where Antony makes preparations for war with Octavian: the mise-­en-scène and dialogue play up the fundamental Augustan projection that Antony’s love for Cleopatra has bewitched him, and thus made him unfit for political leadership.35 After Enobarbus (C. Aubrey Smith)36 informs Antony that his officers refuse to fight for the hated Egyptian queen, and his generals have all deserted, he cruelly suggests that he himself should kill Cleopatra and Antony can take credit for it to win back the love of the Roman people (see Fig. 13.1). But Antony chooses to remain at Cleopatra’s side, and so Enobarbus defects to Octavian. Thus the fateful lovers are shown in this film as irretrievably caught up in fighting a doomed battle, their passion sweeping them forward into a war they cannot win. Moreover, the theme of all-­consuming yet destructive love showcases DeMille’s trademark cinematic grandiosity, while satisfying the appetite of 1930s moviegoers for escapist romantic entertainment. DeMille’s 1934 Cleopatra is also justifiably acclaimed for its elaborately staged spectacles, including the depiction of the naval combat at Actium, which is conflated with the land battle at Alexandria by a blurry jump cut. Together the two battle episodes screen for only about two minutes, but as one critic notes, ‘these carefully edited sequences make an immediate and effective impact’.37 The land battle section recycles some stock footage from the battle scenes in DeMille’s earlier film The Ten Commandments (1923): since spectacular action scenes were

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Fig. 13.1  Enobarbus (C. Aubrey Smith) berates Antony (Henry Wilcoxon) before the Battle of Actium in Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra (1934).

so expensive to shoot, footage from previous films was often reused.38 In DeMille’s Cleopatra, the land battle segment is spliced together with new footage depicting the Actium sea battle. The naval battle sequence opens with a gloomy water-­filled screen showing galleys attacking each other, catapults of fire, grimacing faces, underwater shots of the dead, all ending in an enormous fireball shot directly at the camera lens. In the last few seconds, the image of Cleopatra’s face dramatically superimposed over the sea battle montage underscores the queen’s responsibility for the bloody chaos, as she is exposed as both the unequivocal cause of and a scapegoat for the devastating civil wars between Octavian and Antony. The scenes of the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Actium reveal how Antony’s desperate final effort to save something of his honour in the fight against Octavian inevitably turns into hopeless despair. But first we see Cleopatra, determined to find another way out of their predicament, as she slips away from the palace in an attempt to negotiate with Octavian: this image of the queen making one last valiant try at salvation often recurs in subsequent screen constructions of the story and serves to underscore Antony’s own lack of resourcefulness: ‘The explicit desolation is configured as Antony’s alone: Cleopatra remains prepared to fight her way out of the situation, while Antony succumbs to emotional collapse.’39 When he sees Cleopatra leaving through the gates, presuming the loss of her love and so betrayal, Antony’s bravado deserts

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him and he sinks into anguish: this scene may be intended to evoke her infamous and allegedly self-­interested flight at Actium – which is not actually depicted in this film – when Antony saw Cleopatra’s ship sail away from the fray, and he despaired of losing her forever. Thus DeMille’s 1934 film replays several of the tropes of the Augustan projection of Actium and its implications, while responding to contemporary debates about gender roles and relationships. The quintessential version of the story is Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra (1963), starring Elizabeth Taylor as the noble queen paired with her real-­life adulterous lover, Richard Burton, as a volatile Antony. It has been noted that extensive and pitiless editing damaged Burton’s compelling performance as the brilliant general and strategist, leaving only the ‘dissolute, weak, passionately amorous pawn’ in the released film:40 thus the final cut of the film can be read as an emphatic validation of the Augustan propaganda that turned the Roman people (and the movie-­going audience) against Antony. In the second act of the film, which also follows the bipartite ‘mimetic’ love-­affair model,41 the events surrounding the Battle of Actium take up a substantial amount of time, and its graphic presentation on screen robustly incorporates the Augustan tradition’s ‘most damning indictment’ of Antony:42 that his excessive, emasculating love for the Egyptian queen forced him to abandon the battle and follow her as she fled. Mankiewicz’s film, however, offers a clear exculpation to Cleopatra (and indeed to Taylor as its marquee star) by allowing an alternative explanation for her flight to the standard ancient accusation of womanly fear: in the 1963 film, she is shown to be persuaded by her advisors to escape the battle after they convince her that Antony could not have survived the direct attack on his ship (see Fig.  13.2). Yet Cleopatra’s motivation only makes Antony’s tragic despair and martial ineptitude more pronounced in this telling:43 he has both forfeited the male dominant position in his intense romantic devotion to her, and also his impulsive actions have resulted in utter military catastrophe. As they make preparations for war with Octavian, the film uses Antony’s growing dependence on alcohol to signify his loss of political power and consequent lack of mental clarity, another slur that comes right from the ancient sources.44 When he and Cleopatra first debate with their officers over what tactics to use in the imminent battle, Antony is shown stooped over his wine, mumbling and sulking, as the queen makes all the decisions. Even when he seems to reclaim the position of command just before the Battle of Actium, Antony is still clutching a goblet of wine as he seriously overestimates his advantages and drunkenly insults his loyal military aides, Rufio (Martin Landau) and Canidius (Andrew Faulds), for speaking against his decision to fight at sea rather than on

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Fig. 13.2  Cleopatra (Elizabeth Taylor) consults with her advisors during the Battle of Actium in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra (1963).

land: this scene exposes that ‘Antony’s alcohol use is proposed as a partial cause of his defeat.’45 When Antony angrily dismisses the men, an apprehensive Cleopatra asks him, ‘Antony, what has happened?’ and he replies sullenly, ‘To me? You have happened to me.’ The line encapsulates the Augustan projection of Antony’s overwhelming love and how it destroyed his ability to function as a man, a Roman and a leader. The lengthy Battle of Actium sequence is ‘frighteningly realistic’,46 and its thrilling visual impact far surpasses the expert model work in the naval combat scene in William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959): with thousands of costumed extras, thunderous sound editing and state-­of-the-­art, award-­winning special-­effects ballistics and firebombs, the scene cost nearly half a million dollars to shoot. There is a flash of Antony as the skilful commander, beloved by his troops, as he stands on deck clashing his sword on his shield and rousing his men to battle: but this image quickly deteriorates into the reckless, inebriated Antony whose predictably brazen head-­on attack in Cleopatra’s lumbering Egyptian galleys is easily countered by Octavian’s shrewd admiral, Agrippa (Andrew Keir), commanding his lighter, sleeker ships. The camera cuts instantly to the deck of Cleopatra’s flagship, the Antonia, where the queen and her staff surround a relief map of the Actium seas and where the audience can follow the manoeuvres of the engagement: here the mise-­en-scène and dialogue highlight the queen’s involvement in the military strategy and her calm monitoring of the conflict. There is only a flickering shadow of emotion that crosses her face when her advisors convince her to make a break for Egypt. When Antony sees Cleopatra’s flagship departing, he enters a purely instinctive mode: he leaps into a small dinghy, shoving aside his lieutenant who pleads with him not to abandon them, and follows blindly after her. Here the film emphasizes

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the ‘gender anxieties’ performed by Antony’s flight from the battle: as Cleopatra retreats, ‘Antony, drawn by his emasculating love for her, jumps ship and follows, to his enduring shame.’47 But Antony’s crippling emotionality is in no way mirrored by Cleopatra: as in earlier scenes, she remains steady and dignified under pressure. Under the piercing eyes of Rufio, who is appalled by his general’s desertion of his men, Antony boards Cleopatra’s ship but does not speak. Apollodorus (Cesare Danova), Cleopatra’s chief slave, confiscates Antony’s sword on the queen’s orders and throws it into the sea, a sequence ‘loaded with phallic symbolism’48 to indicate Antony’s loss of masculine power and status. But the scene also suggests that Cleopatra is afraid he might kill himself, just as the contemporary audience would likely link Antony’s emotional distress to the chance he might try to commit suicide.49 Left alone, Antony groans in despair and collapses on the deck, as he watches his men being slaughtered and his ships burned in the battle still raging on the Greek horizon. The next scene shows him wandering the empty beach at Alexandria and wearing a long black robe as a visual signal of his psychological suffering. Although he appears in only a few brief scenes, Octavian (Roddy McDowall) is persistently villainized in Mankiewicz’s film; that is, characterized both as a ruthless politician (historically accurate) and a cold-­blooded, despicable murderer (much less so):50 this depiction functions as simple cinematic shorthand to highlight by contrast the dignity of Taylor’s noble Cleopatra. Central to the negative portrayal of Octavian is the Actium scene, where the future princeps lies below deck, incapacitated by nausea and unable to fight.51 When the jubilant Agrippa comes down to announce their decisive victory, Octavian raises himself up feebly on his pale scrawny arms, and then falls back upon his pallet without a word. The scene underscores Octavian’s lack of martial aptitude and calls into question his fitness to lead Rome, while at the same time this problematic characterization may also indicate a subversive critique of the ancient Augustan propaganda that drives much of the film’s script. The staging of Antony’s evident collapse after the loss at Actium, however, explicitly follows the hostile Augustan tradition of how events unfolded at the battle: in this projection, Antony’s emotional disintegration on screen is the inevitable response of a gravely infatuated man who allowed all-­consuming love ‘to dictate – and undermine – his military policy, and who now finds the shame . . . unbearable’.52 But as Octavian advances on Alexandria, Cleopatra tries to rouse Antony from his misery to prepare to wage war: just like the queen in the DeMille film, Taylor’s Cleopatra likewise is determined to find a way out of their present dilemma. She begs him to stand up and fight with her, but Antony is too

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despondent and humiliated over his actions at Actium to contemplate armed resistance. In his melancholy speech to Cleopatra, Antony ‘reinforces his position of subservience’:53 he bitterly describes that he abandoned his men at Actium because he had no regard for his military duty or his honour as a Roman general. At this late point in the narrative, Cleopatra, seeing her lover’s breakdown right before her eyes, now repairs the previous gender shifts and adopts the submissive feminine stance, just as Colbert’s Cleopatra did in the 1934 film:54 she reasserts her redemptive love for him, and vows that together they will fight to their destined end. Thus, while Mankiewicz’s screen text has attempted to recover Cleopatra’s actions at Actium from malicious Augustan propaganda, it does so at the cost of an utterly diminished and unmanned Antony, who gets no such reprieve. Thus the film can be interpreted as using its provocative discourse on historical authenticity to engage with current interrogations of gender paradigms. Both DeMille’s and Mankiewicz’s films feature the Battle of Actium as a dramatic turning point in the cinematic narrative that can be seen as responding to particular Augustan projections. But in his 1970 book, The Battle of Actium, John M. Carter reinterprets the events of the engagement as recorded in the ancient sources – specifically, that Cleopatra fled the battle in fear and Antony’s emasculating love forced him to follow after her – as a canny and strategic naval retreat, a reading that is generally supported by historians today.55 Before the publication of this work, there was no widely available historiography that filmmakers and screenwriters might consult for an alternative explanation of the conflict; that is, if they referred to histories at all rather than, say, Shakespeare’s plays or (even less plausibly) Plutarch’s writings. And although Mankiewicz’s film endeavours to present a more pro-Cleopatra reading – that the queen’s advisors had to convince her to retreat from the battle – this perhaps had more to do with the influence of Taylor’s star power than any scholarly compulsion towards a revisionist historical interpretation of events. What is noteworthy, however, is that later screen versions continue to engage with and replay distinctive Augustan projections of the battle, and this crucial origin incentive offers rich territory in which to keep exploring the Actium story archetype. The premium cable television series Rome (2005–7) enjoyed enormous critical and commercial success. Yet when it was unexpectedly cancelled midway through the writing of the second season, that final sequence of episodes suffered a necessary (and much lamented) compression of narrative time.56 Thus, while the producers had planned to spend an entire season of ten or twelve episodes on those last few critical years of the Roman Republic, focusing on Antony and Cleopatra securing their position in the East and Octavian struggling to raise

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funds to support his legions in Rome, and taking at least one entire episode to depict the Battle of Actium itself, the premature cancellation of the show compelled them to telescope the history of several Alexandrian years into a single episode, the final one of the series.57 Moreover, because the series Rome focuses primarily on politics and not on romance – ‘the romantic subplots within the narrative tend eventually to be sacrificed to political expediency’58 – the love affair between Antony and Cleopatra is not the focus of the final episode. Yet there is still room in this highly politicized universe for the female perspective, but it does not belong to Cleopatra: the primary focalization of the series is directed to the character of Atia (Polly Walker), the mother of Octavian – and in Rome’s narrative, the long-­time lover of Antony before Cleopatra arrived on the scene – whose fierce ambition to see her son elevated to first man in Rome is the main theme of the series, suffusing the final episode with her reaction to his crucial victory over his enemies. The final episode of the series opens on the aftermath of the Battle of Actium: the conflict itself is not shown explicitly on screen.59 The opening shot reveals Antony (James Purefoy), brooding and dishevelled, hunched over in a small dinghy, leaving the site of the engagement and reflecting on the unfamiliarity of being beaten in battle (see Fig. 13.3). ‘All my life I’ve been fearful of defeat,’ he muses to his loyal aide, Vorenus (Kevin McKidd), ‘but now that it has come, it’s not near as terrible as I’d expected. The sun still shines, water still tastes good . . . glory is all well and good, but life is enough, nay?’ Presumably Antony is shown at the moment he is on his way to join Cleopatra on her flagship, but this is not made clear by dialogue or camera angle. In this brief scene, the usually brash and

Fig. 13.3  Antony (James Purefoy) ponders the aftermath of the Battle of Actium in episode 22 (‘De Patre Vostro’) of Rome (2007).

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belligerent Antony seems more philosophical in his tone rather than hopeless or despondent: ‘Rome, despite having presented an irredeemably conscienceless Antony across both seasons, somewhat anomalously moderates him in the final episode.’60 Under the impact of Actium and its persistent ideology, as it seems, the series now allows him to be tempered, even blunted, in his last few scenes. Antony’s sudden rejection of military glory as his life’s major goal is an obvious anomaly in his characterization within the series that indicates an intentional narrative continuity of the Augustan projection. As in earlier instances in the series where historical events are not actually staged, the report of the battle is announced in the following scene by the popular Newsreader character (Ian McNeice), who hits all the sordid lowlights of the Augustan propaganda about the nautical battle. ‘Glorious news at Actium in Greece!’ he cries.‘The navy of our imperator Octavian Caesar, under the command of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, has won a decisive victory over Queen Cleopatra and her slave, Mark Antony. The Egyptian fleet has been destroyed! Even now Octavian Caesar advances on Alexandria where the witch and her creature take refuge.’ The very next scene at dinner finds the young Livia (Alice Henley), Octavian’s waspish wife, repeating the official Augustan spin of the battle’s events that stresses Cleopatra’s cowardice and Antony’s emasculation by love, while Octavia (Kerry Condon) disputes the truth of her brother’s reports, and even calls Octavian a ‘liar’. Here Octavia is evidently referring to the alternative interpretation, proposed by historian Carter, that Cleopatra made a cool-­headed and strategic decision to retreat in order to protect her treasury and preserve their option to fight another day.61 That the actual events of the Battle of Actium are not show on screen leaves the truth vs. propaganda debate open to audience interpretation, in keeping with more modern entertainment imperatives. One of the very last scenes of the series is that of Octavian’s triumph, which historically took place in 29 bc. In this sequence, the effigies of both Cleopatra and Antony are rolled past the throne of Octavian (Simon Woods) on the quasi-­ imperial platform, as the camera closes in on Atia’s face: her anguished expression reveals her recognition that the price she paid for her son’s elevation to princeps was the loss of the love of her life. At Octavian’s side sits his sister, Octavia, wearing a crown of sun-­bleached coral, perhaps as a visual symbol to reinforce the significance of the Augustan naval victory in the sea battle at Actium. Even within the overtly politicized narrative of the series, and even if the historical Octavian might not have wished to remind the gathered Roman people that his civil war was waged also against Antony, at its end the series Rome encourages the audience to share in Octavian’s decisive victory over the doomed romantic

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couple as a prominent and persistent feature of the battle’s Augustan mythology. Thus the screening of the Battle of Actium does not so much adapt history as reveal contemporary fantasies, anxieties and projections – even if those projections were current to 31 bc.

Notes 1 Sheppard 2009, back cover; the italics have been added by me for emphasis. 2 See Fratantuono 2016 for the Battle of Actium as the most significant military engagement in Roman history. 3 Syme 1939, 335. 4 On DeMille’s Cleopatra, see Solomon 2001, 63–4; Cyrino 2005, 138. 5 On Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra, see Solomon 2001, 67–5; Cyrino 2005, 121–58. 6 On the Rome series, see the volumes edited by Cyrino 2008 and 2015. 7 See Gurval 1995 for a detailed examination of contemporary views of the Battle of Actium and its immediate political and social consequences. 8 The most important ancient sources for the Battle of Actium are Cass. Dio 50–1; Plu. Ant.; and Suet. Aug. 9 The following historical summary is indebted to the account and exegesis of events described in Sheppard 2009. 10 Sheppard 2009, 5. 11 On Octavian’s exploitation of the divorce as a convenient way to focus on Cleopatra as the ‘real enemy’, see Southern 2010, 222. 12 Sheppard 2009, 33 notes that Octavian seized the will because he believed he could simply ‘ride out the backlash’ against violating Vestal sacrosanctity. 13 Sheppard 2009, 33. 14 On the construction of an Augustan ideology after the Battle of Actium, see Gurval 1995. 15 For example, in Verg. Aen. 8.671–728 (the ecphrasis of the Battle of Actium on the shield of Aeneas); Hor. Epod. 9 and Carm. 1.37; and Prop. 2.15, 2.16, 2.34, 3.11 and 4.6. 16 Sheppard 2009, 34. 17 For Agrippa’s constant manoeuvring during that summer to constrict Antony and his forces, see Sheppard 2009, 58–60, and Southern 2010, 242–3. 18 Antony was deeply demoralized by the loss of Ahenobarbus, who was grievously ill and died soon after transferring his allegiance to Octavian; see Sheppard 2009, 60, and Southern 2010, 243. 19 Sheppard 2009, 61. 20 Sheppard 2009, 73–8 discusses how the ancient sources played a role in amplifying the Augustan propaganda about ‘the inherently righteous nature of Octavian’s cause’

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(73) in the battle by stressing the disparity in the size of the ships relative to each fleet; see, for example, Cass. Dio 50.32.2. 21 This is the opinion of Sheppard 2009, 69. 22 Vergil calls this wind Iapyx (Aen. 8.710), a strong north-­west wind from Apulia. 23 Sheppard 2009, 69. 24 Ibid., 77. 25 Cass. Dio 50.33.1–2: ‘Cleopatra, riding at anchor behind the combatants, could not endure the long and anxious waiting until a decision could be reached, but true to her nature as a woman and an Egyptian, she was tortured by the agony of the long suspense and by the constant and fearful expectation of either possible outcome, and so she suddenly turned to flight herself and raised the signal for the others, her own subjects.’ 26 Sheppard 2009, 84. 27 Plut. Ant. 66.45: ‘Here, indeed, Antony made it clear to all the world that he was swayed neither by the sentiments of a commander nor of a brave man, nor even by his own, but, as someone in jest said that the soul of the lover dwells in another’s body, he was dragged along by the woman as if he had become incorporate with her and must go where she did. For no sooner did he see her ship sailing off than he forgot everything else, betrayed and ran away from those who were fighting and dying in his cause, got into a five-­oared galley . . . and hastened after the woman who had already ruined him and would make his ruin still more complete.’ 28 Sheppard 2009, 92. 29 On Cleopatra in film, see Wenzel 2005; also Wyke 2002, 266–320. See Kelly 2014 for a detailed and provocative examination of the recurring tropes that construct Antony for the screen, comparing the modern pop-cultural icon both to the historical figure and to the earliest Augustan projections of him; on Antony and the Battle of Actium in the screen texts, see Kelly 2014, 197–8. 30 Kelly 2014, 197. 31 On the films’ Cleopatra-­driven narratives, see Cyrino 2005, 145; Hatchuel 2011, 141–2. 32 Solomon 2001, 62. 33 On Henry Wilcoxon’s performance of Antony as ‘the least politicized Roman male’ in the film, see Kelly 2014, 138–9. 34 Hatchuel 2011, 83–4, 133–5 traces this binary device back to a ‘conflation of plots’ from Shakespeare’s plays. 35 Kelly 2014, 100, 117–30, 136–48 traces the tropes of all-­consuming love, excessive emotionality and political ineptitude as some of the original elements of Augustan propaganda against Antony. 36 The film adopts Shakespeare’s abbreviated form of the general’s name: the character Domitius Enobarbus appears in the play Antony and Cleopatra as Antony’s friend

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who deserts him for Octavian (3.13), is then stricken with remorse (4.6) and later dies (4.9). 37 Solomon 2001, 64. 38 Hatchuel 2011, 139. For the film version of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (1972), which suffered from poor reviews and had only limited release in the UK and US, director/star Charlton Heston was allowed to purchase several hundred feet of outtakes from the war galleys in action in the naval battle sequence in Ben-Hur (1959) to enhance the epic realism of the Battle of Actium in his film, but the footage was used to uneven effect; see Hatchuel 2011, 44. 39 Kelly 2014, 108. 40 Solomon 2001, 71: ‘This cinematic Antony starts at the bottom and falls sideways.’ 41 Hatchuel 2011, 83–4. 42 Kelly 2014, 125. 43 See Kelly 2014, 126, who observes, ‘No similar re-­positioning is available to Antony.’ 44 On the trope of Antony’s alcohol abuse, see Kelly 2014, 101–9, with citations from Cic. Phil. 5.9 and Plut. Ant. 9. 45 Kelly 2014, 106. 46 Solomon 2001, 75. 47 Kelly 2014, 120; see also 120–6 for the film’s exploration of the trope of Antony’s emotional disintegration after Actium. 48 Ibid., 120; for the scene’s emphasis on the masculinity of Apollodorus by contrast, see 188–91. 49 Ibid., 120 notes that the meaning and morality of suicide is much more complex in ancient Roman discourse; see also Plass 1995, 81–134. 50 On the film’s complicated portrayal of Octavian, see Solomon 2001, 72. 51 The scene may draw from the historical fact that Octavian was reportedly ill for much of the Philippi campaign (Suet. Aug. 13). 52 Kelly 2014, 124. 53 Ibid., 121. 54 See Hatchuel 2011, 147–8 on the redemption of the cinematic Cleopatra(s) through her romantic surrender to Antony, even when she realizes it means her doom. 55 For the importance of Carter’s work to a reading of the screen texts depicting Actium, see Kelly 2014, 197–8. 56 On the narrative compaction due to the cancellation of the series, see the introduction to the second series volume Cyrino 2015, 1–10. 57 Episode 22, ‘De Patre Vostro (About Your Father)’, written by Bruno Heller, directed by John Maybury. See also Späth and Tröhler 2012 for an analysis of the series as an ‘experimental historiography’. 58 Kelly 2014, 127 cites the ruined relationships of Caesar and Servilia; Octavia and Agrippa; Vorenus and Niobe.

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59 The series Rome avoids staging full set-­piece battle sequences (e.g. Pharsalus, Mutina, Philippi), perhaps due to cost and run-­time constraints; but by not actually showing the Battle of Actium on screen, the audience is invited to draw their own conclusions. 60 Kelly 2014, 123. 61 On Octavia’s direct reference to Carter’s reading, see Kelly 2014, 227.

Part 5

Contemporary Uses of the Classical Mediterranean

14

Troubled Waters: Performative Imaginary in the Project PI – Pequena Infância Sofia de Carvalho, Elisabete Cação and Ana Seiça Carvalho ([email protected])

The Project PI – Pequena Infância (Little Childhood in English) began to be developed in Coimbra (Portugal) a decade ago, but only saw its activity grow exponentially from 2010 onwards, when the students’ society for Classical Studies Origem da Comédia (Birth of Comedy) reactivated the Project.1 The principal goal of the Project members was to bring academia closer to the surrounding community by providing drama workshops to young audiences, thus exploring the pedagogic and educational value of ancient mythology and drama. The volunteers decided to work with mythology and ancient theatre together in order to teach the participants important aspects of both subjects. Drama and performative techniques are relevant to increasing body- and self-­ awareness, as well as the development of aesthetic sensibilities, though we also aim to explore the pedagogic dynamic of ancient myth, its potentially moral content and its value as a constant component of Greek and Roman educational programmes. It is this last aspect of our workshops that we will explore in the following pages, in particular the symbolic power of the sea for mythical sagas and their heroes. First, we will briefly present the project, its members and its audience, along with the structure of our sessions. We will then discuss the process of selecting mythic cycles, our reasons for choosing one myth over others, and how we rewrote them for younger audiences. With this in mind, we will discuss the importance of myth and narrative in the context of our audience. Furthermore, we aim to show how theatre and myth can be helpful in the process of medical treatment and the improvement of self-­esteem for children taken from their family custody. Although it was not our starting point, we began to realize the applicability of the concept of Narrative Medicine (also called Narrative-Based Medicine) to our

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project. Narrative Medicine is defined as ‘medicine practiced with the narrative competence to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by stories of illness’, and was established several years ago by Rita Charon (among others) and developed as a theoretical and operative approach.2 Narrative Medicine was redefined in 2014 in a Consensus Conference as a methodology of clinical intervention based on a specific communicative competence.3 Accordingly, Chiara Fioretti argues that: Narrative has also been defined as a fundamental tool to acquire, comprehend and integrate the different points of view of all the participants having a role in the illness experience. In this sense, the main aim of the Narrative Medicine approach would be that of co-­constructing a shared and personalized care path. Narrative Medicine has to be considered as part of a new, broader cultural change stressing the importance of humanization of care and personalized Medicine.4

In fact, language and communication are crucial to our interpersonal encounters, and can be a healing strategy: ‘Telling stories, listening to them, being moved by them to act are recognized to be at the heart of many of our efforts to find, make, and honor meaning in our lives and the lives of the others.’5 Ancient myths are ancestral narratives with a variety of symbolic meanings. Taking the Narrative Medicine theory into consideration, we use these myths to encourage children to relate to the mythical characters, thus exploring the symbolic potential of narrative and theatre. Although we cannot directly act upon the healing process, we believe that our approach in these contexts makes children recognize their own story in the narrative, identifying themselves with the hero and thus helping them to deal with their condition.

The aim of Project PI Every year Project PI has been able to gather a team of four to six volunteers. At the beginning of the project, the team consisted mainly of classics students from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Coimbra, Portugal, including some who were experienced in theatre, whether acting or directing. Fortunately, over time, volunteers from other academic backgrounds have joined us, and our team now consists of students with backgrounds in classics, medicine, archaeology and psychology. This is particularly relevant when one understands the audience with whom we work.

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The Project PI (Pequena Infância) does not present its activities to schools or other educational facilities. Instead, we provide our sessions of drama and Graeco-Roman mythology to a public aged between four and eighteen years old who were taken from parental custody and are fostered in social care institutions in Coimbra (Casa de Acolhimento Temporário do Loreto, Casa do Pai – Fundação Bissaya Barreto, and Lar do Padre Serra), as well as children currently undergoing medical treatment in the Paediatric Unit of the University Hospital Centre of Coimbra and Casa Acreditar, which provides accommodation for the families of children from other regions of Portugal who are undergoing oncological treatment in Coimbra. The decision to focus our work on these institutions was motivated by the limited access these children have to extra-­curricular activities such as those we aim to provide, and to understand the response of this disadvantaged audience to theatre and the symbolic power of ancient myths.

The structure of the sessions Project PI brings the participants to drama workshop sessions once a week for a month, and this period of workshops takes place twice a year, the first in November/December and the second in March/April. The sessions are divided into four main components. In the first part, we begin with presentation games, such as the ‘Moving Name Game’, an acknowledged technique for engaging with new groups of differing age ranges. In the second part of the session we introduce a reading of the mythical episode. In the hospital and Acreditar, where the audience is mainly composed of children aged between three and thirteen, the narrative is accompanied by a physical enactment using stuffed dolls and puppets (see Fig.  14.1). This live, animated support to the story has proven to be effective for the children’s comprehension of, and engagement with, the narrative. In the social care institutions, where participants are older (twelve to eighteen years old), instead of having the storytelling episode, we provide the script of a play inspired by myth. The goal is to present the complete play, based on this script, to the staff of the institution during the final session. After the narration of the episode, the group leaders encourage dialogue and discussion with the participants on key elements of the story (see Fig. 14.2). Who are the main characters? What are their characteristics? How do they relate to each other? What do their actions mean in the narrative? The third part is reserved for one of the Project PI’s primary concerns: introducing notions of dramatic techniques, such as improvisation and mimicry.

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Fig. 14.1  Narration with the puppets at Acreditar.

Fig. 14.2  Discussing the myth and the characters at the Paediatric University Hospital Centre of Coimbra.

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Fig. 14.3  Performance at Lar do Padre Serra: sailing the boat.

Some of the skills we aim to teach these children include the ability to impersonate different characters, shifting to different emotional states and the development of spatial awareness to enhance physical perception of the self and the ‘other’. In the fourth section, these skills and exercises are introduced into the performance, which is unanimously the children’s favourite part of the session. To enrich this final part we rely on Thíasos, the Theatre Group of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, who kindly lends costumes and props (see Fig. 14.3). The structure of our sessions encourages active audience participation throughout the workshop, promoting the importance of storytelling, a comprehension of characters and their behaviours, and the recognition of characters’ traits for the final dramatization. We also aim to analyse behavioural patterns and improve human relations through basic drama techniques. The educational potential of performance, which is one component of aesthetic education, has been recognized by teachers, nurses and social workers, since it encourages artistic creativity, self-­awareness of bodily and creative capacities, and aesthetic and ethical education. As a consequence of this self-­awareness, children acquire a fundamental notion as a citizen: a respect for the limits of the other. We also invite the participants to engage with the mythical imagery not

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merely as a set of ancient stories, but as metaphors for their own reality, and this is ultimately why we try to emphasize the meaning of each episode so that the children can reflect and learn.

Selecting myths Although central to our sessions, we are not focused on the artistic value of theatre alone; the themes with which we work are also just as relevant, if not even more so. The idea of performance and theatre itself is always associated with a narrative. The project approaches and encourages performance by emphasizing its function as a means of telling a story. The legacy of mythical narratives has been a fertile and effective way of exploring the dimensions of dramatic creativity since the beginning of theatre. Juvenile audiences are no exception. However, rewriting myths for younger audiences requires caution; for this reason, we began by adapting our episodes from existing literary versions for children.6 With the experience acquired here, we began to venture into writing the episodes ourselves, directly from ancient sources. When doing so we relied upon the help of a psychologist responsible for assuring the suitability of the texts to our audience. However, we believe, with William Bedell Stanford, that omitting certain parts of the myth encourages creativity, and this is why we reshaped those parts of the myth to focus on poignant episodes which were simple to interpret and perform.7 Our goal was not to teach Greek mythology in itself; we were interested in myths to which our audience could symbolically relate. The selection of narratives varied between the heroic cycles (Odysseus, Heracles and Theseus) and independent mythical episodes (Pandora, Midas and Narcissus). The heroic cycles allow us to explore the continuity of the narrative and the evolution of its characters, which is suitable for a fixed group, whereas individual episodes (such as Pandora and the meaning of hope) emphasize a clear, specific morality and are more appropriate to explore in the hospital, where it is common for participants to vary from session to session. Of all the myths with which we have worked, the heroic cycles have shown the best response from the children. The idea of a continuum in the narrative and an evolution of the character, particularly the hero’s quests, creates curiosity among our audiences. Our selection was somewhat biased by the fact that the ancient sources tend to emphasize male characters in the heroic cycles; however, we include female characters in all episodes, as either assistants to the hero or antagonists.

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In all the heroic cycles we adapted, the theme of the sea and travelling is constant and fundamental. Odysseus travels back home after ten years in Troy; Heracles travels to complete his labours; Theseus travels in search of freedom and adventure. Our selection of these three figures among the heroic cycles was not accidental – all of these journeys are by sea. In all of them there are monsters to be defeated, barriers that the hero must overcome. The analogy between these aspects of the myth and the illness or situation of the disadvantaged children is clear. However, the choice of myths in which the central element is travelling, especially by sea, is also significant. The motif of the sea journey in Greek mythology allows an approach to the idea of the sea that conceals, in the first place, the idea of displacement – the abandonment of a comfort zone is a precondition for the consummation of the hero. In other words, overcoming the barrier of the sea is a heroic accomplishment. In this sense, overcoming the sea in the realm of myth represents an analogy not only for the displacement these children experience, but also for their battle against an illness or disadvantaged social situation. The symbolic meaning of the journey by sea that Odysseus and Theseus undertake was a determining factor in our decision to use them in the project.8 Sea travel as a heroic quest is a common element in Portuguese (and indeed Southwestern European collective memory); it is present in our literature, history and identity. It is easier for us to elaborate on the theme of the sea as something to be overcome and conquered because it is so deeply rooted in our concept of the sea. Scholarship on Odysseus and his adventures and wanderings is diverse, and controversial. The figure of Odysseus has been a source of inspiration for every literary genre, and provides the most material for discussions on the symbolic value of archetypical figures.9 The metaphor of the dangerous and troublesome journey for the hero to return home functions as a background and an analogy for the journey of these children, a journey that began too soon. However, the choice of the Odyssey was motivated by other features as well. The characterization of Odysseus is versatile. The long tradition of reception and rewriting of the figure of Odysseus allowed him to be portrayed as flexible and adaptable, or as a malefic deceiver (e.g. in Sophocles’ Philoctetes), making him, according to Stanford, an atypical hero. This is true for his body structure (though a hero, Odysseus is physically weaker than other heroes such as Achilles or Ajax), though he compensates for his inferior strength with his cunning mind. He is also the hero who suffers the most, in his longing for home.10 As José Ribeiro Ferreira puts it, ‘the hero became the symbol of someone whose circumstances of life or the need for adventure led him to several places and

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people; the hero who, when facing several dangers, escapes from every situation, thanks to his cunning mind. However, at the same time, it is the sorrow in which he lives that makes him experience every sensation in life.’11 All of these characteristics, particularly those evident in the Odyssey, are an analogy to which our audience members can easily relate. The Odyssey relates the distant journey of Odysseus during his return home after the Trojan War. The war lasted ten long years, exactly as long as the ten years that Odysseus spends in his wanderings. This nostos is a metaphor for life in its adventures and twists. In fact, apart from experiencing the condition of displacement with Odysseus, our participants also share with him the frightening odyssey of life. With Odysseus, they have monsters to defeat as they fight cancer or other health problems. However, the Odyssey, particularly in its idea of displacement, is also a recognizable analogy for the disadvantaged children at the social care institutions. In both cases, as in the Odyssey, the sea is both the cause of their displacement and eventually the source of their success, as troubled as the journey may be. The symbolic power of the sea and journey that the Odyssey allows is evident in our choice of episodes. From the panoply of episodes in the nostos of Odysseus, we chose to use four sections, all of them related in some way to journeys by sea. We began by narrating the importance of Odysseus’ cunning in constructing the Trojan horse, and ended with the Trojan War, which initiates his journey back home. In the second episode, concerning the island of Circe, we decided to emphasize the significance of obedience at the moment when Odysseus’ companions are turned into pigs. The third episode concerns Aeolus’s winds and the Sirens. Finally, after all Odysseus’ obstacles are overcome, the fourth episode represents his arrival in Ithaca. In all of these journeys, Odysseus travels by sea; in one of them he faces sea monsters.12 These four episodes bring together the general symbols and ethics we wanted to elaborate for our audience. Apart from the importance of the journey and the adventure, we focused on the fact that Odysseus longs for home, to return to his homeland and loved ones. He is far from home, wandering in the sea. We also emphasized the importance of the physical effort and the cunning mind with which Odysseus is often associated, within the episodes that deal with building the Trojan horse and his encounter with the Sirens. In contrast to the positive value of intelligence, we emphasize the imprudence and stubbornness of Odysseus’ companions in the episodes of Circe and Aeolus. The significance of the sea in Odysseus’ journey functions as a metaphor for the journey of these children, who face either illness and painful treatment or

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removal from their home to be sheltered in a place of strangers. In the first place, water can be understood as a source of life, a means of purification. Whoever dives suffers a symbolic death and emerges from it purified. Water is yin, the opposite of fire; it is cold, and can also mean death and destruction. Hence, water is creation and recreation. After a journey, or a dive, a new man arises. When sailing past the Sirens, Odysseus does not dive – he sails by the danger, and this experience grants him a rebirth, maturity and change.13 In a never-­ending search for a harbour, for Ithaca, the boat – a vehicle where one walks the path of challenges and difficulties but also the path to knowledge – symbolizes human frustration and dissatisfaction. As Ribeiro Ferreira shows, this is present in the work of various Portuguese poets, such as Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Fernando Guimarães and Manuel Alegre.14 The symbolism of the journey, on the other hand, is dominated by a ceaseless search for a spiritual centre where the wanderer can find peace.15 The wanderer searches for truth, immortality, or simply adventure; he thus tests the limits of human knowledge, strength and condition, making the journey itself worth more than the destination. All the heroic cycles with which we worked are somehow associated with this idea of a journey by sea as a path of maturity and spiritual growth, as testing the limits of humanity. Heracles and his labours symbolize the search for adventures and new obstacles to overcome, though the defeat of the monsters (more than the representation of the Greek idea of superiority and civilization through the control of wilderness) symbolizes for our audience the obstacles they have ahead of them, the constant battles they fight. Meanwhile, the figure of Theseus, whose story we featured in 2013, is perhaps of greater significance to our discussion. Of all the adventures of Theseus, we chose to begin with the discovery of his identity and his defeat of the Minotaur, in the two first episodes. Despite being very similar to the labours of Heracles, Theseus’ story offers a very powerful analogy for the troubled waters in which our participants have been sailing. The episode of defeating the Minotaur serves as a significant analogy of the journey by sea as a journey to death. When Theseus declares himself against the Athenian penalty of sending seven girls and seven boys to Crete to feed the Minotaur, he decides to embark on a journey to death along with the fourteen young Athenians. The others who went before have never returned, and Theseus promises to end this cycle of death by defeating the monster. His task is highly dangerous, but he embarks on it nonetheless, determined to end the atrocity. He eventually succeeds, killing the monster and saving the other young Athenians from death. To our audience in the hospitals, the analogy is established by identifying

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the sea as treatment which, despite being painful and tormented, is necessary for the final goal of defeating the monster, or the illness. Theseus’ strength, intelligence and courage are what grants him victory, with the help of Ariadne who provides the thread to guide his way back, which in the context of our project is the help from family members, doctors and nurses. The journey back to Athens by sea is not as troubled, but it is significant: it is a journey of glory and victory. Theseus arrives in Athens a hero, someone who came back from the dead, which is also a characteristic of the katabasis of Odysseus and Heracles. However, unlike Odysseus and Heracles who descend for their own sake, Theseus embarks on the journey not only for himself, but for his community. The troubled seas sailed by Theseus in this episode represent a victorious path through illness, which, even though hard and unfair, is to some extent achievable.16

The importance of myth and narrative in the context of our audience Performing the myth of Odysseus polytropos, accounting for his adventures during his return home, or the adventures of Theseus, proved to be highly stimulating for our audience.17 Five years of experience have enabled us to improve certain aspects, and to understand certain recurring patterns of behaviour among the children with whom we have been working. In general, children at the hospital – in spite of their fragile condition and physical limitations – do not show signs of insecurity or self-­esteem issues. They are generally accompanied by their parents or relatives. They also show a predisposition to participate and interact with others – group leaders and other children – and are respectful of how the session is organized. At the hospital we seldom work with the same children twice, since their stay in the hospital is temporary; nevertheless, we can easily see patterns in their approach to the narrative, which shows a detailed attention to and apprehension of the message. This was evident in one of the few cases we experienced of a girl attending our session twice. Throughout the first session she did not actively participate, remaining seated but paying close attention. In the second session, we asked her if she could retell the previous episode to the new participants. At first she declined our request; but as we were telling the previous episode she began to add important and accurate details, and soon took the lead in the narrative, illustrating the dynamic of oral tradition societies in which the literary process depended on the constant retelling of the same stories.

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Parental support also seems to play a major role in the behaviour of these children; a fundamental weapon in the battle they are fighting themselves. A young boy in his teens, who was very active and enthusiastic from the very start of our session, led one of the most interesting dramatizations we have had so far. He and his father used improvisation to enrich the dialogue we had provided without shifting its order or contents. The father’s constant motivation appeared to us to be an important aspect of this child’s education, which allowed the boy to make an entire audience laugh. On the other hand, children and adolescents of social care institutions present a different pattern of behaviour, likely influenced by their parental and familial situations. These groups tend to approach us in a more distant and uncompromising manner. In these cases, it is more challenging for the group leaders to gain their trust and lead the session. However, they also tend to become increasingly interested throughout the sessions, despite the constant tension and detachment they exhibit. Perhaps their behaviour tends to be more difficult to control because during our visits they are not under supervision of the social institutions’ staff members. During the myth and drama exercises, we have noticed that their interaction with the narrative is more effective through performance than by reading. For this reason, we decided to focus more on performance techniques with these groups. The audience from the social care housing responded in diverse ways. However, there is one case that illustrates the potential of the performative approach for these children: an eight-year-­old boy made a clear evolution over the course of our sessions dedicated to Odysseus. In the first episode, the child chose to be the Trojan horse, a mere prop, an object. In the second episode, he played one of Odysseus’ companions whom Circe turns into a pig: from inanimate object, he changed to an animal. In the third session, he gave life to one companion of Odysseus, and in the final session, he chose to be Odysseus himself. The evolution from minor character to hero is evident, showing signs of a clear increase in self-­confidence.

Myth as therapy and the metaphor of the sea The examples mentioned above show how narrative knowledge, myth and the possibility of impersonating its characters brought about significant changes in some of our participants, in both contexts. Moreover, and according to the Narrative Medicine Studies approach mentioned above, the symbolic power of

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myth can be explored with these children in an effective and fruitful way for our purposes. In a seminar which took place in 2012, with the help of professional psychologists, philosophers and philologists, we concluded that our workshops have impacts in two dimensions. First, the effects of the drama exercises showed that the children acquire self-­ awareness of their body, as well as the space surrounding them (as opposed to the other), factors which determine the development of the idea of community and citizenship. In doing so, they find the means to define themselves and their space within the social environment; they find that their voice and their presence matters, which contributes to an increase in self-­esteem. All these aspects give a clearer idea of the staging of a theatre play. In fact, there is one case in which the child subsequently pursued theatre classes. Second, the idea of cultural growth has also played an important role. From the beginning, we have emphasized the cultural importance of these stories. We wished to put Rita Charon’s words to the test: ‘by telling stories to ourselves and others . . . we grow slowly not only to know who we are but also to become who we are’.18 The act of narrating is a moment from present to past, in which the description of actions and events allows one to attempt to understand and explain oneself.19 The knowledge that the children gained of myths enabled a significant change in some of their behaviour, as shown above, and narrative is the key to achieving the other, to communicate with the other. The knowledge of the story and the will to prove it granted them narrative power, which they acknowledged as they were telling the story with increasing levels of detail. This mastery of the narrative gave them the confidence to become involved in the session in a more active way. The act of writing/speaking/narrating can also provide the feeling of being in control of the situation. Furthermore, recognizing the validity of their knowledge through their peers grants the validation that many of these children, particularly those in social care institutions, seek; the opportunity to demonstrate their control of a subject or fact earns respect from the others, leading to a subsequent increase in self-­confidence,20 as the examples mentioned above show. This sensation of power increases their emancipation. In some cases, we detected progress in their personality and social expression on stage. We interpret this progress in the following way: after telling the myth, children gained awareness of the characters and their limits – they related their actions to a character, showed sympathy or disgust for the various characters and could express why they felt the way they did towards a certain character, be they good or evil. A child who relates to a minor character is projecting himself upon them;

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this is how they picture themselves, who they think they are, or where they belong in the narrative, in the dramatic space, but also in life. Our goal is to halt this tendency and encourage the children to develop their approach to the characters in a more progressive and positive way, as shown in the example above. Nevertheless, throughout the years we witnessed heterogeneous reactions to our project. Some children soon lost interest; some parents preferred that their children did not participate in our sessions. Fortunately, in the vast majority of cases we received a positive response to our efforts. This demonstrates the level of engagement that we receive from the participants, as well as the extent to which they perceive the power of theatre and the message conveyed by the myth. In more general terms, we realized that Greek myths, and particularly the heroic cycles, provide the perfect analogy for these children’s situation: the displacement that they experience is analogous to that of the mythical character. As we have shown, the sea is central to these narratives; it is the instrument of displacement. Symbolically, the sea (and the journey itself) represents the displacement these children have experienced throughout the period of treatment and hospitalization, or during their stay in social care institutions. All the children have experienced displacement from their homes, albeit for a variety of reasons. The sea is what lies between them and their return, and as myth is keen to show, the journey is never easy, though this is ultimately why it is heroic. Furthermore, the sea hides terrifying creatures, challenging obstacles that the hero must surpass in order to succeed. The presence of the sea and the journey also allows for the development of physical exercises, not only for the performance of the sea itself, but also (and perhaps more relevantly) for the representation of the rowing sailors, which demands a highly co-­ordinated movement, as well as the performance of sea monsters. The sea monsters are also particularly important in the way they represent the perils of the sea, and thus the ultimate test or obstacle that one can experience while sailing. The sea may grant their return, but it will never be a calm journey. In performative terms, the sea and the sea monsters are a decisive moment, as the children enjoy the battle and the idea of defeating a monster. However, it is also significant that they look at these episodes as decisive, and therefore those in which they should spend more time. By stretching out the performative moment of defeating the sea monster, they are acknowledging themselves not only as the actor, but also as the hero. They are entitled, for once, to be heroes against a monster, and they do not waste that opportunity.

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Conclusion The sea and its perils are, alas, a powerful metaphor for the present situation of these children. Project PI aims to provide narratives that enable them to deal with the unfortunate events in their lives. Our aim is that, by performing these myths and engaging with the ancient narratives, the participants can experience theatre not only as entertainment, but also as a moment of identification with the characters they are performing. We want them to recognize their perils as somehow identical to the hero’s, and to understand the imagery of the heroic sea journey as their fight against illness or a troublesome past at home. After all, the troubled waters that they sail make their journey truly heroic.

Notes 1 We are grateful to the Centro de Estudos Clássicos e Humanísticos (Centre for Classic and Humanistic Studies), Associação Portuguesa de Estudos Clássicos (Portuguese Classical Society) and Thíasos – Theatre Group of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra – for their help. A word of thanks is also due to all the members of staff at the institutions for welcoming and helping us throughout the sessions. Last but not least, thanks to every child who participated and made us believe our work was worthy. We are deeply thankful for every smile that illuminated our day and warmed our hearts, for the lessons they taught us. Research developed under the PhD scholarships SFRH/BD/85173/2012 and SFRH/BD/111097/2015 was funded by the Portuguese FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology). 2 Charon 2006, 4. 3 AAVV 2015. 4 Fioretti et al. 2016, 8. 5 Charon 2006, 12. 6 For the Odyssey, see Menéres 2004 and Lourenço 2005; for Heracles’ Labours, see Nogueira 1997; for Pandora, Midas and Narcissus, see Arbiol 2006. 7 Stanford 1963, especially chapters I and V. 8 Malkin 1998. 9 Boitani 1992, who provides a general overview of the reception of Odysseus’ myth from the thirteenth to the twentieth century, including, for example, Mensagem by Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese poet. 10 Stanford 1963, chapter V. 11 Ribeiro Ferreira 1996, 408 (translation is ours).

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12 Hom. Od. 8.492–520; 10.1–130; 10.135–574; 12.166–200; 13.352ff. 13 Chevalier and Gheerbrant 1982, Água, 41–6. 14 Ribeiro Ferreira 1996, 410–15. 15 Chevalier and Gheerbrant 1982, Viagem, 691–2. 16 Ustinova 2009. 17 Boardman 2003, 25–34. In Greek art, Odysseus is portrayed as a traveller (the traveller’s pilos and hat, p. 26). Boardman lists Odysseus’ adventures and compares them to folk tales. The debate over the interpretation of Odysseus’ travels as corresponding to geographical accuracy is disputed, due to some flaws (Said 2011, 158–88; West 2014, 82–6, 118–21). 18 Charon 2006, vii. See also Entralgo 1965, 1021. 19 Vide Rhonda and Hallenbeck 2010, 472: ‘Narrative models the flow of life, provides a social commentary, and helps us to understand and share our lives with others. We live, survive, thrive and die in the context of a larger life narrative, woven together by personal stories of caring. Narrative is crucial to the process of recognizing and integrating repressed and alienated selves that suffer . . . Narrative also can become an important tool to probe, resurrect, and forge new identities within new story lines, and thereby promote healing. Any new identity requires a “new” understanding of self, a self that arises through empathy and union with others’. In the Odyssey, when Odysseus hears the report of his wanderings from the bards, he cries, moved by the tribute made to him: ‘The new adventures of Odysseus shaped a new Odysseus who is, simultaneously, himself and the other. As if his identity was constructed according to the options made by the person. As if one’s story was the quest for himself, the conquest of himself ’ (Pena-Ruiz 2009, 56–7. Translation is ours). 20 ‘Stories are often drawn from the community and the explicit purpose is to promote change, either in a direct sense or indirectly in terms of raised awareness’ (Österlind 2013, 91).

Annex: Nem Gregos nem Troianos Over the course of eighteen months, José Bandeira photographed the old Dafundo neighbourhood, on the outskirts of Lisbon. First drawn to the place by its unusual buildings and riverside landscapes, he eventually met Euclides, a Cape-Verdean immigrant who runs a modest tavern by the roadside. In José’s frequent visits to the place he got to know many of the locals, mostly inhabitants of the Clemente Vicente building – an austere construction built a century ago to lodge the working men of two factories in the vicinity. Among its current inhabitants are many retired elders, immigrants and unemployed workers; they share convivial space with less fortunate, destitute people living on the streets. José never forgets to give the locals prints of the photographs he takes of them. They learned to trust him and his camera: his pictures of the Dafundo inhabitants are a compromise between José’s photographic aim and the ideas his models have of what a portrait should be. Viewed as a whole, the hundreds of photographs José has gathered in the last year and a half are as much an artistic pursuit as they are documents of a soon-­to-disappear world. At some point José, who has an interest in the classics, saw an improbable photographic connection between the close-­to-martial façade of the Clemente Vicente building and the citadel of Troy. The fact that the locals kept small boats, tents, furniture, vegetable gardens, bird cages and all sorts of strange objects on a strip of land adjacent to the Lisbon–Cascaís railway line, which runs parallel to the (now highly degraded) Dafundo beach, helped to reinforce the comparison. The strip of land became a Greek camp, the railway line a defensive wall and ditch (‘What’s a suburban train but a moving wall?’ asks José). To complete the picture, the hazardous Ivens Avenue, a straight, busy road with no pedestrian crossing, became an elongated Trojan plane. After this geography was defined, José started toying with the idea of posing some of the inhabitants as characters of the Iliad and the Epic Cycle. This implied narrating the whole story to each one of them, from the Judgement of Paris to the return of the Greek heroes, as well as giving them a more detailed insight

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into each specific character. How would people who have never heard of the Trojan War respond to the narrative and moral issues it poses? Were there points of contact between the vulnerability – sometimes even hopelessness – of their lives and that of the Greek and Trojan combatants after ten years of war? When Professor Adriana Freire Nogueira suggested that ‘neither Greeks nor Trojans’ could be integrated into the Imagines IV Congress hosted at the University of the Algarve, what was little more than an idea became a de facto project. José spent July and August of 2014 shooting ‘Cycle’ portraits, some of which were included in the exhibition. In the last few days of August, José and the Clemente Vicente inhabitants learned that works to complete the Maritime Walk between Algés and Cruz Quebrada, at both ends of Dafundo, were to begin. With the collaboration of locals (who expect improvement), three small boats were dragged to the beach by an excavator and what remained was razed to the ground, the debris filling a tall container with the word ‘Rebirth’ painted on it. When José saw the green, conspicuous container in the middle of nowhere, facing the Clemente Vicente building, he couldn’t help but ask himself, ‘Could that be a horse?’ From: http://blog.josebandeira.com/ (accessed 17 March 2017).

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Index Abulafia, David 2 The Great Sea (book, 2011) 2 Abyss 96, 110, 131, 153 Achilles 104 n.4, 259 Acis 74 Aci Reale 37 Aci Trezza 35 Actium 231, 235, 239, 242, 244 battle of 7, 184, 231–233, 235, 237–246, 247 n.2, 7, 8, 14 and 15, 248, 249, 250 in cinema 7, 184, 232–233, 238–244, 248 n.29, 38, 47 and 55, 250 n.59 Addison, Joseph 44–45 Remarks on Several Parts of Italy (book, 1705) 45 Adimari Raffaele 18–20, 29 Sito Riminese (book, 1616) 18–19 Adriatic Sea 4, 11–13, 18–20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30–31, 301 Roman harbours 4, 12, 22, 24–27 Aegean Sea 90, 95, 97, 101, 121, 122, 123, 124, 138, 276, 277, 279 Aeneas 199, 215, 247 n.15 Aeolian islands 40 Aeolus 65 n.1, 125, 131, 260 Aeschylus 117, 132 The suppliants 117, 132 Africa 41, 45, 110, 111, 131, 132, 186, 223 Agamemnon 125 Agrippa, Marcus Vipsanius 233, 235–237, 242, 243, 246, 247 n.17, 249 n.58 Agostini, Niccolò degli 87 n.23 Ahenobarbus, Gnaeus Domitius 235, 247 n.18 Airport (film series, 1970, 1975, 1977, 1980) 192 n.14 Ajax 259 Akrotiri 70, 122 flotilla fresco 122 house of the Admiral 122 miniature frieze 122, 123 West House 122

Akti 124 Alaric 183 Albanese, Flavio 128 Albani, Francesco 87 n.25 Alberti, Leandro 23, 42 Alciati, Andrea 89 n.46 Viri clarissimi D. Andree Alciati Iurisconsultiss. Mediol. ad D. Chonradum Peutingerum Augustanum Iurisconsultum Emblematum liber Augsburg (essay, 1531) 89 n.46 Alcinous, King 104 n.5 Aldor 58, 59 Alegre, Manuel 261 Alexander the Great 86 n.7 Alexander mosaic (Pompeii) 221, 229 n.42 Alexandria 16, 30 n.10, 184, 200, 234, 238, 239, 243, 246 harbour 16, 30 lighthouse 1, 16 Allasseur, Jean-Jules 87 n.24 Alma-Tadema, Lawrence 7, 184, 197–208, 209 n.4, 5 and 6, 210 n.39 and 42, 211 n.61, 212 n.68 and 72 influence from Pompeii 7, 210 n.41 photographic collection 203, 205, 211 n.52 Catullus at Lesbia’s (painting, 1865) 202 A coign of vantage (painting, 1895) 204 The conversion of Paula by St Jerome (painting, 1898) 206 A dedication to Bacchus (painting, 1889) 206 A difference of opinion (painting, 1896) 204 Entrance to a Roman theatre (painting, 1866) 202 An exedra (painting, 1869) 202, 204 A favourite poet (painting, 1889) 206, 211 n.64

306

Index

Gallo-Roman women (painting, 1865) 202 Her eyes are with her thoughts and her thoughts are far away (painting, 1897) 205 An oleander (painting, 1882) 206 Pleading (painting, 1876) 205 Resting (painting, 1876) 204 A sculptor’s model (painting, 1877) 203 A sculpture gallery in Rome at the time of Augustus (painting, 1867) 202 A silent greeting (painting, 1889) 205 Silver favourites (painting, 1903) 204 Unconscious rivals (painting, 1893) 206 The voice of spring (painting, 1910) 204 The way to the temple (painting, 1882) 206 Alós y Sera, Ricardo 220 Altdorfer, Albrecht 77 Alyattes 75 Ambracian gulf see Actium America/New World 41, 56, 63, 171, 221 Amiel, Jon 105 Sommersby (film, 1993) 105 Amphitrite 72–76, 82, 88 n.25 marriage with Poseidon 73, 75 Amsterdam 39 Ancona 26, 27 Arsenale 26 Mole Vanvitelliana 26 Anderson, Paul W.S. 182 Pompeii (film, 2014) 182 Anderson, Poul 214, 225 n.7 Time patrol 214 Delenda Est (short story, 1955) 214 Andreas-Salomé, Lou 159 Andreotti, law 105 n.9 Andromache 135 Angelopoulos, Theo 97 To Vlemma tou Odyssea (film, 1995) 97 Anguier, Michel 88 n.25 Annales, school of 110 Anticlea 101 Antiquarianism/antiquarians 11–12, 16–19, 21, 23–27, 29, 30, 44, 45, 189 Papal role 26, 27 Anzio 184

Apollo 60, 70, 71, 76, 89 n.47, 125, 149, 155, 159, 163 n.20 Delphinios 71 Apollodorus 243, 249 n.48 Appa 48 Apulia 248 n.22 Aquileia 27 Arcadian 44 Archaeology 4, 11, 12, 24, 27–30, 59, 205, 254 Archimedes 186 Arganthonius 219 Aristotle 147, 214 Poetics 147 Politics 214 Armileo, Paolo 13, 16, 18, 25 Armitage, Simon 128, 129 Odyssey (script) 128 Armour 101, 139 n.11 Ariadne 91 n.65, 147, 149–153, 155–157, 159–161, 162 n.18, 163 n.37, 262 Arion 69, 71, 72, 75–85, 87, 88 n.34, 89 n.40, 47 and 48, 90 n.60, 91, 92 n.77 and 82 as a musician 71, 90 n.59, 91 n.70 and 71 as a poet 71, 83, 92 n.79 depiction 76–80, 84, 90 n.53 and 56165, 174, 180, 181, 197, 198, 199, 202, 239, 243 lack of romantic element 76 Arrigoni, Antonio 19–21 Art 5–6, 43, 46, 69, 70, 72, 75–76, 82, 83–85, 88, 95, 111, 117, 122, 127, 133, 138, 151, 157, 163, 166, 173, 176–177, 198, 201–203, 205, 206, 208, 210–211, 228, 232, 242, 267 Aegean 122, 138 n.3 European 43, 69, 72, 75, 76, 88, 201, 206 Roman 191 n.4, 199, 206 Artemision 124 Asia 237 Asterix 185 Asterix Conquers America (film, 1994) 193 n.25 Athamas 70, 73, 87 n.23 Athenians 261 Athens 60, 128, 132, 148, 209 n.4, 262 Athos, mount 54 n.95, 124–125 Atia 245, 246

Index Atlantic, sea 7, 111, 199, 200, 208, 223 routes 111 Atlantis 102 Attica 124 Attila 170, 171 Audi, Pierre 148 Audience 25, 35, 37, 42, 46, 55, 57, 65 n.8, 93–95, 99, 113, 123, 126, 128, 129, 132, 133, 136, 141, 148, 154, 158, 182, 183, 186–188, 190, 218, 232, 241–243, 246, 250 n.59, 253–255, 257, 258, 260–263 Augustus/Octavian Caesar/Octavius 7, 22, 165, 166, 202, 231–241, 243–246, 247 n.11, 12, 18 and 20, 249 n.36 in cinema 231–241, 243–246, 249 n.50 and 51 Philippi campaign 249 n.51, 250 n.59 Ausa, river 19 Auschwitz 119 Babylon 86 n.7, 214 Badoaro, Giacomo 104 n.4 ll ritorno di Ulisse in Patria (opera, 1640) 104 n.4 Baiae 190, 194 n.48, 204 Balkans 97 Baltic, Sea 133 Barbarian 21, 170, 173, 183 Barbate 66 n.19 Baroque period 80 Barrow, Rosemary 209 n.6 Barry, John 170 A Grecian harvest-home (painting, 1790s) 170 Orpheus instructing a savage people in theology and the arts of social life (painting, 1790s) 170 Basque Country 216 Baudelaire, Charles 166–167, 170–171, 173, 175, 177 n.28 Le Cygne (poem) 166, 167 Les fleurs du mal (poems, 1857) 166 Bava, Mario 96 Bayona, Juan Antonio García 192 n.16 The Impossible (film, 2012) 192 n.16 Bellintani, Umberto 106 n.26 Bellu, Giovanni Maria 131

307

Odyssey: La nave fantasma (play, 2004) 131 Bene, Carmelo 106 n.27 Un Amleto di meno (film, 1973) 106 n.27 Berio, Luciano 98 Bernal, Martin 216 Black Athena (book, 1987, 1991 and 2006) 214 Bernds, Edward 95 The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (film, 1962) 95 Bertolini, Francesco 105 n.8 L’Odissea (film, 1911) 94 Bithynia 185 Black, Sea 3, 165, 172, Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente 223 Sónnica, la cortesana (novel, 1901) 2223 Bochum 113 Boeotia 70 Bol, Ferdinand 87 n.25 Bologna 16, 19, 42, 118 Bondì, Claudio 183 De Reditu (film, 2003) 183 Borders 2–3, 39, 41, 43, 64, 104 n.1, 115, 118, 121 Borgiotti, Maria Grazia 184 Giulio Cesare contro i pirati (script, 1962) 184 Borodin, Alexander 98 Boucher, François 82 Bouguereau, William-Adolphe 84, 104 Penelope (painting, 1891) 104 n.4 Brass, Tinto 190, 191, 194 n.44 Caligula (film, 1979) 190, 191 Braudel, Fernand 2, 110 La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen à l’Époque de Philippe II (book, 1949) 2, 110 Brazil 66 n.19 Brescia 98, 106 n.26 Brescia, Alfonso 95 Elena si . . . ma di Troia (film, 1971) 95 Bridge of Tiberius, see Rimini British Empire 6–7, 197–200, 210 n.24 and 31, 211 n.47 as Roman Empire 7, 197–199, 210 n.31, 211 n.47 British Royal Navy 200, 210

308 Britons 199–201, 207, 208 Bronze Age 5, 121, 122, 126 Brossmann, Jakob 112 Lampedusa in inverno (documentary, 2015) 112 Bruegel the Elder, Pieter 206 The fall of Icarus (painting, 1695) 206 Brundisium, pact of 234 Brussels 166, 278 Bull 122 Bulwer-Lytton, Edward 181 The Last Days of Pompeii (novel, 1834) 7, 181, 182 Burnand, Francis Cowley 92 n.82 Burton, Richard 232, 241 Butor, Michel 112 Byron, George Gordon 91 n.67 Byzantines 49 Byzantium 42 Cadadieteatro 135, 143 n.67 Cádiz 59, 66 n.19, 218 Caiano, Mario 95 Ulisse contro Ercole (film, 1962) 95 Calabria 33, 35–37, 39, 41–43, 45, 47–49, 51 n.14, 53 n.92, 54 Calabrian, Sea 183 Calendar Minoan 122–123 Spartan 138 n.10 Caligula 189, 191, 194 n.42 and 45 Nemi ships 189 Callegari, Gian Paolo 187 Pontius Pilate (film, 1962) 187 Calmettes, André 94 Le retour d’Ulysse (film, 1908) Calypso 94, 102, 105 n.11 Camerini, Mario 94, 95 Ulisse (film, 1954) Campallà 39 Campania 35 Campomanes, Pedro Rodríguez conde de 216, 227 n.23 translation of Voyage of Hannon 216 Camus, Albert 110, 189 Caligula (play, 1944) 189 L’homme révolté (essay, 1951) 110 Canidius Crassus, Publius 235, 237, 241 Caños de Meca 66 n.19

Index Cánovas del Castillo, Antonio 229 n.43 Canto la storia dell’astuto Ulisse (theatre production) 128, 141 n.41 Capri 35, 37 Carracci, Annibale 79, 104 n.4 Polifemo e Galatea (painting, 1600) 104 n.4 Cartagena/Cartago Nova/Kart-Hadashat 225 Carter, John M. 244, 246, 249 n.55, 250 n.61 The battle of Actium (book, 1970) 244 Carthage 198, 213, 214, 226 n.11 and 12, 227 n.17, 228 n.28 Carthaginians 179, 184, 186, 213–216, 219, 223–225, 226 n.9, 227 n.22, 228 n.24, 229 n.51, Carthaginians in popular culture 7, 214, 218, 223, 225, 229 Carthaginians and Romans festival (Cartagena) 225, 230 n.53 Cartography 36, 37, 41 Casa Acreditar 255 Casa de Acolhimento Temporário do Loreto Casa do Pai 255 Caserini, Mario 182 Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei (film, 1913) 182 Cavallerino, Antonio 73 Censorship 62–64, 66 n.17 and 28, 190, 194 n.44 Champrosay 170 Charles II 87, 90 n.60 Charon, Rita 254, 264 Charybdis 33, 35, 38–39, 41, 43, 48, 50 n.1, 52 n.55 Chateaubriand, François René de 171–173, 175 Les Martyrs (novel, 1809) 172 Les Natchez (novel, 1826) 171–172 Chaucer, Geoffrey 75 Chios 124, 125, 174 Chorus, Greek 58, 60, 135, 142 n.62, 152–157, 161 Dithyramb 71, 87 n.16, 92 n.79, 147–158, 160, 162 n.6 and 18 Epinician 148 tragedy 58 Christ 149, 181

Index Christian 91 n.69, 110, 181, 182, 206, 218, 223 Crusades 110 Culture 110, 181 Chronotope 34, 46 Cimino, Michael 97 The Deer Hunter (film, 1978) 97 Cinecittà 94 Cinema 7, 56–57, 64, 93–94, 96, 98, 100, 102–103, 104 n.3 and 5, 105 n.24, 106 n.26 and 27, 112, 127–128, 180, 184, 186, 188, 190, 191 n.6, 192 n.16, 209 n.6, 214, 233–234, 236, 238–239, 243–244 American 7, 56, 94, 95, 105, 127, 191 blockbuster 298 epic 94, 96, 180, 183, 185 Greek 97 Hollywood sul Tevere 94 Italian 94, 96, 100 Kolossal 94 Spanish 55, 57, 63, 65 n.2 Cicero 179, 203, 214 De Re Publica 179 Letters to Atticus 203 Cicones 125 Circe 93, 95, 102, 104 n.4, 105 n.11, 116, 129, 149–150, 157, 159–161, 163 n.37, 260, 263 in cinema 93, 95, 102, 104–105 Civilization/acculturation 6, 39–42, 45, 47, 94, 110, 122, 123, 160, 169, 170–172, 183, 191, 207, 214–216, 218, 226, 261 clash of cultures 171 in Baudelaire 170–171, 273 in Chateaubriand 171–172 in Delacroix 6, 169–172 Classe 13, 15–16, 18 Fossa Augusta canal 16 Portus Augustii 16 Portus Candiano 15 Porto Fuori 18 Claudius Rutilius Namatianus 183 Clementini, Cesare 19 Cleopatra 7, 184, 187, 193 n.20 and 21, 194 n.39, 231–246, 247 n.4, 5 and 11, 248 n.25, 29, 31 and 36, 249 n.38 and 54

309

in cinema 7, 184 visit to Rome 187 Cliffs 40, 43, 51 n.14, 153 Clytemnestra 105 n.11 Coen, Ethan 95, 105 n.24 Inside Llewyn Davis (film, 2014) 105 n.24 O Brother, Where Art Thou? (film, 2000) 95 Coen, Joel 95, 105 n.24 Inside Llewyn Davis (film, 2014) 105 n.24 O Brother, Where Art Thou? (film, 2000) 95 Coimbra 8, 253–257 Colbert, Claudette 232, 239, 244 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 106 n.30, 184 Colonialism 43, 52 n.53 and 56 Columbus, Christopher 43 Comus 77, 163 n.37 Congreve, William 73 Constanta see Tomis Constantine (Algeria) 72 Cook, James 43 Coppola, Francis Ford 107 n.37 Apocalypse Now (film, 1979) 107 n.37 Corinth 60, 71, 91 n.72, 92 n.78 temple of Apollo 60, 71 Cornelius, Peter von 84 Cortes de Cádiz 218 Costa, Lorenzo 76–77, 120 n.19, 213 Cousins, Marc 127 The Story of Film: An Odyssey (documentary, 2011) 127 Covens, Johannes 87 n.23 Cox, Fiona 166, 176 n.8 Coypel, Noel Nicolas 87 n.25, 90 n.63 Coysevox, Antoine 88 Cretan civilization 122, 159 Crete 50 n.11, 71, 122, 124–125 Crialese, Emanuele 112 Terraferma (documentary, 2011) 112 Crusoe, Robinson 170 Cunto 129, 131 Cupid 70, 72–73, 76–77, 79–80, 85, 90 n.56 Curino, Laura 130 Custine, Alphonse de 36, 39–40, 42–43, 51 n.22, 52 n.51 Letters 36 Mémoires et voyages (book, 1830) 39

310

Index

Cuticchio, Mimmo 129, 131, 141 n.48 L’approdo di Ulise (oral performance) 131 Cycladic islands 122 Cyclops 35, 37, 74, 129 Cymba see ship 183 Cyprus 200 D’Alembert, Jean Baptiste Le Rond 35, 51 n.16 Dallapiccola, Luigi 160 Ulisse (opera, 1968) 160 D’Amato, Joe 95 Ulyses (film, 1998) 95 Danae 76 Danckerts, Dancker 90 n.57 Danova, Cesare 243 Dante Alighieri 73, 165 Divina commedia 75, 165 Dante, Emma 129–130 Io nessuno e Polifemo: intervista impossibile (play) 129 Odissea, movimento n.1 130 Danube, river 97 Daphne 76 Dardanelles 124 Dassin, Jules 57, 65 n.9 Phaedra (film, 1962) 57 Daumier, Honoré 5, 84, 92 n.83 Davis, Natalie Zemon 96, 105 n.24 The Return of Martin Guerre (novel 1983) 96 Delacroix, Eugène 6, 88, 165, 167–175, 177 n.28 and 30, 221, 229 n.42 classical influence 167 Palace Bourbon ceiling decoration 167, 169–173, 176, 177 n.17 Attila and his barbarian hordes trampling Italy and the arts 170–171 Les Natchez (painting, 1823–24 and 1835) 171–172 Orpheus bringing civilization and the arts of peace to the primitive Greeks 170–172 Ovide chez les Scythes (painting, 1859 and 1862) 89 n.46, 176 n.10 Scène des massacres de Scio (painting, 1824) 174

D’Elia, Corrado 131 Ulisse: il ritorno (play, 2013) 131 De Liguoro, Giuseppe 105 n.8 L’Odissea (film, 1911) 94 Delphi 71 harbour 71 Temple 71 DeMille, Cecil B. 232, 239–241, 243–244, 247 n.4 Cleopatra (film, 1934) 232 The Ten Commandments (film, 1923) 239 Denon 42 Deplechin, Eugène 88 De Retza, Franciscus 89 n.45 De virginitate Mariae (essay, 1470) 89 n.45 De Sanctis, Gaetano 214 Storia dei Romani/on Carthage 214 De Silvestre, Louis 90 n.63 Des Marolles, Michel 90 n.57 De Tavel, Duret 39 Deyries, Bernard 96 Ulysses 31 (TV series) 96 Diderot, Denis 35 Didier, Charles 39–40 Dido 215, 227 n.17 Difesa della Razza (journal) 215 Di Giovanni, Bertoldo 77 Di Matteis, Paolo 88 n.33 Diomedes 125–126 Dionysus 6, 70–71, 86 n.9, 147–155, 157–159, 161, 162 n.15 and 16, 163 n.37 cult 71, 148 Dithyramb, see Chorus, Greek Doctor Who (TV series) 95 Dolphin 4–5, 69–85, 85 n.1, 2 and 3, 86 n.4 and 14, 87 n.17, 88 n.34, 90 n.53, 59 and 60, 92 n.79, 99, 102, 122, 152, 157, 161, 162 n.16, 165 and music 71, 76, 82, 87 n.14, 90 n.59 as decoration 70, 72, 73, 74, 76, 85, 86 n.4, 167, 169, 172 as escort of the dead 70, 86 n.14 depiction 70, 76, 77–79 Dolphin-rider 69, 70, 72, 82, 84, 85 n.1 in coins 70, 71 Donati, Danilo 188

Index Don Pacifico affair 200 Dortmund 113 Douglas, Norman 37, 39 Drake, Francis 43 Draper, Herbert James 104 n.4 Ulysses and the Sirens (painting, 1909) 104 n.4 Drayton, Michael 90 n.60 Dryden, John 90 n.60 Mac Flecknoe (poem) 90 n.60 Dumas, Alexandre Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (novel, 1844) 181 Dürer, Albrecht 77, 89 n.49 Earthquake 39–40, 42, 51 n.14, 52 n.47 East India Company 199, 210 n.24 Edwardian period 197, 208, 212 n.75 Egypt 16, 124–125, 184, 200, 231, 234–235, 237–238, 242 Egyptians 187 El Jabato 223, 230 Enalaos 86 n.4 Encyclopaedia Britannica 35 Encyclopédie 35 England 7, 90 n.60, 170, 218 Enlightenment 76, 90 n.62, 216 Enobarbus/Domitius Enobarbus, see also Ahenobarbus 239–240, 248 n.36 Eratosthenes 123 Eros 149 Essen 113 Estepona 66 n.19 Etna, mount 35, 37–39, 45 Etruria 98 Etruscans 179, 218 Euboea 124–126 Euripides 66 n.15 and 25, 73, 129, 163 n.20 The Bacchae 155, 163 n.20 Cyclops 129 The Suppliants 117 Euryclea 98 Europa 76, 112–113, 115, 120 n.12, 16 and 20, 141 n.40 Europe 3–5, 24, 41–42, 44–45, 48, 50 n.6, 63, 79, 97, 111, 115–118, 132–133, 137, 191, 214, 216 Evans, Arthur John 50 n.11, 122

311

Exile 3, 6, 116, 165–167, 170–173, 175–176, 176 n.3 and 11 Fascist regime 189, 215 Faulds, Andrew 241 Fehmiu, Bekim 96 Fellini, Federico 7, 105 n.9, 188–191, 192 n.8, 193 n.35 and 36 La Dolce Vita (film, 1960) 105 n.9, 189 Satyricon (film, 1969) 7, 188, 191, 192 n.8, 193 n.35 Ferrari, Stefano 77, 106 n.27 Onora il padre (TV film, 1986) 106 n.27 Ferroni, Giorgio 95 La guerra di Troia (film, 1961) 95 L’ira di Achille (film, 1962) 95 Feyder, Jacques 102 L’Atlantide (film, 1921) Fiorelli, Giuseppe 201 Fioretti, Chiara 254 Fischer, Mike 142 n.62 Fish 48, 54 n.94, 189, 199 Fishermen 59–60, 180 Fiumicino 189 Fleming, Victor Gone with the Wind (film, 1939) 115 Florence 35 Fontainebleau 88 n.33 Fortuyn, Willem 37–39 Fossa Augusta canal, see Classe Fould, Benoît 167, 173 Francisci, Pietro 95 Ercole e la Regina di Lidia (film, 1959) 95 Ercole sfida Sansone (film, 1963) 95 Le fatiche di Ercole (film, 1958) 95 Franco, Francisco 4, 218, 222, 228 n.29 Francoism 55, 58, 64, 218, 228 n.29 Fratelli Mancuso 132 Freda, Riccardo 187, 193 n.33 Spartaco (film, 1953) French revolution 171 Frowde, Philip 229 n.47 The Fall of Saguntum (play, 1727) 229 n.47 Fuengirola 66 n.19 Fundação Bissaya Barreto 255

312 Fuqua, Antoine 191 n.6 King Arthur (film, 2004) 191 n.6 Fuzelier, Louis 90 n.61 Gaddafi, Muammar 131 Galatea 73–74, 104 n.4 triumph of Galatea 73 Galba 187 Gallone, Carmine 186 Messalina (film, 1951) 186 Scipione l’Africano (film, 1937) 186 Gambart, Ernest 202 Garat, Joseph Dominique 216 García y Bellido, Antonio 224 Garda, lake 98 Garrido y Agudo, María Soledad 220 The sacrifice of the Saguntine women (painting, 1878) 220 Garrone, Riccardo 187 Gaskill, Charles L. 238 Cleopatra (film, 1912) 238 Gast, Peter see Köselitz, Johann Heinrich Gaul 183, 209 n.4 Gautier, Théophile 173, 177 n.26 Gaza 213 Gazzola, Gianandrea 98 Geraestus 125 Géricault, Théodore 221, 229 n.42 Germany 3, 83, 85, 115–116, 141 n.40, 200 Gérôme, Jean-Léon 184 Giani, Felice 88 Gibbon, Edward 207 Gibraltar 200 Gide, André 110 Girard sieur de Saint-Amant, Marc Antoine 90, n.60 Girault de Prangey, Joseph-Philibert 206 Gissing, George Robert 45 By the Ionian Sea (book, 1901) 45 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 44, 109–110, 119 n.3 and 4 Nausicaa 109 Golding, Hadar Lieutenant 213 Goltzius, Hendrick 87 n.25 González, Cesáreo 63, 66 n.19 and 26 Goscinny, René 193 n.25 Asterix 185, 193 n.25 Goths 49

Index Goya y Lucientes, Francisco José de 219–220, 228 n.35 Annibale vincitore, che rimira la prima volta dalle Alpi l’Italia (painting, 1770) 219 Grand Tour 3–4, 11, 24, 33–34, 46, 50 n.6 Adriatic Sea 11, 24 Italy 33, 46 Granier, Pierre 87 n.24 Grassi, Nicola 87 n.25 Greece 3, 43–45, 54 n.95, 70, 92 n.78, 96, 101, 111, 118, 133, 135, 148, 162 n.1, 231, 236–237, 246 Greek culture 34, 63, 100, 109–110, 115, 223 Greek language 99, 101, 117–118, 129, 136 Greek religion 92 n.79, 147 Greeks 2, 35, 43, 49, 119, 170–172, 179, 218, 226 n.12 Grieco, Sergio 184–186 Giulio Cesare contro i pirati (script, 1962) 184 Grüber, Klaus-Michael 162 n.15 Die Bacchae (play direction, 1974) Guazzoni 186 Guernsey 166 Guerra, Tonino 130 Odiséa. Lettura selvatica (play) 130 Guibal, Barthélemy 91 n.66 Guillemet, Pierre-Désiré 88 Guillermin, John The Towering Inferno (film, 1974) 192 n.14 Guimarães, Fernando 261 Hades 101–102, 131–132 Hadrian 64, 190 Hamar 185–186 Hamas 213 Handbook for Travelling in the Continent (book, 1858) 45 Händel, Georg Friedrich 73 Hannibal 213–215, 219–223, 225 n.4, 5 and 6, 226 n.10 and 11, 227 n.18 Hannibal directive/Hannibal doctrine 213, 225 n.4 Harbour archaeology 12, 24, 27, 29 Hardt, Hermann von 83, 90 n.64

Index Harris, William V. 2 Rethinking the Mediterranean (book, 2005) 2 Hector 135 Hellas 42, 47–50, 91 n.71 Heller, Bruno 249 n.57 Henley, Alice 246 Hephaestus 35, 39 Herculaneum 187, 207, 211 n.44 Hercules/Heracles 22, 37, 95, 219, 258–259 promontory of (Calabria) 37 Herder, Johann Gottfried 91 n.65, 92 n.80 Hermes 161 Hermias 70 Herodotus 75, 77, 82, 87, 88 n.34 and 35, 124, 167 Heroic cycles 258–259 Heston, Charlton 181, 249 n.38 Antony and Cleopatra (film, 1972) 249 n.38 Hiero II 194 n.39 Highcliffe Castle (Dorset) 212 n.73 Hiolle, Ernest 84 Historiography 2, 7, 12, 214–215, 218, 224, 227 n.22, 244, 249 n.57 Roman 7 Spanish 7, 215, 218, 224, 227 n.22 Hoare, Richard 45 Classical Tour through Italy and Sicily (book, 1819) 45 Hoby, Thomas 34, 43 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von 149, 160–161 Ariadne auf Naxos (opera, 1912) 149–150, 160–161 Hollywood 94, 180, 184, 232 Homer 3, 6, 8, 33, 35, 50 n.8, 71, 73, 75–76, 79, 85, 87 n.22, 112, 115, 118, 121, 123–127, 129, 131, 135–136, 140 n.28, 191 n.2, 214, 226 n.8 Homeric world 8, 94, 96–97, 100, 113–114, 125, 222 reception 8 Horace 45, 75, 170, 197, 199, 208, 209 n.19, 211 n.64, 234 Ars Poetica 170 Horden, Peregrine 2, 8 n.5 The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (book, 2000) 2, 8 n.5

313

Hippolytus 61 Hitler, Adolf 119 Hittites 229 n.51 Hugo, François-Victor 166 exile 166 Hugo, Victor 166–167, 171, 175, 176 n.8 exile 166 Les Misérables (novel, 1862) 166 William Shakespeare (essay, 1864) 166 Hyginus 73, 75 Iberian peninsula 215, 227 n.19 Icarus 206 Ichikawa, Kon 104 n.3 Biruma no tate goto (film, 1956) 104 n.3 Identity 4, 6–7, 11–13, 18, 24–25, 29–30, 46, 63, 65, 93–94, 98, 102, 110, 112, 114, 116–117, 139 n.11, 148, 150, 152–153, 155–161, 181, 199, 218–219, 222, 232, 237, 259 European 4, 11–12, 24–25, 29, 63, 93, 112, 114, 116, 155, 159, 259 National 24, 53 n.66, 182, 199, 217–223, 232 Regional 24 Incudine, Mario 132 Industrial Revolution 42 Ingram, Terry 95 Odysseus and the Isle of the Mists (film, 2008) 95 Ino/Leucothea 70–73, 86 n.9, 87 n.23 and 24, 91 n.65, 92 n.77 and 78 as mistress of the sea 73 Ionia 185 Ionian Sea 40, 45–46, 101, 231, 235 Iphigenia 119 Ischia 184 Isgrò, Emilio 131, 141 n.47 Odissea cancellata (monologue, 2004) 131, 141 n.47, 142 n.57 Orestea di Gibellina (play) Polifemo (novel, 1989) 141 n.47 Islands 40–41, 52 n.55, 96, 112, 135, 149–150, 189 Ismarus 125–126 Israel 213, 225 n.4 and 6 Istanbul 114–115, 117 Italy 19, 22, 33, 35, 37–39, 41–47, 53 n.66, 71, 93–94, 96, 105 n.9, 128, 132–133,

314

Index

141 n.40, 142 n.60, 167, 170–171, 174–175, 177 n.35, 193 n.26, 194 n.44, 200–201, 215, 219, 235 Ithaca 5–6, 93, 95–96, 98, 103, 105 n.6, 111, 114, 125–126, 131, 135–137, 140 n.28 and 38, 260 Jarzyna, Gregor 114 Areteia (play, 2010) 114 Jasos 70 Jelinek, Elfriede 117–118 Die Schutzbefohlenen (play, 2013) 117 Jenkyns, Richard 209 n.6 Jersey 142 n.62, 166 Jordaens, Jacob 87 n.25, 104 n.4 Odysseus in the Cave of Polyphemus (painting, 1630) 104 n.4 Jourdan, Pierre 65 n.9 Phèdre (film, 1968) 65 n.9 Joyce, James 104 n.4, 140 n.32 Ulysses (novel, 1922) 104 n.4 Julius Caesar 184–185, 239 Kaballà, Pippo 132 Keir, Andrew 242 Kephalonia 140 n.38 Kern, Matthäus 82 Kircher, Athanasius 39, 51 n.39, 52 n.40 Mundus Subterraneus (book, 1665) 39 Klucevsek, Guy 142 n.62 Knossos 50 n.11, 70, 123 Konchalovsky, Andrei 96 The Odyssey (TV series, 1997) 96 Korainos 86 n.4 Köselitz, Johann Heinrich 150 Kubrick, Stanley 106 n.35, 127, 187 2001: A Space Odyssey (film, 1968) 3, 5, 96, 98, 100, 109, 112–115, 117, 127 Laboratorio Teatro Settimo 98 Labyrinth 113, 115, 120 n.13, 152, 155–157, 159 Lady of the Beasts 155–156, 160 La Fionda Teatro 131 La casa – Odissea di un crack (play) 131 Lafuente, Modesto 213, 218 Lake 98, 148, 150–151, 187, 189, 204 Lampedusa 112, 117, 132 Landau, Martin 241

Landscape 2, 8, 13, 27, 29, 34, 36, 38, 40–43, 49, 53 n.66, 58–59, 77, 109–110, 112–114, 165–167, 170–175, 191 urban 41, 43, 112, 167, 170 Language 94–95, 98–99, 101, 104, 116–118, 126–127, 129, 136, 180, 192 n.18, 215, 254 Lar do Padre Serra 255, 257 La Salle, Achille Étienne de 37 Voyage pittoresque en Sicile (book, 1829) 37 Latin, language 101 Lazio 98 Lear, Edward 40 Le Bargy, Charles 94 Le Retour d’Ulysse (film 1908) 94 Le Brun, Antoine-Louis 90 n.61 Leda 76 Lefkowitz, Mary 214, 226 n.10 Lefler, Doug 191 n.6 The Last Legion (film, 2007) 191 n.6 Le Gray, Gustave 206 Leighton, Frederic 206 Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) 97 Lenormant, François 46 La grande-Grèce, paysages et histoire (book, 1881) 46 Le Roy, Mervyn 105 n.9 Quo Vadis (film, 1951) 105 n.9 Lesbos 71–72, 124–126 Lestrygonians 116 strait to (Sicily) 37 Leucas island 235 Libya 186 Linear B 123 Livia 246 Livy/Titus Livius 186, 192 n.8, 214 Lofoten islands 41, 52 n.55 London 170, 200–202, 210 n.38 Losi, Michele 131–132 Sbarchi_un’Odissea (play) 131, 135 Meeting the Odyssey (project) 132–133, 135, 137, 142, n.66, 143 n.67 and 69 Louvre, palace 87 n.24, 88 Lucian 76, 84, 86 n.8, 13 and 16, 89 n.43 and 49, 90 n.62, 91 n.69, 198 popularity during the Enlightenment 76 Lucretius 199, 207

Index Maenads 149 Maggi, Luigi 186 Magic lantern 193 n.30 Magna Graecia 34, 43, 46, 53 n.66 Magnani, Roberto 141 n.54 Maifredi, Sergio 132, 142 n.65 Odissea: un racconto mediterraneo (play) 132, 135 Málaga 59, 66 n.19, 219 Malea, cape 124–125 Malta 133, 200 Manakis brothers 97 Mangano, Silvana 95 Mangini, Gino 184 Giulio Cesare contro i pirati (film, 1962) 184 Mankiewicz, Joseph L. 184, 232, 241–244, 247 n.5 Cleopatra (film, 1963) 184 Mann, Anthony 191 n.6 The Fall of the Roman Empire (film, 1964) 191 n.6, 207 Mantegna, Andrea 76 Marais, Jean 187 Marco, Tomás 160 El viaje circular (opera, 2002) 160 Mardonius 124 fleet 124 Marecchia, river 19, 22, 29, 31 n.21 Marías, Miguel 62, 65 n.5, 6 and 14, 66 n.24 Marine animals/ fauna/sea animals 34, 37–38, 40, 48, 70, 77, 179–180 Mark Antony 7, 231, 246 Maros, Rudolf 98 Marqués, Domingo 220–221, 229 n.42 Los últimos días de Sagunto (painting, 1869) 220 Marsili, Luigi Ferdinando 21 Marsyas 147–149, 155–157, 159–160, 163 n.20 Martinelli, Marco 131–132, 137, 141 n.54, 142 n.61 Rumore di acque (play, 2010) 131–132, 137, 142 n.61 Masdeu, Juan Francisco 216, 227 n.24 Matho, Jean-Baptiste 82, 90 n.61 Tragédie en musique Arion (opera, 1714) Arion 90 n.61

315

Matvejević, Predrag 110 Mediteranski brevijar (book, 1991) 110 Maybury, John 249 n.57 McBride, Jim 106 n.27 Pronto (TV film, 1997) 106 n.27 McDowall, Roddy 243 McKidd, Kevin 245 Mediterranean culture 5, 7, 34, 41, 63, 100, 104, 109–110, 112, 115–116, 198, 201, 214–215, 218, 223 Mediterranean Sea 1–8, 8 n.5, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38, 40–42, 44, 46, 48, 50, 52, 54, 56, 58, 60, 62–64, 66, 70, 72, 74, 76, 78, 80, 82, 84, 86, 88, 90, 92–94, 96, 98–104, 104 n.1, 106, 109–112, 114–122, 124, 126–128, 130–136, 138, 138 n.3, 140, 142, 147–150, 152, 154, 156, 158, 160, 162, 165–166, 168, 170–172, 174, 176, 179–194, 197–204, 206–208, 210, 212, 214–216, 218, 220, 222–224, 226, 228, 230, 232, 234, 236, 238, 240, 242, 244, 246, 248, 250, 254, 256, 258, 260 as dangerous place 40, 188 as outer space 96 Languages 99 Latin Sea 55, 60 mare nostrum 198, 208, 223 pre-Homeric 100, 103 Meese, Jonathan 148, 151 Melicertes/Palaemon 70–73, 86 n.9, 87 n.24, 92 n.78 and 80 athletic games 71 cult 71, 118, 148 Méliès, Georges L’ile de Calypso: Ulysse et le géant Polyphème (film, 1905) Mello Breyner Andresen, Sophia de 261 Menelaus 125–126 Merchants 180, 217, 223, 227 n.20 Merian, Matthaeus 38 Topographia Italiae 38 Mérida 63 Mermaid 61, 152 Messapii 49 Messina 33, 35–37, 42–43, 52 n.47

316 Metamorfoseo d’Ovidio, figurato & abbreviato in forma d’Epigrammi (poems, 1559) 89 n.46 Métamorphose d’Ovide figurée, La (poems, 1557) 89 n.46 Meyer, Michael 142 n.62 Mezzanotte, Luigi 106 n.27 Michelangelo 43, 175 Michelin guide 47 Midas 258 Middle Ages 3, 75, 79, 88 n.29 and 37, 89 n.40, 110, 180 Middle East 137 Mikuriya, Kyosuke 96 Ulysses 31 (TV series) 96 Milton, John 163 n.37 Comus. A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634 (masque, 1634) 163 n.37 Mimas 125 Miñana, José Manuel 222 Saguntineida (poem) 222 Minoan Age 121–123 mother Goddess idol 144, 159 Minos 122 Minotaur 261 Mississippi, valley 95, 171 Mitchell, Gordon 185 Mithridates 198 Mizoguchi, Kenji 104 n.3 Ugetsu Monogatari (film, 1953) Moers 113 Mohedano, Pedro 216, 228 Mohedano, Rafael 216, 228 Molière 161 Le bourgeois gentilhomme (play, 1870) 161 Moloch 230 Monteverdi, Claudio 98, 104 n.4, 147, 149–150 L’Arianna (opera, 1607–08) 147, 149 Il ritorno di Ulisse in Patria (opera, 1640) 104 n.4 Montorsoli, Giovanni 43 Mortier, Cornelis 87 n.23 Mosino, Franco 48 Moskstraumen 41 Mülheim 113 Muller, Jan 81, 90 n.54

Index Mur Oti, Manuel 4, 55–57, 59–65, 66 n.15, 19 and 26 nickname ‘Mur Oti the Genius’ 56 Destino Negro (novel, 1949) 56 Fedra (film, 1956) 4, 55–59, 61–63, 65 Murray, John 45 Mussolini, Benito 215 Mutina 250 n.59 Myth 6, 8, 26, 33–38, 41, 43, 45–49, 50 n.6 and 7, 51 n.34, 54 n.94, 57, 65 n.1, 70–73, 75–76, 78, 82–85, 86 n.9 and 13, 89 n.47, 91 n.73, 92 n.81, 93, 100, 102, 104, 118, 123–124, 129, 135, 139 n.17, 148–152, 157, 159, 161, 162 n.16, 167, 179, 186, 199, 206, 232, 253, 255–256, 258–259 adaptation of myth 57, 129 Nádas, Pèter 114 Sirenengesang (play, 2010) 114 Naples 35, 44–45, 109, 199, 201, 204, 207, 212 n.73 Naples, bay of 199, 201, 204, 207, 212 n.73 Napoleon Bonaparte 216, 228 n.25 Napoleon III 166, 210 n.31 Napoleonic wars 44, 199 Narcissus 258 Narrative Medicine/Narrative Based Medicine 253–254 Natchez 171–172 Nationalism 186, 228 n.36, 229 n.50 Italian 186 Spanish 228 n.36 Natoire, Charles 87 n.25 Nature 4–5, 18, 20, 29, 37–41, 46, 48, 50, 56–57, 60, 62, 64, 94, 96, 98–101, 103–104, 109, 128, 133, 135–136, 155, 160, 163 n.32, 170, 182–185, 189–190, 198, 203, 207–208, 220, 247 n.20, 248 n.25 Naumachia 187, 193 n.32 Nausicaa 102, 109, 134–135, 143 n.67 Nausicaa. Io sono io 135 Navigation 38, 121–122, 125, 128, 194 n.38 Naxos 149–150, 160–161 Nazi regime 118, 226 n.15 nacht und nebel 118 Neapolitan coast 197 Nemi, lake 189, 194 n.42

Index Neptune 43, 74, 199 Nereid 77 Nereus 71 Nero 190 Nestor 125–126 Niblo, Fred 182 Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (film, 1925) 182 Nicomedes, King 185 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm 6, 147–161, 162 n.3, 5 and 18, 163 n.26, 27, 29, 32 and 35 aesthetics 147 as the Crucified 151, 153 on Dionysian thought 149, 153–155, 157 Turin incident 150–151, 156, 158 Also sprach Zarathustra (novel, 1883–85) 149–150, 153–154, 155, 158–159, 162 n.17 Dionysos-Dithyramben (poems, 1888) 147–149, 155 Die Geburt der Tragödie (essay, 1872/1886) 147, 155 Götzen-Dämmerung, oder, Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophiert (essay, 1888) Ein Wanderer (poem) 148 Der Wanderer und sein Schatten (poem, 1880) 148, 153 Niobe 249 n.58 Nolpe, Pieter 87 n.23 Nonnos 73 Normans 49 Nostalgia 42, 49 Nouveau-riche 201, 207 Nouvelle Phénicie 216 Novalis 83, 91 n.75 Heinrich von Ofterdingen (novel, 1800) 83 Nugent, Thomas 22 Numancia 213, 217, 219, 221–222, 225 n.3 Oberhausen 113 Ocean 3, 166, 179, 191 n.2, 208, 236 Octavia 234, 246, 249 n.58, 250 n.61 Odissea per bambini, viaggio nel teatro per venti bambini di tutte le età (theatre production) 128

317

Odissea viaggio nel teatro (theatre production) 128 Odyssee Europa 112, 120 n.12 and 16, 141 n.40 Odyssée Hostel (hostel, Berlin) 127, 140 n.38 Odysseus/Ulysses 4–6, 33, 35–36, 41, 44, 64, 65 n.1, 70, 86 n.9, 93–103, 104 n.4 and 5, 105, 105 n.6, 7, 8 and 24, 107, 109–110, 112–118, 120 n.17 and 19, 121, 123–132, 135–137, 138 n.2, 140 n.32, 149–150, 157–161, 163 n.32, 258–260 as adventurer 94 as antihero 115 as wanderer 157–158, 161 no one/outis 157 polytropos 136 return to Ithaca 5, 93, 96, 103, 105 n.6, 111, 114, 136–137, 260 Odyssey (Homer) 3, 5, 8, 33, 40, 48, 93–96, 98, 100–104, 104 n.4 and 5, 106 n.35, 109, 111–115, 117–118, 121, 124–137, 140 n.34, 37 and 38, 141 n.43, 51 and 55, 143 n.67, 214, 259–260 in cinema 93–96, 98, 100–103, 104 n.4 and 5, 112, 127–128, 214 in theatre 109, 112–115, 117, 121, 126, 128–130, 132–133, 135 in TV 95–96, 104 n.5, 127 reception 3, 5, 8, 121, 126–128, 132, 135–136, 259 universality 5 Odyssey/American Odyssey (TV series) 94–95, 127 Odyssey (NASA exploration project) 127, 140 n.38 Oedipus 159, 163 n.32 Ogygia 125 Oikós/home 3, 5, 43, 71 n.91, 91 n.72, 93, 95–99, 101–104, 105 n.11, 114–116, 118, 121, 126–127, 129, 131, 136–137, 183, 259–260, 266 Olomouc (Czech Republic) 85 Olympian gods 76, 103 Olympian movement 197, 209 n.5 Olympus 118

318

Index

Opera 6, 73, 82, 90 n.61, 91 n.65, 104 n.4, 119, 129, 147–151, 153–161, 162 n.3, 163, 229 n.50 Opera dei pupi 129 Orestiadi festival 142 n.65 Orient 42, 47, 155 Origem da Comédia (society) 253 Orion 139 Orlando, Angelo 106 n.27 L’anno prossimo vado a letto alle dieci (film, 1995) 106 n.27 Orpheus 76, 155, 163 n.20, 170–172 bringing civilization 170–172 dismemberment by Thracian maidens 163 n.20 Ostia 16, 31, 186, 190 Claudian harbour 186 lighthouse 16 Ottoman Empire 21, 200 Ovadia, Moni 132–133 Ovid 3, 6, 69, 71, 73–77, 87 n.23, 88 n.30, 31, 32, 37 and 38, 89 n.40 and 46, 90 n.58, 165–176, 176 n.3 and 8, 177 n.32 and 35, 199 as damned artist 166 exile 3, 6, 165–167, 170–173, 175–176, 176 n.3 grave 171–172 influence in art 75, 88 n.32 Ex Ponto 165 Fasti 75–76 Heroides 199 Metamorphoses 76, 88 n.29 and 31, 165–166 Tristia 165 Oxford, John of (Bishop of Norwich) 44 Oysters 189 Özdamar, Emine Sevgi 114–117 Pacific Sea 111 routes 111 Padovan, Aldolfo 105 n.8 L’Odissea (film, 1911) 94 Painting 7, 73, 76–77, 79, 85 n.3, 86 n.15, 88 n.37, 90 n.56 and 57, 97, 104 n.4, 165, 167, 171, 173–175, 177 n.22, 24, 26 and 33, 197, 202, 206, 212 n.68, 219–221, 228 n.35, 36 and 38, 229 n.40 and 42

Palais Bourbon 167, 170–173, 176, 177 n.17 library ceiling decoration 167 Salon du roi 167 Palais Luxembourg 167 Palestinians 213 Palinurus 199 Palomera, Carlos Nicolás de 222 Ultimos Dias de Sagunto O Ergasto y Belenna: Novela Historica Original (novel, 1863) 222, 229 n.46 Pan 89 n.47 Pandora 258 Papal State 13, 19–21, 30 properties in the Adriatic coast 13, 21 Paris 84, 88, 90 n.61, 166, 170, 176 n.15, 177 n.16 and 25, 193 n.30 Parolini, Gianfranco 187 79 AD (film, 1962) 187 Paronchi, Alessandro 106 n.26 Pasolini, Pier Paolo 190 Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (film, 1975) 190 Past, Georg Wilhelm 102 Die Herrin von Atlantis (film, 1932) 102 Pastrone, Giovanni 186, 230 Cabiria (film, 1914) 180, 186, 230 Paul, Saint 198 Pax Britannica 200, 210 n.30 Pax Romana 198, 204 Pelasgians 49 Peloponnese 124, 126 Pelorus, cape 35, 37 Pemán, José Ma 218, 223, 228 n.29, 229 n.49 La destrucción de Sagunto: tragedia en verso, en un prólogo y dos partes (poem, 1954) 223 Historia de España contada con sencillez (book, 1938) 218 Penelope 93, 95, 98, 102, 104 n.4, 105 n.11, 114, 130, 135 Pentheus 148–149, 155, 163 n.20 Peplum/sword and sandal/toga film 93, 95, 180, 184, 192 n.17 Perelli, Luigi 106 n.27 La Piovra 4 (TV series, 1986) 106 n.27 Periander 71, 75

Index Perrotta, Mario 130, 141 n.55 Odissea (play) 130 Persia 237 Persians 2, 218 Peruzzi, Baldassare 89 n.47 Pessoa, Fernando 266, n.9 Petersen, Wolfgang 95, 103 Troy (film, 2004) 95, 103 Petronius 188 Satyricon 188 Phaeacians 104 n.5, 118, 124 Phaedra/Fedra 4, 55–63, 65, 65 n.9 and 11, 66 n.15 and 25 suicide 63, 66 n.25 Pharsalus 250 n.59 Philhellenism 33, 41, 47, 52 n.56 Philippi 249 n.51, 250 n.59 Philips, Katherine 90 n.60 Phoenicians 187, 213–219, 221, 223–225, 226 n.8 and 13, 227, 227 n.20, 228–229 in popular culture 214, 218, 223, 225 meaning in Spanish language 215 Phrontis 125 Piavoli, Franco 5, 93–94, 97–98, 100, 103, 106 n.26, 27 and 35 Affetuosa presenza (film, 2004) Al primo soffio di vento (film 2002) 106 n.26 Ambulatorio (documentary, 1954) 97 Domenica sera (documentary, 1962) 97 Emigranti (documentary, 1963) 97 Evasi (documentary, 1964) 97 Frammenti (short film, 2012) 106 n.26 Il pianeta azzurro (film, 1982) 97 Incidente (documentary, 1955) 97 Nostos, il ritorno (film, 1990) 97–98, 100–102, 106 n.27 Stagioni, Le (documentary, 1960) 97 Uccellanda (documentary, 1953) 97 Venice 70: Future Reloaded (film, 2013) 106 n.26 Voci nel tempo (film, 1996) 106 n.26 Picart, Bernard 80 Piccolo Teatro (Milan) 128–129 Pilati, Carlantonio 37, 47 Pirandello, Luigi 129, 141 n.45 U Ciclopu (play, 1914) 129

319

Pirates 21, 26, 71, 90 n.53 and 59, 92 n.82, 152, 157, 182, 184–186, 193 n.25 Tyrrhenian 152 Pirrotta, Vincenzo 129, 132, 141 n.45 Pizan, Christine de 73 Planas, Eusebio 222 Plato 93, 102 Plautia 185 Plautus 199, 203 Pleiades 139 Pliny, the Elder 16, 19, 25, 45, 79, 181, 190, 214, 226 n.9 Plutarch 70, 184, 244 Polly, Jean Armour 140 n.31 Polybius 186 Polyphemus 74, 93, 97, 104 n.4, 105 n.7, 115, 129 Pompeii 7, 74, 181–183, 192 n.15, 194 n.48, 201–202, 207, 210 n.41, 221 Herculaneum Gate 211 n.44 House of Fabius Rufus 207 Pompey the Great 198, 209 n.8 Pontine islands 189 Portugal 253–255 Portus Augustii, see Classe Portus Candiano, see Classe Porto Fuori, see Classe Poseidon 60, 70–73, 75, 80, 82, 86 n.7, 131, 136, 179 Poussin, Nicolas 87 n.25 Poynter, Edward 205, 211 n.63 Project PI – Pequena Infância 253, 255 Propaganda 7, 29, 189, 248 n.35 Augustan 7, 233–234, 241, 243–244, 246, 247 n.20 Propertius 234 Prosa, Lina 131, 142 n.60 Trilogia del naufragio (play, 2007–13) 131 Prou, Jacques 88 Psara 124–125 Punic wars 185 Second Punic War 186, 214, 220, 227 n.18 Puppa, Paolo 130 Penelope (monologue) 130 Purcell, Henry 2, 119 n.7, 215, 227 n.17 Dido and Aeneas (opera, 1689) 227 n.17

320

Index

Purcell, Nicholas 2, 8 n.5 The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (book, 2000) 2, 8 n.5 Purefoy, James 245 Pylos 123 Quad, Matthias von Kinkelbach 87 n.23 Quartucci, Carlo, 106 n.27 L’ultimo spettacolo di Nora Helmer (TV film, 1980) 106 n.27 Querol Subirats, Agustín 219, 221–222 El suicidio de Sagunto (sculpture, 1888) 219 RAI 96 Rampini, Jacopo 132 Ransmayr, Christoph 114, 141 n.40 Odysseus, Verbrecher (play, 2010) 114 Raphael/Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino 88 n.33, 175 Rapper, Irving 187 Pontius Pilate (film, 1962) 187 Ravenna 4, 11–14, 16–19, 22–23, 25–27, 31, 142 n.62 lighthouse 13–14, 16, 18–19, 22–23, 26 Rayol, Joseph 87 n.24 Refugee/migrant 3, 5, 111, 114, 116–119, 128, 132, 135–137, 142 n.62, 270 Reggio 33, 37, 42–43, 48–49, 52 n.47, 54 n.94 Regnault, Jean 87 n.25 Renaissance 4–5, 11, 14–17, 35, 41, 63, 69, 73–74, 76, 85, 88 n.32, 33 and 35, 89 n.40, 110, 155, 169 Renda, Alessandro 132, 142 n.61 and 62 Mare bianco (documentary, 2010) 142 n.61 Republic, Roman 7, 198, 231–232, 234, 244 Return 2–3, 5, 23, 46, 71, 90 n.60, 91 n.72, 93–94, 96–97, 100–104, 104 n.3, 105 n.6, 109–111, 114–115, 118–119, 121, 123, 127, 136–137, 141 n.51, 157–158, 160–161, 165, 173, 175, 183, 185, 259–260 from war 97, 104 n.3, 106 n.25 Home 3, 5, 91 n.72, 93, 96, 102–104, 114, 121, 126–127, 137, 259–260, 262 Revue des deux mondes 170

Rhodes 1, 185 Riace, bronzes 49 Ricci, Tonino 106 n.27 Thor il conquistatore (film, 1983) 106 n.27 Riccio, Andrea 77 Riedesel, Johann H. 35, 37, 44 Reise durch Sizilien und Großgriecheland 35, 37 Rihm, Wolfgang 6, 147–151, 153–161, 162 n.3 Dionysos: Szenen und Dithyramben. Eine Opernphantasie (opera, 2009–10) Rimini 4, 11–12, 18–19, 22, 26–29, 141 n.45 and 48, 188 bridge of Tiberius 19 harbour 12, 18–19, 22, 26–27, 29 Ritsos, Yannis 130 Old Women and the Sea (poem) 130 Rivers 29, 150, 179 Rodolfi, Eleuterio 182 Ultimi giorni di Pompei, Gli (film, 1913) Rojo, Gustavo 185 Roman emperors 64 Roman Empire 4, 6–7, 21, 64, 183, 191, 191 n.6, 197–200, 207–208, 215, 231–232, 238 Roman wall painting 206 Pompeian fourth style 206 Romania 166 Romans 2, 7, 19, 28, 179–189, 191, 193, 198–199, 201, 203, 205, 214, 216, 224–225, 226 n.12, 15 and 16, 228, 230 n.53 engineering skills 181, 188 on the sea 2, 7, 19, 28, 180–184, 186–189, 198–199, 201, 203, 214, 216, 224–225, 228 taming of the sea 179 Romanticism 83, 165, 217 Rome 6–7, 16, 26, 35, 42, 70, 172, 174–176, 177 n.31 and 35, 179, 182–189, 191, 191 n.6, 197–199, 202–203, 206–208, 209 n.21, 210 n.31, 211 n.47 and 61, 212 n.75, 214, 220, 225 n.7, 226 n.10, 227 n.18, 228 n.35, 231–236, 238, 243–246, 247 n.6, 250 n.59 in cinema 7, 184, 188, 191, 191 n.6, 214

Index Rome (TV series, 2005–07) 232, 238, 244–246, 247 n.7, 250 n.59 Romulus 179 Ronconi, Luca 141 n.51 Rosa, Salvator 90 n.56 Rosenberg, Alfred 226 n.15 Rosi, Gianfranco 112 Fuocoammare (documentary, 2016) 112 Rossi, Franco 96, 103 Odissea, L’ (TV series, 1969) 96, 103 Rotunno, Giuseppe 188 Royal Society of Arts 170 Rubbettino (publisher) 47 Rubens, Peter Paul 79, 90 n.55, 104 n.4 Achilles discovered by Ulysses (painting 1617–18) 104 n.4 Rufio 241, 243 Ruhr-District 112 Ruins 12–13, 17–18, 20–23, 25–27, 29–30, 34, 42–43, 60, 63, 66 n.20, 98, 118, 229 n.45 Runge, Philipp Otto 84 Sachs, Hanns 189 Sagristani, Giovanni 87 n.25 Saguntum/Sagunto 7, 213, 215–216, 218, 220, 222, 225 n.2 and 3, 227 n.18, 228 n.37, 229 n.45, 46, 47, 48, 49 and 5 in Spanish parliamentary speeches 228 n.33 Sailors 38, 71, 91 n.67, 99, 101, 121, 123, 125, 127, 129, 131, 133, 135–137, 139, 141, 143, 167, 180, 198, 215–216, 218, 223 Sainz, Francisco 228 n.37 Destrucción de Sagunto (painting) 228 n.37 Salamis 237 Salzburg festival 147–148, 162 n.2 Samper Ortega, Daniel 228 n.31 El mercado de Gadir (book, 1936) 218 Sánchez-Castañer, Francisco 229 n.49 La destrucción de Sagunto: tragedia en verso, en un prólogo y dos partes (poem, 1954) 229 n.49 Sand, George 173

321

Sanskrit, language 101 Saint-Non, Abbé de 35, 37, 42–44, 47 Voyage pittoresque 35, 37, 42 Saint Petersburg 133 Santi, Pietro 28–29 Santorini see Thera Sarajevo 97 Sardinia 98, 133 Sarti, Renato 131 Odyssey: La nave fantasma (play, 2004) 131 Satyr 129, 147, 155, 159–160, 163 n.35 and 36 Scarlattine Teatro 132 Scheria 125 Schimmelpfennig, Roland 114 Der elfte Gesang (play, 2010) 114 Schlegel, Friedrich 83, 91 n.70 Schmitt, Eric-Emmanuel 111 Ulysse from Bagdad (novel, 2008) 111 Schwetzingen 91 n.66 Scilla 35–40, 43, 46–49, 51 n.14 Scott, Ridley 208 n.3 Gladiator (film, 2000) 208 n.3 Scottish highlands 127 Sculpture 55, 73, 84, 92 n.78, 197, 202, 205, 211 n.64, 219, 221–222 Scylla 3, 33, 35–41, 43–45, 47–49, 50 n.1, 51 n.16, 52 n.49, 54 n.94 Scylla and Charybdis, strait 33, 35–41, 43–45, 48–49 Scyllaeum, cape 37 Scythians 167, 173, 176 traditions 167 Sea 1–8, 8 n.5, 11–14, 16, 18–20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 31 n.21, 32, 34, 36, 38–42, 44–46, 48, 50, 52, 54–65, 65 n.1, 66, 70–74, 76, 78, 80, 82–84, 85 n.2, 86, 88, 90, 92, 92 n.78, 93–104, 104 n.1, 106, 109–138, 138 n.3, 140, 141 n.52, 142, 145, 147–154, 156–162, 162 n.7 and 19, 165–168, 170–176, 179–193, 193 n.25, 194–195, 197–204, 206–208, 209 n.7, 10, 16 and 22, 210, 210 n.24, 212–216, 218–220, 222–226, 226 n.9, 228, 230–244, 246, 248, 250, 253–254, 256, 258–260

322

Index

as metaphor for transformation 112, 157, 159, 181 as the Other 7, 61, 257 as the sixth/seventh solitude 150, 153, 159 monsters 34, 38–40, 45–46, 48, 83, 116, 123, 129, 259–260 representation of the sea 7, 13, 16, 20, 72–73, 76, 78, 82, 84, 96, 100, 117, 151, 170–171, 175–176, 184, 190–191, 206, 223, 239 Seafarer 148–149, 158, 161 Sea journey/journey/route 1–8, 8 n.5, 11–14, 16, 18–20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 31 n.21, 32, 34, 36, 38–42, 44–46, 48, 50, 52, 54–65, 65 n.1, 66, 70–74, 76, 78, 80, 82–84, 85 n.2, 86, 88, 90, 92, 92 n.78, 93–104, 104 n.1, 106, 109–138, 138 n.3, 140, 141 n.52, 142, 145, 147–154, 156–162, 162 n.7 and 19, 165–168, 170–176, 179–193, 193 n.25, 194–195, 197–204, 206–208, 209 n.7, 10, 16 and 22, 210, 210 n.24, 212–216, 218–220, 222–226, 226 n.9, 228, 230–244, 246, 248, 250, 253–254, 256, 258–260 as death 3, 6, 39, 65 n.1, 103–104, 110, 112, 114, 149–150, 153, 161, 165, 173, 185, 201, 216, 218, 220, 232, 234 as discovery 3, 38, 41, 44, 98, 127, 150–152, 154, 156–157, 172 Segovia 63 Senate, Roman 234 Seneca 55, 57, 62, 64, 66 n.15, 25 and 28, 204 Phaedra 62, 66 n.15 and 25 Servilia 249 n.58 Settis, Salvatore 59, 66 n.20 Shakespeare, William 75, 115, 131, 166, 184, 244, 248 n.34 and 36, 249 n.38 Antony and Cleopatra (play, 1607) 248 n.36 The Tempest (play, 1610–11) 120 n.18, 131 Shark 189 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 83, 91 n.67

Ship 71, 90 n.53, 91 n.71, 98–99, 101–102, 111, 114, 118–119, 124, 126, 131, 150, 158–159, 181, 184–187, 189–190, 192 n.19, 199, 241, 243, 248 n.27 cymba 183 luxury ships 189 warship 123, 231, 236 Shipwreck 99, 101, 111, 117, 123, 131–132, 142 n.59, 209 n.15 Schulten, Adolf 218, 228 n.28 Sicily 3, 33, 35, 37, 39–40, 45, 51 n.14, 109, 111, 129, 131–133 Sienkiewicz, Henryk 222 Silius Italicus 229 n.45 Punica 229 n.45 Sils Maria, lake 150 Simpson, Thomas 142 n.62 Simpsons, The (TV series) 95 Sinbad 129 Sirens/undines/mermaids 35, 37, 39, 61–62, 66 n.23, 97, 99, 102, 104 n.4, 114, 129, 135, 149–155, 157, 159, 161, 162 n.16, 163 n.32, 260–261 Sirmione 98 Skyli, cape see Scyllaeum, cape Slave trade 181–182, 199, 210 n.24 Social care institutions 8, 255, 260 Soldiers/warriors 93, 97, 99–101, 180, 213 Solomon, Jon 57, 192 n.13, 249 n.40 and 50 Sophocles 66 n.25, 73, 259 Philoctetes 259 Sounion, cape 60 Temple of Poseidon 60 Spain 4, 7, 55–57, 59, 62–65, 65 n.1, 66 n.19, 140 n.35, 215–216, 218–219, 221, 224, 227 n.22, 228, 228 n.33 Reconquista 63 Spanish Civil War 57, 218, 228 n.30 Spanish republic 7, 219, 227 n.23 Spenser, Edmund 75, 81–82, 90 n.58 and 59 The Faerie Queene (poem, 1590) 81–82 Sphinx 159 Spinola, Tommaso 16, 18, 21 Stillman, William J. 206, 212 n.71 Storm/tempest 61, 70, 81, 90 n.60, 99, 101–102, 120 n.18, 125, 131, 207

Index Storti, Renato 131 Odyssey: La nave fantasma (play, 2004) Storytelling/narrating 20, 129, 180, 255, 257, 260 Strabo 19, 25–26, 35, 123 Strauss, Botho 130 Ithaka (poem, 1996) Strauss, Richard 149–150, 160 Ariadne auf Naxos (opera, 1912) 149–150, 160–161 Stromboli 38 Strutt, Arthur John 40 Suetonius 184, 189–190 Suez Canal 200 Suicide 63, 66 n.25, 218–219, 222, 231, 238, 243, 249 n.49 Sulla 14, 185 Syme, Ronald 232 Syracuse 132–133, 186 Syria 131, 137, 184 Swinburne, Henry 35, 37, 43–44 Travels in the Two Sicilies (book, 1783) 35, 37 Swinton, Tilda 127 Tanairon 72 Taranto/Tarent 71–72, 91 n.71 Tarent football club 72 Taras 71–72, 92 n.80 Taraval, Hughes 87 n.25 Tarsus 184 Tartessians 218 Taviani, Paolo 106 n.27 Il prato (film, 1979) 106 n.27 Taviani, Vittorio 106 n.27 Il prato (film, 1979) 106 n.27 Taylor, Elizabeth 232, 241–242 Taymor, Julie Titus (film, 1999) 912 n.8 Teatro del Lemming (Rovigo) 128 Teatro delle Albe 142 n.61 Teatro Pubblico Ligure 132 Telemachus 70, 93, 98, 114, 130, 135 Television 57, 93, 106 n.27, 111, 118, 127, 182, 232, 244 Televisión Española 56 Temple 22, 60, 71, 92 n.78, 175, 177 n.34, 206, 229 n.51, 234 Greek 60, 71, 92 n.78

323

Tenedos 125 Tennyson, Alfred 140 n.32 Terence 203 Teti, Camilo 106 n.27 L’assasino é ancora tra noi (film, 1986) 106 n.27 Theatre/drama/performance 113, 115, 129, 131, 133, 143 n.67, 147–149, 162 n.1, 187, 241, 248 n.33, 257–258 Themistocles 237 Thera 122, 138 n.3 Therapy 8 Theseus 61, 161, 258–259 Thíasos -Theatre Group of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra 257 Thompson, Charles 22, 24 Thracians 170, 172 Thucydides 38 Tiber, river 6, 175–176, 179, 187 Tiberius 19, 187, 190 Tieck, Ludwig 83, 91 n.73 Time Tunnel, The (TV series) 95 Tiresias 160 Titanomachia 179 Titans 149 Tito, Josip Broz 185 Tivoli 175, 177 n.34 temple of Vesta 175, 177 n.34 Tomai, Vincenzo 13–16, 18, 21, 25 Tomis 3, 165–166, 172, 175, 176 n.7 Tonini, Luigi 28–29, 32 n.40 Tourism 34, 44–49, 50 n.4 and 9, 197, 200–201, 225 Trajan 64 Transformation 73, 112, 149–150, 155, 157, 159–161, 163 n.37, 181 Trastevere 187 Travel 3, 33–38, 42, 44–47, 49, 50 n.9, 52 n.56, 93, 111, 113, 115, 127, 129, 136–137, 166, 199, 209 n.7, 259 Travel writing 44 Travelogue 37, 42, 45–48 Trieste 27 Triton 71 Troad 124–126 Trojan horse 173, 260 Troy 3, 6, 8, 50 n.11, 93–95, 97, 99–101, 103, 119, 126, 259

324

Index

Troy War/Trojan War 93, 97, 100 Trump, Donald 132, 235 Tsunami 39–40, 122, 182–183 Turin 97–98, 150–151, 156, 158 Turkey 3, 186 Turner, Joseph Mallord William 6, 104 n.4, 167, 174–176, 177 n.31, 33 and 35, 215, 227 n.17 classical influence 174 Dido building Carthage; or the Rise of the Carthaginian Empire (painting, 1815) 215, 227 n.17 Modern Italy: The Pifferari (painting, 1838) 175, 177 n.35 Ovid banished from Rome (painting, 1838) 174, 177 n.35 Ulysses deriding Polyphemus (painting, 1829) 104 n.4 Tyrian purple 189 Tyrrhenian, sea 40, 152 Uderzo, Albert 193 n.25 Asterix and Obelix. God save Britannia (script, 2012) 193 n.25 University Hospital Centre of Coimbra– Paediatric Unit 255 Vacis, Gabriele 132 Valletta 200 Van Haarlem, Cornelis Cornelisz 79, 81, 90 n.54 Vanzo, Marcella 142 n.61 Summertime (documentary, 2007) 142 n.61 Venice 18, 97, 106 n.26, 141 n.52 Ventris, Michael 123 Venus 55, 60, 89 n.47, 189 Venus de Milo 55, 60 Vera, Alejo 221 Verne, Jules 129 Verrio, Antonio 90 n.57 Versailles 87 n.24 Vestal virgins 234, 247 n.12 temple 234 Vesuvius 39, 182 Victoria, queen 200 Victorian period 7, 197, 201 Victorians 197–198, 200–201, 208, 209 n.6 ‘Victorians in togas’ 209 n.6

Vietnam War 97, 107 n.37 Vigne, Daniel 105 n.23 Le retour de Martin Guerre (film, 1982) 105 n.23 Villa Farnesina 89 n.47 Villa maritima 189, 212 n.73 Villot, François 169 Virgil/Vergil 75–76, 79, 199, 215, 227 n.17, 234, 248 n.22 Aeneid 199, 227 n.17 Volcano 38 Vorenus 245, 249 n.58 Vulpius, Christian August 91 n.65 Wagner, Cosima 150–151 as Ariadne 150–151 Wagner, Richard 92 n.80, 119, 150–151, 161 Das Rheingold (opera, 1869) 149–151 Walker, Polly 245 Wallace, Lew 181, 222 Ben-Hur: a Tale of the Christ (novel, 1880) 181 Walsh, Enda 114 Penelope (play, 2010) 114 Walter, Friedrich 89 n.45 War 40, 57, 64, 90 n.60, 91 n.71, 93, 97–98, 100–101, 104, 104 n.3, 106 n.25, 107 n.37, 111, 118, 126, 180, 184, 186–187, 192 n.19, 213–215, 217–220, 226 n.12, 227 n.18, 228 n.30, 231, 233–235, 237, 239, 241, 243, 246, 249 n.38, 260 areas/zones 111 War of Independence 217–218 Waterhouse, John William 104 n.4 Circe offering the Cup to Ulysses (painting, 1891) 104 n.4 Waters, Roger 121, 137 Waves 2, 22, 36, 40, 45, 55, 61, 63, 72, 83, 102–103, 121, 131, 150, 162 n.19, 198–199, 201 Wetzendorf (Germany) 85 Whale 40, 99, 102 Wilcoxon, Henry 239–240, 248 n.33 Willaerts, Cornelis 87 n.25 Wilson, Robert 128–129, 141 n.43 and 44 Odyssey (play direction) 128 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim 46, 92 n.78

Index Winds 40, 122, 124–125, 131, 137, 207, 236, 260 meltemi 124–125 Wise, Robert 79, 94 Helen of Troy (film, 1955) 94 Woods, Simon 246 Wordsworth, William 83, 91 n.68 World Exhibition Barcelona 1888 222 World War II 97, 226 n.12 Wyler William 97, 182, 242 Ben-Hur (film, 1959) 182, 242 The Best Years of Our Lives (film, 1946) 97

325

Xerxes 124, 237 Yugoslavia 185, 193 n.26 You Are There (TV series) 95 Zapponi, Bernardino 188 Zarathustra 149–150, 153–155, 157–159, 162 n.10 and 17 Zavala y Zamora, Gaspar 222, 229 n.47 La destrucción de Sagunto (play, 1787) 229 n.47 and 49 Zeus 76, 125, 130 Zimmern, Helen 203, 210 n.40