The Door Ajar: False Closure in Greek and Roman Literature and Art 9783825356972, 3825356973

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Contrib
utors
Abbreviations
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Is this the End?
I. Questioning Closure
Francis M. Dunn: Ethical Attachments and the End of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King
Christian Kaesser: False Closure and Deception
Christopher Whitton: Trapdoors: The Falsity of Closure in Pliny’s Epistles
II. Time, Space, and Closure
Markus Asper: Minding the Gap: Aetiology and (False)
Closure
Michèle Lowrie: Foundation and Closure
Victoria Rimell: (En)closure and Rupture: Roman Poetry in the
Arena
III. Looking at Closure
Gloria Ferrari: History and its Margins in the Pictorial Narrative of the Nile Mosaic at
Praeneste
David Petrain: Closing the Ring: Epic Cycles in theTabulae Iliacae and Other Roman Visual Narratives of the Trojan
War
Michael Squire: Picturing Words and Wording Pictures: False Closure in the Pompeian Casa degli
Epigrammi
IV. Reading False Closure
Ivana Petrovic: Never-Ending Stories: A Perspective on Greek
Hymns
Jonathan Wallis: Reading False Closure in(to) Propertian
Elegy
Regina Höschele: Sit pudor et finis: False Closure in Ancient Epigram
Manuel Baumbach: False Closure, TrueLies and a Never Ending Story: Romantic Aesthetics, Lucian’s Verae Historiae and a Fragmentary Ending
Alexander Kirichenko: Mimesis, Metamorphosis, and False Closure in Apuleius’
GoldenAss
V. Beyond Closure
Philip Hardie: Fame– the Last Word?
Epilogue
Works Cited
Index locorum

Citation preview

farouk f. grewing benjamin acosta-hughes alexander kirichenko Editors

(Eds.)

hen is “closure” in fact “false closure”, the deceptive opposite of apparent conclusion or perfection? 2009 marked the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Don Fowler’s seminal essay ”First Thoughts on Closure: Problems and Prospects” (md 22: 75–122), a work that contributed greatly to bringing about a broad reconsideration in Ancient Literary Studies of the concept of closure whether understood as an ontological feature, an aesthetic concept, an appreciative inclination on the part of a work’s audience or a psychological desire of the individual to control the “text” at hand. The present volume seeks to mark both a debt to the ongoing influence of Fowler’s work, and to frame a future discourse on false closure in particular as an artistic phenomenon.

grewing acosta-hughes kirichenko

grewing · acosta-hughes · kirichenko (Eds.) The Door Ajar

The Door Ajar False Closure in Greek and Roman Literature and Art

The Door Ajar

Druckfarben cyan magenta gelb schwarz

Universitätsverlag

isbn 978-3-8253-5697-2

win t e r

Heidelberg

bi bli oth ek d er k lassisch en altertu m sw issen s cha f t en Herausgegeben von

j ürg en paul s chwin dt Neue Folge · 2. Reihe · Band 132

The Door Ajar False Closure in Greek and Roman Literature and Art

Edited by

farouk f. grew i n g benjamin acosta-h u ghes alexander kiri ch en ko

Universitätsverlag

w i n ter Heidelberg

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar.

cover illustration “Blue Door Ajar”, © Kendrick Shackleford

isb n 978-3-8253-5697-2 Dieses Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. © 2o13 Universitätsverlag Winter GmbH Heidelberg Imprimé en Allemagne · Printed in Germany Druck: Memminger MedienCentrum, 87700 Memmingen Gedruckt auf umweltfreundlichem, chlorfrei gebleichtem und alterungsbeständigem Papier Den Verlag erreichen Sie im Internet unter: www.winter-verlag.de

Contents Acknowledgements

ix

List of Contributors

xi

Abbreviations

xv

List of Illustrations

xvii

Introduction Is this the End?

1

I Questioning Closure FRANCIS DUNN Ethical Attachments and the End of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King

17

CHRISTIAN KAESSER False Closure and Deception

29

CHRISTOPHER WHITTON Sliding Doors: The Falsity of Closure in Pliny’s Epistles

43

II Time, Space, and Closure MARKUS ASPER Minding the Gap: Aetiology and (False) Closure

63

MICHÈLE LOWRIE Foundation and Closure

83

vi

Contents

VICTORIA RIMELL (En)closure and Rupture: Roman Poetry in the Arena

103

III Looking at Closure GLORIA FERRARI History and its Margins in the Pictorial Narrative of the Nile Mosaic at Praeneste

129

DAVID PETRAIN Closing the Ring: Epic Cycles in the Tabulae Iliacae and Other Roman Visual Narratives of the Trojan War

143

MICHAEL SQUIRE Picturing Words and Wording Pictures: False Closure in the Pompeian Casa degli Epigrammi

169

IV Performing Closure / Reading False Closure IVANA PETROVIC The Never-Ending Stories: A Perspective on Greek Hymns

203

JONATHAN WALLIS Reading False Closure in(to) Propertian Elegy

229

REGINA HÖSCHELE Sit pudor et finis: False Closure in Ancient Epigram

247

MANUEL BAUMBACH False Closure, True Lies and a Never Ending Story: Romantic Aesthetics, Lucian’s Verae Historiae and a Fragmentary Ending

263

ALEXANDER KIRICHENKO Mimesis, Metamorphosis, and False Closure in Apuleius’ Golden Ass

277

V Beyond Closure PHILIP HARDIE Fame – the Last Word?

309

Contents

vii

Epilogue

325

Works Cited

327

Index locorum

359

And sometimes I get nervous when I see an open door. (The Killers, Human)

Acknowledgements … habent sua fata libelli. When Terentianus Maurus, in the closing section of his De syllabis, wrote this half line (the full verse reads pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli), he surely did not imagine that these words would develop a life of their own as a proverb, totally decontextualized, devoid of their original sense. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, e.g., in his Maximen und Reflexionen (Kunst und Altertum of 1824) could write “Auch Bücher haben ihr Erlebtes, das ihnen nicht entzogen werden kann.” Goethe was quite unaware, as ever so often, of this bon mot. In the context of the present volume, however, I am conscious enough of the original meaning of Terentianus’ words. As the chief editor of the present book, I am, like my co-editors, a first reader. And this first reader-as-editor can only let go, when time is ripe. This collection could have appeared about two years ago, but – alas – got detained, so to speak, for various reasons, both personal and academic. Ego sum qui traducor, to quote Statius, much less so my co-editors. An open door is always a nuisance. This door has been open much too long. It is now closed. Hence, it is time to thank. We thank all institutions and people who contributed financially and intellectually to the making of this volume. I would like to mention particularly the University of Vienna (its Philologisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät, esp. the Dept. of Classics), the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the City of Vienna (MA 7, Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien). Our thanks also extend to the institutions and editors that readily gave permission to reproduce their images. We also thank a variety of individual people. There is not enough room to mention them all. However, I want to single out my colleagues and assistants, Thomas Lemmens and Matthias Jackwerth (Vienna), for their unstinting support. The series editor, Jürgen Paul Schwindt, instantly accepted this collection for publication with the Universitätsverlag Winter; Andreas Barth, the Director of Winter, joined in. My thanks go to both of them for their encouragement – and patience. The Killers had their share in a rather abstract way – witness the motto above. Thanks to them as well. Last but not least: the cover image, The Blue Door Ajar, is a typical in-themiddle-of-nowhere image from the US South, in this case from Alabama. My thanks go to Kendrik Shackleford for allowing me to use his photo. The potential

x

Acknowledgements

of this blue door is quite blurred, but it encapsulates brilliantly the purpose of the present collection. Finally, I need to apologize: not only to the readers who have been waiting for this volume much longer than necessary, but particularly to my co-editors, without whom I would still be lost, and, even more so, to all the contributors, who have patiently waited for the publication of this volume. I can only hope that this delay is for the better rather than worse. Vienna, late July 2013

FG

Contributors Benjamin Acosta-Hughes is Professor and Chair of the Classics Department at the Ohio State University. He is the author of Polyeideia: The Iambi of Callimachus and the Archaic Iambic Tradition (Berkeley, 2002), Arion’s Lyre: Archaic Lyric into Hellenistic Poetry (Princeton, 2010), and, with Susan Stephens, co-author of Callimachus in Context: From Plato to the Augustan Poets (Cambridge, 2012), as well as of a multiple articles, especially on Greek poetry. Markus Asper is Professor of Classics at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Among his publications are Onomata allotria: Zur Genese, Struktur und Funktion poetologischer Metaphern bei Kallimachos (Stuttgart, 1997), a critical edition, with German translation, of Callimachus’ works (Darmstadt, 2004), and Griechische Wissenschaftstexte: Formen, Funktionen, Differenzierungsgeschichten (Stuttgart, 2007). Manuel Baumbach is Professor of Classics at Bochum University, Germany. He is the author of Lukian in Deutschland. Eine forschungs- und rezeptionsgeschichtliche Analyse vom Humanismus bis zur Gegenwart (Munich, 2002), and co-editor of Labored in Papyrus Leaves: Perspectives on an Epigram Collection Attributed to Posidippus (Cambridge, MA, 2004), Quintus Smyrnaeus: Transforming Homer in Second Sophistic Epic (Berlin, 2007), and Archaic and Classical Greek Epigram: Contextualisation and Literarisation (Cambridge, 2010). Francis Dunn is Professor of Classics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His recent book, Present Shock in Late Fifth-Century Greece (Ann Arbor, 2007), is a multidisciplinary study of concepts of time. He is also the author of Tragedy’s End: Closure and Innovation in Euripidean Drama (Oxford, 1996) and co-editor of Classical Closure: Reading the End in Greek and Roman Literature (Princeton, 1997); his current research focuses on the dramaturgy of Sophocles. Gloria Ferrari Pinney is Professor emerita of Classical Archaeology and Art at Harvard University. She is the author of Figures of Speech: Men and Maidens in Ancient Greece (Chicago, 2002) and Alcman and the Cosmos of Sparta (Chicago, 2008).

xii

Contributors

Farouk F. Grewing is Professor of Classics at the University of Vienna. He is the author of a commentary on Martial, Book 6 (Göttingen, 1997), Adriano Castellesi: De sermone Latino et modis Latine loquendi (Trier, 1999), and the editor of Perspektiven der Martial-Interpretation (Stuttgart, 1998). His publications also include various articles on Latin literature, especially poetry. His current research focuses on literary criticism and the Carmina Priapea (edition & commentary). Philip Hardie is a senior research fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. His most recent books include Lucretian Receptions (Cambridge, 2009), and Rumour and Renown: Studies in the History of Fama (Cambridge, 2012). He has published widely on ancient literature and beyond. Regina Höschele is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Toronto. She is the author of two monographs on ancient epigrams: Verrückt nach Frauen: Der Epigrammatiker Rufin (Munich, 2006), and Die blütenlesende Muse: Poetik und Textualität antiker Epigrammsammlungen (Munich, 2010). She is currently preparing a translation of Aristaenetus (together with Peter Bing). Also she is working on a study of Greek epigrammatists in the Roman Empire. Christian Kaesser was, from 2008 to 2011, Assistant Professor of Classics at Stanford University. He has published on Callimachus, Plutarch, and Prudentius. He currently works at Siemens AG, Munich. Alexander Kirichenko is lecturer in Classics at the University of Trier. He is the author of A Comedy of Storytelling: Theatricality and Narrative in Apuleius’ Golden Ass (Heidelberg, 2010), and Lehrreiche Trugbilder: Senecas Tragödien und die Rhetorik des Sehens (Heidelberg, 2013), as well of a variety of articles on Greek and Roman poetry. Michèle Lowrie is Professor of Classics and the College at the University of Chicago, with a focus on Republican and Augustan literature and culture. Her monographs include Horace’s Narrative Odes (Oxford, 1997) and Writing, Performance, and Authority in Augustan Rome (Oxford, 2009). Current projects revolve around the Roman exemplum, safety and security in Roman literature at the transition to empire, and tropes of civil war in Roman literature and its reception. David Petrain is Assistant Professor of Classics at Vanderbilt University. He studies the interactions between Hellenistic and Roman literary traditions and cross-fertilizations between the narrative techniques of visual and textual art. His monograph Homer in Stone: The Tabulae Iliacae in Their Roman Context is forthcoming with Cambridge Unieversity Press.

Contributors

xiii

Ivana Petrovic is senior lecturer at the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University. She is the author of Von den Toren des Hades zu den Hallen des Olymp: Artemiskult bei Theokrit und Kallimachos (Leiden, 2007). She is co-editor, with H. Krasser and D. Pausch, of Triplici invectus triumpho: Der römische Triumph in augusteischer Zeit (Stuttgart, 2008), and has published widely on Greek poetry, religion, and magic. Currently she is working on a commentary of Callimachus’ Hymn to Artemis. Victoria Rimell is Associate Professor of Latin literature and language at La Sapienza, University of Rome. She has published monographs on Petronius (Cambridge, 2002), Ovid (Cambridge, 2006), and Martial (Cambridge, 2008), and is currently completing a book about claustrophilia in Augustan and Imperial literature. Michael Squire is lecturer in Classical Greek Art at King’s College London. His books include Image and Text in Graeco-Roman Antiquity (Cambridge, 2009), The Iliad in a Nutshell: Visualizing Epic on the Tabulae Iliacae (Oxford, 2011), and The Art of the Body: Antiquity and its Legacy (Oxford, 2011). Jonathan Wallis is lecturer in Classics at the University of Tasmania. He is currently preparing a monograph on Propertius (Reading Backwards and Looking Forwards in Propertius, Book 3. Cambridge). Christopher Whitton is lecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Emmanuel College. His particular interest is Latin literature of the Trajanic period; he is currently completing a commentary on Pliny, Epistles 2 for the Cambridge ‘Green and Yellow’ series. Right now, he is a Humboldt Fellow at the Freie Universität, Berlin, and at Rostock University, Germany.

Abbreviations AE AG AL AP APA APh APlan Asper BT CA CIL CLE DNP DNP-E EGF EV FIEC FLP fr. / frg. frs. / frgs. / frr. FRP IG LCI LCL LfgrE LIMC LSJ

L’Année épigraphique Anthologia Graeca (alias Palatina cum Planudea) Anthologia Latina (ed. Bücheler resp. Shackelton Bailey) Anthologia Palatina (cum Planudea): see AG American Philological Association L’Année Philologique Anthologia Planudea (a.k.a. AP, Book 16, containing the material not included in the Codex Palatinus) M. Asper’s Callimachus (Greek-German) Bibliotheca Teubneriana Powell’s Collectanea Alexandrina Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum Carmina Latina Epigraphica Der Neue Pauly Brill’s English version of DNP (see above) Davies’ Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta Enciclopedia Virgiliana Fédération Internationale des Associations d’Études Classiques Courtney’s The Fragmentary Latin Poets fragment fragments Hollis’ Fragments of Roman Poetry c. 60 BC – AD 20 Inscriptiones Graecae Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie Loeb Classical Library Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon, rev. and augm. by H.S. Jones w. the assist. of R. McKenzie

xvi MG

OCT OED OLD PCG Pompeii PMG PPM RAC RE ROL Roscher SH SSH TE TGF TLL / ThlL / ThLL TLS

Abbreviations

Mommsen-Gesellschaft e.V.: Verband der deutschsprachigen Forscherinnen und Forscher auf dem Gebiete des GriechischRömischen Altertums Oxford Classical Texts Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.) Oxford Latin Dictionary Kassel and Austin’s Poetae Comici Graeci (see PPM) – online: http://pompeiiinpictures.com. E.g., Pompeii 5.1.18: regio 5, insula 1, domus 18. Page’s Poetae Melici Graeci Pompei: pitture e mosaici Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum Pauly and Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (a.k.a. PW) Warmington’s Remains of Old Latin. 4 vols Roscher’s Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie Supplementum Hellenisticum Supplementum Supplementi Hellenistici Petrarch’s Trionfo dell’Eternità Snell, Radt, and Kannicht’s Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta Thesaurus Linguae Latinae Times Literary Supplement

List of Illustrations p. 141

Nile Mosaic: Palestrina, Museo Archeologico (after Andreae 2003: 78; Marquand Library of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University Library)

p. 164

Detail from the plan of the House of the Cryptoportico, Pompeii I 6.2 (after PPM 1.193) Sketch of an inner wall from the cryptoportico. (PPM 1.201)

p. 165

Drawing of the cryptoportico’s north wing viewed from its east end. (Brilliant 1984: 62, fig. 2.4) The Odyssey frieze (Vatican Museums, Sala delle Nozze Aldobrandine), reconstruction of its original arrangement by O’Sullivan. (O’Sullivan 2007: fig. 4, reproduced with permission from O’Sullivan; watercolors of the individual panels reproduced with permission from R. Biering [1995])

p. 166

Tabula Iliaca Capitolina (1A). Rome, Museo Capitolino, Sala delle Colombe 83 (photo credit: Scala / Art Resource, NY) Approximation of the original appearance of the Tabula Capitolina, digital manipulation of the preceding image by the author

p. 167

Tabula of New York (2NY), recto. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 24.97.11 (image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY) Tabula of New York (2NY), verso (image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY)

p. 168

Tabula Veronensis I (3C), verso. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Cabinet des Médailles 3318 (photo by the author, reproduced with permission from M. Amandry, director of the Cabinet des Médailles) Detail of the Tabula Capitolina, with a line denoting the central axis added by the author (photo credit: Scala / Art Resource, NY)

xviii p. 194

List of Illustrations

René Magritte, La Trahison des images (Ceci n'est pas une pipe), 1929 Plan of the Casa degli Epigrammi (after Staub Gierow 2005)

p. 195

View from the south entrance of the exedra of the Casa degli Epigrammi, Pompeii 5.1.18

p. 196

Reconstruction of the design of the four walls of the exedra (after Strocka 1995)

p. 197

Drawing of the Pan and Eros panel from the west wall of the Casa degli Epigrammi Drawing of the Dionysus panel from the east wall of the Casa degli Epigrammi

p. 198

Drawing of the dedication-of-nets panel at the west side of the north wall of the Casa degli Epigrammi Drawing of the Homer panel at the centre of the north wall of the Casa degli Epigrammi

p. 199

Drawing of the goat panel at the east side of the north wall of the Casa degli Epigrammi Reconstruction of part of the east wall of the Casa degli Epigrammi

p. 200

‘The Wings of Eros’ (AP 15.24): ‘picture-poem’ attributed to Simmias, probably early 3rd c. BC View of the peristyle from the south door of the exedra of the Casa degli Epigrammi

p. 201

Reconstruction of a part of the east wall of the peristyle of the Casa degli Epigrammi

Wer sich als Quelle ergießt, den erkennt die Erkennung; und sie führt ihn entzückt durch das heiter Geschaffne, das mit Anfang oft schließt und mit Ende beginnt. (Rilke, Sonette an Orpheus II)

Is this the End? The idea for this volume was inspired by Don Fowler’s foundational work on closure in classical literature. In his “First Thoughts of Closure” Fowler, “at the risk of much simplification, [...] distinguish[es] five different sense of ‘closure’ in recent criticism: (1) the concluding section of a literary work; (2) the process by which the reader of a work come to see the end as satisfyingly final; (3) the degree to which an ending is satisfyingly final; (4) the degree to which the questions posed in the work are answered, tensions released, conflicts resolved; (5) the degree to which the work allows new critical readings.”1 The gist of Fowler’s analysis of classical studies’ engagement with these five closely interrelated meanings of closure essentially boils down to the realization that no ending can be hermetically ‘closed’, that any finality reached in interpretation of literature is but subjective and provisional, and that thus, to put it bluntly, any closure is of necessity a false closure.2 This realization becomes

1 2

Fowler 1989: 78. Fowler 1989: 244: “[I]t seems to do more justice to our intuitions to see the tension between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ as one ever present in the literary work. All works leave things undone as well as done; all great works have that paradox at the core of their greatness.” Cf. Fowler 1997: 5: “I now appreciate more clearly that whether we look for closure or aperture or a dialectic between them in a text is a function of our own presuppositions, not of anything ‘objective’ about the text. [...] I continue to feel that it is more satisfactory to play the two tendencies off against each other; but I am more aware now that that has to do with my own ideology, temperament, and mood rather than with the nature of the universe.”

2

Introduction

particularly apparent in Fowler’s concluding remarks in his “Second Thoughts of Closure:”3 “There is no a priori way to distinguish between an accumulating sense of final closure, and a stronger sense of false closure. [...] The more endings we get, the more we feel we are in the general area of The End, but also, the less confidence we feel that the ‘real’ end is necessarily the one for us. In fact, readers notoriously rearrange their own endings: ask a variety of people how a well-known book or film ends, and one is liable to find a variety of answers. In life, too, it can be very hard to get it right, and it can be as embarrassing to go on as to stop too soon. [...] All ending, however ‘good’, has to be, in the end, just stopping. But equally, any stopping can be made good, if the game is played right.” This book picks up where Fowler stopped. The editors asked the participants of the 2009 Vienna conference on False Closure in Greek and Roman Literature and Art not only to consider the inherent dialectic between closure and aperture but also to ponder on (or to question) the heuristic value offered by the emphasis on the relativity of the end. Since we felt that, in this broad form, the question was applicable to a greater variety of cultural artifacts, we decided to expand the focus of Fowler’s original critical enterprise and, in addition to papers dealing with literature, to solicit contributions from scholars working on visual materials. Needless to say, the critical questions behind this volume can sensibly be asked of any cultural artifacts created in any historical period. For the students of Greece and Rome, they become particularly compelling, however. The relevance of the classical civilization to ‘us’ is, on the one hand, so deeply ingrained in our cultural self-understanding as to produce the deceptively comforting sense of familiarity and proximity. On the other hand, classical antiquity, like any other past, or perhaps even more so, is a foreign land – a civilization not only distant in time, but also consisting for the most part of hopelessly fragmented or decontextualized remains of texts and material culture. Our efforts to understand this civilization inevitably involve attempts to reassemble its disiecta membra and, by doing so, to impose on them at least a semblance of critical closure. Nowhere is the provisional nature of the scholarly ‘last word’ more apparent than when dealing with literally fragmented texts or artworks. Literary scholars speculating on the form and content of a play, a poem, or even an entire genre on the basis of a few isolated quotations and papyrus scraps, or archeologists reconstructing a landmark building on the basis of ambiguous literary evidence and a few scattered architectural remains, often create imaginary artifacts in their own 3

Fowler 1997: 21.

3

Introduction

right, whose putative certainties, while capable of exerting considerable influence on subsequent cultural production, tend to be thwarted (or in some fortunate cases, corroborated) by later discoveries. Giacomo Leopardi’s 1822 poem “Sappho’s Last Song” (Ultimo canto di Saffo) offers a good illustration of the cultural significance of the desire to bring closure to what is essentially (or as yet) incomplete: Bello il tuo manto, o divo cielo, e bella sei tu, rorida terra. Ahi di cotesta infinita beltà parte nessuna alla misera Saffo i numi e l’empia sorte non fenno. A’ tuoi superbi regni vile, o natura, e grave ospite addestta, e dispregiata amante, alle vezzose tue forme il core e le pupille invano supplichevole intendo. A me non ride l’aprico margo, e dall’ eterea porta il mattutino albor; me non il canto de’ colorati augelli, e non de’ faggi il murmure saluta… Your cloak is lovely, divine heaven, and you are lovely also, dewy earth. Alas, the gods and pitiless fate saved none of this endless beauty for poor Sappho. In your proud kingdoms I am worthless, Nature, an uninvited guest, an unloved lover. My heart and eyes address your gracious form in hopeless supplication. The sunlit shore or the bright dawn out of heaven’s gate doesn’t smile on me. No brilliant birdsong or beeches’ murmur greets me…

20

25

30

(tr. J. Galassi)

This poem begins (lines 1-2) from images drawn from then extant Sappho citations (the peaceful night, the gentle ray of the declining moon, Sappho’s lonely bed (cf. frr. 168B V., fr. 34) to launch unto her suicidal lament, part of the tradition of a later “life of Sappho” that had her kill herself when rejected by Phaon. The last stanza includes the lines (63-68): Me non asperse del soave licor del doglio avaro Giove, poi che periri gli’inganni e il sogno della mia fanciullezza. Ogni più lieto

4

Introduction giorno di nostra età primo s’invola. Sottentra il morbo, e la vecchiezza, e l’ombra Della gelida morte. Zeus anointed me with none of that sweet liquor from his miser’s jar, once the illusions and the dream of childhood died. The happiest day of life is first to fly. Then sickness follows, and old age, and the shadow of cold death.

(tr. J. Galassi)

Leopardi of course did not know, could not know, of a poem of Sappho’s, preserved on two pieces of papyri, that would be published so many years after his death, and that it would feature Sappho telling of her own old age, and further that it would feature ‘regret’, albeit one tempered, not despairing. 4 ῎Υμμες πεδὰ Μοίσαν ἰ]ο̣κ[ο]λ̣πων κάλα δῶρα, παῖδες, σπουδάσδετε καὶ τὰ]ν̣ φιλάοιδον λιγύραν χελύναν· ἔμοι δ’ ἄπαλον πρίν] π̣οτ’ [ἔ]ο̣ντα χρόα γῆρας ἤδη ἐπέλλαβε, λεῦκαι δ’ ἐγ]ένοντο τρίχες ἐκ μέλαιναν· βάρυς δέ μ’ ὀ [θ]ῦμο̣ς πεπόηται, γόνα δ’ [ο]ὐ φέροισι, τὰ δή ποτα λαίψηρ’ ἔον ὄρχησθ’ ἴσα νερβίοισι.

5

τὰ ⟨μὲν⟩ στεναχίσδω θαμέως· ἀλλὰ τί κεν ποείην; ἀγήραον ἄνθρωπον ἔοντ’ οὐ δύνατον γενέσθαι. Καὶ γὰρ π̣[οτ]τ̣α̣ Τιθωνον ἔφαντο βροδόπαχυν Αὔων ἔρωι φ. . α̣θε̣ ̣ισαν βάμεν’ εἰς ἔσχατα γᾶς φέροισα[ν,

10

ἔοντα [κ]ά̣λ̣ον ̣ καὶ νέον, ἀλλ’ αὖτον ὔμως ἔμαρψε χρόνωι π̣ό̣λ̣ι̣ο̣ν̣ γῆρας, ἔχ̣[ο]ν̣τ’̣ ἀθανάτων ἄκοιτιν.

For the gifts of the Muses with violets in their laps be eager, girls, and for the clear song-loving lyre. Yet my once tender body old age has now overtaken, and my hair has turned white from black.

4

Text of M.L. West, TLS 24 June 2005, translation by B. Acosta Hughes.

Introduction

5

Heavy has my spirit grown; my knees don’t bear me up, which once were nimble as fawns in the dance. Often do I lament these things. But what can I do? Being mortal, it cannot be that I am ageless. They say once rosy-armed Dawn, in love with Tithonus, bore him off to the ends of the earth young and fair then, but in time gray old age came upon him, though he had an immortal wife.

At one level the connections between these poems are but tangential, Leopardi echoes other fragments of the same poet who composed the New Sappho. But at another level, of course, the story is quite different. For the poem on Sappho’s Old Age is, for us, the last published poem, the ‘ultimo canto di Saffo’. And our reading of the Leopardi will never be the same, no matter how we may try to divorce the two texts. We confront a necessary case of ‘misreading’. The reading of the Leopardi text for a Hellenist who knows the Sappho is necessarily altered, even if through “misreading”; the reading of the new Sappho on old age for one familiar with the Leopardi is inevitably colored by an anachronistic mapping of images from the 1822 poem. A textual relationship, however illegitimate, now exists, and there it is. Every five years or so a new text, or a new reading of a known text, opens what had seemed a closed door, shatters our confidence in what we thought we knew, and casts our sense of authority as literary scholars in doubt. For, as Inneke Sluiter has so acutely shown, the commentator needs a fixed text:5 a text in metamorphosis defies authority. Callimachus papyri have recently provided two illustrative cases, one positive (a new text appears), one negative (an old reading is proven incorrect). Each instance has compelled Callimachean scholarship to question itself. PSI inv. 2002 is a small new papyrus fragment of the Victoria Berenices only recently published:6 .

5 6

.

. ].[ Ἰναχ̣[ίδ]ι̣ς̣ κει̣[ δωδ⌊ε⌋κάκις περὶ δίφρον ἐπήγαγεν ὄθματα †δίφρου†

Sluiter in Depew/Obbink 2000. At the time of this writing the most extensive treatment is that of G. Massimilla in his 2010 commentary to Callimachus Aetia 3-4. The editors could not take into consideration A. Harder’s 2012 English commentary.

6

Introduction καὶ τ[. ]. Ἀμυμών̣[η κρή[ν]η̣ καλὰ νάουσα κ̣[ δρωμ̣[ῶ] σιν’ Δαναοῦ δε[ ἱππ̣[στ]ῆρ’ ἅτ̣ε̣ τ̣οῦτο φε̣[ Αἴγυπτ̣ος γενεῆς αἷμ’ α̣[ δ̣ηθάκ[ι] μου τὸν Ν̣εῖ̣ ̣λο[ κ̣εῖνος ὃς ἐν Προίτου ξ[ ὦς ἔνεπεν· τοὶ δ’ἦχον̣[ . . . . . . ]ν̣κ[̣ ἐκ λα̣γό̣ ν ̣ ων [ . . ] . θερ[ ἔσταθε̣ν̣· ἤκ̣ου̣[ αυτα . δ̣[ οὐκ ἐρέω̣ [ α̣ὔριον .[ σ]υ̣ρίζει . [

5

10

15

(Call. Aet. fr. 144 M. 1-18)

to the Inachids (…) twelve times around the chariot he directed his eyes (…) and (…) Amymone (…) lovely flowing spring (…) race (…) of Danaos the driver (acc.) as this (…) Egypt blood of the race (…) often from me the Nile (acc.) (…) that one who on Proeteus’ (…0 so he spoke. And these the sound (…) from the flanks (…) stood (…) I will not tell (…) tomorrow (…) pipes

The new fragment repeats some of the striking features that so impressed the first readership of the opening of the Victoria Berenices when that fragment was first published in 1977:7 the references to the Nile (~ fr. 143.14), to Proteus (~fr. 143.5-6) and to the ‘blood’ of the race (~fr. 143.2: ν̣ύμφα, κα[ϲιγνή]τ̣ων ἱερὸν αἷμα θεῶν, ‘bride, holy blood of the brother-sister gods’). What is really luminous here is line 8: Αἴγυπτ̣ος. The fragment continues the connection of Argos and Egypt so prominent in the beginning of the poem (and in Ptolemaic iconography, which both claimed descent from Heracles and mapped an earlier Egypt/Argos/Macedon narrative to equal the present one), but here we have the name ‘Egypt’, as well as Egyptian motifs, e.g. fr. 143.16, of the Colchian women who ‘know how to lament the dappled bull’ (i.e. Apis bull). A growing awareness of the role of Alexandria’s Egyptian context in Callimachus’ poetry has been frequently met with the counter-argument that Egypt itself is largely absent in his poetry. This argument is proving to be increasingly spectral – and this new papyrus fragment, narrow and incomplete though it be, surely lays that argument to rest, and re-opens a door once emphatically closed by authoritative scholars. The new Simonides fragment has similarly caused a reconsideration of this poet, and of his doxography. While Simonides was long known to have been the 7

Fr. 143 M. (= 383 Pf. + SH 254).

Introduction

7

war memorializer,8 a reputation garnered from e.g. his epitaph on the fallen at Thermopylae,9 the new Plataea elegy put this characterization into a new light. Author of one of the more prominent pan-Hellenic poems, Simonides was to attain for this a role as poetic model that we can only now appreciate with the partial discovery of the original.10 Simonides had already achieved a name for ‘novelty’ in his treatment of the poet’s career (he is particularly associated with poetic composition as a techne that can garner financial emolument), but the new poem shows that he pre-figures the Hellenistic poets in positioning himself, and his own art, in juxtaposition with the past. Simonides’ utterance: αὐτὰρ ἐγώ̣ [ | κικλήισκω] σ’ ἐπικουρον ἐμοί, π̣[‒‒⏑]ε Μοῦσα, ‘but I call upon you my (…) Muse’, a conceit appropriately adapted from the language of hymn, “I will sing of you on another occasion”, here evolves into a contrast of past singer and song (Homer, the Trojan War), and present singer and song (Simonides, the battle of Plataea). Such artistic positioning of ‘coming after’11 is a feature often, and rightly, associated with Hellenistic poetry, but the new Simonides pushes the conceit further back in time. For Simonides, unlike e.g. Euripides or Timotheus, who voice similar statements of artistic novelty, is not late 5th century, i.e. does not compose toward the end of a long history of, particularly, Athenian (but not only) cultural flowering. His newly found elegy on the fallen at Plataea, at the end of the Persian Wars, necessarily moves the ‘border’ on such ‘Hellenistic’ programmatic statements back to a much earlier time, suggesting, once again, that too rigid a demarcation of artistic evolution in poetry may be unwise. And, of course, this is an elegiac poem. Greek elegy is one of the poetic types where a great deal is still unknown, and the discourse on Greek elegy has been informed over time by a variety of scholarly definitions, several among them not without their own programmatic ends (e.g. on the originality of individual features of Roman elegy, of Hellenistic epigram, etc.). The new Simonides fragment suggests a realm for lengthy poetic works that may reflect both past and present, both heroic and contemporary. The new Archilochus fragment, P.Oxy. LXIX 4708, on the pre-Trojan War battle between the Greeks and the Mysian king Telephus, similarly compels us to consider Greek elegy in a new light, and to re-open the discussion on early elegy that had long been something of a closed door. While it always seemed reasonable to assume that there existed earlier elegy with mythological narrative (Callimachus’ Aetia in particular seems to assume this in its juxtaposition in the early lines of Mimnermus, very early elegy, and Philetas, more or less contemporary elegy), the new Telephus fragment confirms this supposition beyond question, and exemplifies an alternate 8 9 10 11

The term is A. Barchiesi’s, 1996: 20. Fr. 531 PMG. Eur. Tr. 511-15, Tim. Pers. 201-220; on the latter see Acosta-Hughes 2010b: 85-86. ‘On coming after’, the title of R. Hunter’s inaugural lecture as Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge, Oct. 17, 2001, and now of his collected papers.

8

Introduction

treatment of heroic material to epic (e.g. Homer) and lyric (e.g. Sappho and Alcaeus). Elegiac couplet is one of the oldest Greek poetic forms known – it appears to come into being and co-exist with hexameter from the beginning (the earliest extant elegiac poetry is 8th cent.). In respect to hexameter, elegy is the “marked” metical type – the composer/reciter of elegy is clearly not composing/reciting hexameter, yet the recurrence of the hexameter every other line is an ongoing reminder of both identity and difference. The recurrent dichotomy of epic and elegy in Roman poetry has a very, very ancient origin, one that we are only beginning to understand. And the publication of the new Archilochus fragment has re-opened the discussion of this origin. Another example of such ‘disruptive’ new pieces, new discoveries that reopen closed scholarly questions, and compel us frequently to acknowledge the potentially ephemeral nature of scholarly pronouncement is the new epigram collection attributed to the 3rd cent. BC poet Posidippus of Pella (P.Mil.Vogl. VIII 309). Prior to the 2001 publication of this collection, Posidippus was something of an epigrammatic sidekick of the far more appreciated poet Asclepiades of Samos.12 There was already confusion in the compilation of early epigram anthologies on the ascription of six epigrams to either Asclepiades or Posidippus, and has always been, until 2001, significantly more Asclepiades than Posidippus.13 It was surely this factor, in part, that led to Posidippus being considered the lesser poet. This situation has now changed. There is considerably more material attributed to Posidippus, and material of several types unknown to the Greek anthology (the oionoskopika, poems on bird augury, being one example). The collection also opens a window on a specifically Macedonian aspect of the Ptolemaic court, again an aspect of which we had less previous knowledge.14 Perhaps most significantly, the early date of the collection (the papyrus dates to the late 3rd cent. BC) necessarily raises questions about collection, and about the poetry book, that had been raised prior to its publication, but never in quite this way. Another conceptual door was opened, and another closed academic topic, in this case the history of epigram’s evolution, proven to have been closed too early. The list of such previously closed-off topics reopened by new discoveries can be continued indefinitely, comprising instances from all branches of classical studies – not only literature, but also philosophy and art history. But in a more general manner, even those artifacts whose endings (or margins) are either preserved intact or can be reliably reconstructed often openly parade the unstable nature of meaning imposed on them by their physical boundaries. The dialectic between boundedness and continuum can indeed be observed in a vast variety of literary and artistic phenomena. A historian continuing his predecessor’s under12 13 14

Newly edited with translation and commentary by Alexander Sens. See further Acosta-Hughes 2004: 48-49, Sens 2011: lix-lx. See Stephens in Gutzwiller 2005.

Introduction

9

taking (such as Xenophon picking up where Thucydides had left off) inevitably renders the earlier work’s ending less final, turning it instead into a new beginning. Roman poets’ creative engagement with their Greek models can also lead to surprising reassessments of endings, such as, for instance, in Catullus’ translation of Sappho in c. 51, transformed into a deeply personal poetic statement by the addition of the final stanza on the deleterious effects of otium.15 Likewise, any text consisting of more or less clearly separable formal units, from Hellenistic and Roman poem collections to such vast multi-story conglomerates as Ovid’s (or, for that matter, Apuleius’) Metamorphoses, cannot help but continually play with the transitional status acquired by an individual poem’s or narrative segment’s ending in the greater scheme of things. A similar fluidity of closure is occasionally enacted in the decoration of Roman houses, where mythological wall paintings can be integrated into the context of a room’s illusionistically painted architecture in such a way as to leave it largely unclear whether the painting’s frame serves as an enclosure for a single reproduced Greek prototype or as a window opening up onto the boundless world outside.16 Another sense in which closure becomes a problematic notion has to do with contextualization. Critical theory’s preoccupation with the social embeddedness of cultural phenomena (from the study of intertextuality inspired by Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea of literary language as a dialogue to Judith Butler’s emphasis on the performativity of discourse) has led to the awareness, increasingly more palpable in classical studies, of the central role played by the interaction between text and cultural context.17 It is obviously a truism that a ‘finished’ artifact is never intended to collect dust in a library or a museum depository, patiently waiting for a scholar to ascribe to it, once and for all, a uniquely valid meaning. On the contrary, artistic and literary products, once completed, are meant to continue to live on in social and cultural settings for which they have been created (or to acquire a new life in a previously unforeseen context). For a Greco-Roman worshipper, a divine statue is not just a piece of dead matter skillfully shaped into a beautiful anthropomorphic figure, but constitutes an indication of the living presence of a god, which becomes increasingly more intensely felt with every successful ritual interaction.18 Or, on a more secular note, lavish assemblages of wall paintings and statues elaborately arranged in Roman private residences are not simply ostentatious repositories of cultural clichés, but rather, by cohering into a plurality of meaning-laden patterns, turn the house’s or the villa’s narrowly circumscribed space into a miniature projection of the entire universe of Greco-Roman high culture, with which the viewer can continuously 15 16 17

18

Wray 2001: 88-109. Clarke 1991: 208-235; Mielsch 2001: 86-90. Bakhtin 1981; Butler 1997. On Bakhtin’s crucial role for the study of intertextuality, see Allen 2011: 14-30. On the notion of performativity in cultural studies, see Bal 2002: 174-212. Cf. Gordon 1979; Tanner 2006; Platt 2011.

10

Introduction

engage without incurring boredom and which Bettina Bergmann quite fittingly described as a ‘memory theater’.19 Similarly, but on a somewhat grander scale, the reason why the Aeneid can never reach ‘final closure’ is not only that its ending leaves too many questions open, but also that, from its very inception, we always already see its dynamic interaction with society and culture (both contemporary and later) in a two-way creative process of semantic renegotiation.20 Literature and art are, in other words, created not to have fixed meanings, but to do work, and the fact that we still continue to engage with classical literature and art is probably the best proof that their work can never be fully completed. One of the consequences of the emphasis on the social embeddedness of cultural artifacts is that the formerly undisputed dichotomy between form and content has become rather blurred, allowing for a notional merger between aesthetical and political issues. Daniel Selden convincingly showed, for instance, that the overall sense of displacement characteristic of the Hellenistic world in general, and of Prolemaic Alexandria in particular, is reflected in the pervasive fragmentation, as well as de- and re-contextualization, of Callimachus’ poetry.21 Likewise, Karl Galinsky pointed out that many of the purely formal features of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, whose destabilizing ironies had previously been regarded as downright ‘anti-Augustan’, can in fact be read as expressions of the typically “Augustan cultural thematics,”22 while Thomas Habinek advanced a similar argument for Roman literature in general, arguing that its aesthetic concerns always serve as reflections of the structure of political authority.23 This shift from aesthetics to politics has far-reaching repercussions for the study of closure. If literature’s metapoetic preoccupation with its own language turns out to encode some of the most fundamental concerns of its social context, if, in other words, self-reflexivity serves not so much to solidify the text’s aesthetic self-containment as to open it up to culture and politics at large, then, rather than a clear-cut semiotic dichotomy, form and content constitute an infinite continuum, which precludes the very possibility of final closure. And last but not least, it is this inherent openness of literature that enables it to serve as a highly effective means of questioning ideological certainties postulated by politics, philosophy, and religion. From eschatological aspirations and apocalyptic visions to the social utopias put into practice by the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century and the announcement of the end of history after the ultimate demise of the Soviet Union in the early nineties, the need to 19 20

21 22 23

Bergmann 1994. On the appropriation, and semantic renegotiation, of the Virgilian model in later epic, see Hardie 1993. On the reception of Virgil from antiquity to the twentieth century, see Thomas 2001. Selden 1998. Galinsky 1999. Habinek 1998.

Introduction

11

ascribe a transparent teleological thrust to a series of contingent events is probably one of the most characteristic features not even so much of Western culture as of human thinking in general.24 And it is perhaps due to the infinite relationship between form and content in literature that its engagement with these kinds of ideologically imposed ‘final closures’ often results, even despite the overtly stated intention to promulgate the official message, in an inadvertent demonstration of the provisional nature, or even the inherent falsity, of any attempt to impose a rigid schema on recalcitrant phenomena.25 Each in their own way, the fifteen papers collected in this book tackle the infinitely elusive nature of closure. Needless to say, the final result by no means aspires to pronouncing the ‘last word’ on the topic. Rather, like the topic itself, the volume is deliberately self-doubting, provisional and open-ended. And there is an additional sense in which the book’s form can be regarded as a reflection of its content: the first section of this volume on false closure (Questioning Closure) has in fact something of a false start, as the three articles put together here question the critical validity of the very enterprise to which the volume as a whole is dedicated. In his contribution, Francis Dunn provocatively doubts the usefulness of “closure” and “false closure” as critical concepts. He argues that the ending of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, although full of potential examples of false closure, is best understood in terms of the characters’ ethical relations with others and with society. He further points to parallels in forensic oratory, which give incidental support to an approach through ethics, not aesthetics. Christian Kaesser’s paper offers a different, albeit equally skeptical, view on the notion of false closure. Prompted by the German translation of false closure as Trugschluss, he examines the relation of deception and closure in the ancient world. In a first, general part he argues that, owing to the generally rhetorical outlook of ancient literary production and criticism, the ancients had little reason to assume that authors would deceive readers about the ends of their poems. In a second section his paper addresses specifically Ovid’s Fasti, a poem whose end could with some justification be said to deceive. He concludes, however, that an examination of the end in the context of the tradition of aetiological poetry and the relation it establishes between beginnings and ends suggest that the case for deception at the Fasti’s end is ambiguous at best. Christopher Whitton’s paper considers the falsity of closure in Pliny’s Epistles. He shows that at the level of letter, book and collection, closure is a 24

25

See Kermode 1967: 67-124. On the on teleological directionality of narrative plot, see Brooks 1984. On the fundamental role of story and projection for human thought in general, see Turner 1996. This is probably why scholars cannot help but discern subversive overtones in the majority of overtly encomiastic texts – from Callimachus’ Hymn to Zeus (Haslam 1993) to Virgil’s Aeneid (Thomas 2001: 25-54) and the Eclogues of Calpurnius Siculus (Newlands 1987), to name just a few.

12

Introduction

provisional and potentially deceptive feature. In particular, he scrutinizes 9.40’s role as the Epistles’ closing letter and suggests rival closures both in book 10 and earlier in book 9. He then poses the question of the possibility to distinguish between closure and false closure as a creation of the writer and as a figment of the reader. So far as this essay offers a conclusion, it is that an attempt to pin down the many endings of Pliny’s life in letters must prove, in the end, to be itself false closure. The three papers of the second section of the volume (Time, Space, and Closure) deal with different ways in which literary texts use closure to highlight inherent contradictions in the concepts of time and space that form the foundation of their contemporary aesthetics and ideology. The topic of this section’s first contribution is aetiology’s ambivalent gestures towards closure. Markus Asper begins by discussing aetiologies that function on a local and, often, ritual level. He shows that they bring about a closure that leads the audience via a constructed past to themselves, which is both the actual intention of the aetiological myth and the means of how these narratives achieve aesthetic pleasure. He then turns to Hellenistic poetry and points out that there, too, aetiology features prominently, but works in different ways: audiences are not the primary focus of the aetiology anymore, for the aetiological narrative does not lead the audience into a local past and back to themselves, but somewhere else (examples discussed include Callimachus, Apollonius, and Eratosthenes). On the basis of these observations, he argues that these “detached” narratives provide false closure and concludes by showing that the aesthetic pleasure provided by “detached” narratives results from the audience’s responses that seek to close that gap. Michèle Lowrie’s contribution deals with the topic of foundation. She explores Roman political thought about foundation and closure in the Augustan period through the critical lenses of formalism and reception. Machiavelli and Arendt, who each use the Roman exemplum to clarify their own thought about refoundation, help her make explicit what the stakes are in different models of repetition in foundation. The paper’s thesis is that Virgil and Livy both use literary form, specifically in the way they fail to achieve closure at the end of books, to convey different ideas about repeated foundation. While Livy is akin to Cato and Cicero in seeing an overall movement forward, Vergil presents a picture of repetition that reenacts similar traumatic events. Whether Augustus can refound the Roman state on a healthier basis remains an open question. Victoria Rimell’s paper begins by asking whether there is something essentially Roman or imperial about the complex closural games we see being elaborated in much of imperial Latin literature. The paper then moves through an analysis of the image of circus/arena as icon of bounded-boundlessness, and discusses how the poetics of closure are staged as ludic spectacle in different texts, from Horace and Virgil to Ovid, Lucan and Martial. The argument builds towards a new reading of the (non-)end of Lucan’s Bellum Civile as a master

Introduction

13

exercise in enclosure-as-rupture which makes spectator-readers complicit in the vision of Caesar’s murder/escape. The papers in the third section of the volume (Looking at Closure) are dedicated to analyzing the function of closure in art. Gloria Ferrari’s contribution, like the papers in Section 2, is concerned with the ways in which a cultural artifact confronts and reflects complexities of the contemporary notions of space and time. The thesis of her paper is that visual representations may in particular cases rely on engagement with the beholder in order to achieve closure, extending the subject beyond the picture surface, whose margins then effectively constitute an instance of false closure. She examines this issue through the analysis of the monumental Nile Mosaic at Praeneste, dated to the last decades of the second century BCE. She argues that, as well as representing an illustrated map of the course of the Nile, the mosaic offers an abridged history of the progress of mankind and the succession of world empires, down to the successors of Alexander. Like the river, this narrative is brought to a close in the area of the Delta, with the depiction of a festival attended by the Ptolemaic rulers. The intended viewer, a member of the Roman elite at the end of the Middle Republic, would be well aware that the cycle of successions had not been brought to an end by the conquests of Alexander but had entered the next stage, that of Roman hegemony, to which he belonged. Rather than within the picture, closure is achieved in the interaction of the viewer and the image. David Petrain also analyzes the characteristically visual ways in which the progression of narrative time can be encoded in a work of art. He focuses on the multiscenic representations of the Troy saga produced in the Roman world during the late Republican and early Imperial periods. He discusses a variety of organizational gambits in the painted frieze from the House of the Cryptoportico in Pompeii, the so-called Odyssey frieze from the Esquiline in Rome, and the carved versions of the Epic Cycle featured on the Tabulae Iliacae, and suggests that these gambits are deployed in order to convince viewers that the stories being recounted are complete and come to a natural, satisfying end. He then examines how the Roman visual narratives inflect the stories of Greek epic through artifices of selection and three-dimensional arrangement, and argues that they generate a specifically visual type of closure, one that does not depend on the single, fixed sequence of reading with a determinate beginning and ending that is characteristic of textual narratives. Michael Squire’s paper serves to bridge the gap between visual art and literature. It explores false closure in terms of the relationship between images and texts, using the exedra of the Casa degli Epigrammi in Pompeii (5.1.18) as its single archaeological case study. The paper demonstrates that, far from closing down interpretation, the addition of each painted epigrammatic text alongside each panel-painting in the room complicated responses in a variety of playful, self-conscious and highly erudite ways: the juxtaposition of media challenged viewer-readers to re-think responses at each and every turn – both to

14

Introduction

individual tableaux of paintings and poems, and to the room’s collected assemblage. Whether dealing with the monumentalized literary epigrams emblazoned on these walls, the collaborating and competing associations between the collected assemblage of images and texts, or the illusionistic Second Style frame, nothing in this exedra proves quite what it seems… Each of the five papers of the fourth section (Performing Closure / Reading False Closure) analyzes closure within a specific literary text (or a collection of texts). The texts under discussion range from Archaic Greek to Imperial Roman literature, and, when taken together, these contributions can be understood as advancing the argument that false closure is probably the only type of closure attainable (and desirable) in literature. Ivana Petrovic investigates the narrative strategies Greek hymns employed in order to create an impression of endlessness. The hymns took a unique place among many different gifts to the gods, since, unlike temples and material objects, they were durable gifts, and could be re-performed and presented as a gift to the gods many times. The ancient etymologies of the word hymnos stress this unique position and derive the word from hypomeno (“remain”). Furthermore, the ancient treatises about the hymns highlighted the need for the texts to mirror the characters of gods, but the main difference between the gods and humans in Greek thought is that the gods are eternal, forever young and happy. In order for their texts to mimic the essential characteristic of the gods, in order to convey an impression of repetitiveness, duration and endlessness, ancient Greek poets regularly employed false closure. To demonstrate how false closure functions in a hymn, the paper discusses the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Hesiod’s Theogony and the use of refrains in choral hymns. Jonathan Wallis focuses on the function of closure in Propertian Elegy. One of the most notorious instances of engagement with erotic closure in ancient literature appears at the end of Propertius Book 3. Here Propertius seems to seal off a three-book amatory collection by dismissing his muse and mistress, Cynthia – who had been the cause of his living sine ratione since even before the outset of Book 1 – and by dedicating himself henceforth to the sensible sanctuary of Mens Bona. This paper examines the range of responses that a reader of love-poetry might bring to this authorial declaration of an ending – as well as to the complications that arise when Propertius subsequently resumes writing elegy in a fourth book. To begin with, Catullus especially has taught us to be alert to the phenomenon of false closure when a lover claims to have freed himself from love – and, as Propertius obsessively envisions his ex-girlfriend beset by the ugliness of old age, the reader might well recognize another poet failing to give up amor even in his very professing to do so. Moreover, the interaction here between the poet’s closural strategy and the experienced reader’s (in)credulity leads to an ending which, paradoxically, continues elegy’s game of teasing its reader by flirting with its own annihilation. From the perspective of hindsight, Ovid’s Amores offer a close re-reading of Propertian elegy in

Introduction

15

particular; here one can see that the Ovidian narrator’s insistence on the preeminence of love in the continuation of writing itself shows up that Propertius’ attempt to resume elegiac composition without love is based ultimately on a false premise – something Propertius himself comes to declare. As such, this paper seeks to demonstrate that, on a number of levels, Propertius Book 3 concludes with an ending that inevitably fails: an ending that, eventually, simply cannot sustain the type of closure that it claims. Regina Hoeschele’s paper deals with false closure in ancient epigram. Since, as she argues, the brevity and conciseness of epigrams does not favor the insertion of fake closural markers, this paper explores the phenomenon of false closure within the context of epigram collections, i.e. on a macrotextual rather than a microtextual level. Beginning with an analysis of the Carmina Priapea, it argues that c. 40, which concludes the book’s first half, might dupe the reader into thinking that the collection as a whole is coming to an end. After offering some general reflections on this sort of readerly deception, the paper turns to Martial’s twelve books of Epigrams, which repeatedly tease the reader by declaring that “enough is enough”, while presenting a virtually inexhaustible supply of further epigrams. Manuel Baumbach’s contribution takes the Romantic aesthetics of fragment as a starting point in order to offer a new reading of the end of Lucian’s True Histories. It argues that Lucian’s narrative is intentionally left unfinished so as to urge the readers not only to complete the story in their own imagination but also to reflect upon the aesthetics of reading. In opposition to an Aristotelian aesthetics of literature, which regards a story as a well-composed artifact with a specific (generic) beginning, middle and end, the True Histories aim at incompleteness on the structural as well as on the fictitious level of narration. This reading of Lucian’s text challenges the widespread assumption that there were no ancient forerunners of fragments in the Romantic sense of the word. Instead, it tries to point out parallels in the history of ideas between the Second Sophistic and Romantic times that might have caused similar literary phenomena including the ‘Romantic’ idea of fragments. Alexander Kirichenko’s paper focuses on the notoriously problematic ending of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. It argues that the main storyline of Apuleius’ narrative simultaneously enacts two different aspects of the Platonic notion of mimesis (representational and behavioral), for not only does the novel’s protagonist constantly listen to mimetic fictions, but he also inadvertently ends up mimicking behaviors displayed by these fictions’ characters. As a result, metamorphosis emerges in the novel as a particular case of the overarching mimesis phenomenon. The paper concludes by suggesting that the novel’s interpretative indeterminacy, which dooms every kind of provisional finality to remaining a false closure, is a result of Apuleius’ reflection on the nature of mimetic art in general and on the mimetic nature of his own narrative in particular.

16

Introduction

The volume concludes with a contribution that analyzes closure not as a feature of a literary text, but as a meaningful conclusion of a literary life. Philip Hardie’s paper examines the closural ambitions of several meanings of the Latin word fama. Fama as ‘fame’ is the goal of a life led in pursuit of achievement and recognition, and immortality in fame is the crown of such a life or of its products, especially in the form of artistic or literary works. Fama as ‘tradition’ or ‘story’ aims to finalize a version of events, for example in historiography. But fama is inherently unstable, since in the wider sense the word refers to the unlimited and mutable circulation of words, within which any halting point can only be provisional. The paper looks at a wide range of texts in which closural fama is not as final as might at first sight appear: Latin epic and historiography, Horatian lyric, Chaucer’s House of Fame, Petrarch’s Africa, and concludes with some Christian texts (Milton, Petrarch, Vida) which explore the possibility of transcending the mutability of fama through appeal to the glory of God or to the certainties of Scripture.

I. Questioning (False) Closure Ethical Attachments and the End of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King — Or: Why I don’t want to write about ‘false closure’ Francis M. Dunn Note: this paper proposes that ‘false closure’ is less useful as a category than we sometimes suppose, but is nevertheless ‘good to think with.’ I therefore reproduce the opening anecdote from my talk in Vienna since it helps to convey my dialectical relation to the subject of this volume. Not long ago I had an interesting exchange with my son about writer’s block. Alex is a talented writer: he has won a city-wide prize in poetry, had screenplays filmed for the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and had a play performed by the professional Rubicon Theater Company. But a seemingly simple school assignment was managing to cause him an inordinate amount of trouble. Eventually his aimless fidgeting got to me, and I asked him what the problem was. “I don’t like the prompt,” he said. “How am I supposed to write an eight-page essay when I have issues with the topic?” We discussed different angles for a while, and then I said, “Well, if you can’t write on the prompt, write an essay about why you can’t write the essay.” “What?” he asked in disbelief, “do you think I can?” “Why not?” I answered. “You can’t write on a topic unless you care about it, and if that’s the only meaningful way you can respond to the prompt, the teacher will have to understand.” A few weeks later I asked Alex how he had done on the paper, and he replied, nonchalantly, that he had received an A. Recently I was invited to take part in a conference on ‘false closure.’ Is there anything I can, or would like to, say about that? I asked myself. My book on closure in Euripides appeared in 1996, and Classical Closure, which I co-edited, in 1997; since then I have moved on to other things. I was ruminating aloud at the dinner table when Alex interjected, “Come on, Dad, take your own advice!” “What do you mean?” I asked. “Don’t you remember?” he said. “You told me that if I didn’t like the prompt, I should write about why I wasn’t going to write the essay.”

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He was right. So I went to the conference, presented a paper, and I have now revised it as a contribution to this collection on the same subject: Why I don’t want to write about false closure. There are three reasons I am reluctant to write on this topic. The first is simple and arguably simplistic: I no longer find the subject exciting. As an academic enterprise, the study of closure was a creature of poststructuralism, one that directly challenged the criteria of aesthetic and organic unity advanced by New Criticism and indirectly questioned the positivist assumptions on which such criteria rested. Those battles are now effectively over. This is not to say that the criteria of unity and completeness have been banished from criticism; on the contrary, complementary notions of one and many, order and disorder, are necessarily implicated in any attempt to address an aesthetic object, only nowadays there is little at stake in defending or challenging these notions. My second reason is more complex and more interesting, namely that the term ‘false closure’ is problematic in itself and hence less useful than is usually recognized. If I were to consider discussing false closure, I would want to know precisely what it is, and in particular how so-called ‘false closure’ differs from ‘true closure.’ D. Fowler suggests that “the existence of externally marked points of closure” makes possible the effect of a false ending, “where the text seems to pause or end but the external division has not yet been reached” (Fowler 1989: 97). To put this another way, a work has a real or objective end in (according to its genre) the last page of a novel, the falling curtain in a theater, or the cinema’s rolling credits, and this presumed true closure is what grounds our perception of false (or premature) closure. But there are at least two problems with this formulation. One is that texts and their supposedly objective endings are not always as secure as we might wish them to be. For instance, if there is debate or uncertainty over where a work ends, how can we speak with any confidence about closure, either real or false? A second, more fundamental problem is that the normative notion of true closure – in which closing signals coincide with the externally marked ending point – is in fact maddeningly subjective, in that critics will often disagree whether the (externally marked) end of a work is indeed characterized by (real or effective) closure. Yet if the real end does not entail real closure, on what can we ground the notion of false closure? My third reason for hesitating to write about false closure is a practical one: critical attention to closure – and this includes false closure – can fail to yield the interpretive benefits it promises. To illustrate this point, I take Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, the ending of which has become the subject of new controversy and of new readings that implicitly invoke false closure. In the course of showing that the notion of false closure does not materially improve our understanding of this play, I also flesh out the first two reasons for my diffidence. Finally, I argue that ethical continuities are more helpful than aesthetic completeness in addressing the so-called closural problems in Oedipus the King.

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I begin with a textual question that immediately leads to terminological difficulties: where does the play end? where is the ‘real ending’ – the external division marked in performance by the emptying stage, and marked for modern readers by the last line of printed text? In the Oxford Classical Text, H. Lloyd-Jones and N. Wilson (1990) place this division at the end of our transmitted text, after line 1530.1 These two scholars, however, are in the minority; many editors bracket as spurious the trochaic exit-lines of the chorus (1524-1530), as did A. Pearson in the prior OCT (1924), and consequently place the real end somewhere after line 1523.2 A number of critics, including D. Hester (1984) and J. March (1987: 148154), would place brackets after 1514, additionally rejecting the preceding trochaic dialogue between Creon and Oedipus.3 Meanwhile D. Kovacs (2009: 53) places the real ending around 1467, rejecting both the recognition scene between Oedipus and his daughters (1468-1485) and Oedipus’ final speech (1486-1514). Finally, R. Dawe (2001) cuts even further, rejecting everything after line 1423, including Creon’s command that Oedipus go inside (1424-1431) and the testy exchange between the two old men that follows (1432-1467).4 Our play therefore has at least five different possible end-points. Those who consider the received text authentic, including O. Taplin (1977) and G. Gellie (1986), try to accommodate the arguments of those who do not by treating the supposed end-points as false endings. On this view, what Dawe considered the real ending of the play, at line 1423, is an instance of deception on the part of the playwright, who induces spectators to feel that the drama is over only to continue it for another hundred lines. From this it follows that before we can talk about false closure in Oedipus the King, we must decide not only where the play really ends, but also the number of times it pretends to end. How might we go about making these decisions? In practice, most critics rely on notions of unity and completeness – precisely those normative and aesthetic criteria that I consider problematic. Dawe, for example, buttresses his arguments about individual words and lines by the larger claim that, with the blinding of Oedipus and his impending exile, “the play is really over” (2001: 3). Once we assume that blindness and exile make the tragedy complete, then further developments become “a series of surprises” (ibid.) and a new entrance – that of Oedipus’ children at 1471 – is an “unexpected appearance” (2001: 6).5 Kovacs, in rejecting the second half of the epilogue, says the play is “all but over” by 1467 (2009: 64), the exchange with Creon and the entrance of the children are both unnecessary and melodramatic (ibid.), and moreover, the effect of the last 1 2

3 4 5

In the Budé edition Dain (1958) likewise accepts the transmitted ending. Likewise Dawe in the first editions of his BT (1975) and Cambridge commentary (1982) and Kamerbeek in his commentary (1974). The choral ‘tag’ 1524-1530 is defended by Arkins (1988). The excision was earlier proposed by Teuffel in 1874. Finglass (2009: 55-59) traces such doubts back to Boivin in 1718. Compare the critique of Dawe’s circular argument in Serra 2003: 325.

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63 lines is one of a “noticeable falling off” (2009: 65). Thus aesthetic assumptions about where a play should end help these critics to determine where to place the external ending. Curiously, those who accept the transmitted text largely subscribe to these aesthetic judgments but turn them to different ends. O. Taplin, for example, in a discussion of ‘false endings,’ takes a position seemingly no different from Dawe’s when he observes that by line 1415 Oedipus the King has “come close to an ending which would tie up the thematic threads of the play” (Taplin 1977: 184); but for Taplin the unexpected sequel is a deliberate effect by which “with the entry of Creon the play turns to another, less powerful conclusion” (ibid.). G. Gellie makes a similar point only at greater length, when he concedes that before Oedipus’ daughters appear “the play is really over” (1986: 38), yet maintains that the closing scenes, “coming so late and with so little warning” (ibid.), build to “a secondary climax” (1986: 39) as Oedipus recovers his strength and composure. One critic’s real ending is thus another critic’s false ending; both positions here, however, rest on an aesthetic judgment that the action is complete and has reached its natural conclusion. The situation as such is paradoxical. Showing that both sides in a scholarly debate subscribe to the same problematic ideas of aesthetic unity is exactly the kind of thing that critics of closure used to delight in. Ironically, I began by professing reluctance to write about false closure … and somehow have ended up doing just that: my attempt to offer an intellectual rationale for not writing on the subject has turned into yet another academic exploration and critique of it. Is there some better way to explain or excuse my doubts? Perhaps a better approach would be to offer an alternative. If I can show that the ending of Oedipus the King, where false endings proliferate, is best understood by a reading that has no need for notions of closure and completeness, then writing an essay on false closure will no longer be necessary. A reading along just these lines is offered by F. Budelmann (2006), who views the end of the play, not in organic terms of unity and completeness, but metadramatically, in terms of action and audience. In general, we may consider the end of a drama as the point at which spectators cease their involvement in the performance and return to their social lives. In some cases, this transitional process is prolonged by means of a coda or epilogue which, according to Budelmann, affords the spectators a more gradual “reawakening” to their everyday world (2006: 45). He adopts H. Schmidt’s (1992) term “mediated ending” to describe this kind of epilogue, and posits that in the final scene of Oedipus the King our continued interest both in plot (where will Oedipus go?) and in character (why does he quarrel with Creon?) helps us to turn from the disastrous outcome of the play back to the more ordinary (yet still complicated) problems we face in our own experience. Citing psychological studies on the stages of grieving, Budelmann (2006: 49-53) argues that Oedipus starts coming to terms

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with what he has done, but neither clearly nor fully enters the final stage of renewal, thus leaving viewers (and critics) unsure to what extent he has recovered his stature by the end of the play. Just how Oedipus’ attempt to cope with the horror of his crimes carries over into the spectators’ ability to manage their return to ordinary life is never made entirely clear. This last point does not detract from Budelmann’s persuasive account of the uncertainties confronting the audience in the epilogue, but it vitiates his attempt to base a new approach on Schmidt’s notion of mediation. On the one hand, if a metadramatic transition from the world within the drama to the world without is not integral to this reading, then it simply shifts the locus of organic unity within the play from action to psyche, from the rise and fall of a great man’s fortunes to a longer trajectory that includes the character coping with loss or disaster. The problem of a play that seems to end, then keeps on going, is replaced by that of a play which stops before reaching the natural end of the hero’s renewal. On the other hand, if the metadramatic transition is central because it allows us to address, not the end of dramatic action, but in some sense “the continuity of human existence” outside the drama (Budelmann 2006: 45, quoting Schmidt), it is not obvious how this works. In studies of closure it is commonplace to contrast the continuity of the characters’ lives with the end of the work that portrays them; as Gerhart Hauptmann puts it, Das wahre Drama ist seiner Natur nach endlos. […] Da wir aber jedem Bühnenwerk eine Auflösung zu geben gezwungen sind, hat jedes aufgeführte Drama etwas grundsätzlich Pedantisches, Konventionelles an sich, was das Leben nicht hat. Das Leben kennt nur den fortdauernden Kampf, oder es hört überhaupt auf, Leben zu sein.6

However, to parse the relation between the end of a performance and the continuing experience of the spectators would be a different and quite tricky project, one that neither Schmidt nor Budelmann seems prepared to take on. It follows that I cannot rely on Budelmann to make my case for me, but have to give my own reading of the epilogue of Oedipus the King in order to show that we can proceed without starting from the notion of false closure. Nevertheless, Budelmann’s essay is helpful insofar as it urges us to consider different varieties of continuity as well as the role of the audience. So let us begin at the end – or rather at the point where Dawe thinks the play should end, somewhere around line 1420, when the blinded Oedipus has come onstage and so lets chorus and spectators see for themselves the extent of his 6

“True drama is by its nature endless. […] But since we are forced to give every play a resolution, every drama performed has something fundamentally pedantic and conventional about it that life does not. Life knows only the continuous struggle – or it stops being life at all.” (Quoted in Chapiro 1932: 162 [my translation].)

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ruin. We might easily agree that by this point the main events of the play are behind us, since the reversal Teiresias once hinted at has been realized. But I argue that the drama is by no means over since the ethical implications have yet to be broached: What effect will events have on how Oedipus relates to others? Is there anyone he can now turn to? In his present condition, who – if anyone – can he associate with? The answer Oedipus gives is highly ambivalent. In his first speech after entering blind, he explains that the curse he laid on Laius’ murderer, which now redounds on himself, makes him anathema to humans and gods alike (13811383): the people are required to cast him out as impious (τὸν ἀσεβῆ) and the gods have shown that he is unclean (τὸν ἐκ θεῶν / φανέντ’ ἄναγνον). How could he look at the people, he asks (1384-1385), after revealing such a bloody stain (τοιάνδ’ […] κηλῖδα […] ἐμήν)? Oedipus concludes by calling on the people of Thebes immediately to hide him away or kill him or cast him into the sea (ἔξω μέ που / καλύψατ’, ἢ φονεύσατ’, ἢ θαλάσσιον / ἐκρίψατ’) where he will never be seen again (1409-1412). Yet in the very next breath, having forcefully rejected all human attachments, he makes a startling about-turn: ‘Come on, turn and touch a wretched man! Believe me, you have nothing to fear: my crimes are such that no other mortal could withstand them’ (ἴτ’, ἀξιώσατ’ ἀνδρὸς ἀθλίου θιγεῖν· / πίθεσθε, μὴ δείσητε· τἀμὰ γὰρ κακὰ / οὐδεὶς οἷός τε πλὴν ἐμοῦ φέρειν βροτῶν, 1413-1415).7 It is in the very act of declaring himself untouchable, then, that Oedipus seems most to require contact with those he addresses. The person most closely involved in the ethical implications of the old man’s ruin, surpassing even the chorus, is Creon, who replaces Oedipus as ruler and now appears onstage. The chorus calls his arrival timely (ἐς δέον πάρεσθ’ ὅδε) since he has the power to carry out the punishments Oedipus has begged for (1416-1418). Creon, however, shows little interest in punishment and will eventually send the blind man indoors while he considers what to do. In the meantime, the two men struggle to find a new relationship in dramatically altered circumstances. Oedipus, for once, is at a loss for words (1419-1421) because his past mistreatment of Creon leaves him no good way to establish trust (τίς μοι φανεῖται πίστις ἔνδικος;). Creon announces that Oedipus must go inside and out of sight (1424-1431), but prefaces the command with a disclaimer that he does not mean to mock Oedipus’ misfortune or complain of his own evil treatment (1422-1423). He thus affirms the reversal of their roles and demonstrates the very different, more prudent, use he will make of the power which Oedipus once held. Oedipus now asks for exile rather than seclusion, using his abject status to rhetorical effect: ‘since you came here and snatched my hope from me – you most noble of men, me most wretched – hear my plea’ (ἐπείπερ ἐλπίδος μ’ ἀπέσπασας, / ἄριστος ἐλθὼν πρὸς κάκιστον ἄνδρ’ ἐμέ, / πιθοῦ τί μοι, 1432-1434). Creon’s refusal is conciliatory, saying he might have 7

The Greek text is that of Lloyd-Jones and Wilson (1990); translations are my own.

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agreed were it not necessary to consult the oracle (1438-1439), to which Oedipus replies, with bold overstatement, that the earlier oracle demanded his death as an impious parricide (πᾶσ’ ἐδηλώθη φάτις, / τὸν πατροφόντην, τὸν ἀσεβῆ μ’ ἀπολλύναι, 1440-1441). When Creon reiterates his cautious refusal (14421443), Oedipus plays the misery card again: ‘will you inquire about a man so wretched?’ (οὕτως ἄρ’ ἀνδρὸς ἀθλίου πεύσεσθ’ ὕπερ; 1444), forcing Creon to assert his authority with withering sarcasm, ‘yes, and maybe this time you will believe the god!’ (καὶ γὰρ σὺ νῦν γ’ ἂν τῷ θεῷ πίστιν φέροις, 1445). This cagey exchange between the two men is miles away from their harsh accusations earlier in the play, all because they are speaking from altered positions of power. At least as important as Creon for the old man’s ethical standing are the members of Oedipus’ family. With his parents dead and his sons famously indifferent, Oedipus has only his daughters to turn to in trying somehow to come to terms with his incestuous marriage. Yet in the very act of re-establishing emotional and physical contact with his children, Oedipus underscores the perversity of doing so: ὦ τέκνα, ποῦ ποτ’ ἐστέ; δεῦρ’ ἴτ’, ἔλθετε ὡς τὰς ἀδελφὰς τάσδε τὰς ἐμὰς χέρας, αἳ τοῦ φυτουργοῦ πατρὸς ὑμὶν ὧδ’ ὁρᾶν τὰ πρόσθε λαμπρὰ προὐξένησαν ὄμματα· ὃς ὑμίν, ὦ τέκν’, οὔθ’ ὁρῶν οὔθ’ ἱστορῶν πατὴρ ἐφάνθην ἔνθεν αὐτὸς ἠρόθην.

(Soph. Oed. 1480-1485)

My children, where are you? Come here, come to your siblings – these my hands, which enabled your caring father’s once-bright eyes to see as they do now. My children, I am now revealed – sightless, witless – as one who fathered you from the very place where I was sired.

He proceeds to lament the difficulties they will face, unwelcome at any social gathering (1489-1491) and destined to die without children or husbands (15001502), yet immediately after painting this gloomy picture of their future as outcasts, Oedipus calls upon Creon to be their surrogate father (1503-1504), to look after them (1505-1506) and to pity them (1508), finally calling on the regent to make a physical gesture to signal his agreement (ξύννευσον, ὦ γενναῖε, σῇ ψαύσας χερί, 1510). Oedipus thus projects onto his daughters the same ambivalence he feels himself: they are social outcasts with no family to look after them, even as he insists that Creon is their surrogate father and must care for them. Finally he asks his children to pray that he live wherever chance allows, and that their lives turn out better than his (1512-1514), thus affirming the bond between them while accepting a position beneath theirs.

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Creon now ushers the actors indoors and off stage (1515), but Oedipus is not quite ready to go. He tries to impose conditions upon Creon’s command (1517), repeating the plea that he be sent away in exile (γῆς μ’ ὅπως πέμψεις ἄποικον, 1518), to which Creon answers, yet again, that the oracle must decide (τοῦ θεοῦ μ’ αἰτεῖς δόσιν, ibid.). The repartee speeds up in these half-line tetrameters but it does not move forward, as Oedipus again invokes his wretchedness and Creon again responds with sarcasm (1519). Indeed Oedipus is starting to sound petulant: ‘[you say the gods must decide,] but the gods hate me above all’ (ἀλλὰ θεοῖς γ’ ἔχθιστος ἥκω, 1519) and Creon’s half-mocking tone suggests he is losing patience, ‘well in that case maybe you will get [what you want]’ (τοιγαροῦν τεύξῃ τάχα, ibid.). Oedipus tries to salvage some control by demanding, ‘Do you mean it?’ (φὴς τάδ’ οὖν; 1520), but Creon needs only to reaffirm his stand, not promise exile, as he does now with ironic ambiguity, ‘I don’t usually talk nonsense about things I don’t know’ (ἃ μὴ φρονῶ γὰρ οὐ φιλῶ λέγειν μάτην, ibid.). At last Oedipus, after agreeing to go inside (1521), balks at letting go of the children (1522) and has to be overruled by Creon in the closing lines of the scene, ‘Do not try to rule in everything; what you did rule did not remain in your life’ (πάντα μὴ βούλου κρατεῖν· / καὶ γὰρ ἁκράτησας οὔ σοι τῷ βίῳ ξυνέσπετο, 1522-1523). The inconsequential bickering does not advance the plot, and although it may remind spectators of the complexities of ordinary life, as Budelmann proposes, it does not do much to help them cope with the traumatic outcome. Oedipus tries – and fails – to salvage some self-esteem by arguing with Creon, and while clinging to his daughters and sparring with his brother-in-law insists he is beyond human or divine concern. That Oedipus must yield in the end is, as C. McLeod has noted, “realistic, down-to-earth, and painful” (reported in Taplin 1978: 46); even more important, however, is what we might call the lower ethical register of the exchange, in which Oedipus tries to assert himself against Creon from a new and completely altered position. Each exchange – with the chorus, with his children, and the two with Creon – is incomplete in the sense that we are not left with a firm impression of how Oedipus will conduct himself from now on with members of his city and his family, but this does not mean that these exchanges generate formal or narrative incompleteness. His words to the chorus do not leave the spectators pondering whether in a given future encounter the blind man will shun or crave human contact, but instead lets them understand the ambivalence he will bring to such encounters. The two exchanges with Creon do not leave us unsure whether the former king or the new ruler will ultimately have his way, but signal to us the very different terrain in which their disagreements will be played out. His interaction with his daughters does not make us wonder how or when they might meet again, but allows us to appreciate more keenly their intertwined wretchedness. The final scene is therefore not primarily concerned with closure nor with that species of anti-closure – the inconclusive conclusion – which P. Burian finds in the play, where he says it “produces tension between the

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narrative trajectory and the divergent possibilities opening out beyond it” (2009: 116); rather it alerts us to the ethical implications of the protagonist’s present condition. I admit that I have been discussing the final scene of Sophocles’ play, but still maintain that my reading does not presume the concepts of closure and false closure. To draw this distinction more clearly, I now summon as witness a practice in the Athenian law-courts. It was not uncommon for a defendant, at the end of his speech, to call friends and relatives, especially his children, up to the speaker’s platform to elicit the jurors’ sympathy (thus Hyperides 4.41). In Plato’s Apology, however, Socrates refuses to follow this custom. Toward the end of his defense-speech he justifies this decision by saying: οὐδ’ ἐγὼ ‘ἀπὸ δρυὸς οὐδ’ ἀπὸ πέτρης’ πέφυκα ἀλλ’ ἐξ ἀνθρώπων, ὥστε καὶ οἰκεῖοί μοί εἰσι καὶ ὑεῖς γε, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, τρεῖς, εἷς μὲν μειράκιον ἤδη, δύο δὲ παιδία· ἀλλ’ ὅμως οὐδένα αὐτῶν δεῦρο ἀναβιβασάμενος δεήσομαι ὑμῶν ἀποψηφίσασθαι. (Plat. Ap. 34d5-98) I am not born ‘from oak or stone,’ but from humans, and thus I do have relatives and also, men of the jury, three sons – one adolescent and two young children – but all the same I shall not make them stand here and then ask you to acquit me.

Plato, as he often did, thus portrays Socrates disdaining popular and emotional strategies while at the same time a clever praeteritio allows him to arouse even greater pity by reminding his audience that two of his three sons are still young children.9 Modern scholars tend to consider this Athenian practice an “irrelevant appeal to emotion” which shows how much ancient courts differ from modern ones, the latter being concerned “solely with questions of fact” (Carey and Reid 1985: 10 and 1). Yet both oppositions – between ancient and modern institutions, and between emotional and factual arguments – can be misleading, as D. Konstan points out, adding that the appeal to pity in Athenian courts was designed “to make vivid to the jury the consequences of condemning an innocent person” (2001b: 43). Konstan does not dwell on this point, being interested instead in what pity entails as a cultural value, and I would like to expand on this. Although jurors are indeed obliged to ascertain the facts of a case – to the extent that is possible – they must also consider the implications of their 8 9

The Greek text is that of Duke et al. (1995); the translation is my own. Cf. Andocides 1.148-149, who raises the stakes by saying he has no one to bring up to the platform – his father is dead, he has no brothers, and does not yet have children – and then asserts that the men of the jury must serve instead as his father and brothers and children.

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decision, as ancient orators do not hesitate to remind them: What will it mean for the city if a murderer goes free? If an innocent man is condemned, how will other good men feel? How will the condemned man’s family cope? Thus Athenian judicial practice recognizes that the jurors’ decision is ‘ethically embedded’ to the degree that their verdict will have important consequences for individuals and groups connected to the defendant. Or to put this another way: judging a case without considering these implications divorces legal arguments from the ethical contexts that give them meaning. It follows that a strictly rational criterion for legal argument is analogous to an aesthetic criterion for drama: the coherence and completeness of a work is in either case compromised by including ‘irrelevant’ emotional repercussions. According to D. Kovacs, the last part of our text of Oedipus the King was added later for the sole purpose of heightening pathos, and is thus a “fine example” of “melodramatic interpolation” (2009: 64) – just as, according to Plato, melodramatic appeals to the audience have no place in a good defendant’s speech. If the sentimental epilogue is not easily reconciled with an organically coherent work, I propose that rather than amputate the epilogue we reconsider our demand for closure. An ending, after all, need not complete an aesthetic whole, but may instead show how events are embedded in a broader web of relations: forensic oratory in the exordium points toward the range of ethical obligations in which the case and its verdict are entangled, and tragic drama in the exodos likewise recognizes the realm of personal and social interactions to which the plot belongs.10 This notion of ethical and social embedding suggests, in turn, another parallel, namely with the broader mythical continuum of which the plot is a part. The general importance of this so-called ‘megatext’ has recently been emphasized by scholars such as P. Burian (1997), and more specifically D. Roberts (1988) has shown how Sophocles acknowledges, near the end of his plays, the continuity of the dramatic action with its larger mythical context. Yet the tendency has been to read this assertion of continuity in relation to organic completeness. For example, Roberts concludes that “we are made to understand – if we pay attention to these allusions – that our judgment at the end of the play […] is inevitably provisional, and that we will not be able to remedy that provisional nature” (1988: 191). Within the prison house of closural study – to put this rather crudely – continuity can only be viewed as part of every literary work’s double movement toward, and away from, closure. For an audience 10

Scholars have begun to consider the forensic appeal for pity, not merely as a curiosity, but as a practice worthy of critical attention: Johnstone (1999: 109-125) argues that such appeals are less emotional than ‘cognitive’ in the sense that they articulate an understanding of democratic power; Konstan (2001b: 36-43) especially contrasts ancient with modern notions, the latter but not the former entailing remorse. Bers (2009: 77-98) seeks to distinguish amateurish displays of emotion from the dignified appeal for pity on the part of a professional orator.

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dwelling in the land of the megatext, however, there is no obvious reason to view the drama as an organic whole and the continuity of myth as somehow compromising or undermining that completeness; rather, it is the drama’s singular attention to a particular event (or cluster of events) that temporarily subverts the continuity of myth. The same is true of ethical attachments. For an audience raised not on doctrines of individual freedom but on attachments to a range of communities, from oikos to polis, there would be little reason to view one person’s downfall as a self-contained event, independent of its social and ethical context; rather, a tragedy’s heightened attention to its protagonist temporarily upstages the broader nexus of obligations and allegiances. My reading of the ending of Oedipus the King has given me one more reason to avoid relying upon the notions of closure and false closure: doing so would predispose me to interpret continuity as a subversion of closure, and the web of affective connections in particular as extraneous to, or an anticlimactic counterpoint to, the fulfillment of plot expectations with Oedipus’ spectacular and bloody entrance. Doing so would blind me, in other words, to an interpretation that is not only equally plausible per se, but also more in keeping with the spectators’ understanding of their mythical and social world. I end by noting some parallels in other plays to the end of Oedipus the King. The situation in the exodos has its closest counterpart in Euripides’ Heracles: in both cases the protagonist learns that he has committed a heinous crime and is on the verge of killing himself, but in the end chooses to go on living. In both, the hero’s decision to live, despite having lost everything that previously gave his life meaning, dramatizes the problem of reconstituting an ethical and social persona; Oedipus and Heracles will both have to reinvent themselves from scratch, on a profoundly humbler plane. It is therefore no coincidence that Heracles finds himself bickering with Theseus (1410-1417), as Oedipus did with Creon, and it is no coincidence that a recent editor of the Heracles, G. Bond, found this spectacle of recrimination “not edifying” (1988: 417) and proposed removing the lines, just as some editors would prefer to remove the final sections of Oedipus the King. We might also compare the latter episodes of Sophocles’ Ajax, where the protagonist, like Oedipus and Heracles, is horrified at the enormity of his deeds, but unlike these characters does choose suicide. Ajax takes the easier way out, but consequently creates a more difficult situation for those who remain: his attempted murder of the Greek leaders and his own ignominious death tear apart the ethical fabric, which his friends and family and community must somehow repair. We might say that the false closure of Ajax’ death falls midway through the play and is followed by a new conflict over his burial. Or we might propose instead that the life and death of a hero cannot be separated from ethical attachments on a heroic scale, involving friends and enemies, family and army, who for better or worse, owe him so much.

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To these examples we could surely add others, but certainly not enough to let us speak of a ‘new approach’ to tragedy. And that is how it should be. Sometimes, as I have cautioned elsewhere, our interpretive framework must be “strategic” and limited in scope rather than comprehensive (2009: 342). While writing (or hesitating to write) this essay has allowed me to enumerate some difficulties in the study of closure, it may also suggest the value of considering ethical attachments in Greek tragedy.

False Closure and Deception Christian Kaesser This paper is concerned with the relation of false closure and deception. For British and American classicists this topic perhaps is a surprising choice, since the English term ‘false closure,’ so my British and American colleagues say, does not necessarily connote deception. But for me, addressing the relation of false closure and deception is a plausible proposition for two reasons. The first is personal: I am German; and in my native language German ‘false closure’ translates as Trugschluss, a compound word in which the element Trug-, familiar for instance from the word betrügen, carries the notion of deception. And secondly, my interest in the relation of false closure and deception has a professional reason that stems from work I am currently doing on Ovid’s Fasti, a poem famous for its apparently abrupt and premature ending. One could assume that the odd end of the Fasti is simply the result of the premature death of its author, which prevented him from completing his work. Evidence for this view could be, among other things, the fact that in the poem’s extant first six books a number of passages can be found in which Ovid refers his readers to the (apparently) never completed last six books. Had Ovid had the time or leisure to complete the Fasti, so one could suggest, he would have eliminated those references.1 Recently, however, it has been suggested that the poem’s apparently abrupt ending might not be as accidental as it appears. First, general dissatisfaction with his exile at Tomis and the political power that caused it, as well as simply lack of source material that would be accessible only at Rome, might have persuaded Ovid to abandon the project.2 More specifically, it has been pointed out that the hypothetical Books 7 and 8 of the poem would have largely dealt with material pertaining to Augustus and his family, so that Ovid’s abandonment of the Fasti after Book 6 might be interpreted a gesture that defies and challenges Augustus’ political order; and such a gesture would be well paralleled elsewhere in the poem.3 Finally, it has been shown that toward the end of book six, the poem’s design features elements that elsewhere in ancient literature are characteristic of closure.4 If this understanding of the poem’s end is accepted, the references Ovid includes in the poem’s first six books to its never written last six books turn out to deceive his readers.5 1 2 3 4 5

See Bömer 1957: 15-22. For various approaches, see e.g. Fantham 1985; Green 2004: 15-24. E.g. Feeney 1992: 18-19; Newlands 1995: 209-236. Barchiesi 1997b: 197-207. The famous verse Tr. 2.549, where Ovid alleges that sex ego Fastorum scripsi totidemque libellos, adds a further dimension to the problem. In this paper, which is

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It is worth noting that both in previous studies of closure in classical texts and in the papers featured in this volume, few modern scholars have argued that ancient authors seek to employ closural features in order to deceive their audiences. To be sure, closure in ancient texts is a problematic issue; when it comes to closure, as Don Fowler has argued, both ancient authors and their modern readers struggle to find a balance between openness and closure – between, on the one hand, the desire to keep a text open so as to make it an appealing model for poetic imitators and to facilitate its production of meaning in the hand of future readers, and on the other the need to bring it to an end so that it becomes a meaningful entity.6 But in this dialectic of openness and closure the possibility that closural features are employed where they do not belong so that a text’s audience is deceived has rarely been raised.7 One explanation for such silence might be that most of today’s students of classical closure were born and raised in English-speaking countries, so that their native language does not suggest to them the possibility that false closure might be employed to deceive a text’s audience. After all, as Don Fowler has observed as well, when it comes to closure one only sees what one is predisposed to see.8 In this case, our modern eyes will have to be opened to an aspect of ancient closure that is not on the contemporary horizon. Another reason, however, might be that ancient authors as a rule did not seek to deceive their audiences about the endings of their texts, and that Ovid’s Fasti is an exception to that rule. In that case, one will have to ask why that rule existed in the ancient world, and determine why and to what extent Ovid in the Fasti breaks it. So this paper addresses two questions. First of all, it seeks to determine whether the ancients in general considered the possibility that closural features might be employed to deceive the audience. Of course, in the ancient world nobody wrote scholarly articles on closure such as those featured in the present volume. But a good set of evidence from which the ancients’ attitude towards deception and closure can be assessed emerges when one keeps in mind that, as G. Most has shown, most ancient literary criticism took place within the conceptual framework of ancient rhetoric.9 So even if ancient rhetoricians do not analyze the endings of literary texts from a modern critical perspective – and they don’t –, what they have to say about the design of endings of forensic and

6 7

8 9

concerned with the Fasti only, I will disregard that dimension; I plan to address it elsewhere. Fowler 1997 (esp. 5-7). Closest comes Rutherford who discusses passages where closural features “conspire to create the impression that a [text] is ending, when in fact it continues:” Rutherford 1997: 58-61 (quotation on 58). Fowler 1997: 5. Most 1984; see too Seel 1977: 53-58. Numerous examples of rhetoricians who acted as literary critics in Suetonius’ De grammaticis et rhetoribus; on the rhetorician specifically as critics see 23.4 and Kaster 1995: 237-238.

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other speeches still is indicative of the general critical vantage point from which, on the one hand, an ancient audience approached a literary text and to which, on the other, its author will have catered. In this paper I will rely for this purpose predominantly on Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria. Moreover, the ancient scholia to classical texts, whose authors sometimes discuss closure, supplement this evidence. And secondly, once the relation that existed in the ancient world between closure and deception has been examined on a general level, the paper will address specifically the end of Ovid’s Fasti, identifying on the one hand in what ways the ending of the poem is unique when judged against that background, and on the other seeking to determine the effect it made on its rhetorically trained audience. Given that false closure concerns the effect – in this case deceptive – of a literary text on its audience, one would expect that the ancient rhetoricians, whose precepts and training was generally concerned with just such effects, would have discussed false closure among the other ways by which a speaker can move and persuade his audience, and would have included it in their lists of figures and tropes.10 Moreover, given that ancient rhetoric provided the conceptual framework for most ancient literary criticism, one would expect ancient literary critics to amply document instances of deceptive false closure in ancient literature. Finally, given that ancient rhetoricians have often been attacked for, and sometimes freely admit to, deceiving their audiences, one would expect that they were aware of the possibility that closural features can be used for the purpose of deception. Now they might well have been aware of that possibility. But neither ancient literary critics nor the rhetoricians from whom they took their conceptual clues discuss it in their writings. First of all, where available scholia to classical texts show that ancient literary critics did not recognize the possibility that closural elements can be used to deceive the audience even at places where their modern colleagues do – or come close to doing, as is I. Rutherford in his discussion of Pindar’s Pythian 1 and Nemean 7, where he identifies closural elements that conspire to create the impression of closure when in fact the text continues.11 In his analysis of Pythian 1, Rutherford notes that the ode displays closural features at the end of the fourth triad, and argues that, since the poem continues for two more triads, here the poet misleads his audience. Not so the ancient scholia. The ode’s fifth triad, which begins immediately after Rutherford’s false ending, starts with what is most likely an address that Pindar, as he does elsewhere in his poetry, directs at himself:

10 11

Excellent discussion of the purpose and definition of ancient rhetoric in comparison to modern definitions in Bender and Wellbery 1990 (esp. 6-7). See above n. 7.

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Christian Kaesser καιρὸν εἰ φθέγξαιο, πολλῶν πείρατα συντανύσαις ἐν βραχεῖ, μείων ἕπεται μῶμος ἀνθρώπων.

(Pi. P.1.81-82)

If you should speak to the point by combining the strands of many things in brief, less criticism follows from men.

The ancient scholiasts noticed these words and even discussed them under the aspect of the poem’s closure. However, the scholia’s understanding of them as a reminder of brevity and the need to avoid loquacity never mentions the possibility, even though the generally meta-poetic nature of Pindar’s text at this point might have prompted such considerations, that the effect Pindar creates here is false closure: a. καιρὸν εἰ φθέγξαιο· οἱ μέν φασι λείπειν τὴν κατὰ πρόθεσιν, ἵν’ ᾖ· κατὰ καιρὸν εἰ φθέγξαιο. b. εἰ καιρίως λέγων, τῆϲ πολυλογίας τὰ πέρατα εἰς ἓν συντείνας καὶ συμπλέξας, ἐκφυγοῖς ἂν τὸν φθόνον. c. τὸ δὲ ἑξήϲ· εἰ ἐν βραχεῖ φθέγξαιο κατὰ καιρὸν, πολλῶν πείρατα συντανύϲας, μείων ἕπεται μῶμος ἀνθρώπων. d. ἄλλως· αἰσθάνεται ἑαυτοῦ ἐκπεπτωκότος. ὁ δὲ νοῦς οὕτως· εἰ τὰ καίρια λέγεις τῶν πολλῶν τὰ πείρατα εἰς ἓν συντεμῶν καὶ συμπλέξας, οὐκ ἀκολουθήσει σοι μέμψις οὐδὲ φθόνος. (Σ Pi. P. 1.157a-d) a. “If you should speak to the point”: some say it is missing the preposition κατά, so that it is: κατὰ καιρὸν εἰ φθέγξαιο. b. when speaking timely, weaving together and combining the limits of loquacity into one, you should avoid envy. c. and the next: if you should speak briefly and opportunely, stretching together the limits of many things, less criticism from people were to follow. d. differently: he notices that he has digressed. The meaning is the following: if you speak opportunely, weaving together and combining the limits of many things into one, reproach and envy will not follow you.

Moreover, the scholia to Nemean 7, where Rutherford identifies a similar instance of false closure at the end of the third triad, permit the same observation. Here too Pindar continues with meta-poetic commentary, presenting a lengthy remark on the appropriateness of his poetry to the occasion for which it was composed. As before, this meta-poetic context might have provoked the ancient critics to comment on closural devices. But again, their scholia remain silent. Elsewhere, when ancient scholiasts discuss closure, the question of deception is not on their agenda either. A well-known scholion to Od. 23.296 reports that Aristarchus and Aristophanes believed that line to be the end of the poem. But while the scholiast reports the opinion of the two famous Alexandrian literary

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critics and gives no indication that he considers their view implausible, he does not consider the possibility that Homer could have employed at that passage those closural features that the two scholars must have observed in order to deceive his audience.12 The impression gathered from the scholia that ancient literary critics were not interested in deceptive false closure can be generalized when one turns to the ancient rhetoricians and their frequent discussions of closure. These occur in the first place when they discuss the proper way to design the epilogue of a speech. Quintilian identifies two goals that a speaker should achieve at that point. On the one hand, he mandates him to recapitulate and reassemble the main points of the speech so that the memory of the judge is refreshed (6.1.1-8). On the other hand, and more importantly, Quintilian encourages the speaker to make emotional appeals in order to court the favor of the judges (6.1.9-54). That Quintilian discusses that second aspect at such great length is a function of the fact that the sixth book of his Institutio Oratoria is predominantly concerned with the emotions and features a preface that exemplifies emotional writing.13 But his basic description of the epilogue’s twofold purpose mirrors those found in other rhetorical treatises, which regularly demand that at the end of a speech a speaker must both summarize the main points of his speech and make a heightened appeal to the emotions of his audience.14 But if these two characteristics identify the actual end of a speech, can they be used elsewhere in it in order to deceive the audience? On the one hand, Quintilian observes that rhetorical features normally characteristic of the end of a speech can be used elsewhere in its course, especially in the proem but also at other places. But on the other hand, he adds that the greater part of these appeals must be held in reserve: Omnes autem hos adfectus, etiam si quibusdam videntur in prohoemio atque in epilogo sedem habere, in quibus sane sint frequentissimi, tamen aliae quoque partes recipiunt, sed breviores, ut cum ex iis plurima sint reservanda. (Quint. Inst. 6.1.51) All these appeals to emotion, though some think their proper home is in the prooemium and the epilogue (where indeed we may allow them to be commonest), nevertheless have a place in other parts of the speech as well, though in a shorter form, because the greater part of them must be held in reserve. 12 13 14

On this scholion and other ancient discussions of the end of the Odyssey, see Garbrah 1977. On the ancient theory of emotions in general, see Gill 1984 and Wisse 1989. Parallel passages: Rhet. ad Alex. 36; Arist. Rhet. 1419b-1420a; [Cic.] Ad Her. 2.47; Cic. de inv. 1.98. For Cic. part. 16-24, see Arweiler 2003: 102-110. Quintilian’s general indebtedness to the tradition of rhetorical handbooks: Adamietz 1986: 22402245.

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Quintilian does not tell his readers here to use design features characteristic of the end of a speech in order to mislead its audience about the place where the end occurs. In fact, he recommends the application of caution precisely so that the audience is not misled about the proper end of a speech, for only at their proper place do design features characteristic of the end of a speech develop their full force. He takes care to maintain a hierarchy between the actual end of a speech where these features can be fully employed and other places in the speech where they should be used more sparingly, and he is not interested in blurring that distinction by deceptively suggesting the end of a speech when in fact it continues. In fact, this point is so important to Quintilian that he also makes it at another point in the Institutio Oratoria, where he discusses of the extent to which a speech’s narrative should be used to stir the audience’s emotions. To be sure, he argues, emotions should be used even in the narrative of a speech, a place for which the ancient rhetoricians commonly recommended a simple, matter-offactly style. But he prefaces this statement with the warning that appeals to emotions in the course of a speech should never eclipse those at its end: Quo magis miror eos qui non putant utendum in narratione adfectibus. Qui si hoc dicunt ‘non diu neque ut in epilogo,’ mecum sentient: effugiendae sunt enim morae. Ceterum cur ego iudicem nolim dum doceo etiam movere? (Quint. Inst. 4.2.111) This makes me all the more surprised at those who think emotion is not to be used in Narrative. If they mean ‘not long, and not as in the Epilogue,’ they are agreeing with me; for we must avoid prolixity. But why should I not want to move the judge while I am instructing him?

Elsewhere too, when Quintilian addresses ways in which a speaker can design the end of his discourse or one of its parts, deception is not on his mind. For instance, Quintilian recommends that sometimes it might be helpful to interrupt a narrative. But for Quintilian the point of such an interruption is not to deceive and mislead the audience, but to help and assist them, namely by letting them catch breath so that they feel refreshed when the narrative continues. The speaker has to aid the audience’s understanding, not to undermine it: Interim expediet expositionem brevi interfatione distinguere: ‘audistis quae ante acta sunt: accipiter nunc quae insecuntur.’ Reficietur enim iudex priorum fine et se velut ad novum rursus initium praeparabit. (Quint. Inst. 4.2.50) Sometimes it will be advantageous to interrupt the Narrative with a brief interjection like ‘You have heard what happened before; now learn what follows.’ The judge will then feel refreshed by reaching the end of the first stage, ad will prepare himself as it were for a new beginning.

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Quintilian’s discussion of these matters resembles those in other, earlier rhetorical treatises, where the possibility that closural features may be deceptively employed to suggest an end where the discourse in fact continues is similarly not raised. But in one of these treatises a passage occurs that deserves discussion because it supports from a different angle the impression Quintilian gives that closural deception was not on the mind of the ancient rhetoricians. The passage, which is found in the third book of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, is concerned, not with the end of a speech, but with the end of a verse in a tragedy. Aristotle discusses an iambic verse he falsely attributes to Sophocles (it is by Euripides) where the end of the metrical period results in false sense, suggesting that the city of Calydon is on the Peloponnesus while in fact it is on the opposite side of the Corinthian gulf: δεῖ δὲ τὴν περίοδον καὶ τῇ διανοίᾳ τετελειῶσθαι, καὶ μὴ διακόπτεσθαι ὥσπερ τὰ Σοφοκλέους ἰαμβεῖα Καλυδὼν μὲν ἥδε γαῖα Πελοπίας χθονός· τοὐναντίον γὰρ ἔστιν ὑπολαβεῖν τῷ διαιρεῖσθαι, ὥσπερ καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ εἰρημένου τὴν Καλυδῶνα εἶναι τὴς Πελοποννήσου. (Aristot. Rhet. 1409b8-12) But the period must be completed with the sense and not stop short, as in the iambics of Sophocles, “This is Calydon, territory of the land of Pelops;” for by a division of this kind it is possible to suppose the contrary of the fact, as in the example, that Calydon is in Peloponnesus.

Fortunately another source transmits the subsequent verse, which shows that Euripides rectifies the false impression he had earlier created: Καλυδὼν μὲν ἥδε γαῖα, Πελοπίας χθονός ἐν ἀντιπόρθμοις πεδί’ ἔχουσ’ εὐδαίμονα.

(Eur. TGF 515.1-2)

This is the land of Kalydon, which has happy plains in the parts opposite Peloponnesus.

Aristotle’s interpretation of Euripides’ verse might indicate that he, and perhaps other ancient students and practitioners of rhetoric as well, knew that ends (of verses, if not of speeches) could deceive. But it is unlikely that the purpose of the line in Euripides’ play was to deceive his audience, and in any case Aristotle does not recommend it for that purpose. It is unlikely that Euripides tried deceive the Athenians on the true location of Calydon, which, after all, is by the Corinthian Gulf; and even if he did it is hard to see what purpose such deception would serve. Instead, it is more likely that at the end of the first line the

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Athenians were surprised at what they certainly recognized as an evident mistake, and that they would have been pleased and satisfied when in the next line they saw the mistake corrected. The arousal of curiosity and satisfaction of course is a standard technique of the ancient rhetoricians. And definitely Aristotle does not recommend to readers of the Rhetoric using such or similar devices to deceive their audiences. To begin with, he does not mention that the effect is deceit; and in any case he explicitly discourages his readers from imitating Euripides’ trick. Why is it that the ancient rhetoricians did not consider the possibility that closural features, when employed at places other than where the speech ends, could conspire to deceive the audience? The explanation touches on the core mission of ancient rhetorical training: teaching the design of credible and persuasive speeches. Of course, the audience of an epideictic speech, whose point was not in the first place to persuade but to entertain the audience by (among other things) the display of the speaker’s skills, might have been entertained when a speaker pretends that his speech ends while in fact it continues;15 in fact, they might even been impressed by the rhetorical prowess he revealed in creating this effect. But the core mission of the ancient rhetoricians (Quintilian repeatedly insists on this point) was the teaching of forensic and deliberative speeches; and the purpose of these speeches was not primarily to entertain or to impress, but to persuade a judge or the members of a political institution by credible argument, the speaker ought to refrain from appearing to deceive his audience. Of course, Quintilian is the first to recognize that speakers sometimes deceive their audience; in fact, he gives advice on how to do so. For instance, in his analysis of the partition of a speech Quintilian writes that sometimes the audience has to be misled about the speaker’s intentions: Interim vero etiam fallendus est iudex et variis artibus subeundus ut aliud agi quam petimus putet […] Interim refugienda non modo distinctio quaestionum est, sed omnino tractatio: adfectibus turbandus et ab intentione auferendus auditor. (Quint. Inst. 4.5.5-6) Sometimes however even the judge has to be deceived and tricked by various devices into thinking that our aim is other than it is […] We have sometimes to avoid not only a clear articulation of the questions, but any handling of them at all; in this case the audience has to be disturbed emotionally and distracted from paying attention.

15

Purpose of epideictic in contrast to forensic and deliberative rhetoric: Kennedy 1963: 152-203; on the appropriateness of the display of rhetoric in different rhetorical genres, or the lack thereof, see the excellent discussion in Neumeister 1964: 130-155.

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But Quintilian also notes that speaker must apply greatest care to make sure that his deception remains undetected, for instance by remembering throughout a speech what he has made up: Utrubique autem orator meminisse debebit actione tota quid finxerit, quoniam solent excidere quae falsa sunt: verumque est illud quod vulgo dicitur, ‘mendacem memorem esse oportere.’ (Quint. Inst. 4.2.91) In both cases the orator will need to remember his fictions throughout the pleading, because falsehoods commonly slip from the mind; the common saying that ‘a liar should have good memory’ is very true.

However, if a speaker employs closural features to create the false impression that his discourse ends while in fact it continues, his audience learns immediately – that is, as soon as he goes on with the speech – that they were deceived. And an audience that learns that as a result looses confidence in a speaker of whom they know that he can bring about this effect – and the less likely they are to trust him. This is one reason why the ancient rhetoricians do not address the possibility that closural features can be employed to deceive the audience. Quintilian’s discussion of irony may provide a useful parallel that helps in understanding why he and other rhetoricians do not address, let alone recommend to their students, deceptive false endings. Just as irony occurs when something different is said from what is meant (not necessarily the opposite),16 so false closure occurs when a speaker indicates an end when in fact he means to continue. But when he discusses irony, Quintilian adds an important qualification to the well-known definition of irony – namely that the true meaning of the statement must be apparent by context. For instance when in his first speech against Catiline Cicero called Metellus an excellent man, what had been said before indicates that Cicero did not consider him such: primum quod tropos apertior est et, quamquam aliud dicit ac sentit, non aliud tamen simulat: nam et omnia circa fere recte sunt, ut illud in Catilinam: ‘a quo repudiatus ad sodalem tuum, virum optimum, Metellum demigrasti.’ (Quint. Inst. 9.2.45) The trope is more open and, although it says something different from what it means, it does not pretend something different, for the whole context is generally quite straightforward: an example is the passage of the speech against Catiline which runs ‘Rejected by him, you migrated to your bosom friend, that excellent person, Metellus.’

16

See Nehamas 1998: 50-57.

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So irony does not actually deceive, and the same caution against open deception that led Quintilian to qualify in this crucial way his definition of irony also made him (and other teachers of rhetoric like him) abstain from addressing the possibility that false endings can be created in order to deceive the audience. Against the background of the ancients’ general dislike of deceptive endings the ending of the Fasti and the possibility that Ovid deceives his readers about where it occurs appears unusual and surprising. In order to explain it, several factors must be taken into account. The first of these is that, while undoubtedly in the ancient world rhetoric and poetry were closely related to each other (much more than they are today where the Romantic period introduced the assumption that the deployment of formal rhetoric in a poetic text prevents the poet from speaking freely his mind), rhetoric and poetry were not of course two fully congruent types of discourses. Specifically as far as deception is concerned, while rhetoricians would never admit openly to lying to their audience, every reader of the opening of Hesiod’s Theogony knows that poets sometimes do:17 ἴδμεν ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγειν ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα, ἴδμεν δ’, εὖτ’ ἐθέλωμεν, ἀληθέα γηρύσασθαι.

(Hes. Th. 27-28)

We know how to sing many false things similar to genuine ones, but we know, when we wish, how to proclaim true things.

To be sure, there are passages where ancient authors seem to assume that rhetoric and poetry are fundamentally identical, and also presume their audience’s familiarity with that assumption. For instance, in the second half of Plato’s Phaedrus, which discusses rhetoric, Socrates makes an off-hand remark stating that what he is going to say about good and bad rhetoric applies, not even mutatis mutandis, also to poetry: Τίς οὖν ὁ τρόπος τοῦ καλῶς τε καὶ μὴ γράφειν; δεόμεθά τι, ὦ Φαῖδρε, Λυσίαν τε περὶ τούτων ἐξετάσαι καὶ ἄλλον ὅστις πώποτέ τι γέγραφεν ἤ γράψει, εἴτε πολιτικὸν σύγγραμμα εἴτε ἰδιωτικόν, ἐν μέτρῳ ὡς ποιητὴς ἢ ἄνευ μέτρου ὡς ἰδιώτης; (Pl. Phdr. 258d7-11) So what distinguishes good from bad writing? Do we need to ask this question of Lysias or anyone else who ever did or will write anything – whether a public or private document, poetic verse or plain prose?

17

My understanding of the passage is similar to that of Ferrari 1988; see also Clay 2003: 57-64.

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But especially to Ovid’s poetry that equation should be applied only with care. On the one hand, of course, Ovid perhaps is a rhetorical poet if there ever was one. His poetry prompted Seneca the Elder to report that in his youth Ovid was trained in the art of declamation (Contr. 2.2.8-10); and modern critics agree that Ovid’s poetry is rhetorical – even though they do not necessarily agree about what that characterization entails.18 On the other hand, however, Ovid distinguishes his career as a poet sharply from the career as a lawyer that his brother had pursued thanks to the latter’s considerable skills in rhetorical eloquence:19 frater ad eloquium viridi tendebat ab aevo, fortia verbosi natus ad arma fori; at mihi iam puero caelestia sacra placebant, inque suum furtim Musa trahebat opus.

(Ov. Tr. 4.10.17-20)

My brother’s bent even in the green of years was oratory; he was born for the stout weapons of the wordy forum. But to me even as a boy service of the divine gave delight and stealthily the Muse was ever drawing me aside to do her work.

The line that Ovid draws in this passage between the pursuit of rhetoric and the pursuit of poetry is unusual among the authors of his time, and perhaps unusual in antiquity in general. It clears room for the possibility that whatever conceptual framework the rhetoricians have developed on any given issue, it might not wholly apply to his poetry. Second, there are two good thematic reasons why the Fasti should be the place where Ovid departs from the conceptual framework the ancient rhetoricians developed for closure. First of all, the Fasti continues the tradition of aetiological elegy, which is primarily concerned with beginnings, but (perhaps not surprisingly) has also developed an interest in endings.20 So the ending of a poem on beginnings attracts an increased degree of scrutiny, and Ovid of all poets can be expected to respond to the special interest with a special gimmick. Secondly, Ovid inherited from the tradition of ancient aetiological elegy also a concern with truth, even if that truth cannot (and cannot expected to) be ascertained and established in ways that satisfy modern standards of objectivity. To find out what is the right cause of a certain ritual or religious custom is what often drives the poet in the Fasti; however, he often encounters conflicting explanations and frequently does not even bother to evaluate them.21 So, a 18 19 20 21

See Tarrant 1995. See Schiesaro 2002: 71. See Asper in this volume. Newlands 1995: 51-78; Loehr 1996.

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possibly deceitful ending is an apt capping of a poem questioning the truth of beginnings. Moreover, the end of the Fasti appears even more aptly problematic when viewed in the context of the challenges one encounters at the poem’s own beginning. First, Ovid points out that the Roman year itself used to have the wrong beginning, when Romulus, owing to his ignorance of astronomy, designed a year of ten months that started in March. Only the much wiser and more learned Numa corrected Romulus’ mistake and placed two more months in front of the existing ten: tempora digereret cum conditor urbis, in anno constituit menses quinque bis esse suo: scilicet arma magis quam sidera, Romule, noras, curaque finitimos vincere maior erat.

(Ov. Fast. 1.27-30)

When the founder of the city was setting the calendar in order, he ordained that there should be twice five months in his year. To be sure, Romulus, you knew swords better than you knew stars, and conquering your neighbors was your main concern.

Moreover, even with this mistake now rectified, the Roman year still begins at the wrong time, as Ovid reveals in his conversation with the god Janus that forms the poem’s first major section. Ovid observes that the beginning of the Roman year as it stands now runs afoul nature; if it were to begin where the cycle of nature begins, the year should start in spring – which makes Romulus’ launch of the year in March look not that misguided after all: sumpsi animum gratesque deo non territus egi verbaque sum spectans pauca locutus humum: ‘dic, age, frigoribus quare novus incipit annus, qui melius per ver incipiendus erat? omnia tunc florent, tunc est nova temporis aetas, et nova de gravido palmite gemma tumet […].’

(Ov. Fast. 1.147-152)

I plucked up courage, thanked the god composedly, and with eyes turned to the ground I spoke in a few words: “Come, say, why does the new year begin in the cold season, even though it had better begun in spring? Then all things flower, then time renews his age, and new from the teeming vine-shoot swells the bud […].’

Of course, Janus can meet this objection with a reference to the winter solstice that occurs close to the beginning of January:

41

False Closure and Deception quaesieram multis, non multis ille moratus contulit in versus sic sua verba duos: ‘bruma novi prima est veterisque novissima solis, principium capiunt Phoebus et annus idem.’

(Ov. Fast. 1.161-164)

Thus I questioned at length; he answered prompt and tersely, throwing his words into two verses, thus: ‘Midwinter is the beginning of the new sun and the end of the old one. Phoebus and the year take their start from the same point.’

But the cumulative impression of Ovid’s account of the beginning of the Roman year is that it is not easily determined and that there are reasons on the basis of which the present beginning of the year can be contested. Since Ovid chose the present beginning of the year as the beginning of his poems, the arguments that contest the accuracy of the former also cast into doubt the appropriateness of the latter. However, it remains doubtful whether the challenges that surround the beginning of Ovid’s Fasti can be used as a parallel for the poem’s possibly deceitful ending. After all, it is hard to argue that any of the persons involved in designing the beginning of the Roman year ever acted deceitfully. Romulus’ choice of the beginning of the year was due to a hillbilly’s ignorance of astronomy, but not a result of the intention to deceive. In fact, arguments on favor of it can be found as well: est tamen ratio, Caesar, quae moverit illum, erroremque suum quo tueatur habet: quod satis est, utero matris dum prodeat infans, hoc anno statuit temporis esse satis; per totidem menses a funere coniugis uxor sustinet in vidua tristia signa domo.

(Ov. Fast. 1.31-36)

Yet, Caesar, there is a reason that may have moved him, and for his error he might urge a plea. The time that suffices for a child to come forth from its mother’s womb he deemed sufficient for a year. For just so many moths after her husband’s funeral a wife supports the signs of sorrow in her widowed home.

This anticipates the way in which later Janus defends the beginning of the year in January on astronomical grounds. And in this calculation is the possibility of political interference and manipulation, always present in the Fasti and especially in the foundation of the year, is not even mentioned.22 22

Barchiesi 1997a: 151-79.

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Moreover, Ovid challenges the theoretical foundation on which the argument for deception rests. Each lie implies a truth that it conceals; without such truth, any lie loses its force and purpose. However, Ovid’s intricate presentation of the complex beginning of the Roman year, and especially the fact that arguments can be found in favor of both the beginnings he discusses suggests that as far as this issue is concerned, no easy truth that deception could conceal presents itself. And one surmises that what is true for the beginning of Ovid’s poem, may apply no less to its end. A consideration concerning a hypothetical end of a 12-book Fasti further fosters this doubt. Assuming for a moment the Fasti were a complete poem, what would the end of that poem be like? One year follows upon another; similarly, a poem depicting such a year ought to be followed by another. Whatever end Ovid could have designed for the Fasti,23 it would have had to take that fact into account, and allow for the poem’s continuation just as the time and the calendar it represents continue. In other words, the Fasti can never be a complete poem. The fact that at present the Fasti ends after Book 6 suggests these reflections and reinforces the special character of the end of a poem on beginnings. But the end of the Fasti is not deceptive just because it is special. To sum up. A negative answer can be given to the general question whether the ancients considered the possibility that closural features can be employed in order to suggest the end of a text at a place where in fact it continues. They did not associate closure with deception and, probably owing to the impact of rhetoric on the ancient production and reception of poetry, it is not surprising that modern scholars have identified few passages where ancient authors employ false closure to deceive their audience. On the more specific question whether Ovid deceives his audience over the end of the Fasti, the answer is more elusive. On the one hand, from the perspective of those who assume that the Fasti ends deliberately after Book 6, those passages in which Ovid refers his readers to the content of Books 7-12 of the poem appear to deceive the audience. On the other hand, from the perspective of a student of the role of deception elsewhere in the poem and especially at its beginning, there is little to support the assumption that Ovid deceives his readers about the end of the Fasti. But perhaps for the reader a poem that features double-headed Janus as its first character,24 it is fine to settle on that conclusion.

23 24

Excellent ideas in Feeney 1992: 18. Hardie 1991.

Trapdoors: The Falsity of Closure in Pliny’s Epistles Christopher Whitton Epistolography is a particularly fertile area for the exploration of literary closure. In recent years the tension between the self-sufficiency of the letter unit and its role in a wider collection has been, not least in Pliny, a critical scholarly battleground, the heart of the conflict between (to be crude) ‘historical’ and ‘literary’ readers of these Epistles. Sherwin-White, in his avowedly non-literary commentary, explored at length Pliny’s principles of variatio in arranging his letters, but saw little reason to read further meaning into that placement.1 By contrast, current scholarship is more likely to privilege the broader canvas, asserting (or implying) that the meaning of any one letter is subsumed into, and only explicable in terms of, its context in the ‘mosaic’ or ‘kaleidoscope’ of the collection.2 Exploring, defining and contesting closure, then, is fundamental to current work on Pliny, and false closure is a useful concept with which to review the structural stakes in these letters. In what follows I consider some of closure’s tensions in the Epistles, at the level of letter, book and collection, and ask in particular how far 9.40 deserves attention for its place at the end of Pliny’s ninebook collection.3 *** Vale. A more or less formulaic mark of closure is standard in epistolography, ancient and modern. In Pliny’s case it is wholly formulaic: every one of the 247 letters of Books 1-9 ends with the single word, ‘farewell’.4 Ovid called it the ‘word with which every letter ends’, with characteristic disingenuity:5 Latin letter-writers had a range of closing salutations at their disposal, making Pliny’s

1 2

3

4 5

Sherwin-White 1966: passim, esp. 46. He defined his work A Historical and Social Commentary. ‘Mosaic’: Altman 1982: 167-184; ‘kaleidoscope’: Henderson 2002c: xi with n. 5; id. 2003: 125. A signal manifesto for such reading strategies is Marchesi 2008: 12-52, using intertextuality as the key. Even the arch-conservative Lefèvre 2009 is alert to the value of sequence and juxtaposition. As we shall see, ‘nine-book collection’ is a justified designation, but not without its problems in excluding Book 10. All references are to Pliny’s Epistles unless indicated. Translations throughout are my own. The letters of Book 10, by interesting contrast, have been stripped of any sign-off. Ov. Tr. 5.13.33 quo semper finitur epistula uerbo, introducing, with ironic selfreflexivity, a very rare use of uale on Ovid’s part (so too at Tr. 3.3.87-88).

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choice striking for the unvarying simplicity of this detachable adjunct.6 The unadorned four-letter word routinely seals and demarcates, marking the letter as complete, the communication as over. Yet the letter is an intrinsically openended form. As Altman put it in her foundational study of the European epistolary novel, “the letter writer is always in dialogue with a potential respondent, and […] any letter appears as part of a potentially ongoing sequence.”7 Her view finds confirmation in the ancient topos of the letter as a dialogue, famously encapsulated in the opinion of Artemon, apparent editor of Aristotle’s letters, that ‘a letter is, so to speak, half a dialogue’.8 Even a final imperative ‘farewell’ is dialogic in bringing writer and addressee together through its expression, however cliché, of the concern of one for the well-being of the other.9 The fiction of dialogue is fundamental to Pliny’s self-presentation as a man at society’s centre, and to the cohesiveness of his letter collection. We eavesdrop on a series of ‘conversations’ in which Pliny ‘talks’ not just ‘to’ his correspondents, but ‘with’ them, as when he confesses to Lupercus that ‘what I might call the pleasure of conversing with you (tecum loquendi) has made me go on too long’.10 He routinely puts words into his addressee’s mouth: phrases like ‘you have often urged me …’, ‘I have received your letter …’ or ‘you write that …’ courteously displace the impetus for Pliny’s quasi-autobiography and set him among friends.11 Similarly, letters often end with the hope of a reply or the 6

7 8

9 10

11

‘Detachable’: uale is never integrated into the rhythm any more than into the syntax (for the latter, contrast e.g. Cic. Ad fam. 16.4.4 to the ill Tiro: uale, mi Tiro, uale, uale et salue, and Ovid above). Here Pliny’s model is more Seneca’s Epistulae morales than Cicero’s letters, which are transmitted with a wide variety of sign-offs (often none). However, given the redundancy of e.g. Ad fam. 14.16 cura ut ualeas. uale. Prid. Non. Ian.), it is possible that the editing hand which removed the dates from many letters cut off uale with them; we cannot be sure who is responsible for the presentation of Seneca’s and Pliny’s letters as transmitted. For a full survey of subscriptiones in late republican and early imperial epistolography, see Cugusi 1983: 28-29 and 56-64 (more briefly id. 1989: 386-389). Altman 1982: 148 (143-166 on epistolary closure). εἶναι γὰρ τὴν ἐπιστολὴν οἷον τὸ ἕτερον μέρος τοῦ διαλόγου (Ps.-Demetrius, On style 223). On this passage, see Trapp 2003: 42-46, 317-320; on the topos, Cugusi 1983: 32-33. Compare the affirmation of loyalty in ‘yours sincerely’, a sign-off which has not (uniformly) lost all sincerity. 2.5.13 longius me prouexit dulcedo quaedam tecum loquendi. For other instances of this topos, see Cic. Ad Att. 12.1.2, Ov. Ex P. 2.4.1, Sen. Ep. 75.1; for theoretical discussion Ps.-Libanius, On the epistolary form 2, available in Trapp 2003: 188-193 and 323-326 (and cf. ibid. at 39). As will be apparent, my interest lies in these letters as addressed to a ‘secondary’ readership (the reader of the collection), not in any putative private function. The openings of 1.1, 5.11, 9.7; for an analytical catalogue, see Sherwin-White 1966: 6-9. Such openings are not, however, the default: here as always varietas reigns. The

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promise of a another. A sequel may indeed be forthcoming, whether following hard on the first letter (as exceptionally 2.12, an appendix to the Priscus trial 2.11), later in the book (as with 5.4 and 5.13 on the Nominatus trial) or even in another book (such as the Pallas letters 7.29 and 8.6). Such sequences offer particular scope for Pliny to supply the missing side of the dialogue. A famous instance is the second ‘Vesuvius letter’ to Tacitus (6.20), which begins with reference to Tacitus’ reply to the first (6.16): ‘You say (ais) that the letter about my uncle’s death which I wrote on your request (exigenti tibi) has made you keen (te … cupere) to know what happened to me …’ (6.20.1). With canny anticipation or sheer good luck, Pliny takes advantage of the future loss of Tacitus’ letters to stage both sides of their conversation.12 But as well as this external dialogue, Pliny constructs internal dialogue between his own letters, inviting the reader to consider 6.20 alongside 6.16. This is just one (particularly obvious) instance among many: with or without reconstructed replies, the Epistles are alive with dialogue. They constantly challenge the self-sufficiency of the individual letter, and with it the reader who seeks to extricate some ‘original’ document from the edited sequence. Yet the epistolary form challenges no less the reader who denies all autonomy to the individual tiles in a quest for some “over-determinedly unified simulacrum” of the collection.13 In a version of the familiar dynamics of literary closure,14 the open-endedness of dialogue and sequence must be in (productive) tension with the crisp simplicity of a uale. Pliny recognises letter-boundaries, and knows how to play with them. Though false closure within a letter is not a recurrent feature – and will not occupy much of this paper – he presents a salient instance in 3.9, narrating the posthumous trial of Caecilius Classicus. The long letter mirrors the complexity of this multiplex case (3.9.2), not least with a staged finish two-thirds of the way through. ‘So ended a case involving so many people’, writes Pliny, beginning a substantial coda.15 Closural clichés of ‘what a long letter that was’ and ‘you’ve only yourself to blame’ conspire with the remark ‘I think I’ve given a full account of everything’ (so sealing a ring with the opening, ‘I can now write a full

12 13 14

15

autobiographical thrust of the letters is a theme of recent scholarship, notably Ludolph 1997, Hoffer 1999, Henderson 2002c and 2003, Gibson and Morello 2012: 9-35. See already Syme 1958: 98: “the closest that was decent or permissible to the autobiography of an orator and a statesman”. Marchesi 2008: 97-143 sees such moments as quotations or ‘citations in praesentia’, from which Tacitus’ ipsissima uerba can be reconstructed (see also 171-189 on 6.20). See Henderson 2011: 315. My approach to closure, like that of many, is substantially informed by Fowler 1989 and 1997; Roberts, Dunn and Fowler 1997. This interplay of unit and collection, familiar from recent debates on Latin poetry, resonates particularly closely with that in epigram books, on which see Höschele in this volume. 3.9.22 hic numerosissimae causae terminus fuit […]. Coda: 3.9.22-28.

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account’)16 to generate an exceptionally – suspiciously – strong sense of ending. But it is unpicked immediately (temere dixi, ‘I spoke too soon’, 3.9.28), as Pliny goes on to extend the letter by half as much again. He revisits the joke at the (true) close, adding a pun on littera/‘letter’: ‘this will be the epistle’s end, really, the end; I shan’t add a letter’.17 In the end, you might say, such play depends on – and conspires to consolidate – a defined finis.18 Equally, you might emphasize the ludic subversion. What is at stake here is, precisely, definition; and if closure in individual letters is open to question, the (de)termination of book-unit is a more gaping aperture still. *** What emerges most clearly from the long debate over the Epistles’ stages of publication is the indefinite nature of any one book’s sense of closure. Take the endings of the first three books. 1.24, helping (Suetonius) Tranquillus with a property purchase, can be defended as an optimal summary of the first book’s themes of friendship and patronage, and Pliny’s deuteragonist Suetonius generates satisfying if mysteriously prophetic ring-composition with the addressee of 1.1, Septicius Clarus.19 Book 2 has if anything a clearer frame, pitting the death of a paradigmatic senator, Verginius Rufus, in 2.120 against the life of testamentary fraud (featuring more scenes of death) still being lived by the counter-exemplary senator, Regulus, in 2.20.21 Yet if Book 2 stands well enough 16 17

18

19

20

21

3.9.28 quae omnia uideor mihi […] persecutus ~ 3.9.1 possum iam perscribere. Clichés: e.g. 2.11.25 and 9.13.26 respectively. 3.9.37 hic erit epistulae finis, re uera finis; litteram non addam. What is the threat: a Buchstabe or another whole Brief? Issues of ending in 3.9 are considered independently by Gibson and Morello 2012: 240-241. For epistolary false closure of the most literal sort, see Sen. Ep. 22.12-13. After a sententious exhortation to Lucilius, Seneca defers the end to add a customary dose of Epicurus: ‘I was just putting the seal to my letter, but I must open it again’ (iam imprimebam epistulae signum: resoluenda est) – this at the end of a new start in Book 3. Thematic summary: Merwald 1964: 31 and Hoffer 1999: 221-225 (also, naturally, seeking closure for his own monograph). Addressees: Henderson 2003: 116. Septicius (praetorian prefect under Hadrian) is the future dedicatee of the Lives of the Caesars of Suetonius (ab epistulis to Hadrian). Verginius, like Corellius Rufus in 1.12, exemplifies the importance of death for Pliny not just as closural but as a motif of opening. Pliny’s political career, as instantiated in letters, takes its life from the deaths of these surrogate parents (Bernstein 2008 and 2009; Gibson and Morello 2012: 104-135). Of course deaths are not restricted to beginnings and ends (e.g. Silius Italicus in 3.7, Pliny the Elder in 6.16): Pliny’s structuring principles do not submit so easily to crude analysis. Only one testator explicitly dies, but death is in the air for all three (2.20.2 grauiter iacebat; 2.20.7 nouissima ualetudine; 2.20.11 tamquam morituram). The closure of

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on its own, 2.20 also completes Books 1-2 as a set, with its reprise of Pliny’s favourite malefactor from 1.5, the first substantial letter of the collection after its programmatic opening parade of inconsequentiality (1.1-4).22 Perhaps, then, the reader is to take these two books as a unit; certainly they are implicated chronologically, as Pliny weaves backward and forward through the early NervanTrajanic years.23 This impression is reinforced when Book 3 emerges as the consular book, for the first time mentioning and thematizing Pliny’s high office of AD 100.24 Yet 3.1 at the same time unpicks the closure of Book 2, first by presenting a theme to match that of 2.1 (an exemplary senator of the older generation, this time still alive), second by addressing the same Calvisius Rufus who received 2.20. Meanwhile, this book ends with the clearest accumulation of closural allusions yet,25 as Pliny reports in 3.21 the death of Martial, demonstrates his editorial finesse in cutting down an epigram(matist) down to size,26 and reflects on that canonical sphragis-theme, literary immortality. A suitable end to a book, no doubt, but also the strongest closure in the collection so far:27 had antiquity bequeathed us only three books of Pliny’s letters, literary readers would have good reason to be content with this as a finale.28 Is this enough to override the closure of Books 1 and 2, to subsume them into a larger, three-book structure? As the jigsaw expands, the sole certainty is the contingency of any closure – and the inevitable role of reader as its arbiter. Certainly, explicit closural clichés are more numerous in some places than others. Two particularly strong book-ends in this respect are 5.21 and 7.33. In 5.21 Pliny responds to news that one friend, Julius Valens,29 is terminally ill, another, Julius Avitus, dead. He perfomatively cuts short the laments that ensue:

22

23

24 25 26 27 28

29

Book 2 is reinforced by the counter-closure within 2.20, it ends with a gloomy prediction of Regulus’ future life and success to balance the celebration of Verginius’ past. Is there also a deliberate reflex in 2.20.13-14 habiturum; et habebit of 2.1.12 et habemus et habebimus? That is, of course, apparent inconsequentiality. For rich readings of these letters see Ludolph 1997: 99-141 on 1.1-4; Hoffer 1999: 15-44 and 50-55 on 1.1, 1.3 and 1.4; Marchesi 2008: 27-36 on 1.2-3. On the tendency of Epistles 1-2, in contrast to the Panegyricus, to project Nerva’s and Trajan’s principates as an indistinct continuum, see Hoffer 1999: 142-143; Gibson and Morello 2012: 24. On Book 3, see especially Henderson 2002c. For ‘closural allusions’, see Herrnstein Smith 1968: 172-182. Henderson 2002b. So too Merwald 1964: 79-80, who proposes a (too tidy?) structuring triad 1.1 – 2.10 – 3.21. The impression, reinforced by the strong sense of opening in 4.1 (a new cycle, to grandfather-in-law Calpurnius Fabatus, begun; a journey planned; a temple to be dedicated), may not be accidental: Seneca’s Moral Epistles present themselves as a three-book collection later expanded (Lana 1991: 280-281). An unfortunate name in the circumstance.

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‘I shall put an end to this letter (finem epistulae faciam), so that I can put an end too to the tears which the letter has forced out of me’ (5.21.6). The redoubled theme of death feared and sealed, Pliny’s rare self-reflexive sign-off, and the word finis, all conspire to generate a particularly emphatic sense of an ending.30 A sign that Book 5 marked an intermediate end-point during Pliny’s serial publication?31 Or a pointer to the final editorial activity of constructing a nine-book collection, in which Book 5, the middle of the nine books, presents an ‘ending in the middle’, a twist on the familiar conceit of ‘proem in the middle’?32 Reader, decide (or not). 7.33 exudes finality in a different way, not this time with death (though it features Herennius Senecio, one of the famous victims of the treason trials of AD 93, alongside his nemesis Baebius Massa) but in its reprise at length of the theme of literary immortality. Pliny ‘augurs’ the immortality of Tacitus’ Histories, at this stage a work in progress, and supplies material for inclusion in an express bid for eternal fame.33 Within our nine-book collection, this makes a symmetrical reprise of the immortality theme from 3.21, complete (as posterity, if not Pliny, can observe) with an equally inaccurate prediction of literary longevity.34 But imagine for a moment a collection with no eighth or ninth book. 7.33 makes a superb conclusion to Books 1-7 as a set. Here is a letter to one of Pliny’s favourite correspondents,35 framed by two of the highest accolades Pliny can claim: an opening pun on his priesthood36 and a climactic, lapidary quotation of

30 31

32

33

34

35

36

Elsewhere Pliny combines the formula finem faciam with apology for pushing the limits of an individual letter (2.5.13, 6.16.21). Sherwin-White 1966: 35, after much more exhaustive scrutiny (but with no interest in the sort of reading proposed here) finds that “all the indications are against separate publication” for Book 5. On the ‘proem in the middle’, see Conte 1992; Kyriakidis and de Martino 2004. It is striking that 21 is also the number of letters in both Cic. Ad Att. 5 and Ad fam. 5 (the only number on which Ad Att. and Ad fam. coincide, and the only such correspondence between Cicero and Pliny except Ad fam. 7 ~ Plin. Ep. 7). ‘I augur – and augury is an area of expertise – that your histories will be immortal; hence my especial desire (I shall be honest about it) to be included in them’ (auguror – nec me fallit augurium – historias tuas immortales futuras, quo magis illis (ingenue fatebor) inseri cupio, 7.33.1). Pliny proves as wrong in anticipating the survival of the Domitianic Histories (7.33.1) as he does in fearing the short life of Martial’s epigrams (3.21.6): These are not of course the only ironies at play in these letters, as Pliny challenges Martial and Tacitus in a bid for control of his posterity. This is Tacitus’ eighth letter, keeping him neck and neck with Calpurnius Fabatus (recipient of 7.32). Only with Book 9 does Tacitus emerge as the favourite correspondent (eleven letters against Fabatus’ nine and Voconius Romanus’ eight). Pliny advertises his augurate in 4.8; 10.13 displays the winning plea. It was probably bestowed in 103 (Birley 2000a: 16).

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the divine Nerva (proleptically valorised as emperor-to-be),37 to the effect that Pliny presented ‘an example (I quote his very words) like those of olden times’.38 Not to mention the lexical and thematic ring-composition with 1.1, as this strongly historiographical letter, book-ended by history (7.33.1 historias … 7.33.10 historia), recalls Pliny’s notorious opening disclaimer for his letters, ‘I wasn’t writing a history!’39 – And the parting sententia makes a perfect Plinian motto: HONESTE FACTIS VERITAS SVFFICIT (7.33.10). Should we then postulate the publication of a seven-book collection, to which Pliny in time added two further books without emending what had gone before? The theory has been proposed, if little endorsed.40 Or is my last paragraph a salutary warning of the ease with which closure can be found in the ‘wrong’ places? Book 7’s closure is soon unravelled: rather as (I suggested) 3.1 ‘unpicked’ the closure of 2.20 through a shared addressee, Book 8 unpicks 7.33’s claim to finality by opening with a letter to Septicius Clarus, recipient of 1.1, so challenging the ring of 1.1/7.33 with a new proposition 1.1/8.1, and thus Book 1/Book 8.41 Fast-forward to Book 9, making up the Muses’ number,42 and we find yet another ring established: where 1.1 depicted Pliny responding to Septicius’ urge to publish letters, 9.1 has Pliny urging Maximus to publish works of his own, complete with responding opening phrases: ‘you have frequently

37

38

39

40

41

42

With diuus quidem Nerua (the quidem throwing weight not least onto diuus) and what follows, Pliny draws attention to the temporal twist which allows this letter to inhabit the Domitianic past, but end, as it were, in Nerva’s principate. 7.33.9 exemplum (sic enim scripsit) simile antiquis. To be antiquus is high praise in Pliny’s lexicon of conservative values: e.g. 1.22.2 (Titius Aristo), 2.9.4 (Erucius Clarus), 3.1.6 (Spurinna’s villa); cf. Lefèvre 2009: 23-47 and 273-277. 1.1.1 neque enim historiam componebam. On the Epistles’ “ironic status as a discussion of the possibilities of autobiography as a form of historia” (Henderson 2003: 118), see Traub 1955; Sallmann 1979; Beutel 2000: 165-170; Ash 2003. Merwald 1964: 115-137 (for different reasons). Might it be pertinent that Pliny’s avowed imitator Sidonius Apollinaris (below, n. 70) ended his Epistles at Book 7 (cf. Sid. Ep. 7.8.1), subsequently adding Books 8 and 9 (cf. Sid. Ep. 8.1.1, 9.1; Harries 1994: 7-10)? Bodel [n. d.] proposes, on the contrary, conjoint publication of Books 78 (my thanks to John Bodel for kindly sending me a copy of this unpublished study). Explicit indication of an earlier letter having been circulated comes only in Book 9 (9.19.1, much debated: cf. Mommsen 1869: 32; Murgia 1985: 200-201; Marchesi 2008: 239-240). Merwald 1964: 117 and 136 sees this reprise of 1.1 (together with Book 8’s total of 24 letters, matching Book 1) as a sign that Book 8 was originally designed as a final instalment. A further closural sign lies in 8.1’s thematic evocation (in the illness of a favourite freedman) of Tiro in Cicero’s Ad fam. 16 (the last book). As Roy Gibson observes to me, it is peculiar that Septicius receives two letters in Book 1 (1.1 and 1.15), then goes to ground until 7.28 and 8.1. Lefèvre 2009: 310 (his own last page).

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encouraged me …’ ~ ‘I have often advised you …’.43 Can these completing claims to closure ever be quantified, ordered, ranked? Whatever the mechanics of Pliny’s publication, it is clear that book-closure in its many forms is above all provisional.44 The reader of each book finds closure of one sort or another at its end, only to turn the page, or commence a new scroll, to find that the presumed closure was, one might say, false. This is an inevitable outcome: just as each book combines the individuality of the letter with the possibilities of combination, so the collection as a whole combines the individual integrity of the book with a higher unity. One might wonder, though, whether Pliny shows increasing awareness of this as the collection comes towards its close: here I draw closer to the playful if not deceptive sense of Trugschluss as often understood. We have observed how 7.33 in particular exudes finality, one which 8.1 reveals as temporary. It is curious that Book 8 ends with a different but equally, if not more, deceptive move. 8.23 laments the death of Junius Avitus, a young senator to whom Pliny played moral guide.45 The subject offers apt closural allusion, which (as in 5.21) Pliny complements with striking final words: ‘for I cannot now think or speak of anything else’.46 The letter thus seals Book 8 with the move from illness (8.1) to death (8.23); within a nine-book collection, it creates pleasing symmetry with 2.1: as Book 2 opens with the death of Pliny’s moral tutor,47 so Book 8 ends with the death of his moral tutee, encapsulating Pliny’s growth from protégé to protecteur.48 Yet of course this is not how Book 8 ends. These multiple points of closure deceive us, as the book trumps Avitus with its biggest card of all, a final letter to Maximus.49 Whatever the reason for this displacement of 8.23 from the final position which it longs to inhabit,50 the noble sorrow at young Junius’ death does not stop the collection from playing a joke on the reader – and warning that 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

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1.1.1 frequenter hortatus es ~ 9.1.1 saepe te monui. See Murgia 1985: 198 (and Merwald 1964: 136). For the notion of provisional epistolary book-closure, see already Cancik 1967: 138151 on Seneca’s Epistulae morales. See 8.23.2 and 4; also 2.6. What better name than Avitus (‘ancestral’) to encapsulate the old-time morality which Pliny holds so dear (7.33.9 with n. 38 above)? 8.23.9 neque enim nunc aliud aut cogitare aut loqui possum. Verginius was indeed literally Pliny’s tutor (legal guardian: 2.1.8). Bernstein 2008: 218-219 sees 8.23 as a bid for quasi-paternity of Avitus. Complete with closing wordplay: 8.24.10 quod esse maximum debet. uale. The addressee of 9.1, one (more) Maximus, will then unravel this closure as does Calvisius in 2.20/3.1. Possibilities include: 8.24’s role in Book 8’s theme of slavery (Whitton 2010: 134139); its gubernatorial theorizing as preparation for Book 10 (Woolf 2006: 102-103; Lefèvre 2009: 170-171); the structural force of its Ciceronian allusivity (Zucker 1928: 219-232; Cova 1972: 28-35), which either binds the letter to 7.33 (Marchesi 2008: 224-225; Lefèvre 2009: 155-156) and/or ring-composes Book 8 (cf. n. 41 above on 8.1, and Lefèvre 2009: 194, who sees Book 8 framed by humanitas).

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Pliny’s letters are not prepared to submit to the structural scrutinist without a fight.51 *** Our journey brings us, finally (one might think), to Book 9 and the collection as a whole. By now the reader has discovered some of the complexities, porousness and indeed wit of book-endings: will it pay off at the last? We have seen already the responsion of 1.1 and 9.1, just the first of a series of letter-pairs which speak to each other across the nine books to generate structural closure.52 Let me dwell now a little in the twilight of this collection. Marchesi has drawn attention to the suggestive choice of addressees for the first and last letters of the collection: 1.1 to Septicius Clarus, Mr Bright, and 9.40 to Pedanius Fuscus, Mr Dark, embrace Books 1-9 to make a diurnal cycle from sunrise to sunset.53 To complement this ‘daily round’, as it were,54 scholars have in various ways seen the Epistles’ lifeblood ebbing away in the final book. Such is the appeal of a narrative in which Pliny’s literal death, widely believed to terminate his epistolary project(s), is metaphorically expressed as the collection draws to a close, whether (for Sherwin-White) in a failing supply of material or (for Marchesi) in a final book “ominously dominated by a sense of impending death”.55 To glance once more at 51

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For another macabre joke, intended or not, see 8.16.1: ‘I have been done in by the illnesses and even deaths of my people’ (confecerunt me infirmitates meorum, mortes etiam). To give a vestige of completeness to my survey, I mention the framing of Book 4 through Pliny’s trip to Comum (4.1 ~ 4.30.1; cf. Merwald 1964: 98), and the extensive investigation into Book 6’s subtle structures offered by Gibson and Morello 2012: 36-73. Most obviously 1.5 ~ 9.13, 1.6 ~ 9.10, 1.20 ~ 9.26: see primarily Murgia 1985: 198199. On 1.6 ~ 9.10, the subject of keenest debate, see recently Marchesi 2008: 118135 and Edwards 2008; and add 1.6 ~ 9.14 (Whitton 2012: 355-362). To the following discussion of closure in Books 9 and 10, add the independently conceived Gibson and Morello 2012: 234-264. Marchesi 2008: 239 and 249-250, building on and varying Barchiesi 2005: 332 (“Mr VIP […] Mr Almost Famous”). Our text has only SEPTICIO in the inscriptio for 1.1, but his identity is scarcely in doubt (Gibson 2012). With the (partially extant) index, whether written by Pliny or compiled later in antiquity, the reader had gentilicium and cognomen for each addressee (Robbins 1910; Gibson forthcoming b). I adapt from Henderson 2002c: 206 n. 118 on Pliny’s (equally important) seasonal round: “The theme of Pliny’s round is justly deployed to close down the collection when 9.40 fills in his summer and winter, and ‘we can add autumn and spring’ to complete the picture.” Sherwin-White 1966: 40-41 and 51; Marchesi 2008: 239; see also Leach 2003: 162 on Book 9’s sense of ‘valediction’. 9.1 certainly sets a tone, with Planta’s death (7.1 and 8.1 prepared the way with the illnesses of Geminus and Encolpius). Recurrent talk of a meagre grape-harvest (9.16.1, 9.20.2, 9.28.2) may have more than literal meaning

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9.1, can it be coincidence that the first letter of the final book combines the subject of completing literary work with notice of the death of Planta (prefect and author)?56 Here, at last, surely, is the beginning of the end …57 The more we seek cogency and editorial control in Pliny’s collection (and there is doubtless more than Sherwin-White allowed), the more the need for narrative pulls us to perceive metaphorical death looming towards the close.58 But this appeal should not lead us to overlook the open-endedness of the final letter, whether as part and parcel of that closure, and/or as a hint that even Book 9 can have only a contingent end. 9.40 forms together with 9.36 a diptych on Pliny’s daily routine at his two great villas in Tuscany and Laurentum.59 Having already dealt with Tuscany in 9.36, Pliny responds in 9.40 to Fuscus’ request for information on his Laurentine ways: scribis pergratas tibi fuisse litteras meas, quibus cognouisti quemadmodum in Tuscis otium aestatis exigerem; requiris quid ex hoc in Laurentino hieme permutem. (Plin. Ep. 9.40.1) You write that you much appreciated the letter of mine in which you learned how I spend my summer vacation in Etruria; you ask how my habits differ in winter in Laurentum.

The first phrase has a strongly closural meta-epistolary edge, implying also ‘you (reader of the collection) have enjoyed my letters’, but it pulls the other way too.60 As Pliny puts words into Fuscus’ mouth, characteristically filling in the

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(Whitton 2010: 134 n. 96). On the narrative pull of death, see Altman 1982: 149: “Both for real letter writers and for readers of epistolary fictions there is a doubtless a profoundly felt truth in the ostensibly specious argument that correspondents exist only in their letters.” In Pliny’s case the metonymy of letter and person is clearest in 6.7.1, as Calpurnia cuddles Pliny’s parchment (cf. de Pretis 2003: 139-140). According to a scholion on Juv. 2.99, Pompeius Planta wrote a history of the civil wars of AD 69. Pliny urges Maximus not to be dissuaded by Planta’s death from publishing a work, already written, critical of him (9.1.4): ‘finish this (hoc perfice), which has long seemed complete/perfect (olim absolutum uidetur) to us your readers’. The injunction applies as well to Pliny himself: cf. 9.11.2 incipio enim satis absolutum existimare […], ‘I begin to consider [my work] sufficiently accomplished/complete’. On readers’ dependence, even in a postmodern age, on ultimately rigid expectations of ending, see Kermode 1967: 18-20. The ‘two great villas’, that is, to the reader of the collection (cf. 2.17 and 5.6, chiastically reprised here). For the former, see Barchiesi 2005: 331. The phrase also ensures a clearly Ciceronian exit: both the word pergratus and the expression gratae litterae tuae fuerunt (vel sim.) are identifiably clichés of his letters. Contra Sherwin-White 1966: 524, with a parting

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other side of the dialogue, we are reminded that Fuscus will be writing back to thank him for this second letter too: even this final letter must “inevitably suggest the existence of responses”.61 So too the letter’s final words pull in two directions: habes aestate hieme consuetudinem; addas huc licet uer et autumnum, quae inter hiemem aestatemque media, ut nihil de die perdunt, de nocte paruolum acquirunt. uale. (Plin. Ep. 9.40.3)

There you have it, my summer and my winter ways. You can add spring and autumn: halfway between winter and summer, they waste none of the day and take little of the night. Yours, Pliny.62 As Marchesi sees, at the end of this wintry letter “night is the last image to occupy the reader’s eye”.63 Yet we should not miss the quintessentially Plinian balance expressed by the final sentence as a whole: our final sight of him is not in summer or winter, but in the happy middle-ground of spring and autumn, when neither day nor night is too long: the seasonal and diurnal reflex of his allencompassing moderation.64 Nor should we miss either the subject of the letter as a whole: not death, as one might expect (hope?) to find at a collection’s end, but life.65 Right to the bitter end there is no sign that this indefatigable advocate will stop ‘reworking his speeches time and time again’, at his desk to the last.66 Modesty, generic humility and the reality effect forbid a closing prayer for immortality sphragisstyle; such hopes have been expressed elsewhere,67 and all that remains is for Pliny to put his final, but – or rather: and – open-ended, touch to his life in

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shot at the doubters of documentary value: “This postscript is hardly part of an entirely fictitious correspondence.” A maxim from MacArthur 1990: 10; cf. Altman 1982: 148, and the opening of this paper. Pliny likes this use of habes (‘there you have it’) to end a longer letter (1.8.18, 1.22.12, 2.11.25, etc.). Here, unusually, it ends a short note – and the collection. Marchesi 2008: 249. Moderation is a key word for Pliny in the Epistles as it is for Trajan in the Panegyricus (references in Hoffer 1999: 61 n. 17). For a final epistolary (non-)death see egregiously Ov. Ex P. 4.16.49-52, a living death as unending as his exile. Cicero’s last letter to Atticus from exile proclaims him funditus perisse (Cic. Ad Att. 3.27; see Beard 2002: 126-127 on the irony). Cf. 9.40.2 illa quae dictaui identidem retractantur. The loss without trace of these speeches makes this final instalment into Pliny’s insurance policy for gloria (cf. Mayer 2003) all the more poignant. See esp. 9.3, 9.11, 9.14, 9.23.

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letters. Letters may die, but Pliny shows no sign of slowing down,68 revising and redrafting into eternity. Even in conspiring to grant 9.40 the closure that a literary reading desires, we can remind ourselves of the truism that the most satisfying closure contains as much that is open as is closed. But the more we occupy ourselves with 9.40, the easier it is to forget that this letter is an outstanding instance of a false ending. If a first-time reader has ever appreciated the sort of (over-)refined structural play which fascinates current criticism (including the paragraphs above), a surprise lies in store. Book 9 is not the end of Pliny’s collection: beyond it lies another entire book of letters. Not only that, but a new set of rules: here are letters to a single, imperial addressee, and one who has right of reply; what is more, the loosely chronological run of Books 1-9 is temporarily broken as we find ourselves back at Trajan’s accession in AD 98 (order is restored at 10.15, with Pliny’s journey to Bithynia-Pontus).69 This is not only a modern reader’s experience: at least in later antiquity, some readers of Pliny’s letters had the ten books in similar form.70 The existence in particular of this ten-book manuscript tradition makes the division still imposed in most current scholarship on Pliny increasingly difficult to justify.71 For the linear reader, then, 9.40 is nothing if not false closure.72 Does the true end, then, lie in 10.120-121? Certainly there is closure to be found, and wielded as evidence in the recently re-opened debate concerning the crafting of Book 10. In this final exchange Pliny requests and receives retrospective permission for his wife Calpurnia’s use of imperial official travel passes on private business (following the death of her grandfather, Calpurnius Fabatus). Holders of the communis opinio that we witness here Pliny’s literal 68 69

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So too 9.35.1 ‘I am [still] extremely busy just now’ (sum […] hoc tempore occupatissimus), and 9.39 (starting a new rebuilding project). The Bithynia-Pontus letters span three calendar years, beginning in 109, 110 or perhaps 111 (for references, see Birley 2000a: 16-17; Noreña 2007: 240 n. 3). 10.1-14 all date from 98 to 102 (Sherwin-White 1966: 62-65; Cugusi 1983: 230). The oldest surviving manuscript of Pliny (Π), from the late fifth or early sixth century, belongs to the ten-book family (on the tradition, see Mynors 1963: v-xxii; Reynolds 1983). The best evidence before that for a ten-book collection is the 9+1 configuration adopted by Ambrose and Symmachus (see respectively Liebeschuetz 2005: 31-36 and Noreña 2007: 264, with references), but not all are convinced (Savon 1995; Sogno 2006: 34-35). Pliny’s most explicit imitator, Sidonius Apollinaris (see Gibson forthcoming a) shows no signs of knowing a tenth book. In general on Pliny’s antique reception see Cameron 1965, id. 1967. For the complaint, see Noreña 2007: 266, with due recognition of the clear stylistic differences which demarcate Book 10. Syme saw in 9.28.4 a subtle hint of Pliny’s provincial appointment (see finally Syme 1985: 184); like Woolf’s suggestion on 8.24 (above, n. 50), this allows the boundary of Books 9 to 10 to look, with hindsight, more porous than assumed. 9.28 is also strongly closural within Books 1-9 (9.28.4 litteras curiosius scriptas ~ 1.1.1 epistulas si quas paulo curatius scripsissem).

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death, cutting his tenure and correspondence short,73 have seen, naturally enough, little sign of engineered literary closure. In recent years, however, three scholars have independently argued that Book 10 is, no less than Books 1-9 (only differently), edited by Pliny himself.74 Two of them adduce the elegance of 10.120-121 as evidence of closure by design: Stadter points to the axiomatic blending of ‘public’ and ‘private’, recalling Book 10’s opening (10.1 et priuatim et publice opto), and the theme of return; Noreña sees in Pliny’s presumptuousness and Trajan’s complaisance a climax in the friendship which Book 10 constructs.75 One might add the closural relevance of the death of Calpurnius Fabatus and the aptness of the reality reference to the communication network, ending this most documentary book with a self-reflexive reminder of the letters’ physicality;76 one might also note the elegance of ending this Imperial book with the word augere – from the pen of the Augustus himself.77 What is more, Calpurnius Fabatus, cause of the journey, is well known to the reader of the earlier books of letters:78 is this closure then not just for a tenth book, but for a ten-book collection?79 But is this false closure of a different sort – fantasy creating meaning? It should by now be clear that closure and false closure press awkward and fundamental questions of intentionality and the role of the reader. When do the closural features of Book 10 (of Book 9, of Book 8 …) add up to an argument for editorial activity, rather than proof of the reader’s determination to find closure? Can closure ever be ‘true’ – or false?80 P.S. One of the falsities of my argument so far is its implicit claim that closure is an issue of linearity. To discuss the structure of Pliny’s books on the basis simply of their final (and occasionally opening) letters is, of course, only to scrape the 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

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Represented by Williams 1990: 2. Stadter 2006; Woolf 2006; Noreña 2007. The argument was already made by Barwick 1936: 439-445. Stadter 2006: 70; Noreña 2007: 270-271. Hor. Epist. 1.20 is paradigmatic. I owe the latter suggestion to Yuddi Gershon. See 2.11.10, Pan. 59.1 and Tac. Agr. 2.1 for other possible Trajanic augeo puns. He is Pliny’s second favourite correspondent (above, n. 35). Or, less conveniently, for a collection of Books 4-10: 1.120 mentions the three key family members (Calpurnia, her grandfather, and her aunt Calpurnia Hispulla), all first introduced in 4.1. Further comments on 10.120-121 in Gibson and Morello 2012: 270. For a direct engagement with the intentionality of ancient Trugschluss, see Kaesser’s article in this volume; for the questions here raised, see also Barchiesi 2005 with his ‘fuzzy’ model of reading the ancient book-collection. And for one more question, return to Fowler 2000: 289: “And how satisfactory is it to phrase critical readings always as questions?”

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surface. By way of apology, let me end with a final challenge to 9.40’s claim to occupy the clinch position as Pliny’s last word on closure. This challenge emerges not from Book 10,81 but from within Book 9 itself, in 9.13, Pliny’s celebration of his ‘vengeance for Helvidius’. Here we encounter for the last time the salient political closure of the Epistles, namely the death of Domitian. The construction of a watershed between the principate of the ‘tyrant’ and the enlightened rule of Nerva and Trajan is, as has been well observed, a key strand of Pliny’s literary-political project in the Epistles as in his Panegyricus.82 Here I propose that this letter is accordingly the ultimate closural moment of this collection – with all the loose ends that brings. Epistles 9.13 tells the story of Pliny’s ultio Heluidi, his revenge for Helvidius the Younger, one of the victims of the treason trials of AD 93.83 This had taken the form of a senatorial speech in 97 in which Pliny had publicly attacked Publicius Certus, a senator who was not actually responsible for Helvidius’ prosecution, but had apparently taken the prosecutors’ side.84 Pliny has mentioned the speech several times in earlier letters, beginning perhaps almost at the very opening of his collection (1.2 makes a likely, but not certain, reference to it), always with the implication that the addressee of his letter has a copy to hand.85 Of course we do not, as Pliny perhaps foresaw: the more remote readers of his collection are teased all the way to Book 9 for the dénouement of this saga,86 making 9.13 the grand finale of Pliny’s project of avenging Helvidius in letters as in life.87 Prompted to action by the death of Domitian (occiso Domitiano, 9.13.2), Pliny consults Helvidius’ surviving family, picks his 81 82

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Which might be better characterised not as postscript, but as a semi-detached collection running in parallel to Books 1-9. On Pliny’s temporal politics, see especially Hoffer 1999 and Beutel 2000. On the wider indignation industry of the period, see Ramage 1989; Freudenburg 2001: 209242; Flower 2006: 234-275. PIR2 H 60. Helvidius and his fellow victims are known principally from Pliny’s letters, where they are talismanic (Carlon 2009: 18-67), and from Tac. Agr. 2.1, 45.1. Suet. Dom. 10.2 gives the supposed reason for Helvidius’ execution. De Heluidi ultione is the title bestowed by Sherwin-White 1966 on Pliny’s speech. Certus was absent, as Pliny anticlimactically reveals in 9.13.22. Pliny’s speech may be dated to mid-97 (Sherwin-White 1966: 492). 1.2.6; 4.21.3; 7.30.5. Cf. Sherwin-White 1966: 90-91. As Pliny tells us elsewhere, ‘people are provoked to find out what is delayed’ (incitantur enim homines ad noscenda quae differuntur, 9.27.2). Like us, Pliny’s addressee Quadratus was too young to hear the speech for himself (9.13.1): here we witness Pliny making history for the younger generation (and so for posterity). Although the letter poses as para-rhetorical, a mere ancillary to the speech, Pliny’s closing remark reveals its real importance (9.13.26): ‘Here’s a letter, then, one no smaller (non minorem), if one considers the norms of a letter, than the speech you read.’ The topos of apology doubles as a claim that 9.13 is no less significant (non minorem) than the speech itself, a worthy climax to his Epistles.

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moment in a senatorial debate, and begins obliquely to accuse Certus of physical assault during Helvidius’ trial. This sparks a lively debate, the upshot of which is no formal prosecution or even censure, but Pliny claims to have achieved his goal – namely that Certus, who had been due to progress to a consulate, did not (9.13.22-23).88 The letter ends with notice of Certus’ subsequent death, which was accompanied, we learn, by ghostly dreams of Pliny looming over him with a dagger (9.13.25).89 It has long been observed that 9.13’s theme of avenging Domitianic victims responds in particular to 1.5. There Pliny states his intention of bringing Regulus to book for his (ancillary) role in the trial of Arulenus Rusticus, another of the victims of 93,90 and establishes at the very outset the death of Domitian as the definitive temporal marker of the collection: ‘Have you seen anyone more frightened and chastened than Marcus Regulus after Domitian’s death (post Domitiani mortem)?’91 The letter goes on to emphasize repeatedly the reversal of roles between Regulus and Pliny, the senatorial reflex of the imperial shift from Domitian to Nerva. For Pliny as for Tacitus, Domitian’s death is the defining moment in both political and literary terms, the enabling force for an entire literary career.92 It is no surprise, then, to find it functioning as a structural linchpin at the central point of Book 1’s central letter, the dramatic narration of Corellius Rufus’ suicide in 1.12.93 It is from Domitian’s death, more than any other, that Pliny’s collection takes its vital force. Though 1.5 dwells on the interplay between past and present in the rolereversal of Pliny and Regulus, it is directed firmly to the future: even as he prepares for attack, Pliny affirms time and again that he will do nothing until Junius Mauricus (Rusticus’ brother) returns from exile.94 Yet Pliny never does 88

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Explained by Sherwin-White 1966: 498-499 (pace Lefèvre 2009: 74 n. 111). Pliny tendentiously maintains in another senator’s case (2.12) that such implicit censure is in fact worse than any formal punishment. Pliny thus claims – without claiming – the kudos of an assassination of his own (Freudenburg 2001: 233-234). ‘He had supported the attack on Arulenus Rusticus and crowed over his death’ (Rustici Aruleni periculum fouerat, exsultauerat morte, 1.5.2). Like Certus, then, Regulus is not the spearhead of the prosecution. On 1.5 and Regulus, see Ludolph 1997: 142-166; Hoffer 1999: 55-91; Beutel 2000: 201-207; Méthy 2007: 141-151. 1.5.1 uidistine quemquam M. Regulo timidiorem humiliorem post Domitiani mortem? Death lies thick in 1.5.1-3, where Domitiani mortem is followed hard by Rustici Aruleni […] morte and ‘meis mortuis’ (the victims of informer Mettius Carus). Cf. Tac. Agr. 3.3. Domitian’s assassination is alluded to at 1.12.8 (adfuit tamen deus uoto), almost precisely half-way through the letter (227 words into a total of 445). On the importance of middles in Pliny, see Whitton forthcoming b. On the temporal politics of 1.12, see especially Hoffer 1999: 141-159. 1.5.10 exspecto Mauricum; 1.5.15 dum Mauricus uenit; 1.5.16 uerum, ut idem saepius dicam, exspecto Mauricum – a characteristically careful tricolon. This letter, like

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attack Regulus, at least in political life.95 Here in particular the prospective 1.5 speaks to the retrospective 9.13: the unfulfilled revenge for Arulenus finds an answer in the fulfilled vengeance for Helvidius;96 threats against Regulus come to fruition in the crushing of Certus, his ‘substitute victim’ for Regulus.97 Scholars have noted and commented on this responsion, which establishes a crucial frame for the collection as a whole. Nevertheless the degree to which 9.13 is multiply climactic remains understated. Let me list some factors which contribute to its remarkable sense of closure. 9.13 is the longest letter in Book 9 and the fifth longest in the collection.98 It is the last of a series of letters memorializing Pliny’s forensic, or better senatorial, triumphs;99 more than any other, it claims monumental status with its exuberant amplificatio: ‘of the many crimes committed by many people [in the entire principate of Domitian!] none seemed more appalling’ than Certus’ assault on Helvidius.100 This is not just Pliny’s crowning act of ultio, it is the highlight of his senatorial career. It is also the last in a series of improving letters

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many, gains future direction also from its addressee, Pliny’s protégé Voconius Romanus. He settles for character assassination in a sustained campaign of epistolary calumny: see especially 2.20, 4.2 and 4.7; also 1.20.4, 2.11.22 and 6.2.4. As Murgia 1985: 199 puts it, “the balance is therefore more one of question and answer than of reversal”. The time contrast is reflected in the matching pair of ‘glosses’ in each letter: Mauricus ‘had not yet returned from exile’ (nondum ab exsilio uenerat, 1.5.10), but Arria and Fannia ‘had returned from exile’ (ab exsilio redierant, 9.13.5). Whether or not they are editorial additions (Sherwin-White 1966: 15, 98; Murgia 1985: 196; Deufert 2008 suspects interpolation), they capture in miniature the shift from plan to action, from hope to fulfilment. Hoffer 1999: 88; cf. Murgia 1985: 199, and already Sherwin-White 1966: 93. Carlon 2009: 18-67 reads the entire cycle of ‘Stoic opposition’ letters framed by 1.5 and 9.13. 9.13 is Pliny’s fifth-longest letter, at 981 words. Book 9’s second longest letter is 9.26 (a pendant to 1.20; see Cugusi 2003), at 726 words. The placement of these two letters (one-third and two-thirds through the book) can hardly be accidental, nor that each is followed by a letter concerning history’s immortality and involving Tacitus: he is addressee of 9.14 (see below), and widely taken to be the subject of 9.27. More strong closure in 9.28 (above, n. 72). The largest-scale ‘trial letters’ are 2.11 (Marius Priscus), 3.9 (Caecilius Classicus), 4.9 (Julius Bassus). Pliny’s language in 9.13 deliberately evokes a trial (9.13.7 crimen […] reum […] reus, 9.13.13 defendunt crimenque […] defensione suscipiunt). The tendency to describe these as ‘forensic’, though, overlooks their all-important arena, the senate (cf. also the weighty 8.14, with Whitton 2010, for Pliny’s role in a different sort of senatorial trial). 9.13.2 inter multa scelera multorum nullum atrocius uidebatur; cf. also 9.13.4 immanissimum reum (‘the most shocking of defendants’). In a spectacular lapsus, Lefèvre 2009: 67 and 282 dates this event to Nerva’s principate.

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addressed to the young senator (and future star) Ummidius Quadratus.101 The letter is bracketed by death: it begins, in reprise of 1.5, with Pliny’s last mention of Domitian’s demise,102 and ends with the timely death of Certus, thus bringing into a single epistolary unit the power of death as both opener and closer. Finally, the following letter, 9.14, must be significant.103 Here Pliny makes a final call to Tacitus to join him on the road to literary immortality, opening up the theme explored in 7.33 for one last reprise, this time with a change: where in 7.33 Pliny confessed his desire to piggyback on Tacitus’ success, here at last he is an equal partner: ‘let us tread our chosen path [sc. together]’ (pergamus modo itinere instituto).104 The juxtaposition of the two letters binds Tacitus – a notable absence from the narrative of 9.13 – into Pliny’s enterprise of ultio.105 Furthermore, just as 7.33 bestowed (temporary) finality on Book 7, so 9.14, with this final gaze into the future at Tacitus’ side, marks the closure of 9.13.106 These considerations conspire to make 9.13 a strongly closural letter. This triumphant climax competes with and complements the low-key fade-out of 9.40 as the closural letter of the collection, not least in its grand temporal ringcomposition, bringing the Epistles back to the heady post-accession days of 97. Whatever shades surround the dusk of 9.40, Pliny presents himself here dwelling insistently in the dawn of the new age – (almost) preparing us for Book 10’s new start at Trajan’s accession.107 This is doubtless structurally satisfying; but how successful is it in political terms? Why does Pliny have nothing more recent to tell us about? In other words, is he imposing sham closure on his collection, and on the year 97?108 101

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Ummidius was first mentioned, alongside Fuscus Salinator (addressee of the final 9.40) in 6.11; see next 6.29 and 7.24, and Sherwin-White 1966: 367-368. On Ummidius (cos. 118), see Syme 1968 and Carlon 2009: 189-191. 9.13.2 occiso Domitiano ~ 1.5.1 post Domitiani mortem. Marchesi 2008: 36-39 explores a connection of 9.13-14 in terms of Virgilian quotation and allusion (see further ibid. 113-117 on 9.14). For other examples of contiguity making meaning, see Berry 2008: 302-303 on 6.15-16 and Whitton 2010: 130-134 on 8.13-15, and see n. 2 above. Whitton 2012. Tacitus may have been away on provincial command (Birley 2000b: 235) until his consulate in late 97; the debate of 9.13 probably occurred in the second quarter of 97 (cf. Merrill 1919: 383; Sherwin-White 1996: 495). Even this will be unravelled/strengthened when the reader reaches 9.23 and 9.27. Note 9.14’s closing onomastic play in silentio protulit (reprising with all seriousness a joke from the first letter to Tacitus: 1.6.2 silentium). ‘Almost’ because Nerva and 97 are never quite Trajan and 98. Of course Book 9 does not dwell uniquely in the past. 9.37, the only precisely datable letter (Sherwin-White 1966: 39-40), belongs in 107, and Sherwin-White’s 1966: 39-41 ‘book-date’ is 106108 (others, including Syme 1958: 663 and id. 1985, have preferred 109). Cf. Herrnstein Smith’s 1968: 212 description of false closure: “where the use of particularly effective devices in the terminal lines of a poem can compensate for or

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Certainly it has been seen that way, though the point is rarely pressed. The best Pliny can produce for his grand finale is an informal attack on a relatively minor player, in his absence, and ten years ago.109 The scene is not dignified by the presence of the emperor;110 indeed, the lack of a relatio or any comment from Nerva threatens bathos.111 Pliny confines this disappointment, however, to a concessive clause,112 and the mention of a Caesar opens the way to a climactic quotation of the end of Pliny’s own speech: ‘let him surrender under the best emperor the prize which he received from the worst’ (namely, the consulate).113 The Panegyricus-flavoured sententia leaves no doubt about the temporal politics of this narrative:114 we see Pliny one last time as the senatorial instantiation of the change on the Palatine. But recollection of the Panegyricus, where Nerva’s principate is characterized as a time of crisis,115 if anything underlines the unusual degree to which 9.13 reveals the rifts and tensions of the accession moment in its narrative of a factionalized senate.116 Returning to the past in this letter perhaps opens as many doors as it closes.

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110 111 112 113 114

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obscure – for some readers more than others – the structural inadequacy of the conclusion.” This implies no game, but an attempt to hoodwink the reader (true Trugschluss). No less than other ideas of false closure, it treads through dangerous fields of intentionality. E.g. Marchesi 2008: 37, putting Pliny in his place with her gloss on de Heluidi ultione, “a small chapter in the post-Domitian purges […]”. We should perhaps be cautious about talking down the stigma which may have attached to such open criticism of a fellow member within the senatorial club. Contrast 2.11, where Pliny and Tacitus plead in a senate presided over by Trajan (n.b. 2.11.10-11, 15). Contrast 7.33.6 (above, at n. 37). Pliny’s reader knows from 4.22 that Nerva did not pursue a hard policy against Domitian’s so-called delatores. 9.13.22 et relationem quidem de eo Caesar ad senatum non remisit. 9.13.23 reddat praemium sub optimo principe quod a pessimo accepit: thus climax of speech and letter coincides. In Pan. of course the optimus princeps is usually Trajan, but 9.13 is not the only time Pliny applies the description to Nerva (2.1.3 with Whitton forthcoming a ad loc., Pan. 88.5). For optimus vs. pessimus princeps see Pan. 44.2, 94.3, 95.4. Pan. 5-10: cf. Kienast 1968; Roche 2002: 44-46. See Hoffer 1999: 9, suggesting 9.13’s anxieties as reason for its exclusion from its natural chronological habitat in Book 1 (other reasons for its delay are offered by Sherwin-White 1966: 15, viz. that Certus was still powerful in the late 90s, and/or that the publication of the speech was too recent). One riposte to my objection is that this senatorial mêlée is what allows Pliny to shine as the exceptional exemplary figure. For Syme 1958: 120, Pliny’s self-historicizing in 9.13 reveals that Tacitus has not included the affair in his Histories. Beutel 2000: 196-200 sees the letter as an attempt to galvanise Pliny’s fellow senators to action in the form of a rebuke for not following his lead in grasping the nettle in 97. Any such rebuke is well hidden, and it is hard to see why Pliny should have waited ten years to make this intervention.

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The last paragraph demonstrates some of the possibilities of reading against the grain, of looking for fault-lines in Pliny’s self-representation, whether in terms of transparent editing decisions (à la Sherwin-White) or in the revelation of unrealised Hofferian ‘anxieties’. To collaborate with closure – or to find it false – is ultimately a reflection of our reading strategies: do we want to be Pliny’s admirer or critic? It would be false to claim closure in my own interpretation. What I hope to have shown, above all, is the contingency – the inevitable falseness – of any closure in Pliny’s / P.T.O.

II. Time, Space, and (False) Closure Minding the Gap: Aetiology and (False) Closure* Markus Asper

Thank God for Callimachus.1

Work on ‘closure’ in Greco-Roman literature at first concentrated on collecting the facts, that is, literary devices or gestures that provide closure.2 The pioneers of closure looked at phenomena like nightfall, slamming doors, and book divisions, to name but three disparate examples.3 However, they missed one narrative device from the beginning, namely aetiology. To the best of my knowledge, it is still largely missing from the discussion.4 There is no question that many stories, texts, and episodes end with aetiologies and that therefore aetiology belongs somehow in a list of closure-providing devices and gestures. On the other hand, if one compares, say, ‘nightfall’ and ‘book division’, that is, one device that is a part of fiction and one device that is not, it is clear that aetiology poses one problem that sets it apart: it crosses that *

1 2

3

4

Thanks to Farouk F. Grewing for making me think about closure, to Michèle Lowrie for suggesting improvements, and to David Lunt for checking my English; special thanks to Barbara Kowalzig for thorough discussion and many suggestions. Research for this article was facilitated by New York University’s ‘Humanities Initiative’ in 2008/9. I borrow this exclamation from Fowler 1994: 252 (though I am quoting it here in a way that differs from his ironic intentions). I understand ‘closure’ as a “sense of finality, stability, and integrity” in the words of Smith 1968: viii; see also Fusillo 1997: 210 (experience of “completeness, integrity, and coherence”); in Fowler’s list of five different senses of ‘closure’ (1989: 78), this one corresponds to (2). These examples are taken from the index s.v. ‘closure’ in Fowler 2000: 342; cf. Smith 1968: 121. For the emergence of research on closure, see Fowler 1989: 75-77; Fusillo 1997: 209. The exception is F. Dunn’s work on ‘closing aetiologies’ in fifth-century tragedy as a “connection between past and present” (Dunn 1996: esp. 45-63). See also Kowalzig 2006: esp. 97-98, for a political interpretation of hero-cult aetiology in tragedy.

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divide and thus translates directly into extra-narrative reality. Compare these two ways a story can end: (a) ‘... and then, they lived happily ever after.’ (b) ‘... and ever since then ravens are black.’ Clearly, (a) provides full narrative closure: with this ending, story-time concludes. At the same time, the story is sealed off in respect to real time and remains largely undefined with respect to the audience’s time. Case (b) provides a different form of closure: again, the story is over. But the feeling of closure and the aesthetic effect of the story depend heavily on whether, in the audience’s world, ravens exist and whether they are really black. With aetiology, not only is narrative economy at stake; it also relies on the audience’s respective real world to a much greater extent than closure – providing devices that are either confined to the narrative world of the text, like nightfall, death, and marriage, or the texts’ material reality, like the end of the book or chapter. Mythological narratives in ancient Greece and Rome usually contained some aetiological element: part of the narrative provided a cause for facts present to the audience. Since aetiologies are ‘tales of social relevance’,5 it comes as no surprise that, for modern readers of ancient Greek and Roman poetry, aetiologies in ancient literatures provide an alienating experience. Not only does the modern reader often not know exactly what the ancient text tries to explain, but even if s/he knows, that fact might not be part of her/his world. Aetiology has also largely vanished from modern literature and thus strikes modern readers as aesthetically rather odd. Repeatedly, it has been argued that aetiology is the core structure of local myth in Greece, performed in local ritual. Unfortunately, only rarely has local myth survived in its original form. As far as one can tell from how these narratives look in the literary sources that we still have, there was a tendency for such narratives to end with an aetiological motif. This is also characteristic for Hellenistic poetry where one almost expects narratives to end aetiologically, as many do. In this paper, I will look at such aetiological endings, hoping to arrive at a more systematic approach to the problem of what aetiology-in-poetry does for closure, true or false. 1. ‘Embedded’ Aetiologies and Closure For the sake of comparison, let us begin with some aetiologies that are themselves part of literary narratives but offer glimpses of how local, non-literary aetiologies would have looked: such aetiologies I will call ‘embedded’ here, which means that I take them to be an integral part of local, and thus to a certain extent oral, culture. As a matter of course, our access to oral aetiology in ancient Greece is almost completely blocked. The following examples will give an impression of how close one can come: 5

Kowalzig’s expression (2007: 25).

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(a) When Herodotus reports how war broke out between Athenians and Aeginetans around 506 BC (5.82-88, a short version in Pausanias 2.30.4), he recounts the complicated legend that accounted for the ancestral hatred between Athenians and Aeginetans at that time. Stripped to its essentials, the story runs like this: in former times, Aegina was a tributary of Epidaurus, which was a tributary of Athens. In order to overcome a drought, at the behest of the Delphic Pythia and with Athenian permission, the Epidaurians made two statues of Athenian olive wood for which they compensated the Athenians with an annual tribute. The drought was duly warded off. Much later, the Aeginetans broke away from Epidaurian rule and eventually stole the two statues. In turn, the Epidaurians stopped paying tribute to the Athenians. When these complained, they were referred to the Aeginetans who refused to pay or to return the statues. An Athenian force that tried to recover the statues from Aegina was defeated, perhaps with the consent of the deities concerned. The Aeginetans installed the statues in a new sanctuary that banned all things Athenian. Interesting as a major, quite complicated narrative (involving accounts of the relations between Athenians, Epidaurians, Argives, and Aeginetans, oracles, the abduction of two very special statues, and one massacre) centered around one aition (whence the hatred between Aeginetans and Athenians?) that is itself interspersed with a couple of minor aitia.6 This narrative perhaps does not qualify as mythical, but at least it is related to cult aetiology. Furthermore, the Herodotean account must be a reflection of local ‘oral aetiology’, both for Athenian and for Aeginetan audiences. (b) Pindar’s ninth Nemean Ode celebrates the victory of Chromios in horseracing, won at some time around 474 BC. The games the ode was composed for are not, however, the Nemean ones, but the Pythian ones in Sikyon. Almost in passing, Pindar tells the aition of the Sikyonian festival: it was founded by Adrastos when he had fled from Argos and before he later founded, during the expedition against Thebes, the Nemean games. Pindar tells the myth succinctly, almost elliptically: […] ἱππίων ἀέθλων κορυφάν, ἅ τε Φοίϐῳ θῆκεν Ἄδραστος ἐπ’ Ἀσωποῦ ῥεέθροις· […] ὃς τότε μὲν βασιλεύων κεῖθι νέαισί θ’ ἑορταῖς ἴσχύος τ’ ἀνδρῶν ἁμίλλαις ἅρμασί τε γλαφυροῖς ἄμφαινε κυδαίνων πόλιν. 6

(Pind. Nem. 9.9-12)

Why do the statues of Damia and Auxēsia look in Aeginetan Oia as if they have fallen to their knees? Why do women in Attica no longer wear Ionian pins (peronai), but the Karian khitōn? Why do women at Argos and Aegina, instead, wear very big pins? Why does one Aeginetan cult refuse to accept donations of Athenian pottery? See Kowalzig 2007: 26 and 211-213, who uses this text to explain some mechanisms of aetiology and discusses its background. She aptly describes the story’s structure as “a chain of pasts” (26).

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Markus Asper […] the crown of horse-races, which Adrastos founded for Phoebus by the streams of Asopos […] who was then king there and, with new festivals, competitions of men’s strength, and elegant chariots, made the city famous and prestigious.

Pindar can only afford to be so brief and instead focus on the myth of Amphiaraos, who competed with Adrastos for power at Argos and eventually became his brother-in-law, because he expects his audience to be familiar with the myth. This myth was probably performed or in some form present in the hero cult for Adrastus at Sikyon, perhaps even in the games celebrated. For Sikyonian locals, the question of who founded the games was loaded with political significance since in the sixth century the tyrant Cleisthenes probably tried to re-found the games as Pythian games, whereas they had been formerly part of the hero cult of Adrastos. Pindar obviously is more interested in the parallel of founding games and founding cities (Aitna had just been founded by Hieron who installed Chromios as the local authority) and also in the priority of the Sikyonian games before the more prestigious ones at Nemea. Nonetheless, Pindar’s account preserves a local aetiological narrative in an artistic context that pursues more complex objectives. (c) Attic tragedies, based on myths and staged for somewhat larger, but still mostly local audiences, sometimes end with aetiologies that must refer to oral narratives known throughout the audience.7 For example, Aeschylus’ Oresteia could pass as an aetiological tale that explains the presence of the cult of the Eumenides at Athens on a very large scale. (Of course, in Aeschylus’ work the tale is put to more complex tasks.) One finds something similar, though on a smaller scale and coming as a surprise, in most of Euripides’ tragedies: for example, at the end of Hippolytus, the character Artemis reveals to the dying hero and his father Theseus that, in compensation for his sorry fate, Artemis will make him perpetually remembered in Troezen (1423-1427): young girls will, on the threshold of womanhood and marriage, shear their hair and dedicate it to him (presumably, as part of a heroic cult). σοὶ δ’, ὦ ταλαίπωρ’, ἀντὶ τῶνδε τῶν κακῶν τιμὰς μεγίστας ἐν πόλει Τροζηνίᾳ δώσω· κόραι γὰρ ἄζυγες γάμων πάρος κόμας κεροῦνταί σοι, δι’ αἰῶνος μακροῦ πένθη μέγιστα δακρύων καρπουμένῳ·

(Eur. Hipp. 1423-1427)

But to you, miserable man, in recompense for these terrible things, the greatest honors in the city of Troezen 7

Dunn 1996: 45-63. For further aitia in Greek tragedy, see the list in Fantuzzi 2002: 272-273.

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I will give. Girls unwed, before their wedding, shall shear their hair for you. Through a long age you will reap the deepest mourning of their tears.

In the play, these few lines sum up and refer to a religious reality in Troezen that is mentioned by other sources, too, notably by Pausanias (2.32.1-4). There was a corresponding Attic cult of Hippolytus, about which, however, little is known.8 Such local tales must have been ubiquitous. Since they were oral, they only survived when adapted for, and integrated into, written texts which almost invariably changed their shape, added additional functions and, generally, altered them as narratives. Thus, it is not Herodotus, Pindar, Euripides, and their respective authorial agendas I am concerned with here, but the embedded narratives that we can glimpse through the aetiologies in their texts. The phenomenon of aetiological narrative is not restricted to the ancient world: (d) One of the tribes of the Canadian First Nations is the Gitksan. Those Gitksan who live in a place called Kitsumkalum (Kispiox, British Columbia) tell the following story (abbreviated and simplified), which they call the ‘motherbear myth’:9 In earlier times their ancestors lived somewhere else, in a place called Gitwenlakstae. Once there was a great scarcity of food. During their travels some hunters found that there was plenty of salmon at the place which is now called Kitsumkalum. So the tribe moved, finding bears and Caribou in addition to the salmon. In spring, while the girls were out berry-picking, one of them complained about bears’ excrements (sic). Later she was abducted by two bears and brought to a settlement of strange bear-men. Eventually she married one of the two bears. In the meantime, she was missed by her brothers in the village who, after searching for her and seeing her trail between those of the two bears, realized that she had been taken captive by the bears as punishment for these complaints. The girl lived as a wife to one bear among all these other bears. She became pregnant and had little bear cubs. When winter began, her brothers began to search for her. They killed a lot of bears, including her husband. Finally they found her and took her back, along with the cubs. These were eventually turned into human beings by education and became the ancestors of the modern Gitksan.

8 9

Evidence collected in Barrett 1964: 3-6; discussion in Dunn 1996: 53-54 and 87-88; Kowalzig 2006: 91-94. My source for this myth is http://www.kitsumkalum.bc.ca (last accessed on Sept. 10, 2005). For background, see McKenzie 2007: 46; cf. McDonald 1988: 5.

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As a charter myth, the structure of this narrative exhibits the same features as ancient Greek aetiologies: its main function is to explain why the tribe lives where it does and why they have an affinity to bears in many of their cultural practices. The story does so by linking the present state to historical facts (the habitations of the tribe in former times; what happened to bear mother ages ago). Just as for Herodotean or Euripidean audiences, for the Gitksan tribe the aetiological tale factually happened in the remote past. In 1998, the Canadian Supreme Court accepted this story and similar ones as legally valid evidence that supported, by way of oral history and in lack of written treaties or titles, the Gitksan claim to more than 20,000 square miles of land.10 Evidently, the aetiology still works. The oral forms beneath the literary ‘surface’ in Herodotus, Pindar, and Euripides, must have looked and functioned more or less like the Gitksan myth. Among their respective audiences, the social acceptance of the aetiological stories they presented must have been similar to the one of the mother-bear myth among the people in Kitsumkalum. In all of these cases, the narrative ends with an aetiology. What does, however, ‘end’ exactly mean in these (and similar) cases? In the following, some general conclusions will be offered on what can be said or assumed about aetiological narratives of this type, and then some comments that describe the kind of closure that such narratives provide. (1) These narratives are ‘embedded’ in the sense of not having been detached or not having developed much from their functional or geographic origins. Embedded aetiologies are local narratives, designed to explain local facts and collective pasts of certain, locally defined communities of which the target audience consists. (2) Not only did these narratives have a place in local collective memories, but probably they also played a role in local ritual. At least some of the aetiologies in Herodotus’ account mentioned above have to do with a local sanctuary and its peculiarities. The same applies to the Troezenian side of the Hippolytus aetiology. Adrastos’ founding role must have been remembered somehow throughout the proceedings of the Sikyonian games. That means that these tales are actually ‘sourceless’ because they are remembered collectively. As for aesthetics, in such stories, the audience presumably gets exactly what it expects to get, because this is the point of the narrative. Any further embellishment and, especially, narrative suspense and thus surprise are probably unnecessary. What about the closure of these stories? Despite trying to reconstruct the plot of these aetiological myths from mere allusions in secondary contexts, one can make a few simple points concerning their efficiency in bringing about closure: (1) Embedded aetiologies provide a closure that is ‘total’: they not only end the historical sequence of narrated events, they also close off the past for the audience present. In the aetiological account, the present is linked seamlessly to 10

A. DePalma, “Canadian Indians Win a Ruling Vindicating Their Oral History.” New York Times of Feb. 9, 1998.

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the past. What at first glance looks like historical awareness, rather denies time and change: what is now, is exactly the same as it was in the time of the ancestors, of the gods and heroes. Time comes full circle:11 the past is part of the present, and the present continues the past without change. Therefore, these narratives effectively minimize or even jump the gap between past and present.12 Far from celebrating the past, embedded aetiologies erase the past by making it disappear into the present. Therefore, from an outsider’s perspective, these narratives show circular structures: invented for the present, they construct a past that, at the same time, is, in all important aspects, like the present. From its beginning, the whole narrative is structured by the demands of the present audience.13 (2) The narrative identifies closure in time (‘now is then’) with closure in causation/agency:14 what is now is caused by events in the beginning. Cause and effect have been matched, and thus the action is closed. It is the circularity that makes the closure achieved ‘total’. At the end of the story, the audience arrives nowhere else but at themselves. Aesthetic aspects (the closure of the narrative) and non-aesthetic aspects (the explanation and construction of identity) become one. There is no need to assume that this type of aetiological narrative was restricted to certain epochs or areas. The quality of explanation provided and the tempting unity of past and present achieved in closure must have made it a prominent species (if not the main one) of local myth all through antiquity, at least.

2. ‘Detached’ Aetiologies and False Closure Local aetiological tales sometimes adopt a life of their own and develop into something that transcends the local level. In what follows, I shall provide some examples of another type of aetiology that achieves another form of closure, which may turn out to be false. These, I will call ‘detached’ aetiologies;15 my 11 12 13

14 15

See Kowalzig 2007: 27-34 on circularity in aetiology and its tendency to erase the past. The structure of circularity causes what J. Vansina famously describes as “floating gap” in oral history (1985: 23-24 and 168-169). See Kowalzig 2007: 28-29: “A working aetiology makes statements about history bound to the moment in which it is being told.” Cf. Ricœur 2002: 45 on the teleological structure of “the national chronicles of the founding events of a given community”. On the relation of time and causation in aetiology, see Kowalzig 2007: 26-27. The terms of ‘embedded’ versus ‘detached’ attempt to capture the types of social immersion that these tales exhibit without suggesting a uni-directional narrative according to which one follows from the other, as ‘raw’ versus ‘cooked’ would have done or ‘contextual’ versus ‘decontextualized’.

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account of them in comparison with embedded aetiologies is informed by three categories: ‘hierarchy’, ‘frame’, and ‘separation’. The closest parallel to how embedded tales may have typically looked is provided by autonomous aetiological tales. By ‘autonomous’ I mean narratives that, like the examples discussed above, focus on, or end with, one main aetiology. As is well known, such narratives become a common literary format especially in early Hellenistic times. For example, Eratosthenes’ Erigone and Callimachus’ Hecale come to mind. Both are based on Athenian myths: in brief, Eratosthenes told the story of how Dionysus made the Athenian Ikarios introduce vines and wine to Attica. When his fellow farmers became intoxicated by the new product, they thought he had poisoned them and therefore killed him. Later, his daughter Erigone, led by her pet dog, found her father’s corpse and hanged herself. When a mysterious disease took hold of Athenian girls, the Athenians sent to the Delphic oracle, which ordered them to found a cult for Ikarios and Erigone. This story serves as a triple aetiology: first, it ‘explains’ how wine came to Attica; second, how all three characters became signs among the stars; third, why in Attica, the Aiora, a religious festival with initiatory character that ended the wine-centered Anthesteria (or coincided with its second or third day, the Choes or Chytrai, respectively), celebrated the girl who hanged herself.16 Unfortunately, almost nothing survives of Eratosthenes’ treatment (9 lines in six fragments of what once must have been a 1,500-line poem). These are the concluding remarks of a much later paraphrase that indicate how for Eratosthenes the names of the constellations was the most important aition: Ἡ [sc. Erigone] δὲ μαθοῦσα τἀληθὲς ἑαυτὴν ἀνήρτησε. νόσου δὲ ἐν Ἀθήναις γενομένης, κατὰ χρησμὸν Ἀθηναῖοι τόν τε Ἰκάριον καὶ τὴν Ἠριγόνην ἐνιαυσίαις ἐγέραιρον τιμαῖς. οἳ καὶ καταστερισθέντες, Ἰκάριος μὲν Βοώτης ἐκλήθη, Ἠριγόνη δὲ παρθένος· ὁ δὲ κύων τὴν αὐτὴν ὀνομασίαν ἔσχεν. ἡ ἱστορία παρὰ Ἐρατοσθένει. (Schol. gr. in Hom. Il. 10.29 Dindorf17) When she [i.e. Erigone] learned the truth, she hanged herself. Then, a plague hit Athens, and according to an oracle, the Athenians celebrated Icarius and Erigone with yearly honors. Turned into stars, Icarius was called Bootes, Erigone the virgin. The dog retained his name. The story is in Eratosthenes.

With Callimachus’ Hecale, we are in a more fortunate position. Although the myth explains perhaps even more obscure facts, Callimachus’ treatment fared much better than the Erigone. The Hecale became a classic, many fragments 16 17

For Choes, see Rosokoki 1995: 107-110; for Chytrai, see Deubner 1969: 118-121. Quoted from Rosokoki 1995: 29.

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survive. Its plot is more complicated, however: an evening thunderstorm forces Theseus, on his way to kill the Marathonian bull, to seek cover in a little hut he happens to pass by. This is the modest home of Hecale, a very old woman who receives the young and hungry hero in the friendliest way. Theseus leaves her in the morning, and when he returns after having mastered the bull, he finds her dead. In her memory, he names the deme Hekale after her and founds a cult of Zeus Hekaleios. Again, the end of the poem survives only in a late prose paraphrase: Πρὸς δὲ τὴν ἕω ἀναστὰς [sc. Theseus] ἐξήιει ἐπὶ τὴν χώραν, χειρωσάμενος δὲ τὸν ταῦρον ἐπανήιει ὡς τὴν Ἑκάλην· αἰφνίδιον δὲ ταύτην εὑρὼν τεθνηκυῖαν ἐπιστε[νάξ]ας ὡς ἐψευσμένος τῆς προσδοκίας, ὃ εφ[. . . .]εν μετὰ θάνατον εἱς ἀμοιϐὴν τῆς ξενίας ταῦτηι παρασχέσθαι, τοῦτο ἐπετέλεσεν δ[ῆ]μον συνστησάμενος ὃν ἀπ’ αὐτῆς ὠνόμα[σ]εν, καὶ τέμενος ἱδρύσατο Ἑκαλείου Δι[ό]ς. (Dieg. 10.31-11.7, p. 65 Hollis) Early in the morning, he [i.e. Theseus] arose and left the place. After defeating the bull he returned to Hecale. He found her suddenly dead and groaned over his frustrated hope. What he had [?intended] to give to her after her death as a reward for hospitality, this he fulfilled by founding a deme that he named after her. In addition, he built a sacred precinct of Zeus Hecalius.

Both stories explain certain local cults and insofar seem to be in line with embedded aetiologies. Nonetheless, there are also some differences which, as I will argue, affect and change the effect of closure achieved. True closure, as described above, skips the past and lets the recipients experience history as ending with themselves, by matching ancient to modern places and realities. How are these narratives different from the first set of embedded examples? First, although these poems are based on local tales, they have most probably not been presented to local audiences, which sets them radically apart from, e.g., tragedy. Admittedly, some scholars have maintained that Eratosthenes wrote the Erigone while still at Athens before he migrated to Alexandria. For Callimachus, however, nobody doubts the Alexandrian background. The same is true for Euphorion who was also interested in local Attic myth.18 Without doubt, Alexandrians were interested in Athenian narratives (not only the ones that regarded themselves as Athenian, as Callimachus’ Pollias).19 Such interest corresponds to the political interest that the Ptolemies and their leading circles had in Athens during the first half of the third century.20 When exposed to these 18 19 20

See his Mopsopia, CA fr. 34-36 and SH fr. 417. Fr. 178 Pf. = 135 Asper. Asper 2011; for the facts, see Huß 2001: 271-281.

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narratives, however, Alexandrian audiences could not experience the mythic past as ending with themselves: because they lived somewhere else. Thus, if they experienced any closure, it would not have been the closure of ‘embedded’ aetiologies. Two more points follow from the same fact: Second, embedded aetiologies are tied to certain religious occasions the celebration of which contains a narrative-performative element. As far as one can judge, these detached Alexandrian narratives were composed for audiences that were not in the same way dependent on occasions. Perhaps they were meant for readers, perhaps for audiences at competitions (in that case, although it is true that the competition was part of a cultic framework, the frame, however, did not dictate the content of what was performed). Either way, the occasion would not have been a commemoration of the myth remembered in the narrative. Third, these aetiological poems utilize what is usually called intertextuality (or, partly‚ ‘antiquarianism’), but the function and impact of which one should rather understand as ‘distance-markers’: embedded aetiologies mirrored and informed the local collective knowledge that everybody in the community had at their hands as part of their local identity. In the case of these Alexandrian narratives, not only do the stories concern places and times far away and not immediately the audience, even more, there are intermediate stages of narrative (I am tempted to call them ‘intermediate voices’) that make the divide even broader: references to Homer and Athenian literature remove the narratives twice from local and immediate experience. In addition, the plot of these narratives itself is taken from local written traditions, in this case, from Atthidographers.21 Perhaps, the Attic ‘flavor’22 even had an alienating effect (language emerged as an end or a means per se). Here an additional layer between the past and the present emerges that would be impossible in sourceless, embedded aetiologies. Fourth, a similar effect emerges from certain aesthetic features of these narratives: Both narratives contained, as far as we can tell, passages that embedded aetiologies would not bother to tell: the hospitality scenes, depicted in great detail, the digressions (due to the scarce remains of the Erigone, Callimachean examples must suffice: Hecale’s life, the dialogue of the birds). In these narratives, there is an element of surprise, which embedded aetiologies, almost by definition, can never provide. In one respect, however, both the Hecale and the Erigone were like embedded aetiologies, e.g., the stories that Herodotus refers to: they integrated several aetiologies into one plot, that is, they hierarchized them. In the course of the Hecale, the reader learns, among other things, about the reasons for the color of the raven and certain kinds of Attic bread while the main narrative pursues its higher aetiological end.

21 22

As for Eratosthenes, see Rosokoki 1995: 21; for Callimachus, Hollis 1990: 6-10. Fantuzzi and Hunter 2006: 196. Perhaps the habit of Alexandrian poets to invent ‘prequels’ to episodes in Homer would have had a similarly distancing effect (see Barchiesi 2001 on “futuro riflessivo” and Payne 2007, index s.v. ‘Polyphemus’).

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One can, however, also make use of aetiological narratives in several nonhierarchical ways to which I turn now: most simply, as an element, often almost an aside, in a non-aetiological context. I shall call this device ‘framing’. It comes in many variations which mainly depend on the genre providing the frame. First, there is epic framing. The many aetiological references with which Apollonius intersperses the Argonautica, fall into this class.23 The search for the Golden Fleece has the structure of a typically Proppian fairy-tale plot, that is, its plot is not geared towards aetiology in the way embedded aetiology would be, or even as in the stories of Hecale or Erigone discussed above. In Apollonius’ version, however, the reader comes across foundation stories mapping out the travels of the Argonauts like pearls on a string. These little stories relate, e.g., how the shrine of ‘unanimity’ (homonoia) on the island Thynias was founded or why certain pebbles at a beach of what is now Elba look sweaty.24 Occasionally, Apollonius even goes off on aetiological tangents that have nothing to do with the Argonauts (e.g., the aition of the rain-ceremony on Ceos, provoked by the mere mention of the Etesian winds: 2.498-527).25 Apollonius almost always marks such explanative asides by reference to the unchanging continuity of the fact explained through time (εἰσέτι καὶ νῦν, and similar). In comparison, aetiology in Homeric poetry is much better integrated into the narrative and kept at a distance in the past.26 Second, there is hymnic framing that is quite close to the epic form, although, in at least some passages, the hymn’s narrative is interspersed with cult aetiologies more densely than any epic could possibly be (compare especially the narrative hymns of Callimachus).27 In these hymns, several locally unconnected aetiologies are forced into one narrative or one list-like structure that makes the biggest difference with ‘embedded’ aetiologies. There is presumably no audience with which all narrated stories could resonate in the way of ‘embedded’ aetiologies. 23 24 25

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On the strong aetiological current in the Argonautica see Fantuzzi and Hunter 2006: 92-98. 2.669-719 (Thynias), 4.654-659 (Elba). This is one of the passages that evoke comparison with Callimachus who tells the same aition (fr. 75.32-37 Pf. = 87 Asper). Interestingly, the two both implicitly explain the name of the Etesian winds, but in different ways. E.g. Il. 7.81-90 (Hector on Achilles’ tomb, cf. Od. 24.80-84); Od. 11.74-78 (Elpenor gives Odysseus instructions on his tomb). See Fantuzzi 2002: 272: Homeric aetiologies “are kept tightly in check and do not at any point have a direct link to the author’s own situation in time”. See also the brief account of comparisons between Homeric and Apollonian aetiology in Morrison 2007: 273. See especially the Hymn to Artemis which presents in 15 verses (225-239) four to five aetiologies for sanctuaries (Miletus, Imbrasia on Samos, one or two sanctuaries in Arcadia, and Ephesus). See Ehrhardt 2003: 280-289; for a different view, see Petrovic 2007: 208.

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Third, there is didactic framing: in this case, what one could define as aetiological ‘short stories’ finds a place in non-narrative surroundings. Aratus explains in his Phaenomena, e.g., why justice has vanished from mortal life (Phaen. 97-136); Nicander, in his poem on snake-bites, narrates why snakes enjoy ever-lasting youth (which was meant by Zeus to be a gift for mortals) and why the snake Dipsas inflicts deadly thirst on whom it bites.28 Again, one finds parallels that are less clearly marked within their non-aetiological contexts, in archaic didactic poetry, e.g., Hesiod’s stories on Pandora and Prometheus. Although a reference to the time of the narrator and the unchanged state of what was initially caused in all instances ends the aetiological ‘short story’, the effect is different from the one assumed for embedded aetiologies. Most obviously, after the aition has been told, the story still goes on. What ends with ‘until now’ turns out to be a side-track that is quickly by-passed by the main course of narrative (or the didactic agenda). Differently from embedded aetiology and also from Hecale-type hierarchical narrative, the aition therefore does not deliver any but insignificant closure. In drawing attention to the fact that the main story is still far from being over, the device actually propels the reading act by renewing narrative desire. The digression ends, but the audience finds itself again involved in the framing plot, the suspense of which drives them on reading. Thus, when put into such frames, the closure achieved by the aetiological tale cannot be anything but temporary, fleeting, and therefore, false.29 These are actually cases of anti-closure (sometimes called ‘aperture’), a reminder that the main narrative is not yet over. The voice of the narrator whose presence is clearly felt in the Hellenistic examples quoted above, provides the second reason why such framed aetiologies provide false closure. For if the audience receives the signal ‘until now’ or ‘still for us’ or something similar, the question instantly arises of whose ‘now’ this is and who ‘we’ are: these deictic references, however, lead the reader only to the narrator’s world. The more pronounced the presence of the narrator is, the less naturally the audience will identify with him. In such cases, there remains a distance in time and place that prevents true closure and its typical circularity from being achieved, similarly to our reaction when we read, say, an aetiology in Apollonius: the story does not end with us, it ends with him.30 Thus the aetiologi28

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Theriaca 343-358; the original story in Aelianus/Ibycus [PMG fr. 342]. Both authors introduce these stories in a similar way: Aratus 100-101: λόγος γε μὲν ἐντρέχει ἄλλος / ἀνθρώποις; Nicander 343: ὠγύγιος δ’ ἄρα μῦθος ἐν αἰζηοῖσι φορεῖται. Nicander chooses this digression to ‘seal’ the Theriaca with an acrostich. I follow Smith’s definition (1968: 212) of false closure as “structural inadequacy of the conclusion”, that is, the text is at its end, but the reader does not experience closure. See Payne 2007: 13 on separation as the function of the narrator in Hellenistic poetry; Payne has in mind the separation of the poet from the storyteller. By the same rationale, however, obtrusive narrators separate readers from the fictional worlds they

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cal narrator himself, as a fictional instance, becomes the main obstacle to true closure.31 In order to suit a continuous, or even unified, plot, aetiologies must either be asides, that is, ‘framed’, or be arranged hierarchically. The “aetiological mode”32 in Hellenistic literature is most prominent, however, when authors collect and rearrange a number of aetiological narratives in non-hierarchical ways and without a frame. One finds famous examples in Callimachus, in his Aitia, the Iambs, and the prose writings, many of which collected certain classes of aetiologies (changes of names, foundation-myths, origins of competitions, etc.).33 By no means was this an idée fixe of Callimachus: Eratosthenes’ Katasterismoi, Nicander’s Heteroioumena, Boio’s Ornithogonia, or Euphorio’s Chiliades or Atakta,34 all qualify as such un-framed and un-hierarchical collections of aetiological tales. As with unity, authors and addressees of the ‘aetiological mode’ have a problematic relationship with a closure comparable to the quality of embedded aetiologies. Unlike a ‘framing’ author, the one who collects aetiological narratives must recognize beforehand that these aetiologies constitute a class of narratives. He must have a notion of what to collect, that is, he must form a quasi-theoretical idea of the possible variety of narratives and a rudimentary system of how to classify them. It is unclear when precisely the awareness of aetiology as a certain narrative structure arose, but certainly such an awareness rests on a comparative view of narratives as narratives. At some point, some specialists collect such stories. Therefore, their system of narrative classifications must have been quite developed. Such a quasi-theoretical view is based on the activities of collection and comparison and both leads to and rests on a more than local perspective. This view presupposes a perspective on myth that is removed from the immediate involvement one may assume for ‘embedded’ aetiologies. Part of the great change is, of course, technologies of recording and the social context into which they fit. Furthermore, one should not assume that both attitudes were shared by the same people. Whoever collected mythologies, cannot have

31

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present and thus increase the desire to be part of these worlds. One could also describe the effect of ‘separation’ as a clash of the two “public times” of narrative described in Ricœur 2002: 41. Mostly, aetiologies are seen as connecting past to present, regardless of their narrative status or the credibility of who narrates them: cf. Morrison 2007: 154-155 and 273274. Fantuzzi and Hunter 2006: 50. See fr. 403 Pf. = 477 Asper (Περὶ ἀγώνων), 405 Pf. = 479 Asper (Βαρβαρικὰ νόμιμα), and fr. 462-463 Pf. = 508-509 Asper; among the titles cited by the Suda are relevant Μηνῶν προσηγορίαι κατὰ ἔθνος καὶ πόλεις and Κτίσεις νήσων καὶ πόλεων καὶ μετονομασίαι (p. 524 Asper). Perhaps Philitas’ Ataktoi glōssai were already part of the same mode. Bing 2003: 338339, however, now explains the title quite convincingly as ‘unruly tongues’.

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believed in aetiological myth in the way sketched out above, such as the Gitksan.35 The Hellenistic poets even fabricated aetiological myth (or, at least, put existent fabricated aetiological myth into poetry, e.g. the Coma Berenices). It is difficult to see how one can at the same time share a belief in certain embedded aetiologies. Thus, the ‘aetiological mode’, that is, the non-hierarchical, non-framed arrangement of aetiological myth, makes embedded aetiologies impossible in two ways: whoever collected them, cannot have believed in all of them. Those to whom they were presented would have experienced a different kind of closure than the one experienced in the embedded mode. As far as one can judge from the existing collections, it is mainly the common local background that is missing and thereby the erasure of the past that is destroyed by such collections. Just one example: Callimachus arranges the last four stories of the fourth book of the Aetia in the following order (fr. 104-110 Pf. = 116-127 Asper): a Theban aition about a place called ‘Antigone’s dragging place’, a story about a Roman called Gaius and his heroic fight against the Peuketioi, how the Argo left its anchor at Cyzicus in the Bosporus region and how this anchor ended up in the sanctuary of Athena Iasonia, and, finally, the famous story of Berenice’s hair. Except for the last, nothing more remains from these stories than brief summaries. Therefore, the precise aetiological points are more or less obscure to us. This short list, however, already shows how radically Callimachus juxtaposes places and times, apparently often aiming for the greatest possible discontinuity. Compared to embedded aetiology, it is clear what kind of effect this must have had for the audience: closure is impossible because no single audience can at the same time experience a story set in Cyzicus and one set in Rome as ending with themselves, in their own place and time. The stories, at least a good part of them, are detached. The appreciative reader experiences something different from the erasure of the past and the circularity of ‘embedded’ aetiologies’ true closure. A certain preference for rare myths may have added to the effect, since most readers will not have known the aetiologies collected, many may not even have heard of the places where the mythical events took place or of the mythic cycles they were culled from. Yet, collections of this kind were not necessarily restricted to presenting a willful array of stories combined into a somewhat arbitrary ‘mythology’:36 I suggest that they had a positive and particular effect for a reader who tried to 35

36

Hence the common view of the emergence of mythology, compare Fantuzzi and Hunter (2006, 50: “[…] the slow development which saw ‘mythology’ join ‘myth’ […]”). Fantuzzi 2002 maintains that collections such as these show how ‘mythology’ replaces ‘myth’ in third-century Alexandria (a process discussed by Detienne 1986: 82-102 with respect to, mainly, Plato). The new myths in the collection, however, that is, the ones about the Ptolemaic dynasty, are clearly just ‘myths’ (and not ‘mythology’).

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make sense of the bizarre structure. The closure of the collection, in order to take place, relies on an activity of the reader (more on that later), unlike embedded aetiologies that bring the message home for the community involved and can rely on being evidently socially relevant. Compared to embedded aetiological tales, the audience is larger, but more removed. Whereas in the first case a community fabricates myths for its own practices of identity, in the second case an intermediate instance emerges, the poet who, by performing activities that create distance in time and space (these activities are collecting, recording, and arranging) aesthetically exploits the separation of his audiences from certain myths.37 That is why I classify such stories as ‘detached’. The key notion of ‘separation’ takes us one step further, that is, to the problem of what Greek aetiologies did for Roman audiences. Here, the problem of social relevance emerges quite radically. It is surprising that scholars are so rarely puzzled by the attractiveness of Hellenistic poets to Roman readers. Certainly, the problem becomes most pressing when one considers aetiologies. Most of the aetiological explanations in any Hellenistic author could not have resonated with any Roman reader (the only exception I know of is the Gaius aetiology in Aetia 4).38 In terms of the closure provided it is evident how true closure in the way of embedded aetiology becomes impossible. In passing, one may realize that some of the strategies we see in Roman authors like Vergil and Ovid who are heavily invested in aetiologies, result in providing effective surrogates to embedded aetiology and the quality of its closure: both ekphrasis and katabasis as a means of (historical) narrative and the introduction of a chronological or a calendrical axis allow readers to end up with themselves again (perhaps the re-introduction of frame and hierarchy).39 To sum up the argument: compared to the gold standard of embedded aetiology, detached aetiology, that is, almost all aetiologies that we find in Hellenistic and Roman poetry, and arguably in most parts of Greek and Roman literature in general, cannot provide anything but false closure. The main issue is the addressing of wider than local audiences and thus, of separation. The specific character of aetiology that sets it apart from other closure-providing devices also provides the cause for the problematic closure of detached aetiology: the built-in bridge from mythological fiction to the audience’s reality.

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A similar observation in Dunn 1996: 48 on aetiologies in Euripides. I hasten to admit that the degree of separation is often difficult to tell. Moreover, Kowalzig 2007: 32 makes a case for aetiologies being “socially especially active” in the space between ‘the local’ and ‘the Panhellenic’. Fr. 106-107 Pf. = 118-119 Asper. Of course, the question of closure for the Aeneid, the Metamorphoses, and the Fasti is more complex than I can indicate here: see Barchiesi 1997.

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3. Reader Response to Detached Aetiology’s ‘False Closure’ What is interesting about false closure is how readers react to it. Perhaps, then, it is permissible to speculate about how readers would react to such effects of false closure in detached aetiology. One should keep in mind that they would have been quite familiar with embedded aetiology and its narrative patterns from their local culture, its traditions, and cults. Modern readers, as we all have experienced when confronted with open-ended novels or movies, tend to provide closure by constructing possible outcomes. To give a non-aetiological example: in Lucretius, the ending of the poem with a description of a plague forces the reader to make sense of the plague’s prominent position.40 This is an instance of false closure that provokes the real one that takes place in the reader’s mind (perhaps even by putting Epicurean doctrine to work). In other words, actual or apparent openness provokes audiences to work on closure themselves. Readers feel an urge to overcome the separation from the ending and try to fill the gap that remains. Therefore, in such texts, real closure is deferred to the reader; experiencing closure now becomes more than just a receptive activity, it becomes a constructive one.41 This must especially be the case in contexts where readers expect aetiologies and thus a sort of aetiological suspense is created (certainly a phenomenon one observes in Callimachus).42 A last, well-known example will provide illustration both of false closure, actually a two- or threefold one, and the need for such constructive activity. In Aetia 3, Callimachus tells the story of Acontius and Cydippa, the structure of which is close to the genre of the novel: the story is driven by the obstacles Acontius has to overcome in order to eventually marry Cydippa (unlike in at least some novels, the female heroine here remains merely a name). Gods intervene at various stages, Cydippa nearly dies three times, and in the end, her father must be convinced of the qualities of a son-in-law whom he has never even heard of. Naturally, this type of story will achieve closure with the wedding of the two main characters, which is exactly what Callimachus delivers:

40 41

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Compare Fowler 2007: 232. See also the discussion of Lucr. 6.1247-1251 in Fowler 1989: 85 and Barchiesi 1997: 189. Compare Brooks 1984: 314: “Our most sophisticated literature understands endings to be artificial, arbitrary, minor rather than major chords, casual and textual rather than cosmic and definitive.” Perhaps, then, my reading of how detached aetiologies end narratives is informed by my expectations of what ‘literature’ should be like. Thus, the handy formula of the British novelist Ian McEwen according to whom suspense (he speaks of “narrative tension”) consists of “withholding information” (quoted in: D. Zalewski, “The Background Hum. Ian McEwen’s Art of Unease.” The New Yorker, Feb. 23, 2009: 46-61, quote at 48) must not be true in all cases. Rather, suspense is the withholding of anything that the reader is led to expect.

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[…] λοιπόν, Ἀκόντιε, σεῖο μετελθεῖν . . . . . . ηνιδιην ἐς Διονυσιάδα. χἠ θεὸς εὐορκεῖτο καὶ ἥλικες αὐτίχ’ ἑταίρης εἶπον ὑμηναίους οὐκ ἀναϐαλλομένους. (Callim. Aet. 3. fr. 75.40-43 Pf. = 87.40-43 Asper) [the only thing] left for you, Acontius, was to travel […] to the island of Dionysus [i.e., Naxos]. And the oath to the goddess was fulfilled and instantly, girls of the same age sang wedding songs for her friend [i.e., Cydippa], without deferral.

Neatly and with almost pedantic economy, Callimachus gives the necessary information to answer three questions: how the two lovers finally met, what happened to the wrath of Artemis, and whether they really married. (Remarkably, we could have supplied this information ourselves or lived without the answers.) At this point, complete narrative closure is achieved. Readers, however, know that this closure must be false, because they are, constrained by the genre, waiting for a clue as to why this micro-novel is an aition. Callimachus goes on to provide closure to this problem, too: ἐκ δὲ γάμου κείνοιο μέγ’ οὔνομα μέλλε νέεσθαι· δὴ γὰρ ἔθ’ ὑμέτερον φῦλον Ἀκοντιάδαι πουλύ τι καὶ περίτιμον Ἰουλίδι ναιετάουσιν […] (Callim. Aet. 3. fr. 75.50-52 Pf. = 87.50-52 Asper) From this marriage, a great name would come; For, still now your clan, descendants of Acontius, is dwelling, large and honored, around Joulis [i.e., town on Ceos].

Readers now can see the point of the story within the context of the Aitia. Nonetheless, they are still far removed from the closure typically achieved by embedded aetiologies. For audiences would have had to connect the aition and the facts explained with themselves, unless they wanted to be left with doubly false closure. (As an aside: one of the ways in which Callimachus’ method of telling this story is different from a novel is the stratagem of iterating moments of closure and providing three separate endings, only the last of which will turn out to be the real one.)43

43

Again, what Brooks 1984: 314 has to say about modern readers’ sophistication applies directly to Callimachus and his readers.

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Questions of relevance emerge that trigger the constructive activities I have mentioned.44 The structure is quite similar to that of the Hecale: first a conventional narrative device of closure (here marriage, there death), then the aition that leaves non-local audiences with the threat of false closure again. In the case of the aition about families on Ceos, Callimachus adds a third form of closing gesture: the long and hilarious reference to Xenomedes that selfmockingly drives home the bookishness of the whole enterprise45 – but also serves to highlight the superior narrative quality of Callimachus’ version when compared to our impression of Xenomedes’ writings that Callimachus suggests. To generalize: certain genres or contexts create a desire for aetiology, which is then withheld. But when the information is finally delivered, that is, when at the end the reader understands the aetiological point of the narrative, this is still not ‘full closure’. Unless the relevance of the aetiology becomes clear to the reader, a gap remains that separates reader and narrative. The Alexandrian reader, therefore, has to bridge a (geographical and, possibly, biographical or even generational) distance in order to relate such stories to himself. Thus, these detached aetiologies provide false closure: in fact, what they provide is a beginning, namely the beginning of an effort to make sense of the narrative.46 They trigger constructive activities that intend to bridge the gap between the world of the story and the world of the audience.47 In Hellenistic aetiological poetry such an effort must have led to a consideration of the gap itself (‘What does that have to do with us?’) and of the unifying principle (‘Why did the poet collect all these stories in that order?’). The ‘aetiological mode’ collects and co-ordinates stories that are, besides being about aetiologies, unrelated in time and space. If presented to an audience that consistently asks ‘what does the story have to do with us?’ and does indeed come up with a convincing answer, these texts produce a literary present from 44

45 46

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I have argued (Asper 2011) that the significance of Ceos for an Alexandrian audience is bound to the presence of a large Ptolemaic fleet there. Ceos is not just a little island with strange and beautiful myths and rituals, but a place of strategic importance for the Ptolemaic claim to ‘liberate’ Athens. See Walbank in Hammond and Walbank 1988: 284. Understood by Fowler 1994: 251 as Romantic irony. “An ending which is really a beginning” is sometimes called ‘anti-closure’, for example by Hornblower 2004: 329. – Aetiologies, as the reason for why the story is told, function also as a beginning, that is, as the beginning (the ἀρχή) of looking backwards, especially when readers like us do not even know the fact the aition is supposed to explain (this type of reader is also targeted in the Aetia when the narrator’s passionate urge to know clashes with the obscurity of the fact explained, e.g. fr. 43.84-85 Pf. = 47 Asper about a Cretan cult in Theban Haliartos, and fr. 178.23-26 Pf. = 135 Asper) about an onion involved in the cult of Peleus on Icus. Cf. Ricœur 2002: 40 on ‘completion’ as an activity that is typical of readers following plots.

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different pasts, and, retrospectively, by re-projecting from that present, also one unified past (plus a unified space in which that past took place). Therefore, I see the particular benefit of false closure in detached aetiologies essentially as a political one, in Homer as in Apollonius or Callimachus. They force their audiences to make false closure come true, that is, to construct pasts, spaces and presents. Audiences need to mind the gap and deal with it. 4. Conclusion ‘Aetiology’ gestures towards closure. In that capacity, it reaches out from the realm of fiction/the mythical past into the present reality of readers. Because of that particular structure, it depends to a large extent on the audience whether aetiological plots provide true or false closure. I have considered several cases that do and several that do not. It is my impression that aetiology-in-literature, especially in Hellenistic poetry, tends to provide false closure. Detached aetiology brings a false ending, because although the text’s pause and the external division are congruent, the actual end of text-related meaning-producing activity has not yet been reached. The external division suddenly emerges as a mere pause that readers (at least, some readers) would want to bridge. The longer one thinks about aetiology and closure, however, the more questions and problems emerge. Let me mention just three. First, the term ‘false closure’ seems to imply that there is a clear line between real closure and false closure, just as the now classical definition of Fowler suggests (“[…] the false ending, where the text seems to pause or end but the external division has not yet been reached […]”).48 The texts discussed above show, however, that what is real closure to certain audiences, becomes false closure to others.49 The main reason for this transition is probably detachment, that is, the separation of plots and audiences, and thus the internationalization of readers. At the same time, the aesthetics of the detached aetiological narrative emerge as, compared to ‘embedded’ aetiology, an additional concern. Detachment allows for certain aesthetic compensations, such as suspense and surprise. Second, from this perspective, there cannot be closure in ancient aetiological poetry for us. What I have hinted at for Roman readers, that is, separation in time and place, fits our situation as readers of ancient poetry even better: there is no real closure for us in the ‘aetiological mode’. In many cases modern readers no longer even have access to the facts that are explained by aetiological poetry. 48 49

Fowler 1989: 97. Fowler later critiqued his earlier attempts to pin down closure as ‘essentialist’ (1997: 4-5). – On the other hand, relativism has its limits, too. While one can argue that it is the context that decides what works as a closural device, I think it would be difficult to deny aetiology some closural force regardless of its context, due to its unique structure. What kind of closure it achieves, however, depends on (social) contexts.

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Whereas ancient readers could at least come up with constructions that linked them to the aetiologies described, we do not even seek such a link any more in these texts. At least, modern readers are thus forced to focus even more on aesthetic questions. One might argue that our detachment enables us to become better readers. Third, if it is unclear whether the pleasures of closure tend to the cognitive or, rather, on the emotional side, the case of embedded versus detached aetiologies might indicate that real closure is a combination of the two: embedded aetiologies affirm local identities which, I assume, is a combined cognitive and emotional experience. As our own reaction to detached aetiologies indicates, a plot can, on the other hand, be cognitively ‘closed’, but still leave a gap. Minding this gap, then, becomes a new source of puzzlement, speculation, and thus pleasure.

Foundation and Closure* Michèle Lowrie Closure is a formal quality and since form at Rome was a salient means of articulating all cultural spheres, closure is a vehicle into questions about how they organized their society, whether through literature, religion, politics, or the law. I start from the assumption that closure provides the sense of completion that allows you to leave something behind and move on. It lets you close the book and go read something else. It lets you set an end to a period of mourning. Foundation is complex regarding closure, since it is a kind of beginning, a transition point or zone between an old and a new order. Is there a gap between the old and the new? At what point can closure be achieved? When has the beginning come to an end? My premise is that foundation achieves closure once a given constitutional form has won ideological stability and citizens move ahead with the day-to-day business of politics and governance. After Solon set up a new law code at Athens, he left the city so that they could use this code without the founder being around to interfere, to tinker with the code, to continue the foundation. The Athenians wanted the moment of beginning to be over. The Romans, however, did not adopt this model.1 Foundation is more spread out at Rome and closure is consequently hard to pin down.2 This paper analyzes some contributions Roman writers made to the history of political thought about breaks, gaps, transitions, and closure in foundation. Rome (largely) fell out of consideration in mainstream 20th century political theory. D. Hammer’s recent book on Roman Political Thought locates the reasons for this in the Romans’ own preference for more “affective and tangible” ways of conveying political ideas than political theorists “steeped in reason and abstrac*

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2

This paper has been improved by various responses. I thank the audiences at Harvard, the University of Chicago, and the conference on False Closure in Vienna for discussion, and Patchen Markell for his generous comments on an earlier draft. Solon, as the native who leaves after an act of foundation, and the foreign founders in the Aeneid who stay (Saturn, Evander, Aeneas) offer variants on the myth of the foreign founder, who both comes from abroad and leaves after foundation, analyzed by Honig 2001: 1-40. It would be worthwhile to explore the symbolic implications of these variants in the pattern in light of democratic or, in the Roman case, republican politics. Generally Lowrie 2010; Hammer 2002: 130; Serres 1991: 1-6, 9 and 115; Miles 1988: 185 and 194; Bremmer and Horsfall 1987: 42. For the Republic, see Flower 2010: 24. Miles 1985: 195 and 199, and Ungern-Sternberg 1993: 92-93 compare Livy’s to other Greek views of foundation, including those of Dionysius of Halicarnassus: the Romans attribute foundation to many while the Greeks tend to attribute it more to the single founder.

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tion” would like (2008: 7). The Romans “provided examples more than they illuminated ideas” (28). The different methodological aims of classicists and political theorists during the 20th century turn on “dramatically divergent conceptions – in fact, a severing – of the relationship between history and theory” (28). Hammer’s discussion of Livy and Machiavelli emphasizes the priority they place on feeling and experience over abstract conceptions (9 and 82-83).3 This paper tries to recuperate for Livy and Vergil contributions to political thought that are conveyed not conceptually, but through expression, exemplification in myth, and specifically, through formal features of their texts.4 My reading is therefore something of a methodological experiment in the relation of ideology to literary form.5 Like Hammer, I would like to make Roman political thought of interest to political theorists precisely because of its less abstract formulation and conversely to encourage classicists to think about their material within the framework of the history of thinking about politics. 3

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Miles 1988: 185 argues that Livy has a coherent conception of history and expresses his “own political judgments”, “values”, and “ideals” (205) and is also aware of the “political implications” of his ideas about Roman history and foundation. I am not sure I would argue for his having a coherent conception of politics, but certainly that he expresses political ideas in fruitful ways. A number of articles in Graf 1993 address the political work done by myth in this period. For the mythic function of Roman historical tales, Beard 1993: 61: “Roman ‘history’ is part of Roman ‘myth’ […]. ‘Myth’ offers an honourable way out: the stories can still be valued not as ‘history’, but as ‘symbol’.” Hölscher 1993 shows the intersection of genealogical and ideological strands of Caesar’s, then to a greater degree Augustus’ deployment of myth. Scheid 1993: 118-127 focuses on foundation myths and the doubleness of Roman identity, specifically on the Romulus myth as a parallel to Augustus. Ungern-Sternberg 1993 traces the dynamics of the Romulus myth as a foundation myth, specifically in relation to the Republic. I do not think of either Livy or Vergil as political theorists in the sense that Pocock 2006: 165 defines political theory as the “construction of heuristic and normative statements, or systems of such statements, about an area of human experience and activity called ‘politics’ or ‘the political’.” Rather they set the exemplum in the place of the norm and engage in political thought without generalization. Pocock’s blurring of the distinction between political theory and political thought in the realm of “the historical world in which discourses interact” (173), however, speaks to their endeavors. I am sympathetic to the methods of the so-called Cambridge school with their emphasis on history and context but have a healthy skepticism towards republicanism. My attempt to use formal features to draw out political conceptions is in sympathy with Markell 2011, who analyses work in Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, and with Konstan 1986. Markell sees the placement of significant parts of Arendt’s discussion of work and action in sections of the book devoted to the other term as reinforcing the two categories’ conceptual interrelation. I thank him for sharing a draft of this piece in advance of publication. Konstan uncovers ideology through the repetition of story patterns.

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Roman founders did not leave the city after the moment of foundation. Or rather, the people represented as founders in the late Republic and early Augustan period do not do so. They come up in texts as emblematic successors to each other in a way that calls into question the finality of foundation. Rome famously has no single founder, but a series of proto-founders followed by figures who re-found the city in moments of crisis. Even Romulus, the city’s nominal founder, has a double in his twin brother Remus. This paper is the second installment in my thought on this topic. Let me therefore outline briefly my assumptions, which derive from an argument made elsewhere about the performativity of refoundation at Rome (Lowrie 2010). It is important to recognize that although the Romans are consistent in representing their state in its various manifestations as undergoing repeated foundations, different authors use similar mythic material within different models for how this works. One is developmental, another sees refoundation as a repetition compulsion arising from violence. Cicero, at De re publica 2.2, cites Cato for the developmental quality of the Roman polity (ciuitas): nostra autem res publica non unius esset ingenio, sed multorum, nec una hominis uita, sed aliquot constituta saeculis et aetatibus. (Cic. rep. 2.2) Our republic was founded not by the genius of one man, but of many, nor during the life of any single individual but over a number of centuries and lifetimes.

Livy similarly attaches foundational language to all the early Roman kings, who function as emblems of different aspects of the state: Romulus established sovereignty in a militaristic vein (conditor, 3.39.4); Numa authored Roman religion (auctor, 1.42.4); Servius Tullius set up the social orders (conditor, 1.42.4). After the kings, Brutus effected the shift to the Republic and becomes an icon of this form of government (conditor 8.34.3). Livy opens Book 2 with a comment on how all the early kings, with the exception of Tarquinius Superbus, are numbered among the founders (conditores) because they increased (auctae) the state. This latter is conceived as a combination of territory (sedes) and population (multitudinis) (2.1.1). In contemporary times, Augustus is also called conditor (4.20.7). Against this progressive model, Vergil clusters a number of proto-founders in Aeneid 8. Their stories are remarkably similar, but their foundations have no relation to one another and they do not move the constitution forward. When Aeneas meets him, king Evander is called the founder of the Roman citadel (tum rex Evandrus Romanae conditor arcis, 8.313). He in turn calls Saturn the – or ‘a’ – founder of the citadel, with Janus as the founder of another (hanc Ianus pater, hanc Saturnus condidit arcem, 8.357-358). Like Aeneas, himself a protofounder, Evander and Saturn have both gone into exile, fleeing domestic

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violence (8.333-335, 319-320). The violence Aeneas flees is less domestic than military, but formal elements, such as Evander’s sea-voyage, cement the link. In the standard myth, Romulus will also return from a kind of exile and engage in domestic violence against his twin brother in his foundation of Rome. One could argue that Aeneas’ killing of Turnus, his notional twin, figures the domestic violence that attaches to founding figures. Much has been said on this topic, but for the moment, let it suffice to note that the Aeneid does not show these various founders as building the state progressively. Saturn’s foundation does not lay the ground for Evander’s, nor Evander’s for Aeneas’, nor Aeneas’ for Romulus’. Rather, they are discrete foundations that reenact similar stories in the same or related locations. Each has a different character or tonality. Saturn’s is a golden age; Evander still belongs to the age of heroes; Aeneas marks the transition away from this world and Trojan values, even if he does not yet reach Anchises’ injunction to spare the conquered but war down the proud (6.853). But the one does not lead in any organic way to the next. Violence is a recurrent element in this pattern, often displaced somewhat from the central moment of foundation. I return to this aspect below. What the models of Cicero and Livy on the one hand and Vergil on the other share is the need to reenact foundation in the present moment. This I see as a performative understanding of foundation, not in the sense of a contract that, once established, holds without need for renegotiation, but in the sense of ongoing and creative reconfiguring. This means that the Romans in the period of transition from Republic to Principate resist closure in foundation if we understand closure as absolutely final.6 From a modern perspective, the need for refoundation looks like failure. Why would an already founded state need foundation all over again unless its very being were at risk?7 But what seems like a problem for us may or may not have been a problem for the Romans or for the history of political thought. Our American assumption that foundation happened once and that our Republic has a fixed form is idiosyncratic. France, for instance, has had a much more tumultuous history, although their current Cinquième 6 7

Flower 2010: 65 sees republicanism as dynamic. The same can be said for the regal period, at least as presented in Augustan accounts. Seery 1999: 462 cites the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of foundation as “the act of founding or building upon a firm substructure” and the action of “establishing, instituting, or constituting on a permanent basis” to draw out our associations of both building and permanence with the term. He relates political to epistemological foundationalism and critiques anti-foundationalists for projecting monolithic uniformity into foundations as a kind of straw man and wants to recuperate a more modest metaphor: builders everywhere use different techniques for imparting stability to the buildings they erect; there is no one building code; foundations may need additional support and shoring up as they succumb to stress or too much weight is put upon them. He calls for a political and constructivist understanding of foundations and resists a politics built on metaphysics.

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République has been stable now for some time. Furthermore, even within a performative conception of refoundation, different takes are possible, as with Livy and Vergil. Two perceptive thinkers about Rome, Niccolò Machiavelli and Hannah Arendt, address refoundation in different ways and focus specifically on Livy and Vergil respectively. Their analysis of Rome is illuminating because they consider similar material, but are more interested in giving conceptual explanations about why refoundation may be necessary, or on what basis it works, and can therefore provide a framework for articulating the kinds of possible relations between breaks, gaps, and transitions in foundation. Their actual conceptions differ significantly from the Roman formulations, but the contrasts will help us specify what is particular about Livy and Vergil. Machiavelli’s conception of the need for renewal is the negative of the progressive idea we see in Cato, Cicero, and Livy. He does not use either the word ‘foundation’ or ‘refoundation’, but subsumes a similar idea under ‘beginning.’ In his Discourses on Livy, the first chapter of the third book is entitled: “If one wishes a sect or a republic to live long, it is necessary to draw it back often toward its beginning.” Rather than seeing progress, he worries about inevitable corruption and decline. This he makes analogous to the human body. Time corrupts the goodness in institutions and necessarily kills it off, just as doctors see that “daily something is added” to bodies “that at some time needs cure” (3.1.2; 1996: 209).8 Terror and fear (3.1.3; 210-211) are needed to keep men from corrupting themselves and behaving “with greater danger and more tumult”. Otherwise “delinquents join together” and “dare to try new things and to say evil”. The method for renewing republics or sects is “to lead them back toward their beginnings” and this can be done either “through extrinsic accident or intrinsic prudence” (3.1.2). His example of extrinsic accident is the taking of Rome by the French (the Gauls). The lack of observance of religious ritual and the failure of the Romans to punish the Fabii who had violated ‘the law of nations’ in engaging in combat with the French were signs of decadence. These wrongs or oversights were righted once Camillus restored Rome.9 I will return to this story below. For intrinsic prudence, Machiavelli cites the virtue of a single man – this is the notion of individual agency – or the virtue of what he calls an order. This encompasses, e.g., the tribunes, the censors, or even the laws that curb the “ambition and insolence of men” (1996: 210). These go in both positive and 8

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For the threat of instability and decay over time in Machiavelli, see Pocock 1972: 160-161. Conversely, there is no pure state where the legislator can mold the people outside of circumstance, but there is always “an antecedent structure of habit and memory” (172). Although Pocock does not use this terminology, the consequence is that there is only ever refoundation and no absolute beginning. Miles 1988: 202 analyzes Camillus’ refoundation in a way that Machiavelli would appreciate: his “greatest achievement is not to create something new, but to preserve essential Roman traditions”.

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negative directions. Although the “rare and virtuous examples” of the likes of Horatius Coclus, Scaevola, Fabricius, the two Decii, and Regulus Attilius could bring the state back to its beginnings (1996: 211), more troublesome from a perspective that does not take a utilitarian view of state violence is that a similar effect is attributed to notable executions, where he lists the deaths of the sons of Brutus, the decemviri, Maelius ‘the grain dealer’, Manlius Capitolinus, the son of Manlius Torquatus, and some others. Machiavelli shows what to modern liberal taste is a notable lack of moral outrage at these deaths and coolly notes their pragmatic effect: “Because they were excessive and notable, such things made men draw back to the mark whenever one of them arose” (1996: 210). These acts of violence are foundational in that they reestablish shared values, ideology if you will, against transgressions and lead to the reaffirmation of community cohesion around these values.10 Progress and decline are in inverse relation to one another and to that extent, Machiavelli’s virtuous exempla parallel the progressive founders of the Roman prose writers of the Late Republic and Early Empire. But while progress keeps moving forward, rectifying decline entails a forward movement to counteract a backward one. Rather than an absolutely new beginning, taking a state back to its beginning is a refoundation that overlaps with what was there before. Although Livy does not see decline as inevitable, neither does he see continuous and constructive progress, but rather an overall movement forward despite occasional setbacks and diversions.11 Movement forward sometimes rectifies some decline, which may in fact entail repeated violence. The stories of the rape of Lucretia and the attempted rape of Verginia, for instance, are emblematic of the corruption of the monarchy or the absolute rule the decemviri adopted after establishing the new law code of the Twelve Tables.12 In reaction, virtuous Romans overthrew the tyrants. But rather than restoring the state to what it was, as Machiavelli would have it, Livy generally views the Roman State as moving forward to a new formation. When Brutus establishes the Republic, liberty is the novel element. When the decemviri are deposed, the situation corresponds better to Machiavelli’s conception since the consuls are restored – a renewal after a 10

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Momigliano 1942: 120 comments on Machiavelli’s greater appreciation for discord and social conflict than on concord in helping Rome achieve stability – competition creates balance among the classes. McCormick 2011 argues that Machiavelli wants to restrain violence as much as possible within the rule of law and tries to minimize elite fears about popular tumult (ch. 2), but in the end sanctions occasional violence in the democratic containment of elites. I thank him for discussion in the wake of a presentation at the ‘Political Theory Workshop’ at the University of Chicago and for sharing his book with me in advance of publication. Not all institutional developments in Livy, however, are cumulative, even though they all “contribute to Rome’s gradual evolution as a great power”, Miles 1988: 193. Lüdemann in Koschorke et al. 2007: 36-46. The decemviri started well, but ended badly and therefore had only a temporary virtue (Miles 1988: 193).

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decline. But the state has nevertheless made progress in the sense of becoming more like the current structure by now having a set law code. Foundational violence in Vergil differs both in purport and in structure from that in Machiavelli and Livy. Vergil sees a greater break between foundational moments than does Livy, and it is not, furthermore, clear that the violence that attends foundation in the Aeneid has the utilitarian function Machiavelli ascribes to it. As mentioned above, it is somewhat displaced from the foundation, which happens subsequently to it. Saturn flees the arms of Jupiter (Aen. 8.319-320) on his way to Italy, where he hid before establishing a new citadel. But while his flight might be the occasion for the new foundation, the threatened violence is separate from it. According to legend, Evander had gone into exile because he killed his father or mortal stepfather Echenus (Eden 1975 on Aen. 8.333). Again, the violence is not intrinsic to foundation. Aeneas’ actual foundation of Lavinium, a proto-foundation of Rome, is not depicted in the Aeneid, but it too must follow on his killing of Turnus without there being a necessary link between the two. Vergil does not present any of these acts of violence as punishment for transgression or as bringing the state either back to some good origin as in Machiavelli or enabling the passage, however fraught, to a better form as in Livy. Violence attends foundation without having a pragmatic function, and repetition entails no forward motion. Arendt’s more radical notion of foundation in her On Revolution corresponds better in certain respects to Vergil’s disconnected events, however repetitious they may be.13 In attempting to understand the paradox of revolution, she attempts to think together the tension between the ‘care for stability’ and the ‘spirit of the new’.14 This leads her to address tradition, the break from it, the difficulty of beginning, and repetition in the attempt to make beginnings last. The men of the enlightenment revolutions, particularly the Americans, needed a break from tradition, specifically those of the Middle Ages: When they turned to the ancients, it was because they discovered in them a dimension which had not been handed down by tradition – neither by the traditions of customs and institutions nor by the great tradition of Western thought and concept. (Arendt 1963: 197) 13

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She revisits these ideas with a specific focus on freedom at the end of part 2, ‘Willing’, of The Life of the Mind (1977: 195-217). The earlier version, although less well worked out, corresponds in my view better to the actual Roman dynamic as a contest between tradition and newness; the later version is more traditional in aligning the Romans in the end with continuity. The version in On Revolution is consequently more stimulating for my purposes here. On constitutional building metaphors in Arendt, see Waldron 2000: 203-204. For the role of Rome in her political thought, see Taminiaux 2000. Waldron 2000: 214-215 turns to Christian Meier’s characterization of Caesar as an example of what it might appear Arendt would support, but in fact does not. Her commitment to institutions and constitutional forms is too great. The phrasing of Tassin 2007: 1122.

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She goes on to speak of the ‘Roman example’. What they provided were models and precedents, rather than direct continuity. But there was, in her view, continuity within Rome. She makes an analogy between the American almost religious worship of the Constitution and the Roman derivation of religion from religare: If their [the Americans’] attitude towards Revolution and Constitution can be called religious at all, then the word ‘religion’ must be understood in its original Roman sense, and their piety would then consist in religare, in binding themselves back to the beginning of Roman history, the foundation of the eternal city. (Arendt 1963: 198)

The Americans, like the Romans, bind themselves to their beginnings. They differ, however, in that the American beginning was recent, while the Roman was even to themselves shrouded in a distant past.15 The mechanism shared by both cultures for such binding is authority. Arendt sees the act of foundation as carrying authority within itself (1963: 199) and she thinks the Americans took from the Romans the separation of power from authority. The difference between Rome and the United States is that the Roman Republic located authority in the Senate, while the Americans translated it to the judiciary, particularly the Supreme Court. But here we need to stand back. Although Arendt focuses on Vergil as her preeminent Roman author with a nod to Cicero and to Polybius’ analysis of Rome, I think her understanding of Roman foundation at Rome owes more to the likes of Cicero and Livy than to Vergil. The question at issue is the relation of the historical break to tradition and continuity. She does not explicitly acknowledge the Roman view that their constitution was in a continual process of development; she attaches this aspect rather to the American constitution (1963: 200), where she quotes Woodrow Wilson saying that the Supreme Court is a “a kind of Constitutional Assembly in continuous session”. Her analysis of Rome also resembles Cicero and Livy’s in its emphasis on continuity (1963: 201): through the Senators, the ancestors were present to the Romans, and with them the spirit of foundation was also present. Arendt outlines two aspects of Rome that seem in contradiction.16 On the one hand, the Romans always engaged in refoundation. This differentiates them from the Americans, for whom one foundation was sufficient. Any needed revision of 15

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Arendt 1963: 205 draws the parallel between the biblical story of the Exodus and the wandering of Aeneas: both are stories of liberation that look forward to a future freedom, both are shrouded in legend. Arendt 1977: 215-216 puts the Romans more decisively on the side of tradition and sees the hiatus between liberation and freedom in the myth as marking the problem without solving it (207). In her view, the Romans come close to, but fundamentally miss an opportunity to embrace a radical notion of freedom as spontaneity.

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the Constitution could happen in her view through the Supreme Court. However, while she sees a gap between the old and the new orders in refoundation, the Romans for her were always bound to tradition. The combination of refoundation and boundedness to tradition she figures in the notion of Rome as a second Troy.17 I have argued elsewhere that Arendt misreads Vergil here by overstressing continuity over the break (Lowrie 2005: 967-968). The questions are what the stakes are for her and how her misreading can help clarify the Aeneid for us. Arendt needs a gap between the old and the new order in refoundation because a break with the old does not necessarily entail the ability to construct anything new.18 Freedom does not arise automatically, but must be won through certain kinds of political work.19 She makes the Aeneid story parallel with the Exodus story in sharing an important lesson: both insist on a “hiatus between the end of the old order and the beginning of the new” (1963: 205; also 1977: 203204). She continues, “If these legends could teach anything at all, their lesson indicated that freedom is no more the automatic result of liberation than the new beginning is the automatic consequence of the end.” Here we have an important statement about closure and refoundation: an end does not guarantee in itself a new beginning. Rather, there is need for ‘times of transition’. Revolution could and did in America correspond to the legendary hiatus between end and beginning, between a ‘no-longer’ and a ‘not-yet’. Arendt here uses language that serves as a leitmotif in Hermann Broch’s The Death of Vergil, which has recently been analyzed by P. Eiden (2006) as a meditation on the coming of a democratic empire, of which America serves as a model.20 Broch’s Vergil was acutely conscious that he was dying at such a moment of transition, from the old Republic, which was defunct, to a new Empire with intimations of Christianity which loomed just beyond his horizon. For both Germanic immigrants, Rome 17

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Waldron 2000: 212-213 resolves the tension between continuity and change in Arendt’s constitutional thought by explaining that she sees the authority of a constitution as consisting in “a willingness on the part of all concerned” to treat it “as the starting point and point of reference for all subsequent politics.” The political order may subsequently change in response to circumstances so that a “constitution is necessarily a work in progress.” For Arendt’s need for a “break with the continuum of history” in order to establish the “constitutio libertatis” which she sees as the “opening up of a common world”, see Wellmer 2000: 222. He sees her insistence on the break from her own favorite examples of the Athenian polis, the Roman trinity of “authority, religion, and tradition”, and the early American republic as aligning her more with liberalism as well as making her less nostalgic than is usually credited (225). Wellmer 2000: 229 stresses that “Institutions of freedom must be invented (and their preservation in some sense amounts to their continuous re-invention)” (his emphasis). Arendt writes about Broch in Men in Dark Times (1983: 111-151). Eiden-Offe 2011 presents his argument in greater detail; I was not able to see the book in time for this paper.

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provides a screen for thinking about their adopted land in relation to the one they left behind.21 The question is how to square the Romans’ perennial refoundation with their commitment to tradition. What is at stake is exactly the hiatus that can, but does not necessarily allow freedom to follow in the wake of liberation.22 Arendt recognizes the central role of refoundation in Rome’s self-understanding, but her idea of Rome as a second Troy is more generally Roman than specifically Vergilian (1963: 207-208). In Book 3 of the Aeneid, Aeneas keeps trying to found a second Troy and all these attempts amount to failure. His visit to Buthrotum, a miniature Troy, shows that recreating the old keeps the participants, Andromache and Helenus, in perpetual mourning; they cannot put closure on their past life and move forward. Arendt is right to say, “even the foundation of Rome was not understood as an absolutely new beginning” and “the thread of continuity and tradition never had broken” (1963: 210),23 but Vergil’s Rome only ever refounds itself. Troy figures the rejected Eastern other that resides within; surpassing this other and leaving it behind underlies and inhabits refoundation.24 For Vergil, Rome is more like Arendt’s America (1963: 212), for which it was no longer a matter of founding ‘Rome anew’ but of founding a ‘new Rome’. The ‘thread of continuity’ was broken. I think, in fact, that Arendt displaces onto Vergil the continuity emphasized by Cicero and Livy and transposes Vergil’s gap onto the American foundation.25 What is continuous in Vergil is not the link 21 22

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Arendt 1946 relates Broch’s novel to the break in the European tradition during and after the First World War. Villa 1997 analyzes Arendt’s lack of nostalgia for the ancient (largely Greek) past she appears to revere in light of the extent to which she can be viewed as communitarian. The questions about break and continuity in foundation should be viewed within this larger frame. Also Arendt 2005: 173. Seery 1999: 477 identifies Vergil as a central and understudied figure in Arendt’s writings about foundations and stresses a point “Arendt makes repeatedly about politics: political action steps into the liminal period of the present but that moving occupancy assumes meaning, a thread of continuity, only by drawing on the past and by anticipating the future” (478). The thread metaphor is an attempted resolution of combined continuity and break. He sees the mystery in her understanding of self-authorizing foundation as belonging to a different order from the absolute of metaphysical foundationalists. Honig 2001: 1-40 sees the foreignness of the founder as a symbolic way both to distance the violence of foundation and to mark the strangeness of the self-imposition of law. To completely reject the foreign would be to sacrifice the capacity for democratic (here: republican) action. I treat self-definition through eastern others in various passages of Roman literature at Lowrie forthcoming. Seery 1999: 480-481 sees Arendt as retreating from her Vergilian lesson in her understanding of the American founders in On Revolution; she therefore switches metaphors from founding to birthing. The risk of the Vergilian model is precisely the “tyrannical violence” and “dictatorial political actors” (482). He would rather hold on

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to the past, but the need to found over and over again. To that extent, Vergil’s refoundation is structurally closer to Arendt’s skepticism about whether freedom can ever be held on to. Even the Americans did not in her estimation achieve it in any lasting way.26 But freedom is not Vergil’s concern and his vision is darker: it is not clear that these moments of starting over again are productive of anything but difference from what came before. For Arendt, even if we cannot hold on to the creativity of foundation, these moments can be precious articulations of freedom in themselves. We can wonder, however, for both Arendt and Vergil, whether the thread of continuity can ever be entirely broken and whether either would want it to if it could.27 The one element of Trojan culture Jupiter insists on retaining when he reconciles Juno to the Romans is in fact religion, whose etymology from religare, ‘to bind back’, Arendt underscores in analyzing the American attitude toward the Constitution (1963: 198). The moment of citation, whether of Troy for the Romans or of Rome for the Americans, reveals some connection, of whatever sort, even while making a break. Or does it? Jupiter says that he will ‘add custom and the rites of sacred things’ (morem ritusque sacrorum / adiciam, Verg. Aen. 12.836-837). Vergil does not etymologize a link or clarify whether Jupiter appends traditional Trojan rites or adds them anew. Aeneas’ Penates, prominent earlier in the poem and in Roman legend enshrined in the temple of Vesta, are absent in Jupiter’s final proclamation.28 In “Introduction into Politics”, Arendt acknowledges as an aside the mythic dimension of Rome’s Trojan foundation,29 whether the legend’s fourth century origins were Greek or Roman:30 the willful retrojection of a fictitious past is a non-conceptual way of thinking about continuity and break. What reading Arendt helps clarify in these Roman texts is the relation of the hiatus between old and new orders on the one hand and tradition and continuity on the other in the various ways of thinking about refoundation.31 Both of these elements are

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to “the specifically Virgilian notion that politics takes root by creatively reestablishing a meaningful connection to the humanly authored past while eagerly building for the worldly future to come” (483). Markell 2006: 4 and 13. Markell 2006: 7 shows that “nothing about beginning requires a break with the terms of an existing order, or resistance to regularity as such.” I thank Richard Tarrant for calling my attention to Jupiter’s precise wording and ownership of the gift of religion. This corrects my sense that religion is a Trojan contribution in Lowrie 2005: 963. Arendt 2005: 178. I take her statement “whether it was originally a Roman idea or arose only later when they thought about and embellished the Trojan war of annihilation” as showing she was aware that the myth was a vehicle for thinking about politics. Bibliography on the history of the Trojan foundation is cited at Lowrie 2005: 946 n. 8. What reading the Roman alternatives brings to Arendt is to highlight the extent to which she refuses to choose between a continuous account and one that highlights a

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important for closure. Does refoundation set closure on the old order as it opens the new? It could be a moment that bridges a hiatus while the old is in abeyance, but the new has not yet begun (‘no longer and not yet’). To this way of thinking, moments of refoundation are structurally similar as spaces in between. Or refoundation could fold the old into the new so that it marks change in the sense of progress or the rectification of decline. This sort of break lacks a hiatus. With these alternatives in mind, let us look at two moments of foundation or refoundation in Livy and Vergil. The founders in question are Aeneas and Camillus. Perhaps the most famous and most reductively formal instance of deceptive closure in Latin literature is the end of the Aeneid. Vergil announces the topic of his epic in the poem’s first lines: he sings of arms and a man who traveled over land and sea and engaged in warfare ‘until he could found a city’ (dum conderet urbem, Aen. 1.5). In the poem’s final lines, the verb condere returns, but does not refer to the foundation of a city; rather it denotes Aeneas’ burying ‘his sword in Turnus’ opposing breast in a rage’ (ferrum aduerso sub pectore condit / feruidus, Aen. 12.950-951).32 The return of the word condere satisfies a superficial closural desire and creates ring composition. But many have found the poem’s end deeply unsatisfying: instead of founding a city, Aeneas is represented in an act of violent fury. The death of Turnus becomes the founding act and the actual foundation of the city – even the proto-city of Lavinium that heralds the protocity of Alba Longa – is deferred. Not only is Rome not founded in the poem, there is not even a representation of the foundation of its harbingers. Although foundation is everywhere in the poem, there is no single foundational event. By depicting an event, Vergil could have chosen to give closure to Rome’s beginning. By displacing it to a violent act that stands in for it, he raises questions: how do we know foundation has occurred? that we have finished beginning? Furthermore, if – and this is a big ‘if’, though much scholarship takes it as given – if Aeneas stands in by analogy for the contemporary refounder of Rome after a period of civil war, he offers a disquieting model for Augustus. How can we put violence behind us and move beyond foundation? The closure of the end of the Aeneid surpasses the discussion here. Let me focus on how the failure to close in any full or rounded way presents the founding moment. One could interpret suspended closure as an aesthetic move that ensures that readers keep coming back to the poem in an attempt to gain satisfaction. There is pleasure in this return. Furthermore, condere refers not just

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radical break. Markell 2006 dismantles these oppositions. Arendt 1963: 211 uses Rome on her way to articulating the relationship between continuity and a new beginning: “What matters in our context is less the profoundly Roman notion that all foundations are re-establishments and reconstructions than the somehow connected but different idea that men are equipped of the logically paradoxical task of making a new beginning because they themselves are new beginnings.” James 1995 explores violence in foundation in these passages and traces Vergil’s semantic innovation in applying condere to burying a sword in an opponent.

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to foundation, but also to poetic composition. D. Fowler makes the analogy between composition and foundation in light of closure (1997: 261): the Aeneid “finally ends with an act of composition, if not of composure. […] The final killing is at once an end and a beginning, a foundational act for the new Rome like Romulus’ killing of his brother […]”. But there is more than readerly satisfaction at stake, and Fowler’s identification of Aeneas’ killing of Turnus with Romulus’s killing of Remus takes us in the direction of repetition and unresolved violence in foundation. Vergil’s decision to represent not the foundation of Rome in his book of foundation, but rather this substitute for foundation corresponds, in my view, to a greater problematic, namely the way he conceived of refoundation as violent repetition. Rather than closure, we find a displacement that requires reenactment because Roman history may lurch violently in a new direction, but cannot let go of the disturbance accompanying change in any definitive way. Vergil’s discontinuous refoundations are continuous to the extent that they share an inability to put an end to mourning.33 I have argued in “Vergil and Founding Violence” (Lowrie 2005) that Turnus’ violent death is overdetermined: it follows a number of different and perhaps incompatible logics, many of which line up with the different kinds of violence outlined in Walter Benjamin’s famous essay, “Kritik der Gewalt”. Although we could justify Aeneas’ killing of Turnus as the punishment of a treaty-breaker, in which case the violence remains within the demands of the law, Vergil does not actually bring this aspect up at the poem’s end. Aeneas’ violence is rather expressive of emotion and therefore exceeds the legal sphere. This makes the question of whether Turnus as treaty-breaker deserves his end to a certain extent beside the point. For this reason, many people who discuss the end of the Aeneid speak at cross-purposes.34 Arendt and Vergil share an appreciation for what is lost in moments of moving forward. While Arendt values the liberatory aspect of revolutionary politics and Vergil expresses horror at the violence that often attends such moments, both acknowledge the importance of the space between (for Arendt) liberation and the establishment of freedom, between (for Vergil) the old and the new order. Both see that change entails winning and losing. Tassin (2007) shows Arendt’s concern for the losers in revolutionary moments: they can open up a new politics whether it succeeds or fails. It is the losers’ narrative that gives 33

34

It is beyond the scope of this paper, but would be worth pursuing Tassin’s 2007 analysis of Arendt’s feeling that revolutions can never be entirely successful, since they have to put their own beginnings behind them, against Vergil’s melancholic inability to move forward. While Aeneas and Rome have to leave Troy behind, Vergil’s poem keeps Rome’s beginnings eternally present. Tassin uses Arendt’s citation of Lucan to argue for the continuing importance of the losing side. James 1995 sets the deaths that mark the end of the Aeneid in a long tradition of scholarship that focuses on Vergilian mourning. E.g, Thomas 1998 and Stahl 1990.

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Vergil his mournful tone. James (1995) traces Vergil’s use of condere when a sword is buried in a warrior’s body. They are all Italian and his commemoration of their deaths allows us to imagine a potentially different kind of politics that would be perhaps less foundational, but more conciliatory. What will show up the specificity of Vergil’s location of a multiply violent act that takes the place of a scene of foundation at the end of the poem, where we expect closure, is comparison to a different act of foundation at a similarly closural point. This is Camillus’ refoundation of Rome after its sack by the Gauls at the end of Livy, Book 5.35 Machiavelli makes this his first example of bringing a state back to its beginning. Although Book 5 of Livy closes his first pentad, his work by no means ends there. Just as neither Rome, nor its foundation, nor Livy’s work comes to an end, the story of Camillus’ refoundation cannot be localized at one single place. Rather, the story binds the end of Book 5 to the beginning of Book 6 and repeats the beginning of Book 1. C.S. Kraus observes “at this major division of the Ab urbe condita there is very little in the way of closure” (1994b: 286). My larger point is that the form of the story with regard to closure corresponds to Livy’s understanding of foundation, just as the form of Turnus’ foundational death corresponds to Vergil’s. Although both involve some degree of closural failure, they fail to close in different ways. In Arendt’s terms, Vergil sets a gap between moments of refoundation, whereas Livy emphasizes continuity within change through the folding in of the new beginning to the old end.36 My conclusion will come as no surprise: Livy is less radical and revolutionary a political thinker than Vergil, but his vision may be more true to the historical process. Let us first consider how the foundation of Rome frames the first pentad.37 Due largely to the work of C.S. Kraus, A. Feldherr, and M. Jaeger, it has become a commonplace of Livy scholarship that there is a formal commensurability between the city of Rome and Livy’s Ab urbe condita (‘From the city’s foundation’).38 The first pentad extends from the city’s first beginnings to its sack by the Gauls. Book 6 marks the resurgence of the new city with the rebeginning of Livy’s task in the second pentad. From this point on (6.1.2), he comments, the sources will be better because much of the material (litterae) attesting to the earlier history was burned during the sack along with the city itself (incensa urbe). From ‘the second beginning […] of the reborn city’ (ab

35

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Ungern-Sternberg 1993: 105 notes similarities between Romulus’ foundation and the refoundation after the Gallic sack. Momigliano 1942 traces the historical development of the Camillus legend. Ungern-Sternberg 1993: 105-106 considers the mythic import of the regifugium and the interregnum as gaps between governmental systems beyond Livy’s accounts. Miles 1988: 200. Explicit statement at Kraus 1994b: 268-270; Jaeger 1997 and Feldherr 1998: passim.

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secunda origine […] renatae urbis, 6.1.3), “the events conducted at home and abroad will be set out more clearly and securely”.39 Book 1, however, starts not from Rome’s first beginnings, but with two proto-beginnings: Aeneas leaves Troy and founds Lavinium; his son Ascanius leaves Lavinium and founds Alba Longa. While the site of Rome itself offers repeated foundations in the Aeneid, for Livy, what marks Rome’s protofoundations is not the site, but the conjunction of the words urbs (‘city’) and condere (‘to found’). The repetition is overwhelming. The other Trojan foundation by Antenor is not graced with either urbs or condere (1.1.1-3). Aeneas sought a place ‘for founding a city’ (condendaeque urbi locum, 1.1.8) and he and his companions ‘found a town’ (oppidum condunt, 1.1.10); Mezentius was none too pleased by the ‘origin of the new city’ (nouae orgine urbis, 1.2.3), namely Lavinium; Ascanius left Lavinium (urbem) and ‘founded a different new city’ (nouam aliam condidit). Only gradually do we build up to the foundation of Rome herself. The story of the rape of Rhea Silvia heralds Rome’s origin (tantae origo urbis, 1.4.1); Romulus and Remus conceive a desire to found a city at the site of their abandonment (urbis condendae, 1.6.3) and all think Lavinium and Alba Longa will be small in comparison ‘to the city which would be founded’ (urbe quae conderetur, 1.6.3); they fight over who will give a name to the ‘new city’ and ‘rule it with command once founded’ (qui nomen nouae urbi daret, qui conditam imperio regeret, 1.6.4); after murdering his brother, Romulus gives his name to the city. For Livy, the moment of founding violence pertains not to the death of Turnus, whose death goes entirely unmentioned, but to that of Remus. In the Aeneid, Aeneas cannot go about the business of foundation before he plunges his sword with the verb of foundation into Turnus. By contrast, the business and the language of founding a city surround Livy’s narrative of the death of Remus. Although his death is what allows Romulus to give Rome her name, the foundation itself has already happened and does not depend on this death, although it is related to it. But if we look for the actual moment of foundation, it somehow disappears. The multitude of Albans and Latins who come to join in the new endeavor hope that this city will make Lavinium and Alba Longa look small; when Romulus and Remus fight, it does not seem as though any building has taken place. But once Livy reports the alternative fable (fama, 1.7.2) that Romulus killed Remus for jumping over the walls, somehow the walls were already built. At what point was the city founded? When the twins conceived the desire? When the neighboring peoples joined in? When the auspices were taken? When the walls were actually built? Livy does not let us pin the precise moment down. It is only once Remus is killed that the narrative allows Rome to receive her name, but surely the city was founded once the walls were going up, whether 39

Kraus 1994b: 271. I owe much to her piece in this section. Her analysis of the fall of Troy as coloring Livy’s depiction of Veii’s fall and of Rome’s fall to the Gauls adds a further level of overlap, repetition, and continuity.

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or not they had settled on a name. It is at this point, when the city takes a name, that Livy can refer back to it as having already been founded (urbs condita). The previous conditam functions like a future perfect to the futurity implied in regeret (1.6.4). Somewhere in this span, foundation has occurred. There is a similar spread of the language of foundation and building around Rome’s resurgence after the Gallic sack. There is again no specific moment of foundation, although, here, if anything, the language is reversed. Camillus is called a second founder before the city has been rebuilt, before the decision to rebuild the city has even been made. Like many founding figures, he went into exile before the moment of foundation. He had angered the people when they took the nearby city of Veii under his command, because he insisted a certain percentage of the spoils be devoted to the gods, and they exiled him in retaliation. He differs from Vergil’s Saturn, Evander, and Aeneas, who are all foreigners, in that he returns as founder to his hometown. He is recalled as dictator once the Gauls have besieged the Romans on the Capitoline and he returns with forces just in time to save his countrymen from buying the Gauls off the siege and slaughters them in two battles. While returning to the city in triumph, his soldiers sing the habitual military jokes (5.49.7): ‘Once he recovered the fatherland from the enemy, the dictator returns to the city, and among the soldiers’ impromptu jokes (iocos […] inconditos) which they throw out, he was called Romulus and parent of the fatherland and a second founder of the city (parens patriae conditorque alter) – praise not in the least empty.’ Livy conspicuously contrasts the soldiers’ jokes, which are ‘unfounded’ in the sense of ‘not composed beforehand’, with the seriousness of the praise of Camillus as a second founder. The unpremeditated praise of the soldiers functions as an omen and guarantees its truth. But is Camillus already a second founder for saving the city from the Gauls or does the praise point forward like an omen? To save the city was conventionally to become a second founder. Livy insists that Camillus saved the city not once, but twice (5.49.8): ‘Then, the fatherland he saved in war he saved again without a doubt in peace when he prohibited them from migrating to Veii […].’ Once again, foundation is not a single event. As with Romulus’ foundation, the question again revolves around building. The tribunes were agitating to move to Veii.40 They had done so before the arrival of the Gauls, since Rome was crowded and a beautiful empty city lay nearby. Now that their city has been burned down, there was all the more reason to take advantage of their former conquest. Rebuilding looked like a great outlay of resources and effort. Camillus persuades them otherwise in a masterful speech that reminds them of their religious obligations, their affective ties to the place, and the dishonor of leaving a city as if they had been vanquished. He repeatedly uses the words urbs and aedificare. One of his arguments revolves around 40

Kraus 1994b: 280-281 suggests the potential move is retrojected from more recent circumstances. It would entail “the unfounding of Rome”. She analyzes the scene in terms of Roman identity.

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foundation: ‘We have a city founded on auspices and augury’ (urbem auspicato inauguratoque conditam habemus, 5.52.2); ‘Not without cause did the gods and men choose this place for founding a city’ (non sine causa di hominesque hunc urbi condendae locum eligerunt, 5.54.4). These phrases point back to the city’s original foundation and to the language of foundation at the beginning of book one. The auspices and augury recall the method Romulus and Remus use in the attempt to resolve their quarrel over who should rule (1.7.1-2). The second phrase, however, recalls Aeneas’ foundation. Latinus hears the Trojans’ justification for coming to Italy, including that they were ‘seeking a seat and a place to found a city’ (sedem condendaeque urbi locum quaerere, 1.1.8). The different proto-foundations and re-foundations all contribute to the over-arching theme, the foundation of the city, but the repetition of the elements at the beginning and end of the pentad provides only provisional closure. At the end of Book 5, the city has not yet been rebuilt. The rebuilding happens with great fanfare at the beginning of Book 6.41 After Livy’s programmatic first paragraph heralding the city’s second origin, he continues with the narrative. The restitution of the city is both constitutionally and militarily bumpy: the Volsci and other traditional enemies of Rome attempt to take advantage of her weakness, so that after a period of Camillus’ holding on to the dictatorship, then a period of interregnum, then the election of military tribunes, Camillus ends up being appointed dictator again for the state’s defense (defendi rem publicam, 6.6.5). After successful military intervention, Camillus returns in triumph to the city (6.4.1), the slackers who sneaked off to Veii out of laziness for building at Rome (aedificandi Romae pigritia, 6.4.5) are definitively recalled, and finally the city is rebuilt: ‘the new city stood within the year’ (intraque annum noua urbs stetit, 6.4.6). But if we think that this is the climactic moment of refoundation, we will be surprised that building continues as a theme. After bringing up the election of military tribunes at the end of the year and retailing their plundering the Aequi, Livy closes the year with another comment about building: ‘In the same year, lest the city (urbs) grow only through private works, the Capitoline was also undergirded with squared stone-work, a work conspicuous even in the magnificence of this city (urbis)’ (4.3.12-5.1). Even this closural device does not leave building behind. The new year, which, I think, begins with the next paragraph, explains that the tribunes tried to agitate for agrarian reform ‘while the citizenry (ciuitas) was occupied with building (aedificando)’ (6.5.1), but the plebs did not frequent the forum to hear them speaking ‘because they were busy with the care of building’ (propter aedificandi curam, 6.5.5). Practically, it is not surprising that Rome was not rebuilt in a day or even a year. Although it looks as though there is a neat closural barrier between the end 41

Kraus 1994b: 285 comments on the open closure of the reference to the disorganized building at 5.55.2-5: Rome still looks like an occupied city.

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of book five when Rome is sacked and the beginning of book six when she is restored, in the narrative the refoundation starts before the end of five and trails off as six develops, despite apparently clear statements that the city stood anew. I think Livy blurs the boundaries between closure and starting up again not just to make the point that human endeavors take time, but to accord with his overall idea of gradual foundation. Yes, there are defining moments in history, but if looked at from the perspective of day-to-day life, the foundation or refoundation of a city cannot be pinned down to one particular moment. Transitions happen, political entities come into being and go through transformation, but not all at once. Livy’s understanding of tradition and continuity follows the model suggested above, where refoundation folds the old into the new and marks change without hiatus. Even in a more revolutionary situation, the transition from kingship to the Republic, Livy emphasizes continuity: libertatis autem originem inde magis quia annuum imperium consulare factum est quam quod deminutum quicquam sit ex regia potestate numeres. Omnia iura, omnia insignia primi consules tenuere. (Liv. 2.1.7) You could count, however, the origin of liberty more from this reason, because the command of the consuls was made annual, than because anything was diminished from the kings’ power. The first consuls held all [the kings’] rights, all their insignia.

This opens Book 2, after the election of the first two consuls closed Book 1. Statements about the two ways that the consulship limits kingly power, by there being two consuls (1.60.3) and by term limits (2.1.7), are distributed across the book boundary. The manipulation of textual form enables the reader to experience Livy’s ideas about continual refoundation. This point takes to a formal extreme the understanding of Livy as using representational vividness to teach the reader Roman civic virtue, as outlined by Hammer, who builds on Feldherr and Jaeger. It is not just representation, which affects the emotions through the mind’s eye, but embodied textuality that creates readerly experience. I think that this sense of continuity and tradition was extremely important to Roman conceptions of their state, and this is why Arendt emphasizes tradition and renewal at Rome. Even the change from the Republic to the Augustan principate was conceptualized as continuity, and Arendt’s notion that auctoritas, such an important concept for Augustus’ understanding of his rule, tied permanence and change together, could usefully illuminate the moment of political transition witnessed by Livy and Vergil alike. To treat this adequately, however, will require further exploration. To conclude here, let me simply make a gesture toward thinking about how Vergil and Livy figure continuity and breaks in foundation as they pertain to the contemporary refounder of the Roman state. Here I want to reverse my overall claim that Vergil sees refoundation as more of

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a break, while Livy emphasizes continuity. Vergil clearly identifies Aeneas as the founder of the Julian line when Jupiter tells Venus that Iulus will be added to Ascanius’ name as cognomen (Verg. Aen. 1.267) and follows up by saying that a Trojan Caesar, Julius, a name derived from great Iulus, will be born and limit his command with the Ocean and his fame with the stars (1.286-288). The link between Iulus, Caesar, and Augustus is also made in Book 6 with no indication that there was anything but a direct line between Aeneas and Augustus (6.789792). Whether Aeneas can be assimilated metaphorically to Augustus is subject to all the problems of similarity and difference in comparisons, but there is no doubt about Vergil’s assertion of a direct genealogical link. Livy also links his founder, Camillus, with Augustus,42 but here there is no question of direct continuity. It is rather a clear metaphor. Livy begins the narrative (after the programmatic paragraph) of Book 6 with M. Furio principe (‘with Marcus Furius, i.e., Camillus, as princeps’, 6.1.4). The word princeps was closely associated with Augustus. He furthermore celebrates a triple triumph (6.4.1, 6.7.4), another Augustan feature. While F. Gaertner (2008) emphasizes the Ciceronian and republican elements in Camillus’ representation over against an Augustan analogy, I see Augustus’ self-presentation as drawing on Republican ideals in his refoundation in ways similar to Livy. Both emphasize continuity. The larger point, however, is that the Augustan refoundation of Rome after the civil wars could be well analyzed both in terms of the break of violent repetition and as continuity within a tradition. Augustus’ new Rome was presented very much as, in Arendt’s phrase, ‘Rome anew’. Livy and Vergil, writing in the 20’s at the beginning of the principate, offered interpretations that correspond in different ways to the historical reality they saw. Their debate is what is true to the paradox of Augustan renovation within tradition. While each thinker configures these elements differently, the tradition they themselves hand down is the idea that closure does not attend foundation in any but a provisional sense.

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Miles 1988: 199-200 and 207 highlights the parallels between Romulus, Camillus, and Augustus.

(En)closure and Rupture: Roman Poetry in the Arena Victoria Rimell The term ‘false closure’ is (unintentionally?) Janus-like: it suggests we can’t quite forgo the schematic view that sees closural features not located where they ‘belong’ as ‘false’, while at the same time acknowledging: all closure is false – end of story. It puts a postmodern love-affair with indeterminacy in bed with a philological pleasure in pattern, order and decidability. Although it sounds catchier (discussions of closure are a barometer of trends, as Fowler points out), ‘false’ closure is emphatically not ‘premature’, or ‘anticipatory’ closure – the former suggests disappointment, while the later is almost reassuring, preparing us nice and slow for the point the text stops dead, an event as traumatic as it is satisfying. ‘False’ flags an element of wrongness (something is ‘out of place’), or a sense of being deceived. In other words, it labels a reader’s reaction, not an objective facet of a text per se. On Oprah’s couch, as in conferences on Latin literature, closure is something you (open yourself up to) ‘get’: it’s ‘yours’. Closural gestures are a feature of all narrative turns (including beginnings), and impact by making us pause: they promise and insinuate renewal. ‘True’, Aristotelian, closure, where every strand of the story is tied, every uncertainty resolved, and every imaginative leap atrophied, is fortunately a theory no real fiction can match. Long after Dunn, Fowler and Roberts’ survey of the study of closure and its implications for Latin and Greek texts, the topic is still endlessly exposing of the politics of our readings, of how our imaginations are structured (and warped). Looking back at Fowler’s first and second thoughts on closure, and the various offspring of those essays, the controlled, showy stand-off between openness and closure in many of our most esteemed ancient texts (still) appeals in part because it appears to be both attractively ‘modern’, or ‘modernist’, and recognisably ‘classical’ (since 1997, twenty-first century animation and videogames have dealt such blows to classical closure, it may never be the same again). ‘False’ closure either in the sense of including or alluding to ‘deceptive’ closural markers in the middle of a work, or in the sense of unconventional, provocative or deflating actual endings, is almost a defining feature of Roman imperial literature written in Latin.1 But is there really something quintessentially Roman, or imperial, about this type of textual play, which we might say is a feature of all complex literature, and even of all stories? Is it rather what we love to do with classical texts, our own nostalgic, escapist, quasi-archaeological fasci1

Innumerable poems and works in Latin write their own or other texts’ endings into their beginnings and vice versa, or manipulate our perspectives on the hazy, subjective difference between pre-climax and premature or ‘false’ closure (see Fowler 1997 for discussion and summing up).

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nation with (reworking) the anatomy of poems and books, with authorial ‘strategies’, and with formalist taxonomies, that makes us choose ‘closure’ as a way into examining how narratives work? If we were to argue for the cultural specificity of Roman literature’s obsession with embedded and surprise endings, or more generally, with dilation and concentration, opening up and closing down, there might be many ways to begin, and many circles to trace (discussions of closure are doomed to reiterate, I fear). In broad terms, the affected, oxymoronic poetics of neo-Callimacheanism do much to stoke the particular brand of hyperallusivity we see in writers in Latin from Catullus to Apuleius. An imagined spatial closing down, an aestheticisation of the small, a fragmentation and complication of narrative and world, go hand in hand with the game of repeated, variegated closure within a work, especially within a book of poems. Such play reaches an extravagant apex in Martial’s twelve books of Epigrams, a mock-annalistic epic fractured into a million shards, each book both a tight package and an unravelling tapestry whose border moves and frays the more readers (are invited to) pick at it. ‘False’ closure – gesturing towards an imminent or parallel end before running right through it – is also often, in these and other authors, about conceptualising creative progression, about epic ambition and ‘living on’. At the ‘end’ of his career, in the Epistles, for example, Horace returns compulsively to previous endings, a self-immortalising retrospective that can be investigated as a labyrinth of structural loops and knots;2 Ovid’s exile poetry is a funereal, comic rerun and rewriting of his earlier works, an artist’s impression of the posthumous fame, contiguous with ‘open’ empire, which he declared in the final lines of the Metamorphoses.3 Ovid exemplifies the artifice with which confident imperial writers chain and layer beginnings, endings (and middles) of their own and others’ works. Closure and endlessness, moreover, finds its backdrop (especially in epic, as it builds walled civilizations outwards) in the vision of a vast, ever-expanding yet mappable empire. Much of imperial Latin literature participates (gloriously, awkwardly) in the fantasy of imperium sine fine, while at the same time appropriating a quasi-imperial power to set limits. Roman closure is above all a synthesis of spatial contradictions, a series of spaces for poetry to swell, to assess and exhibit its form. Both Fowler and Hardie’s contributions to Classical Closure (1997) touch on imperium sine fine as a slogan that captures the paradoxes and deconstructability 2 3

See Cucchiarelli 2010. Ov. Met. 15.877-878: quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris, / ore legar populi. Patet, as Habinek 1997 notes, is usually taken to mean ‘extend’ here, but generally describes something that is unprotected, or easy of access, like doors, cities, bodily apertures. To say that Roman power lies open is to underscore that it has eradicated difference, that it has no rivals and therefore no need for guards, precisely because those lands ‘beyond’ it have been utterly mastered, domitis terris.

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of ‘closure’ as a concept. Just as openness and closure are mutually implicated, and just as the desire to reach the end of a story (in Ovid as in Brooks’ Freud4) is at the same time a desire to delay and stretch out that end, so the boundlessness of empire, and the imperial act of ‘opening up’ spaces, must be predicated on setting and enforcing borders. In Augustan discourse, Jupiter’s prophecy of endlessness must work together with the power to bolt the gates of war, and to create a new, static golden age, although this also enfolds within it the image of undrainable abundance. The same impossibility, as many have noted, compels us to re-read the Aeneid, whose plot is spun out of the conflict between Jupiter closing down conflict and policing peace, asking for a finis, and Juno together with various chthonic characters blasting enclosures and releasing more narrative and poetic energy. Ovidian elegy brazenly eroticises this dialectic: the dream of empire without end is always now the lust for the finis of sexual conquest, and vice versa, which is at the same time a longing to experience the tantalising process that will lead to that orgasmic climax, which will then produce, necessarily, further opportunities for seduction. One of the reasons why the power to close, or rather to manage the paradoxes of closure, is so loaded in the Roman literary imagination, is because the rhetoric of opening characterises both imperial expansion (an image Tacitus uses repeatedly in the Agricola and Germania5) and the trauma of the Fall of Troy, which Latin literature is fired up to counter, and bound to re-live. In the Aeneid’s refoundation of Greek and early Roman epic, Troy’s destruction is the horrific penetration and cracking open of spaces, which might in some ways be ‘resolved’ by the restriction and demarcation of space as the epic draws to a close.6 The curse Latin poetry must confront is that, after (Virgil’s) Troy, told as 4 5

6

Brooks 1984 famously aligned the desire to keep reading works of fiction with Freud’s understanding of desire in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. See Tac. Agr. 25.2: Britannos quoque, ut ex captivis audiebatur, visa classis obstupefaciebat, tamquam aperto maris sui secreto ultimum victis perfugium clauderetur; 30.3: nunc terminus Britanniae patet, atque omne ignotum pro magnifico est. And Germ. 1.1: cetera Oceanus ambit, latos sinus et insularum immensa spatia complectens, nuper cognitis quibusdam gentibus ac regibus, quos bellum aperuit. The closing line of the Germania leaves ‘open’ the question of whether the strangest German tribes (the Hellusii and the Oxiones) are man-beast hybrids: the unveiling force of the book gives way to a sense of tantalising uncertainty and curiosity. The paradox of Tacitus’ closural gesture, which announces the limits of knowledge in a way that cuts off the work in medio (46.6) is a quintessentially imperial one: the empire of the book requires both fixed borders and the ambition to transcend them (or to stimulate readers’ imaginations long after they stop reading). Aeneid 2 displays the Oedipal ‘opening up’ of the inner sanctums of Troy, as ‘blind spaces’, the unseeable, are revealed: whilst the Greeks are ‘inclusi’ in the monstrum of the horse-womb, the Trojans swing wide their gates (the verbs pando, pateo are

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bewitching, post-traumatic flashback, and after the civil wars that must be reconfigured into pax Augusta, imperial invasion of territory can always be read through the perspective of other-as-self. Openness is triumph and tragedy, (state) power and (bodily) vulnerability, while closure both protects (shuts out) and entraps. The way poetic language writhes in shaping this on the page hits us first at Aeneid 2.494-497: when the Greeks rumpunt and complent the interior space of Priam’s palace, the image is that of a foaming river overwhelming its banks and rushing furiously over the plains. The act of bursting in is visualised as the river bursting out – non sic aggeribus ruptis cum spumeus amnis / exiit […], the failure to distinguish inside from outside, open from closed both captured and deferred in a banal simile.7 Lucan’s move will be to scrub out the displacing simile, and to write civil war as penetruption. After the large-scale battle scenes in which gates and boundaries, along with bodies, are ruptured in Books 9, 10 and 11 of the Aeneid, Book 12 sees the Trojans closing in on the Latins and on Turnus. They are ‘surrounded’, and their ‘lair’ is filled with smoke, evoking Troy’s fall. Aeneas ‘traps’ his ‘closed in prey’ (undique enim densa Teucri inclusere corona, 12.744; hinc vasta palus, hinc ardua moenia cingunt, 745; the inclusum or saeptum cervum at 749-750), promises to bury Turnus in a closed prison (clausumque cava te condere terra, 893). Gradually, the action shrinks down into the circular space of a makeshift, rustic arena (harena, 741), in which the two protagonists chase each other in circles and become the quasi-gladiatorial spectacle for a huge and anxious crowd: quinque orbis explent cursu totidemque retexunt (‘five circles they complete and unweave as they run’, 763) – a violent dance that takes us back to the Trojan games of Book 5, where the boys weave more complex circles (alternosque orbibus orbis / impediunt, 5.584-585; texuntque fugas et proelia, 593). Closure-as-circularity is taking shape, spatially and spectacularly. The duel ‘ends’ when Aeneas’ spear closes the circle again, hasta […] orasque recludit8 / loricae et clipei extremos septemplicis orbis (‘pierces the breastplate’s rim and the sevenfold shield’s outermost circle’, 12.924-925), yet literally he ‘un-closes’ it, recludit, even though he has yet to ignore Turnus’ plea not to go ulterius (938), contradicting Jupiter’s ulterius temptare veto (806). Recludere is a powerful verb, especially here, and in 7.617, where it is used of Latinus’, or eventually Juno’s, unleashing of the gates of war, the paradoxes of which are discussed by Fowler in his article ‘Opening the gates of war’.9 It

7 8 9

repeated, as in Tacitus’ account of the imperial machine), allowing the opening up of the horse (patefactus […] equus, 259-260). Austin 1964 ad loc. defines this simile as the type ‘when a comparison is made with something that is inadequate to give the full force of the thing illustrated’. Recludere means ‘to open what had been closed’, ‘to unclose’, but also ‘to shut up’, ‘re-close’. Fowler 2000.

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signifies an opening predicated on closure, and also can mean both ‘to open up’ and ‘to shut off’. In this drawn-out pattern of tracing circles within circles within circles, Aeneas marks the furthest limit, extremos orbis, the end of the world and of this text miniaturised in Turnus’ shield, but at the same time he tears open the borders, together with his enemy’s body – oras recludit. In the amphitheatrics of Aeneid 12, rehearsed already in the games of Book 5, we see ‘into the future’ to the bloody entertainments of imperial Rome that celebrate empire’s mastery, which is, for Latin literature, a mastery of the contradictions of closure as an idea. As Henderson puts it, “the circus stands proud as, more than a representation of Rome as universe, a massive engine of representation”.10 Through the microcosmic circus/amphitheatre11, the orbis as orbis terrarum, we see the paradoxes of imperium sine fine in action: to enclose is to celebrate limitlessness. As a structure completely closed on all sides, which functions as a microcosmic showcase for imperial conquest, which lets us conceptualise endless circularity, and whose acoustics ensure that sounds reverberate (cf. vocem late nemora alta remittunt, Aen. 12.929), the amphitheatre/circus is a compelling stage for the poetics of closure in Latin literature. One of the most succinct demonstrations of this comes in the opening poems of Martial’s Liber de Spectaculis, where the all-encompassing, en-closing arena offers up a visual metaphor both for totalising imperial conquest, symbolised in one ruler and in the multiethnic audience, and for epigram’s runaway boundedness. Consider the third poem in the introductory sequence: Quae iam seposita est, quae gens tam barbara, Caesar, ex qua spectator non sit in urbe tua? venit ad Orpheo cultor Rhodopeius Haemo, venit et epoto Sarmata pastus equo, et qui prima bibit deprensi flumina Nili, et quem supremae Tethyos unda ferit; festinavit Arabs, festinavere Sabaei, et Cilices nimbis his maduere suis. crinibus in nodum tortis venere Sicambri, atque aliter tortis crinibus Aethiopes. vox diversa sonat populorum, tum tamen una est, cum verus patriae diceris esse pater.

5

10 (Mart. spect. 3)

What race is so remote, so barbarous, Caesar, that it sends no spectator to your city? The farmer of Rhodope has come from Orphic Haemus, the 10 11

Henderson 2002: 45. See Lovatt 2005: 34 for discussion of the Circus Maximus as microcosm (the channel of water surrounding the circus is akin to an encircling ocean, the central obelisk from Heliopolis in Egypt symbolises the sun, while the chariots revolve as quasi-heavenly bodies).

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Martial exploits the fantasy of the all-unifying amphitheatre to display the reductive powers, aesthetic appeal, and violence of his epigrams. All three poems in the apparently intact opening sequence of the Liber de Spectaculis employ chiastic patterns to give the impression of a unified ‘crown’ of poems.12 But on a smaller scale, this third epigram is a miniaturisation of the book (or of the games) as a whole: just as the arena is a microcosm of empire, so the poem folds into its drum-roll program highlights of the bloody punishments to follow: as the tourists hurry in (festinavit […] festinavere, 7), so the poem leaps ahead for impatient readers, cramming it all in and advertising epigram as ending and ending again, endlessly. The farmer from Orphic Haemus announces the dismemberment of ‘Orpheus’ at poem 24(21); the Sarmata fed on horses’ blood becomes a generic flash of bestialized humans and bleeding mouths; the Egyptian who drinks the waters of the conquered Nile and the Briton beaten by the waves of furthest Tethys preview the mass of humanity dancing and drowning when the arena is flooded in poems 27(24), 28(25), 29(25b), 30(26) and 34(30; 28). Note that poem 34, which may have been the final poem of the collection, echoes in its final line the ‘one for all and all for one’ ethos of the opening pieces (hanc norint unam seacula naumachiam, ‘may this be the one sea fight known to posterity’, 34.12): the ring is (perhaps) complete, its endbeginnings sewn up, leaving no room for competitors. Finally, at 3.8-10, after the Cilicians are sprayed, like the arena and its victims, with their ‘own’ (not any more!) saffron, the Sygambrians and Ethiopians, with their elaborate braids (crinibus in nodum tortis […] aliter tortis crinibus), can easily be recontextualised as slaves dragged by the hair across the sand (the verb torqueo is used by Cicero and Suetonius, among others, to refer to torture on the rack). When the pentameter of 3.10 repeats its hexameter, atque aliter, the message is both that they’re all foreign to you and me (far north, far south, same difference), and also that what the games are about to offer is this kind of torture, then that – the sort of sadistic, boring repetition that lends itself to epigrammatic summary.

12

For further discussion see Fitzgerald 2007: 37-42 and Rimell 2008: 116-120. – The numbering of poems from the Liber de Spectaculis follows Shackleton Bailey’s Teubner edition.

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This epigram, then, is a showpiece if ever there was one, the première of epigram’s power to clamp shut, to banalise and intensify, and a grafting of poetic space onto the imperial space of the amphitheatre, display-case of empire as both peacemaker and cruel conquerer. Its camp trouncing of the boundaries of the poetic book (due to reader excitement and short attention span, Martial gives us the whole performance right now, not elegantly ordered in acts with pauses, diversions and Horatian cadences, though we can have that too …) betrays the violence of holiday ‘inclusiveness’ and takes its inspiration directly from the Roman determination to cross all borders (hence the ‘captured Nile’ at 3.5, the domestication of every gens barbara at 3.1). In Latin literature the amphitheatre, or circus, is a recurrent, self-propelling image for controlled ‘open’ ending (closed beginning), for the imperial management of the deconstructability of poetic closure. The metaphor of the chariot race as the course of a poem and of human life is already a very familiar one in Greek literature, explained in part by the ancient idea of life as a series of ‘circuits’ made by the sun (see, e.g., Herodas, Mim. 10),13 and the Platonic idea of the ‘chariot of the soul’14. The chariot race as a symbol of martial epic and epinician, or of poetic competition in general, dates back at least to the days of Choerilus and Pindar, and in the fifth century BC poetic competitions ran alongside athletic competitions at the great festivals.15 Poets drive the chariot of the muses,16 and (in Choerilus, SH 317) are pictured lagging behind their predecessors in the race for glory. Yet the topos takes on a new Roman, imperial flavour in the late Republican and Augustan periods. Lucretius, for example, calls on Calliope to get him through the last lap of the De Rerum Natura (6.92-94).17 At the beginning of Epistles 1.1, Horace compares his retirement to a gladiator’s merciful dismissal, and to the quitting of former champion chariot racer. The image takes us back to the end of Satires 1.1, where, returning to his starting point (illuc, unde abii, redeo 108),18 the poet paints his portrait of the greedy man in life’s race, who cares only about getting ahead and so can never be content: sic festinanti semper locupletior obstat, ut, cum carceribus missos rapit ungula currus, 13

14 15 16 17 18

There are a number of Roman sarcophagi depicting chariot races, frequently (in the case of children) with the figure of Eros as chariot driver (perhaps representing the child who died an untimely death, and associating contest with desire). Plato, Phaedrus 244-247. On chariot metaphors in Pindar, see e.g. Simpson 1969. For a full discussion of the tradition of this metaphor, see Lovatt 2005: ch. 1. E.g., Pi. P. 10.65, I. 2.1-5, 7.17-19, 8.61-63. Tu mihi supremae praescripta ad candida calcis / currenti spatium praemonstra, callida Musa / Calliope. See Gowers 2009 on ‘false’ closure in Horace’s Satires.

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(Hor. Sat. 1.1.113-116)

In a race like this there is always a richer man blocking your way. It’s like when chariots shoot from opened gates behind a blur of hooves, and the charioteer chases down winning horses, despising the one he has passed and left behind with the losers. Prima dicte mihi, summa dicende Camena, spectatum satis et donatum iam rude quaeris, Maecenas, iterum antiquo me includere ludo, non eadem est aetas, non mens. Veianius armis Herculis ad postem fixis latet abditus agro, ne populum extrema totiens exoret harena. est mihi purgatam crebro qui personet aurem; ‘solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne peccet ad extremum ridendus et ilia ducat.’ nunc itaque et versus et cetera ludicra pono.

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10

(Hor. Epist. 1.1.1-10)

You of whom my earliest Muse has spoken, and of whom my last Muse will speak – you Maecenas, are trying to shut me up again in my old school, though I have been gazed on enough and have already been presented with the wooden sword. My years, my mind, are not the same. Veianius hangs up his arms at Hercules’ door, then hides out in his country refuge, so that he won’t have to plead with the crowd again and again from the arena’s edge. There’s always someone yelling in my wellrinsed ear, ‘See sense before it’s too late, let the ageing horse go free, don’t let him fail and collapse breathless at the last hurdle, a laughing stock!’ I therefore lay down my verse and all my other toys.

As Freudenberg puts it of Epistles 1.1, “with the oddly Romanised figures that open this poem we have a picture of the poet’s lyric enterprise that the Odes themselves never paint – never even hint at. Namely, lyric song as ludic spectacle (lyrica = ludicra).”19 This is a fresh start then, a new life-cycle, an overhaul of old perspectives, marked by the act of quitting a race – a beginning and/as an end (from prima to summa Camena). As much as he lays down his ludicra and breaks free from the gladiatorial school, Horace also makes a facile visual display of taking ludus (school, game) out of (or slotting it back into?) includere (to ‘shut in’) at the end of line 3. In sending himself up as the champion slave-boy and the wannabe equus (sorry, Eques), the poet is still 19

Freudenberg 2002: 124.

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(iterum) showing off, playing the game, and making the crowd laugh. There will be no quitting after all, or at least, the quitting will lead us round in elaborate loops, from city to country, from letters to sermones to lyric and back again.20 It is the gladiatorial arena and the chariot circuit that signal the edge (of the Epistles) that Horace will go beyond: the poet situates himself extrema harena (6) like Veianius and (with his horse) ad extremum (9), at the border of a collection that will be obsessed with return, with (not) going back. Latin literature, deeply conscious of its recycling of earlier (especially Greek) texts, and of Callimachus’ ironically overquoted advice to ‘not drive your chariot down the common ruts of others’ (Aetia 1.25-8 Pf.) visualises the chariot race as a ludic and quintessentially Roman ‘structure of repetitions’.21 Book 1 of Virgil’s Georgics also uses an image of chariot racing to delineate the (end of the) first relay of the poem (indeed, as Thomas notes in his commentary, 1.512 looks to be indebted to Horace, Sat. 1.1.114: cum carceribus missos rapit ungula currus). In lines 505-514, civil war, which is transforming farmland into battlefields, is raging like a chariot racer who gathers speed from lap to lap and finally spins out of control: quippe ubi fas versum atque nefas; tot bella per orbem, 505 tam multae scelerum facies; non ullus aratro dignus honos, squalent abductis arva colonis, et curvae rigidum falces conflantur in ensem. hinc movet Euphrates, illinc Germania bellum; vicinae ruptis inter se legibus urbes 510 arma ferunt; saevit toto Mars impius orbe: ut cum carceribus sese effudere quadrigae, addunt in spatia, et frustra retinacula tendens fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus habenas. (Virg. Georg. 1.505-514) For here are right and wrong inverted; so many wars rage the world over, sin has so many different faces; respect for the plough is gone; our lands lie waste, the farmers gone, and curved pruning hooks are forged into straight swords. Here Euphrates, there Germany incites war; breaking the laws that which bind them, neighbouring cities take up arms; impious Mars rages throughout the world, as when chariots pour out of the starting gates and gather speed lap by lap, while the driver, tugging hopelessly at the halter, is carried along by his horses, and the car ignores the reins.

20 21

See Cucchiarelli 2010 on the circularity of the Epistles and points of ‘false closure’ in the collection. Lovatt’s phrase (2005: 16). See also Juvenal 1.19-20, where he declares he shall run his horses in Lucilius’ track.

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The horse and chariot accelerate as they race lap after lap, addunt in spatia (if that is the correct text of 513: it’s certainly the most convincing). The book ends, as Mynors puts it in his commentary, ‘on a note of uncontrollable despair’, yet that violence and chaos is neatly circumscribed, and aestheticized as entertainment, within the circuit of the arena – as well as, of course, this text, which loops round and round in four books which match, and don’t match, the primitive circularity of the seasons. Whereas war, especially civil war, is the bulging and bursting apart of dark, secret places – the sun warns of ‘blind uprisings’ (caecos tumultus), and ‘hidden wars brewing’ (operta tumescere bella, 1.464-465) –, the imperial poet, inspired by the metamorphic power of civil war itself, converts unseeable horrors into exciting spectacle, tot bella per orbem into the totus orbis of empire, and then into that microcosm of orbis and of urbs, the hippodrome. The trauma of civil war, and of fallen Troy (502), is unleashed and at the same time cured, transformed. A perfect imperial finis sine fine: we have only ended Book 1.22 The second half of Book 4, the salvation of the bees (281-314), initially concerns the selection of confined spaces for a process of triumphant metamorphosis and rebirth; at the same time the entire complex story of the bees’ salvation, of Aristaeus and Orpheus and Eurydice, is to be ‘laid open’ by Virgil – the verb used is pandere at 4.284: exiguus primum atque ipsos contractus in usus eligitur locus; hunc angustique imbrice tecti parietibusque premunt artis […]. […] sic positum in clauso linquunt […]

(Virg. Georg. 4.295-297, 303)

First a space is chosen, small and hemmed-in for this very purpose. This they confine with a narrow roof of tiles and close walls. […] And thus they leave him lying in his prison. […]

The notoriously difficult, or ‘open’, or ‘circular’ ending to the Georgics is visualised in a bursting out of closed confines (the bees flying free of the ‘ruptured ribs’ of the putrefied bull, at 308-314, and then at 554-558). As well as picking up on the uncontrollable chariot at the end of Book 1 (the same verb, effundere, at 1.512 and 4.312, is emphatic, and the bees are compared to the arrows of war), these scenes already preview and concentrate much of the imagery of Troy’s fall in Aeneid 2, which centres on the ‘opening up’ of another perverse animal belly. Look at the description of the bees’ ‘birth’ in Georgics 4.308-314: 22

The beginning of Book 2 already revives the cyclic rein-tugging/unleashing of the end of Book 1 in the temporal adverb hactenus, echoing Book 1’s final word habenas.

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interea teneris tepefactus in ossibus umor aestuat, et visenda modis animalia miris, trunca pedum primo, mox et stridentia pinnis, 310 miscentur, tenuemque magis magis aëra carpunt, donec ut aestivis effusus nubibus imber erupere, aut ut nervo pulsante sagittae, prima leves ineunt si quando proelia Parthi. (Virg. Georg. 4.308-314) Meanwhile the wetness warming in the softened bones ferments, and wondrous creatures begin to be seen, footless at first, soon with buzzing wings as well, they swarm together, and more and more venture into the light air, until, like a downpour from summer clouds, they burst out, or like arrows from a trembling bow, when the light-armed Parthians enter into battle.

The image returns in the final passage of the poem: hic vero subitum ac dictu mirabile monstrum aspiciunt, liquefacta boum per viscera toto 555 stridere apes utero et ruptis effervere costis, immensasque trahi nubes, iamque arbore summa confluere et lentis uvam demittere ramis. (Virg. Georg. 4.554-558) But here they see a miracle, sudden and awesome to tell – everywhere in the belly, in the molten innards of the bullock, bees buzz and swarm out from the ruptured ribs, then trail in vast clouds, till at last on a treetop they flow together and hang in clusters from the lazy branches.

And compare Aen. 2.298-301 (this comes just after Hector’s dream, or does it? Hector shakes himself from sleep – excutior somno – only at 302). diverso interea miscentur moenia luctu, et magis atque magis, quamquam secreta parentis Anchisae domus arboribusque obtecta recessit, clarescunt sonitus armorumque ingruit horror.

(Virg. Aen. 2.298-301)

On every side, meanwhile, the city is a blur of wailing, and more and more, though my father Anchises’ house lies far away and screened by trees, the sounds grow sharper and the horror of war falls upon us.

In some dream-like sense, the fake quaint house which contains the bull carcass, with its miniature tiled roof and four windows, returns in the ‘deformed home’ that is fallen Troy; the rising hum of the warlike bees becomes the din of war closing in on the heart of the doomed city, and the mixing of the bees becomes the turmoil of the Trojans as they struggle to escape and feel the walls closing in

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on them. The Trojan horse itself, with its ‘ribs’ interwoven with branches – intexunt abiete costas, Aen. 2.16 – is reminiscent of the bullock, which is beaten to death and branches put under its ribs: ramea costis / subiciunt fragmenta, Georg. 4.303-304. The bugonia is a mirabile monstrum whose womb (uterus, 4.556) produces the bees in a perverse birth, just as the Trojan horse in Aeneid 2 will be a monstrum (e.g. at 2.245) which the Trojans first ‘marvel at’, mirantur (32), and which ‘gives birth’ to the Greek soldiers from its grotesque uterus (repeated four times: 20, 38, 52, 243). The oneiric writing back into Georgics 4 of the rupture of the Trojan horse, and of Troy itself, fuels the jagged contradictions of the bees’ renewal – as both natural and perverse, a ‘salvation’ contingent on sacrifice, violence, rot. It visualises the way in which the Georgics, at their end, take us in circles not only back to earlier bits of the text and to beginnings and ends of the Eclogues, but already, forward towards epic, before that ambition is artificially frozen in the pastoral still-life of 4.557-558. Georgics 4 is an enigmatic pivot around which Virgil’s three poetic worlds turn. Its circular pattern of dilation and dissilience followed by closure and withdrawl – from stridere apes utero et ruptis effervere costis (556) to lentis uvam demittere ramis (558), from canebam […] super arboribus (559-560) to Caesar […] fulminat (560-561), and back again – will be replayed on a much grander stage at the end of the Aeneid. But already it lets us see how enclosed spaces in Latin poetry, and endings that visually narrow down space, are pumped full of a poetic energy whose disturbing repercussions are not easily stifled. Enclosures may function as peaceful, neo-Callimachean retreats from the vast spaces of empire, war, and epic – yet they are also where violence and poetry foment, where they are moulded to fit/pressure imperial-textual structures. Ovid responds directly to the Georgics and to the Aeneid when he makes the hippodrome the visual icon of his poetics of (false) closure. As many have noted, in Ars 1.35-40, the joke that he only describes the content of Books 1 and 2 yet does so in three bullet-points, hinting at a three-book work yet at the same time concealing Ars 3 a ‘surprise addition’, hinges on the image of the chariot race, and on the double meaning of meta: turning post, or end post:23 principio, quod amare velis, reperire labora qui nova nunc primum miles in arma venis. 23

35

Propertius includes a similar image in the first poem of his last book of elegies (has meus ad metas sudet oportet equus, ‘this is goal my tired horse must aim for’, 4.1.70). For Ovid’s 2/3-book program, see discussion in Sharrock 1994: 18-20. The ‘illusion’ of two books is maintained at the end of Ars 1, where the ‘doubleness’ of elegy lends itself to suggesting a work divided into two (pars superat coepti, pars est exhausta laboris, 771), and again at the end of Ars 2 (finis adest operi, 733). Game over, says the poet at Ars 3.809 (lusus habet finem), but that can only tempt the backlash that is the Remedia Amoris. And so it goes on.

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40

(Ov. Ars 1.35-40)

First, make it your mission to find an object for your love, you the soldier coming to new wars for the first time. The next task is to win the girl you fancy; the third, to make that love long lasting. This is my limit, this the field whose boundaries my chariot shall mark, this the goal my flying wheel will graze.

The only way you can actually see imperium sine fine, Ovid knows, is in the oval microcosm of the Circus Maximus. The infinite, shown off, is made finite, while the ingens orbis in Urbe, as Ovid sloganises in Ars 1.174, concentrates and fuels sexual-as-poetic tension. In Amores 3.2, the poet-lover is a charioteer driven round the bend with lust for a girl he sees in the crowd, yet at the same time he is squeezed beside her on the benches, her gaze fixed on the horses, his split between race and girl – two shows back-to-back.24 The clever permutations and triangulations of perspective in this poem, the lover’s testing out of different strategies of seduction, the ambiguous expressions of the puella which allow the narrative to spiral, find their visual allegory in the repeated image of chariots flying from the starting blocks and tracing laps in the sand. The circus is both carcer (enclosure, prison: 9, 66, 77) and cetera (so much more, 84): it figures desire as repetition, as repeated repression-explosion. Its ‘rule of space’ (haec in lege loci commoda circus habet, 3.2.20) dictates and flaunts elegiac form, the paradox of unjoined circularity (line 19 spells this out: cogit nos linea iungi, ‘the line compels us to sit close/get together’). In both the Amores and the Ars Amatoria, the word meta looks towards the Meta-morphoses and seems to already contain the idea of a change of place, mind or body: it echoes and transforms Jupiter’s prophecy in the Aeneid – his ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono (‘I place no limit on space or time’, Aen. 1.278) – morphing boundaries into turning posts, fashioning conquest and territorial expansion into an imperial spectacle and literary-erotic ludus. When, at the end of Ars 2, lovers race side by side to the meta (ad metam properate simul, 727), aiming for simultaneous orgasm, the scene would seem the ideal headlinegrabbing end, the twin books laid out spent in the form of two lovers’ bodies. Yet of course, there is more: in a race, chariots inevitably compete. The image of the two charioteers cedes (ironically when there is no time for mora or delay, when the man, implicitly, must ‘finish’) to the more conventional porn-shot of horse and rider, better to fit the reiterable top-bottom of the elegiac couplet: cum 24

For a much fuller analysis, see Henderson 2002.

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mora non tuta est, totis incumbere remis / utile, et admisso subdere calcar equo (‘When delay is risky, I advise pressing on with all oars, and spurring on the galloping horse’, 731-732). We are back to not guaranteeing the plena voluptas of 727, which provides the fake finis of 732 (finis adest operi) and leaves women pleading for advice (rogant tenerae […] puellae, 745). Cue Ovid’s proxima cura (746): the third book, but soon to be followed by the Remedia Amoris, together with the Medicamina, which will teach that cura in detail, grinding cosmetic into poetic tricks (discite quae faciem commendet cura, puellae, ‘learn what dedication can enhance your looks, girls’, Med.1). Meanwhile the reader’s desire for more sex after Ars 2’s taster is both catered for and thwarted – we’re already on board for the sequel. Ovid will recall his hurrying, textbook lovers (ad metam properate simul, Ars 2.727) at almost exactly the mid-point of the Remedia, when he attacks Envy for disparaging his choice of genre (his Musa proterva, 362). As punishment, Envy is told he should ‘burst himself’ (rumpere, Livor edax, 389: a phrase with clear sexual connotations25). He is ‘hurrying too much’ to criticise (sed nimium properas, 391), the implication being that he is too hungry for the sexual gratification of ‘hating’ Ovidian free love (lascivia libera, 385).26 Envy unwittingly becomes a mascot for Ovidian double-speak in the Remedia (he loathes erotic poetry, yet is turned on by the act of loathing). The poet has plenty more tormenting to do: his horse is panting (the innuendo never tires) at the beginning of the climb towards even greater fame (principio clivi noster anhelat equus, 394). Whereas Ovid manipulates endless transformability within domesticized, microcosmic imperial spaces – the circus, the bedroom, the body – Lucan imagines civil war as endless disfigurement and contagion in a global arena, a totus orbis (that compulsively repeated phrase) that is one enormous amphitheatre.27 As the immensum aperitur opus in Book 1.68 (together with empire itself: apertum orbem, 1.465) and images of eruption, exposure and boundlessness abound,28 Caesar is determined to steal the reins of power from Pompey,29 and champs at the bit like a horse caged at the start of a race: 25 26

27

28

See Adams 1982: 150-151 (and especially Catullus 11.20, Propertius 2.16.14). Adams 1982: 144 notes that the verb propero “seems to have been idiomatic in much the same sense as Eng. come.” See especially Martial 1.46.1-2 (cum dicis ‘propero, fac si facis’, Hedyle, languet / […] Venus). See e.g. Lucan. 1.511-514 (urbem populis victisque frequentem / gentibus et generis, coeat si turba, capacem / humani facilem venturo Caesare praedam / ignavae liquere manus). The violated body has a similar capacity for (miniaturising) containment: see e.g. 2.186-187 (vix erit ulla fides tam saevi criminis, unum / tot poenas cepisse caput). In Book 1, see especially: tum longos iungere fines / agrorum (167-168); longa sub ignotis extendere rura colonis (170); mitis Atax Latias gaudet non ferre carinas / finis et Hesperiae, promoto limite, Varus (403-404): produntque suas omenta latebras

(En)closure and Rupture: Roman Poetry in the Arena […] sic postquam fatus, et ipsi in bellum prono tantum tamen addidit irae accenditque ducem, quantum clamore iuvatur Eleus sonipes, quamvis iam carcere clauso inmineat foribus pronusque repagula laxet.

117

(Lucan. 1.291-295)

So Curio spoke – his words only added to Caesar’s rage, as the general was already eager for war, fired up now, just as the race-horse at Olympia is excited by the shouting, although he is already pressing against the gates of the enclosure, loosens the bolts with his forehead.

The microcosm of Rome itself explodes, the temple of Saturn symbolically split and emptied, in Book 3.30 The entire text of the Bellum Civile is patterned by a bulimic expansion ↔ contraction, whereby images of imprisonment and armies/towns under siege are followed or accompanied by violent opening.31 Outbursts of fury burn themselves out, only to flicker up again.32 Lucan wants us to visualise the paranoid psychology of an empire at war, so that cycles of opening and closing, immurement and breaching, gain their own monstrous momentum, the one folded into and predicated on the other, unable to cling to the structures of ‘civilized’ war.33 The idea, central to this epic, that the entire globe is infected by civil strife, a grotesque parody of imperial expansion, has the oxymoronic effect of producing enclosures, and of feeding claustrophobia. Armies are confined into ever-tightening circles, arenas made for watching.34 As

29 30

31 32

33 34

(625): terraene dehiscent […]? (645). Caesar, as in the image at 1.291-295, is the transgresser, the loosener, the destroyer of boundaries (e.g. 1.204: moras solvit belli); he would rather burst through a closed door than open it (non tam portas intrare patentes / quam fregisse iuvat, 2.443-444). Lucan. 1.316: ille reget currus nondum patientibus annis […]? See especially 115-118, and 153-155 (protinus abducto patuerunt templa Metello. / tunc rupes Tarpeia sonat magnoque reclusas / testatur stridore fores […]). The participle conditus used in 155 of the hidden treasure, now exposed, ([…] tum conditus imo / eruitur templo, 155-156) points to the break-in as an undoing of Rome’s foundation (see, e.g., Virg. Aen. 1.33: tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem). On the interlocked movement of opening and closing in the episode of the battle of Massilia in Lucan, Book 3, see Saylor 2003. For example the matron’s Bacchic whirling and rant at the end of Book 1, the energy of which is exhausted just in time for the book, too, to come to a stop (lasso iacuit deserta furore, 1.695). The first verb of Book 2, predictably, is patuere. Book 8 ends with Pompey’s tiny tomb, evaporating into dust, while Book 9 begins with the spirit of Pompey soaring up from its prison of ‘tiny ashes’ (cinis exiguus, 9.2). See Henderson 1998. The accumulation of dark nefas and dead bodies loads cosmic and earthly space to bursting point. See also, e.g., 4.73-75 (vetitae transcurrere densos / involvere globos,

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Book 4 exhausts itself, for example, Curio’s soldiers die propped up against each other like planks,35 the front rank ‘narrowing the circle’ as it inches back (constrinxit gyros acies, 4.781), and perversely denying the victorious Moors the full spectacle of bodies crashing to the floor. In Book 8, the dream of reaching a zone exterior to civil war, a refuge securum a Caesare (8.214) is lost once and for all. Cornelia’s hiding place, the nostalgic, elegiac Lesbos, which, Pompey says, ‘was Rome’ to him (hic mihi Roma fuit, 8.132) is a briefly lived romance: its dramatic purpose is to set the scene for a grand staging of the motif of multum in parvo, or Magnus parvus, which stands for the shrinking down of an overexpanded empire, and hero – the very contradiction that will lead up to Pompey’s spectacularly un-spectacular murder. The only simile in Book 8, of the chariot coursing round a meta, imagines Pompey’s flight as return, and forecasts the implosion of his dream of ‘outside-Rome’. aequora senserunt motus aliterque secante iam pelagus rostro nec idem spectante carina mutavere sonum. non sic moderator equorum, dexteriore rota laevum cum circumit axem, cogit inoffensae currus accedere metae.

200

(Lucan. 8.197-201)

When the sea sensed the movement, it gave a different sound, and the ship’s beak cut the water differently, pointing the prow in a new direction. With less skill the charioteer makes the right wheel spin round the left, and forces his car close to the turning-post without striking it.

Both ‘endings’ of the Bellum Civile (the death of Pompey in Book 8 and deathly non-death of Caesar at the end of Book 10) are marked by the narrowing and closing down of space. As Pompey moves towards the ‘boundless’ east, everything contracts. We enter the world of little islands, tiny boats, of women, tears and kings dressed as beggars. Grief ‘closes down’ Cornelia’s soul, animam clausit dolor, 8.59; Pompey calls a ‘halt’ to mourning (satis est, 8.137); the vast epic seas are packed into the circular hippodrome in the image quoted above (197-201). The open-closure figured in the space of the circus acts out the paradoxical nature of Pompey’s ‘escape’, which is especially overt in his speech at 262-327. Note particularly this: dividit Euphrates ingentem gurgite mundum Caspiaque inmensos seducunt claustra recessus.

35

(Lucan. 8.290-291)

congestumque aeris atri / vix recipit spatium quod separat aethere terram); 4.98-99 (iam flumina cuncta / condidit una palus vastaque voragine mersit); 4.777 (ergo acies tantae parvum spissantur in orbem). See especially Henderson 1998: ch. 4 on the ‘congested crush of BC’. Looking both not-dead and newly dead (already seized by rigor mortis).

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The waters of the Euphrates shut us off from the huge world, and the Caspian gates hide boundless retreats.

The ‘East’ is conceived as both limitless and enclosed, both incomprehensibly foreign and a reassuring refuge. It is a huge, open, yet protected space (Alexander’s Caspian gates lock out the barbarians to the north), which hides innumerable sheltered corners. When Pompey is murdered off the coast of Alexandria, the amphitheatricality of the scene (the Stoic veiling of the head, the theatrical slitting open of the hood to reveal the twitching, dying face, then the slow butchery of decapitation) is all the more intense for the tininess of the stage. Magnus rows to the spot in his modest boat, and is met by a little two-oared vessel (8.560-563); in this restricted, partly covered space, we see in nearmicroscopic detail the features of his un-curtained face, the muscles, bones, and even the veins of his neck as it is severed, while the culminating nefas of Egyptian head-shrinking in 688-691 (and head-absence at 711) is felt as a cinematic literalisation of the compacting vision of the second half of the book. Lucan invites us to squint (through the eyes of Cornelia, stretching to see),36 and at the same time thrusts the cruelty of this alius orbis in our faces, taunting us to look away, to tear out our eyes.37 As Book 10 narrows down to its ‘close’, as we have it, Caesar shuts himself inside the palace at Alexandria. Like Cornelia and Pompey, he too seeks a refuge, but that hiding place is also a trap: […] at Caesar moenibus urbis diffisus foribus clausae se protegit aulae degeneres passus latebras. […]

(Lucan. 10.439-441)

But Caesar did not trust the city walls and defended himself by closing the gates of the palace, suffering an unworthy hiding place.

36 37

Likewise Pompey’s grave is so small ‘a stranger must stoop to read it, and a visitor from Rome would pass it by if it were not signposted (8.821-822). Oedipus’ incestuous crimes and the Oedipus-inspired motif of looking and not looking (e.g. Cornelia at 8.591-592), or of blinding oneself so as to avoid seeing the horrific (Pompey at 8.615, tum lumina pressit) haunt depictions of the East in Book 8. See especially Lentulus’ speech at 8.404-409, and Cornelia’s guilt in 8.647-661 (haud ego culpa / libera bellorum, 647-648), where she describes herself as a mater (648), just before addressing Pompey as her coniunx (651), and asks to hang at 655 – like Jocasta? The Oedipus subtext is enriched by the allegorical tale of Medusa in Book 9, where Medusa, who turns her spectators into stone, is beheaded in an amphitheatrical scene that cannot but echo Pompey’s beheading in the previous book. See Papaioannou 2005: 226.

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He is like a beast driven to madness in a narrow cage (parvis claustris, 445), a volcano ready to blow (447-448), just as he was a caged racehorse at the beginning of the war, and at the beginning of this poem. The phrase carcere clauso at 1.294 contained an anagram of Caesar (it is his defining image, in contrast to that of Pompey as an ageing tree in 1.135-143), but was used also of the Spanish forces in Book 4, roused to new fury by Petreius’ speech (they are almost-tamed beasts, in carcere clauso, 4.237, driven wild once more by the taste of blood). It reverberates now through 10.445-446 (fremit in parvis […] claustris / […] praemorso carcere).38 Spatially, the narrative is tensing up to enforce actual and imminent closure along with the possibility of rupture. Caesar becomes, effectively, a victim of his own megalomaniac view of the world as ‘too small’ to contain him: hic, cui Romani spatium non sufficit orbis, parvaque regna putet Tyriis cum Gadibus Indos, ceu puer imbellis vel captis femina muris, quaerit tuta domus; spem vitae in limine clauso ponit […].

(Lucan. 10.456-460)

Yet he, for whom the whole Roman world is too small, who would not be satisfied to rule at once India and Phoenician Gades, seeks safety within a house, like a defenceless child or a woman when her city is taken; he relies for his life on a closed door […].

The entrapment of Caesar at this point summons all the terror of the rape of Priam’s palace in Aeneid 2, especially the line in which he wanders from room to room, desperately seeking shelter (incerto lustrat vagus atria cursu, 460). Pompey’s and Priam’s deaths are a gory blur, and Caesar could slip in too – he is following the ragged neck at 10.1 (Pompei colla secutus). We think of the Trojan women roaming madly through the vast, exposed building, and clinging to the doors (tum pavidae tectis matres ingentibus errant, / amplexaeque tenent postis atque oscula figunt, Aen. 2.489-490), of wounded Polites rushing through the same ‘empty halls’ (vacua atria lustrat / saucius, Aen. 2.528-529).39 Caesar is at once the doomed Trojan and an avenging Medea whose stillness conceals sadistic plots (sic barbara Colchis, 10.464). Yet there is nothing limitless, inimitable Caesar cannot be: he is all in one, toto iam liber in orbe solus

38 39

Clausus is repeated three times in the last one hundred or so lines of the poem (440, 459, 504). A similar phrase, again used of a desperate female, occurs at Aen. 12.474, when Juturna flits like a black swallow through a rich lord’s mansion, in search of scraps to feed her chicks (alta atria lustrat hirundo).

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(2.280).40 Rossi summons the evidence for seeing him here as a super-Aeneas, landing at Alexandria just as Aeneas landed at Carthage (itself modelled on literary representations of Alexandria), and also as the future Caesar Augustus, arriving at Alexandria after his final victory over Anthony and Cleopatra at Actium.41 Equally, Caesar can channel the Aeneid’s losing hero, Turnus, imprisoned just before his death towards the end of Aeneid 12, or at a point of near, deferred (or ‘false’) ending in Book 9 of Virgil’s epic. Book 9 begins as a therapeutic rewriting of Troy’s fall, when the Trojans carry out a cunning night attack on the Rutilian camp, bestrewn with drunken, sleeping soldiers. When Nisus and Euryalus are slaughtered, the tables turn and the Rutilians strike back, getting the upper hand when the giant brothers Pandarus and Bitias open the camp gates and symbolically welcome the Trojan horse for a second time. Too late, the gates are closed, shutting Turnus inside: like Caesar, he is a wild animal, a tiger among ‘helpless herds’ (730). Had he thought, in his furor, to reopen the gates so that the entire Rutilian army could flood in behind him, ‘that day would have been the last for the war and the nation’ (ultimus ille dies bello gentique fuisset, 9.759). Finally, Turnus escapes by jumping into the Tiber, just as Caesar escapes when he manages to leap aboard a ship at 10.506-507. The ghost of Turnus’ rampage in Bellum Civile 10 hints that Caesar may yet rid himself of the role of Trojan (‘)woman(’) and use enclosure as a weapon, as a hothouse for epic ira, and as a creative space in which to rewrite or imply alternative endings. As he boasted in his speech in Book 3, he is a whirlwind that needs to have thick woodland in its path in order to sustain its strength (3.362-363): obstruction is itself invigorating. The Turnus model also helps sustain the conjecture that the Bellum Civile ends just before Caesar is forced to jump into the sea (a story recorded in the Bellum Alexandrinum, Plutarch, Appian, Suetonius and Dio42), despite the fact that the text seems expressly to rule this out (there shall be via nulla salutis / non fuga, 10.538-539).43 The imagery of literal closure and circumvention in Book 10, which becomes inseparable from the impulse to burst and expand, is overwhelming. It culminates, suitably, in the last lines we have: molis in exiguae spatio stipantibus armis dum parat in vacuas Martem transferre carinas, 40 41 42 43

535

Henderson’s 1998 Caesarian tour-de-force shows this and then some; see especially 172-(at least) 177, plus 188 and 198. Rossi 2005. B.Alex. 21, Plut. Caes. 49.7-8, App. BC 2.90, Suet. Diu.Iul. 64, Dio 42.40.4-5. As Penwill 2009 recently discusses in his interesting analysis of Lucan’s end(s). The article concludes by proposing that the finale of the poem constructs a poetic imago of Caesar’s assassination.

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Victoria Rimell dux Latius tota subitus formidine belli cingitur: hinc densae praetexunt litora classes, hinc tergo insultant pedites. via nulla salutis, non fuga, non virtus; vix spes quoque mortis honestae. non acie fusa nec magnae stragis acervis 540 vincendus tum Caesar erat sed sanguine nullo. captus sorte loci pendet; dubiusque timeret optaretne mori, respexit in agmine denso Scaevam perpetuae meritum iam nomina famae ad campos, Epidamne, tuos, ubi solus apertis 545 obsedit muris calcantem moenia Magnum.

(Lucan. 10.534-546)

Round him stood his soldiers in the narrow space of the pier; and he was preparing to embark his troops on the empty ships, when suddenly he felt hemmed in by the terror of war. On one side the shore was lined with close-packed ships; on the other, the infantry assaulted his rear. There was no path of safety either in flight or in valour. He could scarcely hope even for an honourable death. To conquer Caesar, then, no rout of an army and no heaps of dead were needed, nor any bloodshed at all. Held captive by the fate of his position, he weighed out his options. And even as he doubted whether to fear death or pray for it, he looked back at Scaeva in the tight-packed ranks, that Scaeva who had already won immortal glory on the plains of Epidamnus. For there, when the walls were breached and Magnus trampled the defences underfoot, Scaeva single-handed beleaguered Magnus.

The Bellum Civile smashes the security of closure by writing massiveness into smallness, eruption into entrapment, outside into inside. Lucan’s strange ending, or non-ending, puts this familiar, unwriteable dynamic on show in a dizzying way: hence civil war is endlessness44, yet it is also endless closure, the caging of the world. In the image of molis in exiguae spatio (534), moles means pier, but literally ‘huge mass’, a gigantic structure that is at the same time ‘small’. The world is contracting again (just as Scaeva’s heroism in the epic landscape of 6.138-262 is zoomed visually into the gory conflicts of the arena, with Scaeva playing champion gladiator, and later a speared African elephant in a venatio). There is empty space into which Caesar can move (vacuas carinas, 535), yet the rest of the scene implies confinement, a line-up of barricades. At 536-537 Caesar is ‘surrounded’, or ‘hemmed in’ (cingitur) by a fear of war that is, at the same time implicitly inside him (totus orbis reduces down and flips into tota formido: winning was always in the head). A few lines back, the same spatial paradoxes were imagined in the lines: 44

See especially Masters 1994: 251: “For the civil war can have no ending: everything about the war and the poem is boundless, illimitable, infinite.”

(En)closure and Rupture: Roman Poetry in the Arena obsessusque gerit – tanta est constantia mentis – expugnantis opus.

123

(Lucan. 10.490-491)

Such was Caesar’s courage that while besieged he did the work of a besieger.

In defence, Caesar appears on the attack. The verb obsedit sits heavily in the final line of the poem, where it refers to Caesar’s hero Scaeva, and is usually translated as ‘blocks’ or ‘assails’.45 Yet Scaeva, like Caesar at 10.490-491, is a besieged besieger, and the entire lead-up to his aristeia butchers spatial categories.46 At the beginning of Book 6, Caesar performs the unlikely miracle of hemming in Pompey’s entire army without it noticing by constructing the equivalent of the walls of Troy or Babylon around it: the circle of battle is delineated once more (aestuat angusta rabies civilis harena, 6.63); yet Pompey and his men break through the walls like an army forcing its way into a city, although at the same time they have ‘opened up’ the world (iam mundi iura patebant, 6.139, cf. 119). Scaeva then heroically defends Caesar’s ramparts as if besieged, yet all notion of walls and what they divide from what is vaporized when the dead bodies make ‘the ground level with the ramparts’ (180-181) at which point Scaeva leaps in medias (6.182) and becomes a solid, punctured, body-as-wall (pro Caesare murus, 201). The blurred obsedit at 10.546 (literally ‘besieges from outside’, not ‘blocks from within’) has the re-doubled effect of pulping interior and exterior, defence and attack, solid and crumbling boundaries into one bloody, mutilated mass, just at the point at which the walls are breached (apertis muris, 10.545-546). Cingitur and obsedit, which encircle this ‘epilogue’ (the ships weaving a border, praetexunt, at 537, the trampled walls of Dyrrachium delineating the edge at 54647) enact over-neat, parallel contradictions.48 Obsedit, at the frontier, has forced us to come to a stop, to look back with 45

46 47

48

OLD, s.v. obsideo 4d (to obstruct a passage – though no examples concern warfare), 5b (to interfere with, block – but the example given refers to business: sed qui tempus obsideret, Cic. Ver. 6) and 6 (to assail, beset, press) – most often used in the passive in the sense of ‘being beset by ills’. Berti, in his commentary on Lucan. 10.546, ad loc.: “a Sceva viene attribuita la stessa capacità di assediare, da assediato, gli assedianti”. As Berti ad loc. expresses it: “la metafora, tratta dalla pratica della tessitura, evoca vividamente l’immagine delle navi che ‘orlano’ la riva, formando una specie di bordo decorativo.” Henderson 1998: 206 points out the perverseness of the ablative apertis muris, which also offers the instrumental sense of (besieges) “with open walls”: walls are not-walls in this passage, and no-blood is spraying from every crack. The dream-vision of Scaeva, his name spelling a mutilated Caesa--, makes nonsense of time sequences and situates Scaeva-Caesar everywhere – here (present) and there (past), on either side of the wall, his body the wall itself as it is mauled and torn down.

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Caesar, and to weigh up which side of the wall each character is (was) on, which side we are on: the point is that visualisation is hard, that there are confusions to untangle or let beat us before we can let paradox stand.49 As Caesar wavers between fearing and longing for death, the twists and obfuscations of the passage allow us to multiply narrative options, which are interwoven as tightly as the ships that buttress the poem’s ‘border’. Escape seems both imminent and contained within Caesar’s dream-like vision, and shadows of other stories (not least, the fate of shadow-man Pompey) haunt each piled-up negation: the ‘no mass slaughter’ of 10.540, the ‘no blood’ of 541, tease the imagination, especially as nothing can be magnus without conjuring up Pompey’s death-scene, itself a spectacle that is nothing, that boils down to the horror of ‘no head’. The adjective densus, a Lucanian buzzword repeated twice in the final lines (densae classes, 537; in agmine denso, 543), insists that there is no way out for Caesar, yet we have already looked back at Caesar’s self-defining speech in Book 3, in which he compares himself to a hurricane in need of densely-packed fuel (robore densae […] silvae, 3.362-363). In the same speech, Caesar argues that he must be on the attack, that he must ever destroy not capitulate, because offers of Greek diplomacy are a trick designed not to keep him out of Massilia, but to shut him in (inclusisse volunt, 3.369): the model for the poem’s final scene, then, is Caesar’s psychotic need for, and fear of, entrapment. Densus, after all, figures not just Caesarian unstoppability, but the last image of Scaeva, carrying a ‘thick forest in his breast’ (densam […] ferens in pectore silvam, 6.205, cf. densos inter cuneos compressus at 6.184).50 Just as in the final passage of the Aeneid, where Aeneas’s vision of Pallas sword belt (together with its depiction of the myth of the Danaids), is an unseen distillation of memories and associations and a catalyst for new violence, the last lines of BC 10 perform, spatially, the convergence and energising repression of narratives. If this is the intended end of the Bellum Civile, Lucan ‘out-Virgils’ Virgil, as Masters puts it, not just by writing a provocatively ‘open’ finale, but by stopping just at the point at which a non-verbal vision takes, or is about to take, its devastating emotional effect. As Caesar looks back at Scaeva, do we ‘see’ the Ides of March and want the text to stop right there, at Magnum, the ultimate revenge?51 Or do we want the show to go on, to call back Turnus’ escape and Caesar’s courageous dive? How far do we want ‘calcantem’ in the last line to close the circle with Caesar calcavit in line 2 of Book 10, or is that wall already breached? The spatial contortions of the final lines render all closure negatable: they put violent reversability on display, and taunt us to 49 50 51

I echo Bartsch’s thesis here (1997: passim). While the verb densatur (4.780) describes the inhuman crushing together of Curio’s soldiers in the novel amphitheatrical scene of 4.777-787. Penwill 2009 proposes that Caesar’s final vision imagines and predicts his assassination, marking a definitive, time-space-crunching finale.

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choose. Yet they also constitute an impressive, climactic densification of the tortuous circuits of civil war. Nowhere else in the BC does Lucan weave so many textual borders around literal enclosure. More specifically, respexit turns the scene into an amphitheatrical pivot/prison, a drama of spectating which evokes the circus of Caesar’s plot and Scaeva’s quasi-gladiatorial display in Book 6, as well as the account of Pompey’s murder in Book 8. It is clear that these lines set Caesar and Scaeva in parallel: Scaeva too, just before he respicit in order to slay another of Pompey’s soldiers in 6.18552 is ‘wedged tight among the ranks (densos inter cuneos) and encompassed by a whole army’ (6.184-185). Before this he longed for Caesar to watch him (peterem felicior umbras / Caesaris in voltu, 6.158-159), a desire that fuses the shadow of Pompey and/as death. Indeed the only other time respexit appears in the BC is at the very moment Pompey is stabbed at 8.620: sed postquam mucrone latus funestus Achillas perfodit, nullo gemitu consensit ad ictum respexitque nefas, […]

(Lucan. 8.618-620)

But when murderous Achillas had driven the blade through his side, he did not acknowledge the blow by any cry, and looked back at the horror.

Of course respexit, translated in this way, does not make sense. Translators rewrite and explain the Latin to formulate something like ‘he did not acknowledge the blow by any cry and did not take heed of the horror’, a prize example of the Lucanian idiosyncracy Bartsch discusses at length53 – the employment of positive conjunctions in sentences that follow or imply a negative. How can Pompey look when he is veiled and has just closed his eyes (8.615)? This is, if anything, a metaphorical ‘respexit’ then (Pompey only imagines seeing the nefas), yet the verb plays painfully with the torture of notseeing, an Oedipal theme which seeps throughout Book 8 (and indeed, Book 10, also set in ‘incestuous’ Alexandria).54 When Caesar, too, respexit, at the moment of his (non-)end, can we run with Penwill’s determined reading of Pompey’s final revenge, a revenge that is no less real, and no less horrific, for being a (our) vision?55 52

53 54 55

Respexit, as Masters 1994: 256 notes, contains the metaphorical sense of looking back in time (to the looking back, I’d add). Normally, Masters reminds us, it is Pompey who reminisces (see, e.g., 7.688). Henderson 1998: 171 n. 28 translates, in addition, ‘thought of’ (cf. 6.185). Bartsch 1997: 123-130 – though this specific example is not discussed here. Also see n. 37 above. This is, arguably, an especially apt way of suggesting Caesar’s Pompey-like stabbing, and hence Pompey’s revenge, given that when Caesar finally gets his hands on

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When we allow respexit at 10.543 to return us to the events of Book 6, meanwhile, the verb is close to suggesting a meeting of gazes across time, a flash of Caesar and Scaeva confined to the same arena: now Caesar catches sight of Scaeva in the ‘crowd’, then Scaeva wanted to see Caesar in the crowd, watching him (6.157-158). Two men, tied by a glance, mirroring each other in a circular space. We have come to a standstill, looking at them looking – a quasi-Medusan paralysis – imagining what it would have been back then for Scaeva to have Caesar in the audience, admiring his past courage, his future fama.56 Yet the tale of Medusa in Book 9 has already reminded us that looking back can be fatal (Pallas orders Perseus not to carry Medusa’s head over inhabited lands, as quis enim non praepete tanto / aethera respiceret?, 9.688-689). And what, exactly, do we see Caesar seeing? Is this a fuzzy day-dream of the past he didn’t get to witness? Is Scaeva simply an exemplum, lifted from history to inspire escape?57 Or is Scaeva really present on the causeway (or in Caesar’s mind), his mashed, eye-less (un-seeing?) face a brutal image of civil war?58 Remember the imbre cruento / informis facies (‘the shapeless face, a mass of streaming gore’) at 6.224-225. Is this what petrifies Caesar, what dictates that he will never escape from these lines, despite what history tells us? There is no room for stasis, or for a ‘satisfying’ dialectic between aperture and closure, if we wish for Caesar’s flight.59 If we waver (like Caesar, dubius), if we get caught up in looking back, he dies right here. What the Bellum Civile does at its close is to make a spectacle of the way readers write their own ends.

56

57

58

59

Pompey’s head at the end of Book 9, he, unlike Pompey and Cornelia, who shudder to (not) look at death, does not avert his gaze, fixing it instead on the mutilated face (9.1035-1036). When it is his time to die, he too will (not) want to look. To say, as Berti ad loc. does, that respexit can not also bear the metaphorical sense of ‘looking back in time’ (as both Masters and Henderson suggest) and must only be “inteso in senso letterale” seems perversely repressive. Berti 2000: 40 confirms the long-standing idea that Scaeva is a model for heroic action. Penwill 2009 argues very convincingly that this explanation is unsatisfactory. 10.539 explicitly states that virtus offers Caesar no way out. More straightforwardly, to watch Scaeva at Dyrrhachium is to be witness to his near-death and disturbing mutilation. Forcing Caesar, like Pompey, to (not) look. The participle calcantem in the last line reminds us, if we are looking with Caesar, of how Scaeva surreally trampled his own eye at 6.219 (telumque suo cum lumine calcat). Caesar is also described treading over corpses at 9.1043-1044 (qui duro membra senatus / calcaret voltu). Fowler 1997: 5 appreciates that “whether we look for closure or aperture or a dialectic between them in a text is a function of our own presuppositions, not of anything ‘objective’ about the text”, and goes on to admit: “I continue to feel that it is more satisfactory to play the two tendencies off against each other”. Lucan implies there is no neutrality in ambiguity, however: I agree with Bartsch 1997: passim that the BC calls for, even ‘forces’ intervention and partisanship.

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With Caesar’s backward gaze, like Ovid’s in Amores 3.2,60 Lucan turns the spotlight on his audience, and shows us what we have become. Lucan’s all-framing metaphors of the arena and the circus, which retrace shapes drawn by Virgil, Horace and Ovid in particular, teach that boundedness can contain boundlessness, and that confinement is itself the engine of explosive reiteration. The Bellum Civile represents the most intense development, in epic, of a graphic, spatial mapping of permeability in Roman poetry. It should make us think hard about our own naturalised, (neo)liberal, postmodern endorsement of all things ‘open’ (closure = false) in the form of ambiguity, deferral, multiplicity, deregulation, and the like, and about the way in which those constructions may be manipulated politically. Early imperial Roman verse enchains poetic with geopolitical structures. Against Ovid’s libidinal postponement of endings in elegy (both identifying with and putting off female orgasm), the Aeneid (after Georgics) repeats the trauma of openness as both liberation/rebirth and violent exposure; the Bellum Civile turns the world into an open prison, in the tightest Latin imaginable – creative dynamite.

60

As well as Amores 3.2, where the poet-lover turns the wrong way to make a parallel spectacle of the audience, see Romulus’ men in Ovid’s primordial Roman theatre at Ars 1.109, the model for sexually-aggressive turning on the audience in Amores 3.2 (respiciunt, oculisque notant sibi quisque puellam). Will Caesar’s anger-lust leap from its starting blocks again, when he spots the man he loves in a crowd?

III. Looking at (False) Closure History and its Margins in the Pictorial Narrative of the Nile Mosaic at Praeneste Gloria Ferrari Pinney There is nothing in recent studies of art history to match the outpouring of interest in the subject of closure in literary criticism over the past forty years – surprisingly, in a field that has been so heavily influenced by developments in literary theory. Can one speak of closure, let alone false closure, in a painting or a sculpture? That depends on the definition one adopts. Of the five that Fowler projects in “First Thoughts on Closure”, 1 “(4) the degree to which the questions posed in the work are answered, tensions released, conflicts resolved” and “(5) the degree to which the work allows new critical readings” certainly seem applicable to works of art as much as to literary texts. B. Herrnstein Smith, in her pathbreaking study of the topic, is ambivalent, admitting on the one hand that the notion of closure may be applied to “visually perceived forms”, while on the other she denies that in regard to works of art it is appropriate to speak of “finality or conclusiveness”. Nevertheless her formulation of the concept of closure is most useful in that it emphasizes structure in both thematic and formal elements. In this view, “the occurrence of the terminal event is a confirmation of the expectations that have been established by the structure of the sequence, and is usually distinctly gratifying”.2 While they have largely ignored the question of closure, art historical studies of the past generation have been concerned precisely with the structure of visual representations. In particular, approaches moving from premises established in theory of reception have revealed ways in which the viewer’s sight is drawn into the picture at specific points, becoming, in a sense, incorporated into the work itself, and have further focused on the function of the frame of the work and on the discursive context established by the physical location of the object.3 These are all ways in which an order every bit as focalized as that of a verbal description or narrative is imposed on visual 1 2 3

Fowler 2000: 242. Smith 1968: 2. For an introduction, see Kemp 1998.

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representation, one that we have every right to expect will come to a resolution. It is in developments of the aesthetics of reception that one finds discussion of a question germane to the theme of this volume, namely, how pictures end. At issue is the way in which some works of art require what Shearman called “a more engaged spectator” to be “complete” or realize their subject, works which, in other words, come to closure in the space of viewing, beyond the picture surface, in an “imaginative engagement” with the beholder.4 With these questions and possibilities in mind, in the pages that follow I return to the interpretation of a tableau, whose theme is the (im)possibility of an ending: the mosaic of the Nile at Praeneste (Figure 1). My choice depends on the fact that this representation of Egypt is not only monumental in size and brilliantly realized but also, it has been said, erudite.5 Therefore, we have every reason to expect a high degree of conceptualization in its organization. Secondly, it exhibits an evident linearity, which makes it easy to determine where the description of Egypt begins and where it ends. The mosaic, I have argued elsewhere, also contains a narrative, for which the ending is less easy to determine. 6 The mosaic formed the pavement of a large, elaborate, artificial cave in a building that is part of the so-called Lower Complex of the sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste.7 Large as it is, measuring 4 ½ meters by nearly 6, in its restored state the tableau is substantially smaller than the area it originally occupied. A first necessary step, before moving to an analysis of its composition, is to gauge how much of it has been restored and the original composition has been modified. Soon after it was discovered in the basement of the Bishop’s palace between 1588 and 1607, the Mosaic was lifted by breaking it into sections and transported to Rome piecemeal, leaving fragments behind and without drawing a state plan.8 In Rome, Cassiano dal Pozzo commissioned a series of drawings for his Paper Museum. These drawings, now in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, illustrate the single sections before they were incorporated into a first restoration and they are a precious source for the original form of the composition.9 In the latest restoration, after World War II, it was possible to distinguish genuine ancient parts from restorations. Comparison of the dal Pozzo drawings shows that the repairs made in the 1640s were not unfaithful to the original, although 4 5 6 7 8 9

Shearman 1992: 17 and 58-59; see the review by Kemp 1994. Schrijvers 2007: 232 and 235. The interpretation proposed in this essay relies on, and partly summarizes, conclusions reached in a previous study; see Ferrari 1999. The most comprehensive study of the mosaic is Meyboom 1995; for a bibliographical update see Tammisto 2005. For the history of the mosaic since its discovery, see Whitehouse 1976: 1-10; Forni Montagna 1991. The dal Pozzo drawings are fully published and illustrated in Whitehouse 2001: 70131.

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there are omissions, misunderstandings, and rearrangements. An important lacuna is the fragment that incorporated a parasol but survives in one of the dal Pozzo drawings. This scene shows the arrival of the king and queen at the festival depicted in the lower section of the tableau. But modern additions concern a few small details and for the most part consist of watery ground and plants that serve to connect one vignette to the next. Efforts to place the original sections in the original frame of the Mosaic, the East Hall apse, and to determine where the lacunae should be plotted began with Whitehouse’s study of the dal Pozzo drawings and are ongoing.10 Here I am less concerned with the details of such reconstructions than with establishing the broad features and general flow, so to speak, of the imagery. The crucial point, as regards my analysis, is that no major shifts have been proposed so far in the vertical distribution of the principal blocks of the composition. Thus the wild terrain populated mainly by animals is above the sections that contain the Nilometer and the Egyptian temple, while the festivities in the Delta are placed in the lower register. Turning now to the imagery of the mosaic, I begin with a brief description, an exercise in ekphrasis, in which I choose where to begin, which order to follow, where to place emphasis, and where to end. If closure is defined in terms of formal features, the question of genre matters. It is evident that in terms of genre, the representation adopts the idiom of geography. It has the format of a chorographia, the illustrated map, which in Late Hellenistic and Roman times is the heir of the Archaic and Classical ges periodos.11 It is characterized by the representation of lands as though seen from the air, and it features vignettes, poikilmata, displaying landmark buildings, typical fauna, and significant human activities associated with each location. Although the term may apply to geographical description in general, as it does in the case of the title of Pomponius Mela’s Chorographia, it is also used in a more restricted sense, according to Vitruvius (8.2.6), to refer to depictions of the sources and course of rivers, and that seems to be what we have here: a representation of the Nile at the time of its annual flood, although not from its sources, which would not be discovered until the nineteenth century, but from its earliest appearance in the Ethiopian highlands. It is an extraordinarily rich map animated by vignettes of places, people, and events. The scene is continuous, but it may be thematically broken down into three broad sections. At the top the rocky terrain of the Nubian desert is populated by native hunters and animals. The names of the animals are inscribed in Greek, identifying an unlikely fauna, composed of both real and imaginary beasts. It includes two giraffes, kamelopardalis, a lioness, leaina, a rhino, rinokeuos. The bear, arkos, is real enough, although Africa is not its habitat. Among the imaginary beasts one counts the crocodile-panther, 10 11

Whitehouse 1976: 75, fig. 20; Meyboom 1995: fig. 8; Andreae 2003: 80-81 and 108109; Tammisto 2005: 17-18, figs. 9-10. On these geographical traditions, see Ferrari 1999: 376-380.

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kokodrilospardalis, and certainly the she ass-centaur, onokentaura. In the section below, the inscriptions abruptly cease and buildings arise from the marshy ground. The shift occurs past the first cataract at the height of Assuan, identified by the ‘shadowless well’ that measures the rising waters of the Nile. Roughly at the same height, or slightly higher, is a temple complex of Pharaonic type. The flock of ibis around and over the conical building near the center of this section probably indicates that this is the famous sanctuary of Thot at Hermoupolis Magna, where the ibis was worshiped.12 The vignette identified by Meyboom as the funeral procession of Osiris, presently restored at the lower right hand of the mosaic, should identify the site of Bigeh, and it should be placed below the Pharaonic temple, at any rate, above the scene of the Alexandrian harbor.13 Although it includes some rustic vignettes, the urban landscape of the Delta dominates the lower section, with scenes of celebration of a festival, possibly the Festival of the Nile, of which Burkhalter found mention in a late papyrus.14 The placement of the scene of banqueters feasting under an arbor is debated, but there is general agreement that the so-called pavilion scene was at the center. This is the largest, most complex, and most detailed. In front of a portico-like structure, from which extends an awning, a drinking party is imminent or under way, as we see from the table laden with a krater and drinking horns. In front is a lively crowd of soldiers in Hellenic garb, wearing Macedonian helmets. To the right of this vignette we should reconstruct the arrival of the king and queen.15 The order I followed in this description, scanning the picture from top to bottom, was prompted by the genre to which it apparently belongs, that is, the geographical representation of the course of the river, beginning at its sources or, in this case, its earliest known appearance, and ending at the place where it issues into the sea.16 In this perspective, the picture on the mosaic comes to its obvious and true closure at its lower margin. This order of viewing also owes much to our own reading habits and to the way we confront the mosaic nowadays, in its present location on the wall in the archaeological museum at Praeneste, in illustrations, as a picture on the screen, that is, vertically placed, opposite our gaze – as a real map would have been. The mosaic, however, is not a map and, in its original placement, it did not function as a map. It is a picture of the kind of map, chorographia, that allows for the depiction of peoples and events, made to serve as the pavement of an elaborate cave. Thus transposed, the representation it offers is not only, not even primarily, about geography, but about the flow of history, a construct in which the course of the Nile becomes a 12 13 14 15 16

Coarelli 1990: 243. Meyboom 1995: 38-39 and 55-64. Burkhalter 1999: 251-253. Meyboom 1995: fig. 8; Andreae 2003: 108-109. Just so Strabo’s description of the Nile, citing Eratosthenes, begins in Ethiopia and ends at the Delta (17.1.2-4), while his description of the geography of Egypt begins with Alexandria (17.1.6).

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metaphor for time. In that it appropriates the geographical mode of discourse for narrative purposes, the tableau indeed has a direct parallel in the tradition of triumphal paintings, so often invoked in comparison,17 which mapped accounts of historical events onto the topography of the regions in which they had taken place. In analogous fashion, in addition to typical activities and landmarks, the mosaic depicts a series of events that are linked temporally or causally. The dominant vignettes in the lower section, the festive pavilion and the banquet under the arbor, highlight the Hellenic, Macedonian character of Ptolemaic Egypt, with figures in Greek dress and celebrations in quintessentially Greek style. These are the clearest signal of a specific historical horizon: the early Ptolemaic period. In contrast to the modernity of the Delta, the middle section of the tableau appears remote and quaint. Except for the figures near the temple in Greco-Egyptian style near the Nilometer, there are no signs of human activity in the buildings. The only human figures are travelers: the rider and his companion in front of the Pharaonic temple and the men in the sailboat. There are hints of abandonment and decay in the buildings where the ibis nest, particularly in the conical structure with the doorway askew, as if toppling over. Beyond this, in the top section the landscape contains no man-made structures, not even huts or boats, only primitive hunters. Most remarkable is the fact that here and only here there are inscriptions labeling the beasts. Animals also appear in the lower registers that depict Upper and Lower Egypt, but those are not labeled. These inscriptions are a significant index of internal focalization, pointing to the fact that a narrative structure has been imposed upon the geography of Egypt. Their charge is not, or not only, to instruct but, most of all, to mark off this area as the site of naming, the habitat of peoples, beasts, and plants, that form the inarticulate object of scientific and anthropological inquiry. For the act of naming, to which they bear witness, brings to the fore the question ‘Who does the naming’, that is, ‘whose perspective informs this picture?’ The answer leads us back to the figures that populate the picture of the Delta. It is the perspective of the Macedonian conquerors of Egypt that informs this view of the land, for the vignettes refer to a particular episode in the exploration of Ethiopia. Steinmeyer-Schareika has shown that its learned tone and specific details directly connect this section of the Mosaic with geographical writings, specifically, with the treatise On the Red Sea by the admiral Pythagoras, who had led an expedition into Ethiopia at the behest of Ptolemy II Philadelphus around 280 BC.18 This expedition of Ptolemy II to Ethiopia is mentioned in connection with the search for the sources of the Nile. In his excursus on this topic, Diodorus (1.37.5) says that he was the first Greek ever to lead a military expedition into Ethiopia with an army, while Strabo speaks of Ptolemy’s expedition to that area precisely in his discussion of the rising and origin of the Nile (17.1.5). 17 18

E.g., Meyboom 1995: 186-187; Holliday 1997: 138-139; Schrijvers 2007: 231-234. Steinmeyer-Schareika 1978: 52-56 and 58-80.

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The trajectory leading from the lower margin of the picture to the top, I have argued, describes an imaginary itinerary through historical time, from the present of the successors of Alexander, through the venerable past of Pharaonic Egypt, across the threshold of culture into the absolute, unmarked timeline of nature.19 That time as space traversed is, of course, a familiar figure. Here it is applied to the linear progression upon which the very possibility of universal history is predicated. Such a view of the course of all history in terms of space is only possible in Egypt. This notion is first attested in Plato’s Timaeus (21e-25d), in the story of Solon’s voyage to Egypt. From the priests of Neith at Sais, who are themselves extremely old, Solon learns that Egypt is the only nation on earth that has continuously survived through 8,000 years of its existence. The Nile protects its country from both water and fire, while all others suffer periodic cataclysms that throw them back to the point of origin, primitive, uncultured, with no memory – nameless, in other words, needing to learn again from Egypt the arts needed to re-enter historical time. As a result, its temple achieves preserve the continuous record of all human history, the accounts of the rise and fall of nations. In an analogous way, this chronographia of the Nile proposes a bird’s eye view of the succession of world empires, the grandest narrative of all. This construct appears first in Herodotus (1.95, 130), who speaks of the succession of Assyria, Media, and Persia. The sequence eventually came to include Macedon and, finally, Rome.20 It is the passage of Strabo’s Geography cited above (17.1.5) that affords the means of tying the expedition dispatched by Ptolemy II to the theme of the rise and fall of empires.21 As is the case for other explorations of the regions beyond the first cataract, in this account intimations of conquest go hand in hand with the pursuit of geographical and scientific knowledge. While he attributes Ptolemy’s interest in the sources of the flood to the king’s intellectual curiosity, Strabo goes on to mention two earlier expeditions that imply territorial conquest: the first by the legendary Egyptian king Sesostris, who “traversed the whole Ethiopia,” the second by Cambyses, in the wake of his conquest of Egypt. The list of rulers in this passage, headed by Sesostris, bears an uncanny similarity to the tradition of successive world empires that Momigliano traced back to 19

20

21

I rely on Fabian’s distinction (1983: 21-23) between time understood as linear progression and ‘typological time’, which is measured in terms of historically meaningful events; see Ferrari 1999: 359-360 and 365-366. As Momigliano (1994: 30) notes: “In the Hellenistic period the notion of imperial succession represented a pattern of general history known to the Greek historiographic tradition, and was typical of Greek historiographic thought.” See also Momigliano 1982: 539-546. On the intersection and overlaps of geography and history as genres, and on historical narrative in Strabo’s Geography, see Clarke 1999. She notes at 69: “The vital factor is that of conquest, to which both real and conceptual geography and history are intimately bound.”

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Hecataeus of Abdera. In this version, Sesostris was the first to conquer the whole oikoumene and remained, long after his death, unrivaled in his achievement by the Persian king Dareius.22 While it is unclear how, when, and where this tradition developed, it is evident that it is analogous to, and a variant of, the canonical sequence of empires. Strabo is not alone in portraying the search for the origin of the river as either the pursuit of scientific knowledge or imperialistic design. In the same vein, Seneca (nat. 6.8.3) speaks of the expedition sent by Nero as a manifestation of the emperor’s love of virtue, truth first of all. But these two aims of the quest are, in fact, faces of the same coins. The connection between the dream of conquering the world and the search for sources of the Nile that is implicit in the text of Strabo cited above is explicitly made in Lucian’s account of Caesar’s voyage to Egypt of the Bellum Civile. At banquet in the place of Cleopatra, Caesar addresses a venerable Egyptian priest, Acoreus. He styles himself as the last in a tradition of intellectual pilgrims to Egypt, another Plato, as it were, a lover of truth:23 […] si Cecropium sua sacra Platona maiores docuere tui, quis dignior umquam hoc fuit auditu mundique capacior hospes?

(Lucan. 10.181-183)

[…] If your ancestors taught their mysteries to Cecropian Plato, what visitor ever more deserved to listen so or could better comprehend the universe?

Caesar ends his appeal for knowledge with an extraordinary statement: Sed, cum tanta meo vivat sub pectore virtus, tantus amor veri, nihil est quod noscere malim quam fluvii causas per saecula tanta latentis ignotumque caput: spes sit mihi certa videndi Niliacos fontes, bellum civile relinquam.

(Lucan. 10.188-192)

But though there lives within my breast such enormous energy and love of truth, there is nothing I would rather know than the causes of the river which lie hidden through so many ages and its unknown source: let me have a hope assured of seeing the springs of the Nile, and I will abandon civil war.

22

23

Diodorus 1.53-58; Momigliano 1982: 545-546. The status of Sesostris as founder of a world empire is already implicit in Herodotus 2.106-110. On the ‘Sesostris legend’, see Eddy 1961: 280-282. The text is cited in the translation by Braund (1992).

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In response, Acoreus provides a long explanation of astral and planetary influences on the river and theories about the flood, but he does not reveal what Caesar asks. Instead, he exposes him as the last of a series of tyranni driven by the ambition to conquer the world: Quae tibi noscendi Nilum, Romane, cupido est, et Phariis Persisque fuit Macetumque tyrannis nullaque non aetas noluit conferre futuris notitiam: sed vincit adhuc natura latendi. summus Alexander regum, quem Memphis adorat, invidit Nilo misitque per ultima terrae Aethiopum lectos; illos rubicunda perusti zona poli tenuit: Nilum videre calentem. venit ad occasus mundique extrema Sesostris et Pharios currus regum cervicibus egit: ante tamen vestros amnes, Rhodanumque Padumque, quam Nilum de fonte bibit. vaesanus in ortus Cambyses longi populos pervenit ad aevi defectusque epulis et pastus caede suorum ignoto te, Nile, redit. non fabula mendax ausa loqui de fonte tuo est. ubicumque videris, quaereris et nulli contingit gloria genti, ut Nilo sit laeta suo. […]

270

275

280

285

(Lucan. 10.268-285)

Your desire to know Nile, Roman, was shared by tyrants Pharian and Persian and of Macedon, and no age is there which has not wished to grant the knowledge to the future – but up to now its natural power of hiding is victorious. Alexander, greatest of the kings, adored by Memphis, begrudged Nile his secret and sent his chosen band through furthest reaches of the land of the Ethiopians: they were hindered by the ruddy zone of the scorched sky; they saw the Nile steaming. To the west and to the world’s extremities came Sesostris and drove his Pharian Chariot across the neck of kings; yet he drank your rivers, Rhône and Po, before he drank Nile from his source. The mad Cambyses penetrated the east as far as the people of long life, and after running short of food and feeding off the slaughter of his men he returned with you, Nile, undiscovered. Lying legend has not dared to speak about your source. Wherever you appear you are a puzzle; and no race can take the glory of rejoicing in possession of Nile. […]

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The imperialistic connotations of the search for the sources of the Nile, so obvious in this passage, have long been acknowledged.24 What has been missed, I think, is that the desire to know the river at its origin is not simply a character trait of power-hungry rulers. Rather, the quest has a narrative function in the tradition casting universal history in terms of a never-ending cycle. Although it features Alexander rather that Ptolemy II, Acoreus’ list of seekers substantially corresponds to the sequence outlined in Strabo, which arguably depends upon a tradition at least as old as Hecataeus of Abdera. What Acoreus’ diatribe implies is that, somehow, seeing the hidden springs is the key to empire without end. In other words, the sight of the ‘head’ of the Nile, when he reveals it, should he reveal it, will be an omen portending conquest and everlasting power.25 Is the story of the rise and fall of empires inscribed in the geography of Egypt that the mosaic proposes one that can be brought to closure? The prominence accorded to the expedition of Ptolemy, that is, the quest for the head of the Nile, suggests the open-endedness of the historical cycle. In historical thought there seems to be no question that the cycle is unending, that is, incapable of closure. Herodotus states: “Many nations that were once great have now become small and those that were great in many time were small before […] human prosperity never continues in one state.”26 But, as Momogliano observes, “The mixture of the historic and the Messianic has seldom been absent in the accounts of universal history.”27 The possibility of closure, of the emergence of an everlasting empire that will effectively put an end to historical time is regularly projected into the future of an apocalyptic or prophetic mode. That is the case, for instance, with the allegory of the statue made of different metals that appeared to Nabuchodnezzar in a dream. The author of the Book of Daniel interpreted the statue as a sign that the succession of empires would end with the establishment of the kingdom of God, following the demise of the successor of Alexander the Great.28 The most famous example, and the one likely to inform the perspective of the viewer on the Nile mosaic, may be the prophecy of Zeus at

24

25

26

27 28

Romm 1992: 151-156; Murphy 2004: 143-144. Berti (2000: 212-214) sees in the desire to reach the sources of the Nile a particular mark of the tyrant, indicating his ambition to tame natural forces; he also notes, however, that the quest is the ‘project’ of a series of absolute rulers. That is the significance, I think, of the emergence out of the waters of the Danube – the ‘other Nile’ – in the lower register of the column of Trajan. On this figure, see Jones 2000: 483-485, with references. Hdt. 1.5.4: τὰ γὰρ τὸ πάλαι μεγάλα ἦν, τὰ πολλὰ αὐτῶν σμικρὰ γέγονε· τὰ δὲ ἐπ’ ἐμεῦ ἦν μεγάλα, πρότερον ἦν σμικρά. τὴν ἀνθρωπηίην ὦν ἐπιστάμενος εὐδαιμονίην οὐδαμὰ ἐν τὠυτῷ μένουσαν […]. Momigliano 1982: 533. On the derivation of the topos of the four empires from Greek historiography in the Book of Daniel, see Momigliano 1994: 31-35; Niskanen 2004: 26-31.

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Aeneid 1.279, which promises the descendants of Aeneas an empire without end, imperium sine fine.29 One can attempt now to bring the viewer into the picture – the intended viewer, Kemp’s “implicit beholder”,30 who would confront the mosaic in its original setting and share with its creators a certain horizon of expectations. A reconstruction of his experience will be of necessity tentative, since both the identification of the building in which the mosaic was laid, the ‘Apsidal Hall’ in the Lower Complex, and its date are a matter of conjecture.31 On the basis of its location and its architectural morphology, I have argued that the Lower Complex is a library comprised of two halls (a Greek library and a Roman library) on either side of an open court.32 If this hypothesis has any merit, it will allow us to imagine that the viewing of the monument took place in an environment of learning and philosophical and historical inquiry. As to date, there are good reasons to place the monumental development of the sanctuary of Fortuna around 120 BC and, with it, that of the Lower Complex.33 That is the earliest possible date for the Mosaic and the most likely. At the other end, interesting correspondences between the representation of animals in the Mosaic on the one hand and in Aelian’s Historia Animalium on the other have led to the suggestion that it may be as late as the early third century AD.34 What we can say with reasonable certainty is that our viewer’s gaze was conditioned by the location and the frame of the mosaic in a specific way. He stood at its lower edge, facing the artificial cave. His eyes would first meet the scenes of the festival pavilion, populated by characters in Macedonian garb, and the arrival of Ptolemaic royals. The Hellenized Delta marks the beginning, the point of entry into the picture, inviting the beholder to travel back into time, 29 30 31

32

33 34

On Jupiter’s consolation to Venus, see Hejduk 2009: 283-292 and 323 Kemp 1998: 183. See Tammisto 2005: 7 for the range of identifications that have been proposed and for bibliographical references. Gatti 1997 argues once more the prevalent view that the Apsidal Hall is an Iseum . Ferrari 1999: 366-376. The hypothesis is favorably, albeit tentatively, considered by Tammisto (2005: 4-7) and rejected by Zevi (2008: 86 n. 2). Zevi mistakenly attributes Hülsen’s initial suggestion that the Lower Complex might be a library to D. Vaglieri; see the references in Ferrari 1999: 370. Coarelli 1987: 61-65. On the question of chronology and the possibility of a Sullan date for the Lower Complex, see Tammisto 2005: 5-6. For an overview of the many different hypotheses concerning the date of the mosaic, see Meyboom 1995: 217-218 n. 58. Although there is general agreement on the likelihood of a late second century BC date (see, e.g., Versluys 2002: 52-54), other possibilities continue to be entertained. Weill Goudchaux (2001: 334) proposes a date in the second half of the first century BC, in connection with Cleopatra’s arrival in Italy. Schrijvers 2007 places the creation of the mosaic in the years following Actium and argues that it was commissioned by Messalla Corvinus in commemoration of his Egyptian campaign.

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ending in the region beyond which the sources of the Nile remained hidden, in a retrospective view that often marks reflections on the theme of the rise and fall of nations. Like the course of the Nile, this narrative comes to an end at the Delta, with the image of the empire of the Ptolemaic successors of Alexander. This ending is problematic in several respects. As regards closure, historical narrative represents a special case, because the place where it ends is never the end of the story.35 Matters become even more complex if this succession of empires may be viewed as a plot that is capable of closure, such as the one envisioned in Jupiter’s promise of everlasting empire at Aen. 1.279. For the implicit viewer knew that the cycle of successions had not been brought to an end by the conquest of Alexander but had entered the next stage, that of the Roman conquest of the oikoumene. In a sense, he is the end of the story. We may be sure that the point would not escape him, since the topos of the hegemony of Rome had currency in elite circles of Roman society by the time of the late Middle Republic. This is shown clearly by the often-quoted passage in Polybius, which compares the emergence of Roman supremacy to that of the most famous empires of the past (in this version, Persia, Sparta, Macedon). While even the greatest among them, that of Macedon, had failed to incorporate large parts of the oikoumene, Polybius writes, ‘the Romans have made subject to their rule not portions but nearly all of the inhabited earth’.36 Is the closing of the narrative with the image of Ptolemaic rule, then, an instance of false closure? It may be, if we allow the possibility that the narrative extends to encompass its aftermath, which is elided but of which the viewer has knowledge. Such a situation has indeed been envisioned for both literary texts and works of art. On the literary front, Roberts has explored the ways in which “endings beyond endings,” which call for a particularly active role of the reader, are generated by means of allusion or “simply implied by the trajectory of the narrative in light of the reader’s prior knowledge.”37 Trajectory is a useful notion in our case, since the idea that history follows a pattern of succession of empires implies that the pattern extends into the future.38 On the visual side, Wilder has recently strongly argued that a work may imply the presence of an external beholder in such a way as to draw “the ‘real’ space of the spectator into its domain.”39 For such paintings, that is, closure lies outside the picture field. His proposal is of interest because it focuses on paintings that are “integrated into their architectural settings, and imply a continuity of real and fictive space”, as is the case with the Nile mosaic, which forms integral part of the architecture of the 35 36 37 38 39

As Dewald 1997: 63 writes in her essay on “Herodotean open-endedness”, “there are no real beginnings and endings in history”. Polyb. 1.2.7: Ῥωμαῖοί γε μὴν οὐ τινὰ μέρη, σχεδὸν δὲ πᾶσαν πεποιημένοι τὴν οἰκουμένην ὑπήκοον αὑτοῖς. Roberts 1997: 251-252. I owe this observation to Clarke 1999: 15-16. Wilder 2008: 267-277, the quotation from 261.

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hall. In addition, Wilder’s development of Shearman’s notion of “imaginative engagement” captures the effect of false closure as a creative movement in that it solicits the dynamic interaction of the viewer and the image. It requires that he not only complete the story in his own mind but also that he react to it emotionally and intellectually. In this perspective, it is possible to envision a triumphalist response to the picture, one that lingered on the finality of the Roman conquest.40 But it is also possible that the mosaic engaged its intended viewer in a more nuanced discourse on the mutable fortunes of empires, their rise and inevitable fall. This line of thought, albeit in a tragic vein, is expressed by Scipio Aemilianus’ deservedly famous reaction to the fall of Carthage, reported by Appian and Diodorus, both of whom probably depend upon Polybius.41 As the city was laid to waste, Scipio was moved to tears at the thought that ‘[…] all cities, nations, and authorities must, like men, meet their doom; that this happened to Ilium, once a prosperous city, to the empires of Assyria, Media, and Persia, the greatest of their time, and to Macedonia itself, the brilliance of which was so recent […].’42 Polybius’ own text reports these words of Scipio: ‘A glorious moment, but I have a dread foreboding that some day the same doom will be pronounced on my own country.’43 Polybius comments that Scipio’s capacity to bear in mind at the very height of success the mutability of Fortune revealed his quality as a statesman and a thinker – and that is who I think the intended viewer of the mosaic might have been.

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Schrijvers 2007: 232-239. Polyb. 38.21.2-3; Diodorus 32.24; Appian, Lib. 132 = Polyb. 38.22. On the problem of whether Appian’s account faithfully follows Polybius and on the significance of Scipio’s tears, see Astin 1967: 282-287. Appian Lib. 132: […] καὶ πόλεις καὶ ἔθνη καὶ ἀρχὰς ἁπάσας δεῖ μεταβαλεῖν ὥσπερ ἀνθρώπους δαίμονα καὶ τοῦτ᾿ ἔπαθε μὲν Ἴλιον, εὐτυχής ποτε πόλις, ἔπαθε δὲ ἡ Ἀσσυρίων καὶ Μήδων καὶ Περσῶν ἐπ᾿ ἐκείνοις ἀρὴ μεγίστη γενομένη καὶ ἡ μάλιστα ἔναγχος ἐκλάμψασα, ἡ Μακεδόνων, εἰπεῖν […]. Polyb. 38.21.1: καλὸν μέν, ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ οἶδ᾿ ὅπως ἐγὼ δέδια καὶ προορῶμαι μή ποτέ τις ἄλλος τοῦτο τὸ παράγγελμα δώσει περὶ τῆς ἡμετέρας πατρίδος.

Fig. 1: Palestrina, Museo Archeologico. Nile Mosaic (after Andreae 2003: 78; Marquand Library of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University Library)

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Closing the Ring: Epic Cycles in the Tabulae Iliacae and Other Roman Visual Narratives of the Trojan War David Petrain Among his approved subjects for wall paintings Vitruvius lists mythological narratives and goes on to name specifically “Trojan battles and the wanderings of Ulysses through landscapes” (7.5.2). From the latter half of the first century BC, two painted friezes survive that seem to corroborate a vogue for these subjects: a retelling of the Troy saga in the House of the Cryptoportico in Pompeii (I.6.2), and the so-called Odyssey landscapes from the Esquiline in Rome.1 A few decades later the carved versions of the story of Troy featured on the plaques known as the Tabulae Iliacae appear, an indication that interest in multiscenic depictions of material from Greek epic persisted. Together these painted friezes and stone tablets, linked by subject matter and period, form a promising corpus for the study of ancient closure in the visual realm: all of them relay their stories using series of vignettes that succeed each other in the chronology of the narrative, and it seems reasonable to inquire into how these stories come to an end. Yet, to say nothing of closure, what do we mean by ‘end’? In the case of written narratives the answer is easy: the end is whatever part of the story is told last, a function, that is, of the order of telling, what the Russian Formalists would term the story’s sjuzhet.2 This order, and hence its end, are empirically verifiable because text is a linear medium that imposes an explicit, normative sequence in which its words and the events they describe are to be processed. The chronology of these events, by contrast, has no necessary relationship to where the story ends: events may be described out of temporal sequence, say with the chronologically earliest event told near the end in a flashback. The order of occurrence – fabula in narratological parlance – is not an empirical fact, but rather a product of inference from temporal indications contained in the narrative. The fabula will be more or less determinate depending on the extent to which the narrative supplies the relevant information and the reader the necessary effort to (re)construct it.3 1 2 3

For overviews of the extant mythological friezes in Roman painting, see Brilliant 1984: 59-65, Ling 1991: 107-112, Croisille 2005: 154-168. For authoritative definitions of sjuzhet and its conceptual pendant, fabula, see Prince 2003: s.vv. Genette 1980: 33-85 is the standard account of narrative order. For the fabula as an aspect of readers’ cognitive response to a narrative, and therefore dependent upon their interest in, and expectations of, that narrative, see Smith 1980: 228-231.

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For visual narratives, or at least for those whose stories are already familiar, the epistemological statuses of sjuzhet and fabula are precisely reversed.4 The fabula of the Trojan War was well known to ancient viewers from a variety of sources, textual and visual; at any rate both the painted friezes and the Tabulae make their vignettes’ order of occurrence explicit through artifices of arrangement (the friezes place scenes in chronological order running from left to right) and even labeling (the Tabulae assign numbers to individual scenes – more on this below). The sjuzhet of these images, however, is far less apparent: where does the telling begin and end in stories whose scenes are arrayed in two or three dimensions and might be traversed by the viewer’s eye along any number of imaginable routes (left to right, right to left, top to bottom, side to side, etc.)? In a study of sequencing in pictorial narrative, N. Goodman has suggested that many such narratives exhibit no sjuzhet at all, no indication that any one starting or stopping point is preferable to any other;5 all viewing sequences would be equally possible, the end could be anywhere. J. Elkins responds with an important qualification: “[v]isual art, unlike written narrative, possesses no certainty about order of telling, but there can be strong hints”; among the hints he mentions are the genre a visual narrative belongs to, and the spatial disposition of its scenes.6 Here it is the sjuzhet, not the fabula, that must be inferred, that may require the viewer’s active participation to be discerned and may be left partly ambiguous. The ending is a matter of interpretation. In the brief description of painted narratives partially quoted at the beginning of this paper, Vitruvius seems to refer compendiously to some of the features that we have just been considering. His mention of stories drawn from Greek epic forms part of a more extensive list of subjects proper to megalographia, loosely ‘monumental painting’:7 nonnullis locis item signorum megalographiae habentes deorum simulacra seu fabularum dispositas explicationes, non minus Troianas pugnas seu Ulixis errationes per topia ceteraque quae sunt eorum similibus rationibus ab rerum natura procreata. (Vitr. 7.5.2)

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5 6 7

Ryan stresses the narratological relevance, particularly in non-textual media, of whether or not an audience has prior knowledge of the story being told (2004: 14). She suggests that “illustrative” narrative, which assumes prior knowledge, is a special case while “autonomous” narrative, in which there is none, is the unmarked category; in the ancient world, however, “illustrative” narrative would seem to be the norm. Goodman 1980 (esp. 110-111). Elkins 1991: 351. Ferrari (this volume) uses the categories of genre and spatial disposition successively to articulate her reading of the Nile mosaic at Praeneste. I print the text of Liou and Zuinghedau (justified in Cam’s commentary ad loc.; the textual problems in the initial phrase do not affect my discussion). For signorum as ‘figures’, cf. OLD s.v. 12c.

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In some places, likewise, monumental representations of figures [are painted], which include images of the gods or unfoldings of stories arranged in space, not to mention Trojan battles or the wanderings of Ulysses through landscapes and all the rest of the things that, in ways similar to these, proceed from nature.

Though distinguished from the epic themes that follow by a connective (non minus), the compressed phrase fabularum dispositas explicationes surely applies to them just as well as to any other narrative in visual form. The word explicationes emphasizes that the telling of the narrative is a sequential process, akin perhaps to the unwinding of a papyrus roll, while dispositae establishes the means and medium through which this sequence propagates: throughout this section Vitruvius is concerned with the types of paintings best suited to the characteristics of different interior spaces, so that it seems reasonable to assign to the adjective here a primarily local meaning, hence my translation, ‘arranged in space.’8 For these stories that unfold before a viewer, we require a definition of sjuzhet that better reflects the multidirectionality of their spatial medium.9 I propose that, in the visual realm, we understand sjuzhet not as a strictly determinate order but rather as a pattern of telling. The spatial organization of an image may direct the viewer’s eye to a specific point or points in the visual field – toward the middle, for instance, in an image that is organized symmetrically – and thereby send a strong hint that this point is a normative place from which to begin or on which to focus a viewing. Such hints establish a pattern that guides the viewing process, that allows for many possible viewing sequences linked nonetheless by common features such as a focus on the center. Just as we tend to examine the text’s fixed order of telling when we consider closure in written narratives, so an image’s pattern of telling, what I call the visual sjuzhet, may be interrogated for the potential closural effects it generates. As I will argue in what follows, the visual narratives on epic subjects mentioned above show a concern for a type of closure that is inextricably related to the nature of their subject matter. Any multiscenic representation of the Troy saga is necessarily the fruit of a process of selection: what portion of the epic fabula will be recounted, given that it is too extensive to be encompassed wholly in any one telling; within this portion of the story, which episodes are to be included, and on what principle? The two painted friezes and the Tabulae Iliacae employ a remarkable array of organizational gambits in order to justify their selections, that is, to communicate unmistakably that the stories they have chosen to tell are coherent and meaningful to the viewer, and that nothing 8 9

Cf. TLL 5.1.1429.55-56 s.v. dispono (Hey), where our passage appears under the rubric “dispositus, i.q. bene ordinatus, I. de loco.” Cf. Ryan 2004: 33-34 for a general discussion of the benefits and pitfalls involved in adapting narratological concepts from one medium to another.

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important has been omitted. To draw on the definition developed in the preceding paragraph, the sjuzhet of these narratives functions as a kind of visual argument for closure, designed to assert that the narratives are closed in the sense of being whole, complete, and without need of addition or supplement. Far from being confined to the visual realm, a preoccupation with closure in the sense of completeness characterizes the very imagery employed by ancient authors to express the totality of epic narrative as instantiated in early Greek poetry. At least as early as Aristotle, these epic poems could be pictured as a circle or cycle, κύκλος, attributed at an early stage to Homer en masse; later the term Epic Cycle, ἐπικὸς κύκλος, is explicitly attested in reference to the poetic texts that together offer a continuous narrative running from the origin of the world to the death of Odysseus.10 This is not a cycle in the sense of a series of elements that are regularly repeated. The idea of an Epic Cycle depends, rather, on the image of a circle as the shape that represents a unified, seamless whole: the Cycle is notionally an unbroken ring, its beginning and endpoint embracing between them everything that there is to be said, a perfectly comprehensive, closed narrative.11 The Cycle maintains this association with narrative completeness even when ancient scholars segregate the Iliad and Odyssey from the Cyclic poems proper, for the term ‘Cycle’ itself always denotes the entire epic plotline, never a subsection (there was no ‘Trojan Cycle’ in antiquity, e.g.).12 While the Epic Cycle implicitly figures its narrative as a circle without gaps, the friezes and Tabulae Iliacae in essence realize the spatial metaphor. They aim to produce a similar impression of seamless closure by guiding the viewer’s eye through their actual arrangement in space; in two instances they even place beginning and ending in physical proximity, a sort of literal ring composition. In what sense, if any, this visually asserted closure is false, is a question that I leave to the close of this article.

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11 12

For exhaustive collections of the relevant testimonia, see Bernabé 1987: 1-8 (Cyclus Epicus T 1-35, with extensive bibliography); Davies 1988: 13-16 (Cyclus Epicus T 110). Davies 1989 offers an accessible introduction to the Epic Cycle; Burgess 2001: 733 discusses theories about its genesis. Parmentier 1914 offers the most extensive treatment of the imagery latent in the term (esp. 371-377). Claims that ancient scholarship recognized such subsets as a ‘Trojan,’ ‘Theban,’ even a ‘Tragic Cycle’ (see, e.g., DNP 3.1154-1156 s.v. Epischer Zyklus) derive ultimately from Wilamowitz’s questionable supplements to two inscriptions of the Tabulae Iliacae (1884: 333-335); no ancient text supports the existence of such terms. (For this point see Petrain 2010: 51-53.)

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The Order of Telling in Two Narrative Friezes Because the painted friezes from Pompeii and Rome place scenes in chronological order, their spatial layout has a predictable and explicit relationship to the narrative fabula: story time advances from left to right, in step with the friezes’ linear extension. It does not follow, however, that the order of telling coincides with this neat temporal progression. Instead both friezes offer a more readily accessible sjuzhet, one that guides viewers to focus on a few key scenes and appreciate the narrative as a coherent ensemble, rather than to traverse the entire fabula and attempt an exhaustive reading of every vignette. The frieze from Pompeii unfolded a wide swath of the fabula of the Troy saga over the walls of its house’s eponymous cryptoportico.13 Though the paintings have suffered extensive damage, they appear to have followed the plot of the Iliad in its entirety, commencing with the plague from the poem’s first book and continuing through to the climactic death of Hector and its aftermath. While Iliadic material occupies about four fifths of the paintings’ total length, scenes from the end of that poem do not mark the end of the frieze. Rather, it moves on to the arrival of Penthesilea at Troy, a subject from the next poem in the literary Epic Cycle, the Aethiopis, and its final scene shows Aeneas and his family escaping from the captured city under the guidance of Hermes (a rare detail attested in visual art only here and on the Tabulae Iliacae).14 A bare recitation of the frieze’s content gives little indication of how the layout of the cryptoportico inflects the narrative, literally and figuratively. The cryptoportico is divided into three wings that are perpendicular to each other and approximate the shape of the letter Π (Figure 1). The frieze adorns the outer and inner walls of each wing, crowning an elaborate decorative scheme that involves imitations of marble paneling, festoons, and painted herms whose heads extend into the field of the frieze and segment it at regular intervals; on the inner walls the frieze is interrupted further by the windows that provide light for the underground passage (Figure 2). The frieze starts its story on the outer, western wall at the southern end of the west wing, where the cryptoportico’s main entrance was located (I.6.16).15 From there it twists along the outer wall, turning right angles as it navigates the three wings; at the end of the east wing it moves over to the opposite wall and reverses direction, retracing its path along the inner wall to the point where it began. To follow the vignettes in chronological order, a viewer would have to traverse the whole subterranean passage twice, a distance of over 300 feet. Such diligence, however, was probably seldom applied and at any rate hardly required 13 14 15

Spinazzola and Aurigemma 1953: 905-970 is the principal publication of the frieze, which is usually dated to the 30s BC (see PPM 1.193 [I. Bragantini]). On the final scene, see Spinazzola and Aurigemma 1953: 955-956; Horsfall 1979: 4142. Spinazzola and Aurigemma 1953: 907.

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for comprehension or appreciation of the narrative.16 The doubling back of the frieze ensures that, wherever one stands in the cryptoportico, the paintings to the left and right immediately available for viewing show scenes from earlier and later in the fabula and frame the remainder of the story; upon entering at the end of the west wing, for example, a visitor encounters on either side the first and last scenes of the story and can deduce at once its subject and extent without examining the rest in detail. In effect the sjuzhet is a series of nested temporal brackets, revealed as viewers walk along the passages and notice the chronologically disjunct sections of the frieze that flank them. In several cases, and despite the spotty preservation of many scenes, it is still possible to discern the effects that our frieze’s distinctive sjuzhet was designed to evoke. The west wing pairs the start of the Iliad with an inner wall devoted entirely to post-Iliadic material (Penthesilea, Aeneas’ escape; the other two wings carry scenes from the Iliad alone); visitors who came in through the west wing could not fail to be impressed by the implication that the frieze incorporates the entire Iliad and then pursues the story further. More speculatively, the sjuzhet of the east wing seems to be organized around the death of Patroclus and its consequences. At the northern end of this wing, the outer wall features Hector fighting with the two Ajaxes over the corpse of Patroculus, while on the inner wall we see him being attacked by Achilles as the Greek hero returns to battle to avenge his companion; the inner and outer sections of the frieze converge eloquently at the end of the wing on a thematically resonant subject, the scene of Ajax carrying Patroclus’ corpse that adorns the short south wall.17 With its continuous delimiting of the temporal endpoints of its story, the frieze from the House of the Cryptoportico might be said to focus on closure from the very beginning. The cryptoportico’s main entrance (and exit) provides viewers with a normative starting and stopping point, where the juxtaposition of Book 1 of the Iliad and Aeneas’ final escape construes the epic plot as a story culminating in a event that a Roman audience could be expected to read as significant and, to use one of D. Fowler’s formulations, “satisfyingly final:”18 as Aeneas departs and Rome’s foundational narrative commences, this story, that of the Troy saga, is definitively finished.19 Regardless of how closely viewers

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As Brilliant 1984: 63 remarks, “[i]t is far more likely that the paintings were assimilated in the ensemble and only occasionally in the particular.” The details of this (poorly preserved) scene apparently differ from Iliad 17, in which the two Ajaxes remain behind to fight off the Trojans while Menelaus and Meriones bear Patroclus off the field. For documentation of the images noted in this paragraph and their position on the walls, it is easiest to consult PPM 1.204-222. Fowler 1989: 78-79 (the phrase occurs in the second and third of the five senses of closure he distinguishes). Galinsky 1969: 31-32 detects what might be considered an additional closural gesture: the placement of Aeneas’ departure near the exit not only provides a mythological

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examine the remainder of the frieze, its remarkable length and sheer abundance of images play a vital role in authorizing this culturally bound sense of closure, as do the strong verticals of the painted herms, which articulate the images and lend them a sense of forward momentum as they recede down the cryptoportico’s long halls (Figure 3). The whole ensemble impresses upon viewers that the exposition of the narrative is orderly and exhaustive: the story is all here. It is worth noting that the frieze relies on purely visual elements to segment its tale. The sections marked off by the herms do not correspond to book divisions in the text of the Iliad,20 nor do the Greek texts that occasionally label individual figures in the vignettes serve an organizational purpose (on the Tabulae Iliacae textual sources and supports will be much more prominent, as we shall see). Without direct reference to the poems whose plots it broadly follows, the frieze asserts its coherence and completeness by joining an order of telling that fronts Aeneas with viewers’ perception that the rest of the fabula is unfolding before them. This is a sense of closure that depends on accumulation of material and spatial expansion. The Odyssey frieze from the Esquiline shows Odysseus moving through an evocative landscape that is likewise split up by a vertical element, this time an illusionistically rendered portico whose double colonnade frames the terrain that seems to continue behind it into a series of individual panels (Figure 4).21 In the eight contiguous panels that survive, Odysseus’ adventures follow the sequence of events recounted in Books 10-12 of Homer’s epic, running from left to right; an additional, disconnected fragment featuring the Sirens may belong at the right end of this section but may also have adorned an adjacent wall.22 The frieze’s original extent and context are largely unknown, though it is clear that the contiguous section we now possess once consisted of eleven panels, and that the frieze continued onto other walls.23 These uncertainties about the frieze’s scope and overall organization obviously make it less germane to any discussion of closure. I argue, however, that the surviving portion’s portico frame potentially shapes its Odyssean fabula into a thematically unified whole by offering an alternative sjuzhet to the left-to-right movement of the narrative’s chronology.

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parallel to the everyday action of leaving the house, but links the narrative’s conclusion with the inevitable conclusion of viewing as the viewer quits the space. E.g., at the western end of the north wing’s inner wall, a herm divides Achilles’ libation at Patroclus’ pyre from the funeral games for the same, both events from Iliad 23. For the Odyssey frieze, see von Blanckenhagen 1963; Biering 1995; O’Sullivan 2007. Datings of the frieze vary from the mid- to late-first century BC (cf. Biering 1995: 181-190; O’Sullivan 2007: 499). See Biering 1995: 172-174 for the suggestion that the Siren fragment belonged to a different wall. O’Sullivan 2007: 500-503 sets out concisely the available evidence, with detailed bibliography.

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The space allotted to each episode depicted on the frieze bears no consistent relationship to the same episode’s length in the text of the Odyssey itself: Odysseus’ encounter with the Laestrygonians, for example, a mere 53 lines from Book 10 (lines 80-132), stretches over four panels, while the encounter with Circe in her palace, which takes up the remainder of the book (upwards of 400 lines), is telescoped into just one or two.24 As on the Pompeian frieze, texts in Greek identify some figures but give no explicit indication of the images’ relationship to Homer’s poem. The painting has created for its narrative a new rhythm generated by the landscape setting and the disposition of the portico’s pillars. The double row of pillars is rendered in such a way that it marks the panel showing the interior of Circe’s palace as the center of the viewer’s perspective and of the composition. In the panels preceding the Circe panel, the darker pillars of the back row can just be made out to the right of the pillars overlapping them in front; after the Circe panel, the dark pillars emerge to the left of the pillars in the front row. Only in the Circe panel itself are the dark pillars visible on both left and right, symmetrically framing the scene and signaling that this is the vantage point from which an ideal spectator is imagined to be viewing the portico. The Circe panel is also distinguished by its narrative content, in two respects. Unlike the other panels, it places side by side a pair of distinct moments in the story, Circe greeting Odysseus at her door and Odysseus threatening her with a sword, and thus represents both characters twice within a single frame (this technique is usually termed ‘continuous narrative’). The compression of the story here also begins a general acceleration of the narrative’s pace with respect to the Homeric text, for this panel and the next three cover material from the better part of Books 10 (Circe) and 11 (descent to the Underworld), as opposed to the four panels allotted to 53 lines in the Laestrygonian episode. P. von Blanckenhagen sought to explain the change in narrative speed by postulating a hypothetical original that offered an equally detailed illustration for each episode. Our frieze then copies the fight with the Laestrygonians faithfully but resorts to abbreviating the remainder of the story, perhaps because “the original frieze must have been much too long for the wall” (1963: 114). I would argue that the centrality of the Circe panel is deliberate, hardly to be explained as simply a concession to spatial exigency or as a symptom of the difficulties involved in adapting a more capacious original. Von Blanckenhagen nonetheless puts his finger on a technique that we will encounter again on the Tabulae Iliacae, that of highlighting a key scene at the center of a frieze through judicious management of the narrative speed on either side. But why bother to indicate the frieze’s middle at all, and why place Circe’s palace there? As T. O’Sullivan cogently remarks, “the portico frame conveys to 24

On the discrepancies between textual and spatial length, see von Blanckenhagen 1963: 104-110.

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the viewer contradictory suggestions: to walk the length of the wall […] and at the same time to view the entire wall while standing in front of the central panel” (2007: 515). The sjuzhet, in effect, is double. Odysseus’ adventures beckon us to follow their linear progress, but the portico continually points to a different way of reading, one that regards the frieze not so much as a series of vignettes to be viewed successively, but as an ensemble organized around a center that regulates the narrative flow. Regardless of the precise significance we attribute to this center, it imposes a kind of unity – thematic closure – on a narrative form that could otherwise read as an open-ended concatenation of images. The Circe panel might suggest a variety of themes, and the one I propose in what follows is not meant to be exhaustive or to preclude others.25 The frieze lavishes so much attention on its landscape background as to suggest that we look for a local, topographical explanation for Circe’s prominence. N. de Grummond has illustrated the Roman predilection for portraying myths that have some connection to the landscape of the Western Mediterranean, particularly to locales in Sicily and in Italy itself (2000: 272-273). Our frieze responds well to such interests for, as von Blanckenhagen notes, ancient sources routinely place the Laestrygonians and other episodes from Odysseus’ travels in Sicily and Italy.26 Now, if we follow the course of Odysseus’ journey as described in the Odyssey, and cross-reference the places he visits with identifications that were current in the first century BC, we find that the closest Odysseus came to Rome was when he entered Circe’s palace situated, according to most sources, on the Circaean promontory at the southern edge of Latium.27 The mythical progeny of Odysseus and Circe brings us even closer: their son Telegonus is founder of the Latin city of Tusculum.28 They count among their other descendants a veritable gazetteer of eponyms, among them Latinus, Italus, Auson (cf. Ausonia), Ardeias (cf. Ardea), Antias (cf. Antium), Praenestus (cf. Praeneste), Romos, even one Romanos,29 so that the hero and sorceress effectively beget a goodly portion of the toponyms of the Italian peninsula. Viewers standing before the Circe panel thus look out on to a native landscape, both expressed in space and implied in genealogical time: the Laestrygonians reveal an expanse of Sicily or Formiae,30 25 26

27

28 29 30

Cf., e.g., the attractive philosophical reading offered by O’Sullivan 2007: 524-525. Von Blanckenhagen 1963: 129-130; he considers resemblances between the painted landscapes and the actual coasts of southern Italy or Sicily so compelling that he locates the provenance of his hypothetical original frieze in one of those regions. For the identification and the status of the promontory as a southern border of Latium, see EV 1.793-795 s.v. Circeo (M. Cancellieri). Other sources bring Odysseus to Rome and name him as one of the city’s founders (see Solmsen 1986). For sources and discussion, see Solmsen 1986: 98; Gantz 1993: 710-712. Latte (RE 9.2.2285-2286 s.v. Italus), Solmsen 1986: 98-99, and Farney 2007: 48 n. 28 account for all the names (assembled, naturally, from several different sources). Greek sources prefer the former, Roman sources the latter. See Roscher 2.2.1810 s.v. Laistrygones (Jessen).

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the Underworld and the Sirens point toward Lake Avernus and the Bay of Naples,31 while Circe at the border of Latium quite literally bears the seeds of the names and places in which and with which visitors to the frieze on the Esquiline live and identify themselves.32 Both the Roman and the Pompeian frieze produce a closure that is not dependent upon the viewer’s navigation of a fixed sequence, or upon the existence of a determinate concluding section with which each viewing normatively finishes. Rather, each frieze guides spectators into a pattern of viewing, the visual sjuzhet, that offers a way of abstracting from the left-to-right progress of the story and perceiving the frieze as a satisfying whole, coherent and complete. Pragmatic concerns may discourage a viewer from fully tapping into the richness of the fabula that the frieze unfolds, but it is vitally important nonetheless that this fabula be present and impressively detailed, for it acts as a guarantee that nothing has been left out and, perhaps, that the particular version of the story offered by the frieze is therefore authoritative. The closural effects achieved by this delicate balance of sjuzhet and fabula presuppose, of course, a viewership with a specific investment in Rome, Italy, and the myths associated with them: it is against the cultural backdrop of such interests that a viewer might judge the escape of Aeneas as a natural conclusion for the Troy saga, or the landscape of Italy as a theme that encapsulated the significance of the Odyssey.33 In the Tabulae Iliacae we will see a comparable use made of sjuzhet and fabula, and a similar appeal to the interests of the Roman viewer. ‘Begin in the Middle’: Narrative Self-Consciousness and the Tabulae Iliacae The twenty-two plaques conventionally numbered among the Tabulae Iliacae display varied scenes from Greek mythology and history, but the tablets’ claim to fame – and the rationale for their epithet Iliacae – are the illustrations of the Iliad and other poems of the Epic Cycle that appear on fifteen of them.34 The 31 32

33 34

See EV 4.892-893 s.v. Sirene, aspetti geografici (E. Greco). Schefold previously connected the prominence of the Circe panel with Telegonus and Italus, and suggested that the Italian landscape might reinforce such a reading: “jeder, der auf der Via Appia reiste, sah nicht weit südlich von Rom, bei Terracina, zur rechten den Berg der Circe. Noch heute gehört es zum Zauber der Reise an der Westküste Unteritaliens, daß sie ein Märchenland war, von der Sage verklärt” (1952: 85). Von Blanckenhagen 1963: 128 and Biering 1995: 191 reject Schefold’s approach by denying that the centrality of the panel has any particular significance in the frieze, a view I cannot share. Kemp 2003: 70-71 stresses the necessity of analyzing narrative with reference to its recipient. Sadurska 1964 is the standard monograph; Valenzuela Montenegro 2004 works through the iconography exhaustively and considers other issues besides. For a

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Tabulae Iliacae differ from the material we have considered so far in size, material and narrative technique. Rather than covering broad expanses of multiple walls, they squeeze a narration of the Troy saga onto stone plaques not much larger than a sheet of paper, telling the story through miniature carvings and even more minute texts. Their narrative format changes abruptly in the middle of the story, for the tablets use sets of stacked friezes to present the antecedents to Troy’s destruction but portray the sack of Troy itself as a cityscape in a central, square panel, where temporally distinct events appear side by side (a narrative technique similar to that of the Circe panel). The tablets’ extreme compression, and use of both friezes and panel to tell a single story, are virtually unprecedented in ancient art. Thus it is perhaps unsurprising that the Tabulae also demonstrate a high degree of self-consciousness in the way they outline the choices involved in processing their own narratives: inscriptions on the recto and verso sides of several plaques directly address viewers and provide explicit instructions about how they should proceed. In the present section I will examine how the tablets’ inscriptions, and the overall division of their visual field into friezes surrounding a central cityscape, conspire to leave the viewer with a sense of closure more closely allied to the textual tradition of the Epic Cycle than what we observed in the two friezes. Considerations of space and scope prevent me from discussing here several other factors important to the visual impact of the Tabulae, among them the semantics and cultural associations of their two narrative formats, or the significance of their miniaturization and potential portability; I reserve a full treatment of these issues to a forthcoming monograph. Most of the Tabulae Iliacae were produced by the same or related workshops and belong to the end of Augustus’ reign or the beginning of Tiberius’. The dating is based upon iconographic parallels; a chronicle inscribed on the verso of two tablets that dates events backwards from approximately AD 15/16; and use of a schema for representing Aeneas and his family that seems based upon the statue group of the same erected by Augustus in his forum (dedicated c. 5 BC).35 Though many of the tablets lack a precise provenance, several were found in Rome or its environs, and there is no reliable evidence that any was found elsewhere.36 In two cases we can attribute tablets specifically to the ruins of elaborately appointed suburban villas.37 We have then stories from Greek epic

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convenient, brief discussion, see Guarducci 1974: 425-433. Horsfall 1990 is an up-todate list (three tablets came to light after Sadurska’s monograph appeared). Valenzuela Montenegro 2004: 305-310 ably summarizes the evidence; she is the first to recognize that the dedication of Augustus’ forum is an approximate terminus post quem. Cf. the table of provenances at Salimbene 2002: 15-17. The Tabula Capitolina (1A) and the Tabula Chigi (17M). See the next note for the naming conventions.

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being presented to an audience that lived near Rome and that was probably wealthy. Nine of the Tabulae dispose the story of Troy in the arrangement I outlined above, though no one tablet is a carbon copy of any other (each preserves at least one unique detail). All the tablets in this group are fragmentary; the best preserved is the plaque currently housed in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, the Tabula Capitolina (1A).38 The Capitolina is made of a calcite whose off-white color looks like plaster (most of the other tablets are marble). It measures about 25 by 28 cm, yet within this limited space it finds room for twelve books of the Iliad and the fall of Troy besides (Figure 5). A central panel presents a bird’s-eye view of a cityscape in which famous scenes from the city’s destruction play out (Priam’s death, the rape of Cassandra, e.g.). A focus on Rome’s foundation myths is evident: Aeneas is escaping with his family at dead center, guided by Hermes (the figures are identified by inscriptions); he appears twice elsewhere too, within the city walls to the left of the main gate where he receives a casket containing the Penates, and in the lower right corner where he boards a ship that will take him, as an inscription states, to Hesperia. Below the central group of Aeneas and his family, an inscription in large, clear letters names title and author of the poetic sources that the tablet purports to illustrate: Homer’s Iliad; the two poems that follow it in the Epic Cycle, the Aethiopis and Little Iliad; at the top of the list, Stesichorus’ lyric Sack of Troy (not the Cyclic version of the same, attributed to Arctinus) and the enigmatic adjective Τρωϊκός, ‘Trojan.’39 Around the panel are horizontal bands meant to be read from left to right that retell the events leading up to Troy’s sack. The pilaster on the right of the central panel separates it from twelve stacked friezes, to each of which is allotted one book of the Iliad: from Book 13 in the lower right corner the story proceeds upwards to Iliad 24 at the top. The first twelve books of the poem are missing because the Capitolina is incomplete in its present state. On the left it would have carried a matching pilaster and another twelve bands to complete the symmetrical frame around the panel. By mirror-reversing the extant right-hand section and appending it to an image of the Capitolina, I offer in Figure 6 a somewhat crude representation of how the tablet may have appeared when intact. The frieze for Iliad 1 was longer than the others and extended from the original upper-left corner over the top of the panel until it met Book 24 on the right. It is

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In addition to its full name, every Tabula is conventionally assigned a number and letter (or letters) that serve as a convenient shorthand for referring to it (for the full list, see Horsfall 1990 or Salimbene 2002). The Tabula Capitolina is 1A; the eight tablets with similar layouts are 2NY, 3C, 6B, 7Ti, 8E, 9D, 20Par, 21Fro. The inscription raises a number of interesting questions that I pass over here, such as whether the Capitolina accurately represents the contents of Stesichorus’ lost poem, or what ‘Trojan’ refers to. I treat the former at length in my monograph; for the latter see Petrain 2010: 51-53.

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certain then that Iliad 1-12 ran from top to bottom on the left side.40 The two friezes below the panel fill in the events that intervene between the Iliad and the Sack: the Aethiopis on the top and the Little Iliad below it. The friezes and panel carry labels in Greek identifying their figures, but that hardly exhausts the texts that the Capitolina has to offer. We have already mentioned the list of citations below the Aeneas group. In addition, the extant pilaster has a summary of Iliad 7-24 in minute characters; its missing twin would have carried the earlier books. On the lower border of the central panel, finally, is a more readily legible elegiac couplet whose richly nuanced text will provide us a point of departure for considering the complexities of the tablets’ narrative dynamics. What was a viewer to make of this mass of miniature images and texts? The question evidently exercised the artisans of the Tabulae, for the couplet just mentioned seems to provide a kind of answer. Its first words are lost but may be restored with confidence on the basis of comparable inscriptions from other tablets:41 Τέχνην τὴν Θεοδ]ώρηον μάθε τάξιν Ὁμήρου ὄφρα δαεὶς πάσης μέτρον ἔχῃς σοφίας. Learn the techne of Theodorus so that having mastered the taxis of Homer you may possess the measure of all wisdom.

The epigram begins by fronting the name of the artist, Theodorus, and his artistry, to the extent that the ponderous and impressive adjective Theodōrēon is allowed to straddle the middle of the line where we would typically find the hexameter’s main caesura.42 After the injunction to ‘learn!’ we encounter reference to Homer’s taxis followed by the pentameter promising ‘all wisdom’ – a virtue we might expect to derive from Homer’s poetry itself (more on this below). Are we being asked to learn from Theodorus or from Homer, and is there ultimately any difference between the two activities? 40

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3C and 6B, which preserve the reliefs to the left of the central panel, support this reconstruction: Iliad 1 begins in the upper left corner and the books of the first half of the Iliad appear below it, running downward in numerical order. For the supplement, see Mancuso 1909: 730. The distinctive phrase Θεοδώρηος ἡ τέχνη is found, in varying states of preservation, on the verso of 2NY, 3C, 5O and 20Par. 2NY, which came to light in 1924 and was unavailable to Mancuso, also carries a fragment of a different version of the Capitolina couplet that does in fact preserve the word τέχνη (albeit in a different metrical position): τ ] έχ έχν ν η ν μέτρον ἔχῃς σο[φίας. For the rarity of this metrical pattern in an elegiac couplet, see West 1982: 157 and 181. In the few literary epigrams that exhibit this pattern it is always a proper name that prevents a caesura in the third foot, just as in the Capitolina couplet. On the identity of Theodorus, see Horsfall 1979: 27 and 29-31.

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The diction of the epigram works to elide distinctions between the artist’s and poet’s contributions to the tablet. The phrase taxin Homērou at the hexameter’s end is more ambiguous than my translation allows: after the emphatic mention of Theodorus’ art, we might naturally take the words to refer to the arrangement he performs on Homer, the eye-catching visual organization of epic material that is, after all, the tablets’ most remarkable feature.43 Yet the wording of the next line should make us reconsider. There the diminutive participle daeis, ‘having mastered,’ is freighted with a highly specific set of associations. Simplex forms of the verbal root da- are confined to poetry, where they can take on a specialized meaning and refer specifically to the acquisition of a technical ability or the mastery of a body of knowledge: one form, the reduplicated aorist δέδαε, ‘taught,’ appears only in contexts in which the subject is a god imparting some skill to a mortal.44 While daeis is not quite so specialized, it suggests here that the viewer is to acquire a lasting body of knowledge rather than simply an appreciation of the artist’s handiwork. The remainder of the pentameter identifies this knowledge as the ‘measure of all wisdom.’ Here it is not difficult to see reference to the belief, widespread in the ancient world, that Homer was master of all branches of knowledge,45 so that the tablet is claiming to provide access to a comprehensive wisdom uniquely associated with Homer and his poetry. Returning to the hexameter, we see that taxin Homērou might also be understood as ‘the arrangement performed by Homer,’ a reference to the poet’s own organization of his material and the knowledge it conveys.46 The genitive Homērou, in short, might be subjective or objective, and the act of arranging, taxis, unites poet and artist. The double meaning suggests a complementarity between Theodorus’ work and Homer’s: both figures have carried out analogous processes; the spatial distribution of the former merely reproduces, albeit in a different medium, the linear narrative of the latter. The epigram boasts, furthermore, that the Capitolina provides full access to Homer’s wisdom: Theodorus’ visual taxis is perfect and has lost nothing in the translation. How does the Capitolina make good on its promise that all of Homer is included? Theodorus’ brilliant solution is to convert an aspect of the Iliad’s textual organization into a pictorial element and divide the Iliadic material into 24 discrete bands, each devoted to a book, thus making book divisions a principle governing the layout of his tablets’ visual field. It is important to stress that this is hardly an inevitable or even a typical way of illustrating the story of the poem, as we saw in the case of the two painted friezes. They draw out their 43 44 45 46

Cf. Carlini 1982: 632. See LfgrE 2.193.65-68 s.v. δαῆναι, δέδαε (R. Führer). The distinction persists in later Greek literature (Pfeiffer on Callimachus fr. 701). For a detailed discussion of this belief, see Hillgruber 1994: 5-35. For the use of τάξις and related words to denote a poet’s arrangement of his material, see Durante 1968: 266 n. 13.

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illustrations in a single band whose sheer length implies the completeness of the narrative; the Tabulae employ multiple short friezes and often equip these with inscribed numbers and titles as if to assure viewers that the representation is a direct reflex of the text. For instance, a tablet whose layout closely resembles that of the Capitolina, the Tabula Iliaca of New York (2NY), even writes out the title Ἰλιάδος, ‘of the Iliad,’ over each band together with a specific book number and title, a redundancy that drives home the link to the putative textual original (Figure 7).47 This is ‘book illustration’ in its most literal sense, a device rhetorically asserting that every section of the narrative is accounted for in a way more economical and precise than the additive rhetoric of the Pompeian frieze. Any viewer who can count may verify at a glance that each book has been allowed the same amount of space and that none has been omitted. Theodorus was not the only one to hit upon book number as a means of signifying the completeness of Homeric narrative. The grammarian Apion, likewise active in the early imperial period, argued that Homer himself made a similar use of book numbers in order to establish the integrity of the Iliad and Odyssey and his authorship of both.48 The poems have a total of 48 books between them, and according to Apion, Homer laid claim to them with the very first word of the Iliad, μῆνιν (‘wrath’): the initial two letters, mu and eta, spell 48 in the Greek system of alphabetic numeration. Though ridiculed by Seneca (our sole source for the argument), Apion’s fanciful idea suggests how book numbers may harness control over the whole expanse of Homeric epic. Theodorus’ novel, systematic design for the Iliadic material, with its regular succession of duly labeled units running from alpha to omega, thus acts as a visual sphragis, a seal that backs up Theodorus’ claim to be transmitting Homer’s epic in its entirety. We have considered the devices through which Theodorus asserts that the Homeric fabula he sets before the viewer is comprehensive. Little has been said so far about how the viewer is directed to navigate this creation, but once again the tablets’ texts offer explicit help, this time in a highly unusual set of inscriptions on the verso of several tablets that teach the viewer a new way to read. Seven Tabulae in all feature on their verso so-called ‘magic squares,’ letters arranged in a grid that allows the same message to be read in a variety of different directions; the outline of this grid often, but not always, forms a square.49 Four of these tablets belong to the group that, like the Capitolina, features Sack of Troy panels flanked by friezes on the recto (2NY, 3C, 7Ti, 47 48 49

E.g., for Book 23: Ἰλιάδος Ψ. Ἐπιτάφιος ἀγών. See Sen. Ep. 88.40. Bua 1971 is the fundamental discussion; for the magic square on 20Par, brought to light after Bua’s article, see Horsfall 1983: 144-145. None of the squares is preserved in its entirety, but the principles of their construction are regular enough that they can usually be restored.

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20Par)50; the remaining three are a pair of circular representations of the shield of Achilles (4N, 5O) and one badly preserved tablet carrying two Iliadic scenes (15Ber). Though the magic squares have been dismissed as mere curiosities,51 they have an integral role to play in Theodorus’ overall design. He takes great care to correlate the shape of the grids with their respective tablets: the two shields have ‘squares’ in the form of an altar and twelve-sided figure, shapes that complement the pieces’ circular design. The Tabulae featuring the artist’s characteristic taxis of rectilinear panel and friezes, by contrast, receive square grids. All of the squares work on a principle attested here for the first time in antiquity: prospective readers must begin with the letter in the middle of the grid and then read outward, moving left, right, up, down or diagonally until they reach one of the square’s corners and finish the inscription. The message written in the grids always refers to the subject of the images on the recto. Two of the tablets with Sack of Troy panels, for example, have the following text in their grids (quoted from 2NY): Ἰλι]ὰς Ὁμήρου Θεοδώρηος ἡι τέχνη The Iliad of Homer, the art of Theodorus.

The ‘extra’ iota after the article is not an itacistic error; rather it shows the lengths to which Theodorus was willing to go in order to fit his message into a perfect square. A letter grid in the form of a square can only accommodate texts with an odd number of letters, but in this case the letters of the original message added up to 26, an intractable sum! Theodorus introduced the iota to make up the count.52 A hexameter whose beginning and end appear, respectively, on 2NY and 3C above the magic squares themselves lays out reading instructions (Figures 8 and 9): γράμμα μέσον καθ[ορῶν παραλάμβα]νε οὗ ποτε βούλει. Look for the middle letter and continue wherever you wish.

50 51 52

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The Capitolina itself does not have a magic square. For Horsfall 1979: 29 they are instances of the “trivial and bizarre uses” to which the artisans of the Tabulae put their skill. In what is probably a later refinement, another tablet from the Sack of Troy series (20Par) omits the iota after ἡ and solves the problem instead by spelling the artist’s name with a diphthong, Θεοδώρειος. I print Gallavotti’s supplement for the hexameter’s middle (1989: 49 n. 2) rather than the one proposed by Guarducci that has become standard (1974: 426; καθ[ελὼν παρολίσθα]νε). (I explain the reasons for my preference at Petrain 2010: 53-54.)

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I suggest that the squares mirror the organization of the illustrations on the recto and model the pattern of viewing a spectator might be expected to adopt while taking them in. Certainly an injunction to begin in the middle jibes well with the layout of the Capitolina and other tablets of its group, where the rigorous symmetries of Troy’s architecture draw the eye to the central Aeneas group: framed by the city’s gate and recalling a famous monument from Augustus’ forum, these figures probably are the viewer’s first and primary focus of attention. The letter grids endorse a sjuzhet in which viewers begin with the escape of Aeneas and then continue to whatever other scenes on the tablet catch their fancy. To avoid misunderstanding: I do not say that there is an exact equivalence between a reading of the magic squares and the sjuzhet of the recto (a viewing of the recto need not end at one of the tablet’s corners, e.g., while a reading of the square must). Rather, the squares are articulating a tendency already encouraged by the illustrations themselves: we focus on the center and explore the surrounding material haphazardly rather than exhaustively or in strict chronological order, always keeping an eye on Aeneas. We are to understand that the measure of all Homer’s wisdom is on offer, but the direction of our gaze establishes a different order and rewrites the story: now Homer and the Cycle revolve around a new center, their significance and culmination encapsulated in the escape and departure of Rome’s hero.54 Because of its superior preservation, the Capitolina demonstrates most clearly how a centrally focused viewing may knit the tablet’s different sections into a thematic unity. The long frieze above its central panel develops the action of Iliad 1 from left to right, but it selects its subjects in such a way that they form symmetrical pairs and draw the viewer’s gaze back toward the center. The extant scenes run as follows:55 [Chryses offers ransom to Agamemnon for his daughter Chryseis.]56 Chryses calls down the plague. Plague befalls the Greek army. Agamemnon and Achilles quarrel in the assembly. Odysseus returns Chryseis and Chryses prays for the plague to end. • Thetis kneels before Zeus.

• • • • •

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Cf. Horsfall 1979: 37: “[t]he cycle of antecedent events and poems ‘encircles’ – and here Theodorus may be perpetrating a minor verbal/visual pun – the climax, that is, Aeneas’ departure” (Horsfall’s emphasis); Brilliant 1984: 58: “[t]he Flight of Aeneas tied together the Greek past and the Roman present […]. Theodorus has converted the Tabula Iliaca Capitolina into a preface to Roman history.” Cf. Valenzuela Montenegro 2004: 33-43 for a full description and iconographic parallels. In its present state, the frieze opens with a pair of bulls that may be sacrificial victims belonging to the next scene but could also form part of a (currently missing) prior scene, hitched to the cart that bears Chryses’ ransom.

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In the middle of the band, almost directly above Aeneas and his family, Achilles and Agamemnon quarrel while Nestor intercedes. Calchas and Athena stand to the left and right, respectively: Calchas raises his arm as he rushes toward Agamemnon, Athena extends her hand toward Achilles’ head. To the right of this elaborate scene, Chryses prays before the temple of Apollo for the plague to end; Odysseus stands nearby with Chryseis and sacrificial victims to propitiate the god. To the left of the quarrel scene a similar subject appears, Chryses before an identical-looking temple calling down the plague. Both temples project noticeably outward from the surface of the monument and render the connection between this pair of flanking scenes more salient.57 In its original state the Iliad 1 band will have offered an even more striking repetition. The beginning of Iliad 1 is not preserved on the Capitolina, but we may gain a clearer idea of the missing material from two other tablets that carry the relevant portions (3C, 6B): both show Chryses offering ransom to Agamemnon.58 If the Capitolina featured a similar scene in its left-hand corner, the motif would match Priam’s offer of ransom to Achilles from Iliad 24, which occupies the right-hand corner of the tablet, picking up after the Iliad 1 band concludes. Though not perfect by any means, these symmetries overrun book divisions and organize the entire top border of the monument. By linking Iliad 24 graphically with Iliad 1, Theodorus shapes his version of the poem into a visual ring composition. In a study of book illustration in antiquity, K. Weitzmann arrived at a rather different assessment of the Iliad 1 frieze on the Tabula Capitolina (1970: 38-39). Like von Blanckenhagen, he believed that the extant frieze was copied from a more capacious original for which there is no direct evidence – in this case illustrated papyri of Homer’s Iliad.59 The band’s first three scenes (ransom, prayer, plague) cover lines 22-84 of Book 1 closely, while the remaining three (quarrel, prayer, Thetis) are dispersed throughout the rest of the book. Weitzmann concluded from this discrepancy in narrative pace that the artist began by copying out a section from a full cycle of illustrations, but “when he realized that there was not space enough to continue on the same scale, he 57 58

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I note in passing that the tablets use three-dimensional modeling to articulate their reliefs, an effect that does not appear in photographs. 3C has an enigmatic additional scene before this one (Diomedes and Achilles seated and facing each other) that may derive from the Cypria (cf. Valenzuela Montenegro 2004: 171). It is hard to say whether or not the Capitolina would have incorporated such a scene. Rouveret 1989: 356-358 sketches out the idea that Homeric papyri lie behind the Tabulae Iliacae, with further bibliography. As there is no evidence for such abundantly illustrated rolls in the relevant periods, modern scholarship appears to have reached a welcome consensus that it is not credible to postulate them as the source for cycles of Homeric illustrations (see Small 2003 for a full discussion of the issue).

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changed the system and filled the rest of the frieze with selected scenes” (ibid.). The reasoning is strikingly similar to one of the arguments employed by von Blanckenhagen to explain the selection of subjects on the Odyssey frieze. For Weitzmann, then, the scenes of the Iliad 1 frieze are an open set: more illustrations could have been added if only the artist had more space. I argue, by contrast, that the symmetry of the frieze could not have been produced by such a haphazard process. It is a closed set: the principal scenes are tightly grouped into flanking pairs, and no material may be added without disrupting the carefully constructed focus on the thematically significant central subject. The central quarrel and Aeneas’ flight below it create a vertical axis that runs down the middle of the Capitolina and cuts through its major divisions (Figure 10). As our gaze travels along this axis a meta-narrative about Achilles and Aeneas emerges, one that relies on juxtaposition and contrast rather than stricter relations of chronological sequence or cause and effect. Above the center of the panel we see the beginning of Achilles’ conflict with Agamemnon, which will trigger his withdrawal and the events of the Iliad. If we follow the axis past Aeneas and below the panel, we intersect the Aethiopis frieze at about the point where it shows Achilles again as he dies under Troy’s Scaean Gate. Achilles’ role in the fight for Troy is summed up in two pictures, and we can hardly avoid comparing his final scene before the gate with Aeneas’ emergence from the same directly above: the pairing contrasts Achilles’ downfall with Aeneas’ ascendancy. To read the center of the Capitolina, then, is to experience closure with a Romanocentric twist: as on the frieze from the House of the Cryptoportico, the beginning of Rome’s story is the definitive endpoint for Troy’s. On the lower edge of the Capitolina’s panel, just to the right of the middle, there is a column-like structure that may allow us to go even further with this reading. According to the label beside it, this is the Sigean promontory, widely known as the site of Achilles’ tomb (depicted just above).60 Theodorus pointedly locates his representation of the hero’s death just below this site; above it, Aeneas escapes, and to its right, he departs for Hesperia. Unlike Achilles, Aeneas survives the Trojan War, and he leaves the stele of Homer’s dead hero behind him as he sails away. The Capitolina is our only source for this evocative tradition that makes Aeneas embark at the site of Achilles’ grave.61

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For Sigeum as the site of Achilles’ tomb, see EV 4.842-843, s.v. Sigeo (G. Bonamente). See EV 1.190-191, s.v. Antandro (G. Bonamente).

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Closures The lens of closure helps us to keep in view that visual narratives are more than the sum of their parts. The examples considered here do not simply unfold sequences of events (fabularum explicationes) but also ensure these are so arranged (dispositae) as to convince the viewer of the story’s coherency and relevance – this despite the impossibility of fixing a determinate sequence of viewing in a visual medium, and the probability that most viewings of an extensive, multiscenic narrative will be only partial. I have located visual closure in a normative pattern of viewing (sjuzhet) that may encompass several possible ways of sequencing the fabula but imposes on them a set of common characteristics: parameters or instructions, as it were, that guide a cooperative audience to a certain view of the narrative as a whole (the Trojan War as a narrative brought definitively to a close by Aeneas’ escape, e.g.). Work on visual narrative reciprocally enriches our concept of closure precisely by showing that we may need to understand closure differently in different media, and that the existence of a specific ending or concluding section may not even be required for the creation of closural effects. But is the closure offered by the Tabulae or the painted friezes false? The question is useful because it forces us to confront our assumptions about what counts as convincingly or satisfyingly final. I can think of three responses. Certainly it seems tendentious to suggest that Homeric poetry and the Epic Cycle revolve around Aeneas or the Italian landscape, but the Cycle’s seamless narrative continuum is itself necessarily the product of tendentious selection. Extant fragments demonstrate that the Cyclic poems overlapped with each other, perhaps extensively.62 Any attempt to realize the Cycle is therefore, if not false, at least provisional because different choices are possible about which poem’s version to follow and where each should begin and end; the Capitolina in fact makes different choices from those found in the prose summary of the Cycle by Proclus.63 The Tabulae and the Pompeian frieze link the end of the Troy saga with the beginning of Aeneas’ adventures. I tend to think that this gesture seals off the story of Troy and defers Aeneas’ journey to another context or the viewer’s imagination (“But that’s another story […]”). Or do Aeneas’ final scenes on the tablet or frieze prise open the circle and indicate that despite the apparent closure, there is more, much more, to come?64 62 63

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Burgess 2001: 12-33, 135-148 offers a detailed discussion. Proclus, for instance, narrates the suicide of Ajax in his summary of the Little Iliad, but a scholion to Pindar places the same event in the Aethiopis, as does the Capitolina (cf. Burgess 2001: 21-22). Fowler 1997: 20-21 discusses “works that allude to ends at their beginnings and vice versa” and notes that overlaps between narratives can be sites of “contestation and rivalry.” Is this the end, or isn’t it?

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Much depends on the viewer, whose gaze and engagement are required for any closure or aperture to manifest itself. I have tried to plot normative viewing patterns and tease out their meanings, detecting coherence and completeness. One might equally well focus on the contingency of each individual encounter, whether governed by a pattern or not: visual narratives call into question the possibility of a true end because they are inexhaustible, always prone to be traversed again in a new way as we turn wherever we wish. Fowler writes (1997: 22): “[a]ll ending, however ‘good’, has to be, in the end, just stopping. But equally, any stopping can be made good, if the game is played right.” Perhaps we might speak of factitious closure rather than false, and recognize the artificiality and artfulness of all attempts to close the ring.65

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I wish to thank all the participants in the False Closure conference for valuable discussion and feedback, and the editors of this volume for their encouragement and patience. This chapter reached its final form in March of 2010, a self-imposed endpoint after which, for closure’s sake, I have resisted the temptation to make substantial additions.

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Fig. 1: Detail from the plan of the House of the Cryptoportico, Pompeii I 6.2. The cryptoportico’s three wings surround the area marked 30; the main entrance to the cryptoportico is off of the space marked 29. (after PPM 1.193)

Fig. 2: Sketch of an inner wall from the cryptoportico. (PPM 1.201)

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Fig. 3: Drawing of the cryptoportico’s north wing viewed from its east end. (Brilliant 1984: 62, fig. 2.4)

Fig. 4: The Odyssey frieze (Vatican Museums, Sala delle Nozze Aldobrandine), reconstruction of its original arrangement by O’Sullivan. (O’Sullivan 2007: fig. 4, reproduced with permission from O’Sullivan; watercolors of the individual panels reproduced with permission from R. Biering [1995])

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Fig. 5: Tabula Iliaca Capitolina (1A). Rome, Museo Capitolino, Sala delle Colombe 83 (photo credit: Scala / Art Resource, NY)

Fig. 6: Approximation of the original appearance of the Tabula Capitolina. Digital manipulation of the preceding image by the author. (photo credit: Scala / Art Resource, NY)

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Fig. 7: Tabula of New York (2NY), recto. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 24.97.11. (image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY)

Fig. 8: Tabula of New York (2NY), verso. (image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY)

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Fig. 9: Tabula Veronensis I (3C), verso. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Cabinet des Médailles 3318. (photo by the author, reproduced with permission from M. Amandry, director of the Cabinet des Médailles)

Fig. 10: Detail of the Tabula Capitolina, with a line denoting the central axis added by the author. (photo credit: Scala / Art Resource, NY)

Picturing Words and Wording Pictures: False Closure in the Pompeian Casa degli Epigrammi1 Michael Squire The relationship between image and text always and necessarily infringes upon issues of false closure. On the one side is the hope or expectation that one medium can fully represent the other – whether through the ‘ekphrastic’ rendering of an image by means of a text, or the supposed depiction of a text by means of an image. On the other comes the realisation that any such gesture towards coherence, stability and finality – ‘this’ word or picture representing ‘that’ picture or word – is artificial and incomplete. The different resources of words and pictures result in an inevitable surplus between what can be seen and what can be said: try as we may to square visual with verbal media, words will never align with pictures, nor will pictures align with words. The frame in which texts seek to enclose images, or indeed images to enclose texts, proves at once impossibly rigid and prohibitively slack.2 No twentieth-century image (or should that be text?) has proven more iconic in exploring these issues than René Magritte’s 1929 painting, La Trahison des Images (Figure 1). Magritte juxtaposes a schematic picture of (what looks like) a pipe with a graphic inscription below: ceci n’est pas une pipe. We might expect a correspondence between the two media – that the legend will work as a kind of ‘caption’ for the picture, telling us (in the manner of all good gallery labels) what

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This paper expands ideas first explored in Squire 2009 (where I discussed the Casa degli Epigrammi at 176-189). It was written during the generous tenure of an Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung Fellowship at the Institut für Klassische Archäologie at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, and delivered as a paper at the 13ième FIEC Congrès, Berlin, 24th-29th August 2009. My thanks to Farouk Grewing for his comments on an earlier draft. Special thanks also to those individuals who allowed me to reproduce photographs and drawings: B. Bergmann (Figure 12), J. Stanton-Abbott (Figure 3) and V. M. Strocka (Figure 4). Among the many discussions in the late twentieth century, perhaps Bal 1991 expresses the point most clearly: “The most obvious conclusion […] is the inexhaustibility of one medium in terms of the other; poems will never be fully illustrated, nor can the plates ever be fully understood with reference to the poem […] Text and image, even when presented as a whole, do not match” (34). Still more succinct is Foucault 2002 (a translation of the original French text of 1966): discussing Velázquez’s Las Meninas, Foucault concludes that “it is in vain that we say what we see; what we see never resides in what we say” (10). For further bibliography, see Squire 2009: esp. 38-39.

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the image ‘means’.3 But the text frustrates – or at least claims to frustrate – any such allegiance between the seeable and sayable. As Michel Foucault argued in his classic 1979 discussion, each medium at once stabilises and destabilises responses to the other: words and pictures are made to function as both ‘supporting pegs’ and as ‘termites’ that gnaw away and weaken interpretation of the other medium.4 Magritte’s ‘iconotext’ therefore offers the ultimate in false closure. While purporting to render the picture in words (and vice versa), the painting leads us round in circles – from image to text, and back from text to image.5 The words might offer a sort of commentary on the picture – telling how to make sense of it (or at least, how not to) – but they also invite audiences to question the visualverbal relations constructed: while anchoring interpretation of the picture, the text simultaneously undermines its simulative claim, insisting that ‘this is not a pipe’. The result is full-on semiotic meltdown, catalyzed by the demonstrative pronoun ‘ceci’. Just how are we to relate the ‘real’ object with either (this?) visual representation or (this?) verbal appellation? Are both (these?) visual and linguistic systems equally arbitrary and artificial? Which medium precedes the other – (this?) image or (this?) text? Should we take the painting’s original title – ‘the treason of images’ – any more literally than the words painted in the picture? And where is (this?) ‘real’ referent to be found amidst (these?) staged visual and verbal fictions?6 Over the last twenty or so years, Classicists have shown how ancient artists, writers and critics could contest the nature of visual and verbal communication in no less sophisticated and self-referential ways. Whether we look back to the 3

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On the manipulations of labels and titles in modern and postmodern paintings, see esp. Bann 1985, along with Morley 2003; cf. Butor 1969, Franklin, Becklen and Doyle 1993, and Lilley 1994. V. Platt nicely compares Alphonse Allais’ sheet of blank white paper, exhibited in 1883 with the title “Première communion de jeunes filles chlorotiques par un temps de neige” (Platt 2007: 247). Foucault 1983: 38. For further commentary, see Lüsebrink 1993, Mitchell 1994: 6476, and Harris 2005; for an excellent analysis of the Magritte painting in the context of the Graeco-Roman ‘epigraphic habit’, see Platt 2007. For the term, see Nerlich 1990: 268 (defining the iconotext as “une œuvre dans laquelle l’écriture et l’élément plastique se donnent comme une totalité insécable”). Cf. Wagner 1995: 12 and idem 1996: 15-17; cf. also Mitchell 1994: 93-107 on ‘imagetexts’. Cf. Harris 2005: passim, esp. 184: “Our grasp of the literal or iconic meaning of the sign avails us nothing. We are still puzzled by the message. We have tried to identify its content and had to come away empty-handed.” The fact that Magritte himself duplicated the painting – returning afresh to the theme in numerous different contexts – further destabilises relationships between signifier and signified: with every new version added to Magritte’s series of replica-representations, the fissure between original and copy – as indeed between image and text – becomes ever harder to fathom.

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prototypical Homeric ekphrasis of the shield of Achilles in Iliad 18,7 to Simonides’ analogy of painting as ‘silent poetry’ and poetry as ‘talking painting’,8 or indeed to the sophisticated ‘pictures in words’ of Second Sophistic texts like Philostratus’ Imagines and Lucian’s De Domo,9 we witness a culture that remained acutely sensitive to both the proximity and distance between what can be said and what can be seen, and over a thousand-year historical span. By the time we get to the likes of (Pseudo-) Hermogenes and Nikolaus – who discuss the rhetoric of ekphrasis in their late-antique Progymnasmata – we find the phenomenon explicitly theorised: ekphrasis, writes Hermogenes, is an ‘interpretation that almost brings about seeing through hearing’ (τὴν ἑρμηνείαν διὰ τῆς ἀκοῆς σχεδὸν τὴν ὄψιν μηχανᾶσθαι).10 Responding to conventional definitions of ekphrasis which equate visual subject with verbal representation (‘ekphrasis is a descriptive speech which vividly brings the subject shown before the eyes’),11 the question of containing what can be seen in what can be read or spoken is overtly reopened. If rhetoric aspires to render the visible in the sayable,

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Of the many discussions of Il. 18.478-608, I have found Lynn-George 1988: 174-20, Heffernan 1993: 10-22, and Becker 1995 particularly helpful. As Francis 2009 most recently concludes of the passage, “the relationship between word and image in ancient ecphrasis is, from its beginning, complex and interdependent, presenting sophisticated reflection on the conception and process of both verbal and visual representation […]. The very idea of representing a visual work of art with artistic words entailed a level of sophistication which had already begun to think abstractly about these modes of representatio” (3 and 16); cf. also Squire forthcoming. Among the best discussions are Carson 1992, Franz 1999: 61-83, Ford 2002: 96-101, and Sprigath 2004. On Philostratus’ Imagines, see e.g. Bryson 1994, Elsner 2004, Newby 2009 and Squire 2009: esp. 416-428. On the De Domo, see Goldhill 2001: 160-167; Newby 2002; Thomas 2007: 229-233. Webb 2009: 167-191 now provides an excellent introduction to the visual-verbal games of these and other Second Sophistic texts. Hermog. Prog. 10.48 (see Rabe [ed.] 1913: 23). Cf. Nikolaus 70 on how elements of ekphrasis ‘bring the subjects of the speech before our eyes and almost make the audience into spectators’ (ὑπ’ ὄψιν ἡμῖν ἄγοντα ταῦτα, περὶ ὧν εἰσιν οἱ λόγοι, καὶ μονονοὺ θεατὰς εἶναι παρασκευάζοντα, Felton [ed.] 1917: 70). On the ‘almosts’ (σχεδόν/μονονού), see Becker 1995: 28 (with the important Greek and Roman comparanda cited in n. 49) and Goldhill 2007: 3 (“rhetorical theory knows well that its descriptive power is a technique of illusion, semblance, of making to appear”). Theon, Prog. 118.7 (Patillon and Bolognesi, p. 66): ἔκφρασίς ἐστι λόγος περιηγαματικὸς ἐναργῶς ὑπ’ ὄψιν ἄγων τὸ δηλούμενον. The words are in fact repeated verbatim by Hermogenes and Aphthonius, and very closely echoed by Nikolaus. Indeed, Hermog. Prog. 10.47 (Rabe [ed.] 1913: 22) even qualifies the definition with the phrase ὡς φασίν (‘as they say’), as if acknowledging its formulaic derivation. For a detailed analysis of these rhetorical handbooks, see now Webb 2009.

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it simultaneously admits the fiction of such enclosure: the dream of containing images in texts, as indeed texts in images, is necessarily thwarted and deferred.12 While most Classicists have investigated these issues through the literary record – focussing on the phenomenon of ekphrasis in particular13 – my aim in this article is slightly different. In an effort to get some philological hands dirty, as it were, I explore a single material case study: the eponymous exedra of the Casa degli Epigrammi in Pompeii (5.1.18). As we shall see, this room brought together a series of pictures and poems, and in a way not wholly dissimilar to the Magritte painting with which we began. Rather than simply close down interpretation – reducing the juxtaposed images to verbal captions – the room’s multimedial installations sparked a series of dynamic, two-directional interactions between words and pictures: although the epigrams in one sense anchored visual interpretations of the juxtaposed painting (just as the paintings anchored verbal interpretations of epigrams), each medium simultaneously altered responses to the other – and in a variety of playful, self-conscious and highly erudite ways. The combination of poems, panel-paintings and overarching mural framework, in other words, invited viewer-readers to re-think responses at each and every turn. The article proceeds in three distinct but overlapping parts. After introducing the exedra, I first relate the graphic presentation of these poems to the generic history of epigram: the physical inscription of these epigrams, I suggest, has to be understood against the epigraphic-cum-literary self-consciousness of the genre, and of the subgenre of ekphrastic epigrams about artworks in particular. Second, I explore the riddlesome nature of these poetic-pictorial juxtapositions, concentrating not only on the collaborating and competing juxtapositions of individual paintings and epigrams, but also on the collaborating and competing associations between the collected assemblage of images and texts: just when we think that we have cracked the puzzle of each juxtaposition, the pictures and paintings lend themselves to new sorts of individual and collective interpretations. Third and finally, I associate ensuing questions about pictorial and poetic priority to the exedra’s illusionistic décor: the overarching mural frame, I argue, surrounds these words and pictures in still larger questions about reality and representation.

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Mitchell 1992 nicely labels the phenomenon ekphrastic ‘hope,’ ‘fear,’ and ‘indifference’ (developed in Mitchell 1994: 151-181). Wagner 1996: 13 independently captures the point, declaring that “ekphrasis […] has a Janus face: as a form of mimesis, it stages a paradoxical performance, promising to give voice to the allegedly silent image even while attempting to overcome the power of the image by transforming and inscribing it”. For a review of bibliography, see Squire 2009: 139-146, along with idem 2011: 303370.

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Exedra y in the Casa degli Epigrammi Before proceeding, it is necessary to say something about our exedra and its place within the Casa degli Epigrammi.14 Despite the notoriety of the room, anyone visiting the house today will most likely leave disappointed. As though the AD 79 Mt Vesuvius eruption were not enough, the house suffered a second catastrophe in 1943: some seventy or so years after the house was first seriously excavated (from 1875 onwards), it was bombed by allied troops during the Second World War. For this reason, we have largely to depend upon K. Dilthey’s careful drawings and reconstructions of 1876, which V. M. Strocka carefully reviewed against the surviving evidence in 1995.15 The Casa degli Epigrammi, sometimes associated with the family of the Valerii, is a fairly spacious property, well located on the Via Stabiana.16 The exedra (room y) which gives the house its name is located to the northeast corner of the peristyle and seems to have been decorated sometime between 40 and 30 BC (Figures 2-3). The room is small (2.82 x 2.30 m), but well-lit – thanks to the wide doorway onto the peristyle. The mural scheme broadly accords with what A. Mau termed the ‘Second Style’ of Pompeian wall painting, simulating a gallery of paintings, or pinacotheca:17 above a decorated praedella are a series of aediculae, each supporting a framed picture, rendered as if a self-standing panelpainting, or pinax (Figure 4). There are five such panel-paintings in total. On the west wall, Eros is shown wrestling Pan, watched over by Aphrodite (Figure 5); opposite it, on the east wall, we see a reclining Dionysus, complete with thyrsos and kantharos, with a panther behind (Figure 6).18 Between these two scenes, on the north wall, are three pictures: first, a group of male figures before a raised 14

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On the room, its decoration and the epigrams, see PPM 3: 564-573, nos. 51-65; the inscriptions are published as CIL 4.3407. For discussion, see esp. Dilthey 1876; Neutsch 1955; Beyen 1960: 199-233; Peters 1963: 26-27; Gigante 1979: 50-53, 7175; Leach 1982: 158-159; eadem 1988: 219-222; eadem 2004: 135-136; Strocka 1995 (with detailed bibliography at 269-270 n. 2); Thomas 1995: 114-115; Rossi 2001: 6569; Bergmann 2007; Prioux 2008: 29-63 (with further bibliography listed at 29 n. 1). On the excavation history, see Dilthey 1876: 294-296. Dilthey 1876; Strocka 1995. More generally on the house, see Staub Gierow 2005, and the helpful review in Lorenz 2008: 541-543, K15. On the simulative aesthetics of the pinacotheca in Roman wall painting, the classic article is van Buren 1938, but see also Schefold 1952: 32-34, idem 1972: 50-52 and Leach 2004: 132-152. Specifically on the room and its place within ‘Second Style’ decorative schemes, see Beyen 1960: esp. 214-231, associating it with what he terms “phase 2a of the Second Style”. Moormann 1988: 163 identifies the androgynous figure as Ariadne, after a Hellenistic prototype. But the particular attributes make this identification unlikely, and a clear iconographic parallel can be found for Dionysus on the east wall of the Villa dei Misteri (as noted by Neutsch 1955: 159).

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statue of Pan (Figure 7), second, a seated Homer approached by two young men (the figures are named by additional inscriptions) (Figure 8); and third, a large male figure flanked by two goats (a young boy guides one goat, to the left, while a second goat, to the right, perches on its hind legs beneath a column) (Figure 9). In addition to these five paintings are four similarly framed panels, two on both the east and west sides, containing images of single female figures;19 occupying the upper register of each wall is an illusionistic cornice, decorated with garlands and metal vessels filled with fruit.20 W. Aulmann’s reconstruction, drawn in the 1870s, best conveys the overall effect (Figure 10). As for the room’s epigrams, painted in neat capital letters towards the lower edge of each framed pinax, these vary in length from between one line and six. Thanks (at least in part) to the damage of the Allied bombardment, the texts are today even more fragmentary than they were in the late nineteenth century; still, extant sections very much corroborate nineteenth-century notations of their original appearance and form.21 Each letter is inscribed to a height of around 0.5 cm and the script suggests a single epigraphic hand.22 Although only four inscriptions are known, it seems very likely that the fifth tableau, on the east wall, was also originally accompanied by an epigram, in the damaged lower section of the painting; despite scholarship’s best guesses at reconstructing a plausible poem or theme, such speculation seems futile – we will most likely never know the content of this missing text.23 Moving from left to right and from west to east, the epigrams can be reconstructed as follows:24 19

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Should they have attempted to identify these figures conclusively, ancient viewers would probably have had as much trouble as modern scholars. Some have seen the two figures on the west wall as Horai (cf. Wrede 1981: 17-18; de Caro 2001: 57, no. 26 – identifying one figure as Autumn; Prioux 2008: 35), but others have suggested that they represent Abundance, Flora and Peace (Moormann 1988: 162-163, Strocka 1995: 278); on the east wall, Moormann suggests a Muse at the north end and Urania at the south (1988: 163-164), whereas Strocka posits Pysche and a priestess (1995: 285 and 288; see also Prioux 2008: 42). Cf. de Caro 2001: 56-57 no. 25. Note, though, that next to nothing survives of the south wall, or of the south end of the west wall. The most detailed analysis of the paintings themselves remains Beyen 1960: 203-214: although much of the house was redecorated some fifty years later, the mural decoration of the exedra was left unchanged. Prioux 2008: 50 n. 65 makes the interesting (but unsubstantiated) claim that “certaines formes de lettres ne concordent pas avec les graphies usitées dans la seconde moitié du Ier siècle av. J.C., mais évoqueraient davantage des modèles du IIe siècle av. J.C.” Cf. Dilthey 1876: 295; Neutsch 1955: 159; Strocka 1995: 284-285 (suggesting AP 6.44); Rossi 2001: 66; Prioux 2008: 42. I adapt here the texts of Dilthey 1876, as published in Gigante 1979. The first and third inscriptions are still for the most part legible; very little of the second inscription survives – but enough to identify it as AP 6.13.

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1) ὁ θρασὺ[ς] ἀνθέστακεν Ἔρως [τ]ῷ Παν[ὶ παλαίων] χἁ Κύπρις ὠδίνει, τίς τίνα πρῶτος ἑλεῖ. [Ἰ]σχυρὸς μὲν ὁ Πὰν καὶ καρτερός, ἀλλὰ [π]ανοῦργος [ὁ π]τανός – καὶ Ἔρως· οἴχεται ἁ δύναμις. Bold Eros wrestles with Pan and has taken a stand against him, and Aphrodite is anxious to see who will conquer whom first. Strong is Pan and powerful, but roguish too is the winged one – and that is Eros: his 25 strength is departing. 2) [οἱ τρισσοί τοι ταῦτα τὰ δίκτυα θήκαν ὅμαιμοι,] [ἀγρότα Πάν, ἄλλης ἄλλ]ο[ς ἀπ’ ἀγρεσίης·] [ὧν ἀπὸ μὲν πτανῶν Πίγρης τάδε, ταῦτα δὲ] Δ[ᾶμις] τ[ετραπό]δ[ων, Κλείτωρ δ’ ὁ τρίτος εἰναλίων.] Ἀ[νθ’ ὧν τ]ῷ [μὲν πέμπε δι’ ἠέρος εὔστοχον ἄγρην,] τῷ δὲ δι[ὰ δρυμῶν, τῷ δὲ δι’ ἠιόνων.] The three brothers dedicated these nets for you, Pan the Hunter, each for his respective prey: of them, these Pigres dedicated for things that are winged, these Damis for things that have four legs, and Klitior, the third, for things of the sea. In exchange, send a well-aimed catch – to one through the air, to the other through the thickets, and to the third through 26 the sea. 3) [ὅσσ’ ἕλο]μεν, λιπόμεσθ’, ὅσσ’ οὐχ [ἕλ]ο[μ]εν, [φερό]μεσθα. Whatever we caught we left behind, whatever we did not catch we now 27 bring. 4) κἄν με φάγῃς ποτὶ ῥίζαν, ὅμως ἔτι καρποφορήσω, ὅσσον ἐπισπεῖσαι σοί, τράγε, θυομένῳ. Even if you eat me down to the root, I will nevertheless still bear fruit – 28 enough to pour as a libation, goat, at the moment of your sacrifice.

The first thing we might note is that the poems – or at least the poetic themes – appear to have been fairly common and familiar. The three epigrams on the north wall (nos. 2-4) are all known to us from other sources. As Dilthey first noted in 25 26 27 28

Cf. Dilthey 1876: 296-300; Neutsch 1955: 166-168; Strocka 1995: 277-278; Bergmann 2007: 82-88; Prioux 2008: 31-35. Cf. Dilthey 1876: 305-307; Strocka 1995: 279-281; Bergmann 2007: 79-82; Prioux 2008: 35-37. Cf. Dilthey 1876: 300-305; Strocka 1995: 281-282; Bergmann 2007: 71-76; Prioux 2008: 37-38. Cf. Dilthey 1876: 307-311; Strocka 1995: 282-283; Bergmann 2007: 76-79; Prioux 2008: 38-40.

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1876, the second epigram apparently derives from a poem surviving in the Palatine Anthology, attributed to Leonidas of Tarentum (AP 6.13);29 we can be sure that that poem was renowned in antiquity, since it spurred numerous subsequent imitations (cf. AP 6.11-17, 179-187).30 At the opposite end of the same wall, the fourth epigram is also preserved in the Palatine Anthology, where it is ascribed to Euenos of Askalon (AP 9.75);31 as Dilthey again noted, however, Leonidas likewise seems to have been the ultimate inspiration behind the epigram – which adapts Leonidas’ popular and renowned six-line epigram on the same subject into a pithy couplet, preserving its final pentameter unchanged (AP 9.9.6).32 Between these two scenes, accompanying the room’s tallest panelpainting, the third epigram must also have been well known: as we shall see, it is quoted in the so-called Lives of Homer that survive from late antiquity, and the story was evidently anecdotal even in the sixth century BC.33 The poem surviving on the west wall (no. 1) has no extant epigrammatic model. But the story of Eros conquering Pan, whereby ‘Love vanquishes All,’ was evidently popular, frequently referenced in the literary and pictorial repertoire alike.34 29 30

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Cf. Dilthey 1876: 306-307. See Gow and Page (eds) 1965: 2.356 on Leonidas 46. Among the Hellenistic imitations is a poem attributed to Antipater (AP 6.14): see Gow and Page (eds) 1965: 2.34-35 on Antipater 1. On the ensuing sequence of epigrams that attempted to ‘trump’ this one, see Gigante 1971: 63-65, Laurens 1989: 80-83, and Gutzwiller 1998: 241-245. While Leach 1988: 220 suggests that “the content of the epigram is largely formulaic”, the significance of the poem seems to have been precisely its place within a much larger series of variants. See Gow and Page (eds) 1968: 2.291 on Euenus 3. As Dilthey 1876: 309-310 notes, the epigram was well known, at least by the first century AD – quoted, for example, in Suet. Dom. 14. Other echoes can be found in Ov. Fast. 1.353-358, Ov. Met. 15.114 and Verg. Georg. 1.343-350. The story seems to descend from one of the fables that were later attributed to ‘Aesop,’ perhaps going back to a sixth-century source (cf. Gow and Page (eds) 1965: 2.342-334 on Leonidas 32). Cf. Dilthey 1876: 309-319. On AP 9.99 (Leonidas 32), see esp. Gow and Page (eds) 1965: 2.342-343; cf. Gigante 1971: 189-191; Lausberg 1982: 210-211; Albiani 1996: 161-162. Cf. Dilthey 1876: 302-303; Gigante 1979: 50-53; Strocka 1995: 281-282; Bergmann 2007: 71-79. The Vitae are conveniently collected in Allen (ed.) 1955: 184-268, and the story of Homer’s death is well discussed in Levine 2002 (although Levine does not mention this Pompeian material). A number of surviving epigrams also explicitly refer to this Homeric riddle: cf. Gow and Page (eds) 1965: 2.16-17 on AP 7.1 (Alcaeus 11), and compare AP 7.213, 14.65 and 66. One anonymous epigram even cites it in full (AP 9.448): for discussion, see Skiadas 1965: 45-62 and Bolmarcich 2002: 68-73. The earliest reference to the story comes among the fragments of Heraclitus, on which see below. For verbal parallels, see Dilthey 1876: 296-300 (and note esp. Servius on Verg. Ecl. 2.31). For visual parallels, see Neutsch 1955: 164-177, together with LIMC 3.1: 984985, nos. 239-243, s.v. ‘Eros/Amor, Cupido’. The playful pun of the third line, in

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The exact form in which these epigrams might have been known is harder to gauge. Our knowledge of Greek epigram is largely dependent on the Greek Anthology – a hypothetical collection of poems made by Constantine Cephalas in the tenth century. I say ‘hypothetical’ because our sources in fact consist of two different manuscripts: the Palatine Anthology, containing fifteen books of poems, and assembled by an unknown scholar in AD c. 940; and the Planudean Anthology (in seven books, named after its editor in AD 1401, Maximus Planudes), which includes 388 epigrams not contained in the Palatine manuscript – 303 of them (in Book 4) associated with monuments and artworks. Despite the late date of these two collections, such diachronic, multi-authored, thematicallyarranged sequences of poems evidently had a much longer history: the tradition stretches back to the Hellenistic and Roman worlds – to the Hellenistic Garland of Meleager in particular, as well as to the Julio-Claudian Garland of Philip. Although Meleager’s and Philip’s epigrammatic Garlands are lost, certain parts of the Palatine Anthology seem to preserve sequences of poems from such collections; it seems likely that the poems in Pompeii were also known from some such lost anthology.35 A False Start: ‘Illustrated’ Epigrams? Scholarship on the exedra of the Casa degli Epigrammi has tended to assume one particular prototype for this combination of words and pictures: an ‘illustrated manuscript’. According to this theory, the exedra’s juxtaposition of panel-paintings with short ‘explanatory’ epigrams can be explained in terms of a supposed Hellenistic tradition of illuminated papyri, in which literary subjects were set against miniature visual depictions. Where Hellenistic anthologies purportedly juxtaposed epigrams with images, this exedra is deemed to have monumentalised the principle: the patron or artist simply ‘cherry-picked’ five favourite poems and pictures from some favourite manuscript, projecting them onto the room’s west, north and east walls.

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which Eros is [π]ανοῦργος (literally ‘ready to do everything), evidently spelled out the maxim. There is no external evidence to support Geffcken 1916: 124 n. 312 in ascribing the poem to Leonidas (cf. Prioux 2008: 35), nor indeed Prioux’s suggestion that “il fut composé exprès pour le décor de l’exèdre” (ibid.: 54). On the structures supposed to have underpinned these earlier anthologies – especially Meleager’s Garland – the studies of A. Cameron (esp. 1993, with references to earlier work) and K. Gutzwiller (most importantly 1998: esp. 15-56 and 227-322; cf. eadem 1997; eadem 2003) are foundational; for some recent bibliographic guides, see Argentieri 2007, Bing and Bruss 2007: 17-26, and Krevans 2007. Meleager’s Garland is foundational to Prioux 2008, who argues that “le choix d’épigrammes qui compose cette anthologie miniature n’est pas dépourvu de cohérence, si l’on accepte de le lire comme une sort d’hommage à la Couronne” (60); cf. also Bergmann 2007: 67-69.

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This hypothesis goes back to some of the earliest scholarship on the exedra, and was fundamental to Dilthey’s own initial publications.36 But twentiethcentury scholars have tended to accept these assumptions with remarkably little critique. ‘In all five panels, the painter has aimed to translate the suggestions of the verses as exactly as possible into visual form’, writes E. W. Leach; ‘in this respect they are among the clearest examples of illustrative art in the repertoire of ancient painting’.37 K. Schefold went even further, associating the decoration of the room with formulaic Bilderbücher of images that have been lost: “es muß eine alte Tradition von Bilderfolgen mit Epigrammen gegeben haben, wie man längst gesehen hat”.38 Although much more sophisticated in her recent analysis of the room (criticising the assumption “de la copie plus ou moins servile d’une anthologie préexistant aux décors”39), even É. Prioux leaves the essential theory of some such ‘illustrated’ papyrus model unchallenged. The question of the room’s derivation is therefore bound up with a much larger tradition of theorising visual-verbal relations. In particular, it is indebted to a certain mode of philological scholarship that K. Weitzmann epitomised in the mid-twentieth century.40 Weitzmann set out to trace the history of illuminated Greek manuscripts from their supposed origins in Hellenistic Alexandria: defining ‘illustrations’ as images that “are physically bound to the text whose content the illustrator wants to clarify by pictorial means”,41 Weitzmann attempted to reconstruct the history of ancient illustrated papyri from “traces” in other media. The supposed “prototypes” might be lost, but that history could be gleaned from supposed echoes in secondary sources – the so-called Homeric cups of the second century BC, for example the Tabulae Iliacae and the evidence of Roman sarcophagi and wall paintings.42 This is not the place to offer a detailed response to Weitzmann’s hypothesis, still less the ideologies of visual-verbal relations that underpin it.43 Instead, I 36

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See e.g. Dilthey 1876; 1878: 19. Cf. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1898: 229: “freilich kann das ein Wandbild oder ein Statuenpaar ebensogut gewesen sein wie ein Buchbild, denn die Verbindung von Gedicht und Bild kennen wir ja aus Pompei.” Leach 1988: 221; cf. eadem 2004: 136: “The five pictures […] are among the few examples of figurative painting whose status as literary illustrations is certified by an accompanying text.” Schefold 1952: 46; cf. idem 1956: 223-234. For other discussions of these images as ‘illustrations’, see, e.g., Neutsch 1955: 160-163 and 178 (on the room as evidence for illustrated anthologies); Gigante 1979: 71-75 (“il maestro romano attinse ad un Bilderbuch ellenistico”, 71); Strocka 1995: 289-290; Rossi 2001: 65-69. Prioux 2008: 50. Weitzmann 1947 and 1959. Weitzmann 1959: 1. Cf. Weitzmann 1947: 46: “The history of ancient book illustration […] must be based primarily on derived material in other media.” I have attempted this in Squire 2009: 1-193 (esp. 122-139), along with Squire 2011: 129-148.

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limit myself to just two comments. First, there is no evidence that literary manuscripts came to be accompanied by pictures until very late in antiquity, and only then in very special circumstances.44 The only surviving papyri from Hellenistic and Roman Egypt that juxtapose Greek or Latin texts and pictures are relatively late in date;45 although there are earlier instances of images set into technical and scientific works – the newly discovered Geographoumena of Artemdidorus among them46 – the principle seems to have been applied to works of poetry only much later, associated with the particular move from papyrus rolls to bound codices.47 Second, and more fundamentally, I would take issue with the larger set of logocentric assumptions underpinning modern ideologies of illustration, which suppose the priority (in every sense) of words over pictures. As I have argued elsewhere, the ideology of illustration forms part and parcel of a much more complex modernist history of conceptualising visual and verbal relations – ultimately derived from the theology of the Reformation (reducing images to the terms of the text), but overtly rationalised during the course of the Enlightenment. This overarching ‘rhetoric of illustration’ very much holds sway over discussion of the Casa degli Epigrammi, as indeed over most other areas of Classical archaeological scholarship. Our scholarly impulse is always to allow words the upper hand over pictures: the “meaning of these scenes is explained in [the] Greek epigrams”, as W.J.T. Peters maintains of the Casa degli Epigrammi.48 This, it seems to me, is false closure indeed. ‘Closure’, because, according to our rhetoric of illustration, the words simply ‘explain’ what the images ‘mean’; ‘false’, moreover, in the naïve assumption that images can ever be reduced to the terms of a text. As we shall see, the juxtaposition of visual and verbal signs – the collocation of paintings and epigrams in a shared physical space – stages a much more ambivalent process of poetic-pictorial collaboration and competition. To understand that process, it is first necessary to understand something about the literary history of epigram itself. As its name suggests, the generic identity of ‘epigram’ derives from its supposed inscriptional form:49 epigram is

44 45 46 47

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See Valenzuela Montenegro 2004: 337-346 (repeated at 13-14 and 415-416), along with Squire 2010c: 313-316; idem 2011: 137-139 (on the Tabulae Iliacae). For further bibliography, see Squire 2009: 131-134. See esp. Gallazzi, Kramer and Settis (eds) 2008; Brodersen and Elsner (eds) 2009. Cf. Geyer 1989: 29-98 and Valenzuela Montenegro 2004: 341-343; contra, e.g., Weitzmann 1959: 35. The most important discussion of the use of images, diagrams and figures in ancient technical treatises is Stückelberger 1994, but Small 2003: 121129 offers a well-referenced English discussion of diagrams and figures in ancient technical texts. Peters 1963: 26. On the history of the name ‘epigram’, see Puelma 1996 – although there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the term had generic significance much earlier than in the

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defined by its monumentalised appearance, as an epitaph or dedication (for example) chiselled onto an object. But by the late fourth century BC – and perhaps even earlier – something had changed: epigrams came to be collected for their own sake, independently of the monumental objects on which they (purport to) appear.50 What once belonged within the realm of the material monument becomes knowingly translated into the stuff of the papyrus roll: epigram is expressly composed for, and experienced through, the anthology, compiled into neatly-arranged collections that circulate independently from the individual objects celebrated.51 Of course, epigrams were also frequently inscribed (and often specifically composed for inscription): the tradition of epigrammatic epitaphs and dedications continued well into late antiquity and beyond. But there developed in the Hellenistic world a new and highly self-conscious awareness about epigram’s newfound status within the poetic anthology. One example of this phenomenon comes in the 36 extant poems on Myron’s cow (9.713-742, 793-798), recently supplemented by a poem in the new Milan Posidippus (66 A-B).52 While celebrating the lifelikeness of a bronze sculpture of cow – so real, that it might wander off, be mounted by a bull, low, etc. – each poem purports to comment on a cow that purportedly stands before the reader, addressed in a series of demonstrative and deictic adjectives or first person pronouns (‘this is,’ ‘here stands,’ ‘I am,’ etc.). And yet the sheer number of these epigrams – each individual topos duplicated and developed in its own literary right – simultaneously testifies to their rôle as collectible poetic entities: each epigram forms part of an on-going series of replication, written and read not alongside the ‘actual’ image, but for and through the anthological lens of the poetry book. As make-believe monumental inscriptions, the epigrams on Myron’s cow prove as fictional as their purported sculptural subject – a fiction further replicated with each new poetic ‘replica’ added to the series.53

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first century AD (cf., e.g., Gutzwiller 1998: 8 n. 3 and 47-53; Meyer 2005: esp. 30-31; Bing and Bruss 2007). On the development of Hellenistic epigrams from poems inscribed in stone to collections on the papyrus roll, see among others Bing 1988, 10-48, esp. 17-18; idem 1995; idem 1998, esp. 29-35; Gutzwiller 1998, 47-119; eadem 2007, 178-188; Lauxtermann 1998; Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004: 306-338; Bruss 2005: 168-171; Meyer 2005: esp. 96-106; Petrovic 2005. The most important discussion of the Hellenistic ‘culture of viewing’ that epigram (de)constructs remains Goldhill 1994. That is not to say that there are no mutual connections between epigrams destined for literary collections and those still monumentally inscribed; see Bettenworth 2007. For discussion, see e.g. Gutzwiller 1998: 245-250; Goldhill 2007: 15-19; MännleinRobert 2007a: 265-269; eadem 2007b: 83-103; Squire 2010b; idem 2010d: esp. 80. As I argue in Squire 2010b: esp. 608-616, the promise and failure of Myron’s statue to walk and talk – its oscillation between living entity and mendacious fiction – therefore serves as a figure for the generic simulations of epigram at large. Gutzwiller

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Conceptually related are the six surviving Greek calligrammatic ‘picturepoems’ (AP 15.21-22 and 24-27), which seem also to have been imitated (and adapted) in Latin.54 What is unique about these so-called technopaegnia is their mode of drawing out an inscribed monumental context from their physical form – an egg, an axe, the wings of Eros (Figure 11), panpipes, or an altar. In the absence of any real epigraphic object, the epigrams exploit their varying verse lengths to figure the visual in the verbal, and the verbal in the visual. As C. Luz has argued, the pictorial appearance of these picture-poems was most likely disguised by their poetic presentation (explaining why two early third-century BC poems by Simmias proceed first with the first line, then with the last, then the second line, followed by the penultimate, etc.): in a literal sense, readers had to ‘figure out’ the monumental object from the clues latent in the anthologised poem.55 The poems, in other words, offer the ultimate “game of supplementation”, or Ergänzungsspiel (as P. Bing and others have called it): they interrogate the social, cultural and literary distance between epigram as inscribed performance (monumental epigraph) and anthologised collectible (self-contained text).56 It is important to preface the Casa degli Epigrammi with this generic history of epigram because of the room’s playful engagement with precisely these topoi: the exedra, I suggest, knowingly toyed with the established conceits of the genre – epigram’s ambivalence between physical object and tome-trapped fiction. Epigram here finds itself monumentalised once more: we encounter these poems

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2002 serves as an excellent introduction to Hellenistic ekphrastic epigram, now supplemented by Männlein-Robert 2007b. Cf. Simonini and Gualdoni 1978; Ernst 1991: 54-94; Männlein-Robert 2007b, 140154; Luz 2008; Squire 2009: 165-169; idem 2011: 114-115, 231-236. On the (modern) generic name, see Guichard 2006: 83-84. The earliest poems are attributed to Simmias, probably dating to the early third century BC (AP 15.22, 24, 27). My reading contrasts with the literal-minded interpretations of earlier scholars, tending simply to debate whether these were designed as inscriptions to fit the shape of their specific objects (Cameron 1995: 33-37): cf. Gow and Page (eds) 1965: 2.511-516, with further bibliography in Strodel 2002, 265-271. Subsequent Latin authors further elaborated such visual-verbal games: see Ernst 1991, 95-142 and Rühl 2006 on the versus intexti of Publilius Optatianus Porphyrius. Cf. Luz 2008: 23: “Der Leser muss also, wenn er das Gedicht in der Figur lesen will, mit den Augen auf- und niederspringen und kommt am Schluss der Lektüre in der Mitte des Textkörpers an.” Compare eadem 2010: 327-353. Cf. Bing 1995, and idem 1998: 29: “Epigram […] gradually outgrew its chiselled origins, acquiring a parallel life as a γένος ἐπιδεικτικόν, where it might be composed strictly as literature. The result is a hermeneutic crux deriving from the fact that, in spite of its development away from inscription, epigram retained the generic conventions of its incised counterpart.” As Nisbet 2003: 48 argues of a later Imperial Greek epigram by Lucillius, the point is that such poems which pose as inscriptions “could be ‘real,’ could be a literary ‘device’,” but that there was pleasure to be had precisely in that “indeterminacy.”

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not on papyrus scrolls, but as actual inscriptions painted onto the room’s walls. At the same time, though, the particular gesture of pairing these monumentalised epigrams with paintings turns the epigrams into very different sorts of poems. As we have said, the epigrams, epigrammatic subjects and sometimes even epigrammatist authors seem to have been relatively well-known – that is to say, readers had most likely come across these poems in wholly different contexts. Read the poems without the paintings, however, and we would not have imagined that they were designed to accompany pictures at all: nothing in their textural fabric suggests that they functioned as verbal retorts to visual referents, still less the particular images gathered together in this room.57 Whether we recall the deictic reference to ‘these nets’ (ταῦτα τὰ δίκτυα) in the second epigram, or to the speaking vine of the fourth (κἄν με φάγῃς ποτὶ ῥίζαν, ὅμως ἔτι καρποφορήσω), the poems certainly do profess a connection to a specific series of objects. Here, though, those objects are transformed into painted representations. What is more, not only are the poems wittily metamorphosed into makeshift ekphrastic epigrams, designed as responses to artworks, those artworks also appear alongside the poems, offering a kind of ekphrasis in reverse gear. While the Myron’s cow epigrams explore poetry’s potential to filter a visual subject through the verbal lens of the text, the epigrams in our exedra become ekphrastic poems that actually sit beside materialisations of their (purported) pictorial subjects.58 The point is fundamental to the room’s two-way dynamics between visual and verbal stimuli. On the one hand, the exedra has taken a set of epigrams and returned them to an ‘original’ monumental context on the wall, reminding us of the epigraphic roots of the genre; rather than simply ‘explain’ the pictures, however, the very act of pairing picture with poem reopens questions about the nature of those epigrams – about their subjects, form, and purpose. Just as the poems serve as responses to the pictures, the pictures serve as responses to the poems. But which comes first, the paintings or the epigrams? Do the pictures explain the poems, or should the poems explain the pictures? Which medium, in short, precedes the other?59 The whole process smacks of Magritte: we are kept guessing about whether the images (ultimately) refer to the texts, or the texts to the images. 57

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Cf. Rossi 2001: 67 (on epigram 2 above): “This epigram of Leonidas has nothing of the ‘ekphrastic’ nor anything that would lead one to imagine, from an internal analysis, the description of a work of art.” The game would have been all the more striking if, as Prioux 2008: 50 maintains, the graphic presentation of the writing were “archaïsant” – deliberately imitating that of an older papyrus roll. Scholarship has all too often answered these questions in earnest – and with all the academic fervour of deciding whether chickens precede eggs; but they have generally failed to heed the self-conscious play involved. For collected references, see Strocka 1995: 288-299.

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Iconotextual Conundrums Where models of ‘illustration’ serve to shut down such speculation – ‘case closed’, as it were – our exedra evidently relished in it, embedding conceits about the origins of these pictures and poems within still larger questions about the generic history of epigram. As an argument ex nihilo, the supposition of a hypothetical papyrus-model can never of course be wholly disproved: although there is very little evidence for contemporary papyri that paired these (or indeed any other) epigrams with pictures, we cannot rule out the possibility that such an object might lie behind the design. Still, my overarching objection lies in the assumption that this would somehow iron out the room’s complexities. The very decision to inscribe these epigrams alongside these paintings proves in and of itself significant: to return to Weitzmann’s definition of ‘illustration’, the gesture of pairing image with text in this room complicates rather than clarifies responses to each medium.60 Just as with the Magritte painting, the exedra in the Casa degli Epigrammi invited viewer-readers to contemplate the appropriateness – and indeed the significance – of its visual-verbal montage: the polyvalence that ensues keeps us re-thinking initial answers. This, I think, brings us to a crucial point both about these Pompeian ‘iconotexts’, and indeed about false closure more generally. Most of the contributors to this volume talk about false closure in literary contexts – both Greek and Latin, and in poetry as in prose; in doing so, they follow the example of D.H. Roberts, F.M. Dunn and D.P. Fowler, whose edited book on Classical Closure: Reading the End in Greek and Latin Literature (1997) provided the impetus for the volume in hand.61 But the process of responding to the exedra of the Casa degli Epigrammi is structurally rather different: it involves reacting to both verbal and visual media. We might talk about how this exedra’s images are variously framed and contained, of course, or how the texts actively attempt to impose an alien mode of reading onto differently-oriented modes of viewing. But simply to talk about ‘closure’ runs the risk of assimilating the hermeneutics of viewing to those of reading in all too straightforward a manner. Where responding to a text means following a specific narrative sequence – whether or not we 60

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See above, and cf. Squire 2009: 130-131. One of the best ideological critiques of Weitzmann’s thesis is Nisbet 2002, demonstrating how “the very basic assumption of Weitzmann and of all subsequent interpreters – that the pictures do what the text says – is incorrect” (17). Cf. esp. Fowler 1989: 78-79; Fowler 1997a: 5 later clarifies that “whether we look for closure or aperture or a dialectic between them in a text is a function of our own presuppositions, not of anything ‘objective’ about the text” (Fowler’s emphasis). But the author nevertheless maintains that “texts, then, not only have beginnings, middles, and ends, but can often be made to talk about them, too;” in this respect, there is an essential difference between visual and verbal media – and hence their capacity for ‘aperture’ and ‘closure.’

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read from cover to cover (or from scroll to scroll), we move from one letter, line or sentence to the next – images possess no such straightforward linearity. Better, perhaps, pictures are never liable to ‘closure’ in the same sense that words are, because they do not possess the same sorts of structural beginnings, middles and ends. The gesture of pairing image and text in the Casa degli Epigrammi very much invites deliberation along these lines: it asks us to think about the related ways in which words work both similarly and differently from the juxtaposed pictures. The synaesthetic quality of the room’s combined visual and verbal media is something which B. Bergmann has recently championed: “in this elaborately constructed space,” as Bergmann puts it, “word and image are not just simple equivalents or complements, they complicate viewing in diverse and playful ways.”62 Bergmann rightly focuses her argument around the central image of the north wall – “the most prominent panel in the room,” facing viewers upon first entering it.63 This tableau, writes Bergmann, consequently seized viewer’s attention before the others in the room, thereby serving to embody the riddlesome ways in which words and images are here brought together in the exedra. As we have said, the epigram inscribed below this picture (Figure 8) reproduces a riddle posed to Homer. Despite the various discrepancies and contradictions between the versions of the story preserved in the ten surviving Lives of Homer, the general thrust remains more or less consistent: finding Homer on the shore of his hometown, two fisherman challenged the poet with the conundrum that we find here inscribed – ‘whatever we caught we left behind, whatever we did not catch we now bring’. Unable to solve the enigma, Homer promptly ‘slipped’ and died.64 So what is the significance of the associated tale in this particular context? As Bergmann writes, those Pompeian viewers familiar with the story could show themselves as knowing better: it was lice that the fishermen caught but left behind; unable to catch them all, it was also lice that the fishermen brought with them to the shore. In this particular context, paired with this particular painting, the riddle could perhaps take on a deeper significance. The brain-teaser put to Homer in some sense prefigures the room’s brain-teasing juxtaposition of textual and visual media at large. As D. Levine has argued, the biographical tradition presented Homer’s death as a sort of ‘poetic justice’: for all his age and high standing,

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Bergmann 2007: 62. Bergmann 2007: 100; cf. ibid. 76: “The panel of Homer, the central and largest in the room facing the entrance, was clearly the most important in the series. To the left and right, smaller panels with lighter backgrounds and smaller figures take secondary place as pendants within a symmetrical wall design.” As Levine 2002: esp. 153-155 explains, Homer’s literal ‘slip’ is therefore the consequence of his metaphorical ‘slipping-up’ – his inability to solve the famous riddle.

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Homer was in the end trumped by the rhetoric of the young and lowly.65 Although the ‘wisest of the Greeks’, writes Heraclitus in the sixth century, Homer ends up deceived by the false ‘judgment of appearances’ (πρὸς τὴν γνῶσιν τῶν φανερῶν).66 According to tradition, Homer was blind, despite being, in a metaphorical sense, ‘all-seeing.’ Looking at the picture, savvy Pompeian viewers could hope to ‘catch’ a solution to this puzzling visual-verbal depiction of the puzzle; in doing so, moreover, they could get one up on even the great Homer himself.67 The important point is that the riddle originally put to Homer is here made doubly riddlesome through its pictorial-cum-poetic representation: we are invited not only to solve Homer’s riddle (‘lice’), but also to contemplate the riddlesome significance of the associated story and its possible relevance in the room. This is surely the significance of the special basket or griphos held in the fisherman’s left hand. On one level this griphos is a simple attribute, identifying the man’s profession; on another, it functions as a visual parallel to the line inscribed below.68 The griphos is a pictorial pun on two verbally associated meanings, as both a ‘basket’ with which to trap fish, and symbolising a ‘puzzle,’ ‘enigma,’ and ‘riddle’ (as in Clearchus of Soli’s On Riddles, or Peri Griphon).69 The image, it seems, is out to ‘catch’ us, just like the riddling text: it serves as a griphos in its own right, as well as a figure for the griphos of the poem inscribed below. The poems and pictures on either side of this central tableau serve as puzzles in associated ways. In each case, audiences are invited to make sense both of the picture in terms of the poem, and of the poem in view of the picture: at the same time, they also rethink their initial mode of visual or verbal interpretation. Indeed, we are faced with all manner of different riddles – from the allegorical 65 66

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See Levine 2002: esp. 147-150 and 155-158. On the apparent significance of both seeing and language in the riddle, at least for Heraclitus, see esp. Bollak and Wismann 1972: 193-195, as well as Robinson 1987: 119-120. On the dual meaning of the verb αἱρεῖν here, as both ‘to catch’ and ‘to grasp intellectually’, see Bergmann 2007: 74; cf. ibid. 75-76: “Naturally, for those who know the answer, the pleasure lies in ‘getting’ what the great poet could not. More locally, Pompeians up on their Greek legends and letters may well have been elated to ‘get’ such allusions just like elite city and villa dwellers.” As noted in Neutsch 1955: 159; cf. Bergmann 2007: 74. Cf. Wehrli 1969: 74-78, on frs. 84-95b. Ath. 10.448c defines the griphos as “a playful problem (πρόβλημα […] παιστικόν) that is proposed for solution by intellectual inquiry and which is told for the sake of honour or a prize”: cf. Levine 2002: 146-147. Interestingly, the pun is also popular in the epigrammatic treatment of this episode: in one example, the boys ‘weave a riddle / fishing basket’ for Homer (γρῖφον ὑφηνάμενοι: AP 7.1.2); in another, Homer’s death is attributed to the ‘fishermen’s riddle / fishing basket’ (γρίφοις ἰχθυβόλων: AP 7.213.8, with Gow and Page [eds] 1968: 2.445 ad loc.).

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significance of the first tableau on the west wall (Pan as ‘Everything’),70 to the final surviving inscribed picture on the north wall (with its unlikely speaker – not the male figure in the centre of the poem, but the vine to the centre right, perhaps inviting us to identify both animals as one and the same). In each case, text and image work in subtly different ways. How might we have identified the Homer panel without the labels or riddle inscribed below for example? What kind of setting does the painting of the dedications to Pan suggest (left unspoken in the poem)? In what ways does the counterfactual conditional clause of the fourth epigram perform something that the picture cannot? While pondering these questions in the context of each individual tableau, the compilation of subjects complicates responses still further. Not only has each poem been purposely selected to accompany each painting (and vice versa), these poems and pictures have also been purposely combined to form a collective ensemble. If each individual poem and picture invite viewer-readers to make sense of them in isolation from the others, the assemblage also encourages us to compare and contrast each epigram and image with those surrounding them.71 What strikes me as important here is not only the way in which the collected assemblage of images and texts reopens questions about significance and interpretation, but also how different media prompt different sorts of programmatic responses: our impressions of the room depend on whether we privilege the words or the pictures; whichever interpretative path we choose, moreover, lays itself open to re-consideration in the light of the other medium.72 Now, the 70 71

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Cf. Prioux 2008: 44-48. Crucial here is Prioux 2008: 51: “Assembler des textes ou des œuvres d’art revient à doter chaque poème ou chaque tableau d’un supplément d’âme: chaque œuvre, prise isolément, possède bien sûr une signification en elle-même, mais le sens de l’œuvre est également susceptible d’être complété ou infléchi par son inclusion dans un ensemble plus large qui forme un tout signifiant.” Cf. Gutzwiller 1998: 230 and Bergmann 2007: 67-69. In this regard, I respectfully part company with the interpretation of É. Prioux. Prioux submits that “le décor se présentait donc comme une triple collection de tableaux, de statues et de poèmes” (2008: 43), arguing for a “cohérence thématique” (29) centred around a metapoetic reading of the epigrams in relation to the Garland of Meleager (“le choix d’épigrammes qui compose cette anthologie miniature n’est pas dépourvu de cohérence, si l’on accepte de le lire comme une sort d’hommage à la Couronne,” 60): not for nothing, Prioux adds, does the central Homeric epigram serve as a miniature epigrammatic rejoinder to the grand aspirations of epic (“je proposerai d’interpréter cette peinture comme une image de la victoire irrévérencieuse que l’épigramme aurait remportée sur les genres poétiques anciens,” 55). To my mind, though, the programmes that Prioux constructs derive more from the room’s poetic inscriptions than from the paintings; better, perhaps, Prioux slightly underplays the different modes whereby viewers and readers view/read associations between the poems and the paintings.

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relationship between poems collected in Hellenistic and Roman anthologies, and especially anthologies of epigrams, has been a subject of renewed research in recent years;73 in similar vain, late twentieth-century Anglophone scholarship has made much of the programmatic relations between mural paintings displayed in a single room.74 In this Pompeian exedra, however, we are dealing with a combined series of both poems and images, centred around both visual and verbal variables. One way of making sense of the assemblage is to start out from the scripted texts: treating the room’s poems as a kind of anthology in plaster, readers might look beyond the semblance of poikilia, exploring underlying structural associations between the epigrams. Quite apart from possible questions of shared authorship, we might note the dominance of Pan in the first and second epigrams, or the shared first-person voice of the third and fourth; alternatively, we might think it significant that the winged (π]τανός) Eros of the first epigram prefigures the winged creatures (πτανῶν) of the second, or that the second poem’s reference to sea creatures (εἰναλίων) is recalled in the identified fishermen (ἁλεῖς) of the north wall’s central image. Once we start to look for them, we in fact find all manner of verbally mediated associations between the poems: the theme of Pan and Eros attempting to ‘catch’ the other (τίς τίνα πρῶτος ἑλεῖ), for example, leading to ‘the well-aimed hunting-catch’ (εὔστοχον ἄγρην) of the three brothers, to the lice ‘caught’ and ‘not caught’ by the fishermen of the third epigram (ὅσσ’ ἕλο]μεν... ὅσσ’ οὐχ [ἕλ]ο[μ]εν) – in a double relative clause that itself comes to be echoed in the syntactical construction of the fourth poem (ὅσσον ἐπισπεῖσαι σοί, τράγε, θυομένῳ). But the strong iconographic echoes between these sacro-idyllic scenes might simultaneously lead us to devise pictorial programmes which thereby challenge the rival programmes derived from reading the poems. Looking at each of the three pictures on the north wall, viewers can hardly fail to see how all of these compositions are dominated by tall columns, each one topped with a bronze statue.75 A shared compositional structure also forges a connection between the panel-paintings (as with the overarching mural framework) of the east and west walls: the west wall’s Ionic tholos is directly recalled in the circular structure on

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For a good introduction, see Krevans 2007. On the significance of Posidippus’ arrangement of epigrams in the newly discovered early third-century papyrus, see esp. Gutzwiller 2004 and the essays collected in eadem 2005 (esp. Sens 2005). Fundamental is Thompson 1961, developed by e.g. Brilliant 1984: 53-89, Leach 1988: 361-408, Bergmann 1994, 1996, and 1999, and Lorenz 2008. The raised statue of the picture at the west end of the north wall is a horned Pan (cf. Beyen 1960: 213), and that of the central painting seems either to have been an Apollo or a Neptune (cf. Beyen 1960: 212). Although the painting is fragmentary, Dilthey 1876: 307-308 conjectures that the picture on the east end of this wall originally featured a statue of Dionysus.

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which Dionysus reclines on the east.76 Then there is the issue of colour – one of the room’s most striking aspects for visitors, although rather played down in library-bound scholarship (largely dependent upon black-and-white reproductions): the common blue-green background of the central paintings of the west, north and east walls invites us to view them in tandem, whereas the pale white backgrounds of the other two panels on the north wall suggest an independent structural relationship. The paintings confront us with a playful game of ‘spot the difference:’ we are encouraged to look for pictorial analogies between the exedra’s paintings which quite literally go unspoken in the attached poems. In practice, of course, the impulse is to put the room’s images and texts together, not to pull them apart. Just as the first and second inscriptions mention Pan by name, the adjacent pictures show Pan in different forms (shown as a halfgoat wrestling Cupid in one painting, and as a bronze statue receiving offerings in another). On the other side of the central Homeric image, by contrast, Dionysus recurs in both images – as a reclining figure on the east wall (the accompanying epigram is lost), and symbolically in the speaking vine addressing the goat on the north wall (although not explicitly mentioned). But the paintings nonetheless resist such totalising semantic reduction: compare the goat eating the vine in the eastern-end painting of the north wall (Figure 9) with the goaty Pan of the west wall (Figure 5), for example, and we find a very similar pictorial schema – each animal perched on the hind legs, facing to the left. Just when we think we have struck upon a solution that cracks the riddle of the visual-verbal combination, new associations suggest themselves. My overriding point is that whatever rationale we decide to reconstruct behind the ensemble derives in substantial part on whether we view or read: the assemblage of words and images encourages us to construct visual programmes that contend with the verbal, and verbal programmes that contend with the visual. On the level of the collective assemblage, as well as on that of each individual tableau, the multi-mediality of this installation once again opens up rather than closes down issues of interpretation: the divergences between the two media mean that questions are left unanswered, tensions taut, and conflicts unresolved. Image, Text and Virtual Reality So far in this article, I have discussed the exedra’s individual tableaux independently of their overarching mural framework. As I hope to have shown, each panel’s combination of visual and verbal media invited contemplation about

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On the monopteral buildings of the east and west walls, and parallels for them in other ‘Second Style’ wall paintings, see Tybout 1989: 315-323.

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how to pair images and words, as well as about how to group together these respective assemblages of pictures and poems. But simply to talk of ‘panel-paintings’ – to isolate these pinakes from their ‘Second Style’ mural framework – is somewhat misleading. For these panelpaintings and poems were in fact themselves framed within an illusionistic ‘Second Style’ scheme that surrounded them in additional webs of hermeneutic significance. As we have seen, this mural frame combined a number of different realities in its two-dimensional space. There is the ‘Second Style’ aedicula framework (Figures 4 and 10), for instance, with its painted garlands, and not least its baskets of fruits (which themselves echo the fruits held by the winged figures of the west wall, as well as to the fourth epigram’s promise of ‘bearing fruit’);77 the very design of this two-dimensional mural framework, moreover, is predicated upon the pretence of a three-dimensional pinacotheca, complete with detachable pictures hanging on the wall.78 Arguably the most sophisticated illusion, though, centres around the various three-dimensional statues represented in this staged two-dimensional space:79 all of the three tableaux on the north wall incorporate statues into their fictive painted representations; as Dilthey first noted, the gold monochrome colour of Dionysus on the east wall suggests that this too is a painting of a statue, and some have advanced the same argument for the Homer of the north wall.80 Such statuesque figures also recur elsewhere in the mural frame. What should we make of the female figures that flank the central panels of the west and east walls, for instance (Figure 4)? Are these paintings of actual figures, or of statues of figures standing on pedestal bases and rendered in make-believe niches?81 What, for that matter, of the winged female figures above the pediment, who are given the semblance of three-dimensional reality, as though they were caryatids propping up the ceiling (Figure 10)?82 In this world of representation squared, the lines between reality and artifice appear distinctly blurred. We are dealing with a multi-layered

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On the illusionistic functions and associations of such images of food in Roman wallpainting, see Squire 2009: 357-428. In at least one instance, this illusion was further developed by actually breaking the pictorial frame: in the central painting of the west wall, Aphrodite is shown with her left foot literally stepping over the frame of the panel, as Bergmann 2007: 84 notes. On the appearance of statues in Roman wall painting, see the exhaustive catalogue of Moormann 1988, together with Stewart 2003: 38-41 and 214-221. For the original suggestion that the east wall depicts a statue of Dionysus, see Dilthey 1876: 311-313. At the centre of the north wall, moreover, Homer sits on what can be simultaneously construed as an altar and a statue base; the attributes beside him (a shield and an oar) were also common sculptural attributes. Cf. Moormann 1988: 163, on the “basi rettangolari in verde imitanti lamine di bronzo statue”; cf. also Leach 1982: 159. On these figures, see Moormann 1988: 164.

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ontology of visual media, occupying at once a variety of different threedimensional realities in this flat painted space. Such blurring of Realraum with Bildraum is of course a distinctive feature of ‘Second Style’ wall-painting.83 But the amalgamation of different sorts of realities within this mural framework adds a further dimension to the combined representation of words and images in this exedra. In terms of what we have noted about the literary history of epigram – its chequered history from stone to scroll – the feature might in turn affect what we make of these pseudo-epigraphic texts: for all their claims to a sort of monumental authenticity, as opposed to the literary fabrications of the papyrus scroll, the inscribed poems are exposed as just another part of the room’s highly staged fictions; the ‘originality’ of these poems (and not least of the paintings with which they are in turn associated), we might say, proves as (un)convincing as the exedra’s other illusionistic representations. What might this framework mean in terms of the exedra’s iconotexts? Just as each panel-painting forms part of the overarching design of the wall, it seems to me that the playful juxtaposition of texts and images – the intermedial game of ‘spot the difference’, played out on both the individual and collective level – forms part of a still larger and more playful project of artful make-believe. Where paintings and poems invite contemplation about the relations between what can be said and what can be seen, the illusionism of the mural scheme surrounds this discourse with spiralling questions about truth and fiction. The suturing of words and images in this combined field is defined by (and in turn helps to define) the room’s overarching jeu-d’esprit in collapsing truth into artifice, reality into representation, and authenticity into fabrication. Within this fantastic space, we are faced with different levels of mural make-believe – a series of relativised fictions. But the proximity and distance between the poems and paintings – between these images and texts – becomes just one part of the room’s overarching virtual reality. If guests were implicitly asked to plot the interstices between pictorial and linguistic signification on the one hand, and between truth and fiction on the other, the room also encourages contemplation about the intersection between the two axes: pondering the relative reality of what can be seen and what can be said, we are invited to ponder whether images or texts in the end prove more ‘authentic’.84 With these issues in mind, the room offered one last surprise. Turning to leave the room, viewers were faced with a final vista, in the middle of the south wall, framed in the manner of the pinakes at the centre of the two walls flanking it (Figure 12). But this was no painted view; nor was there any epigram accompanying it. Rather, the exedra’s south wall offered a view into the apparently 83 84

For two brief overviews of the ‘Second Style’ and some syntheses of bibliography, see Ling 1991: 23-51 and Croisille 2005: 47-67. For an excellent introduction to these intersecting ‘interstices’, see Mitchell 1986: esp. 42-46.

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unmistakeable reality of domestic life. This sacral-idyllic landscape, looking out onto the peristyle gardens, was literally accessible to the viewer: to enter it, all he needed to do was to walk through the mural frame and emerge the other side. Even here, however, things were not always as they appeared. For among these columns, shrubs and plants were painted representations of columns, shrubs and plants: however real we might at first have judged it, even the peristyle garden concealed its own art of make-believe (Figure 13).85 Conclusion: Closing the Circle? The theme of virtual reality – the discourse of truth and fiction, set against the dialectics of image and text – returns us to the Magritte painting with which we began. Of course, Pompeian audiences brought to the exedra a particular set of ideological baggage about words and pictures, one quite removed from those of Magritte’s twentieth-century viewers; we have already seen as much in the associated history of epigram (where Magritte’s text responded to the culture of the modern museum label, these poetic texts played upon a different set of epigrammatic traditions). But both Magritte’s painting and this room nevertheless interrogate what it means to translate one medium into the terms of the other; what is more, both surround the act of doing so with still larger questions about the fictions of all representation, both visual and verbal. Despite the proclivity of modern interpreters to fall back on assumed models of ‘illustration’ – whether in the literal sense of supposed ‘illustrated manuscripts’, or in the associated wider assumption that images can be reduced to texts in the first place – the exedra’s juxtaposition of media worked in wholly more complex and subtle ways. The concept of false closure nicely captures the exegetic gymnastics of responding to the room’s mixed media, because nothing here proves quite what it seems. Audiences are invited to keep on re-thinking responses: as we have said, the only way out of the exedra’s representational conceits is to leave the exedra entirely, exiting into the peristyle; still, the referential games very much continue, leading us to rethink our responses to the exedra even after we have left it. Allow me, though, to conclude on a different note. This article has concentrated on the formal properties of the Casa degli Epigrammi exedra – on how its painted decoration might have been seen and read. But under what sorts of social contexts might audiences have viewed this decoration? I have deliberately left this question open until the close of this article since, in the absence of any external evidence, deductions must be derived from the room itself. As we have 85

Very little of these paintings survive: see PPM 3: 547-549, nos. 18-21, with the discussion in Jashemski 1979: 333-334 (with further bibliography). More generally on illusionistic garden paintings, see esp. Carey 2003: 122-133.

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said, the exedra was well lit with natural sunlight thanks to position off the peristyle (with light entering the room from the south); the size of the exedra, moreover, suggests small and intimate gatherings.86 As for the mural decoration, there can be little doubt that the room was designed to flaunt the literary leanings of its patron, and in an environment that recalled the much grander Bildungslandschaft of Roman aristocratic villas.87 That these paintings were inscribed in Greek rather than Latin confirms such high-flying aspirations, as does the room’s simulation of the grand architecture of a pinacotheca. What is more, the active decision to leave this décor unchanged – to renovate the houses’ surrounding rooms, but to leave this room just as it was, even in the later firstcentury AD – suggests a continuity in use over some hundred or so years.88 To my mind, the room can best be understood as a sort of conversational centre-piece. The poems and paintings, and not least the relationship between the two, served as a stimulus for erudite discussion and debate – a forum for flexing intellectual, social and cultural muscle. As such, the room would have been well suited to the sorts of discussions that characterised the Roman cena in particular, where, as Trimalchio puts it (while getting his own wonderfully wrong), ‘it behoves one to know one’s philology at dinner’ (oportet enim inter cenandum philologiam nosse, Petron. 39.3).89 Indeed, the literary aspirations of the room

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Leach 1988: 220 suggests that the position of the room and the “nature of its subject matter are appropriate for a reading room” (cf. eadem 1982: 159 and Bing 1998: 33): the low level of the inscriptions arguably lent themselves to a seated or reclining reader, but there is otherwise no evidence for such speculation. Cf. Strocka 1995: 271: “Es [das Zimmer] wird sich also um ein cubiculum diurnum handeln, das zum privaten Rückzug vorzüglich geeignet war, und zwar nicht nur zum Schlafen, sondern auch zum Aufenthalt bei Tage, zu Lektüre und Gespräch im kleinsten Kreis, aber sicher auch zu intimem Genuß leiblicher Freuden.” Cf. Leach 1988: 221 on the room’s display of a “well educated taste in Greek literature” – arguably all the more conspicuous if, following Moormann 1988: 163164, we identify the female figure at the north end of the west wall as a Muse. These literary pretensions were played out elsewhere in the house: note, for example, the graffito on the south wall of the fauces, which cited the opening words of second book of the Aeneid (CIL 4.4036). On the Bildungslandschaft of the Roman villa, see esp. Mielsch 1987 and 1989 (“Die Villa wird vor allem aufgefaßt als eine Stätte der Bildung, d. h. vor allem der griechischen Literatur und Kunst,” 448). Bergmann 2007: 99 concludes that “the exedra […] was so highly valued that it was left intact.” For further discussion of such artistic-poetic amuse-bouches during the course of the Roman cena, see Squire 2010a: 90-91 and idem 2011: 67-86 (in the context of the Tabulae Iliacae). Bergmann 2007: 82 reaches a related conclusion about the room’s use, on the basis of the third and fourth epigrams: “on a more practical level, the options of bird, beast and fowl speak to the gustatory pleasures of the meal, and nicely balance the consumption of wine invoked by the pendant panel of the nibbling goat.

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echo those of much grander dining installations – one might think of the contemporary sculptural ‘Homer-land’ of the Sperlonga grotto, for example, where a multivalent series of larger than life-size sculptures were installed opposite a floating triclinium, themselves translated into an inscribed, ten-line Latin epigram (probably late third-century in date).90 As for the particular gesture of pairing epigrams with fresco paintings, there is only one parallel from Pompeii – a poem composed on an image of Pero shown breastfeeding her father in room 6 of the Casa di M. Lucretius Fronto (V.4.11).91 But a still closer comparison is to be found in the so-called Casa di Properzio in Assisi, where, in a ‘Second Style’ cryptoporticus, a series of Greek epigrams were inscribed alongside a series of pinax-paintings.92 In these scenarios, as in our exedra, the addition of verse epigrams did not serve as a sort of written ‘blue-print’ for the images, but rather prompted viewers to look more attentively at what they saw – to interrogate the divergent means whereby words and pictures suggest meanings. As such, they encouraged audiences to partake in a process fundamental to epigrammatic composition – to script new epigrammatic responses, trumping the poems at hand.93 There is always another story to be told – even (and indeed especially) when an inscription has been inscribed onto the wall. One final point. If, as I have suggested, the exedra of the Casa degli Epigrammi caters to a culture of intellectual aspiration – where there was social mileage in each consecutive review of combined visual-verbal media – such ambivalence and indeterminacy proved fundamental to the social and cultural efficacy of the room. For the exedra to continue serving as a stimulus for discussion, each attempt to explain it had in some way to be exposed as insufficient or wanting. The exedra, in other words, was conceived with false closure very much in mind: not only as effect, but also as goal.

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Eating, drinking, displaying one’s memory and wit at poems and riddles, all comprised the elements of a successful evening.” I have discussed the scenario in Squire 2007 and 2009: 202-238. See esp. Courtney 1995: 277-278, no. 56, Milnor 2005: 99-102, and Elsner 2007: 155. For further bibliography (and other parallels), see Squire 2009: 208 n. 15. See Squire 2009: 239-293, along with the independent analysis of Prioux 2008: 65121. On the revisions made to the seventh and tenth epigrams inscribed at Assisi, see Squire 2009: 268-269.

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Fig. 1: René Magritte, La Trahison des images (Ceci n'est pas une pipe), 1929.

Fig. 2: Plan of the Casa degli Epigrammi (after Staub Gierow 2005): exedra y occupies the north-east corner of the peristyle.

Fig. 3: View from the south entrance of the exedra of the Casa degli Epigrammi, Pompeii 5.1.18.

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Fig. 4: Reconstruction of the design of the four walls of the exedra (after Strocka 1995).

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Fig .5: Drawing of the Pan and Eros panel from the west wall.

Fig. 6: Drawing of the Dionysus panel from the east wall.

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Fig. 7: Drawing of the dedication-of-nets panel at the west side of the north wall.

Fig. 8: Drawing of the Homer panel at the centre of the north wall.

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Fig. 9: Drawing of the goat panel at the east side of the north wall.

Fig. 10: Reconstruction of part of the east wall.

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Fig. 11: ‘The Wings of Eros’ (AP 15.24): ‘picture-poem’ attributed to Simmias, probably early 3rd c. BC.

Fig. 12: View of the peristyle from the south door of the exedra.

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Fig. 13: Reconstruction of a part of the east wall of the peristyle.

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IV. Reading False Closure Never-Ending Stories: A Perspective on Greek Hymns Ivana Petrovic The Homeric Hymn to Apollo features a captivating representation of a religious festival: Ionians regularly gather on Delos and honor Apollo by organizing musical and boxing competitions. The narrative depicts two perspectives, divine and mortal. On the one hand, the god himself is exceedingly glad at heart when he observes the festivities of the Ionians (146-150), while, on the other, a visitor at Delos is so impressed by the splendor of the magnificent gathering that he might mistake its participants for the gods: φαίη κ’ ἀθανάτους καὶ ἀγήρως ἔμμεναι αἰεὶ ὃς τότ’ ἐπαντιάσει’ ὅτ’ Ἰάονες ἀθρόοι εἶεν· πάντων γάρ κεν ἴδοιτο χάριν, τέρψαιτο δὲ θυμὸν ἄνδρας τ’ εἰσορόων καλλιζώνους τε γυναῖκας νῆάς τ’ ὠκείας ἠδ’ αὐτῶν κτήματα πολλά.

(h. Apoll. 151-155)

A man might think they were the unaging immortals if he came along then when the Ionians are all together: he would take in the beauty of the whole scene, and be delighted at the spectacle of the men and the fair-girt women, the swift ships and the people’s piles of belongings.1

This comparison of the participants of the festival with the gods2 is all the more striking, as it is precisely this hymn that also emphasizes the stark contrast between the gods and mortal men. The hymn depicts the Muses who envisage the humans and the gods in the following way: ὑμνεῦσίν ῥα θεῶν δῶρ’ ἄμβροτα ἠδ’ ἀνθρώπων τλημοσύνας, ὅσ’ ἔχοντες ὑπ’ ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσι ζώουσ’ ἀφραδέες καὶ ἀμήχανοι, οὐδὲ δύνανται εὑρέμεναι θανάτοιό τ’ ἄκος καὶ γήραος ἄλκαρ· 1 2

(h. Apoll. 190-193)

The text of the Homeric Hymns is quoted after Allen et al. 1936; the translations are West’s (2003). Both Clay 2006: 47 and Miller 1985: 58 n. 143 argue that this thought is Pindaric. I hope to demonstrate that it is more general and pertains to all religious celebrations of the Greeks.

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Ivana Petrovic [The Muses] sing of the gods’ divine gifts and of human sufferings – all that they have from the immortal gods and yet live witless and helpless, unable to find a remedy for death or a defense against old age.

The humans are apparently wretched creatures, but they seem to be able to bridge the gap which separates them from the blessed gods during a religious celebration, when they, if only for a moment, seem to find a remedy for death and old age. What made this transcendence possible? Religious celebration offers the means to bridge the discrepancy between gods and mortals and thus offers an elusive opportunity for mortals to escape death and old age. This paper discusses the ways Greek hymns represent the gods, and how, by mimicking the gods through song and dance, the performers of the hymns are – if only briefly – assimilated with the divinities. Hymns, too, mimic the essence of the gods, both in subject matter and form. Greek hymns, like Greek gods, have a beginning, but no end. The form of hymnic narrative aims to capture the ideas about the nature of the divine. On the formal level, the technique of false closure is employed in order to achieve an impression of never-ending stories. By false closure, I understand the effect as defined by Fowler (1989: 97): “false ending, where the text seems to pause or end but the external division has not yet been reached.” I will first outline the reasons why Greek hymns attempt to mimic divine beings and will then go on to discuss the use of false closure in rhapsodic and cult hymns. 1. The Power of Hymns – Enacting and Representing Gods at Festivals There are several important passages illustrating the transformative powers of hymnic performances and of religious festivals in general. In the Laws, Plato discusses the uplifting and rejuvenating effects of song and dance and their role in human education.3 The Athenian in the Laws argues that festivals were invented by the gods in order to console humans: θεοὶ δὲ οἰκτίραντες τὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐπίπονον πεφυκὸς γένος, ἀναπαύλας τε αὐτοῖς τῶν πόνων ἐτάξαντο τὰς τῶν ἑορτῶν ἀμοιβὰς τοῖς θεοῖς, καὶ Μούσας Ἀπόλλωνά τε μουσηγέτην καὶ Διόνυσον συνεορταστὰς ἔδοσαν, ἵν’ ἐπανορθῶνται, τάς τε τροφὰς γενομένας ἐν ταῖς ἑορταῖς μετὰ θεῶν. (Pl. Lg. 653d) The gods, in pity for the human race thus born to misery, have ordained the feasts of thanksgiving as periods of respite from their troubles; and they have granted them as companions in their feasts the Muses and 3

On dance in Plato, see Lonsdale 1993.

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Apollo the master of music, and Dionysus, that they may at least set right again their modes of discipline by associating in their feasts with the gods.

Even those citizens who, owing to old age, are not able to partake in the festive dancing are rejuvenated by merely viewing choral performances: ἆρ’ οὖν οὐχ ἡμῶν οἱ μὲν νέοι αὐτοὶ χορεύειν ἕτοιμοι, τὸ δὲ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων ἡμῶν ἐκείνους αὖ θεωροῦντες διάγειν ἡγούμεθα πρεπόντως, χαίροντες τῇ ἐκείνων παιδιᾷ τε καὶ ἑορτάσει, ἐπειδὴ τὸ παρ’ ἡμῖν ἡμᾶς ἐλαφρὸν ἐκλείπει νῦν, ὃ ποθοῦντες καὶ ἀσπαζόμενοι τίθεμεν οὕτως ἀγῶνας τοῖς δυναμένοις ἡμᾶς ὅτι μάλιστ’ εἰς τὴν νεότητα μνήμῃ ἐπεγείρειν; (Pl. Lg. 657d) Now, while our young men are fitted for actually dancing themselves, we elders regard ourselves as suitably employed in looking on at them, and enjoying their sport and merry-making, now that our former nimbleness is leaving us; and it is our yearning regret for this that causes us to propose such contests for those who can best arouse in us through recollection, the 4 dormant emotions of youth.

Thus, the pleasure and joy of dancing is infectious, as it were, and the χάρις of the spectacle both invigorates the humans and delights the gods. Dancing is part of the religious service to the gods, but it also benefits humans, since it is by imitating the gods during the festivals that humans get closer to the gods.5 This idea is elaborated further in Strabo, who argues that religious festivities have an uplifting quality that allows men to transcend their human state and come nearer to the gods: κοινὸν δὴ τοῦτο καὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων καὶ τῶν βαρβάρων ἐστὶ τὸ τὰς ἱεροποιίας μετὰ ἀνέσεως ἑορταστικῆς ποιεῖσθαι, τὰς μὲν σὺν ἐνθουσιασμῷ τὰς δὲ χωρίς, καὶ τὰς μὲν μετὰ μουσικῆς τὰς δὲ μή, καὶ τὰς μὲν μυστικῶς τὰς δὲ ἐν φανερῷ· καὶ τοῦθ’ ἡ φύσις οὕτως ὑπαγορεύει. ἥ τε γὰρ ἄνεσις τὸν νοῦν ἀπάγει ἀπὸ τῶν ἀνθρωπικῶν ἀσχολημάτων, τὸν δὲ ὄντως νοῦν τρέπει πρὸς τὸ θεῖον· ὅ τε ἐνθουσιασμὸς ἐπίπνευσίν τινα θείαν ἔχειν δοκεῖ καὶ τῷ μαντικῷ γένει πλησιάζειν· ἥ τε κρύψις ἡ μυστικὴ τῶν ἱερῶν σεμνοποιεῖ τὸ θεῖον, μιμουμένη τὴν φύσιν αὐτοῦ φεύγουσαν ἡμῶν τὴν αἴσθησιν· ἥ τε μουσικὴ περί τε ὄρχησιν οὖσα καὶ ῥυθμὸν καὶ μέλος ἡδονῇ τε ἅμα καὶ καλλιτεχνίᾳ πρὸς τὸ θεῖον ἡμᾶς συνάπτει κατὰ τοιαύτην αἰτίαν. εὖ μὲν γὰρ εἴρηται καὶ τοῦτο, τοὺς 4 5

Text: Burnet 1907; translation: Bury 1926. See on this also Furley and Bremer 2001: 14-17. Lonsdale 1995: 39 n. 3 mentions the important point C. Segal made at the conference on the Chorus in Boston in 1992: The dedication of dancing choruses to the gods and sacrifices are parallel acts: the youthful energy (ponos) of the dancers is in a sense sacrificed to the gods.

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Ivana Petrovic ἀνθρώπους τότε μάλιστα μιμεῖσθαι τοὺς θεοὺς ὅταν εὐεργετῶσιν· ἄμεινον δ’ ἂν λέγοι τις, ὅταν εὐδαιμονῶσι· τοιοῦτον δὲ τὸ χαίρειν καὶ τὸ ἑορτάζειν καὶ τὸ φιλοσοφεῖν καὶ μουσικῆς ἅπτεσθαι […]. (Strab. 10.3.9) Now this is common both to Greeks and to the barbarians, to perform their sacred rites in connection with the relaxation of a festival, these rites being performed sometimes with religious frenzy, sometimes without it, sometimes with music, sometimes not; and sometimes in secret, sometimes openly. And it is in accordance with the dictates of nature that this should be so, for, in the first place, the relaxation draws the mind away from human occupations and turns the real mind towards that which is divine, and, secondly, the religious frenzy seems to afford a kind of divine inspiration and to be very like that of the soothsayer, and thirdly, the secrecy with which the sacred rites are concealed induces reverence for the divine, which is to avoid being perceived by our human senses, and fourthly, music, which includes dancing as well as rhythm and melody, at the same time, by the delight it affords and by its artistic beauty, brings us in touch with the divine, and this for the following reason: for although it has been well said that human beings then act most like the gods when they are doing good to others, yet one might better say, when they are happy and such happiness consists of rejoicing, celebrating festivals, 6 pursuing philosophy and engaging in music […].

Strabo points out that the festivities enable humans to assimilate with the gods in several ways: by diverting the mind from human concerns and turning it toward the divine (νοῦν τρέπει πρὸς τὸ θεῖον); by affecting the humans with religious frenzy, creating an impression that they are possessed by divine spirit (ἐπίπνευσίν τινα θείαν ἔχειν δοκεῖ); by augmenting the reverence for the divine being through imitating its nature (σεμνοποιεῖ τὸ θεῖον, μιμουμένη τὴν φύσιν αὐτοῦ) and finally, by affecting the humans with the pleasure and artistic beauty of the music. This pleasure and artistry literally join the humans with the divine (πρὸς τὸ θεῖον ἡμᾶς συνάπτει). The resulting effect is that of imitating the gods (μιμεῖσθαι τοὺς θεοὺς). Music plays a very significant role in this process because the Greeks believed that singing and dancing was a favorite activity of the gods themselves.7 Performing the favorite activity of the gods was just one possible means of imitation. Many aspects of religious celebrations are in one way or another attempts to imitate the gods: communal feasting in a relaxed and cheerful atmosphere is reminiscent of the way early Greek literature depicts the pastimes of the gods; also, ritual practices such as re-enactments of mythic

6 7

Text: Meineke 1969; translation: Jones 1928. On this, see Lonsdale 1993: 48-70.

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episodes (often the first arrival of a god8), which could feature a priest or priestess dressed like a god, are also ways to imitate and thus become closer to these divine beings. Can we detect an attempt to adapt the very form of the hymn to the Greek ideas about the nature of the divine? The corpus of extant Greek hymns is minuscule in comparison with the importance of the genre for everyday life of the Greeks and the richness of its subgenres. Ancient treatises on the hymns mention numerous different types of religious songs, many of which we only know by name. However, even though the scarcity of evidence does not allow formal comparison of individual types of hymns, it is highly significant that there is evidence testifying to the attempt to adapt the text and music of hymns to suit the characters of individual gods. In his essay On the E at Delphi, Plutarch says that the dithyramb is composed to mirror the character of Dionysus and paean that of Apollo: Διόνυσον δὲ καὶ Ζαγρέα καὶ Νυκτέλιον καὶ Ἰσοδαίτην αὐτὸν ὀνομάζουσι καὶ φθοράς τινας καὶ ἀφανισμοὺς εἶτα δ’ ἀναβιώσεις καὶ παλιγγενεσίας οἰκεῖα ταῖς εἰρημέναις μεταβολαῖς αἰνίγματα καὶ μυθεύματα περαίνουσι· καὶ ᾄδουσι τῷ μὲν διθυραμβικὰ μέλη παθῶν μεστὰ καὶ μεταβολῆς πλάνην τινὰ καὶ διαφόρησιν ἐχούσης· ‘μιξοβόαν,’ γὰρ Αἰσχύλος (fr. 355) φησί, ‘πρέπει διθύραμβον ὁμαρτεῖν σύγκωμον Διονύσῳ’, τῷ δὲ παιᾶνα, τεταγμένην καὶ σώφρονα μοῦσαν. (Plut. Mor. 389a-b) They give him the names of Dionysus, Zagreus, Nyctelius and Isodaetes, they construct destructions and disappearances, followed by returns to life and regenerations – riddles and fabulous tales quite in keeping with the aforesaid transformations. To this god they also sing the dithyrambic strains laden with emotion and with a transformation that includes a certain wandering and dispersion. Aeschylus, in fact, says: ‘Fitting it is that the dithyramb With its fitful notes should attend Dionysus in revel rout.’ 9 But to Apollo they sing the paean, music regulated and temperate.

In the Chrestomathia, a treatise on Greek poetry, transmitted only as a summary by Photius, Proclus attests that the stately and dignified nome (νόμος) is appropriate for the character of Apollo, while the wild, exciting dithyramb suits

8 9

Burnett 1985: 5-14. Text: Sieveking 1929; translation: Babbitt 1936, slightly adapted.

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Dionysus.10 Proclus argues that each genre mirrors the character of the god with its tone, wording, rhythm, and musical harmony: Dithyramb is emotional, uses simple vocabulary, its rhythm is swift and its harmony is Phrygian. Nome is dignified and slower, uses double words (διπλασίοις λέξεσι), and is composed in Lydian harmony.11 These passages attest that the Greeks were eager to compose and perform hymns that would mirror the characters of individual gods. I think it can be demonstrated that not only some of its subgenres, but the hymn qua genre attempts to imitate the main characteristic of divine beings. The Greeks pictured their gods as having a beginning, since they are all born, but no end (death), since they are immortal. So, in order to resemble the gods, an ideal hymn would have to be endless. This becomes a narrative technique that mirrors the concepts of the essence of the gods. Apart from formally mimicking the essence of the gods, there are additional reasons why a hymn would attempt to create an illusion of endlessness: since the hymns were supposed to be gifts of gratitude to the gods, and to celebrate the divine beings and their spheres of influence, it would – to put it mildly – be quite rude if they were short and simple. As many legends testify, Greek gods did not easily forgive neglect. A further reason why Greek hymns would want to avoid closure is their Sitz im Leben, their role in cult: they were performed during processions towards the sanctuary of the gods (prosodia) and before the sacrifice, when the procession has reached an altar of the god (parabomia).12 Their goal was to attract the deity to the place of worship and invite it to join the festive gathering. So how were the hymns supposed to end, being, as they were, an invitation for the deity to come and join the ceremony? Rather, they attempted to create an impression of everlasting performance in order to lure the deity and firmly ‘attach’ it to a place. Greek hymns employed several strategies in order to avoid a sense of an ending and create the impression of endlessness, of which repetition and false closure are the most frequent. Some early depictions of hymnic performance testify that endlessness, repetitiveness or at least considerable length of performance were perceived as important characteristics of hymns. What follows is analysis of the formal and thematic closural devices of Greek hymns in which I argue that these very devices are sometimes employed at several stages throughout the hymns, with the aim to create an expectation of closure. As this closure turns out to be false, and instead of ceasing – the hymn continues after all – the impression of repeti10

11 12

Photius, Bibl. 320b12-29. Rutherford 1995 argues that the characteristics Proclus attributes to the nome in this passage are in fact those traditionally attributed to the paean. What interests me here, however, is not so much the question of individual subgenres, but the general tendency to attribute to the hymn the characteristics of the deity it celebrates. See the discussion in Rutherford 1995: 357. Furley and Bremer 2001: 28-32.

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tiveness, duration and endlessness is created. The impact of false closure is that there is, indeed, so much material a poet could cover on a particular god that one could go on forever. 2. False Closure in the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod The earliest mention of a hymn occurs in the Book 1 of the Iliad. After the Greeks have enraged Apollo, they are desperately trying to appease him. Already here, the frequency of hymning is underscored in several ways: οἳ δὲ πανημέριοι μολπῇ θεὸν ἱλάσκοντο καλὸν ἀείδοντες παιήονα κοῦροι Ἀχαιῶν μέλποντες Ἑκάεργον· ὃ δὲ φρένα τέρπετ’ ἀκούων.

(Hom. Il. 1.472-474)

So the whole day long the sons of the Achaeans sought to appease the god with song, singing the beautiful paean, hymning the god who works from 13 afar; and his heart was glad as he heard.

The verb ἱλάσκομαι implies frequent action. Furthermore, the men perform their hymn all day. An important detail of this brief description is the god’s approval – Apollo ‘listened in gladness’. This is the point of the whole action – not only to appease the god, but to gladden him, to provide him joy (τέρψις). These mere three lines encapsulate the most important characteristics of Greek hymns: cult hymns aim at creating a χάρις-filled relationship with the gods, one of reciprocal pleasure and goodwill.14 The worshippers delight the gods by praising them and the gods become well disposed towards worshippers since they receive lovely gifts. Recent scholarship compares the hymns with other gifts to the gods such as animal sacrifice and material dedications in sanctuaries.15 S. Pulleyn notably points out that the main functional difference between a hymn and a prayer is that “the former is a sort of negotiable ἄγαλμα which generates χάρις whereas the latter is not”16 and argues that the hymn is “clearly seen as a gift or offering, an ἄγαλμα for the god” providing numerous persuasive ancient witnesses to this idea.17 However, hymns are not material gifts and leave no visible trace of their existence. Even when a hymn has impressed the worshippers so much that they

13 14 15 16 17

Text: West 1998; translation Murray 2001. Race 1982. Pulleyn 1997: 49; Day 2000: 46-48; Depew 2000; Furley and Bremer 2001: 3; Petrovic 2012a. Pulleyn 1997: 55. Pulleyn 1997: 49. See also Day 2000: 46-48, Depew 2000, and Petrovic 2012a.

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want to leave a permanent trace of the performance by inscribing it,18 the fundamental characteristics of the gift – the melody, musical performance, elaborate choreography, technical virtuosity and comeliness of the performers – are lost when it comes to an end. Therefore it was important for the worshippers both to draw attention to their own performance (significantly for my argument, it was the beginning that was especially emphasized),19 and to attempt to prolong the moment of performance, or at least to create the impression of a lasting performance. This is the reason why the Muses, as a divine counterpart of human performers, are often depicted as perpetual singers in early Greek poetry. In Hesiod’s Theogony, hymning is an activity the gods not only enjoy as audience, but gladly and frequently perform themselves. The poem famously opens with an image of the Muses hymning the Olympian gods (1-21). Hesiod then goes on to describe his initiation by the Muses and how they commanded him to ‘sing of the race of the blessed gods who always are, but always to sing of themselves first and last’: καί μ’ ἐκέλονθ’ ὑμνεῖν μακάρων γένος αἰὲν ἐόντων, 20 σφᾶς δ’ αὐτὰς πρῶτόν τε καὶ ὕστατον αἰὲν ἀείδειν.

(Hes. Theog. 33-34)

And they bade me sing of the race of the blessed gods that are eternally, but ever to sing of themselves both first and last.

Note how αἰὲν ἐόντων neatly corresponds to and mirrors αἰὲν ἀείδειν. The song of the Muses themselves is described as ‘never-ending’ or ‘ever-flowing’ (ἀκάματος ῥέει αὐδή): τύνη, Μουσάων ἀρχώμεθα, ταὶ Διὶ πατρὶ ὑμνεῦσαι τέρπουσι μέγαν νόον ἐντὸς Ὀλύμπου, εἴρουσαι τά τ’ ἐόντα τά τ’ ἐσσόμενα πρό τ’ ἐόντα, φωνῇ ὁμηρεῦσαι, τῶν δ’ ἀκάματος ῥέει αὐδὴ ἐκ στομάτων ἡδεῖα·

(Hes. Theog. 36-40)

Come then, let us begin from the Muses, who by singing for their father Zeus give pleasure to his great mind within Olympus, telling of what is and what will be and what was before, harmonizing in their sound. Their tireless voice flows sweet from their mouths.

18 19

20

For evidence on inscribing texts in sanctuaries, see Herrington 1985: 201-203 and Depew 2000: 76-77. The way Greek hymns praise and display their own performance by using external and internal deixis is the focus of much scholarship. See Furley and Bremer 2001: 52, with bibliography. Text: West 1966; translation: Most 2006.

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In what follows, the voice of the Muses is qualified as ἄμβροτος: […] αἱ δ’ ἄμβροτον ὄσσαν ἱεῖσαι θεῶν γένος αἰδοῖον πρῶτον κλείουσιν ἀοιδῇ ἐξ ἀρχῆς, οὓς Γαῖα καὶ Οὐρανὸς εὐρὺς ἔτικτεν, οἵ τ’ ἐκ τῶν ἐγένοντο, θεοὶ δωτῆρες ἐάων.

(Hes. Theog. 43-46)

[…] Sending forth their deathless voice, they glorify in their song first the venerated race of the gods from the beginning, those to whom Earth and broad Sky gave birth, and those who were born from these, the gods – givers of good things.

How was Hesiod, a mortal man, to match this permanent heavenly chorus?21 His Theogony covers roughly the same ground as the song of the Muses, as he, too, was going to sing of the race of the immortal gods, of what was, is, and will be. In order to match the endlessness that qualifies the song of the Muses, Hesiod employed two narrative strategies: repetition and false closure. In the first 115 lines, he sums up the topic of the Theogony no less than five times22 and presents two false closures – once interrupting himself in line 35, and once with a formulaic ending of a rhapsodic hymn in line 104. It has often been noted that the opening of the Theogony reads like a hymn to the Muses.23 I am interested in the formal devices Hesiod employs in order to match the hymns of the Muses and to create the effect of an ever-flowing, neverceasing song. By announcing the topic of his song so many times, he creates the impression of a flowing and lasting performance. The vehicle of repetition is often used to achieve the same result in cult-hymns as well. Hesiod however also stops his own performance.24 The first stop is abrupt and occurs immediately following the compelling depiction of Hesiod’s initiation by the Muses (22-34), after he has related how the goddesses commanded him to sing of them always first and last: ἀλλὰ τίη μοι ταῦτα περὶ δρῦν ἢ περὶ πέτρην; (Hes. Theog. 35, ‘but what is this to me, about an oak or a rock?’).

21

22 23 24

The flowing character of the song of the Muses is discussed in Nagy 2009: 192-196, who argues that fluidity is one of the main characteristics of the ὕμνος. According to Nagy, the Hesiodic Theogony defines itself as “one single continuous gigantic hymnos that flows perfectly”. In this paper, I differentiate between ὕμνος praising the gods and ὕμνος which bestows κλέος on mortals. By hymn, I refer to the former. Topic announcements in the Theogony: 1-21, 30-34, 36-52, 65-74, 105-115. Clay 2003: 49-52 provides an excellent discussion and evaluation of the scholarship on this matter. See now also Pucci 2007 and Nagy 2009: 192-196. Hamilton 1989: 10-14 discusses the form of the proem and the phenomenon of two ‘new beginnings’ but is mainly interested in thematic, not formal reasons for selfinduced halts in the narrative.

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The origins and the meaning of this puzzling expression have been discussed at length by modern and ancient scholars without a satisfying outcome.25 Whatever its original meaning, the effect must have been something along the lines of ‘I digress’. This self-imposed closure however immediately proves to be false and is followed by a passage discussed above that extols the ever-flowing divine song not once, but twice. It is highly significant that the false closure is sandwiched by two passages in which endlessness and never-ceasing song feature so prominently. By stopping the song in its tracks and then immediately proceeding with it, Hesiod proves that he, too, is capable of continuing his song, perhaps indefinitely.26 The next instance of false closure we find is in line 104. This time, Hesiod uses a typical closing formula of a rhapsodic hymn:27 χαίρετε τέκνα Διός, δότε δ’ ἱμερόεσσαν ἀοιδήν (‘hail, children of Zeus, and give me lovely song’). Instead of finishing his hymn here, Hesiod goes on to invoke the Muses again and announce the topic of his song for the fifth and last time (105-115). As after line 35, here again the poet demonstrates that he is able to emulate the Muses and provide a song that goes on and on. In many ways, the opening of Hesiod’s Theogony resembles the longer Homeric Hymns. They are usually called rhapsodic, because it is often assumed that these hymns were not accompanied by a sacrificial ritual like the choral cult hymns, but were performed as an introduction to the performance of epics at pan-Hellenic competitions.28 The rhapsodic hymns share a common narrative structure.29 They open with a formulaic statement, ‘I sing / I remember’, followed by a name of the god, or by an invocation of the Muse to sing a song about a certain god.30 The myth about 25 26

27 28 29 30

See West 1966: 167-169 and Pucci 2007: 75-76. Nagy 2009: 193 sees line 35 as the “aporetic crisis” which makes explicit the idea of fluidity of the hymn. According to Nagy 2009: 197-198, the Hesiodic Theogony and early epic in general is concerned with the best way to start the performance. Since Nagy sees ὕµνος as ever-flowing, similar to the river, he is comparing this concern with the perfect beginning to the spring of the river. Nagy, however, views ὕμνος as epic performance in general, encompassing stories of the gods (prooimia) and the glory of men (epic). The similarity of this line with the typical ending of a Homeric Hymn has been often noted. See the parallels in West 1966: 189. Norden 1923; Keyssner 1932; Mayer 1933; Fröder 1994. Clay 2006: 7 suggests the symposium as performance context of the longer Homeric Hymns. Nünlist 2004, with further bibliography. Of 33 Homeric Hymns, eleven open with an invocation of the Muses (4, 5, 9, 14, 1720, 31-33). μνήσομαι, ‘I will be mindful of’, is the opening of two (3, 7); ἄρχομ’ ἀείδειν, ‘I begin to sing’, is the opening of eight (2, 11, 13, 16, 22, 25, 26, 28). ‘I (shall) sing of’ is the opening of yet another eight poems (ἀείσομαι: 10, 15, 23, 30; ᾄσομαι: 6; ἀείδω: 12, 18, 27.).

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the god follows. The hymn usually ends with an address to the god in the second person. Apart from the introductory and closing formulae, the longer Homeric Hymns are, with regard to language, style and narrative mode,31 closely related to early Greek epic,32 and were sometimes attributed to Homer in ancient times.33 Perhaps because they want to stress that the main purposes of the hymn – invoking the god(dess), pleasing him/her, inciting him/her to come to the place of worship – have been fulfilled, most rhapsodic hymns start to sing about the god(dess) in the third person and end with a salute to the deity in the second person. Thus, for instance, the Hymn to Demeter opens with the line Δήμητρ’ ἠΰκομον σεμνὴν θεὰν ἄρχομ’ ἀείδειν (‘of Demeter the lovely-haired, the august goddess first I sing’). The hymn features a long narrative in the epic style in the third person, but it ends with a direct address: ἀλλ’ ἄγ’ Ἐλευσῖνος θυοέσσης δῆμον ἔχουσαι καὶ Πάρον ἀμφιρύτην Ἄντρωνά τε πετρήεντα, πότνια ἀγλαόδωρ’ ὡρηφόρε Δηοῖ ἄνασσα αὐτὴ καὶ κούρη περικαλλὴς Περσεφόνεια πρόφρονες ἀντ’ ᾠδῆς βίοτον θυμήρε’ ὀπάζειν. αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ καὶ σεῖο καὶ ἄλλης μνήσομ’ ἀοιδῆς.

(h. Dem. 490-495)

So come, you that preside over the people of fragrant Eleusis, and seagirt Paros, and rocky Antron, Lady, bringer of resplendent gifts in season, mistress Deo, both you and your daughter, beautiful Persephone: be favorable, and grant comfortable livelihood in return for my singing. And I will take heed both for you and for other singing.

The Hymn to Hermes opens with the invocation of the Muse to sing of Hermes, the son of Zeus and Maia, and ends with a salute: καὶ σὺ μὲν οὕτω χαῖρε Διὸς καὶ Μαιάδος υἱέ· αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ καὶ σεῖο καὶ ἄλλης μνήσομ’ ἀοιδῆς. 31

32

33

(h. Herm. 578-579)

Apart from the opening and closing formulae, only the Homeric Hymn to Apollo has sections employing the ‘Du-Stil’. On ‘Du-Stil’ and ‘Er-Stil’, see Norden 1923: 143166. On the narrative style of h. Apoll., see Nünlist 2004. The dating of the Hymns is an important issue for establishing their relationship to early epic. Linguistic characteristics of the long hymns have been analysed and various attempts at the dating were made by Zumbach 1955; Allen et al. 1936: xcvicix; Hoekstra 1969 and Janko 1982. Janko’s chronology is currently the accepted standard; he argues that Aphrodite is the earliest of the major hymns (675 BC), followed by Delian Apollo (660 BC), Demeter (640 BC), Pythian Apollo (585 BC); Hermes: end of the sixth century BC. He dates the Iliad and the Odyssey to 740 and 725 BC, and the Theogony and Works and Days to 675 BC and 660 BC. For instance Thuc. 3.104.4; Antigonus of Carystus 7; Paus. 1.38.3. See Allen et al. 1936: lxiv-lxxxii.

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This typical, two-fold ending of a rhapsodic hymn – a salute to the god followed by an assurance that the end of the hymn is not really the end and that the god shall soon be revisited – consists of a false closure (a prayer or salute) and a real closure which pretends to be false: I will remember you in another song also.34 However, even the real closure can be regarded as false if we pay attention to the performance context of these hymns. In antiquity, these compositions were called prooimia.35 The existence of a prooimion implies that the hymn preceded some other recitation in rhapsode’s repertoire and the term has been interpreted as designating compositions which come before (πρό) the song (οἴμη), or those that are the first οἴμη in a sequence.36 Others argued that prooimion means “the front part of the song”.37 What all interpretations of prooimion have in common is that they associate rhapsodic hymns with the performance of other poetry. This view is supported by internal evidence, since many rhapsodic hymns close with the promise to remember the god and a further song also. There are also references to festivals and recitations in the hymns.38 Thus we can assume that even after the hymn proper has been completed, the performance did not stop, as the rhapsode went on to perform other poetry. Hesiod’s Theogony, which opens like a rhapsodic hymn, with the name of the deity and the announcement of the topic (‘From the Heliconian Muses let us begin to sing’), and contains a typical hymnic closure in line 104, is a good illustration of what a rhapsodic performance probably consisted of: a hymn of some 100 lines which served as a prelude – prooimion – to the epic performance proper. However, in Hesiod, the hymn is at the same time a five-fold summary of the topic of the performance. Also remarkable is the way some Homeric Hymns draw attention to the fact that the song has a beginning: ἄρχομαι ἀείδειν is a frequent opening of a 34

35

36

37 38

Rutherford 1997: 46-50 discusses the reference to poetry and the motif of a favourable reception as common closural devices in Greek lyric, but here we find these devices applied in hexameter hymns as well. Nagy 2009: 232-246 and 312 refers to this line as metabasis, and offers a compelling discussion of this device, which according to him signals a shift in subject (usually from hymnic to epic) and perspective. For a thorough discussion of the term prooimion, see Clay 1997: 494-498, with bibliography. See now also Nagy 2009: 226-246 for a discussion of the relationship of prooimion and hymn. Clay 1997: 495-496. Allen et al. 1936: xcv propose an attractive solution to this problem and liken prooimion to terms such as prélude or ballade, which have lost their proper meaning. Koller 1956: 191 and Nagy 1990: 353. See the list in Allen et al. 1936: xciii.

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rhapsodic hymn. But most hymns avoid any mention of an ending – on the contrary, even at the very end they promise to return to the deity with another song. Just like the divinities they celebrate, these hymns have a proper beginning, but do not really have an end.39 3. False Closure in Greek Cult Hymns In her seminal monograph on closure, B. Herrnstein Smith remarks (1968: 196): “Closure is, of course, a relative matter. A poem may be gently though firmly closed, or slammed shut, locked and bolted.” Greek hymns are never closed, rather their door always remains slightly ajar. A hymn to the god should not really have an ending. How does one dismiss a god who has just been invoked? Greek gods do not just come and go. When they are summoned by humans, they expect to receive something. In the case of cult hymns proper – by which I mean processional and kletic hymns –, the gods are summoned in order to receive a sacrifice. Rhapsodic hymns summon them in order to offer a poetic performance. Neither class of hymns has a strong and final closure or termination point precisely because it is not supposed to end. Hymns last. In the case of cultic hymns, the refrains they often employ make it very difficult to pinpoint an exact breaking point of the song.40 Not many cult hymns proper have been transmitted, but those that have often have a strophic structure. Stanzas tend to end with refrain-like acclamations, be it Io most mighty youth of the Cretan hymn to Zeus or Hie Paian typical for paeans.41 In the epigraphically transmitted Cretan Hymn to Zeus, the line Io most mighty youth is repeated seven times.42 In the epigraphically transmitted Philodamus’ Paean to Dionysus, the following refrain is repeated ten times: Ἰὲ Παιάν, ἴθι σωτήρ εὔφρων τάνδε πόλιν φύλασσ’ εὐαίωνι σὺν ὄλβῳ.

(Philodamus, P. to Dionysus 11-13, etc.)

Ie Paian, come o saviour and kindly keep this city 43 in happy prosperity. 39

40 41 42 43

The contrasting example of epinikia is helpful: as compositions which celebrate victorious humans, these poems often have a very decisive ending which sometimes even addresses the topic of human limitations. See on this Rutherford 1997: 51-53. On closural devices in Greek lyric poetry, see Rutherford 1997. On the role of refrain in paean, see Rutherford 2001a: 18-23 and 69-72. Ἰὼ μέγιστε κοῦρε (line 1 = 11 = 16 = 26 = 31 = 36). Text 1.1 in Furley and Bremer 2001. The refrain of the hymn may be a traditional acclamation, see West 1982: 148. Lines 11-13 = 24-26 = 37-38 = 50-52 = 63-65 = 102-104 = 115-117 = 128-130 = 141143 = 154-156. Text and translation: 2.5 in Furley and Bremer 2001.

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The melody, of which we know almost nothing, could have announced the ending in some way, but looking at the texts of cultic hymns solely, no formal closural devices can be identified.44 It has been argued that the hymns have a thematic closural device in the form of a prayer.45 So for instance the last stanza of the epigraphically transmitted Aristonous’ Paean to Apollo contains a prayer for wealth and salvation: ἀλλ’ ὦ Παρνασσοῦ γυάλων εὐδρόσοισι Κασταλίας να[σ]μοῖς σὸν δέμας ἐξαβρύνων, ἰὴ ἰὲ Παιάν, χαρεὶς ὕμνοις ἡμετέροις, ὄλβον ἐξ ὁσίων διδοὺς ἀεὶ καὶ σῴζων ἐφέποις ἡμᾶς, ὢ ἰὲ Παιάν.

(Aristinous, P. to Apollo 41-48)

So you who beautify your body in the gushing waters of Castalia from the slopes of Mt. Parnassus, I beseech you, o Apollo, receive with grace the hymn we sing, grant us wealth with decency forever, protect us with your 46 presence, o Apollo.

However, even though the transmitted text ends with the prayer, processional hymns such as these were performed on the way to the sanctuary and were probably repeated.47 Such repetition would render any hymnic closure a false closure. On the other hand, we also have cultic hymns which have no prayer at all and those where the prayer is repeated at the end of each stanza, as in the above mentioned Philodamus’ Paean to Dionysus. Finally, there are transmitted cult hymns with a prayer at the beginning.48 It seems that, in the case of hymns, closural rules are meant to be broken.

44

45 46 47 48

Rutherford 1997: 43 points out that uncertainty about performance context hinders discussion of closure in Greek lyric. Performance frame must have provided hints to the audiences on when the poem was going to end. Rutherford 1997: 43 also considers the pauses between formal segments as possible instances of false closure. Rutherford 1997: 44-46. Text and translation: 2.4 in Furley and Bremer 2001. On processional hymns, see Muth 1957: 856-863 and Rutherford 2001a: 105-107 and 329-330; 2001b : 447. Ariphron’s Paean to Hygieia (text 6.3 in Furley and Bremer 2001) is but one such instance.

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4. False Closure in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo If cultic hymns attempt to achieve the impression of durability and endlessness by employing such devices as refrains and repetition, then we can say that false closure devices like Hesiod’s are far more sophisticated, as he offers two different false closures and ever-different versions of the same hymn to the Muses at the beginning of Theogony. However, the true masterpiece of false closure in early Greek poetry would have to be the long Homeric Hymn to Apollo. This hymn narrates the story of the god’s birth on Delos (178 lines) and of the founding of the Delphic oracle (367 lines). Scholarly discussion of this hymn’s structure has been continued unceasingly ever since 1753, when Adrian Heringa remarked in a letter to David Ruhnken that the hymn clearly falls into two parts.49 Current communis opinio tends to observe the hymn as consisting of two parts that were joined together in the archaic age, and the discussion concentrates on the questions of primacy.50 While West and Burkert deem the Pythian part older,51 Janko argues that the Delian part was composed around 660 BC and the Pythian c. 585 BC.52 However, the important detail for my argument is that most scholars posit that the hymn either originated as a unified composition, or was made into a unity already in the Archaic age.53 Both assumptions allow the supposition that the 49 50

51

52 53

Förstel 1979: 21-22. Förstel 1979: 20-83 and Miller 1986: 110-117 provide detailed discussions and overviews of scholarship on the structure of this hymn. I should note here that I am more persuaded by the ‘Unitarian’ argumentation and follow the views of Miller 1986, who argues that the poem’s parts follow the rhetoric of hymnic praise and belong together, and Clay 2006: 17-94, who offers a scene-byscene interpretation and argues that it was one poet who incorporated Delian and Pythian traditions in his hymn which addressed a Panhellenic audience and presented a Panhellenic ideology. She follows the remarks of Nagy 1979: 6-7. Martin 2000 compellingly argues that the hymn is in fact a conflation of two poetic styles. He analyzed the stylistic features of the Delian and Pythian parts of the hymn and concluded that the Pythian part was distinctly Hesiodic in style, whereas the Delian was distinctly Homeric. Rather than to argue that this is the proof that two separate hymns were joined together, Martin posits that the hymn as it stands was performed at the festival of the Delia at Delos in 522 BC, and that it dramatized the myth of the Contest of Homer and Hesiod by juxtaposing two distinct styles and versions of myths. Nagy 2009: 187-246 accepts Martin’s argumentation and expands it. West 1975; Burkert 1979. In a tour de force paper, Burkert 1979 proposed the DelianPythian games, which Polycrates organized at Delos in 522 BC, as the occasion which compelled a Homerid to conflate an older hymn to Pythian Apollo with the new addition praising the Delian shrine. For an excellent discussion of Unitarian views from 1886 until 1979, see Förstel 1979: 40-53. Janko 1982. West 1975 is skeptical regarding the date of unification of the two hymns into one, but in 2003 he proposed Polycrates’ festival, which he dates to 523 BC as the occasion.

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hymn was performed in the state in which we have it – containing in the first part an elaborate story of the god’s birth and institution of the cult at Delos and in the second part the story about the founding of his Delphic oracle. Its unique structure and narrative strategy employs several false closures – in my opinion not, as West (2003: 12) argues, because it was cut and spliced so that “the joints and discontinuities remain plainly visible” but, on the contrary, in order to provide an apt illustration of its main point: that there are many ways to sing of Apollo. As the singer states at the beginning of the hymn, it is in fact exceedingly difficult to praise this deity owing to the enormous quantity of suitable topics. The fundamental question of this hymn is: how can one hymn a god such as Apollo, fit subject as he is in every respect? The problem is first introduced in lines 19-24: πῶς τάρ σ’ ὑμνήσω πάντως εὔυμνον ἐόντα; πάντῃ γάρ τοι, Φοῖβε, νομὸς βεβλήαται ᾠδῆς, ἠμὲν ἀν’ ἤπειρον πορτιτρόφον ἠδ’ ἀνὰ νήσους. πᾶσαι δὲ σκοπιαί τοι ἅδον καὶ πρώονες ἄκροι ὑψηλῶν ὀρέων ποταμοί θ’ ἅλα δὲ προρέοντες, ἀκταί τ’ εἰς ἅλα κεκλιμέναι λιμένες τε θαλάσσης.

(h. Apoll. 19-24)

How shall I hymn you, fit subject as you are in every respect? For in every direction, Phoebus, you have laid down a field for song, both on the heifer-rearing mainland and across the islands. All the peaks find favor with you, and the upper ridges of the high mountains, and the rivers flowing on to the sea, 54 and the headlands that lean toward the main, and the sea harbors.

The crucial line, πῶς τάρ σ’ ὑμνήσω πάντως εὔυμνον ἐόντα, is repeated again at 207 and introduces a new kind of aporia – this time, the problem is not only geographical magnitude of the field one has to cover, but also the multitude of possible topics: πῶς τάρ σ’ ὑμνήσω πάντως εὔυμνον ἐόντα; ἠέ σ’ ἐνὶ μνηστῇσιν ἀείδω καὶ φιλότητι ὅππως μνωόμενος ἔκιες Ἀζαντίδα κούρην Ἴσχυ’ ἅμ’ ἀντιθέῳ Ἐλατιονίδῃ εὐίππῳ; ἢ ἅμα Φόρβαντι Τριοπέῳ γένος, ἢ ἅμ’ Ἐρευθεῖ; ἢ ἅμα Λευκίππῳ καὶ Λευκίπποιο δάμαρτι πεζός, ὁ δ’ ἵπποισιν; οὐ μὴν Τρίοπός γ’ ἐνέλειπεν. ἢ ὡς τὸ πρῶτον χρηστήριον ἀνθρώποισι ζητεύων κατὰ γαῖαν ἔβης ἑκατηβόλ’ Ἄπολλον;

54

Text: Allen et al. 1936; translation: West 2003.

(h. Apoll. 207-215)

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How shall I hymn you, fit subject as you are in every respect? Shall I sing of you as a wooer and lover, of how you went to court the Azantid maid in rivalry with godlike Ischys, Elatos’ cavalier son, or with Phorbas born of Triopas, or with Ereutheus, or with Leucippus and Leucippus’ wife, you on foot and he on chariot – and he did not fall behind Triops? Or of how you first went over the earth, far-shooting Apollo, in search of a place for your oracle for humankind?

There are so many events, so many functions of the god, so many important cult places.55 However, the most difficult task was to sing about the god of music – to offer a song that would match the heavenly chorus, to please the god whose own music delighted the hearts of his fellow Olympians. The poet fashions himself as a figure parallel to the divine singer and offers a song which, in three geographic catalogs, encompasses all Greece,56 a hymn which sings praises to two most important cult centers of the god, depicts him as a formidable and delightful figure, the most important son of Zeus, prophet, musician, even lover. We can identify at least seven parts of the hymn, which fit together to produce a composition that never seems to end. By using the device of false closure no less than six times, the poet creates an impression that one could easily go on singing Apollo forever. Since Heringa’s division of the hymn in 1753, many attempts have been made by various scholars to discern still further divisions of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. The most radical approach was that of Groddeck, who in his 1786 dissertation argued that the hymn was a collection of five autonomous fragments.57 This theory was very influential.58 However, among many other problems, the most significant obstacle of the analytical dissection of this text is that it contains several distinctive endings that are not followed by new beginnings. In other words, those who tried to identify autonomous hymns in the 55

56

57 58

Nagy 2009: 196-197 sees lines 19 and 207 as moments of an aporetic crisis which introduce a shift from local to Panhellenic perspective. According to Nagy, such aporetic questions are motivated by a need for a perfect beginning. In my opinion, these are only two of several beginnings of this hymn. Nagy 1979: 6-7 argues compellingly that the fusing of two traditions about Apollo also implies a fusion of two distinct audiences and thus effectively creating of the Greek world, as the worship of Delian Apollo was fundamental for the identity of the city-states of Aegean Islands and the coast of Asia Minor whereas the worship of Pythian Apollo unites the rest of Greece. Groddeck 1786 divided the hymn thus: 1-13; 14-18; 19-178; 179-206; 207-387; 388546. See the discussion in Förstel 1979: 28-29. See Förstel 1979: 28-41 and 295-296 n. 15 for a systematic overview of radical attempts to divide this hymn into fragments and for excellent criticism of this approach.

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Homeric Hymn to Apollo have failed, since all they could find were several endings, and thus they resorted to speaking about fragments. These closures – which I will argue below are intentional false closures – confused modern critics and have led many to doubt the quality of the composition.59 However, this particular hymn was highly regarded in antiquity60 and was frequently used as a model in the Hellenistic period. Recently, there have been some excellent scholarly attempts to rehabilitate it,61 but without a persuasive explanation of its many closures. In my reading, the hymn represents a unity and attempts to achieve the same effect as the beginning of Hesiod’s Theogony: the impression of a never-ending, flowing, ceaseless song. Having announced its main topic, the endlessness of Apollo’s realm (lines 19-24), the hymn proceeds to praise the whole Greek world as his domain, exemplified in his two most important shrines, and it even attempts to match Apollo and his heavenly chorus by offering a composition which seems to end, but then goes on and on. Rather than identifying separate hymns in the Hymn to Apollo, I shall discuss its six false closures. The first false closure I see in lines 14-18. After the poet has represented the effect of the god’s sudden arrival on the gathered Olympians,62 he addresses Leto directly, in a manner typical for the closure of Homeric Hymns: χαῖρε μάκαιρ’ ὦ Λητοῖ, ἐπεὶ τέκες ἀγλαὰ τέκνα Ἀπόλλωνά τ’ ἄνακτα καὶ Ἄρτεμιν ἰοχέαιραν, τὴν μὲν ἐν Ὀρτυγίῃ, τὸν δὲ κραναῇ ἐνὶ Δήλῳ, κεκλιμένη πρὸς μακρὸν ὄρος καὶ Κύνθιον ὄχθον, ἀγχοτάτω φοίνικος ὑπ’ Ἰνωποῖο ῥεέθροις.

(h. Apoll. 14-18)

I salute you, o blessed Leto, for you bore splendid children, the lord Apollo and Artemis profuse of arrows: her you bore in Ortygia, him in rocky Delos, leaning against the long eminence of Cynthus, hard by the palm-tree, below the streams of Inopos. 59

60

61 62

Analysts’ reactions range from Wilamowitz 1922: 74, according to whom the author of the hymn was a “talentloser delphischer Rhapsode” to Allen et al. 1936: 192, who attribute the final composition to Cynaethus and defend it, but with a caveat: “there is no reason why we should expect or pretend to find perfect or even great art in him”. According to the ancient biography of Homer, Delians were so delighted by the hymn that they had it inscribed on the temple walls. Certamen 319-321: ῥηθέντος δὲ τοῦ ὕμνου οἱ μὲν Ἴωνες πολίτην αὐτὸν κοινὸν ἐποιήσαντο, Δήλιοι δὲ γράψαντες τὰ ἔπη εἰς λεύκωμα ἀνέθηκαν ἐν τῷ τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος ἱερῷ. (‘When the hymn had been recited, the assembled Ionians conferred joint citizenship on him, while the Delians wrote out the lines on the placard and dedicated it in the temple of Artemis;’ text and translation: West 2003.) See n. 50 above. For an interpretation of this scene, see Bakker 2002.

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The formal closural devices employed here are the salute in the form of χαῖρε and the direct address of the divinity. There immediately follow the announcement of the topic and the leitmotif of the hymn in the form of a direct question (line 19): How shall I hymn you, fit subject as you are in every respect? Instead of offering a new beginning, which we would expect if the hymn did in fact consist of several individual smaller pieces, the poet aptly continues the direct address from the previous passage, but he now addresses a different divinity – instead of Leto, to whom he said fare-well, he is now addressing Apollo. At the same time, he playfully demonstrates his ability to offer a continuation of a song. Later on, by the end of the poem, the poet will prove to be the unsurpassed master of singing this very song. After the direct address, he launches into a catalog enumerating different regions, seemingly those under Apollo’s reign (lines 30-44). However, line 45 makes it obvious that the catalog is in fact a list of regions Leto visited when she was pregnant with Apollo.63 Line 45 is at the same time a summary of the catalog and an inversion of its meaning, for the audience was made to believe that the lands were under Apollo’s sway, when, in fact, these are the regions which were denied the honor of being the god’s birthplace. This narrative technique employs surprise and inversion, and it makes the audience aware of the subtle playfulness of the poet both on the formal level and with regard to the subject matter of the narrative. After he has surprised the audience with a closure in lines 14-18, the poet deceives it with a catalog. He goes on to depict Leto’s arrival on Delos and their negotiations. Finally, the island accepts the pregnant goddess, Eileithyia is summoned and the birth itself ensues. After this lengthy narrative, we encounter a second instance of false closure in the hymn, as the poet addresses the newlyborn Apollo: αὐτὸς δ’ ἀργυρότοξε ἄναξ ἑκατηβόλ’ Ἄπολλον, ἄλλοτε μέν τ’ ἐπὶ Κύνθου ἐβήσαο παιπαλόεντος, ἄλλοτε δ’ ἂν νήσους τε καὶ ἀνέρας ἠλάσκαζες. πολλοί τοι νηοί τε καὶ ἄλσεα δενδρήεντα, πᾶσαι δὲ σκοπιαί τε φίλαι καὶ πρώονες ἄκροι ὑψηλῶν ὀρέων, ποταμοί θ’ ἅλα δὲ προρέοντες· ἀλλὰ σὺ Δήλῳ Φοῖβε μάλιστ’ ἐπιτέρπεαι ἦτορ,

(h. Apoll. 140-146)

You yourself, lord Silverbow, far-shooting Apollo, went sometimes on rugged Cynthus, and sometimes you roamed the islands and the world of men. Many are your temples and wooded groves, 63

Miller 1986: 31. Cf. lines 30-31: ὅσσους Κρήτη τ’ ἐντὸς ἔχει καὶ δῆμος Ἀθηνῶν / νῆσός τ’ Αἰγίνη ναυσικλειτή τ’ Εὔβοια […] (‘All whom Crete has within it, and the people of Athens, the island of Aegina and Euboea famed for its shipping […]’); 45: τόσσον ἔπ’ ὠδίνουσα Ἑκηβόλον ἵκετο Λητώ. (‘All that way Leto travelled when pregnant with the Far-shooter.’)

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Ivana Petrovic and all the peaks find favor with you, and the upper ridges of the high mountains, and the rivers flowing on to the sea. But it is in Delos, Phoebus, that your heart most delights.

The closural devices employed here are twofold. On the thematic level, it is the device of ring composition (lines 143-145 mirror 20-24) and the motif of the rejoicing divinity (μάλιστ’ ἐπιτέρπεαι ἦτορ).64 On the formal level, it is the direct address to the deity celebrated. Elsewhere in the Homeric Hymns, direct addresses are limited to the very ends of the poems.65 The next topic of the hymn is a delightful depiction of Delos, its splendid festival and the miraculous performers, the Delian maidens, who know how to thrill the immortals and charm the mortals with their singing. Their repertoire and musical abilities are extolled in lines 156-164. Having sung of the fabled maidens of Delos, the poet offers a third instance of false closure in the lines immediately following: ἀλλ’ ἄγεθ’ ἱλήκοι μὲν Ἀπόλλων Ἀρτέμιδι ξύν, χαίρετε δ’ ὑμεῖς πᾶσαι·

(h. Apoll. 165-166)

But now, may Apollo be favorable, together with Artemis and hail, all you Maidens.

The closural devices in this passage are the direct address, the motif of the rejoicing divinity (ἱλήκοι) and the salute in the form of χαίρετε. Not only does this closure prove to be false, it is also an inversion of the closural topoi of a hymn, since the poet is addressing the maidens directly, not the divinities. The inversion continues in the following lines, since instead of directly addressing the divinity with the promise ‘I will remember you in another song also’, the poet is addressing the Delian maidens and asking them to remember him in their song.66 Instead of promising to spread the fame of the divinity, the poet is promising to remember the maidens and spread their fame in his future songs: χαίρετε δ’ ὑμεῖς πᾶσαι· ἐμεῖο δὲ καὶ μετόπισθε μνήσασθ’, ὁππότε κέν τις ἐπιχθονίων ἀνθρώπων ἐνθάδ’ ἀνείρηται ξεῖνος ταλαπείριος ἐλθών· ‘ὦ κοῦραι, τίς δ’ ὔμμιν ἀνὴρ ἥδιστος ἀοιδῶν 64 65

66

On the pleasure-motif as a thematic closural device in Greek hymns, see Miller 1986: 49-50. Nünlist 2004. Clay 2006: 30 points out that apostrophe in the Homeric Hymns occurs in the final salutation and that, apart from the Hymn to Apollo, only the Hymn to Dionysus offers an exception. Miller 1986: 60-65.

Never Ending Stories: A Perspective on Greek Hymns ἐνθάδε πωλεῖται, καὶ τέῳ τέρπεσθε μάλιστα;' ὑμεῖς δ’ εὖ μάλα πᾶσαι ὑποκρίνασθ’ ἀμφ’ ἡμέων· ‘τυφλὸς ἀνήρ, οἰκεῖ δὲ Χίῳ ἔνι παιπαλοέσσῃ, τοῦ πᾶσαι μετόπισθεν ἀριστεύουσιν ἀοιδαί.’ ἡμεῖς δ’ ὑμέτερον κλέος οἴσομεν ὅσσον ἐπ’ αἶαν ἀνθρώπων στρεφόμεσθα πόλεις εὖ ναιεταώσας· οἱ δ’ ἐπὶ δὴ πείσονται, ἐπεὶ καὶ ἐτήτυμόν ἐστιν.

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(h. Apoll. 166-176)

Think of me in future, if ever some long-suffering stranger comes here and asks: ‘O Maidens, which is your favorite singer who visits here, and whom do you enjoy most?’ Then you must all answer with one voice: ‘It is a blind man, and he lives in rocky Chios, all of his songs remain supreme afterwards.’ And we will carry your reputation wherever we go as we roam the well-ordered cities of men, and they will believe it, because it is true.

Leaving aside many other intricacies of this passage, I only wish to point out that, in addition to presenting himself in a cunning sphragis, the poet uses and inverts the closural elements of Greek rhapsodic hymns. The sphragis and the promise to praise the maidens in his future songs are thus the fourth instance of false closure in this hymn.67 But immediately following is yet another, fifth instance of false closure: αὐτὰρ ἐγὼν οὐ λήξω ἑκηβόλον Ἀπόλλωνα ὑμνέων ἀργυρότοξον ὃν ἠΰκομος τέκε Λητώ.

(h. Apoll. 177-178)

And myself, I shall not cease from hymning the far-shooter Apollo of the silver bow, whom lovely-haired Leto bore.

The closural devices in these lines consist in ring composition, as 177 picks up the motif of remembering from the first line of the hymn (μνήσομαι οὐδὲ λάθωμαι Ἀπόλλωνος ἑκάτοιο), self-referentiality, and a promise to return to the divinity. The promise is instantly fulfilled, as the poet will not cease (οὐ λήξω), but indeed continues to hymn Apollo as we realize that this closure, too, has been a false one. The cluster of no less than four false closures in lines 140-178 creates the impression of an ever-flowing, never-ending song, and in my opinion it is no coincidence that we find such a multitude of false closures precisely in the lines that extol the divine festival and the choral performers at the festival. The poem stages a competition between the rhapsodic hymn and the choral hymn within its very lines. The rhapsode seeks to outdo the maidens, but in the end, instead of 67

On frames and seals as closural elements in Greek lyric, see Rutherford 1997: 46-48. Here we see this device at work in a rhapsodic hymn.

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one winning party, we have a pact (just like in the proem to Hesiod’s Theogony), as the poet promises to spread the glory of the Maidens wherever he goes. The Maidens, like Hesiod’s Muses, have chosen him as his favorite in return.68 The poet now addresses the god himself and depicts the effect of Apollo’s music on the Olympians. After a captivating description of the divine chorus, the sixth instance of false closure occurs: οἱ δ’ ἐπιτέρπονται θυμὸν μέγαν εἰσορόωντες Λητώ τε χρυσοπλόκαμος καὶ μητίετα Ζεὺς υἷα φίλον παίζοντα μετ’ ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσι.

(h. Apoll. 204-206)

Leto of the golden locks and resourceful Zeus are delighted in their great hearts as they watch their dear son sporting among the immortal gods.

The closural device in this passage is the ring composition (these lines mirror the beginning of the hymn, 14-18) and the motif of divine rejoicing (ἐπιτέρπονται). Note again how the false closure immediately follows the depiction of another, divine song. The next part of the hymn is devoted to the founding of the Pythian oracular shrine, and the hymn finally ends thus: καὶ σὺ μὲν οὕτω χαῖρε Διὸς καὶ Λητοῦς υἱέ· αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ καὶ σεῖο καὶ ἄλλης μνήσομ’ ἀοιδῆς.

(h. Apoll. 545-546)

So I salute you, son of Zeus and Leto. And I will take heed both for you and for other singing.

The ancient audiences were so pleased with this composition that the Delians had it inscribed.69 The hymn not only manages to cover the whole Greek world in three catalogs and to unite the Greeks in the worship of the Delian and Pythian gods,70 but it also alludes to several lyric forms,71 and by encompassing both lyric and rhapsodic modes, its poet “proclaims universal mastery of music”.72 The poem proves to be a worthy hymn for the god of music, since it creates the impression of an everlasting, eternal performance by employing a false closure so frequently and aptly. Rather than representing a work of an inferior 68

69 70 71 72

Nagy 2009: 198-208 compares the chorus of the Delian Maidens with the Muses in Theogony 22-34 and Homer’s dramatized encounter with the Maidens to Hesiod’s encounter with the local Muses of Mount Helicon. See above, n. 60. Nagy 1979: 6-11. Clay 2006 argues persuasively that all major Homeric Hymns are consciously Panhellenic. See also Petrovic 2012a. Clay 2006: 30. Clay 2006: 52.

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poet, the Hymn to Apollo demonstrates its composer’s skilful and creative command of hymnic topoi and testifies to his ability to manipulate them in an effective and striking way. Even though modern critics tend to find fault with its structure, the ancient poets, especially in the Hellenistic period, used this hymn as a model.73 Taking into account the sort of games the poet of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo plays with his audience, using the hymnic topoi to create expectations only in order to subvert them, it is no wonder that at least three of Callimachus’ six hymns are heavily influenced by this poem.74 The Hymn to Artemis has two major parts, an Olympian scene in the middle and several false closures, which makes it a compositional mirror image of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. It is not surprising that, just like its Archaic counterpart, this hymn, too, has been castigated by modern critics for decades,75 until Bing and Uhrmeister successfully presented the case defending its compositional and thematic unity in 1994. Callimachus’ Hymns to Apollo and Delos, too, are heavily influenced by the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. However, the most interesting case in terms of closural devices is Callimachus’ refashioning of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo in his own hymn to the same god. In the final part of this paper, I will investigate the way in which Callimachus reacts to the hymnic poetics and especially how he responds to the request to match the hymn to the deity it praises. 5. The Problem of Closure in Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo As a direct reply to both Book 1 of the Iliad (lines 471-473) and to the leitmotif of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (line 19 = 207: πῶς τάρ σ’ ὑμνήσω πάντως εὔυμνον ἐόντα;), Callimachus’ poem contains the following lines: τὸν χορὸν ὡπόλλων, ὅ τι οἱ κατὰ θυμὸν ἀείδει, τιμήσει· δύναται γάρ, ἐπεὶ Διὶ δεξιὸς ἧσται. οὐδ’ ὁ χορὸς τὸν Φοῖβον ἐφ’ ἓν μόνον ἦμαρ ἀείσει, 76 ἔστι γὰρ εὔυμνος· τίς ἂν οὐ ῥέα Φοῖβον ἀείδοι; 73 74

75

76

(Callim. h. Apoll. 28-31)

On the influence of Homeric Hymns on Hellenistic poetry, see Kirichenko 2010 b and Petrovic 2012a. There is ample bibliography on this issue. Bing 1988; Hunter and Fuhrer 2002; Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004: 350-370; Vamvouri Ruffy 2004; Ambühl 2005: 225-233; Ukleja 2005; Petrovic 2007: 114-247; Kirichenko 2010b are just some of the recent discussions of Callimachus’ reception of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. Most notably, again, by Wilamowitz 1962: vol. 2, 58, who thus commented on the hymn’s false closure in line 182: “Hier hätte er aufhören und nur einen kräftigen Schluss machen sollen, aber der Gelehrte hatte noch zu viel Stoff und war in Kallimachos nur zu oft dem Dichter überlegen.” See the overview of critical opinions on the structure of Callimachus Hymn to Artemis in Petrovic 2007: 184-194. Text: Pfeiffer 1953.

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Ivana Petrovic Apollo will honor the chorus which sings according to his heart. He has the power since he sits on the right hand of Zeus. The chorus will not sing of Apollo for one day only, for he is worthy of many hymns well sung. Who would not easily sing of Apollo?

Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo is a pendant of, and a Callimachean reply to, the Homeric composition. The singer of the Homeric Hymn claims that it is very difficult to hymn Apollo because he is well sung (εὔυμνος), whereas Callimachus states that precisely because the god is εὔυμνος, it is easy to sing of him.77 In his poem, Callimachus goes on to cover all the aspects of Apollo mentioned in the Homeric Hymn, plus others, and he manages to compress all of this in merely 104 lines. However, approaching the end of the hymn, Callimachus faces a problem – even though he has promised to sing of the god for more than one day, his composition is in fact quite short. How will he close it satisfactorily? His solution is ingenious: He allows the voice of criticism to resound in his own hymn. The personification of Envy enters the poem and accuses the poet of not singing as much as the sea: ὁ Φθόνος Ἀπόλλωνος ἐπ’ οὔατα λάθριος εἶπεν· ‘οὐκ ἄγαμαι τὸν ἀοιδὸν ὃς οὐδ’ ὅσα πόντος ἀείδει.’

(Callim. h. Apoll. 105-106)

Envy secretly whispered in Apollo’s ears: ‘I do not like the singer who doesn’t even sing as much as the sea.’

The much-debated final passage of the hymn has often been interpreted as a statement of poetics, and numerous related literary texts have been discussed in this context.78 However, the Greek ideas about hymns, especially the notion that the hymn must imitate the nature of the god, has not been considered as a possible explanation. Callimachus is essentially applying this rule to his composition. Envy argues that the god should not accept a hymn that is not even as great as the sea (οὐδ’ ὅσα πόντος). At the beginning of his composition, Callimachus, too, seems to think that a hymn to Apollo should last long (line 30), at least longer than a day. Now, mere 70 or so lines later, Apollo rejects such claims and kicks Envy with his foot: τὸν Φθόνον ὡπόλλων ποδί τ’ ἤλασεν ὧδέ τ’ ἔειπεν· ‘Ἀσσυρίου ποταμοῖο μέγας ῥόος, ἀλλὰ τὰ πολλά λύματα γῆς καὶ πολλὸν ἐφ’ ὕδατι συρφετὸν ἕλκει. 77 78

Williams 1978: 38 discusses the parallelism of theses lines. See Asper 1997: 109-120 for a thorough analysis of the metaphors employed in this passage, and Williams 1978: 90-99 and Cameron 1995: 403-407 for two different interpretations.

Never Ending Stories: A Perspective on Greek Hymns Δηοῖ δ’ οὐκ ἀπὸ παντὸς ὕδωρ φορέουσι μέλισσαι, ἀλλ’ ἥτις καθαρή τε καὶ ἀχράαντος ἀνέρπει πίδακος ἐξ ἱερῆς ὀλίγη λιβὰς ἄκρον ἄωτον.’

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(Callim. h. Apoll. 107-112)

Apollo kicked Envy with his foot and uttered these words: ‘The stream of the Assyrian river is big, but it carries with its water much dirt and garbage. To Demeter the bees do not carry water from just anywhere, but those which are very finest, tiny droplets which drip from the sacred spring, pure and undefiled.’

Why the sudden change of heart regarding the length as a desirable characteristic of a hymn to Apollo? Taking into consideration Greek ideas about hymns and the request to imitate the divine nature, it becomes clear that the characteristic of the god Callimachus chooses to imitate is not immortality, but rather another essential feature of Apollo – purity. This complex passage probably does deal with different types of poetry and may even be viewed as a veiled comment on the various modes of imitation and emulation of previous poets, perhaps even Homer, but it also owes much to the Greek ideas about hymns and their relationship to the divinities they praise. I have argued elsewhere that the reason for stressing purity as an essential criterion is not only Apollo’s general role as the god of purity, but also the local, Cyrenaean, cult of Apollo, inscriptions commemorating it, oracular sacred regulations and the programmata from the great pan-Hellenic sanctuaries. The voice of the god who defends the poet and praises the composition is also an echo of inscriptional dossiers, especially Delphic inscriptions, which claim that the god himself has accepted and approved poetry of Isyllus or Philodamus from Skarpheia.79 Even though he has promised a long hymn and is now closing it after merely 107 lines, Callimachus is defended by the god himself, who allows the poet to finish the hymn that, although not very long, aims to emulate the divinity by being as pure and as fine as it can be. The poetic coda offers the hymn as a gift to the god, but to the god only – critics must leave. So, a closure of the hymn is possible, but it has to be the divinity itself who closes the door.

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Petrovic 2012b.

Reading False Closure in(to) Propertian Elegy Jonathan Wallis difficile est longum subito deponere amorem. difficile est, uerum hoc qualubet efficias. una salus haec est, hoc est tibi peruincendum: hoc facias, siue id non pote siue pote.

(Catull. 76.15-18)

It is difficult suddenly to lay aside a long-time love. It is difficult, but you should do it in whatever way you can. This is your one safety, you must carry this through: you should do this, whether it is possible or impossible. praestiterat iuuenis quidquid mea Musa iubebat, inque suae portu paene salutis erat: reccedit, ut cupidos inter devenit amantes, et, quae condiderat, tela resumpsit Amor.

(Ov. Rem. 609-612)

The young man had delivered on everything that my Muse instructed, and was almost within the port of his safety; he slipped back, as he came among the eager lovers, and Love took up again the weapons he had put away.

There can be no doubt that Propertius 3.24 is an ambitiously closural poem: it is an elegy that utilizes its position at the end of the book to engage actively with representations of ‘ending up’.1 The most overt strategy that Propertius adopts at this point is to conflate a narrative in which he escapes his mistress’ erotic thrall with (and draw upon it as a symbol for) the end of the collection of poetry. And, in objective terms, this makes a fine ending for a book of verse – even an ending, as the poem itself suggests, for three books of verse. Besides the structural unity it establishes,2 the manner of ending in 3.24 offers a perspective from which the preceding body of poetry can be seen to make sense (as, perhaps, representing an errant period of ‘youthful excess’ from which the poet now withdraws in an authorial act of ‘growing up’3); and, in so far as a text’s ending should enable

1

2 3

For convenience, in the discussion below I refer to the final poem(s) of Book 3 simply as 3.24, following the line numbering in Fedeli’s Teubner text. On the issue of the unity of ‘3.24-25’, see Richardson 1977: 409-410, Fedeli 1985: 672-674, Heyworth 2007b: 412. On the structural unity of Propertius, Books 1-3, see esp. Putnam 1980: 108-111 and Barsby 1974: 135-137. Fear 2005.

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one to leave the work behind and move on,4 Propertius adopts precisely this narrative as his closural move, and (I shall argue) suggests to his readers that they do the same. But what of a subjective approach? One of the challenges that arises for the reader out of Propertius’ decision to perform a renuntiatio amoris as his final topos is that the reader must engage inevitably not only with the demands of closure but also with the slipperiness of false closure – since readers of love poetry have learned (and have learned from Propertius himself) to be wary of trusting too quickly in any protestation from a lover that he is giving up love. My intention in this paper, therefore, will be to probe the ending of Propertius, Book 3 – not in terms of the means by which its author seeks to tie his text together (much productive work has been done here already), but mostly from the perspective of a reader of love-poetry: an approach thus alive especially to the literary context in which Propertius’ renuntiatio would have been, and is, received. As we will see, this is a pessimistic poetic scene dominated by Catullus’ archetypally hopeless attempts to drag himself from Lesbia; it’s also a scene later interpreted by an Ovidian poet-lover (perhaps the closest reader of love elegy) who would conclude with cheerful perspicacity that uincit amor every time. Modern readers have generally been united in pointing out that the act of rejecting love is usually complicit in the generation of yet more lovepoetry (“The rejection of love”, for instance, “is part of the discourse of love – it is love”5), and even Propertius’ purported forsaking here of Cynthia as his source of poetic inspiration accords, at a deep level, with an established game of elegiac brinkmanship involving “a degree of suspense as to whether the poet will abandon or betray his calling”.6 Despite this readerly sensitivity, however, modern readings have largely been themselves complicit in perpetuating the author’s point of view at the end of Book 3, affirming the cry that this is an ending! – and so proving insufficiently attentive to the complications that arise from a tradition which would prompt a reader to suspect here false rather than final closure.7 Nevertheless, I do not mean to argue here for an ‘open-ended’ reading of Book 3: at the close of my examination the ending of Book 3 will still stand as an ambitiously closural one, and I will stop far short of claiming any 4 5 6

7

For this function of textual closure, see Lowrie in this volume. Sharrock 1994: 92-93. Wilson 2009: 197. Wilson is referring to a “ludic strategy” that he finds in elegiac programmatic poems which raises “anticipations usually unfulfilled, [and] tensions unresolved”. Such readings are invariably connected to a belief in an objectively distinct poetic voice in Book 4, which has been preceded by (and necessitates) a clear ending and a clean break at the end of Book 3: e.g. Camps 1966: 154, Baker 1969: 335-336, Barsby 1974: 135-137, and Jacobson 1976: 171. But see the resulting awkwardness in, for instance, Cairns 2006: 355-356 over the reappearance of Cynthia at 4.7-8: two fourthbook poems which need then to be confined “to the time-frame of Books 1-3” (356).

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deliberate strategy of authorial deception8 in Propertius’ rejection of Cynthia as the book ends. But by probing this ending with one ear attuned to the interpretive possibilities inherent in hearing some generic false closure in Propertius’ claim to dismiss Cynthia, I will hope to have drawn out broader truths relating the evolving nature of Propertian amor not only in book 3 but also in the ensuing Book 4. Before I turn to my chosen poems, it will be useful to offer a few thoughts on my understanding of the nature of poetic ‘false closure’ and, in particular, on the way that the device operates (or can be seen to operate) in Propertian elegy. To begin with, of course, D. Fowler provides the commonly-cited definition, drawing on Smith’s study into the ways poems end: false closure describes cases “where the text seems to pause or end but the external division has not yet been reached”.9 For present purposes, however, false closure can be seen to work not only within the trajectory of the text itself (whether the ‘text’ is treated simply as an individual poem, or as a collection of poems; or as a book within an epic, or as the epic itself), but also on the management of themes and motifs within the text. As will become clear below, for instance, a love-poet will frequently claim to have ceased taking up love as a theme for his poetry (though not necessarily to have ceased poetry itself), only then to fail in executing that claim – giving rise in the first instance to a case of thematic false closure (this feature is frequently associated with the creation of a false sense of a beginning that attends many poetic recusationes, in which a poet dreams of writing epic poetry, or promises to – only then to recant). A significant issue with reading false closure is that the device can only be positively identified as such after it has passed – it is the continuation of a text or theme beyond the point at which it is supposed to have stopped that renders the proferred closure as, retrospectively, false. Beyond any ‘surprise’ that might go along with being tricked by a text that doesn’t stop when it seemed that it would, the new interpretive challenge arises for the reader in making sense of why the text didn’t stop, and in reading the portion of text that remains in the light of what is now recognizable as a failure to stop.10 Take my text as a case in point – inasmuch as the end of Propertius 3 purports to close down erotic writing, it is open to being exposed (perhaps simplistically) as a false ending when Cynthia reappears in the middle of Book 4.11 On this approach, the retrospective recognition that the poet’s interest in Cynthia didn’t end when he said it had generates considerable pressure to re-evaluate – among much else – the intervening poems 8

9 10 11

But cf. Rutherford 1997: 44 on false closure in Greek lyric poetry: “cases where a cluster of features so placed seems to give a deceptive impression that the song is coming to an end” (my italics). On the connection of deception to instances of false closure, see Kaesser in this volume. Fowler 1989: 97; cf. Smith 1968: 67-69. E.g. Fowler 1989: 98-99 on Catullus 8, a poem I revisit briefly below. E.g. Wilson 2009: 187.

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4.1-6 according to a new set of criteria, since (if we took Propertius at his word in 3.24) they can no longer represent in the same way the poetic departure that we had thought they did – a point to which I return briefly at the end of this paper. So far these points will seem reasonably uncontroversial. But the observation that a moment of false closure will typically be understood only in hindsight brings me to an issue that sits at the heart of my own discussion. One of the reasons that the end of Book 3 tends not to be seen as engaging with the poetics of a false ending is that, at the moment of ending, there is no continuing text: the amatory ending is bound inseparably to the ending of the book – and, it might seem, to the end of the poet’s writing.12 Can such an ending still be regarded as ‘false’? No matter what Propertius’ intention might have been in casting Cynthia out of his verse, my aim here is to investigate the extent that it remains open to a reader (and the extent to which a reader of love-poetry might indeed be likely) still to treat the nature of the claimed ending with a degree of expectation that this will not be an ending at all.13 On precisely this point, it is intriguing to consider the possibility that Book 3 (as we call it) may not have been the only Propertian book to end with the rejection of Cynthia. The question of the unity of the extant ‘Book 2’ is still controversial;14 and, if it is indeed the conflation of two original books, there is no agreement on where the division should be found.15 But one of the scenarios that has been argued is that Book 2 original ended with 2.11 – with a poem that presents a literary epitaph for a rejected Cynthia that, like 3.24, purports to indicate Propertius’ lack of interest in further elegiac writing.16 The significance of such a book-ending for my purposes is clear enough: first of all, it would set up an early Propertian model for a literary closural pattern which draws upon the poet’s supposedly extra-textual loss of interest in his mistress; more significantly, however, it would establish a precedent for a form of false closure at the end of a book – in that the use of amatory closure to mark ending of a such a ‘Book 2’ should subsequently be reversed (or rendered thematically false, in retrospect) by an ‘inceptive’ sequence of poems in an ensuing book (2.12-15) which articulates the opening of a new collection by staging the resumption of the poet’s interest in love.17 Such an ending/beginning would, of course, increase pressure on the credibility of the 12 13 14 15 16 17

The tension arising from this last point is often glossed over in modern scholarship, which tends to read Book 3 safe in the knowledge that there is (or would be) Book 4. Comber 1998: 51 rehearses skeptical questions that a reader might ask upon reaching the ending of Book 3. Goold 1990: 16-18, Fedeli 2005: 21-22, Heyworth 2007a: lxii-lxiv; cf. Butrica 1996: esp. 89-98 and Syndikus 2006: 273 n. 93. See Murgia 2000: 147-191, Lyne 1998; see also Heyworth 2007b: x-xi. See generally Lyne 1998, who argues that the original Book 2 ended with a unified 2.10+11. Lyne 1998: 31.

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erotic closure that Propertius offers now at the end of ‘Book 3’ – despite the lack of any further poetry there and then – following the principle that the love-poet has cried this particular wolf before. But, to leave aside the issue of bookendings for a moment, the broader sequence 2.8-13 both reflects and follows what M. Wyke identifies as “a conventional pattern in setting out the rejection which precedes poetic renewal”:18 the very presence and precedent of such a narrative convention in Propertius’ earlier poetry itself gives just cause for wondering, when the pattern of rejection begins to reappear towards the end of Book 3, whether it too should be followed – at some point, in some manner yet unexplored – by further erotic renewal. Propertius may even be suspected here of manipulating the conventional pattern by deploying it across book-ends in order to ramp up the suspense for his (in)credulous reader; or of manipulating closural expectation itself by implicating his book-ending in a long-running elegiac game that predicates not closure but a refusal to close.19 All the while, of course, it’s just possible that he had done all this already, two books previously. But now – does he mean it, this time? or will the message be one of reinforcement: that he and we are stuck in a loop? Of course, Propertius’ Book 3 is eventually followed by a fourth book, providing at last a continuation of the text that both affects, and is affected by, the ways in which erotic closure is understood in 3.24. However, as I indicated above, I will leave aside a consideration of the effect of (and on) Book 4 until the very end of the paper; for the most part my discussion will concentrate on the possibilities inherent in the way Book 3 ends on its own terms. Whatever else it achieves, in claiming to leave a lover’s mistress behind we will see that 3.24 also rests conspicuously upon a notorious erotic crux. As I hope my opening epigraphs from Catullus and Ovid suggest, Propertius chooses to finish his book by offering a symbolic form of closure that is famously difficult to achieve, and which is ever prone to failing. An Elegiac Ending In order to set up my central discussion of false closure, let me first draw attention to several of the most notable closural features at play in this poem. As I claimed at the outset of this paper, the concluding poem of Book 3 goes to extraordinary lengths to provide Propertius’ elegiac project with the sense of an 18 19

Wyke 1987b: 54.Wyke argues that Book 2 should stand as a unity, containing an internal investigation of the “poetics of renewal” (56). Along these lines, Johnson 1997 reads the figure of Propertius, built up from the course of his poetry, as symbolically “a sort of living recusatio” (179-180, etc.). For Ovid’s use of his own book-ends in the Metamorphoses to toy with the conventional interplay between closural and narrative patterns, see Fowler 1989: 95-97.

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ending: this last third-book poem is also an ostentatiously final poem.20 Here Propertius marshals an array of closural devices which seek not only to cap off Book 3 but also to close down the source of deviant erotic inspiration that the poet had used to kick off his first collection, thereby sealing off Books 1-3 as a self-contained amatory unit from which the now ex-lover/poet has emerged intact and heart-whole. The ways in which 3.24 engages and resolves programmatic material from Book 1 is much discussed in scholarship;21 but, in terms of Book 3 itself, Propertius rounds off the collection’s dominant metaphor of journeying by presenting the triumphant harboring of his poetic ship, its journey safely completed:22 ecce coronatae portum tetigere carinae, traiectae Syrtes, ancora iacta mihi est.

(Prop. 3.24.15-16)

Look, my garlanded ships have reached harbor, the Syrtes have been crossed, my anchor has been cast.

This bold image combines the representation of achieving an emotional tranquility now safe from the amatory storm with a more general statement of attaining literary closure that draws especially on Virgilian precedent. In placing this couplet at the climax of a series of revelations (3.24.9-14) which detail Propertius’ unparalleled achievement in unwriting the programmatic conditions of erotic delinquency that had attended his emergence as a love-poet, Propertius positions the literary movement of Book 3 precisely as a successful progression out of a poetic madness that had begun in Book 1.23 The poet’s claim to have recovered an orthodox common-sense itself reaches a climax in the poem’s central couplet: Mens Bona, si qua dea es, tua me in sacraria dono! exciderant surdo tot mea uota Ioui.

(Prop. 3.24.19-20)

Good Sense, if you are a goddess, I dedicate myself to your sanctuary! So many of my vows have been lost upon a deaf Jove.

20

21 22 23

Significant here, given the importance of Horace’s Odes to Propertius 3, is the way that Odes 3.30 functions both as the closing poem of Odes 3 and as the poem which unifies the three lyric books into one monumentum. See e.g. Richardson 1977: 410, Putnam 1980: 109-110, Fedeli 1985: 682, Debrohun 2003: 131-134. For the significance of journeys in Book 3, see Putnam 1980: 107, and now esp. Clarke 2004. Wyke 1987a: 154; for a powerful reading of the end of Book 3 as a recovery of mainstream values, see Fear 2005.

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In seeking an association with the goddess of clear-thinking Propertius strives to mark out his foregoing poetry as a foolish mistake, in both form and content; the poem’s final image of an aged and haggish Cynthia (3.24.31-38) then reinforces vividly the poet’s forsaking of an erotic aesthetic. In short, the rejection of Cynthia as Book 3 closes is deeply complicit with what must seem the writer’s declared intention to cease writing amatory, Cynthian poetic discourse: in 3.24 we have what fronts up as a very elegiac ending indeed. Of course, the renuntiatio of 3.24 does more than simply claim to narrate any ‘real’ end of an affair between Propertius and Cynthia while simultaneously circumscribing what has been the poet’s largely erotic focus; as a closural device the renuntiatio serves to mark the end of the book(s) emphatically for the poet’s reader.24 On this level, one further and significant feature of the final poem’s closural effect is the way in which Propertius’ escape from Cynthia’s spell offers a suggestive prompt for the reader’s own withdrawal from the act of reading as the collection comes to an end. Addressed ostensibly to Cynthia, the opening lines of this final poem have the doubled effect of undermining the trust that readers might have placed in Propertius’ depictions of his mistress: Falsa est ista tuae, mulier, fiducia formae, olim oculis nimium facta superba meis. noster amor talis tribuit tibi, Cynthia, laudes: uersibus insignem te pudet esse meis. mixtam te uaria laudaui saepe figura, ut, quod non esses, esse putaret amor.

(Prop. 3.24.1-6)

That confidence in your appearance is false, woman, you who were once made proud by my eyes. Our love has granted you such praises: it shames me that you are famous through my verses. The you I often praised was put together from the appearance of various women, such that love thought you were what you were not.

At the level of metapoetry these lines amount to an extraordinary closing declaration of what the reader may have long suspected but been reluctant to accept fully – that the details of Cynthia’s biography are fictive, that Propertius has been making it up, that Cynthia is a deceptive text.25 Such a revelation of authorial manipulation as the poem begins has closural force in itself, a “deflationary turn” that lays bare the poetic system and reminds the reader of its artificiality;26 but 24 25

26

Cf. the similar closural functions of Horace Odes 3.26 and Tibullus 1.9. See here Sharrock 2000: 264-265 on the delicate balance elegy seeks to maintain between inviting its readers to suspend their disbelief and yet appreciate the text’s artificiality. One closural move in 3.24 is to upset this balance. Fowler 2000: 11. On the laying bare in this poem of the author’s manipulative tools, see also Debrohun 2003: 131-134.

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this closural effect is furthered, in the second half of the poem, with the poignant presentation of the poet-lover as a victim of such deception himself. Propertius regularly adopts different subject positions in his poetry, a move that allows him, as author, to interrogate his own text from a variety of perspectives.27 In an excellent discussion highly pertinent to the present poem, H. Valladares has written of the identification (in 1.3) of the Propertian lover not only as protagonist within the drama of the poetry but also as an observer – resembling the external reader – “who has become entangled in the emotional dynamics of viewing a work of art, Cynthia”.28 Just so, as creative poet, Propertius tells us here that ‘Cynthia’ is a fiction; but also, as voyeuristic lover, he confesses that he too has been a victim of trusting in a treacherous Cynthia, thereby taking up a position analogous to that of susceptible readers of his poetry – to some extent, we have all spent the past three books looking at Cynthia.29 But in 3.24 Propertius does not so much replicate his readers’ vulnerability as offer a closural role-model of readerly self-empowerment. In the second half of the poem, Propertius draws attention to his past vulnerability so that he can emphasize, now, his rejection of that role – for this is the poem where Propertius finally puts a stop to his own self-deception: nil moueor lacrimis: ista sum captus ab arte; semper ab insidiis, Cynthia, flere soles. flebo ego discedens, sed fletum iniuria uincit: tu bene conueniens non sinis ire iugum.

(Prop. 3.24.25-28)

I am not moved at all by your tears; I have been deceived by that trick of yours; always as a trap are you accustomed to weep, Cynthia. I myself shall weep as I leave, but the injury surpasses the weeping: though wellmatched, you do not allow the yoke to move forward.

27

28 29

In the current book, this is already conspicuous in 3.6, a poem that examines the eroto-literary ideal of trust through having the Propertian lover hedge between reporting, and listening to, an elegiac tale about his mistress. The strategy of ‘subject displacement’ is particularly prominent in Book 4: see here Miller 2004: 184-209. Valladares 2005: 228. The connection of pleasure, control, and vulnerability with the act of looking (foregrounded here with oculis meis, 3.24.2; cf. suis ocellis, 1.1.1) is fundamental to Propertian erotics – see e.g. 2.22a.1-12. Heyworth’s 2007 OCT edition of Propertius emends oculis to elegis, on the grounds that Cynthia’s forma in this poem is better regarded as written rather than seen: see Heyworth 2007b: 409. Yet a connection between ‘beauty’ and ‘vision’ is exceedingly straightforward, and the emphasis on writing to which Heyworth draws attention stands easily on its own terms. Moreover, there is no difficulty in (and much to be gained by) retaining a poem that describes written praise of an observed appearance.

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In lines underpinned by the earnest resolve of Catullus to free himself from Lesbia – the Roman archetypes of love-gone-wrong (I return to them in a moment) – Propertius’ metapoetic recognition here of his poetry’s ‘real’ nature is linked explicitly with the end of poetic discourse. Propertius connects imagery of stoppage and departure (non sinis ire iugum, 28; ego discedens, 27) with his newfound awareness that he has been deceived (ista sum captus ab arte, 25) and his consequent resistance to Cynthia’s tricks (nil moueor lacrimis, 25). And, in doing so, Propertius provides his fellow Cynthian voyeurs with the most apt parallel for the end of the work being at hand: the opportunity through his own example to see Cynthia for the artifice it is, and so to extract themselves at the end of the book from the illusory world of literature by recovering their own real-world sense of mens bona.30 Catullan Background The Catullan backdrop against which this Propertian renuntiatio takes place serves, without doubt, to authenticate the Augustan poet’s apparent determination to leave love behind in both an amatory and a literary context. For the Roman elegists, the desperate struggle to free oneself from hopeless love is primarily and inevitably Catullus’ struggle, and any elegiac engagement with the seeming impasse of amor and odium will inescapably draw energy from the older poet’s writing.31 Yet, at the same time, precisely the context of this Catullan impasse serves also to call into question the very possibility of achieving the sort of closure that Propertius claims so bitterly to have attained in 3.24. For instance, prefiguring the kind of self-awareness of one’s own folly that Propertius declares in Book 3, Catullus had written: Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire, et quod uides perisse perditum ducas.

(Catull. 8.1-2)

Wretched Catullus, you should stop playing the fool, and what you see is lost, count as lost.

There follows a poem in which Catullus calls on himself repeatedly to cease his obsession with Lesbia and to stand firm (perfer and obdura at 8.11). But, of course, rather than establishing a precedent for erotic closure, this poem has become regarded as a celebrated example of false closure: the failure of the 30 31

In closural terms this brings to mind Fowler’s “recall to reality” at Fowler 2000: 25. Sharrock 1996: 152 offers a focused reflection on reading as “delusion”. I borrow this formulation from S. Hinds, who has discussed the primacy of Catullus for the later Roman love poets: Hinds 1998: 26-29.

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poem to come to an end when seemingly it should articulates the actual inability of Catullus to put an end to his obsessive love for his mistress.32 For successive Roman love poets and – importantly – their readers, the significance of this poem and its brethren lies in creating a poetic program based around futile attempts to leave love behind.33 One of Catullus’ most potent contributions to Roman literary love was, in other words, to become the symbol for a type of love from which one is unable to tear oneself away.34 Not only does Propertius’ claim in 3.24 to have closed down successfully his involvement in erotic affairs sit at odds with a tradition dominated by Catullan false closure, but Book 3’s final elegy can be shown, in turn, to pivot about a false ending all of its own which calls further into question the credibility that a Propertian reader might grant the poet’s surface claim now to be love-free. As we’ve seen, in 3.24 Propertius draws (his own) attention to the creative fiction inherent in Cynthia and Cynthian poetry, and recounts the successful measure he has taken to cure himself from the madness of love; in the poem’s second half he curses Cynthia herself with the onset of old age. But sitting at the point between these two sections (and literally at the poem’s centre) Propertius symbolically dedicates himself to the sanctuary of Mens Bona: Mens Bona, si qua dea es, tua me in sacraria dono! exciderant surdo tot mea uota Ioui.

(Prop. 3.24.19-20)

Good Sense, if you are a goddess, I dedicate myself to your sanctuary: so many of my vows have been lost upon a deaf Jove.

If Propertius is truly possessed of his freedom from the grip of Amor as he claims, then this ‘triumphant climax’35 would provide an excellent place to stop. Mens Bona, and the mainstream common sense with which she is associated, represents the antithesis of an irrational elegiac lifestyle. Just as Ovid would choose to depict his Mens Bona symbolically as tightly bound into submission when kicking off his amatory career at the start of the Amores (Mens Bona ducetur manibus post terga retortis, Am. 1.2.31), so these crucial steps into the shrine of Mens in 3.24 provide Propertian elegy with a strongly closural gesture of mainstream redemption.36 The fine opportunity for an ending that this couplet provides has, in fact, led several editors to divide the elegy in two at this point. 32 33

34 35 36

Fowler 1989: 98-99. E.g. Catull. 11, 72, 75, and esp. 76 – a poem in which Catullus explicitly questions the possibility of carrying out even what is now cited as his only course of action (hoc facias, siue id non pote siue pote, 76.16) Fitzgerald 1995: 114. Richardson 1977: 410. For a reading of the end of Book 3 as a recuperation of mainstream Roman values, see Fear 2005.

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But the fact that the text continues past this point (whether as the same poem or as one further poem) has the effect of complicating any clear sense of elegiac stoppage that Mens Bona provides – especially as the final lines of the return obsessively to, of all people, Cynthia. Of course, this move makes sense for a Propertius desperate to portray effectively the death of his desire; in this sense the image of an old and unattractive anus is mustered to reinforce the message of Mens Bona, the poet being now released to imagine and realize his mistress in this abhorrent guise. But, even so, rather than demonstrating his claim to have moved on, the closing vituperation of a white-haired and wrinkly Cynthia has Propertius end the book still doing what he has stated at the poem’s beginning that he used to do, and what he professes no longer to do: indulging in a neurotic manipulation of his mistress’ uaria figura (cf. 3.24.5). Approached in this way, a reader might well recognize, as M. Wilson puts it, a kind of failed ending that perpetuates a core erotic aesthetic even in claiming to write it off: “while appearing to be a final rejection of Cynthia, [the final poems] assert paradoxically a failure to abandon Cynthia as a theme dominating the poet’s work. [...] The book structure articulates the impossibility of the poet’s attempts to disavow his elegiac roots”.37 At the very least, and regardless of any imputed authorial ‘intention’, the bitter unveiling of a decrepit Cynthia as a symbol for the end of love/poetry indicates, by its continuing presence, that female forma (3.24.1) still dominates the poet’s thoughts and sense of inspiration. Ovidian Reflection While Catullus often appears in later poetry as the progenitor of an erotic poetics, Ovid presents himself explicitly as the inheritor of an amatory tradition; that is, as a writer of, but importantly also as a reader of, Latin love poetry. At this level, Ovid’s Amores front up as more than sophisticated love poetry in their own right: they are also a self-conscious re-interpretation of foregoing lovepoetry – of the poetry of Catullus and Propertius in particular.38 In the present context, one of the significant features of Ovidian erotic verse is his (mostly) upbeat acceptance of love’s endlessness; in this Ovid does not so much contradict his predecessors’ often bitter struggles with the authority of amor as offer own submission to amor as performance of a truth that he regards as underpinning the usual fruitlessness of their struggles – and so now defining his own. The Catullan inability to escape erotic obsession that we have just set up as a backdrop for Propertius 3.24 is also targeted by Ovid in Book 3 of his Amores. 37

38

Wilson 2009: 186. I feel that Wilson’s broader argument, i.e. that Propertian elegy continually rejects thematic expansion and generic reinvention, is overstated; but his observation on this point is most apt. See e.g. Cairns 1979: 137-138.

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In 3.11a, Ovid calls upon the apparent strength of Catullus’ resolve in c. 8 to bolster his own courage in rejecting his mistress (perfer et obdura! dolor hic tibi proderit olim – ‘persist and endure! this pain will benefit you some day’, 3.11a.7);39 in 3.11b, Ovid then plays up the generic pointlessness of this quest by having resurgent, triumphant love open the ensuing poem. In doing so, Ovid has a dominant amor not only bringing the unwilling poet to heel but boldly resolving a famous Catullan dilemma at the same time:40 luctantur pectusque leue in contraria tendunt hac amor hac odium, sed, puto, uincit amor.

(Ov. Am. 3.11b.33-34)

Love on this side, and hate on the other, wrestle and pull my fickle heart in opposing directions; but love, I think, is the winner.

Thus, in 3.11a Ovid begins properly by acknowledging Catullus’ Roman preeminence in the formal topos of erotic renuntiatio; but by pinning the second (half of the) poem to Catullus, too, Ovid makes explicit to Catullan poetics what had only been implied in Catullus 8, and is in fact an unstated truth of Catullus’ poetry more broadly – that in a poet’s struggles with amor, it’s always amor that will come out on top. In doing so, Ovid creates his own instance of false closure in 3.11a, when he claims at the end to have dismissed his mistress and triumphed over love: iam mea uotiua puppis redimita corona lenta tumescentes aequoris audit aquas. desine blanditias et uerba, potentia quondam, perdere – non ego sum stultus, ut ante fui!

(Ov. Am. 3.11a.29-32)

My vessel is already decked with a votive garland, and listens unperturbed to the swelling waters of the ocean. Stop wasting your caresses and your words that once had power – I am not the fool I was before!

As it does for Propertius in 3.24 (I come back to this connection), here Ovid’s garlanded ship seems to symbolize the poet’s successfully completed journey (though, in addition to the sense of an ending implied by the safety of the harbor, Ovid’s deployment of this imagery also includes the hint of a new beginning elsewhere through the inceptive participle tumescentes, suggestive of a new poetic project on the swelling seas of epic literature). Beyond this, familiar 39

40

See Perkins 2002: 119-120. Perkins views the allusion to Catullus as revealing a “lack of determination” (120) on the part of the Ovidian lover, whereas I read the allusive matrix as marking a determination that inevitably fails. Cf. Catull. 85; Hinds 1998: 29.

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closural devices are called into play – the call to stop (desine, 31; cf. desinas ineptire, Catull. 8.1; non sinis ire iugum, Prop. 3.24.28) and the claim to be aware of having been played for a fool in the past (non ego sum stultus, 32; cf. desinas ineptire, Catull. 8.1; ista sum captus ab arte, Prop. 3.24.25). But, as we have seen, all this amounts to a false ending, in allusive fashion: Ovid both reflects and validates an erotic tradition in which the claim to clear-headedness proves to be yet more delusion. As he too resigns himself to (and so performs) the ever-renewed dominion of Amor in 3.11, Ovid annotates an ‘actual’ moment of erotic clarity when he acknowledges (in common with love-poets before him) that even he cannot rely upon the sentiment of his own prayers, whether they lead him to desire separation from his beloved, or indeed to return to her: sic ego nec sine te ne tecum uiuere possum et uideor uoti nescius esse mei.

(Ov. Am. 3.11b.39-40)

So it is that I can neither live without you nor with you, and I seem not to know my own wishes.

Ovid offers here an allusive Catullan commentary41 on the preceding poem that positions his former steadfastness as a misunderstood (and misleading) determination to leave love behind. But, in line with his broader sense of elegiac poetics, Ovid appropriates and then transforms a tortured Catullan confusion into a state of productive ignorance which proves integral to the continuation of elegiac writing. In drawing out a closural context for Roman erotic poetry, it’s significant that Ovid never seeks to ‘close down’ amatory inspiration in the way that Propertius attempts in Book 3 by claiming to see Cynthia for what she really is. The threat that such a position poses for elegy is acknowledged (and sidestepped) by Ovid in his penultimate love-poem when he requests that his mistress not reveal her true nature to him – allowing instead the Ovidian amator to embrace a ‘foolish credulity’ (stulta credulitate, Am. 3.14.30; cf. the ‘false’ non ego sum stultus, Am. 3.11a.27) that permits his love to continue in pain-free perpetuity. In keeping with the lesson that love doesn’t end and cannot be stopped, Ovid finally offers a farewell to his role as a writer of love-poetry more in the manner of a Horatian sphragis than a Propertian renuntiatio, claiming explicitly that his opus (that suggestively erotic word) will not cease but will in fact carry on beyond the poet’s own death (post mea mansurum fata superstes opus!, Am. 3.15.20).

41

Ovid’s psychological uncertainty in 3.11 rests on Catullus’ emblematic confusion as expressed succinctly in c. 85 (already the target of an allusion at the beginning of 3.11b). Here the Ovidian uideor nescius (Am. 3.11b.40) in part establishes the later poet self-consciously as ‘being seen’ to re-enact the Catullan nescio (c. 85.2).

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Ovid’s handling in a renuntiatio of the particular nautical imagery already used by Propertius in 3.24 is clearly significant too for my purposes in reading the staged ‘end’ of the Propertian amatory corpus. Of course, the closural metaphor of a poetic ship reaching its destination is not a Propertian invention. For the Augustan poets it is associated especially with Virgil in the Georgics, as that poet brings his Book 2 to a close, and foreshadows the coming end of the project in Book 4;42 and, indeed, when Propertius employs the metaphor at the close of his Book 3, he quotes directly from Virgil in Georgics 1 – though, significantly, from a passage that is neither metaphorical nor actually closural.43 But, whereas in Virgil the ship’s destination is associated directly with the end of a poetry-book, the love-poets – as we’ve seen – conflate this more general literary motif with the sense of attaining harbor as symbol for release from erotic suffering (of course, itself a closural motif). This is a move which reinforces once more the mutual dependency of love and poetry for the elegists (the end of the affair is the end of the poetry, and vice versa); but it’s also what ties Ovid’s nautical metaphor in 3.11 especially to Propertius, over and above (while also in addition to) their common ancestor in Virgil. But what does Ovid’s reference to the safe harboring of his poetic ship offer to a reading of Propertius? Taken in thematic isolation, Ovid’s decision to use ‘Propertian’ imagery to validate his own claim to be now immune to love’s miseries must reinforce the closural value of the garlanded ship in Propertius 3.24. In this context, Amores 3.11a operates as one of several poems within Amores 3 that allude to Ovid’s intention soon to switch genres and, thus, to a coming end for love(-poetry).44 Such a reading of this allusion has considerable potency: I have already noted above that Ovid’s particular use of the harboring metaphor already reveals a susceptibility to movement towards a higher genre on a broader poetic sea – and it’s in this context that Ovid’s elegiac vessel, via (and in complement to) the mediation of amatory closure in Propertius 3.24, also resonates closely with the Virgilian hexametric ship45 (it’s significant, too, that in the Georgics, Virgil’s literary vessel and the waters through which it travels are conspicuously identified with epic writing;46 and that the poet’s ship is prominent when Virgil flirts with his own generic ascent and nods to a future epic poem at Georgics 2.39-48). But, of course, it turns out that there is more lovepoetry to be written first; and the fact that Ovid follows this ostensibly ‘final’ poem with an elegy in which love reclaims its position of authority over the poet also positions his symbolic ship precisely at the point of what becomes false 42 43 44 45 46

Virg. Georg. 2.541-542 and 4.116-117. See Harrison 2007b (esp. 5-9). Virg. Georg. 1.303: portum tetigere carinae. Ovid also engages directly with this language in Am. 2.9, discussed below. E.g. Am. 3.1, 9, and 13; see also Harrison 2007a: 80-82. Cf. Ovid’s iam mea uotiua puppis redimita corona (Am. 3.11a.27) with Virgil’s puppibus et laeti nautae imposuere coronas (Georg. 1.304). Harrison 2007b.

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closure – that point which purports to have effected thematic shutdown, only to be shown up by the continuing erotic text not to have done so. As such, this broader context now suggests an Ovidian reading of attempted elegiac/amatory closure in which the symbol of poet’s ship anchored safely in port is treated as being ultimately misleading for both the poet – and especially for the poet’s reader. The groundwork for such a reading has in fact been prepared by Ovid in an earlier poem which also examines the power of love to reclaim a resisting lover, and one which is the subject of close reference in 3.11.47 In Amores 2.9, Ovid sends up the closural value of steering one’s literary ship into port by having his ship blown back out to sea even as it reaches the safety of land; in doing so, Ovid tackles directly the symbolic nature of the closure that Propertius offers to his own readers at the end of Book 3:48 ecce coronatae portum tetigere carinae, traiectae Syrtes, ancora iacta mihi est.

(Prop. 3.24.15-16)

Look, my garlanded ships have reached harbor, the Syrtes have been crossed, my anchor has been cast. ut subitus, prope iam prensa tellure, carinam tangentem portus uentus in alta rapit, sic me saepe refert incerta Cupidinis aura, notaque purpureus tela resumit Amor.

(Ov. Am. 2.9.31-34)

As suddenly, when land is almost already gained, the wind sweeps the ship out to the deep even as it reaches the harbor, so the shifting breeze of Cupid carries me away again, and bright Love takes up again its wellknown weapons.

Within the didactic context of his own poem, Ovid adapts the familiar nautical metaphor to fit a simile that has the purpose of explaining his lover’s poor trackrecord in giving up love. But in a wider allusive sense Ovid makes a conspicuous target of Propertius at the very moment (tangentem) that Propertius signals his climactic erotic emancipation – perhaps, then as now, the most celebrated example of elegiac renuntiatio amoris. In doing so, at an intertextual level Ovid does more than merely subvert the older poet’s symbol: he dramatizes explicitly the vulnerability that this outwardly closural metaphor has to being read as false 47 48

See generally Cairns 1979. Both these passages derive their formulation ultimately from Virg. Georg. 1.303. But does Ovid here allude to Virgil or Propertius? For a reader of love poetry, the context of the renuntiatio means that the Propertian passage must be the first port of call.

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closure, regardless even of what its author intended: as Ovid demonstrates rather effortlessly, a ship will quite easily return to sea – with or without its captain’s hand on the tiller. The interpretive matrix surrounding this particular metaphor can be pressed just a little harder. For his part, in 2.9 Ovid pits an ancient ship’s notorious vulnerability to weather against its metaphorical value when pictured as riding ‘safely’ in harbor after a successful crossing of the open sea. But Propertius has already dwelt at length in Book 3 on the lack of safety that even the harbor affords the poet-sailor, especially one who is figured as wanting to leave behind the grip of his penates, and who finds the confines of his homeland too constricting: ancora te teneat, quem non tenuere penates? quid meritum dicas, cui sua terra parum est? uentorum est, quodcumque paras: haud ulla carina consenuit, fallit portus et ipse fidem.

(Prop. 3.7.33-36)

Should an anchor hold you, whom the penates could not hold? What would you say is fitting for him who regards his own land as too small? Whatever you construct belongs to the winds: no ship has ever grown old, and the harbor itself cheats the faith you place in it.

Read as an extensive generic allegory,49 the cautionary tale in 3.7 of the drowned merchant Paetus whose boat slipped its mooring ropes offers a warning to a poet-figure who, much like Propertius himself at the end of the book, desires to abandon the value system that has sustained him so far. Significantly, these lines from early in the book literally bring into question the ability of anchors to hold, and harbors to offer shelter – two of the symbols that Propertius then calls upon prominently in signaling his stoppage and security as the book ends; in other words, within the thematic arc of Book 3 Propertius transforms an early narrative of slippage and vulnerability in 3.7 into a metaphor of resistance and security in 3.24. A positive reading here will treat this transformation as consistent with Propertius’ overall rewriting of his status as victim to whims and wounds of Amor, and of his hard-won authority now to close down elegiac/amatory writing: the point becomes precisely that Propertius’ anchor will hold (ancora iacta mihi est, 3.24.16) where Paetus’ anchor failed. Yet, to the extent that 3.7 offers metaliterary comment on poetic composition, Propertius asserts there that whatever a poet has in mind is ultimately at the mercy of the winds (uentorum est, quodcumque paras, 3.7.35). Beyond this, Propertius’ casting of his metaphorical anchor as Book 3 closes takes places, for his reader, in a generic context informed especially by Catullan recidivism, and treated later with focused 49

See esp. Houghton 2007.

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Ovidian skepticism. In the end the closural value of Propertius’ metaphor at 3.24.15-16 equates to the amount of faith that the reader places in the strength of the poet’s anchor chain. A Romantic Ending My aim in this paper has been to examine ways in which a reader of love poetry might react to Propertius’ ending claim to have finished with love at the end of Book 3. In the first place, we have seen that, in closural terms, Propertius positions his awareness of his own erotic self-deception as a hortatory role-model for his readers in pulling themselves out of a literary spell as the book comes to an end. But, more significantly, at a programmatic level Propertius’ use of a renuntiatio amoris at the end of his book also asks his readers to accept what should amount essentially to the poet’s own literary self-annihilation. In 3.24 Propertius both rejects Cynthia and, in seeking the sanctuary of Mens Bona, rejects amor as well (in any case Cynthia and amor are inseparable, or should be); we have known since the Monobiblos that the end of love would/must be the end of poetry, and since the book too ends right there, so, seemingly, it proves. Yet there is much at play here. The language of erotic closure is inescapably also the language of erotic false closure:50 as Propertius claims closure by cursing Cynthia with encroaching old age, the reader – primed especially by Catullan precedent – will recognize a poet failing to abandon amor even as he professes (and in his professing) to do so; especially so, since teasing the reader with an apparent intent to abandon love/elegy is a game the Propertian narrator has played many times before. Then again, the twinning of the rejection of love with the ending of the book adds new urgency to the game being played with the reader’s credulity – indeed (and to reverse the direction of a point just made) if the motifs of false closure can in the end also symbolize actual closure, then, in the absence of more poetry, just possibly this time Propertius means it. The extent to which this game of will he or won’t he remains live at the end of Book 3 is underlined immediately when the poetry does subsequently resume in a fourth book. In 4.1 Propertius immediately takes up what seems to be a new aetiological program (pace Ovid, below) and as such appears to uphold the erotic closure stated at the end of Book 3; but even before this initial poem reaches its midpoint the poet’s new ambition is opposed directly by the sudden intervention of the astrologer Horos, who seeks to direct Propertius back to his accustomed love-elegy – a move that, inasmuch as it marks out the new program as a

50

Cf. the paradox noted well by Cairns 1979: 138 and 140 that in Amores 3.11 Ovid starts out all the more confident of rejecting his mistress precisely because in that poem he will have accepted that he is powerless to do so.

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conspicuous thematic departure, also must position any such departure as being still a contested issue. With reference to 4.1 we come back to the truism that Book 3 does not in the end act out the death-throes of Propertian elegy: it turns out there were more elegiacs to come. Clearly, at the point of transition between the books, the issue of closure (or its interpretation) is significant – a reader who takes seriously the renuntiatio amoris of 3.24 will approach 4.1 as a new beginning, and will read for the ways in which Book 4 forms a distinctly novel collection within the poet’s corpus (such a reader will perhaps be disappointed that Propertius never quite sustains the new mode in the way he has said he would); a reader who is stubborn in his belief that Propertius – whatever he might claim – would never actually abandon his subversive erotic voice will look for traces of the old poet among the new poems (this reader will struggle to account for the strongly Augustan tones of several of these elegies, and for the frequent absence of the poet’s own voice entirely). But this is too simplistic. As we’ve seen, Ovid appropriates the symbolism of Propertian closure – which would and does form the point of transition between Books 3 and 4 – in a way that emphasizes its complicity in the continuation of erotic writing. In part this is because Ovidian amor must always go on, even if he must therefore change mistresses (or take several) for it to do so; the Propertian renuntiatio amoris of 3.24 can’t mean the end – when Ovid reads it. In one sense, the upbeat focus on erotic continuity in Ovid’s own poetry expresses the relative license ceded to the free-loving Ovidian persona when compared with the tragic romanticism of his predecessor(s), who, in insisting on the absolute indivisibility of life, poetry, love and mistress, constantly face off a literary death should love ever fail them (epigrammatically: Cynthia prima fuit, Cynthia finis erit – Cynthia was the first, Cynthia will be the last/the end: Prop. 1.12.20, a poem just (past) halfway through Book 1; cf. 4.7 below). But Ovid’s relentless connivance in ensuring that his own love/writing continues also shows up the fact once more that, if Propertius was serious about sending Cynthia away in 3.24, then it ought to have been impossible for him to continue writing elegy. And so, as it happens, Propertius himself declares to us in the midst of his subsequent book. In 4.7 a supposedly past love (cf. Horace at Odes 4.1) returns to the present as a ghost, in a dream, to haunt the poet and chastise him for his neglect; and the irrepressible vitality of 4.8 – the final Cynthia-poem – reinstates the mistress to her position of authority over the poet for all time, in a brilliant poetic recantation of any and all past claims to have become love-free. It is true that Cynthian poetry was never quite the same again after the end of Book 3. But it’s equally true that, if Propertius had thought that 3.24 was the end for Cynthia, then he was kidding both himself and us.51 51

I would like to express my gratitude for the wisdom and insight offered to me in reading over drafts of this paper by John Henderson, Graeme Miles, and Eleanor Brooke.

Sit pudor et finis: False Closure in Ancient Epigram Regina Höschele In her seminal 1968 study on “Poetic Closure” B. Herrnstein Smith envisioned a poem of maximal closure as “pre-eminently teleological” and “in a sense […] suicidal […], for all of its energy would be directed toward its own termination.”1 “The poem described here,” she adds, “does not, I think, exist, but the epigram tends to approach it in many respects.” Indeed, brevity and concision are features typically associated with this literary form. Although a stringent bipartite structure based on the principle of Erwartung und Aufschluss, as defined by Lessing,2 is not quintessential to the genre and not all ancient epigrams by any means lead up to a witty point (as the modern notion of ‘epigrammatic’ might suggest), their very shortness seems to make the creation of something like ‘false closure’ virtually impossible. Where a poem ends almost as soon as it has started, there simply is not enough space to insert artificial closural markers, which would mislead the reader into thinking that the text is coming to an end when in fact it continues. If it were true that epigram by definition does not permit false closure, I could conclude my essay right here and now – before it has even begun... Given the textual nature of epigrams, which does not favor this sort of readerly deception (at least I did not come across any particularly striking examples), let us address the topic from a somewhat different angle: instead of looking at single poems, why not explore the phenomenon of false closure in the context of epigram collections, i.e. on a macrotextual rather than a microtextual level? Over the past couple of decades, critics have become increasingly aware of the book’s role as a semantic unit, which may both enhance and modify the meaning of individual components.3 Carefully structured and conceived for a linear reading, poetry books invite the recipient to recognize the texts’ verbal and thematic concatenation and to appreciate the artful composition of the whole. As studies have shown, prominent spots within a collection, like beginnings, middles and ends, tend to be marked as such by means of programmatic statements, metapoetic elements or a high degree of self-referentiality.4

1 2 3 4

Cf. Herrnstein Smith 1968: 197-198. On Lessing’s epigram theory, cf. Citroni 1969 and Lausberg 1982: 84-86. For reflections on the textuality of ancient poetry books and a survey of the scholarship, cf. Höschele 2010: 13-26. On middles in Latin poetry, cf., e.g., Kyriakidis and de Martino 2004, on closure in classical literature Roberts, Dunn, and Fowler 1997.

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An important instance of such structural self-awareness is – to use F. Kermode’s term5 – the “sense of an ending” that often pervades a book’s final section and prepares the reader for its conclusion. In the Carmina Priapea, for example, we encounter a whole series of poems which signal, as I have argued elsewhere, the approaching end by showing the garden god in more and more desperate situations.6 The closing sequence presents us, inter alia, a Priapus suffering from erectile dysfunction, good-for-nothing unless used as firewood (c. 73), a senile, grey-haired guardian capable only of catching and penetrating victims as old as Tithonus, Priam and Nestor (c. 76), a Priapus threatened with unemployment, as his garden is being surrounded with a fence (c. 77): no thieves, no Priapean poetry. Last but not least, the penultimate epigram (c. 79) offers us a peculiar kind of sphragis, ironically characterizing the author as better endowed than the collection’s protagonist, while the final text (c. 80) teaches us that size is not all that counts in matters of sex and, as we may add on a metaliterary reading, poetry.7 It should be evident even from this brief overview how certain motifs, distributed over a series of epigrams, can function as signposts of a collection’s imminent end. Significantly, there also is a distinct closural moment, followed by a new beginning, at the very midpoint of the corpus. Carmen 40 features a prostitute worshipping Priapus in a remarkable way: Nota Suburanas inter Telethusa puellas, quae, puto, de quaestu libera facta suo est, cingit inaurata penem tibi, sancte, corona: 8 hoc pathicae summi numinis instar habent.

(Priap. 40)

In the next poem the ithyphallic god addresses passers-by, asking for verse offerings and threatening with pedicatio anyone not in compliance with his request: Quisquis venerit huc, poeta fiat et versus mihi dedicet iocosos. 5 6

7 8

Cf. Kermode 22000. Cf. Höschele 2008a and 2010: 295-307. For a long time scholars supposed that the Carmina Priapea constituted a more or less randomly ordered anthology of poems by various authors, but it is much more likely that we are dealing here with the work of a single poet, who organized his epigrams in a subtle manner. The first to argue persuasively for the unity of the collection was Buchheit 1962; his hypothesis has recently been corroborated by Kloss 2003, Holzberg 2005 and Gärtner 2007. For this metapoetic reading, cf. Höschele 2008b: 384-387 and 2010: 302-307. ‘Telethusa, well known among Subura girls, who, I believe, has just bought her freedom with her earnings, is crowning your penis with a golden garland, holy one: for hookers this is the highest of all deities.’ If not otherwise indicated translations are my own.

Sit pudor et finis: False Closure in Ancient Epigram qui non fecerit, inter eruditos 9 ficosissimus ambulet poetas.

249 (Priap. 41)

It is, I think, fair to say that c. 41 with its inaugural qualities – the epigram contains inter alia an implicit recusatio of more elevated genres10 – is conceived as an inner proem opening the collection’s second half. Since the text invites us to identify the following poems with the verses Priapus is wishing for, Wernicke has even gone so far as to see in c. 41 the introduction to a separate corpus of Priapean poetry11 – a supposition that neatly conveys his awareness of the text’s opening elements, while failing to take into account that programmatic statements can also occur midway through a work. Significantly, this new beginning is coupled with an effective conclusion to the collection’s first part in c. 40. Not only does Priapus receive here some of the highest honors within the corpus, but in the dedication itself we may detect an allusion to the diacritical sign commonly used to mark the end of a book or section in ancient papyri: by way of a widespread pun, the golden corona put around Priapus’ penis, so to speak, takes over the function of the coronis.12 In addition, the girl’s name, Telethusa, might – etymologically – suggest the Greek word for “end”: τέλος. The closural impact of c. 40 is, I submit, strengthened by the fact that c. 38 and 37, the third-to-last and fourth-to-last epigrams of Part I, are ring-compositionally linked with the third and fourth poem of the corpus. In c. 3 Priapus programmatically rejects euphemistic paraphrases and asserts: simplicius multo est ‘da pedicare’ Latine / dicere. quid faciam? crassa Minerva mea est (‘It is much simpler to say it in plain language: “let me fuck you in the ass”. What can I do? My manner of speaking is gross.’ 3.9-10). The idea of putting things bluntly (simpliciter dicere) is picked up in c. 38, where the god once again makes no secret of his most urgent wish: Simpliciter tibi me, quodcunque est, dicere oportet, natura est quoniam semper aperta mihi: 9

10

11 12

‘Whoever comes here, shall become a poet and dedicate entertaining verses to me. Who doesn’t do so, shall stroll among the erudite poets with the most ulcers in his ass.’ Cf. O’Connor’s paraphrase (1989: 134): “Let anyone who won’t condescend to writing Priapea go ahead and be a Vergil, a Hesiod or an Ennius, i.e. a poet proper; but he shall do so only after having been sodomized by me”; on the epigram’s programmatic character in general, cf. Höschele 2010: 291-292. Cf. Wernicke 1853: 143. On the coronis cf. Stephen 1959. Meleager concluded his Garland with a speaking coronis (AP 12.257), cf. Bing 1988: 33-34, Gutzwiller 1998: 279-281 and Höschele 2010: 172-176. Barchiesi 1997: 190 notes that Aesculapius, the son of Koronis (!) who morphs into a snake toward the end of Metamorphoses 15, evokes the diacritical sign and thus marks the approaching finale. For a possible pun on coronae-coronis in Martial 13.127, the last poem of the Xenia, cf. Lorenz 2002: 95-96 n. 186

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Regina Höschele pedicare volo, tu vis decerpere poma; quod peto, si dederis, quod petis, accipies.13

(Priap. 38)

C. 4 and c. 37, in turn, are the only poems in the collection to mention tabellae dedicated to Priapus in exchange for a favor: pornographic pictures from Elephantis’ treatise on sexual positions in c. 4, and the votive painting of a membrum virile in c. 37. These verbal and thematic connections create a distinct frame around the first half of the corpus, which itself is framed by two pairs of poems, with the collection’s double proem (c. 1+2) standing on one side,14 and c. 39+40 on the other (the worship of Priapus’ penis as the highest of all deities in c. 40 is foreshadowed by c. 39, where the garden god affirms that, though lacking in beauty, he is more desirable to girls than the Olympians because of his enormous mentula15): 1+2 --- 3--- 4 ---------------------------- 37 ---38---39+40 To be sure, it is not very likely that the reader would at once grasp all of these aspects; correspondences between poems rather emerge progressively in the course of a book’s reading (and even more so in the course of multiple readings), with every new bit reshaping our image of the whole. What B. Herrnstein Smith observed with regard to the perception of poetic structure in single texts, surely also applies to poetry books: “As we read, structural principles, both formal and thematic, are gradually deployed and perceived; and as these principles make themselves known, we are engaged in a steady process of readjustment and retrospective patterning.”16 I am not arguing, then, that c. 40 unmistakably advertises itself as the conclusion of Part I, but the poet clearly has invested this epigram with closural force, which is, as a second reading shows, very much in line with its structural function. But now on to the pivotal question: are we, or are we not, dealing here with an instance of false closure? No doubt, c. 40 will hardly mislead anyone into actually believing that they have reached the collection’s terminus. On a pragmatic level alone, the spatial extension of the text would immediately counteract such an assumption – after all, it is visually apparent from the arrangement of the epigrams on the scroll that the corpus is not coming to an end at this point. In the 13

14 15 16

‘I have to tell you in plain language, whatever it is, for my nature is always blunt: I want to fuck you in the ass, you want to pick fruit; if you give me what I ask for, you will receive what you ask for.’ For the double proem, which is probably modeled on the beginning of Strato’s Musa Puerilis, cf. Buchheit 1962: 3-4, 11-13 and Höschele 2010: 273-279. On c. 39, which forms part of a cycle contrasting Priapus and the Olympian gods, cf. Vallat 2008: 75-77. Herrnstein Smith 1968: 10.

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context of Roman literature, we should, of course, also allow for the possibility of oral recitation, which is coupled with a rather different mode of reception:17 in a performative situation, most of the audience would not see the reader’s precise place in the scroll and thus more easily be fooled into thinking that a false closure was a real one. A good reciter, moreover, could play up that expectation, though realizing himself that it is wrong. However, since we know very little about how books of poetry would be recited during dinner parties and the like, the following considerations will focus primarily on the phenomenon of readerly reception. A text can, I submit, very well play with the idea of closure and imply a reader who is either falling for the trick or in on the game. To take an example from another genre: it has been argued that c. 10 of Horace’s first book of Odes marks – both metrically and thematically – the end of the opening series. In his response to an article by Fernández Corte,18 who examined the terminal character of c. 10, D. Konstan states: The opening verses of c. 11 read: Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi finem di dederint, Leuconoe. Of course, the poem goes on to make clear that Horace is discouraging Leuconoe from consulting astrologers (nec Babylonios temptaris numeros). But the abrupt advice concerning ends at the very beginning of the ode makes excellent poetic sense if we suppose that Horace’s reader (like Leuconoe herself, perhaps) might have been tempted to interpret c. 10 as a kind of finale. The injunction, “Don’t inquire about my end,” carries the implicit or metaliterary suggestion that what preceded might in fact have been perceived as a finis. But of course, c. 11 itself demonstrates by its very existence that the book 19 is not over.

Following Konstan’s metapoetic interpretation of Ode 11, we might say that the text playfully responds to the imagined reaction of a reader who mistakes the closural markers of Ode 10 as indicating the book’s end (recall, too, that by the time Odes 1 was published, the Roman audience was familiar with at least three poetry books comprising not more than 10 poems: Vergil’s Eclogues, Horace’s Satires 1 and Tibullus’ Book 1). Whether or not any recipient would actually do so, is of no relevance in this context – the point is rather that the book itself flirts with the idea of closure and wittily insinuates that it has duped the reader, a reader who, it suggests, is actively looking for signs that announce its conclusion. This is indeed a marvelous instance of false closure, made particularly intriguing by the fact that it annotates itself as such. 17

18 19

On recitations in Rome, cf. Quinn 1983, Starr 1991, Binder 1995, Dupont 1997; for a recent reassessment of the phenomenon, cf. Parker 2009, who questions the widespread idea that Roman poetry was primarily received in the context of oral recitation. Cf. Fernández Corte 2000. Konstan 2001a: 17.

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In a similar vein, c. 40 has an air of finality to it, which to a certain degree is deceptive. A reader speculating about endings, like the implied recipient of Horace’s Odes, might, in fact, perceive the poem as belonging to the collection’s finale, if not constituting the terminus itself – an impression that is immediately undermined by the inaugural qualities of the following text. Misleading, too, is the positive note on which the first half ends: far from being worshipped as a powerful deity, the Priapus we encounter in Part II will turn into a figure of ridicule and come to realize that he is but a helpless wooden statue.20 One of his greatest fears toward the end of the corpus will be that someone might put a fibula through his penis (neve imponite fibulam Priapo, 77.17) – a forceful image of closure in that the fible would literally close off Priapus’ productive stream. Also, the contrast could not be starker: no more golden crowns to garland his mentula, but a needle inserted in his foreskin to prevent the god from having an erection (thus depriving him of his most defining feature). It is in this sense that we may characterize the closure provided by c. 40 as false. Let me stress once more that I am talking here of an inner-textual game, a teasing aimed at an implied reader, which does not necessarily fool the actual recipient. The idea of a reader watching out for the final poem is particularly relevant to the poetics of another epigrammatic work, which leads me to my next example: Martial. In his œuvre, the Flavian poet repeatedly insinuates what a bore it is to peruse a book of epigrams in its entirety, thus questioning the very medium in which he has published his poetry:21 he presents us, for instance, with a recipient starting to yawn after two columns only (2.6) and one who just pretends to have read everything by returning the papyrus unrolled ad sua cornua (‘to its horns’, 11.107).22 At the end of Book 4, Martial reins in his book, as it seeks to go on beyond its limits (4.89.3-6), framing his admonition with the twofold exclamation: ohe, iam satis est, ohe, libelle (‘whoa, it’s already enough, whoa, little book’, 4.89.1+9): tu procedere adhuc et ire quaeris, nec summa potes in schida teneri, sic tamquam tibi res peracta non sit, quae prima quoque pagina peracta est.23

20 21

22 23

(Mart. 4.89.3-6)

On Priapus’ increasing impotence and helplessness cf. Holzberg 2005. Like Fowler 1995 and other recent scholars (e.g. Holzberg 2002, Lorenz 2002 and Fitzgerald 2007) I believe that Martial purposefully arranged his epigrams in books to be read in a linear manner. On Martial’s self-contradictory ‘anti-book poetics’, cf. Höschele 2010: 38-46 and 52-65. For cornua = ‘ends of a bookroll’ in Roman poetry, cf. Ishøy 2006: 71-72. ‘You still want to proceed and go further, and you cannot even be stopped by the last column, as though you still had some unfinished business, when you were already done by the first page?’

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At the start of Book 10, the liber itself invites the reader to cut down its size ad libitum. By evoking the notion of a coronis in the first line of the book’s first poem, the author shrewdly implies that the recipient is on the lookout for the liber’s conclusion even before he has properly begun his reading. Through this linguistic displacement of the coronis from back to front, Martial, in a way, turns the initial epigram into a mixture of pseudo-beginning and false closure – into something that is neither a proper opening nor, obviously, a real end (10.1):24 Si nimius videor seraque coronide longus esse liber, legito pauca: libellus ero. terque quaterque mihi finitur carmine parvo pagina: fac tibi me quam cupis ipse brevem.25

(Mart. 10.1)

As these examples indicate, Martial self-ironically portrays his books as tiresome due to the large quantity of poems they contain, and envisions an impatient reader who cannot wait for the end.26 No doubt, this gesture points to a real predicament: as we probably all know from our own experience, the fragmented nature of epigram books makes it particularly hard to hold a reader’s attention over an extended period of time.27 ‘It is,’ as Martial observes elsewhere, ‘easy to write some pretty epigrams, but writing a book is difficult.’28 Or, to quote the words that Lessing once put in the mouth of his poems: Weiß uns der Leser auch für unsre Kürze Dank? Wohl kaum, denn Kürze ward durch Vielheit leider lang.

24

25

26

27

28

Rimell 2008: 67 considers the “mixing up of beginning and endings” a characteristic feature of Book 10. With regard to 10.1, she observes that “the book is already ending and ending again (terque quaterque finitur […] pagina, 3), yet within the same epigram as well as after each page of poems” (71). ‘If I seem to be too long a book, with my coronis coming too late, just read little: thus I’ll be a booklet. Three or four times my page ends with a brief poem: make me as short for yourself as you please.’ Cf. also 2.1, where Martial lists the advantages of a short book, starting with the observation: Ter centena quidem poteras epigrammata ferre, / sed quis te ferret perlegeretque, liber? (‘Surely you could bear 300 epigrams, but who would bear you then and read you from beginning to end, my book?’) At the end of Book 1, the author states: cui legisse satis non est epigrammata centum / nil ille satis est, Caediciane, mali (‘He for whom having read 100 epigrams is not enough, can never get enough of bad stuff, Caedicianus’, 1.118). In Höschele 2007, I try to show how the appeal to the wayfarer’s attention in inscriptional epigrams has been transformed into the attempt to hold the reader’s attention over the course of a whole book. facile est epigrammata belle scribere, / sed librum scribere difficile est (7.85.3-4).

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Martial’s emphasis on the poor quality of his work, however, most likely aims at arousing our protest (“no, Martial,” we are invited to say, “you really did a great job – we want more!”). The idea of a reader yearning for THE END is intrinsic to his self-deprecating poetics, and it is in this context that the author repeatedly reflects upon the issue of (deferred) closure.29 In addition to problematizing the quantity of epigrams within a given liber, Martial presents the number of his books as an obstacle to his success. Thus he laments in 4.29: Opstat, care Pudens, nostris sua turba libellis lectoremque frequens lassat et implet opus. rara iuvant […].30

(Mart. 4.29)

Nonetheless, Martial keeps putting out one liber after the other,31 until he reaches number 8 and finally seems to have had enough (8.3)32: ‘Quinque satis fuerant, nam sex septemve libelli est nimium. quid adhuc ludere, Musa, iuvat? sit pudor et finis! iam plus nihil addere nobis fama potest: teritur noster ubique liber; et cum rupta situ Messalae saxa iacebunt altaque cum Licini marmora pulvis erunt, me tamen ora legent et secum plurimus hospes ad patrias sedes carmina nostra feret.’ finieram, cum sic respondit nona sororum, 33 cui coma et unguento sordida vestis erat.

5

10

(Mart. 8.3)

Before turning to the Muse’s reply, however, let us pause briefly and relish this moment of false closure. This is, mind you, but the third poem of Book 8, and 29 30

31 32 33

On Martial’s strategic denigration of his own œuvre, cf. Banta 1998: 87-102, Roman 2001: 113 and Lorenz 2002: 88-89. ‘My books are impaired by their number, dear Pudens – many works tire and oversaturate the reader. It is the rare things that delight …’ On the confusion of ‘one’ and ‘many’ in this epigram, cf. Rimell 2008: 115. It is commonly assumed that, starting with AD 85, Martial brought out about one book per year; on the chronology of his libri, cf. Friedlaender 1886 (I): 50-67. The discussion of 8.3 is based on Höschele 2010: 56-59. ‘ “Five would have been sufficient; for six or seven books, that’s too much: why do you, Muse, still find pleasure in fooling around? You ought to be ashamed and put an end to this: there is nothing more that Fame could bestow on me: my books are everywhere and in everyone’s hand. When Messala’s stones lie shattered by decay, and the sky-scraping marbles of Licinus have turned to dust, I shall still be read and many a stranger shall carry my songs to his fatherland.” I had ended, when the ninth of the sisters, whose hair and clothes were dripping with unguent, answered thus …’

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Martial seems determined to put an end to his poetic career as an epigrammatist! The liber had opened with a prose epistle addressed to Domitian, in which Martial dedicated the book to the emperor and announced that – in consideration of the dedicatee’s status – it would be free of obscenities.34 Martial corroborates his intention to keep things G-rated in the following epigram, where he orders the book to speak more reverently and programmatically wards off naked Venus, summoning Caesarian Pallas in her place.35 The second poem relates how Janus saw Domitian on his triumphant return from the Sarmatian War (8.2): Fastorum genitor parensque Ianus victorem modo cum videret Histri, tot vultus sibi non satis putavit optavitque oculos habere plures: et lingua pariter locutus omni terrarum domino deoque rerum promisit Pyliam quater senectam. 36 addas, Iane pater, tuam rogamus.

5

(Mart. 8.2)

Martial refers here to a statue located in the temple of Janus that Domitian himself had put up.37 The sculpture, a so-called Janus Quadrifrons, bore four faces as a symbol of the four seasons, but apparently even ‘four’s not enough’ (tot vultus non satis, 3) to take in the emperor’s magnitude. Note the witty transition from this poem to our epigram: on a sequential reading, the beginning of 8.3 sounds like a response to Janus’ insatiability – quinque satis fuerant (‘five would have been enough’). Only at the end of the first line do we realize that Martial is now talking about books (nam sex septemve libelli)!38 Considering his emphatic dedication of Book 8 to the emperor, Martial’s desire to quit writing 34 35

36

37 38

On this prose epistle, cf. Lorenz 2002: 166-172 and Johannsen 2006: 87-97. Mart. 8.1 Laurigeros domini, liber, intrature penates / disce verecundo sanctius ore loqui. / nuda recede Venus; non est tuus iste libellus: / tu mihi, tu Pallas Caesariana, veni. (‘Being about to enter the laurel-bearing house of our Lord, my book, learn to speak more decently with a reverent mouth. Naked Venus, go away; this book is not yours: but you, Caesarian Pallas, you do come to me.’) ‘When Janus, creator and father of our calendar, had just spotted the Hister’s conqueror, he thought so many faces were not enough for him and wished to have more eyes, and speaking with all his tongues at once he promised the lord of the earth and god of the world four times a Pylian age. Add, I beg you, father Janus, also yours.’ Cf. Schöffel 2002 ad loc. We find a similar play with numbers and books toward the end of Book 2, where Martial asks the emperor to grant him the ius trium liberorum (2.91 and 92), which by way of an implicit pun could be understood as the request for a (fictitious) ‘right of three books’ (ius trium librorum); cf. Hinds 2007: 135-136. For Martial’s apparent obsession with numbers and counting cf. Rimell 2008: 94-139.

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altogether seems particularly out of place at this point. First he declares that he wants to honor Domitian, then all he can think of is retiring and resting on his laurels. The Muse, of course, would not hear of such a request. Here’s her response: ‘Tune potes dulcis, ingrate, relinquere nugas? dic mihi, quid melius desidiosus ages? an iuvat ad tragicos soccum transferre cothurnos aspera vel paribus bella tonare modis, praelegat ut tumidus rauca te voce magister 15 oderit et grandis virgo bonusque puer? scribant ista graves nimium nimiumque severi, quos media miseros nocte lucerna videt. at tu Romano lepidos sale tinge libellos: agnoscat mores vita legatque suos. 20 angusta cantare licet videaris avena, 39 dum tua multorum vincat avena tubas.’

(Mart. 8.3.11-22)

The dialogue between Martial and his Muse is reminiscent of classical recusatioscenes, such as, for instance, the beginning of Callimachus’ Aetia or Vergil’s Eclogue 6.40 However, the epigrammatist does not actually envisage a change of genre; what we have here is rather a sort of inverted Musenanruf, insofar as Martial does not ask for the goddess’ support in his literary undertaking, but for the permission to stop writing.41 The Muse seems to deliberately misunderstand him and erroneously vituperates the poet as though he intended to compose epic or tragedy.42 What is more, her answer in all likelihood contains a witty allusion to Anchises’ famous speech in Aeneid 6 (847-853):

39

40 41

42

‘Can you simply give up your sweet trifles, ungrateful one? Tell me, what do you intend to do instead, lazy as you are? Does it please you to exchange your slippers for the boots of tragedy or to thunder brutal wars in equal measures, so that a swollenheaded schoolteacher reads you with his hoarse voice and you are hated by big girls and good lads? Let that stuff be written by the super-serious and super-severe, miserable people, whom the lamp watches in the middle of the night. You, however – season your clever little books with Roman salt: may Life recognize its manners and read of them. It doesn’t matter if you seem to be playing on a thin pipe, so long as your pipe outsounds the trombones of many others.’ On recusationes in Callimachus and the Roman poets, cf. Wimmel 1960. Thus Muth 1976: 205 and Fowler 1995: 35. Aliter Lorenz 2002: 172-176, who argues that Martial is indeed envisioning a change of genre: having conceived the liber as a panegyrical book dedicated to the emperor, he plans to refrain from his typical lascivitas, which however is not in line with Martial’s ingenium. Cf. Schöffel 2002: 97-98.

Sit pudor et finis: False Closure in Ancient Epigram excudent alii spiranti mollius aere (credo equidem), vivos ducent de marmore vultus, orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus describent radio et surgentia sidera dicent: tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento (hae tibi erunt artes), pacique imponere morem, 43 parcere subiectis et debellare superbos.

257

(Verg. Aen. 6.847-853)

The Muse’s command at tu Romano lepidos sale tinge libellos (19) evokes, I submit, Anchises’ order tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento. In both cases, the personal pronoun tu stands toward the beginning of the line, is coupled with an imperative and a form of the adjective Romanus. Furthermore, both requests are preceded by a priamel, and Martial’s scribant ista graves nimium nimiumque severi (17) might recall Vergil’s describent radio (850). Last but not least, both texts show us an authoritative speaker counseling the addressee about what should be his proper arts in the future: hae tibi erunt artes. If we read Martial’s passage with Vergil’s scene in mind, the opposition that Anchises sees between effeminate Greeks and bellicose Romans seems to be turned upside down: The epigrammatist, whose name, one might assume, predestines him for the Martial Arts, is not supposed to “thunder brutal wars” (14), but to mirror life in his writings – just like the Greek artists, who beat out breathing bronze and draw living features from marble. Scholars have puzzled a lot over the question why the Muse is referred to as nona sororum. It has, for instance, been suggested that Martial is conversing with Thalia, who is responsible for minor genres and who could – in a gesture of modesty – be called the ninth, i.e. the last of the sisters.44 There might, however, be another explanation: not only does the adjective ‘ninth’ stand selfreferentially in the ninth line of the poem, but Martial, after speaking of his fifth, sixth and seventh book, is presently refusing to write his eighth liber. Considering this, the mention of the number 9 does not come unexpectedly (recall, too, the numeric joke in the transition from 8.2 to 8.3). Thus we could be invited to infer that the ninth Muse not only secures the composition of Book 8, but also implicitly prepares the ground for its sequel.45 43

44 45

‘Others, I doubt not, shall beat out the breathing bronze with softer lines; shall from marble draw forth the features of life; shall plead their causes better; with the rod shall trace the paths of heaven and tell the rising of the stars: remember thou, O Roman, to rule the nations with thy sway – these shall be thine arts – to crown Peace with Law, to spare the humbled, and to tame in war the proud.’ Translation by Fairclough. Cf. Schöffel 2002 ad loc. In this context we may recall that Herodotus’ Histories were divided into nine books (first attested in Diod. 11.37.6) named after the nine Muses. When exactly the books started to be associated with the Muses is unclear, but the practice must have been well established by the time of Lucian (cf. Herod. 1).

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Be that as it may, Martial expresses his desire to put an end to his literary undertaking in no uncertain terms: sit pudor et finis (8.3.3). The epigrammatist’s vision of his future glory (me tamen ora legent, 8.3.7), moreover, evokes the conclusion of Ovid’s Metamorphoses with its famous prediction: quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris / ore legar populi (‘wherever Roman power extends over the lands it has conquered, I shall be read by the mouth of the people’, 15.877-878). This allusion to the finale of another work contributes to the epigram’s closural force, which is further strengthened by the verb that marks the end of Martial’s plea: finieram (8.3.9). His sudden wish to stop writing appears particularly astonishing, if we take the text’s position into account. This surely is not the kind of thing one would expect to hear in the opening sequence of a book – indeed, it seems especially jarring when juxtaposed with the previous epigram, which prominently features Janus, the god of beginnings. Martial’s reluctance to continue his project forms part of the collection’s paradoxical, self-deprecatory poetics, which disputes, again and again, the very sense of composing epigram books. But no matter how fervently Martial phrases those doubts, he has not the least intention of abandoning his poetic career, not at this point at any rate: the idea of putting an end to everything is just a tease, the signs of closure in our epigram turn out to be false. In a way, Martial plays with the Callimachean idea that ‘less is more’ (a principle especially applicable to a brief genre like epigram), but comes to the conclusion that ‘more is more’ – and ends up producing an œuvre that comprises as many books as the Aeneid. It is impossible to tell when Martial started to conceive his corpus as a “dodecalogue” (to use N. Holzberg’s term), but the Libri Epigrammaton XII undeniably constitute a macrotextual unit, which is carefully structured and ends with our hero’s nostos to his fatherland in the last book.46 He already announces his return several times toward the end of Book 10, and it is in this context that we encounter another instance of false closure – the last example in my discussion (or could I just be teasing you?). After praising the advantages of Spanish simplicity over the costly life in Rome (10.96) and prompting his compatriots to welcome him back after 34 years abroad (10.103), Martial closes his Book 10 by asking his book to accompany Flavus on his journey to Bilbilis. Once there, it shall greet old friends and remind Flavus to purchase a domicile for Martial, where he can retire and enjoy the dolce far niente. ‘That’s it,’ the poet concludes, ‘the indignant captain already screams and condemns the delay, and a rather favorable breeze has opened up the harbor. Farewell, my little book. I think you know that a single passenger cannot hold up a ship.’ (10.104.16-19)47 Thus ends Book 10, while Book 11 starts with the following words: quo tu, quo, liber otiose tendis / cultus Sidone non cotidiana (‘where, my idle book, 46 47

Cf. Holzberg 2002: 135-152, id. 2004 and 2004/2005. haec sunt. iam tumidus vocat magister / castigatque moras, et aura portum / laxavit melior: vale, libelle: / navem, scis puto, non moratur unus.

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where are you going, adorned with non-ordinary purple?’ 11.1.1-2). Where indeed, we might ask – should the book not be in Spain by now? Well, it turns out that it is on its way to Parthenius (the ex-chamberlain of Domitian); contrary to his plans Martial still resides in the City and offers his readers a book bristling with Saturnalian exuberance. Book 12, on the other hand, opens with a prose epistle, in which Martial laments the provinciality of Bilbilis and regrets having left behind Rome’s urban culture.48 Before taking a more detailed look at the phenomenon of false closure within this sequence, the last triad of Martial’s Libri Epigrammaton XII, we have to quickly review some puzzling issues regarding its relative chronology: it has been argued that the order of Books 10 and 11 ought to be reversed, since Book 10, which features Trajan (AD 98-117) as emperor,49 in its present form must have been composed after Book 11, where the poet repeatedly addresses the previous emperor, Nerva (AD 96-98). The widespread hypothesis that we are dealing here with a second edition of Book 10 is based on what Martial says about the liber in one of its opening epigrams (10.2.1-4): Festinata prior, decimi mihi cura libelli elapsum manibus nunc revocavit opus. nota leges quaedam sed lima rasa recenti; 50 pars nova maior erit: lector, utrique fave […]

(Mart. 10.2.1-4)

The poet claims to have called back his tenth book for the purpose of polishing it up and announces that it contains some poems (motifs) already known to his readers, though freshly reworked, together with a larger number of entirely new epigrams (themes). While Martial thus provides a purely artistic reason for revising his work, many scholars assume that this supposed second edition was prompted by the death of Domitian, which, they argue, presented Martial with the opportunity to exchange texts in praise of the hated tyrant with different, less compromising material.51 However, even if Martial bids farewell to blanditiae (‘flatteries’) in 10.72 and welcomes Trajan as a ruler whom he does not have to hail as Lord and God (dicturus dominum deumque non sum, 10.72.3), we should be careful in unquestioningly imagining such a scenario. The idea that Martial

48 49 50

51

Cf. Johannsen 2006: 107-121. He is mentioned by name in 10.7 and 34.1. ‘Before, my care for the tenth book had been hasty, but it has now called back the work which had slipped out of my hands . You will read some things already known, but freshly polished; the new part, however, will be bigger: grant your favor to both, reader […].’ For a survey of the scholarship, cf. Lorenz 2002: 220. Thus also Rimell 2008: 66: “Domitian has been assassinated, hailing a new era and prompting a complete rethink of what Book 10 should look like, what epigram should do and memorialize now.”

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excised “all that filthy flattery,”52 no doubt, appeals to modern taste and makes him appear more ‘likeable’ in the eyes of those who on some level – whether consciously or not – condemn his previous panegyrics. Yet, the text itself hardly necessitates such a reading, and it is impossible to tell whether and how a second edition would actually have been able to replace the previous version.53 An alternative interpretation of 10.2 has been proposed by N. Holzberg, who understands the poem thus: “In 10.2 the poeta tells us – in my reading of verses 1-4 – that he had at first worked quickly on this book (as, we may perhaps assume, on all the foregoing ones), but that he then began to sense that the poems were coming too fast and too thick. He decided to go over them again. The final results of this revision will be in part familiar, but not because the reader knows a previous edition of the texts. Martial simply means that he has used old motifs again.”54 The idea that the ‘work which has slipped out of Martial’s hands’ (opus elapsum manibus) denotes not an official edition, but a first draft of the book, which proved unsatisfying, is to my mind very appealing.55 We need not follow Holzberg’s suggestion that the phrase quaedam nota refers to motifs known from earlier books to justify such a reading (though this is a possible interpretation). Admittedly, we do not know much about the circulation of poems prior to their publication, but in his Epistles Pliny the Younger gives us a glimpse of Rome’s contemporary literary scene,56 and one passage in particular might provide a parallel to what Martial says here and help elucidate the text. In 8.21 Pliny tells his friend Arrianus Maturus about a two-day recital he organized to present an entire book of poems to a small group of friends and ask for their feedback. He concludes the letter by promising his addressee a copy of the revised book and observes: leges, sed retractatum, quae causa recitandi fuit; et tamen non nulla iam ex eo nosti. haec vel emendata postea vel, quod interdum longiore mora solet, deteriora facta quasi nova rursus et rescripta cognosces. nam plerisque mutatis ea quoque mutata videntur, quae manent.57 (Plin. Ep. 8.21) 52 53

54 55

56 57

Thus Rimell 2008: 67. In my opinion, Cameron’s skepticism (1995: 114-118) with regard to the existence of second editions in antiquity is justified. For a recent reassessment of Martial’s panegyrics, which situates the poems in praise of Domitian in the context of the overall epigrammatic discourse, cf. Lorenz 2002. Holzberg 2004/2005: 218 (cf. Holzberg 2002: 147). As Holzberg 2002: 147 notes, the claim that the work needed thorough revisions could account for the long time it took Martial to publish the book, which in its present form came out four years after Book 9. Cf. Höschele 2010: 46-52. On Pliny’s poetry, cf. most recently Marchesi 2008: 53-69. ‘You will read it, but in a revised version (which had after all been the reason for the recital). And yet you know already some parts of it. These you will find either ameliorated or – as sometimes happens in the case of a longish delay – deteriorated, at

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Could it not be, then, that Martial’s imagined reader is likewise familiar with some of the poems contained in Book 10, not because they appeared in a previous edition, but because he had encountered them in a different context? Even if we regard the book as the primary medium of Martial’s epigrams (which I firmly believe it is), we should not dismiss the possibility that the author presented parts of his works before the official release of his libri58 – and that, in the case of Book 10, he felt the need to thoroughly revise everything before entrusting it to the public, a process which might very well have involved the exchange of various epigrams with completely new material: pars nova maior erit. Whatever scenario one prefers (this clearly is an issue where no absolute certainty can be gained), the crucial question is in what order we are to read Books 10, 11 and 12. As mentioned above, scholars have argued for a rearrangement of the sequence (11-10-12), which would solve the temporal conundrum (Emperor Trajan addressed before Nerva) and create a smooth transition from the end of Book 10 (Martial’s wish to return to Spain) to the beginning of Book 12 (Martial writing from Spain).59 However, I find it highly unlikely that Martial, who so frequently thematizes the numbering of his libelli, would not have given any explicit instructions, had he wanted us to read Book 10 after Book 11. If the poet could jokingly suggest to one of his readers that liber II is easily turned into liber I by the removal of one iota (2.93),60 a similar transformation of liber XI into liber X (and vice versa) would hardly have posed a problem. And yet, Martial unmistakably labels the decimus libellus as such in 10.2.1, which to my mind confirms the transmitted order (even if Book 10 is a revised edition and was published after 11, it still holds its proper place within the macrotextual composition).61 If this assumption is correct, then the sense of an ending provided by the finale of Book 10 is, indeed, misleading – and thoroughly undermined by the opening of Book 11, which begins where the preceding book left off and goes

58

59

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any rate they will appear again as something new and newly written. For when most has been changed, even those parts seem changed which have remained the same.’ I am not thinking here of pre-publication in the sense of White’s so-called libellustheory (1974), against which see Fowler 1995. In 2.6, Martial imagines a reader who delights in single epigrams when he hears them recited, but is bored to death when he encounters the same poems in a book, which at least suggests the possibility of an oral circulation prior to publication. Cf. Lorenz 2002: 221-222. He also points out that 10.1, with its announcement of a long book, could be seen as picking up a motif developed in the last three epigrams of Book 11 (106-108), where the poet describes the reaction of recipients to his lengthy liber. On this poem see Fitzgerald 2007: 136-137 and Höschele 2010: 59-60. I do not think that 10.2 offers us any “implizite Leseanleitung” to reverse the books’ order, as Lorenz 2002: 221 suggests.

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(quite literally) in a different direction.62 Martial’s wish to return to Spain and spend his old age away from Rome smacks of closure: with the end of his life approaching, he will at last put an end to his epigrammatic production, or so one might think. By repeatedly envisioning his retirement, the author seems to prepare us for his final farewell, the true end of his multi-book project, which had kept growing despite his professed efforts to quit writing. And once again, we’ve been deceived: Book 10 is followed by a book set in Rome, which in its Saturnalian spirit turns everything upside down and could not be livelier and more cheerful.63 If, however, the party atmosphere that pervades this book should have created the impression that Martial has given up on his retirement plans, then the beginning of Book 12, too, comes as a surprise: now the poet is in Spain, after all, deeply lamenting the lack of inspiration.64 Clearly, Martial loves to play with our expectations, and the creation of false closure is, I submit, an important element in his attempts to dupe the reader, who is constantly being told that ‘enough’s enough’ and yet presented with a virtually inexhaustible supply of further epigrams. As I hope to have shown, the medium of the book permits epigrammatists to experiment with false closure on a macrotextual level, and I am confident that many more examples of this phenomenon can be found in ancient epigram collections. However, so as not to exceed the limits of this essay: sit pudor et finis. This time for real.

62 63

64

For the aprosdoketon in the transition from 10.104 to 11.1, cf. also Holzberg 2002: 142 and 2004/2005: 215-216. On Martial’s Saturnalia, cf. most recently Rimell 2008: 140-180. In this context Holzberg 2002: 149-150 (cf. 2004/2005: 220-221) raises the possibility that Nerva might already have been dead when Martial addressed him in Book 11 and suggests that our author features the deceased emperor as Saturnalicius princeps. For the use of a dead addressee, cf. Clay 2002 on Horace c. 4.12 (addressed to Vergil). Book 12 contains poems about both Trajan and Nerva, which led scholars to assume that it was published posthumously. Against this hypothesis, cf. Lorenz 2002: 232246, who reads the book as an effective conclusion to Martial’s œuvre.

False Closure, True Lies and a Never Ending Story: Romantic Aesthetics, Lucian’s Verae Historiae and a Fragmentary Ending Manuel Baumbach The Romantic Idea of Fragment and Lucian’s True Stories: An Incomplete Beginning “Many works of the ancients have become fragments. Many works of the moderns are fragments already at the time when they are written.” Friedrich Schlegel’s famous Athenäums-Fragment1 is a shortcut to Romantic aesthetics. In opposition to the Aristotelean idea of completeness,2 which widely influenced production and reception of art and literature from antiquity to the classicistic period, ‘modern’ Romantic writers strove for incompleteness. They searched for a literary form which could resemble the idea that a work never is a finished ‘project’ but in constant progress.3 Influenced by authors like Herder, Lavater, Lessing and Klopstock, who had written fragments for different purposes before,4 and inspired by the many fragments of lost ancient works, Schlegel and the Romantics redefined the term ‘fragment’ according to their aesthetics. A Romantic fragment is no longer put in relation to a former unity, of which it was a part and to which it points back, nor is it seen as an extant portion of an unfinished artefact.5 Instead, “the Romantic fragment is not a fragment of something else. It is neither an incomplete part of a work nor a part of an incomplete work; the work itself is nothing but an ensemble of fragments.”6 A Romantic fragment

1

2 3

4 5 6

“Viele Werke der Alten sind Fragmente geworden. Viele Werke der Neuern sind es gleich bei der Entstehung.” Athenäumsfragment 24 (1789), quoted from Behler and Eichner 1988.2: 107; translation by the author. Cf. Arist. Po. 1459a. Cf. Schlegel, Athenäumsfragment 116: “Die romantische Dichtart ist noch im Werden; ja, das ist ihr eigentliches Wesen, dass sie ewig nur werden, nie vollendet sein kann.” (Behler and Eichner 1988.2: 115); also see Ostermann 1991: 115: “Schlegels Idee des Fragments verhält sich komplementär zu seinem Begriff des Projekts. Gemeinsam bestimmen beide in dialektischem Bezug aufeinander die werdende Identität des Kunstwerks.” On the history of the Romantic fragment and on Schlegel’s definition, cf. Behler 1985, Bubner 1993: 295-299, Fromm 2000, Ostermann 1991. Cf. Zinn 1959 and Behler 1985: 127-130. For the history of the term ‘fragment’ and different concepts, see Behler 1985; thought-provoking ‘elements of a definition’ are given by Lichtenstein 2009. Lichtenstein 2009: 125.

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is the expression of the indefiniteness of thoughts and meaning,7 it points towards an organic whole without knowing it and it is therefore a means of constant reflection.8 In their fragmentary writings, Schlegel, Novalis and other Romantics founded a new literary genre9 in which the lack of form and unity opens up room for creative writing and ongoing interpretation.10 In this regard, ancient and ‘modern’ literary texts are based upon different aesthetics as Schlegel’s comparison between the ancients and the moderns makes clear. On the one hand, his statement that “many works of the ancients have become fragments” points towards the historical fact that a lot of ancient works – which were originally well composed artefacts or unities with a specific beginning, middle and ending – have been transmitted only in the form of fragments. And indeed, as G. Most has shown, in antiquity there was neither a taste for fragments nor do we know of ancient scholars who were interested in collecting fragments. On the contrary: “It is only in the eighteenth, but then especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, that a taste develops, especially among academics but even among some segments of the larger public as well, for appreciating both artistic and textual fragments in their purely fragmentary condition …”11 Thus, Schlegel is applying a ‘traditional’ view of fragments to ancient literature, that they point to a lost whole and cry for reconstruction. On the other hand, this history of a loss, which the fragments of ancient texts seem to embody, is contrasted with the new approach to fragments in Schlegel’s second statement that “many works of the moderns are fragments already at the

7

8 9

10

11

Cf. Fromm 2000: 135: “Schlegel möchte die Natur des Denkens im Denken deutlich machen, indem er die Abbruchkriterien an der Form sichtbar werden lässt. Häufig geschieht dies durch Ironie und Witz. Novalis ist anspruchsvoller. Ihn interessiert nicht das Abbruchkriterium im Fragment, sondern die Konstruktion des Ungesagten im Mitgeteilten: Er will die unabschließbare Sinnfülle im Fragment andeuten.” Cf. Zimmermann 1986: 37-41. Cf. Behler 1985: 131: “Erst als Friedrich Schlegel im Jahr 1797 eine Sammlung von 127 Gedanken und Einfällen mit dem Titel Kritische Fragmente überschrieb, kann man von der Geburtsstunde einer neuen Literaturgattung sprechen, in der Form und Inhalt korrespondierten.” Bubner 1993: 296: “Die offen gelassene Formgebung erlaubt wechselnde Ergänzungen ad hoc, die konstitutive Unbestimmtheit verlangt nach fallweiser Bestimmung, das unfertige Werk hat noch eine Zukunft relevanter Modifikation und alternativer Neugestaltung vor sich. Der Interpret tritt in Konkurrenz mit dem Schöpfer, wo aufgrund der fragmentarischen Lückenhaftigkeit eines Produkts jeder Betrachter oder Leser zur aktiven Mitwirkung aufgefordert wird. Mithin gerät jedes statische Kunstwerk in Bewegung.” Most 2009: 11-12.

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time when they are written”.12 Here, Schlegel rules out the idea that a (Romantic) fragment looks back to its lost whole and establishes it as a self-contained opus perfectum.13 It is obvious that this programmatic statement about Romantic fragments is not only directed against ancient aesthetics but also criticises the strong mimetic approach towards ancient literature in the period of Classicism, which lead to a revitalisation of ancient aesthetics and poetics. As R. Bubner observed, “such a subtle concept of fragment, which the Romantics developed, did not come into existence out of the blue”.14 And indeed we have already mentioned the writing of fragments in the 18th century as well as the opposition to classicistic aesthetics which led to a different approach towards ancient aesthetics and thus towards the perception of fragments. In addition, the fascination, which fragments of (ancient) texts or artefacts15 have on their recipients, could be taken as a source of inspiration for the Romantics to use this power for their own writings.16 And there might be a further chapter in the history of the idea of ‘Romantic’ fragment, to which the following reading of the fragmentary ending of Lucian’s True Stories or Verae Historiae (VH) could contribute. For Lucian’s text, which was very popular in the second half of the 18th century, widely spread in a number of German translations and often transformed in creative receptions17, might have exercised some influence on the Romantics in general and on Schlegel in particular. I would like to make a preliminary remark. In his paratextual remarks in the proem of the True Stories the author declares that his whole narration is in fact a collection of ‘true’ lies, which were invented both, to entertain the readership and to leave something eternal to the world. The text is highly sophisticated as it addresses a well-educated readership, which is asked to take an active part in decoding the literary allusions the text contains. The more allusions we find, the more entertaining the text becomes. This kind of literary game between the text and its readership is a typical feature of Second Sophistic literature, which uses 12

13

14 15

16 17

Paradoxically, the new taste for (Romantic) fragments also fostered the “upsurge in collections of fragments of all kinds of ancient authors around the turn of the 19th century” (Most 1998: 12). Also cf. Schlegel’s Athenaeumsfragment nr. 206: “Ein Fragment muss gleich einem kleinen Kunstwerk von der umgebenden Welt ganz abgesondert und in sich selbst vollkommen sein wie ein Igel.” (Behler and Eichner 1988: 197) Bubner 1993: 299: “Eine derart raffinierte Theorie des Fragments, wie die Romantiker sie entworfen haben, entsteht natürlich nicht aus dem freien Spiel …” In this regard not only the fragments of ancient statues and the discussions about their aesthetic quality in the 18th century (Winckelmann) must be taken into account but also the debate on unfinished works and the ‘non finito’ in the history of art, cf. Ganther 1959, Gerke 1959, Frey 1959 and Nochlin 1994. For this aspect cf. Most 1998: 14-15. For the history of reception of the Lucianic œuvre in the 18th century cf. Baumbach 2000.

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tradition as a foil for innovation. As parts of this tradition have been lost in the course of the transmission of ancient literature, it is difficult for modern readers and scholars to play the game with the same cards as a 2nd century AD reader.18 Thus, all attempts to decode the allusions on the basis of a mimetic approach remain Stückwerk in the historical sense of fragmentum.19 The fragmentation of ancient literature as a historical fact restricts our possibilities of decoding the True Stories’ allusions to extant ancient literature.20 This does not mean that we cannot enjoy the True Stories anymore, but it means that we will enjoy them in a different way: At places where we do not find allusions to other ancient texts, we are invited to fill the ‘gap’ (Leerstelle) with our imagination or even speculation about the missing links. Thus, the lack of knowledge becomes a stimulus for searching, and it is precisely the process of fragmentation of ancient literature that enriches the True Stories with new interpretations and different ways of participation for its modern readers.21 The proposed ‘Romantic’ reading of Lucian’s text will start from the end and focus upon three aspects of the True Stories which can fruitfully be compared to the Romantic concept of fragment. 1) Like Romantic writings, the True Stories undermine the established aesthetical scheme of composition by using closure not as a final comment on the narration, which lets its readers experience “completeness, integrity, and coherence,”22 but as a critical reflection upon the very concept of the unity of literary works. 2) The process of fragmentation itself is discussed in the True Stories when the narrator loses a ‘new’ Homeric epos on the battle of dead heroes. 3) With regard to its contents and narrative structure, the True Stories do not limit themselves by any kind of boundaries. In travelling through time and space, transgressing the human sphere, encountering liminal phenomena (Grenzphänomene), such as dreams or magical creatures, the narration provides perfect examples of Romantic Entgrenzung. With regard to the form, the reader is also confronted with a mixture of genres, so that the course of narration is as unpredictable as its literary form. Furthermore, it is striking that Lucian’s narration is built in a very loose manner. Although the narration seems to be ordered according to a certain system – be it the Homeric order of events known from the Odyssee23 or a specific geographical scheme the narrator had in 18 19 20 21

22 23

A brief overview of Lucian and his writings in the period of the Second Sophistic is given by Swain 1996: 298-329. For this historical connotation of the term ‘fragment’ cf. Behler 1985: 127. The most comprehensive study on intertextuality in the True Stories and on the different ways of decoding the text is given by von Möllendorff 2000. As the text does not restrict itself in either place or time, a modern reader could even feel invited to decode the True Stories with the help of all literature s/he can think of – let us say with the help of Gulliver’s Travels or Jules Verne’s fantastic voyages –, even if it means the reversal of the history of reception from a scholarly point of view. Fusillo 1997: 210. Cf. von Möllendorff’s commentary 2000 on the True Stories.

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mind – the single episodes do not follow any systematic order which in the end would cohere into a single unity. Instead, the True Stories stitch together episodes of a journey which seems to have a telos, but never achieves it. The effect is similar to what Schlegel had in mind when he reflected upon the ‘endless unity’ (unendliche Einheit) of thought and literature, which can be found in interlinked fragments but not in well ordered teleological chains of events:24 “Viele Werke, deren schöne Verkettung man preist, haben weniger Einheit, als ein bunter Haufen von Einfällen, die nur vom Geiste eines Geistes belebt, nach einem Ziel streben.”25 The Ending of the True Stories: Fragment and False Closure After a brief paratextual reflection upon the aim and topic of the True Stories in the proem, the narration begins with the shift from the author to the first-person narrator, who invites his readers to share his curiosity and desire for adventure: Ὁρμηθεὶς γάρ ποτε ἀπὸ Ἡρακλείων στηλῶν καὶ ἀφεὶς εἰς τὸν ἑσπέριον ὠκεανὸν οὐρίῳ ἀνέμῳ τὸν πλοῦν ἐποιούμην. αἰτία δέ μοι τῆς ἀποδημίας καὶ ὑπόθεσις ἡ τῆς διανοίας περιεργία καὶ πραγμάτων καινῶν ἐπιθυμία καὶ τὸ βούλεσθαι μαθεῖν τί τὸ τέλος ἐστὶν τοῦ ὠκεανοῦ καὶ τίνες οἱ πέραν κατοικοῦντες ἄνθρωποι. (Luc. VH 1.5) Once upon a time, setting out from the Pillars of Hercules and heading for the western ocean with a fair wind, I went voyaging. The motive and purpose of my journey lay in my intellectual activity and desire for adventure, and in my wish to find out what the end of the ocean was, and who the people were, that lived on the other side.

The reader is taken to unknown regions beyond the end of the oikoumene, and in crossing geographical boundaries on the fictitious level s/he is also invited to leave behind the conventions of traditional narration, so that the new topic will give birth to a new kind of narration in all its structuring elements, be it the beginning or its closure, the point of no return for our reading of the True 24

25

Cf. Zimmermann 1986: 39-40: “Fragmentarisches Sprechen bietet […] die Möglichkeit, beide Prinzipien, Systematik und Fragmentarizität, aneinander zu reflektieren. Die Produktivität der Fragmente Schlegels liegt an deren Fähigkeit, in den Produkten das Scheitern der Reflexion immer wieder aufzuzeigen. […] So ist „ein System zu haben, und keins zu haben“ nicht Ziel, sondern Grund des Sprechens, und das Erscheinen des Sprechens als Fragment bedeutet nicht dessen vorläufige Systemlosigkeit, sondern die Weise der Reflexion, im Fragment den Begriff des Systems zu erhalten.” Schlegel Kritische Fragmente 103.

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Stories: After a long chain of events26 including the encounter with vine-women, a trip to the moon, a whale swallowing the ship, and the visit on the isle of the blessed the crew and its audience are shipwrecked at the end of Book 2: Ταχέως οὖν ἐπὶ ναῦν κατελθόντες ἀπεπλεύσαμεν. καὶ ἐπεὶ ἡμέρα ὑπηύγαζεν, ἤδη τὴν ἤπειρον ἀπεβλέπομεν εἰκάζομέν τε εἶναι τὴν ἀντιπέρας τῇ ὑφ’ ἡμῶν οἰκουμένῃ κειμένην. προσκυνήσαντες δ’ οὖν καὶ προσευξάμενοι περὶ τῶν μελλόντων ἐσκοποῦμεν, καὶ τοῖς μὲν ἐδόκει ἐπιβᾶσιν μόνον αὖθις ὀπίσω ἀναστρέφειν, τοῖς δὲ τὸ μὲν πλοῖον αὐτοῦ καταλιπεῖν, ἀνελθόντας δὲ ἐς τὴν μεσόγαιαν πειραθῆναι τῶν ἐνοικούντων. ἐν ὅσῳ δὲ ταῦτα ἐλογιζόμεθα, χειμὼν σφοδρὸς ἐπιπεσὼν καὶ προσαράξας τὸ σκάφος τῷ αἰγιαλῷ διέλυσεν. ἡμεῖς δὲ μόλις ἐξενηξάμεθα τὰ ὅπλα ἕκαστος καὶ εἴ τι ἄλλο οἷός τε ἦν ἁρπασάμενοι. (Luc. VH 2.47) With all speed we went back to the ship and sailed away. When the light of day began to show, we saw land and judged it to be the world opposite the one we inhabit. After doing homage and offering prayer, we took thought for the future. Some of us proposed just to land and then turn back again, others to leave the boat there, go into the interior and see what the inhabitants were like. While we were debating this, a violent storm struck the boat, dashed it ashore and wrecked it, and we ourselves had much trouble in swimming out with our arms and anything else that we could catch up.

Within the fictitious narration, this ending is not surprising; although it is no happy ending, it seems to be fitting for a sea voyage, especially as shipwreck has already been experienced in the last episode of the first book in the whale (VH 1.31), so that the end of the narration is linked to the end of Book one by means of a ring composition, which is a clear gesture or structural indication of closure.27 The occurrence of a ring composition, however, can also be taken as an indication that the story will go on in a similar fashion, so that this motif, by way of analepsis, may seem to be a starting point for a further episode. This reading of the motif as a false ending is underlined by the fact that in Homer’s Odyssee, which our text alludes to in the proem and which might be taken as a structural model for the narration as a whole,28 shipwreck is used in a transitional 26 27

28

A thematically structured overview over the events is given by von Möllendorff in the appendix of his commentary. Another instance of ring composition pointing to closure can be found in the term προσκυνήσαντες, which is a verbal quote to the first action the narrator and crew made on the isle of the wine women in homage to Heracles and Dionysos. Cf. Georgiadou/Larmour 1998: 232. Von Möllendorff, who, however, interpretes the motif of shipwreck as a clear signal of closure: “Der Schiffbruch, dem die Reisenden bislang trotz schwerster Stürme und

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function.29 Thus, the True Stories seem to have an open ending which is driving the narration forward. Such open endings are known from historiographical narratives that are constructed as series of events interlinked in such a way that the end of one episode functions as the beginning of another.30 Hence, it is only consistent that the Herodotean Stories have an ‘open ending’, which does not ‘close’ the work but rather invites its readers to take this ‘end’ as a starting point for their own historiographical writings. It creates a feeling of endlessness, it opens space for imagination and it activates the reader to fill in the gap or ‘Leerstelle’ without questioning the unity of the work itself. In the case of the True Stories however, this reading cannot prevail: One the one hand we do not have a generic tradition, to which the text belongs and which could generate such an expectation (Erwartungshaltung). On the other hand, the True Stories do not close at this point. Instead, the text comes to its end with the following celebrated epilogue or paratext: Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν τὰ μέχρι τῆς ἑτέρας γῆς συνενεχθέντα μοι ἐν τῇ θαλάττῃ καὶ παρὰ τὸν πλοῦν ἐν ταῖς νήσοις καὶ ἐν τῷ ἀέρι καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα ἐν τῷ κήτει καὶ ἐπεὶ ἐξήλθομεν, παρά τε τοῖς ἥρωσι καὶ τοῖς ὀνείροις καὶ τὰ τελευταῖα παρὰ τοῖς Βουκεφάλοις καὶ ταῖς Ὀνοσκελέαις, τὰ δὲ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἐν ταῖς ἑξῆς βίβλοις διηγήσομαι. (Luc. VH 2.47) Thus far I have told you what happened to me until I reached the other world, first at sea, then during my voyage among the islands and in the air, then in the whale, and after we left it, among the heroes and the dreams, and finally among the Bullheads and the Asslegs. What happened in the other world I shall tell you in the succeeding books.

The narrator steps out of the text and tells his readers, that there will be more to come, namely stories from the other world (τῆς ἑτέρας γῆς).31 On the one hand, the statement is analeptic as it reminds us of the beginning of the narration, where Lucian set out to find “what the end of the ocean was, and who the people were that lived on the other side”.32 This notion has created an expectation, which has not yet been met by the narration, but which is taken up in the

29 30 31 32

gar des Sturzes in die Abgründe des κῆτος hatten entgehen können, muss damit das Ende des Werkes markieren: jede andere Annahme wäre kontraproduktiv” (von Möllendorff 2000: 506). Cf. the arrival of Odysseus at the Phaeacians and the way the Phaeacian ship is wrecked on its return from Ithaca (Hom. Od. 13.159-187). Cf. Dewald 1997 For a extensive discussion of the meaning of this phrase see von Möllendorff 2000: 499-505. VH 1.5 τὸ βούλεσθαι μαθεῖν τί τὸ τέλος ἐστὶν τοῦ ὠκεανοῦ καὶ τίνες οἱ πέραν κατοικοῦντες ἄνθρωποι.

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epilogue in a way that clearly renews this expectation. Thus, the epilogue points to further narration and announces further books of True Stories, which means that we are faced with a false ending or a false closure in the sense of a deceiving one, which is created by means of a ring composition. On the other hand, there are no further books of True Stories transmitted from antiquity, nor do any external hints by ancient or byzantine readers point to such a sequel that the narrative makes us expect. This observation does not lead to aporia but leaves us with three possible readings of the work’s closure: Firstly, the statement in the epilogue could be true. In this case, Lucian had indeed written another two or more books of true stories, which are now lost. This is very unlikely with regard to the well documented transmission of Lucian’s oeuvre and the lack of any external references to these parts in the scholia or in quotations or allusions by ancient or Byzantine authors. And as one should not speculate about the possibility of the actual death of the author before he could finish his planned work or imagine him having left the project unfinished because he had better things to do, Lucian most likely did not write this epilogue with regard to an unfinished or nowadays lost text. Secondly, the statement could be false. This notion has been put forward by byzantine scholia written by Aretas, where we learn that the ending is the “biggest lie of all”: καὶ τὸ τέλος ψευδέστατον μετὰ τῆς ἀνυποστάτου ἐπαγγελίας.33 This reading is consistent with the paratextual statement about the narration from the proem, where the author declared that everything he is telling is a lie: τούτοις οὖν ἐντυχὼν ἅπασιν, τοῦ ψεύσασθαι μὲν οὐ σφόδρα τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐμεμψάμην, ὁρῶν ἤδη σύνηθες ὂν τοῦτο καὶ τοῖς φιλοσοφεῖν ὑπισχνουμένοις· ἐκεῖνο δὲ αὐτῶν ἐθαύμασα, εἰ ἐνόμιζον λήσειν οὐκ ἀληθῆ συγγράφοντες. διόπερ καὶ αὐτὸς ὑπὸ κενοδοξίας ἀπολιπεῖν τι σπουδάσας τοῖς μεθ’ ἡμᾶς, ἵνα μὴ μόνος ἄμοιρος ὦ τῆς ἐν τῷ μυθολογεῖν ἐλευθερίας, ἐπεὶ μηδὲν ἀληθὲς ἱστορεῖν εἶχον - οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐπεπόνθειν ἀξιόλογον - ἐπὶ τὸ ψεῦδος ἐτραπόμην πολὺ τῶν ἄλλων εὐγνωμονέστερον· κἂν ἓν γὰρ δὴ τοῦτο ἀληθεύσω λέγων ὅτι ψεύδομαι. οὕτω δ’ ἄν μοι δοκῶ καὶ τὴν παρὰ τῶν ἄλλων κατηγορίαν ἐκφυγεῖν αὐτὸς ὁμολογῶν μηδὲν ἀληθὲς λέγειν. γράφω τοίνυν περὶ ὧν μήτε εἶδον μήτε ἔπαθον μήτε παρ’ ἄλλων ἐπυθόμην, ἔτι δὲ μήτε ὅλως ὄντων μήτε τὴν ἀρχὴν γενέσθαι δυναμένων. διὸ δεῖ τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας μηδαμῶς πιστεύειν αὐτοῖς. (Luc. VH 1.4)

33

See, e.g., Georgiadou/Larmour 1998: 232, who stress the aspect of parody: “There can be little doubt that this is the end of the work; Lucian may have wished to leave open the possibility of further adventures, but it is more likely that we should take the closing words as one final parodic stroke.”

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Well, on reading all these authors, I did not find much fault with them for their lying, as I saw that this was already a common practice even among men who profess philosophy. I did wonder, though, that they thought that they could write untruths and not get caught at it. Therefore, as I myself, thanks to my vanity, was eager to hand something down to posterity, that I might not be the only one excluded from the privileges of poetic licence, and as I had nothing true to tell, not having any adventures of significance, I took to lying. But my lying is far more honest than theirs, for though I tell the truth in nothing else, I shall at least be truthful in saying that I am a liar. I think I can escape the censure of the world by my own admission that I am not telling a word of truth. Be it understood, then, that I am writing about things which I have neither seen nor had to do with no learned from others – which, in fact, do not exist at all and, in the nature of things, cannot exist. Therefore my readers should on no account believe in them.

Likewise the closing epilogue could be a lie, in which case nothing would follow and we would get the perfect closure of a work that set to sail with a series of lies and ends with a lie, which as such would lose the proleptic power of the announcement of further books. However, this reading is problematic as the epilogue does not belong to the narration of the adventures, and the first personnarrator steps out of his role and once more the author seems to take over and reflect upon his narration. Taken as a second paratext in dialogue with the proem34, the epilogue would not be affected by the announcement that the narration is a series of lies and could contain a true statement, which brings us back to the first option which has been ruled out before. But the statement could also be a true lie, i.e. a deceiving or false closure. The truth in the lie is that there is an untold and unfinished narration which crosses the borders of the text: the story continues although the text closes. The lie is that the story will be told by the narrator, i.e. in the text of the True Stories. The closure is false as we are faced with a “structural inadequacy of the conclusion”35 which does not allow the reader to experience closure although the text has come to an end. Instead, the discrepancy between the actual ending of the text and the readers’ expectations towards the narration is used to stimulate the reader to find an adequate ending himself. In this regard, the closure has a similar effect as the Romantic fragment. For the end of the True Stories explicitly hints at the incompleteness of the text and asks its readers to perceive the text as a fragment of an unfinished project. It is important to note that we 34 35

Cf. von Möllendorff 2000: 506. Cf. Smith 1968: 212. This definition of false closure differs from concepts which take false closure as a means to “create the impression that the song is ending, when in fact it continues” (Rutherford 1997: 58). Alternatively we can speak of false closure, when the text ends but its narration has not reached closure.

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receive no hints as to what the telos of this project is and which adventures the narrator and his crew will experience.36 The journey might be as endless and borderless as the fragmentary Romantic poetry. It becomes evident that Lucian’s text challenges traditional aesthetics of unity not only by being incomplete but also by talking about being incomplete in the form of a true lie at the end of the True Stories. The reader is forced to perceive the available part of the narrative as a fragment of a longer narration and is thus confronted with a new aesthetical approach towards literature – an approach which tries to overcome the traditional generic aesthetics of unity and which no longer regards incompleteness as a shortcoming but as a literary asset. From the point of view of the history of reception, the strategy of urging the reader to work out the closure for him/herself,37 the True Stories were very successful, the list of those who follow in his footsteps includes Rabelais, Gargantua et Pantagruel (1532-1564), Cervantes, Don Quijote (1605/15), Cyrano de Bergerac, Les États et Empires de la Lune (1656), Daniel Defoe, The Consolidator: Or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon (1705), Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s travels (1726), Ludvig Holberg, Niels Klim (1741), Gottfried August Bürger, Erzählungen des Freiherrn von Münchhausen (1786), David Christoph Seybold, Lucian’s Neueste Reisen oder wahrhafte Geschichten (1791), Edgar Allen Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838), Jules Verne, Voyages extraordinaires (De la Terre à la Lune, 1865). All of these writers added adventures to the True Stories, some of them like David Christoph Seybold even took Lucian’s closure as a starting point for the sequel: “so wurde in einem dicken Gewölbe auch ein geheimer Schrank entdekt, in dem alte Schriften lagen, die vermuthlich zur Zeit der Bauernkriege dahin gerettet wurden. Die Aufrührer glaubten, es seyen alte Dokumente, die wider sie zeugen, daß sie Zehenten und andere Abgaben schuldig seyen, nahmen sie zu sich, oder vernichteten sie. Ein griechisches Manuscript aber, das wohl gar als Zauberformeln von ihnen angesehen wurde, ließen sie liegen. Wie es in die Hände des Freundes kam, der mirs gab, weiß ich nicht. Auch liegt nichts daran. Genug, daß sie da ist die Fortsezung, die Lucian selbst versprochen hat.“38

36

37 38

The only proleptic notion we find is Rhadamanthus’ hint that the narrator will safely get home (VH 2.27 ὁ δὲ ἔφασκεν ἀφίξεσθαι μὲν εἰς τὴν πατρίδα πολλὰ πρότερον πλανηθέντα καὶ κινδυνεύσαντα, τὸν δὲ χρόνον οὐκέτι τῆς ἐπανόδου προσθεῖναι ἠθέλησεν. ‘He said that I should reach my native land in spite of many wanderings and dangers, but refused to tell the time of my return.’). Also cf. von Koppenfels 1981: 35, who stresses that the reader is invited to add his own thoughts to this ending. D.C. Seybold, Lucian’s Neueste Reisen oder wahrhafte Geschichten (1791), Vorrede.

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Our reading of the True Stories as a pre-Romantic ‘Romantic fragment’ is supported by an intratextual reflection on the process of fragmentation itself. At the moment of departure from the isle of the blessed the narrator is presented a brand new Homeric epos, which describes the battle of the dead heroes and which is transformed in the course of the events from an ‘existing’ complete literary text to a fragment: ἔγραψεν δὲ καὶ ταύτην τὴν μάχην Ὅμηρος καὶ ἀπιόντι μοι ἔδωκεν τὰ βιβλία κομίζειν τοῖς παρ’ ἡμῖν ἀνθρώποις· ἀλλ’ ὕστερον καὶ ταῦτα μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων ἀπωλέσαμεν. ἦν δὲ ἡ ἀρχὴ τοῦ ποιήματος αὕτη, Νῦν δέ μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, μάχην νεκύων ἡρώων. (Luc. VH 2.24) An account of this battle was written by Homer, and as I was leaving he gave me the book to take to the people at home, but later I lost it along with everything else. The poem began: This time sing me, O Muse, of the shades of the heroes in battle.

By indicating that Homer gave him a complete epos which is lost due to the shipwreck at the very end of the text, Lucian turns the quotation from the ‘Homeric’ epic into a fragment. As a consequence, the opening line of the epic is all we have, as the rest with its middle and ending is lost. Thus, the story of the Homeric epic self-referentially reflects upon the process of fragmentizing the text of the True Stories as a whole. At the very moment when the narrator loses the Homeric epos at the end of Book 2, the whole narration turns into a fragment, so that two aesthetical concepts, exemplified by the two fragments, are put in a close dialogue that results in the inauguration of a new literary form. Just as in Schlegel’s programmatic statement on the Romantic fragment quoted above, so in Lucian, too, we observe the difference between two kinds of fragments: On the one hand, we experience the Homeric fragment as part of a lost unity, i.e. the fictitious Homeric epos on the battle of the dead heroes, which is composed by an author who is well known for writing in a specific generic form. This would be a perfect example or fictitious test-in-case for Schlegel’s statement that “many works of the ancients have become fragments”. On the other hand, as shown above, the True Stories as the text which is carrying the Homeric fragment come close to what Schlegel refers to when he states that “many works of the moderns are fragments already at the time when they are written”. Compared with the Romantic approach towards fragments, Lucian’s text seems to operate with two similar aesthetical concepts and uses the ‘ancient’, i.e. traditional aesthetics (illustrated by the Homeric epos/fragment) as a starting point for developing a new, ‘Romantic’ approach towards literature at the end of his True Stories.39 39

Due to the fact that the True Stories are carrying the Homeric fragment it becomes obvious that the new aesthetical approach is superior to the traditional one which is

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True Stories, Romantic Entgrenzung and the Literary Hippocentaur: An Incomplete Ending The True Stories are constantly testing boundaries of both genre and thought and thus stimulate the readers’ imagination to engage in an endless process of interpretation. As shown above, in turning into a ‘Romantic’ fragment the text tries to shake the aesthetical expectations, which a contemporary readership most likely had with regard to an opus perfectum in the Aristotelian sense. In doing this, the True Stories can be characterised in Lucian’s own words (Bis. Acc. 33) as a literary Hippocentaur, as we find traces of all kinds of literary genres embedded in the narration; the author appears to be a ‘Prometheus in Words’ claiming to “combine and fit together elements which are quite disobedient and will not easily tolerate partnership”.40 Like many other works in the Lucianic œuvre the True Stories undermine the literary tradition, exceed the boundaries of genre and force its readers to change perspective by looking at the world from above or from below or through the mouth of a whale. The tendency of constantly searching for new literary forms, mixing different genres, and ignoring established boundaries is also characteristic of Romantic literature, to which the True Stories can fruitfully be compared. In this regard, it is striking that Lucian’s text does not belong to any established genre, on the contrary: The True Stories play with the conventions of literary genres to the extent that they resists any generic classification. However, apart from epic, drama, historiography and rhetoric there are strong affinities of the text with the ancient novel, which led to the popular classification of the True Stories as ‘novel on the fringe’.41 Put in dialogue with the Romantics, such a reading comes close to Schlegel’s Gespräch über die Poesie (1800), where he states “Ja ich kann mir einen Roman kaum anders denken, als gemischt aus Erzählung, Gesang und anderen Formen.” Of course, Lucian is not Schlegel and the True Stories are not a novel in the Romantic sense: Not only do we miss the mixture of prose and poetry (song), but there is also no ‘sentimental’ love for a higher truth to drive Lucian’s crew forward. Nor are there any traces of a ‘true story’ in Lucian’s novel, which – according to Schlegel – “should be the basis of all Romantic writing”.42 But Schlegel knew Lucian’s works well,43 and – from a comparative perspective –

40 41 42 43

critically reflected. At the same time – ironically – the True Stories establish themselves on the fictitious level as a source for reconstruction of the lost work: The narrator has given a short prose account of the battle in VH 2.23-24 which forms the basis of Homer’s epos. Lucian, Prometheus in Words, 6. Cf. Holzberg 1996 and Rütten 1997: 94-110. Schlegel’s opinion is “dass wahre Geschichte das Fundament aller romantischen Dichtung sei” (Gespräch über Poesie). Schlegel refers to Lucian several times: Über das Studium der griechischen Poesie (Behler and Eichner 1988.1: 64), Geschichte der Poesie der Griechen und Römer

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there is much of the Romantic ‘Schlegel’ in Lucian both in his True Stories and other parts of his œuvre,44 which helps to understand the intention of his writings in a better way. It seems to be precisely the intention of Entgrenzung that is at the core of Lucian’s text, which is constantly on the move, changing places as well as its narrative form starts from the end of the civilized world (the pillars of Hercules) and ends as a ‘Romantic’ fragment, which by being incomplete intends to stimulate the imagination of its recipients in a provoking and innovative way.45 With regard to its many ‘Romantic’ characteristics it would be tempting to regard Lucian’s True Stories as an almost perfect Romantic arabesque as it expresses the ‘progressive endless poetry’ in form of an ‘skilfully organised confusion’,46 in which the ‘endless chain of thoughts manifests itself in a subtle way’.47 The birth of similar literary phenomena might have been caused by parallels in the history of ideas between the period of the Second Sophistic and Romantic times. Like Schlegel, who wrote in opposition to the aesthetics of German Classicism, Lucian (and a number of other authors in his times) opposed the imitative revitalisation of classical literary forms and challenged any generic and aesthetical expectations, which are built upon the established literary canon. One could dwell upon this topic further, but – to quote Lucian once more – I will stop, for fear you may think that, as the saying goes, I am making an elephant out of a fly.”48 It is striking, however, that in the history of reception Lucian attracted both, Classicists and Romantics: On the one hand, Wieland translated the Lucianic œuvre and tried to establish it amongst the classical canon next to Homer, Demosthenes and others,49 on the other hand Schlegel in opposition to Wieland stressed the ‘Romantic’ side of Lucian’s writings: “Ovidius [ist]

44

45

46 47 48

49

(Behler and Eichner 1988.2: 80), Aus den Heften zur Poesie und Literatur (Behler and Eichner 1988.5: 232 and 241), Geschichte der alten und neuen Literatur (Behler and Eichner 1988.4: 51). Cf. Schlegel’s vision of a poetic revival of dead authors, which is modelled upon the Lucianic Dialogues of the Dead, the Fischer and upon scenes from the isle of the blessed in the True Stories: “Da würden die alten Wesen in neuen Gestalten leben, da würde der ehrwürdige Schatten des Dante sich aus seiner Unterwelt erheben, Laura in himmlischer Anmut vor uns wandeln, und Shakespeare mit Cervantes trauliche Gespräche wechseln.” Cf. Bubner 1993: 298: “Die bewusst und planmäßig in der Textgestalt ausgebreitete Unverständlichkeit, deren Ursymbol das Fragment ist, zielt auf eine Fortsetzung der Aktivität über den Augenblick der Begegnung mit dem vollendeten Werk hinaus.” Cf. Schlegel, Athenäumsfragment 116. Cf. Polheim 1966: 287: “arabesk ist jene durch die Dichtungskraft … hervorgebrachte Form, in der sich die unendliche Fülle ahnungsweise manifestiert.” Lucian, The Fly 12: ‘Though I still have a great deal to say, I will stop talking, for fear you may think that, as the saying goes, I am making an elephant out of a fly.’ (tr. Harmon). Cf. Baumbach 2000: 89-103.

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durchaus romantisch. Lucian nicht auch?”50 Lucian seems to adhere to both the Romantic and classicistic aesthetics, and the end of the True Stories could inspire its readers to both a Romantic or classicistic reception. Both readings were exploited by a contemporary of Wieland and Schlegel, David Christoph Seybold. As shown above, Seybold did not only complete the True Stories and thus fulfilled those expectations that were built upon (ancient) aesthetics of completeness, but he was also inspired by Lucian to write a Romantic fragment: Die Gelehrten-Verstaigerung nach dem Lucian. Ein Fragment (published in 1778). This creative reception of Lucian’s Vitarum auctio, which ends with Mercur’s invitation to go to hell, shows that a Lucianic fragment is a Romantic fragment is a fragment.

50

Vgl. Grosse-Brockhoff 1981: 106 und Behler 1989: 232. Romanticism is compared with Lucian by Hegel in one of his lectures on aesthetics entitled Die Auflösung der romantischen Kunstform: “Bedürfnis, sich gegen den bisher allein gültigen Gehalt zu kehren. Wie in Griechenland Aristophanes z.B. sich gegen seine Gegenwart und Lukian sich gegen die gesamte griechische Vergangenheit erhob.“

Mimesis, Metamorphosis, and False Closure in Apuleius’ Golden Ass* Alexander Kirichenko Introduction There are at least three closely interconnected senses in which the ending of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses can be said to constitute an instance of false closure.1 To begin with, the novel’s conclusion seems to be quite literally ‘wrong’ – almost as if it were borrowed from a completely different story. A comparison with the extant epitome of Apuleius’ lost Greek original is particularly revealing in this connection.2 In the Pseudo-Lucianic Λούκιος ἢ ὄνος, Lucius of Patrae, a sophist’s student and an avid aficionado of Thessalian magic, is by mistake transformed into a donkey. It quickly becomes clear, however, that all that he needs for his retransformation are simple garden roses. Since on the very same night he is kidnapped by robbers and soon thereafter sold at a marketplace, the hoped-for deliverance is constantly delayed as he passes from one owner to another. Finally, Lucius’ rendezvous with a sexually insatiable matron suggests to his last owner the idea of displaying the ass copulating with a convict woman in a theater. When Lucius is on stage, he notices roses among the flowers decorating the bed on which he is expected to perform, eats them, and becomes human again.3 This is a beautiful classical ending, with which Aristotle no doubt would have been perfectly happy: the transparent plot structure, with its beginning (where Lucius’ metamorphosis takes place) and middle (where his remetamorphosis is delayed in a variety of ways), reaches a perfectly satisfying

* 1 2

3

I would like to thank Michael Squire (then at Cambridge) and Georg Wöhrle (still at Trier) for discussing an earlier draft of this paper with me. On different senses of closure, see Fowler 1989. On the three versions of the ass-story (the Greek Metamorphoses, the Ps.-Lucianic Onos, and Apuleius’ Golden Ass) and on the history of scholarship on how they are related to each other, see Mason 1994. The section that follows Lucius’ retransformation is quite short. Lucius has regained not only his place in humanity, but also, through his recognition by the proconsul, his status in society (the fact that the woman who so much enjoyed the ass’s sexual performance throws him out now that everything in him has shrunk back to human proportions, in fact points in the same direction too: it puts him, as it were, in his place). Then his brother comes to pick him up, and now they are both set to go back home (Onos 55). The action is complete; its main conflict is resolved without leaving any loose ends or unanswered questions.

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conclusion.4 In Apuleius the situation is somewhat less straightforward. The frame narrative of his novel faithfully follows the basic plot line of the Greek ass-tale almost to the very end. All the more surprising is then a sudden deviation that occurs at the end. In Book 10, Lucius, too, is expected to perform a sexual act on stage. But instead of proceeding with the chain of events, which in the Greek original seems almost inevitably to lead to his re-humanization, he suddenly runs away to a deserted seashore, prays to Isis lacrimoso vultu (Apul. Met. 11.1), is assisted by her in regaining his human appearance, and becomes an ardent devotee of her religion. As M. Fusillo notes in his contribution to the Classical Closure volume, “in terms of narrative structure, the ending [of Apuleius’ Golden Ass] is not circular or parallel but tangential, introducing a new topic, unconnected to the rest of the work.”5 Furthermore, the structure of the novel’s final book itself (Book 11) offers a rather peculiar kind of closure too. J. Winkler was probably the first to draw attention to the fact that the novel’s ending in fact consists of multiple epilogues.6 We are dealing here with a seemingly never-ending series of scenes, each clearly expressing the sense of finality and yet each followed by but then... introducing a new episode. Lucius’ retransformation, his initiation into the mysteries of Isis, his migration to Rome, his further repeated initiations there – all these scenes can indeed be regarded as a succession of false closures. As a result of this multiplication of epilogues, the ultimate ending of the novel, in which Lucius becomes a successful orator and a low-rank priest of Isis, loses its closural momentum too. When we reach the final words of the novel, we are almost bound to ask: Is this really all now? And why on earth does it have to end here instead of anywhere else?7 And finally, each of these closural gestures promises to impose an interpretive finality on the novel’s meaning, and each time the expectation of final closure is frustrated. The speech by the Isiac priest Mithras, in which he in no uncertain terms postulates curiosity as the cause of Lucius’ misfortunes, sounds at first like the only valid interpretation of Lucius’ life, which the reader is implicitly encouraged to adopt.8 The unity with the divine that Lucius reaches 4

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8

On the concept of classical plot, see Lowe 2000, who essentially provides a heavily modernized reformulation of Aristotle’s understanding of plot in Poetics 7-12 (1450b1452b). On the notion of plot in general in modern literary theory, see Brooks 1984. Fusillo 1997: 223. Winkler 1985: 215-223. Fowler 1997: 21: “Closural signals begin to accumulate toward the end of any work, and “toward the end” may be quite near the beginning: the reader may be offered any number of possible places to stop in the closing pages, as the writer finds herself gripped not simply by an inability to achieve closure but by an embarras de richesses. In these circumstances, there is no a priori way to distinguish between an accumulating sense of final closure, and a stronger sense of false closure.” Cf. Merkelbach 1962: 1-90; Griffiths 1975: 1-55.

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upon his initiation seems to provide the answer to his misguided search for revelation in magic.9 Lucius’ frustration with the fact that he constantly has to undergo new initiations – each time at an additional, and quite exorbitant, cost –, which ultimately makes him doubt the reliability of the priests who have initiated him before, sounds like the unassailably valid reinterpretation of the preceding narrative as a satire on a superstitious fool duped by a gang of ruthless religious swindlers.10 None of these interpretative closures, however, retains its full validity until the ultimate conclusion of the novel. The notoriously disturbing final image of Lucius, who, encouraged by his staggering success as an orator, walks around the streets of Rome proudly parading the shorn skull of a newly promoted Isiac pastophorus, clearly shows that, after all, he is anything but a naive victim of a manipulative rip-off. But the anticlimactic indeterminacy of this conclusion, which leaves the door open for both a sympathetic and a sarcastic view of Lucius’ enthusiasm about his arguably rather slow upward progress within the cult’s hierarchy,11 is bound to leave most readers at a loss. So, paradoxically, whatever does sound like the last word in this text is invariably destabilized by alternative closural moves, whereas what in fact is the last word poses new questions instead of solving any of the old ones. The tension between the promise of an authoritative meaning and the play on deceiving appearances and conflicting perspectives inevitably poses the rather philosophical question of what kind of fiction this text confronts us with. It has recently been argued (among others, by me) that references to fictional narratives as either lies (mendacium) or old wives’ tales (aniles fabulae) that we repeatedly encounter in the novel may point to Plato’s discussion of different kinds of fictions in Book 2 of the Republic.12 In my opinion, Apuleius, who notoriously prided himself on being a philosophus Platonicus,13 repeatedly plays on the indeterminate status of his multiple narratives as both aniles fabulae and philosophical (Platonic) myths – as both frivolous stories designed ‘merely’ to entertain the listener and ‘noble lies’ conveying a deeper conceptual truth.14 In 9 10 11

12 13

14

Cf. Frangoulidis 2008: 175-203. Cf. Perry 1967: 236-282; Anderson 1982: 75-86. Griffiths 1975: 265: “Although Apuleius speaks with great respect of the pastophori [...], they belonged to a lower priestly grade, on the border-line between priests and temple servants.” Graverini 2007: 105-132; Kirichenko 2010: 107-121. Cf. e.g. Apul. Apol. 10.6 philosopho Platonico; Apul. Fl. 15 noster Plato. See also Schlam 1970. On reading Apuleius’ novel as a Platonic allegory, see Schlam 1992: 13-17. This becomes particularly apparent in the case of Cupid and Psyche, which is patently both: on the one hand, it could be read as a Platonic myth, vaguely based on Phdr. 243e-257b (cf. Kirichenko 2010: 107-109); on the other, it is explicitly referred to as an anilis fabula (Apul. Met. 4.27 sed ego te narrationibus lepidis anilibusque fabulis avocabo; cf. Graverini 2007: 122-127).

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this contribution, I would like to expand the interpretive framework provided by Plato’s discussion of lies and fictions and to connect the multifarious manifestations of false closure in Apuleius’ novel to its status as a work of mimetic art. In Book 3 of the Republic, Plato distinguishes between two types of literary discourse – diegesis (narrative without dialogue) and mimesis (imitation of human speech in drama and epic). The reason why Plato generally rejects mimesis is not only the negative effect fictions portraying gods and heroes in unseemly situations may have on the souls of the ideal state’s guardians, but also the danger inherent in mimesis as such. The underlying idea here is that witnessing acts of mimesis may induce the beholder to become mimetic too and that this, in turn, would lead to a virtual dissolution of the individual’s identity, whose preservation is indispensable for the proper functioning of the state based on the principle of justice.15 It is symptomatic that Plato particularly singles out myths about metamorphoses among the poetic lies to be banned from the ideal state’s school curriculum and that he constantly stresses the intricate link between mimesis and metamorphosis: not only is a mimetic artist – both an actor and an epic poet adopting multiple personalities – a kind of wizard notionally transforming himself into other creatures and thus dissolving the innermost kernel of his personality, but the recipient of a mimetic work is also inevitably bound to succumb to its metamorphic effect.16 For all these reasons, the only kind of mimetic artist that Plato admits into his city is ‘an unmixed imitator of a good man’ (Pl. Rep. 397d4-5 τὸν τοῦ ἐπιεικοῦς μιμητὴν ἄκρατον), who will produce poetry in accordance with philosophical truths and will thus stimulate the citizens to imitate morally useful examples (Pl. Rep. 378c).17 In Book 10 of the Republic, Plato uses the word mimesis in a somewhat different sense: all art, both visual and literary, he asserts, concerns itself with imitating objects of empirical reality, which are in turn mere imitations of the forms; as an imitation of an imitation, mimetic art is at a third removal from the truth and is for that reason entirely useless. What is more, images produced by mimetic art are by no means accurate representations of empirical objects, but only reflect what those appear to be like from a certain limited perspective.18 Although such images may look deceptively similar to the object they represent, the illusion they produce is able to cast a mimetic spell only on children and

15 16 17 18

Reeve 1988: 170-234; Halliwell 2002: 72-97. Cf. Halliwell 2002: 75-81. Reeve 1988: 220-231. Pl. Rep. 598a7-b5 κλίνη, ἐάντε ἐκ πλαγίου αὐτὴν θεᾷ ἐάντε καταντικρὺ ἢ ὁπῃοῦν, μή τι διαφέρει αὐτὴ ἑαυτῆς, ἢ διαφέρει μὲν οὐδὲν, φαίνεται δὲ ἀλλοία; καὶ τἆλλα ὡσαύτως. – οὕτως, ἔφη· φαίνεται, διαφέρει δ᾿ οὐδέν. – τοῦτο δὴ αὐτὸ σκόπει· πρὸς πότερον ἡ γραφικὴ πεποίηται περὶ ἕκαστον; πότερα πρὸς τὸ ὄν, ὡς ἔχει, μιμήσασθαι, ἢ πρὸς τὸ φαινόμενον, ὡς φαίνεται, φαντάσματος ἢ ἀληθείας οὖσα μίμησις; – φαντάσματος, ἔφη.

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mentally underprivileged adults.19 Nevertheless Plato again emphasizes the pernicious influence that mimetic art exerts on every recipient by inducing him to imitate and thus, in a sense, to transform himself into what he is not.20 With this Platonic framework in mind, I would like to argue that Apuleius uses both facets of the Platonic notion of mimesis – representational and behavioral (urging the recipient to imitate what a mimetic work represents) – in conjunction; that in his novel metamorphosis emerges as a particular case of the overarching mimesis phenomenon; and that the novel’s interpretative indeterminacy, which dooms every kind of provisional finality – both structural and conceptual – to remaining a false closure, is a result of Apuleius’ reflection on the nature of mimetic art in general and on the mimetic nature of his own narrative in particular. 1. Lucius’ Transformation (Books 1-3) The very first scene of the novel sets the basic parameters of the mimetic paradigm, which then consistently informs the rest of the narrative. The episode that immediately precedes Aristomenes’ tale presents a discussion between Lucius and his skeptical traveling companion about the worth of fantastic tales. The skeptic declares that, because of its obvious untruthfulness, listening to Aristomenes’ account would be a complete waste of time and begs the narrator to stop spreading his monstrous lies.21 This uncompromising stance essentially corresponds to Socrates’ ban in the Republic of all narratives that tell lies for their own sake without pursuing any further didactic goal. Lucius, on the contrary, is prepared to take the truth of the story at face value, even before he hears what this story is about, and concentrates instead on the entertainment it provides.22 What is particularly significant here is that he corroborates his idea that nothing can a priori be deemed impossible by, among other things, describing an incredible trick performed by a pair of street performers – a sword swallower and a contortionist: et ecce pone lanceae ferrum, qua bacillum inversi teli ad occipitium per ingluviem subit, puer in mollitiem decorus insurgit inque flexibus tortuosis enervam et exossam saltationem explicat cum omnium qui aderamus 19

20 21 22

Pl. Rep. 598c1-4 ἀλλ᾿ ὅμως παῖδάς γε καὶ ἄφρονας ἀνθρώπους, εἰ ἀγαθὸς εἴη ζωγράφος, γράψας ἂν τέκτονα καὶ πόρρωθεν ἐπιδεικνὺς ἀξαπατῷ ἂν τῷ δοκεῖν ὡς ἀληθῶς τέκτονα εἶναι. Cf. Büttner 2000: 198-202; Halliwell 2002: 118-147. Apul. Met. 1.2 ‘parce’, inquit, ‘in verba ista haec tam absurda tamque immania mentiendo. Apul. Met. 1.4 sed iam cedo tu sodes, qui coeperas, fabulam remetire. ego tibi solus haec pro isto credam.

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Alexander Kirichenko admiratione: diceres dei medici baculo, quod ramulis semiamputatis nodosum gerit, serpentem generosum lubricis amplexibus inhaerere. (Apul. Met. 1.4) And then a boy, pretty to the point of effeminacy, climbed up beyond the metal part of the sword, where the handle of the upturned weapon went down through the man’s throat towards the back of his head, and, as if he had neither sinews nor bones, performed a ballet to the admiration of all of us present there. You would have said that the noble serpent coiled around the staff of the healing god – that gnarled staff with half pruned 23 branches that he carries with him.

The convoluted figure represented by the two entertainers is so similar to familiar sculpted images of Asclepius’ snake coiling around a tree trunk that one could almost mistake it (diceres) for the mythological prototype of those images. In other words, the actors produce here an immediately recognizable imitation of a mimetic image and, by doing so, make it, as it were, literally come alive. In a sense, they create a kind of mobile tableau vivant, a statue capable of movement, which is almost as ‘real’ as the ‘original’ divine figure represented by the notional static image they are imitating. We are dealing here with a sublimely bewildering interplay of perspectives, which further underscores the irreconcilable clash of views on the significance of fantastic fictions voiced earlier on in the conversation between Lucius and the skeptic. On the one hand, Lucius is implicitly presented here as a paragon of perceptional naïveté – as a child or a stupid adult, i.e. one of the people fooled by the lifelikeness of mimetic images in Plato –, and his enthusiasm about the mimetic charms of an image twice removed from the ‘truth’ is explicitly paralleled with his uncritical willingness to take any fictional lie at face value. On the other hand, his fascination with the veritably magical – metamorphic – quality of the mimetic performance doubtless rings true in the context of a mimetic fiction, whose main themes are magic and metamorphosis. That is to say, this description of a mimetic representation could in a sense be considered to function as a self-referential metaphor for the mimetic qualities of the text in which it is located. From this perspective, the skeptic’s unassailably rational critique of fantastic fictions is effectively undermined by the fact that it is uttered from within a mimetic text (and an openly fantastic one, to boot) – where, according to Gorgias, those who let themselves be deceived are always wiser than those who do not.24 23 24

Unless otherwise indicated, translations are my own. Plu. Mor. 15c-d οὐ γὰρ ἅπτεται τὸ ἀπατηλὸν αὐτῆς ἀβελτέρων κομιδῇ καὶ ἀνοήτων. διὸ καὶ Σιμωνίδης μὲν ἀπεκρίνετο πρὸς τὸν εἰπόντα ‘τί δὴ μόνους οὐκ ἐξαπατᾷς Θετταλούς;’ ‘ἀμαθέστεροι γάρ εἰσιν ἢ ὡς ὑπ᾿ ἐμοῦ ἐξαπατᾶσθαι.’ Γοργίας δὲ τὴν τραγῳδίαν εἶπεν ἀπάτην ἣν ὅ τ᾿ ἀπατήσας δικαιότερος τοῦ μὴ ἀπατήσαντος καὶ ὁ

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Hence the sense of irreducible indeterminacy that emerges both from this scene and from later similarly self-referential episodes that concern themselves with mimetic arts. Both of the conflicting viewpoints expressed here promise a final solution to the dilemma. The fact that they are both right within their own ontological parameters and wrong within those applied by the opponent inevitably reduces these conclusions to the status of provisional – and thus inevitably false – closures. Just as the world of a mimetic image in Plato is never fully coextensive with the world of empirical objects (despite their deceptive similarity to each other, exact measurement will always reveal an unbridgeable gap between them),25 so a patently fantastic tale will possess a radically different significance depending on whether it is judged by the criteria of truth or mimetic probability. It is quite symptomatic that Apuleius really goes out of his way to point to the status of Aristomenes’ tale as a mimetic lie, in which the narrator in a sense only impersonates a succession of fictional characters. The explicit doubts in the truth of the tale voiced by the skeptic are further underscored by numerous subtle incongruities between Aristomenes’ claims within the tale and the reality of the setting in which it is told in the primary narrative. Before Aristomenes begins his tale, he avers that his companions will have no further doubts about its veracity when they reach Thessaly, where the story took place and is now told everywhere.26 As later becomes clear from the tale itself, the events it describes could be known to no one but the narrator himself; therefore, the fact that the narrator emphasizes the story’s popularity in Thessaly – the country proverbially known for its fantastic stories about magic – once again points to its fictitious nature, whereas the phrase quae palam gesta sunt acquires the quality of a hackneyed credibility formula that, far from commanding belief, attracts attention to the tale’s patent untruthfulness.27 This tale, when presented as an eyewitness account, entails such obvious contradictions with the frame narrative, which the

25

26 27

ἀπατηθεὶς σοφώτερος τοῦ μὴ ἀπατηθέντος. Cf. Benediktson 2000: 31-32 with further references. Pl. Rep. 602c10-d10 ταὐτόν που ἡμῖν μέγεθος ἐγγύθεν τε καὶ πόρρωθεν διὰ τῆς ὄψεως οὐκ ἴσον φαίνεται. – οὐ γάρ. – καὶ ταὐτὰ καμπύλα τε καὶ εὐθέα ἐν ὕδατί τε θεωμένοις καὶ ἔξω, καὶ κοῖλά τε δὴ καὶ ἐξέχοντα διὰ τὴν περὶ τὰ χρώματα αὖ πλάνην τῆς ὄψεως, καὶ πᾶσα τις ταραχὴ δήλη ἡμῖν ἐνοῦσα αὕτη ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ· ᾧ δὴ ἡμῶν τῷ παθήματι τῆς φύσεως ἡ σκιαγραφία ἐπιθεμένη γοητείας οὐδὲν ἀπολείπει, καὶ θαυματοποιία καὶ αἱ ἄλλαι πολλαὶ τοιαῦται μηχαναί. – ἀληθῆ. – ἆρ’ οὖν οὐ τὸ μετρεῖν καὶ ἀριθμεῖν καὶ ἱστάναι βοήθειαι χαριέσταται πρὸς αὐτὰ ἐφάνησαν, ὥστε μὴ ἄρχειν ἐν ἡμῖν τὸ φαινόμενον μεῖζον ἢ ἔλαττον ἢ πλέον ἢ βαρύτερον, ἀλλὰ τὸ λογισάμενον καὶ μετρῆσαν ἢ καὶ στῆσαν; – πῶς γὰρ οὔ; Apul. Met. 1.5 quod ibidem passim per ora populi sermo iactetur, quae palam gesta sunt. Cf. Keulen 2007 ad loc.

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narrator does not care to reconcile, that the attentive reader has no other choice than to regard it as an entertaining – mimetic – fiction. The harrowing confrontation with Thessalian witches that Aristomenes portrays in his tale clearly has the potential of functioning, in Plato’s phrase, ἀποτροπῆς ἕνεκα ὡς φάρμακον χρήσιμον (Pl. Rep. 382c9-10) – as a kind of warning to Lucius, portraying what may lie ahead for him, too, if he does not pay attention.28 The fact that one of the tale’s protagonists is named Socrates could be perceived, among other things, as an indirect signal designed to strengthen the apotreptic quality of the tale.29 But, an avid consumer of mimetic lies that he is, Lucius of course fails to derive any use from the tale and instead proceeds to implement Plato’s worst anxiety – by virtually imitating whatever he has just heard from Aristomenes. Most importantly, Lucius explicitly presents Aristomenes’ tale as the primary factor that urges him to develop an active interest in magic, which ends up implicating him in a magical plot of his own: ut primum nocte discussa sol novus diem fecit et somno emersus et lectulo, anxius alioquin et nimis cupidus congonscendi quae rara miraque sunt, reputansque me media Thessaliae loca tenere, qua artis magicae nativa cantamina totius orbis consono ore celebrarentur, fabulamque illam optimi comitis Aristomenis de situ civitatis huius exortam, suspensus alioquin et voto simul et studio, curiose singula considerabam. (Apul. Met. 2.1) As soon as the night was driven away and the new sun turned it into a day, I rose from both sleep and my bed, because I was not only generally agitated but also quite eager to discover things that were rare and astounding. For I recalled that I was in the very middle of Thessaly, from where by the unanimous agreement of the entire world the famous incantations of the magic art have originated. I also remembered that the tale told by my dearest companion Aristomenes had its origin in this city. For this reason, anxious with enthusiastic anticipation, I watchfully paid attention to every single thing.

Besides, it is quite conspicuous that individual events of the two narratives unfold in accordance with more or less the same scenario. Aristomenes’ adventures in Thessaly begin with an unsuccessful attempt to buy cheese at the marketplace, where he accidentally runs into Socrates, a close friend from his hometown. Similarly, Lucius begins his first day in Hypata by going to the marketplace; he also fails to buy what he wants, but runs into a close friend 28 29

On some of the inserted tales as warnings to Lucius, see e.g. Wlosok 1969. Cf. Graverini 2007: 151-158.

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instead. Milo’s wife, the witch Pamphile, is portrayed as a narrative double of the witch Meroe from Aristomenes’ tale. In a way, Lucius’ ‘imitation’ of Socrates’ interaction with a witch even outdoes the ‘original’: unlike the protagonist in Aristomenes’ tale, who presents himself as an unsuspecting victim of Meroe’s machinations, Lucius walks into the trap of magic of his own accord by starting a relationship with Photis. Moreover, this affair is depicted in the same terms suggestive of erotic slavery (Apul. Met. 2.18, 3.19) as the relationship between Socrates and Meroe (Apul. Met. 1.7). At a later point, immediately before his direct confrontation with magic, Lucius is tried for murder, which he himself believes he has committed (Apul. Met. 3.1-9). Even though the charges against him turn out to be a hoax and his mock trial a part of the Risus festival (Apul. Met. 3.10-11), the combination of individual details unequivocally reminds one of Aristomenes’ overwhelming fear of being falsely accused of murdering his friend Socrates.30 But the mimetic nature of Lucius’ account of his Thessalian adventures goes far beyond the fact that he notionally engages in reenacting a fictional tale. As a matter of fact, Lucius’ uncritical belief in Aristomenes’ tale urges him to see the very cityscape of Hypata as a mimetic/metamorphic locale par excellence, in which every inanimate object, every tree, and every animal are mere imitations, concealing transformed humans behind their innocently mundane appearances:31 nec fuit in illa civitate quod aspiciens id esse crederem, quod esset, sed omnia prorsus ferali murmure in aliam effigiem translata, ut et lapides, quos offenderem, de homine duratos et aves, quas audirem indidem plumatas et arbores, quae pomerium ambirent, similiter foliatas et fontanos latices de corporibus humanis fluxos crederem; iam statuas et imagines incessuras, parietes locuturos, boves et id genus pecua dicturas praesagium, de ipso vero caelo et iubaris orbe subito venturum oraculum. (Apul. Met. 2.1) I did not believe that anything I saw in the city was merely what it was, but that every single thing had been transformed into a different shape by some deadly incantation. I thought that the stones that I stumbled upon were petrified persons, that the birds I could hear were feathered humans, that the trees enclosing the city-limits were people who had likewise sprouted leaves, that the waters of the fountains were issuing from human bodies. I imagined that at any moment the statues and portraits would begin walking, that the walls would speak, that oxen and other cattle would prophecy, that the very sky and the sun would suddenly proclaim an oracular message. 30 31

Cf. Frangoulidis 2001: 54. On the ekphrastic nature of this passage, see Slater 2008: 240-243.

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In essence, he thinks to have entered the unstable, self-evidently fictional world of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, where nothing is as it seems and where, too, metamorphosis is often conceived of as a subcategory of mimesis.32 Lucius’ fantasy, however, remains unfulfilled at first, which seems to corroborate even further the impression of its purely fictitious nature: sic attonitus, immo vero cruciabili desiderio stupidus nullo quidem initio vel omnino vestigio cupidinis meae reperto cuncta circumibam tamen. (Apul. Met. 2.2) In this reverie, induced by such tortured desire, even though I could not find a hint or even a trace of what I passionately sought, I still went around examining everything.

Lucius is presented here as seeing in his imagination something that is clearly not there. But this is not the only problem that he has with his vision. Not only does his imagination defamiliarize the observable world by virtually transforming it into a mere imitation of the mimetic fiction he has just heard, but it also prevents him from recognizing what clearly should be familiar: when at the market place he runs into Byrrhena, he identifies her as a rich matron by her opulent clothing and golden jewelry, but fails to recognize her as a maternal aunt who raised him (Apul. Met. 2.2)! Quite curiously, this encounter constitutes the primary narrative’s second echo of Aristomenes’ confrontation with Socrates: the narrator of the inserted tale, too, fails to recognize his fellow citizen he runs into at the Hypatan marketplace because the latter is wearing rather unusual clothes (this time, not a luxurious garment, but rags), and it is only a closer look at the pitiful stranger that transforms him into a friend. Byrrhena’s sudden, but perfectly ordinary, transformation from a mere stranger, which she appears to Lucius to be, into a close relative, which she is, not only replicates a motif familiar from the inserted tale, but also serves, quite ironically, as a compensation for Lucius’ naive frustration with the cityscape of Hypata failing to reveal its presumably fantastic, metamorphic nature. His inability to attribute an appropriate meaning to the observable surface (he either interprets too much into what he sees or is incapable of seeing the obvious) is truly remarkable and will continue to dominate the way he perceives the confusing fictional world he inhabits. Lucius’ description of the statue of Diana and Actaeon, which he sees at Byrrhena’s house, again brings to the fore both of the central themes that determine the tenor of this section of the novel – Lucius’ obsession with mimetic surfaces at the expense of meaning and the intricate link between mimesis and 32

On connections between art and metamorphosis in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in general, see Bernsdorff 1999.

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metamorphosis.33 In Lucius’ ekphrasis, the statues of Victory goddesses appear to be in flight; if one were to hear dogs barking in the vicinity one would think that the barking came from the marble dogs; the grapes are so naturalistically carved that one is almost tempted to taste them; etc.34 What particularly heightens the ironic momentum of this scene is of course the fact that it provides another response to the mimetic/metamorphic expectations that Lucius voiced while intently contemplating the cityscape of Hypata. This time, however, this response assumes the form of a complete inversion: instead of seeing a city consisting of petrified humans, he sees a marble statue virtually coming alive. Just as in Lucius’ encounter with Byrrhena his expectation of a face-to-face confrontation with a literally metamorphic world is reduced – rather disappointingly – to a banal recognition scene, so here, too, the fantastic effectively dissolves into something purely figurative – into a typical ekphrastic topos familiar from as early as, among other texts, Aeschylus’ Theoroi Hellenistic epigrams, Theocritus 15, and Herodas 4 – a topos according to which the illusion produced by a mimetic representation is so perfect that mimesis, as it were, effaces itself and makes a work of art seem as real as the object it imitates.35 It is quite symptomatic that visual mimesis serves in some of these earlier texts (especially in Herodas’ and Theocritus’ mimes) as a kind of self-referential metaphor for the literary mimesis that takes place in the text itself.36 In the context of Apuleius’ novel, where, as we have seen, Lucius constantly engages in role-playing mimesis and perceives the fictional world he inhabits as a result of metamorphic mimesis, his obsession with the mimetic naturalism of art, too, effectively turns into a metaphor for the multifariously mimetic qualities of the narrative. Quite significantly, unlike Plato’s naive beholder fooled by the naturalism of a mimetic image, Lucius is here capable of admiring the illusionistic artistry without being entirely deceived by it: the text’s almost annoying emphasis on the fact that, despite deceptive appearances, all individual statues in the composition are indeed made of marble,37 reminds one of the gap between the mimetic representation and the reality it imitates. As the description progresses, however, this distinction becomes rather blurred: 33 34

35 36 37

Cf. Winkler 1985: 168-170; Slater 1998: 26-37; Elsner 2007: 292-293. Apul. Met. 2.4 sicunde de proximo latratus ingruerit, eum putabis de faucibus lapidis exire; ars aemula naturae; putes ad cibum inde quaedam, cum mustulentus autumnus maturum colorem adflaverit, posse decerpi. On Hellenistic, as well as earlier, texts exploiting this topos, see Männlein-Robert 2007. On Aeschylus’ Theoroi, see O’Sullivan 2000. Hunter 1996: 116-123. Apul. Met. 2.4 lapis Parius in Dianam factus [...] qui canes et ipsi lapis erant [...] de faucibus lapidis [...] arbusculis alibi de lapide florentibus [...] splendet intus umbra signi de nitore lapidis [...] inter medias frondes lapidis [...] et in saxo simul et in fonte loturam Dianam opperiens. Cf. Elsner 2007: 291-293.

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Alexander Kirichenko sub extrema saxi margine poma et uvae faberrime politae dependent, quas ars aemula naturae veritati similes explicuit. putes ad cibum inde quaedam, cum mustulentus autumnus maturum colorem adflaverit, posse decerpi et, si fontem, qui deae vestigio discurrens in lenem vibratur undam, pronus aspexeris, credes illos ut rure pendentes racemos inter cetera veritatis nec agitationis officio carere. (Apul. Met. 2.4) Apples and grapes hung from the lower edge of the rock; their highly artistic finish, depicted with a skill rivaling nature’s, made them lifelike, so that you could imagine that some of them could be plucked for eating once the maturing autumn endowed them with the color of ripeness. If you bent low and gazed into the water that skirted the goddess’s feet as it lapped in gentle waves, you would think that the bunches of grapes hanging from the rock possessed the faculty of movement as well as other lifelike qualities.

What we see here is a second image – the reflection of the sculpture in the water –, which may remind one of the mirror as the quintessential manifestation of the mimesis phenomenon in Book 10 of Plato’s Republic.38 At the same time, the fact that the image twice removed from the ‘truth’ becomes endowed with movement, and, for that reason, does look as lifelike as the original represented by the static statue itself,39 in a way harks back to Lucius’ enraptured description of the mobile tableau vivant at the beginning of Book 1, which, as we have seen, can be perceived as emblematic of the mimetic status of Apuleius’ narrative as a whole. The Platonic intimation that a mimetic work is not only intrinsically metamorphic but can also have a metamorphic effect on the beholder is echoed in this passage too – in Lucius’ description of Actaeon’s transformation into a stag triggered by his gaze at (the mimetic image of) Diana: inter medias frondes lapidis Actaeon simulacrum curioso optutu in deam proiectus, iam in cervum ferinus et in saxo simul et in fonte loturam Dianam opperiens visitur. (Apul. Met. 2.4) In the middle of the marble foliage one could see the statue of Actaeon; bending forward he was gazing with curiosity towards the goddess; he was already in the process of turning into a stag, as one could see him waiting for Diana – both as a marble image and as a reflection in the water – to take her bath. 38 39

For the Platonic mirror analogy, see Halliwell 2002: 118-147. On illusionism in Roman still life representations, see Squire 2009: 374-389. On ‘the dream of the moving statue’ from antiquity to modern literature and film, see Gross 1992. On the earliest manifestations of this idea in Greek poetry, see Francis 2009.

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In this dizzying play of reflections, Actaeon sees Diana twice – as a marble statue and as a reflection in the water, the latter, as one is lead to assume by the previous description, transforming the stone into a perfectly lifelike image. Moreover, what the marble Actaeon ‘sees’ in the water is not only the image of Diana, but also his own reflection, which in a sense makes him notionally come alive too (note that in saxo simul et in fonte can be taken apo koinou). This emphasis on the reflected image of the beholder clearly evokes the Narcissus episode in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, where the confusion produced by a deceptively lifelike – mobile – mirror image leads to the literal metamorphosis of the beguiled beholder, indirectly caused by his recognition that the object of his love possesses no reality of its own, but is merely a mimetic representation of himself.40 But the situation in Apuleius is of course even more complex, since here the beholder himself is nothing but a mimetic image – with his reflection in the water doubly removed from the alleged mythical ‘original’, which would itself be classified in Platonic terms as a lie – i.e. a mimetic fiction. Within this infinite recess of mimetic layers, the duplication of Actaeon’s gaze allows him to see both the mimetic image itself and its notional coming-alive (i.e., in a sense its metamorphosis). At the same time, it marks – quite ironically – the moment of his own – literal – metamorphosis. The subtlety with which Apuleius intertwines (Platonic and) Ovidian echoes here is indeed quite stunning: Actaeon, whose portrayal in Apuleius owes a great deal to Ovid’s version of the myth,41 displays a truly Pygmalionesque attraction to a statue (notionally) coming alive, whose transformation he, in a way like Narcissus, believes to be able to contemplate in the deceptive mimetic surface of the water, which, to top it all off, has a doubly transformative effect on him. Furthermore, what complicates this play of reflections even further is the fact that Actaeon’s doubled gaze is mirrored in the narrator’s gaze, who contemplates and describes the image in this ekphrastic passage. Quite significantly, Lucius reproduces Actaeon’s enchantment with a metamorphosed image not only in his description, but also in his own subsequent narrative. To begin with, during his first sexual encounter with Photis he is truly spellbound by what he perceives as his lover’s metamorphosis into (a mimetic image of) Venus.42 Later, it is his look at Pamphile transforming herself into an owl that ultimately leads to his metamorphosis. Besides, Actaeon’s transformation into an animal as a punishment for his curiosity for divine secrets has a tremendous thematic significance for Lucius’ own imminent transformation, which is particularly emphasized by Byrrhena’s delectably ambiguous tua sunt cuncta quae vides. Like Aristomenes’ 40 41 42

On the ambiguities of vision in Ovid’s Narcissus episode, see Hardie 2002: 143-172; Bartsch 2006: 84-103. Cf. van Mal-Maeder 2001: 113. Apul. Met. 2.17 nec mora, cum omnibus illis cibariis vasculis raptim remotis laciniis cunctis suis renudata crinibusque dissolutis ad hilarem lasciviam in speciem Veneris, quae marinos fluctus subit, pulchre reformata.

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tale, this myth seems to be specially designed to serve to Lucius as a φάρμακον – to keep him from making similar mistakes of his own. But as in the case of Aristomenes’ tale, Lucius not only misses this embarrassingly obvious message, but also ends up effectively imitating the myth of Actaeon – showing illicit curiosity, spying on a powerful divine woman, and eventually turning into an animal.43 Again, the narrative essentially reifies the Platonic ‘mimetic anxiety’ by establishing a cause-and-effect link between the two kinds of mimesis – representational and behavioral. But this is not all. This complex interplay and multidimensional mirroring of gazes is reflected on a yet higher level – in the interpretive stance of the reader. “Whatever you see here is yours,” says Byrrhena to her bemused young guest. But within this complex mise en abyme configuration, this phrase seems to be equally addressed to the reader too, who is thereby encouraged to ponder on the mimetic nature of the work s/he is reading. There are indeed multiple ways of looking at a mimetic image or reading a mimetic fiction. Vision can be focused in different ways and may potentially result in radically different images – from skillfully wrought stone (or carefully arranged words) to something indistinguishable from reality to something capable of expressing a rather complex – and potentially useful – thought.44 What we seem to be urged to do here is to keep all these perspectives in mind simultaneously, since to choose one of them would of necessity mean to be content with a reductionist interpretation – or a false closure. From this perspective, Lucius’ adventures in Hypata begin to acquire the following contours: he expects the city to be literally mimetic – i.e. to consist entirely of metamorphosed human bodies; his expectation seems to be revealed at first as a purely fictional fantasy; however, by succumbing to the mimetic charms – both visual and aural – and by imitating what in Plato’s philosophical universe would be a succession of mimetic lies, Lucius does succeed in 43 44

Cf. Wlosok 1969: 73-74; Schlam 1992: 49. Cf. Plu. Mor. 30c-d ἐπεὶ δ᾿ ὥσπερ ἐν ταῖς νομαῖς ἡ μὲν μέλιττα διώκει τὸ ἄνθος, ἡ δ᾿ αἴξ τὸν θάλλον, ἡ δ᾿ ὗς τὴν ῥίζαν, ἄλλα δὲ ζῷα τὸ σπέρμα καὶ τὸν καρπόν, οὕτως ἐν ταῖς ἀναγνώσεσι τῶν ποιημάτων ὁ μὲν ἀπανθίζεται τὴν ἱστορίαν, ὁ δ᾿ ἐμφύεται τῷ κάλλει καὶ τῇ κατασκευῇ τῶν ὀνομάτων [...], οἱ δὲ τῶν πρὸς τὸ ἦθος εἰρημένων ὠφελίμως ἔχονται, πρὸς οὓς δὴ νῦν ἡμῖν ὁ λόγος ἐστίν, ὑπομιμνήσκωμεν αὐτοὺς ὅτι δεινόν ἐστι τὸν μὲν φιλόμυθον μὴ λανθάνειν τὰ καινῶς ἱστορούμενα καὶ περιττῶς, μηδὲ τὸν φιλόλογον ἐκφεύγειν τὰ καθαρῶς πεφρασμένα καὶ ῥητορικῶς, τὸν δὲ φιλότιμον καὶ φιλόκαλον καὶ μὴ παιγνιᾶς ἀλλὰ παιδείας ἕνεκα ποιημάτων ἁπτόμενον ἀργῶς καὶ ἀμελῶς ἀκούειν τῶν πρὸς ἀνδρείαν ἢ σωφροσύνην ἢ δικαιοσύνην ἀναπεφωνημένων. Seneca expresses a similar idea: Ep. 108.29-30 non est quod mireris ex eadem materia suis quemque studiis apta colligere: in eodem prato bos herbam quaerit, canis leporem, ciconia lacertam. cum Ciceronis librum de re publica prendit hinc philologus, hinc grammaticus, hinc philosophiae deditus, alius alio curam suam mittit.

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transforming the drab reality into a fascinating fiction. Or, as the Chaldean prophet Diophanes predicted to him prior to his journey, he essentially becomes such a fantastic fiction himself.45 For the reader, the impossibility of arriving at a totalizing interpretation (or of closing off the meaning) is thus predicated upon the fact that the very fictional world of the novel is in a permanent metamorphic flux, within which multiple mimetic frames are constantly conflated, breaching the constraints of binary logic and thus endowing the same event with multiple – sometimes incompatible – meanings. The process of Lucius’ gradual transformation into a fantastic fiction is further underscored in the Risus festival episode. Just as Lucius’ Thessalian adventures as a whole can in a sense be perceived as a result of his inadvertently imitating the mimetic fiction of Aristomenes’ tale, so the Risus festival episode, too, can be viewed as a reenactment of another inserted tale – the one told by Thelyphron at Byrrhena’s banquet. Quite conspicuously, what ultimately triggers Lucius’ participation in the Risus festival is the fact that the banquet guests laugh at Thelyphron’s account: it is precisely this laughter that suggests to Byrrhena the idea of asking Lucius to contribute ‘something witty’ to the celebration.46 In other words, Lucius is explicitly encouraged here to replicate the effect produced by an inserted tale. For this reason, it hardly comes as a surprise that the plot structures of the two narratives are marked by numerous similarities. Like Thelyphron, Lucius is a foreigner confronted with an unheard-of Thessalian custom in which the locals encourage him to play the central role: Thelyphron is offered a fee for protecting a corpse from the onslaught of Thessalian witches, who are known to cut off noses and ears from unattended dead bodies (Apul. Met. 2.21), and pledges to replace any missing facial features with his own (Apul. Met. 2.22), whereas Lucius is urged to contribute something witty to the Risus Festival – a custom at least as baffling and unique to Thessaly as Thelyphron’s corpse-guarding vigil (Apul. Met. 2.31). Of course, like Thelyphron, Lucius willingly accepts the offer without considering the danger that his participation might entail. Moreover, for a long time both remain unable to perceive the true nature of the events that they have been enticed to participate in: Thelyphron thinks that he has come out of his bizarre experience unscathed 45

46

Apul. Met. 2.12 mihi denique proventum huius peregrinationis inquirenti multa respondit et oppido mira et satis varia; nunc enim gloriam satis floridam, nunc historiam magnam et incredundam fabulam et libros me futurum. On Lucius’ ‘becoming a book,’ see Kirichenko 2011. Apul. Met. 2.31 cum Thelyphron hanc fabulam posuit, conpotores vino madidi rursum cachinnum integrant. dumque bibere solitarias postulant, sic ad me Byrrhena: ‘Sollemnis’, inquit, ‘dies a primis cunabulis huius urbis conditus crastinus advenit, quo die soli mortalium sanctissimum deum Risum hilaro atque gaudiali ritu propitiamus. hunc tua praesentia nobis efficies gratiorem. atque utinam aliquid de proprio lepore laetificum honorando deo comminiscaris, quo magis pleniusque tanto numini litemus.’

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until it turns out that the witches have snatched his own nose and ears replacing them with wax copies, whereas Lucius is convinced that he has committed a triple murder until his victims are revealed to be slashed wineskins. Quite significantly, in both cases the final revelation takes place in front of huge crowds and causes unrestrained hilarity in the spectators and profound humiliation in the protagonist. This process of behavioral mimesis, already familiar from Lucius’ imitation of Aristomenes’ tale and of the Actaeon myth, is once again underscored here by a portrayal of representational mimesis. The Risus festival is based on an essentially theatrical paradigm in which Lucius is forced – unbeknownst to himself – to play a fictional role, that is, essentially to act like a mimetic artist.47 What happens is that Lucius is arrested and tried for having murdered three local citizens (Apul. Met. 3.3). Quite significantly, the trial takes place in a theater. Lucius complies with the role imposed on him by this scenario and, to defend himself, tells a story that is as patently false (i.e. is a mimetic lie) as the version presented by the prosecution: in his apology (Apul. Met. 3.4-6), he essentially produces a complete inversion of the prosecution’s arguments by presenting himself as a law-abiding citizen who risked his life for his host’s sake and eliminated a band of bloodthirsty robbers by killing them one by one. The last scene of the Risus festival fully reveals the performance’s theatrical nature. Lucius obediently plays the role of a culprit until he is forced to unveil the ‘corpses’ (Apul. Met. 3.9). When he realizes that the vigorous men whom he had allegedly killed on the previous night are nothing but slashed wineskins, there is no need for the crowd to restrain its ecstatic laughter any longer. That is to say, the transformation of the murder victims into wineskins simultaneously entails Lucius’ transformation from a culprit into a comic actor, which Lucius himself couches in explicitly metamorphic terms (Apul. Met. 3.9 quae fortunarum mearum repentina mutatio?). Moreover, the moment of ultimate realization makes him feel transformed into a marble statue.48 In addition to this series of notional metamorphoses, the city of Hypata issues a decree immortalizing Lucius’ participation in the Risus festival by literally erecting a bronze statue, i.e. producing a mimetic image of him.49 Once again, we are confronted with a series of transformative effects produced on the beholder by the paradoxes inherent in contemplating a mimetic image. As the narrative progresses, however, the mimetic paradigm receives another additional twist. Photis reveals to Lucius that what in the Risus festival was framed as a transformation of humans into inanimate objects was in fact exactly 47 48 49

On the theatricality of the Risus festival episode, see Slater 2003: 87-93; Kirichenko 2010: 36-37 and 52-58. Apul. Met. 3.10 at ego ut primum illam laciniam prenderam, fixus in lapidem steti gelidus nihil secus quam una de ceteris theatri statuis vel columnis. Apul. Met. 3.11 at tibi civitas omnis pro ista gratia honores egregios obtulit; nam et patronum scribsit et ut in aere stet imago tua decrevit.

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the opposite: the wineskins that Lucius mistook for robbers were actually made to imitate humans by magic – the revelation that unchains the series of events that ultimately lead to Lucius’ transformation. In other words, the juxtaposition of different mimetic phenomena in the Risus festival, which include Lucius’ figurative metamorphoses into an actor and into a statue, serves to underscore the literal metamorphoses of the fictional world he inhabits into an uncompromisingly fantastic one, similar to those of Aristomenes’ and Thelyphron’s tales. Lucius’ transformation into an ass is the culmination of this gradual mimetic/metamorphic process. Both of the familiar aspects of mimesis – representational and behavioral – play the central role in the description of Lucius’ metamorphosis too. When Lucius sees Pamphile turn into an owl, he believes to be notionally transformed – against his will: et illa quidem magicis suis artibus volens reformatur, at ego nullo decantatus carmine, praesentis tantum facti stupore defixus quidvis aliud magis videbar esse quam Lucius. (Apul. Met. 3.22) Whereas she deliberately changed her shape through the art of magic, I was spellbound through no incantation, but just stood transfixed with astonishment at this event and seemed to have become something other than Lucius.

Once again, the gaze at a mimetic/metamorphic phenomenon is revealed to have a transformative effect on the beholder, and it is this figurative transformation that ultimately leads to the literal one. Moreover, perfectly in keeping with Lucius’ overall propensity for behavioral mimesis, his metamorphosis is the result of his desire to imitate the fantastic act he has just seen Pamphile perform.50 Thus Lucius’ metamorphosis, too, is presented in doubly mimetic terms: not only does it result in an incredibly faithful imitation of an ass (both as indistinguishable and as different from the real thing as a work of mimetic art),51 but it also represents the most palpable manifestation of Lucius’ overall mimetic behavior. From this viewpoint, the fact that this time Lucius’ imitation goes so tragicomically awry (he wants to become an ominous owl, but becomes a laughable ass) can also be perceived as a reification of Plato’s critique of unrestrained mimeticism. What is more, the fact that in the course of the novel’s first three books Lucius intermittently impersonates three different characters – Aristomenes, Thelyphron, Actaeon – turns the ultimate loss of his human appearance into the 50 51

Apul. Met. 3.22 ‘patere, oro te, inquam,’ [...] ‘ut meae Veneri Cupido pinnatus adsistam tibi.’ Cf. Apul. Met. 3.26 ego vero quamquam perfectus asinus et pro Lucio iumentum sensum tamen retinebam humanum.

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culmination of the gradual virtual dissolution of his personal identity. In a sense, Lucius’ fluid personality turns him into a reified incarnation of the hypothetical Platonic μιμητικός – a rather incongruous patchwork character who is never quite identical with himself.52 This dissolution of the protagonist’s identity has also far-reaching consequences for the plot structure of his narrative. As a matter of fact, it is precisely Lucius’ indiscriminately mimetic behavior that transforms the perfectly logical narrative structure of the original Greek ass-tale into a collage of recycled scenarios, which fail to cohere into a straightforwardly Aristotelian ‘classical’ plot. As we have seen, the primary narrative every now and then reproduces certain elements of the basic plot lines already rehearsed in embedded tales. Then, however, it abandons them in order to realign itself with a different narrative scenario. As a result, the frame narrative repeatedly produces the sense of (episodic) closure modeled on the conclusions of different inserted tales, but then invariably continues to follow a completely different narrative logic of its own.53 As I will show below, this quality of the narrative is essential for our understanding of the multiple false closures with which we are confronted in Apuleius’ final book. 2. Lucius’ Retransformation (Books 10-11) The intricate interplay between representational and behavioral mimesis is repeatedly emphasized in conjunction with Lucius’ re-metamorphosis too. To begin with, his transformation back into a human is adumbrated in Book 10: still an ass, he is made to play the role of a human – first by eating human food, drinking wine, and displaying other super-asinine abilities, and then by having 52

53

Cf. Pl. Rep. 394e1-4 τόδε τοίνυν, ὦ Ἀδείμαντε, ἄθρει, πότερον μιμητικοὺς ἡμῖν δεῖ εἶναι τοὺς φύλακας ἢ οὔ. ἢ καὶ τοῦτο τοῖς ἔμπροσθεν ἕπεται, ὅτι εἷς ἕκαστος ἓν μὲν ἂν ἐπιτήδευμα καλῶς ἐπιτηδεύοι, πολλὰ δ᾿ οὔ; This pattern of interaction between the frame and the inserted tales recurs on a few other occasions. For instance, when Charite is rescued by her bridegroom (Apul. Met. 7.5-12), her adventures seem to follow quite closely the scenario anticipated in the conclusion of the tale of Cupid and Psyche, where Cupid, too, saves his beloved from an imminent disaster. This happy ending turns out to be another false closure, however, when later on we are confronted with the tragedy of Charite’s heroic death (Apul. Met. 8.1-14). A similar thing happens in the adultery tales too. Their cumulative goal seems to consist in presenting as many comic situations as possible involving an adulterous couple and a cuckolded husband. So, when the miller, the protagonist of the last tale in the series, takes revenge on his wife by divorcing her and by raping her unlucky young lover, he essentially performs an ideal adulterynarrative closure (Apul. Met. 9.27-28). This closure, however, is revealed to be a hoax too, as the episode continues along the lines of an absolutely different plot – depicting the miller’s death through the agency of a witch hired by his rejected wife (Apul. Met. 9.29-30).

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sex with a Corinthian matron (Apul. Met. 10.18-22). Once again, we are confronted with a highly elaborate overlay of mutual imitations: Lucius, qua metamorphosed human, is of course only an imitation of an ass; when as a fake ass he mimics a human, he produces an imitation in a sense located at a third remove from reality; and curiously, the imitation of the imitation turns out somehow to be even better than the real thing (especially in sexual terms, as the Corinthian matron is so pleased to find out). In this connection, it is of utmost importance that this pattern is indirectly echoed in the mechanics of Lucius’ retransformation. When he becomes human again, he is not quite the same person anymore as he used to be: from an astronomically rich Corinthian obsessed with sex and magic he turns into a poor devotee of an ascetic mystery cult from the North African town of Madaurus.54 On the one hand, one could certainly take the unexpected result of Lucius’ retransformation in a rather humorous vein – as inevitable collateral damage produced by a two-stage mimetic process. But on the other, one could hardly overlook the high degree of ambiguity inherent in this move. Does Lucius really lose his identity here or does he providentially discover his true self? Is he forever caught in an infinite recess of mimesis or does his retransformation mark the end of all mimesis in the novel? And last but not least, is his story just another mimetic lie demonstrating the impossibility of escape from the vicious circle of mimesis or is it a Platonic pharmakon showing the reader a rather circuitous way to the ‘truth’ beneath the mimetic surface? The fact that all descriptions of mimetic phenomena in the novel’s finale are marked by this kind of unresolved tension between limitless mimeticism and symbolic representation of the ‘truth’ further strengthens the novel’s overall ‘false-closural’ momentum. It is quite symptomatic in this connection that Lucius’ behavioral mimesis at the end of Book 10 is explicitly couched in terms of mimetic role-playing. To begin with, Lucius perceives his relationship with the Corinthian matron as a reenactment of a mythical plot, where he plays the role of Pasiphae’s bovine lover.55 Later, this figurative reenactment is supposed to be replicated in an explicitly theatrical setting – in the so-called ‘Pasiphae mime’ – a ‘fatal charade’,56 an execution of a criminal woman vaguely based on the Pasiphae myth, where Lucius’ sexual prowess is expected to provide a titillating foreplay for the spectacle of death.57 Since Lucius runs away from the arena, this spectacle never reaches its climax as planned. A partial compensation for this blatant frustration of the reader’s expectations is provided by Lucius’ detailed 54 55

56 57

On Lucius’ transformation into an Apuleius-like figure, see van der Paardt 1981. Apul. Met. 10.22 illa vero quotiens ei parcens nates recellebam, accedens totiens nisu rabido et spinam prehendens meam adplicitiore nexu inhaerebat, ut hercules etiam deesse mihi aliquid ad supplendam eius libidinem crederem nec Minotauri matrem frustra delectatam putarem adultero mugiente. Coleman 1990. On the ‘Pasiphae mime’, see Coleman 2006: 62-68.

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description of the two preliminary stages that are supposed to lead up to this gruesomely pornographic culmination. Both of them are forms of dance – another variety of mimetic art.58 The first one is a pyrrhicha, whose description finds parallels in Lucian’s discussion of the mimetic nature of archaic Spartan dances in On Dance.59 The second one is the pantomime of the judgment of Paris – a multi-actor ballet-like performance –,60 which Lucius again describes in more or less the same terms of mimetic naturalism as he applied to the statue of Diana and Actaeon in Book 2. Just as in the previous case the marble was said to be almost indistinguishable from the objects of nature it imitated, so here the actors’ role-playing skills result in an incredibly faithful imitation of the characters they impersonate: Lucius’ repeated emphasis on the fact that, despite the illusion created by the spectacle, the represented characters are not real but played by actors is also clearly reminiscent of his insistence on distinguishing mimetic representation from nature in his ekphrasis of the statue.61 At the same time, Lucius’ ekphrasis of the pantomime harks back to the very first description of mimetic representation in the novel – the sword swallower and the contortionist imitating a mimetic image of Asclepius’ snake at the very beginning of Book 1. As in that earlier passage, here, too, we have to deal with universally known mythological characters recognizable not because of their life-likeness, as was the case with the ekphrasis of the Diana-and-Actaeon statue, but because of their various attributes familiar from literature and art. In other words, we are again confronted with a mobile tableau vivant – with static mimetic images coming alive in a theatrical performance.

58 59

60 61

Cf. Pl. Leg. 655d5-656c7; Ar. Poet. 1447a. Luc. Salt. 10-12. Cf. especially Apul. Met. 10.29 nam puelli puellaeque virenti florentes aetatula, forma conspicui veste nitidi, incessu gestuosi, Graecanicam saltaturi pyrricam dispositis ordinationibus decoros ambitus inerrabant nunc in orbem rotatum flexuosi, nunc in obliquam seriem conexi et in quadratum patorem cuneati et in catervae discidium separati and Luc. Salt. 12 ὅμοια δὲ καὶ οἱ τὸν ὅρμον καλούμενον ὀρχούμενοι ποιοῦσιν. ὁ δὲ ὅρμος ὄρχησίς ἐστιν κοινὴ ἐφήβων τε καὶ παρθένων, παρ᾿ ἕνα χορευόντων καὶ ὡς ἀληθῶς ὅρμῳ ἐοικότων, κτλ. On this treatise in general, see Lada-Richards 2007. On pyrrhic dances, see Ceccarelli 1998 and Coleman 2006: 63-64, for more recent bibliography. On similarities and differences between this performance and traditional pantomimes, see May 2008. There is a persistent emphasis on imitation, role-playing, and illusionism throughout the ekphrasis. E.g., Apul. Met. 10.30 pulchre indusiatus adulescens, aurea tiara contecto capite, pecuarium simulabat ministerium; puer nudus […] quem caduceum et virgula Mercurium indicabant; is […] qui Paris videbatur; insequitur puella honesta in deae Iunonis speciem similis; alia, quam putares Minervam. 10.31 alia […] designans Venerem; iam singulas virgines, quae deae putabantur, sui sequebantur comites, Iunonem quidem Castor et Pollux, […] sed et isti Castores erant scaenici pueri. Cf. Zimmerman 1993.

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Whereas Lucius’ enraptured description of this performance focuses only on its mimetic surface (on τὰ φαινόμενα, as it were), the Stoic-Cynic diatribe that he all of a sudden launches immediately thereafter attempts to extract a morally edifying message from the mimetic fiction of the myth.62 The morally suspect quality of the account, in which Venus wins the divine beauty contest by shamelessly bribing Paris, makes Lucius interrupt his description of the pantomime with an outburst of anger against the venality of judges in general (Apul. Met. 10.33). Why wonder, he asks, that modern judges are corrupt if corruption is inherent in the primordial judgment initiated by Jupiter? He then cites further classic cases of unjust judgment from Greek mythology – Palamedes and Ajax – and finishes his speech – not at all coincidentally – with a lengthy expostulation on judicial corruption as the main cause of Socrates’ death. In other words, Lucius reinterprets the mimetic lie of a classical myth in the spirit of the Platonic Socrates – as a kind of philosophical φάρμακον. This moralistic reinterpretation of the mimetic surface of the pantomimic performance may in fact be perceived as a closural signal of sorts – as an interpretive clue to the reader as to how to close off the meaning of the novel’s unbridled profusion of mimetic fictions. The closural momentum of this moralistic tirade is, however, immediately undermined. All of a sudden, Lucius interrupts this passionate tirade as abruptly as he launched it: sed nequis indignationis meae reprehendat impetum secum sic reputans: ‘ecce nunc patiemur philosophantem nobis asinum’, rursus, unde decessi, revertar ad fabulam. (Apul. Met. 10.33) But lest someone be irritated with the fervor of my indignant outburst, thinking to himself: “Are we really going to put up with an ass teaching us about philosophy?”, I will return to the point in the tale, from which I digressed.

We are suddenly reminded here of just how absurd the situation really is. The stern philosophical diatribe, albeit quite persuasive per se, has after all been delivered not by a real philosopher, but by a silly donkey, who finds himself on the verge of engaging in a pornographic reenactment of the Pasiphae myth.63 Moreover, Lucius’ moralistic outburst completely misses the point of the thematic program into which the two episodes of this composite performance so neatly cohere: the juxtaposition of the judgment of Paris (as a prelude to Helen’s abduction by Paris and, thus, to the Trojan war) and the Pasiphae myth (which culminated in the birth of the Minotaur and, thus, in the death of countless young 62 63

On this speech as a Stoic-Cynic diatribe, see Zimmerman 2000: 393-394. On the conflation between Lucius the actor and Lucius the narrator in this passage, see Kirichenko 2010: 172-173.

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Athenians) can only serve as a series of climactically arranged illustrations of the destructive power of love – a topic on which any good moralist could say a great many edifying trivialities. Quite interestingly, however, Lucius’ eventual decision not to participate in the Pasiphae mime, which on the surface could strike one as an even stronger rejection of the very idea of mimetic performance than his philosophical interpretation of the judgment of Paris myth, is in fact motivated by reasons infinitely remote from stern anti-mimetic morality: all he refers to is reluctance to have sex in front of so many people, disgust with the murderess, and, most importantly, fear lest the wild animal sent into the arena to tear her apart be sagacious enough to discriminate between the two sexual partners (Apul. Met. 10.34). In other words, Lucius is portrayed here as an asinus philosophans in more than one sense: he is not only a philosophizing fool, but also – literally – an ass (and a fake ass, at that!) rather ineptly impersonating a philosopher. As was the case with Lucius’ skeptical travel companion who rejected fantastic tales wholesale because of their untruthfulness, Lucius’ philosophical stance can by no means be taken at face value in the context – precisely because it is part of the novel’s multidimensional mimetic universe, within which its surface meaning is effectively canceled out. At the same time, the message that Lucius derives from the judgment of Paris myth paradoxically does retain a thematic validity within his own fictional life. The importance of the pecuniary aspect for Lucius’ attainment of eternal bliss as an Isiac, which will be emphasized time and again in Book 11, is clearly reminiscent of the divine corruption portrayed in the diatribe of Book 10: here, too, it is not the gods’ servants (as was the case with, for instance, the Chaldean prophet Diophanes or the priests of Dea Syria) who are corrupt, but rather the gods themselves. Furthermore, in juxtaposition with the judgment of Paris, where Venus wins Paris’ favor by bribing him, Isis’ act of salvation may simply appear to be a clever way of recruiting another soldier for her sacra militia.64 Lucius’ success as an orator at the very end of the novel follows more or less the same do ut des mechanism: it is only after he sells his last shirt to pay for one of his numerous initiations that the gods begin to assist him with his career (perhaps only in order to secure a reliable source of ritual fees in the future?). We are thus once again confronted with a link between representational and behavioral mimesis, familiar from the first three books of the novel: Lucius comes into contact with a mimetic lie that could serve him as a φάρμακον (in this case, he even formulates the philosophical meaning of the fiction himself), but, instead of heeding the message, he continues to practice his habitual mimetic behavior – by imitating precisely what he has been warned of. Once again, we are confronted here with two conflicting perspectives on mimetic fiction, and once again, this confrontation leads to a seemingly inextricable confusion: the validity of the strictly philosophical take on mimesis 64

Cf. Murgatroyd 2004; Kirichenko 2010: 123-141.

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is undermined from within the mimetic text in which it is voiced, whereas the moral significance that the philosophical interpretation uncovers, although undeniably relevant to the novel’s fictional world, is simply ignored by the protagonist, who instead essentially ends up reenacting the dangerous myth with almost the same mimetic fidelity as he admired in its performance on stage. And once again, this interplay of interpretive stances seems to possess a selfreferential significance – as a reflection on the mimetic nature of the narrative as a whole. There are further cases of behavioral mimesis in Book 11, which can ultimately be held responsible for the notoriously strong sense of false closure in the novel’s finale. The most palpable consequence of Lucius’ mimetic behavior is of course the novel’s peculiar concatenation of epilogues. Paris bribed by Venus is not the only character whom Lucius can be regarded as imitating in the last book of the novel. The fact that the Egyptian priests’ (and gods’) rapaciousness causes Lucius to doubt their veracity sounds like an echo of the merchant Cerdo’s doubts as a reaction to the sudden revelation that the Chaldean prophet Diophanes is a greedy charlatan – in the tale told by Milo at 2.13-14. On the other hand, the fact that Lucius at the beginning of Book 11 asks for divine help at all looks like an imitation of the deus ex machina ending of the tale of Cupid and Psyche.65 Moreover, the pattern of moral fall and redemption that the Isiac priest Mithras imposes on Lucius’ life in Book 11 picks up the treatment of the curiosity motif in the tale of Cupid and Psyche:66 Psyche is punished for her sacrilegious desire to see what is strictly prohibited by a god; by going through an endless series of excruciating sufferings, she performs an act of humiliating penitence necessary for ultimate salvation; in the end, after she has paid her penalty in full, she is forgiven and rescued by the offended god himself. From Mithras’ point of view, Lucius’ life essentially replicates this pattern.67 In other words, just as Lucius’ transformation into an ass was preceded by the gradual dissolution of his narrative into a mosaic of echoes borrowed from various fictions with which he had come into contact, so his retransformation, too, is accompanied by a similarly mimetic process, which transforms the conclusion of his adventures into an overlap of mutually exclusive narrative patterns and a series of false closures. Furthermore, as in the first three books of the novel, in Book 11, too, behavioral mimesis is intricately connected with representational mimesis. As a matter of fact, the entire narrative of Book 11 possesses a markedly descriptive – ekphrastic – quality.68 Most importantly, however, there are a few explicitly ekphrastic passages here that concern themselves with mimetic phenomena. And, 65 66 67 68

Cf. Kenney 1990: 6-17. On parallels between Psyche’s and Lucius’ curiosity, see Kenney 1990: 15; Hijmans et al. 1995: 368-375. Kirichenko 2008: 357-360. Cf. Elsner 2007: 297-302.

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just as in the previous similar passages, here, too, there is a pervasive emphasis on the tension between the mimetic and the symbolic – pharmakon-like – aspects of representation. The first ekphrastic passage in Book 11 deals with the image of Isis that appears to Lucius in a dream. What he sees is a truly astounding sight for which he fears to be unable to provide any suitable ekphrastic representation: eius mirandam speciem ad vos etiam referre conitar, si tamen mihi disserendi tribuerit facultatem paupertas oris humani vel ipsum numen eius dapsilem copiam elocutionis facundiae subministravit. (Apul. Met. 11.3) I shall try to acquaint you too with her astounding appearance, if only the poverty of human speech grants me powers of description, or the deity herself endows me with a rich abundance of eloquence.

Nevertheless he proceeds with his description, which in fact ends up resembling that of a lavishly decorated cult statue.69 In a way, Lucius is portrayed here as dumbstruck with a statue-like vision in the same manner as Actaeon was with the statue of Diana. Curiously, in this case, too, the ultimate result of the fascination with a visual image is – literally – a metamorphosis of the beholder. It is quite obvious that Lucius’ metamorphosis back into a human reverses, or undoes, what happens in the Actaeon myth. For this reason, we may be tempted to interpret this instance of the transformative effect of the gaze as an elevated version of mimeticism, which lends itself perfectly to be understood in philosophically salvific terms – as a pharmakon of sorts (to Lucius, who is cured of his asininity, in the literal sense, to the reader in the figurative sense of a morally edifying narrative purged of excessive mimetic elements): not only does Lucius turn back into himself (renouncing mimesis, as it were) as a result of his contemplation of the divine image, but what he sees is after all not a mimetic image at all, but the goddess herself, and it is, as he seems to imply, only the poverty of human speech that forces him to adopt the language of mimetic representation to describe what is clearly indescribable. The impression that Lucius’ re-transformation can be perceived as the end of mimesis seems to be corroborated by the contrast between mimetic and symbolic elements in the description of the celebratory procession, which immediately precedes it. This procession consists of two parts. The first one (the so-called anteludia) is a somewhat degraded version of the mythological pantomime of Book 10, which comprises an array of actors impersonating ridiculous characters, most of them familiar from comedy and the mime – a soldier, a

69

Cf. Laird 1997: 70-72; Elsner 2007: 296.

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hunter, a gladiator, a comic philosopher with a goat’s beard, as well as animals dressed up to resemble people or characters of traditional mythology:70 hic incinctus balteo militem gerebat, illum succinctum chlamide crepides et venabula venatorem fecerant, alius soccis obauratis inductus serica veste mundoque pretioso et adtextis capite crinibus incessu perfluo feminam mentiebatur. porro alium ocreis, scuto, galea ferroque insignem a ludo putares gladiatorio procedere. nec ille deerat, qui magistratum facibus purpuraque luderet, nec qui pallio baculoque et baxeis et hircino barbitio philosophum fingeret, nec qui diversis harundinibus alter aucupem cum visco, alter pisatorem cum hamis induceret. vidi et ursam mansuem cultu matronali, quae sella vehebatur, et simiam pilleo textili crocotisque Frygiis Catamiti pastoris specie aureum gestantem poculum et asinum pinnis adglutinatis adambulantem cuidam seni debili, ut illum quidem Bellerophontem, hunc autem diceres Pegasum, tamen rideres utrumque. (Apul. Met. 11.8) One had buckled a belt, and was impersonating the soldier; a second had tucked up his cloak, and his high boots and spears turned him into a huntsman, a third was wearing gilded shoes, a silk gown, expensive jewelry, and a wig, and with his flowing gait pretended to be a woman; a fourth was conspicuous with greaves, shield, helmet, and sword; you would have thought that he was emerging from the school of gladiators. A fifth was playing a magistrate, with the rods of office and a purple toga; a sixth was impersonating a philosopher with his cloak and staff, sandals, and a goatee beard. Two others were carrying different types of rods, the one playing the fowler with birdlime, the other the angler with his hooks. I saw also a tame she-bear dressed up as a matron, being carried along in a chair, and a monkey in the woven cap and Phrygian saffron garment, carrying a golden cup to ape the shepherd boy Ganymede; and an ass with wings stuck to its shoulders walking along beside a feeble old man, so that you might have labeled the one Pegasus and the other Bellerophon, and laughed at both.

This procession is mimetic in a number of different senses. To begin with, Lucius emphasizes here the success of the actors’ role-playing mimesis with the same persistence as he did in his description of the judgment of Paris pantomime: here, too, we are repeatedly confronted with references to various outward attributes that notionally transform the actors into the figures they are impersonating. Unlike in most of the previous descriptions of mimetic phenomena in the novel, where the illusion produced by a work of art or a performance had a veritably spellbinding effect on the beholder, here the impersonation is so 70

Harrison 2000: 260-261; May 2006: 324-327.

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obvious that one can only laugh at it! In a way, the performance described here is an echo of the Risus festival, except that Lucius is cast here not as an unwitting mimetic artist – the only person incapable of seeing the ridiculous nature of his performance –, but as a savvy audience member laughing at blatantly incongruous impersonations. What the actors impersonate here, however, are not some accidental comic characters. As a matter of fact, many of these figures find parallels in the previous sections of the novel: a soldier, a gladiator, a circus bear, a goateed comic philosopher (in a way, reminiscent of Lucius as an asinus philosophans), and, most importantly, an ass with glued-on wings impersonating Pegasus – the comic image that Lucius sometimes applies to his own asinine persona.71 In other words, one is urged here to see the target of Lucius’ laughter not only in individual impersonations as such, but also in the very mimetic world he seems to be about to leave behind. The second part of the procession consists of Isiac initiates carrying various cult objects and statues. By contrast with his description of the preceding mimetic performance, the only thing that Lucius concentrates on here is the deeper symbolic significance of what he sees. The torches, candles, and other similar sources of artificial light carried by the initiates during the procession are meant to symbolize and to propitiate the very source of the celestial light.72 The shaven heads of the devotees are also meant to be symbolic representations of the stars.73 The altars (altaria) that one of the adepts carefully holds in his hands are emblematic of the help provided by Isis’ divine providence.74 The image of the left hand carried by another Isiac is explicitly said to be a symbol of justice.75 The mysterious urn-like effigy of the highest deity is also suggestive of some ineffable (and therefore unnamed) secret of the Isiac religion.76 71 72

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On the comic aspects of the anteludia, see Harrison 2000: 240-242. Apul. Met. 11.9 magnus praeterea sexus utriusque numerus lucernis, taedis, cereis et alio genere facticii luminis siderum caelestium stirpem propitiantes. Cf. Lucius’ Stoic theory of universal sympathy in Apul. Met. 2.12 nec mirum, licet modicum istum igniculum et minibus humanis laboratum, memorem tamen illius maioris et caelestis ignis velut sui parentis, quid is sit editurus in aetheris vertice, divino praesagio et ipsum scire et nobis enuntiare. See van Mal-Maeder 2001, ad loc. Apul. Met. 11.10 hi capillum derasi funditus verticem praenitentes, magnae religionis terrena sidera. Apul. Met. 11.10 secundus vestitum quidem similis, sed manibus ambabus gerebat altaria, id est auxilia, quibus nomen dedit proprium deae summatis auxiliaris providentia. Apul. Met. 11.10 quartus aequitatis ostendebat indicium deformatam manum sinistram porrecta palmula, quae genuina pigritia, nulla calliditate praedita, videbatur aequitati magis aptior quam dextera. Apul. Met. 11.11 gerebat alius felici suo gremio summi numinis venerandam effigiem, non pecoris, non avis, non ferae ac ne hominis quidem ipsius consimilem, sed sollerti repertu etiam ipsa novitate reverendam, altioris utcumque et magno silentio tegendae religionis argumentum ineffabile, etc.

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It is particularly important that the contrast between mimetic and symbolic representation with which we are confronted here seems to refer to another Platonic discussion of mimesis. In his discussion of dance in Book 2 of the Laws, Plato explicitly opposes the lamentable Greek practice of indiscriminately mimetic dance and the Egyptians’ adherence – in all art forms – to imitating the prototypes that were fixed in some indefinite time immemorial (some even say, by Isis herself)77 and that, for that reason, serve as symbolic expressions of unchanging beauty and truth:78 πάλαι γὰρ δή ποτε, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἐγνώσθη παρ᾿ αὐτοῖς [sc. τοῖς Αἰγυπτίοις] οὗτος ὁ λόγος ὃν τὰ νῦν λέγομεν ἡμεῖς, ὅτι καλὰ μὲν σχήματα, καλὰ δὲ μέλη δεῖ μεταχειρίζεσθαι ταῖς συνηθείαις τοὺς ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν νέους· ταξάμενοι δὲ ταῦτα, ἅττα ἐστὶ καὶ ὁποῖ᾿ ἄττα ἀπέφηναν ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς, καὶ παρὰ ταῦτ᾿ οὐκ ἐξῆν οὔτε ζωγράφοις, οὔτ᾿ ἄλλοις ὅσοι σχήματα καὶ ὁποῖ᾿ ἄττα ἀπεργάζονται, καινοτομεῖν οὐδ᾿ ἐπινοεῖν ἀλλ᾿ ἄττα ἢ τὰ πάτρια, οὐδὲ νῦν ἔξεστι, οὔτε ἐν τούτοις οὔτε ἐν μουσικῇ συμπάσῃ. σκοπῶν δὲ εὑρήσεις αὐτόθι τά μυριοστὸν ἔπος γεγραμμένα ἢ τετυπωμένα – οὐχ ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν μυριοστὸν ἀλλ᾿ ὄντως – τῶν νῦν δεδημιουργημένων οὔτε τι καλλίονα οὔτ᾿ αἰσχίω, τὴν αὐτὴν δὲ τέχνην ἀπειργασμένα. (Pl. Lg. 656d5-657a2) It appears that long ago they determined on the rule of which we are now speaking, that the youth of a state should practice in their rehearsals postures and tunes that are good: these they prescribed in detail and posted up in the temples, and outside this official list it was, and still is, forbidden to painters and all other producers of postures and representations to introduce any innovation or invention, whether in such productions or in any other branch of music, over and above the traditional forms. And if you look there, you will find that the things depicted or graven there ten thousand years ago (and I mean what I say, not loosely but literally ten thousand) are no whit better or worse than the production of today, but 79 wrought with the same art.

Apuleius’ juxtaposition of the unbridled Greek mimeticism with an exhibition of unchangeable Egyptian art captures the contrast between transience and permanence, imitation and the truth, which is at the core of the Platonic discussion. From this perspective, Lucius’ retransformation, which takes place immediately after the Isiac procession, seems to be a manifestation of the latter – Egyptian, symbolic, pharmakon-like – kind of representation. Moreover, this 77 78 79

Cf. Pl. Lg. 657b1. On this passage, see Halliwell 2002: 78-82. Trans. R.G. Bury (Loeb).

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impression is further corroborated in the speech of the Isiac priest Mithras, who effectively reinterprets Lucius’ adventure as a morally edifying fable, whose distinctly philosophical undertones echo Lucius’ own moralistic reinterpretation of the judgment of Paris myth.80 Thus, the text’s overall progression – away from mimesis towards symbolism expressive of a philosophical truth – seems to underscore the transformation of Lucius’ life story from a purely mimetic entertaining lie (or anilis fabula) into an edifying – Platonic – myth. But this impression proves to be misleading, as most impressions are in Apuleius’ mimetic funhouse, and mimesis does find a way to sneak back in. At a later point, as a re-metamorphosed human, Lucius develops a particularly strong attachment to a cult statue of Isis.81 Curiously, Lucius’ interaction with the statue is marked by the same tension between mimesis and symbolism as we have observed elsewhere in Book 11. On the one hand, the culmination of Lucius’ adoration of the statue is his initiation into the Isiac mysteries, which he describes in conspicuously non-mimetic terms: when he is about to relate what he experienced during his initiation, he – contrary to his habitual garrulity – refuses to satisfy the curiosity of the uninitiated readership and, instead, describes everything as a series of symbols consisting of oxymoronic contrasts – life and death, heaven and Hades, day and night.82 Even more curiously, however, it turns out that the result of Lucius’ initiation is his notional transformation into a statue-like effigy displayed to a crowd of curious uninitiated onlookers: namque in ipso aedis sacrae meditullio ante deae simulacrum constitutum tribunal ligneum iussus superstiti byssina quidem, sed floride depicta veste conspicuus. et umeris dependebat pone tergum talorum tenus pretiosa chlamida quaqua tamen viseres, colore vario circumnotatis insignibar animalibus; hinc dracones Indici, inde grypes Hyperborei, quos in speciem pinnatae alitis generat mundus alter. hanc Olympiacam stolam sacrati nuncupant. at manu dextera gerebam flammis adultam facem et caput decore corona cinxerat palmae candidae foliis in modum radiorum prosistentibus. sic ad instar Solis exornato me et in vicem simulacri constituto, repente velis reductis, in aspectum populus errabat. (Apul. Met. 11.24)

80 81 82

Cf. Kirichenko 2007: 269-271. Apul. Met. 11.24 paucis dehinc ibidem commoratus diebus inexplicabili voluptate simulacri divini perfruebar, inremunerabili quippe beneficio pigneratus. Apul. Met. 11.23 accessi confinium mortis et calcato Proserpinae limine per omnia vectus elementa remeavi, nocte media vidi solem candido coruscantem lumine, deos inferos et deos superos accessi et adoravi de proxumo. ecce tibi rettuli, quae, quamvis audita, ignores tamen necesse est. On the reader’s curiosity as one of the central themes of Apuleius’ novel, see Kirichenko 2008: 360-367.

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I obeyed the order to take my stand on a wooden pedestal set before the statue of the goddess at the very middle of the sacred shrine. What made me conspicuous was the linen garment that I wore, for it was lavishly decorated; the sumptuous cloak hung down my back from the shoulders to the heels, and from whatever angle you looked at it, I was adorned all around with multicolored animals. On the one side were Indian snakes, and on the other Arctic gryphons produced by a different world in the shape of winged birds. This garment the initiates call ‘Olympian’. In my right hand I wielded a well-lit torch; a garland of shiny palm-leaves projecting like the sun’s rays encircled my head. When I was thus adorned to represent the sun and set there like a statue, the curtains were suddenly drawn back, and the people wandered in to gaze at me.

Not only is Lucius made here to stand next to the cult statue of Isis, but the image that he has assumed clearly evokes the statue-like appearance of Isis that he described at the very beginning of Book 11.83 The two form, as it were, a composite sculptural group (not unlike that of Diana and Actaeon in Book 2), where the figure of Lucius dressed as the sun matches the figure of Isis, who appeared to Lucius as the Moon goddess. Lucius’ initiation is represented here as the union between the Sun and the Moon – another cosmic oxymoron, whose transparent symbolism is reminiscent of Lucius’ evasive description of his initiation process. It is thus impossible to deny that Lucius’ notional transformation into a statue here has a far-reaching symbolic significance. At the same time, this transformation into a symbol evokes an entire array of mimetic phenomena as they have been presented in the course of the novel. The very fact that Lucius is notionally transformed into a statue here is reminiscent of the Hypatans’ decision to erect a statue of him at the end of the Risus festival episode. That this transformation is linked to his contemplation of a statue-like image reminds one of Actaeon’s transformation, whereas his inability to draw his gaze away from the statue prior to his initiation is couched in terms vaguely reminiscent of Actaeon’s almost Pygmalionesque attachment to the statue of Diana.84 That Lucius is here an actor imitating a static sculpture evokes the mobile tableau vivant of the contortionist imitating a sculpted/painted image of Asclepius’ snake in Book 1. Finally, the fact that the statue that Lucius imitates is itself a notional imitation of the statue of Isis looks like another manifestation of his habitual mimetic behavior. As a result, symbolism effectively dissolves into mimesis. Just as Lucius’ rejection of mimesis is on closer look revealed to be a deeply mimetic phenomenon, so the end of the role-playing mimesis, too, which seems 83 84

Cf. Elsner 2007: 299-300. Actaeon was said to be in deam proiectus (2.4), Lucius describes himself as sed intentus deae specimen (11.17).

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to be marked by the unmasking of the narrator at the very end of the novel, turns out to be another mimetic hoax. In the dream that the Isiac priest Asinius Marcellus sees at 11.27, Lucius is referred to as a poor man from Madaurus (Madaurensem, sed admodum pauperem), which happens to be Apuleius’ own hometown.85 What this seemingly perfunctory slip reveals is that the novel’s empirical author has been behind his multiple speakers all along – impersonating different characters, playing different roles, acting like the paragon of unbridled mimeticism. This blatant unmasking of both the author and of his mimetic activity at such a marked juncture at the very end may indeed be taken as another indication that mimesis has served in the novel as nothing but an attractive surface, behind which is concealed a deeper meaning – encoded by the author and waiting to be deciphered by the reader –, and that, as a consequence, Apuleius’ fictional narrative as a whole is after all to be understood along the lines of a symbolical Platonic myth. This impression seems to be further corroborated by the fact that in the novel’s very last chapter we deal with another case of renunciation of mimesis: Osiris, who has heretofore assumed an anthropomorphic (or theriomorphic?) appearance, manifests himself to Lucius in his own true form.86 With this final move, mimesis in the novel seems to have come to an end. But this appearance, too, turns out to be absolutely deceiving. It is rather curious that the new Lucius from Madaurus gradually turns into a successful orator (is this another autobiographical reference?) and that Osiris drops his mask in order to encourage his devotee to continue his rhetorical studies despite the growing critique from his detractors.87 In other words, the true self that the narrator reveals at the very end is not only that of a mimetic artist in general, but also, as I showed elsewhere, that of a sophistic orator in particular.88 In this connection, it is particularly worth recalling that for Plato the sophist was the incarnation of the worst kind of mimeticism par excellence: ΞΕ. περὶ δ᾿ οὖν σοφιστοῦ τόδε μοι λέγε· πότερον ἤδη τοῦτο σαφές, ὅτι τῶν γοήτων ἐστί τις, μιμητὴς ὢν τῶν ὄντων, ἢ διστάζομεν ἔτι περὶ ὅσωνπερ ἀντιλέγειν δοκεῖ δυνατὸς εἶναι, περὶ τοσούτων καὶ τὰς ἐπιστήμας ἀληθῶς ἔχων τυγχάνει;

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See van der Paardt 1981. Apul. Met. 11.30 Osiris non in alienam quampiam personam reformatus, sed coram suo illo venerando me dignatus adfamine per quietem recipere visus est. Cf. Elsner 2007: 298. Apul. Met. 11.30 quae nunc, incunctanter gloriosa in foro redderem patrocinia nec extimescerem malevolorum disseminationes, quas sudiorum meorum laboriosa doctrina ibidem sustinebat. On Lucius, particularly in the last scene of the novel, as a sophist portrayed in the spirit of Aristophanes’ Clouds, see Kirichenko 2010: 143-159.

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ΘΕΑΙ. καὶ πῶς ἄν, ὦ ξένε; ἀλλὰ σχεδὸν ἤδη σαφὲς ἐκ τῶν εἰρημένων, ὅτι τῶν τῆς παιδιᾶς μετεχόντων ἐστί τις εἷς. ΞΕ. γόητα μὲν δὴ καὶ μιμητὴν ἄρα θετέον αὐτόν τινα. ΘΕΑΙ. πῶς γὰρ οὐ θετέον; ΞΕ. ἄγε δή, νῦν ἡμέτερον ἔργον ἤδη τὸν θῆρα μηκέτ᾿ ἀνεῖναι· σχεδὸν γὰρ αὐτὸν περιειλήφαμεν ἐν ἀμφιβληστρικῷ τινι τῶν ἐν τοῖς λόγοις περὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα ὀργάνων, ὥστε οὐκέτ᾿ ἐκφεύξεται τόδε γε. ΘΕΑΙ. τὸ ποῖον; ΞΕ. τὸ μὴ οὐ τοῦ γένους εἶναι τοῦ τῶν θαυματοποιῶν τις εἷς. (Pl. Sph. 234e7-235b7) Str. So answer this question about the sophist: Is this now clear that he is a kind of juggler, an imitator of realities, or are we still uncertain whether he may not truly possess the knowledge of all the things about which he seems to be able to argue? Theaet. How could that be, my dear sir? Surely it is pretty clear by this time from what has been said that he is one of those whose business is entertainment. Str. That is to say, he must be classed as a juggler and imitator. Theaet. Of course he must. Str. Look sharp, then; it is now our business not to let the beast get away again, for we have almost got him into a kind of encircling net of the devices we employ in arguments about such subject, so that he will not now escape the next thing. Theaet. What next thing? 89 Str. The conclusion that he belongs to the class of conjurers.

In other words, what at first seems to be the ultimate renunciation of mimesis turns out to indicate the protagonist’s/narrator’s transformation into the most dangerously seductive kind of mimetic artist (who is, quite appropriately in this narrative of magic, a conjurer),90 and what has promised to provide final closure plunges the narrative back into the infinite recess of mimesis, from which there is no escape. We are dealing here with the same kind of paradoxical irony as in all earlier episodes of the novel that concern themselves with mimetic phenomena – the contortionist imitating Asclepius’ snake, the Diana-andActaeon statue, the Risus festival, the pantomime of the judgment of Paris, the Isiac anteludia, and Lucius’ initiation. In retrospect, the inherent selfreferentiality of all these passages – their functioning as metaphors for the mimetic nature of the text in which they are located – becomes particularly 89 90

Trans. H.N. Fowler (Loeb). On the conjunction between magic and rhetoric in the novel, see Kirichenko 2010: 156-159.

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apparent in the novel’s finale, where what looks so promisingly like a glimpse of the ‘truth’ beyond mimesis is revealed to be the most cunning manifestation of mimesis we have encountered in the text. Conclusion In his narrative Apuleius constantly evokes – in a sublimely ironic manner – the Platonic ‘mimetic anxiety’. His Lucius essentially puts into practice what Plato so insistently warns of: he admires numerous mimetic phenomena and, as a result, becomes deeply – and multiply – mimetic himself; in fact, so much so that even his human appearance undergoes a mimetic metamorphosis. Mimesis rules supreme in this text on a variety of levels, turning the narrative into a dizzying, never-ending play of echoes and reflections, where looking for ‘final closure’ is a priori a losing game. The reader gradually learns this lesson from the novel’s characters whose attempts to escape from mimesis are invariably destabilized by the fact that they are all trapped within an uncompromisingly mimetic text. In this connection, it would be extremely tempting to hypothesize that Apuleius’ systematic destabilization of Plato’s anti-mimetic strictures not only serves to reflect on the mimetic nature of his own fictional universe, but is also intended as a tongue-in-cheek comment on the fact that Platonic expostulations against mimesis, too, are voiced from within some of the most exuberantly mimetic texts in world literature.

V. Beyond Closure Fame – the Last Word? Philip Hardie The material presented in this paper is based on research for a larger study on the history of fama,1 in the various meanings of the Latin word, of which the most important for the present purposes are the following three: ‘renown’, ‘rumour’, and ‘tradition’. ‘What is said’ (the noun fama is cognate with the verb fari, ‘to speak’) enters into varying relations with temporality and with authority. Reflection on this fact under the rubric of closure leads to a realisation of the compromised nature of the claims of fama – in the senses both of ‘tradition’ and of ‘fame, renown’ – to have the last word. Tradition would offer a fixed and final version of a story handed down from the past, but it is no news that tradition is malleable and plural, and Latin poets in particular delight in pointing this up when they use the language of fama. Fame is the hoped-for crown of a successful career, and to bid for fame is to make a wager on something that will endure after the biological death of the individual. Perhaps one reason why last words are proverbially famous is that they are located precisely at the point where the life of the individual undergoes a transition from embodied existence to survival in the form of just words, the words of the dead person in so far as they are remembered and preserved, and the words of others who continue to speak of the dead. But while death is irrevocably a last thing, fame is notoriously fickle. It may turn out not to be the last word, or as a last word it may not last. The slippery nature of fama as a vehicle for closure is seen in the fact that fama is as equally adept at starting as at concluding narratives.2 Narratives are often introduced with a reference to the ‘tradition’ that validates them: ut fama est, ut fertur, ‘as the story goes’. Fama in the sense of ‘report’ or ‘fame’ may operate within a story-world to inaugurate the sequence of events narrated: fama is responsible for one of the oldest plots in the western canon, the story of the Trojan War, which would never have taken place had reports, the fame, of 1 2

Hardie 2012. For the following reflections see at greater length Hardie 2008: 564-565.

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Helen’s beauty not travelled from Sparta. This is the beginning of a story which will also end with fama, the achieved κλέος of the Trojan War itself and of the heroes who fought there, as memorialized in the epic tradition. Beauty’s fame inaugurates other erotic narratives, for example Apuleius’ Cupid and Psyche, whose plot is triggered by the fame of the outstanding beauty of its heroine, which attracts the admiration of mortals and the envy of Venus, who sets in train all that follows (Apul. Met. 4.28.1-3). For another kind of inaugural fama we may turn to Ovid, who places his House of Fama at the beginning of Book 12 of the Metamorphoses; one of the reasons for the presence of Fama here is that it opens the sequence of epic material, Ovid’s ‘little Iliad’, followed by a ‘little Aeneid’, followed by the matter of Roman legend and history that will take us down to the end of the poem and to the undying fama of the poet himself.3 Ever active, ever moving on, fama can play an important role in middles, as well as in openings and closings. All of the three Virgilian proemi al mezzo touch on issues of fama: the laudes Vari, ‘praises of Varus’, rejected by Virgil in the proem to Eclogue 6, before the poet launches himself on another five poems of bucolic; the poet’s prospective triumphal flight of fame in the proem to Georgics 3; and the four-line epitaph on the fama and gloria of Aeneas’ nurse Caieta, the frontispiece to Book 7 of the Aeneid, which sheds an oblique light on the larger kinds of fame in which the poem deals. That closure is not the only privilege of fama is the consequence of the fact, viewing the matter in its broadest perspective, that fama is simply the substance of that which is said, that which is spoken, and thus denotes the whole continuum of words from which are isolated the segments that make up particular narratives. However authors, like pretenders to authority in non-literary areas of life, like to control and fix the use of words, to impose closure, to assert their version of things. For a writer the desire for power manifests itself above all in the hope for lasting and monumental literary fame – exegi monumentum. For a man of action what matters in the first instance is what people say about you during your lifetime, your reputation, for on that will in large part depend your status and power, and in the second instance the account of yourself that you leave to future generations. Here of course the desires for fama on the part of the writer and of the politician or military man often exist in symbiosis. The desire to fix fama has to confront the unruly and inherently uncontrollable nature of the beast. Fama’s propensity to sudden and unlimited expansion serves well the purposes of the individual who longs for worldwide fame, but her Protean tendency to mutate and distort does not. The personification of Fama in Aeneid 4, in many ways the foundational image of fama, in the various meanings of the Latin word, for the subsequent western tradition, is a monster terrifying in her polymorphousness and ability to metamorphose. The intervention of Fama occurs at a point well into the story of Dido and Aeneas, but here is another 3

For a preliminary account of the functions of Fama in Met. 12 see Hardie 2003.

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erotically charged report, like the report of the beauty of Helen, that initiates a series of events with momentous consequences, for the separation of the wellmatched couple triggers a strife that will reach a conclusion many centuries later, in the famous victory of the Romans over Hannibal’s Carthaginians. In that longer perspective the Aeneid attempts to control and close off the fama of Roman history, in the major prophetic passages of, firstly, the Parade of Heroes, a display of ‘the fama to come’, Aen. 6.889 famae uenientis, and, secondly, of the Shield of Aeneas, whose content is summed up in the words (Aen. 8.731) famamque et fata nepotum, ‘fame and fate of his descendants’. The supreme god of fate, Jupiter, ends his prophecy to Venus in Aeneid 1 with the coming of a man, Julius Caesar, who will conclusively, if hyperbolically, delimit fama, Aen. 1.287 famam qui terminet astris, ‘who will set the stars as the limit to his fame’. However even (or especially?) this terminus to Roman history is made notoriously problematic by the fact that scholars cannot decide which famous Iulius Caesar Jupiter refers to – Julius Caesar or Augustus? One of the most elaborate and powerful interventions in the Virgilio-Ovidian tradition of fama is Chaucer’s The House of Fame, a three-book dream vision which begins with the dreamer’s viewing of images of the fame of the story of Aeneas in a Temple of Venus, which corresponds to the Temple of Juno in Carthage in Book 1 of the Aeneid in which Aeneas views images of the Trojan War, iam fama totum uulgata per orbem, ‘now broadcast in fame throughout the world’ (Aen. 1.457). Chaucer’s dreamer then follows a quasi-Dantesque trajectory to the palace of an authoritarian, but arbitrary, Queen Fame, before ending up in a second house of fame, a whirling house of rumour. There the dreamer joins a pressing throng and ‘At last’ sees a man he does not recognise, but who ‘seemed for to be / A man of great authority’, whereupon the text falls stunningly silent. This is a false closure in the sense that the text is almost certainly incomplete, but this accidental (if that is what it is) truncation of a teleology of fama has seemed to many to be the only possible conclusion to a poem that has consistently questioned the finality of fame, tradition, and the authority of the word.4 In the rest of this paper I look at a number of instances of closural fama which turn out not to be as final as might appear at first sight. I shall range beyond Classical Antiquity into the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Should I apologise for my own false pretences in straying so far from Classical Antiquity in a paper in a collection on ‘False Closure in Greek and Roman Literature and Art’? Perhaps not, given that one of the lessons of reception studies is that it would be a false closure to impose a closing date at any point in the history of

4

On the (non-)ending of the House of Fame, from a large bibliography, e.g., Stevenson 1978 (10 nn. 2-3 for a survey of identifications of the man; Fry 1975; Minnis 1995: 239 n.; Benson 1999.

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the classical tradition (fama again). And the post-classical texts that I will look at in all cases engage in a close dialogue with ancient texts. A word first, though, on the term ‘false closure’, which in English may mean little more than an ending which turns out not to be an ending, with no necessary connotation of deception. The German Trugschluss implies something more deceptive.5 Is deception a useful way of thinking about the false closures of fama? Fama can be a very duplicitous being, who misleads by offering as final truth what may only be fiction. This is an aspect made much of in Ovid’s House of Fama, whose subsidiary personifications include Credulitas, temerarius Error, uana Laetitia, dubio auctore Susurri, ‘Credulity, rash Error, empty Joy, Whispers of doubtful origin’.6 What Fama announces in Metamorphoses 12 is that the Greek fleet is arriving at Troy: straightforward fact – unless you happen to be sceptical of the whole basis for the tradition of the Trojan War. Perhaps not many in antiquity were, but the case is different with the report that Virgil’s Fama spreads abroad in Aeneid 4, since from antiquity down to the Renaissance there was a lively debate as to whether Dido ever did succumb to love for Aeneas; there is an equally strong tradition of a chaste Dido. That is one reason why Virgil places his major Fama episode where he does, in recognition of the fact that this canonical Roman epic’s version of the story, the fama, of Dido can never be the final one. Already in Eclogue 6 Virgil plays with the uncertainty of fama-as-tradition, in a poem that begins with the poet’s refusal to engage with another kind of fama, the praises of Varus. The first of the two mythological subjects that follows the climactic poetic initiation of Gallus (in other words the guarantee of Gallus’ poetic fame), is the story of ‘Scylla daughter of Nisus’, quam fama secuta est, ‘who is followed by the report’ that she attacked the sailors of Ulysses. This is a notorious, and knowing, conflation of the two Scyllas, and the hybrid form of the sea-monster Scylla can itself be read as a comment on the ambivalence of tradition.7 Fama can deceive in other ways: she offers solid rewards to great men, but the substance of fame and glory is delusory: transient, uentosa gloria (‘windy glory’), κενοδοξία (‘vainglory’), a view well established already in Classical Antiquity, but emphasized particularly in the late-antique philosophical and medieval traditions on fama.8 fama, both as fame, and as rumour, fills ears, fills the world, but with what in the end is no more than wind, hot air, a delusive filling. In Aeneid 1, Aeneas, commenting on the scenes in the Carthaginian temple of Juno of the famous history of the Trojan War, asks his companion Achates ‘What place in the world is not full of our sufferings?’, quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris? (460), tentatively hopeful that this fullness of 5 6 7 8

See Kaesser’s contribution to this volume. See Zumwalt 1977. See Hardie 2008. The second of the myths, Tereus and Philomela, is also one where tradition is uncertain: which birds did Philomela and Procne turn into? See Boitani 1984: ch. 6 “Vainglory, Fame, and Conscience”.

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fama will bring an end to their sufferings, 463 feret haec aliquam tibi fama salutem, ‘this fame will bring you some salvation’. In the next line the narrator comments on the emptiness of fame and of human hopes based on fame: sic ait atque animum pictura pascit inani, ‘so he spoke and fed his mind on the empty picture.’ This is not the end, but a new beginning to the suffering of the Trojans. Byron, often thought of as the first object of a fully-developed celebrity cult,9 comments sardonically on the end of Fame in Don Juan: What is the end of Fame? ’tis but to fill A certain portion of uncertain paper: Some liken it to climbing up a hill, Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour: For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill, And bards burn what they call their ‘midnight taper’, To have, when the original is dust, A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust. (Byron, Don Juan, canto 1, stanza 218)

‘End’ in the first line is both the goal at which Fame ends, and the sorry end to which Fame comes. Images of closure are repeatedly undercut. Fame’s purpose is to fill, but nothing more substantial than paper, ‘uncertain’ in its ability to endure, and ‘certain’ only in the sense ‘of a certain amount’, not that of ‘sure’ in its ability to preserve fame. Fame elevates to lofty heights, but this hill-top is lost in cloud.10 ‘Vapour’ may also hint that fame is no more than ‘hot air’. The closure of death is both a means to fame (those killed by famous heroes), and that which fame seeks to cheat by imposing its own, alternative, closure, but realising only the last line’s poor substitutes for the starting point, the ‘original’ living person. In the end bards come to dust, as the midnight taper that they burn to fill up paper is reduced to virtually nothing. It is because fame is so uncertain that rulers and poets strive to stamp it with markers of finality. “By a conventional metaphor the glory and immortality of princes (Gloria dei principi) were represented, as in Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, by ‘a gold-clad figure with an obelisk or pyramid’. An obelisk, whether used as a gnomon or as a winning-post for races, implied time’s passage to the end of life.”11 An enduring monument marking the end of a famous life is one strategy for the achievement of lasting fame. Another is to claim that fame is an ending that continues a life even after death. Horace reaches for the analogy of Egyptian 9 10

11

Mole 2007. Virgil’s Fama shoots skyward only to bury her head in the clouds (Aen. 4.177): in the immediate context the most ready meaning is that rumour is cloudy, its source impossible to authenticate. Fowler 1996: 119.

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monuments in asserting the fame of his poetry in Odes 3.30, but he also uses words that relate to the life of the biological individual, even as the poem offers the readers words that are, so to speak, engraved on the dead poet’s tombstone. The finality of the perfect exegi is gainsaid by the future tenses that follow: this ending is also a continuation, non omnis moriar, ‘not all of me will die’, and the beginning of new growth, 7-8 usque ego postera | crescam laude recens, ‘I shall keep on growing, evergreen, in the praise of ages to come’. Posthumous fame is a transition from one kind of life to another, which may be thought of either as a figurative life in the world above, or as an afterlife: the Underworld often serves the purpose of a repository of fame both for dead characters from legend and history, from where an author may summon them back to play out their roles in life for one more time, and for dead poets.12 In Odes 2.13 the Underworld is the place where Horace can reconnect with the famous archaic Greek poets, Alcaeus and Sappho, whose fame he hopes himself to rival. It is in the Underworld that Aeneas meets his dead father who reveals to him what for Aeneas is Roman ‘fame to come in future time’, but what for Virgil’s Roman reader is the fame buried in earlier poetic and historical texts. Anchises is also a figure for Virgil’s poetic father Ennius, who is given voice again in Anchises’ commentary on the Parade of Heroes. Ennius himself gave a very particular spin to the idea of ‘last words’ through his use of the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis. When the shade, not the true soul, of Homer speaks in the dream at the beginning of the Annals, there is a sense in which this is the real Homer speaking, since the soul itself of Homer is now reincarnated in the body of Ennius, the source of the words that we are reading.13 Ennius perhaps was thinking in Pythagorean terms when he proudly asserted his lasting fame in his epitaph on himself (Epigr. 10 ROL), in which he asks that no tears be shed for him, since uolito uiuus per ora uirum, ‘alive I fly over the lips of men’, but this is a re-embodiment not in any one body, but in the multitude of those who speak of him and recite his poetry. Life in fame is an evasion of the finality of death, but predicated on the hope for a fixity and stability that is not given to those still living in the body. Yet, in Odes 3.30 Horace does allow, indeed embrace, a posthumous process of change in the statement that he will keep on ‘growing’ (crescam). Growth is one of the varieties of metamorphosis in Ovid’s poem of changes.14 But fame may be subject to less comfortable kinds of change. Ennius’ epigram, and Horace Odes 3.30, are both alluded to by Ovid in the Epilogue to the Metamorphoses (15.868879). In the last two lines Ovid does a bit more than either Horace or Ennius with the concept of ‘last words’: ore legar populi, perque omnia saecula fama, / siquid habent ueri praesagia uatum, uiuam. ore legar populi, ‘I shall be read 12 13 14

See Most 1992. On metempsychosis as a trope for literary succession, see Gillespie 2010. Met. 15.434 haec [sc. Roma] igitur formam crescendo mutat; Atlas is another example of metamorphosis through growth, 4.657-662.

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(aloud) on the lips of the people, and through all ages, if the bards’ prophecies contain any truth, I shall live in fame.’ Ore legar populi could also be translated ‘I shall be gathered on the lips of the people’, alluding to the popular idea that the soul of a dying person could be caught by inhaling his or her dying breath. As the guarantor of a monumental poetic fama the un-Callimachean populus is perhaps less than totally trustworthy. It is the populi whom the Virgilian Fama fills with her unstable multiplex sermo (Aen. 4.189), and the mob seems to rule in the House of Ovid’s own untrustworthy Fama at the beginning of Metamorphoses 12. Entrusted to the lips of his readers, how stable will the fama of Ovid / the Metamorphoses be? Ever-vigilant as regards his own reception, Ovid here seems to anticipate the metamorphic, Protean, quality of the reception of the Metamorphoses. He will live in fama, perhaps even as fama, if fama at the end of line 878 is taken as nominative, but the immortal fame of the poet may be as shifty and unfixed as the unstable arrangements in the House of Fama.15 Historians may hope to win personal fame from their achievements as writers, but they also have a responsibility to finalize the reputations, good or bad, of the players on the historical stage, as well as a responsibility to determine the truth of historical events, often caught between conflicting versions of tradition, fama. On a number of occasions Livy places what might be called ‘episodes of fama’ at the end of a book, with closural force, for example the bestowal of the cognomen ‘Africanus’ on Scipio at the end of Book 30: Africani cognomen militaris prius fauor an popularis aura celebrauerit an, sicuti Felicis Sullae Magnique Pompeii patrum memoria, coeptum ab adsentatione familiari sit parum compertum habeo; primus certe hic imperator nomine uictae ab se gentis est nobilitatus; exemplo deinde huius nequaquam uictoria pares insignes imaginum titulos claraque cognomina familiarum fecerunt. (Liv. 30.45.6-7) As to the cognomen of Africanus, whether it was conferred upon him by the devotion of his soldiers or by the popular breath, or whether as in the recent instances of Sulla the Fortunate and Pompey the Great it originated in the flattery of his friends, I cannot say for certain. At all events, he was the first commander-in-chief who was ennobled by the name of the people he had conquered. Since his time men who have won far smaller victories have in imitation of him left splendid inscriptions on their busts and illustrious names to their families.

This climax to a glorious career is also a beginning, the first in a series of triumphal cognomina in Roman history. The end of the book is also a locus for uncertainty as to historical tradition: was it the soldiery, the people, or the 15

Hardie 2002: 94-97.

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household of the great man which started the nickname? The end of another book, 8, is the occasion for an extended reflection on the difficulties for the historian of establishing the truth amidst varying and competing accounts of fama rerum gestarum:16 Hoc bellum a consulibus bellatum quidam auctores sunt eosque de Samnitibus triumphasse; Fabium etiam in Apuliam processisse atque inde magnas praedas egisse. nec discrepat quin dictator eo anno A. Cornelius fuerit; id ambigitur belline gerendi causa creatus sit an ut esset qui ludis Romanis, quia L. Plautius praetor graui morbo forte implicitus erat, signum mittendis quadrigis daret functusque eo haud sane memorandi imperii ministerio se dictatura abdicaret. nec facile est aut rem rei aut auctorem auctori praeferre. uitiatam memoriam funebribus laudibus reor falsisque imaginum titulis, dum familiae ad se quaeque famam rerum gestarum honorumque fallente mendacio trahunt; inde certe et singulorum gesta et publica monumenta rerum confusa. nec quisquam aequalis temporibus illis scriptor exstat quo satis certo auctore stetur. (Liv. 8.40) Some authorities state that this war was managed by the consuls and it was they who celebrated the triumph over the Samnites, and further that Fabius invaded Apulia and brought away great quantities of spoil. There is no discrepancy as to A. Cornelius having been Dictator that year, the only doubt is whether he was appointed to conduct the war, or whether, owing to the serious illness of L. Plautius, the praetor, he was appointed to give the signal for starting the chariot races, and after discharging this not very noteworthy function resigned office. It is difficult to decide which account or which authority to prefer. I believe that the true history has been falsified by funeral orations and lying inscriptions on the family busts, since each family appropriates to itself an imaginary record of noble deeds and official distinctions. It is at all events owing to this cause that so much confusion has been introduced into the records of private careers and public events. There is no writer of those times now extant who was contemporary with the events he relates and whose authority, therefore, can be depended upon.

The last word of the book, stetur, refers to the wish for an authority on which historiographical fama might stand on a firm and final footing, but this is denied by the negative at the beginning of the sentence. Another tangled contestation of fama develops in an extended closural episode of fama at the end of Livy 38 (at 50.4-60), the narrative of the last days of Scipio Africanus, his death, and the continuing post-mortem attacks on him. 16

See Hardie 2008: 570-571.

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Here as elsewhere narratives of the certamen gloriae and observations by the historian on the fama of historical characters tend to spill over into reflections on the historian’s own control of fama. Scipio’s accusation by the tribunes opens up a tale of fame and glory attacked by inuidia, in a debate on the accountability at law of a preeminent unus homo that transparently speaks to concerns of Livy’s own time, the 20s BC. The final peak of Scipio’s celebrity comes when, summoned to trial on the anniversary of Zama, he announces that he will go up from the Forum to the Capitol to give thanks to the Capitoline gods, and is accompanied by almost all present at 38.51.14 (“clearly Livy’s own addition”17): celebratior is prope dies fauore hominum et aestimatione uera magnitudinis eius fuit quam quo triumphans de Syphace rege et Carthaginiensibus est inuectus, ‘The enthusiasm of the citizens and their recognition of his real greatness made that day almost a more glorious one for him than when he entered the city in triumph after his victories over Syphax and the Carthaginians.’ Thereafter it is a tale of inuidia. These assaults on the fama of the Scipiones run parallel with an unusual degree of authorial uncertainty about the fama on which the historical narrative is based, starting at 56.1 multa alia in Scipionis exitu maxime uitae dieque dicta, morte, funere, sepulcro in diuersum trahunt, ut cui famae, quibus scriptis adsentiar non habeam, ‘There are many other details in which writers differ, especially as regards his closing years, his impeachment, his death, his funeral, and his tomb, so that I cannot decide what traditions or documents to follow.’ The last sentence of the book provides a final turning-point in the saga, 60.10 uerteratque Scipionum inuidia in praetorem et consilium eius et accusatores, ‘The ill-will and popular odium against the Scipios had now turned against the praetor and his assessors and the prosecution’, by implication restoring the brilliance of Africanus’ fama. Yet, the first sentence of Book 39 casts doubt on the fixed place of all of this within an annalistic history, dum haec, si modo hoc anno acta sunt, Romae aguntur, consules ambo in Liguribus gerebant bellum, ‘While these incidents were occurring in Rome – if indeed they did occur in this year – both consuls were engaged in war with the Ligurians.’ Consular dating is secure in military history abroad (the chief actors, the consuls, themselves anchor those events to a date), but offers no firm point of reference for murky events in Rome. When Petrarch comes to touch on these events at the end of his epic poem, the Africa, he refuses to narrate the story of the inuidia that assailed Scipio at the end of his life, and chooses instead to impose a meta on his work with the triumph of Scipio, accompanied by his poet Ennius. The fama of Scipio and Ennius is bound up with Petrarch’s own fame, both that already achieved and that for which Petrarch hopes. He has already followed in the triumphal footsteps of Scipio and Ennius in his own ascent of the Roman Capitol at his laureation in April 1341, as he puts it in the Africa (9.408-409) ‘imitating the great honours 17

Walsh in his 1993 commentary ad loc.

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paid to the heroes of old, so that the prophecies of the Greek poet should not prove empty’, irrita ne Grai fierent praesagia uatis. Petrarch is referring to the prophecy of Homer to the dreaming Ennius, earlier in the book, of a poet Franciscus who, in time to come, will sing of Scipio’s exploits in a poem entitled the Africa. The last two words, praesagia uatis, invoke the closural force of the last line of the Metamorphoses, si quid habent ueri uatum praesagia, uiuam, ‘if the prophecies of the bards contain any truth, I shall live’. Petrarch was acutely aware that in April 1341 he might have attempted to pluck the laurel prematurely, and the closing lines of the Africa are taken up with Petrarch’s anxious thoughts about the chances of his fame in an uncertain future, as he dreams of the green shoots of a revival of letters at some time to come, when his own name and fame may be renewed and made more permanent. For a Christian writer there is always the possibility of escaping from the uncertain chances of earthly fame by flight to a transcendental, divine, brand of fame or glory. The glory of God, or glorification in God, is unchanging, while earthly fame is transient and insubstantial. In the medieval Ovide Moralisé the Ovidian House of Fama, the House of ‘Renomee’, is allegorized as Holy Scripture, which ‘portrays all that has been done and is to do’ (XII 1657-1708), and in particular the coming of the Lord at the end of time and His terrible Last Judgement.18 In Lycidas, Milton, another poet concerned that he may be premature in his poetic ambition,19 gets round the problem of the pursuit of a fame in this world that is subject to the hazards of untimely death, of less than pure motives, and of the fickle mouthpieces of rumour, by transferring it to a heavenly court of last appeal, 70-84: Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise 20 (That last infirmity of Noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair Guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th’ abhorred shears, And slits the thin spun life. But not the praise, Phœbus replied, and touched my trembling ears; Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, 18 19

20

70

75

Boitani 1984: 135. Lycidas 1-5: ‘Yet once more, O ye Laurels, and once more / Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never sear, / I come to pluck your Berries harsh and crude, / And with forc’t fingers rude / Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.’ The idea that fame is the last delusion left in a perfected soul is Tacitean, Hist. 4.6 (Helvidius Priscus) erant quibus adpetentior famae uideretur, quando etiam sapientibus cupido gloriae nouissima exuitur. (‘Some thought he was more ambitious for fame than he should be, since the desire for glory is the last thing to be shed even by wise men.’)

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Fame – the Last Word? Nor in the glistering foil Set off to th’ world, nor in broad rumour lies, But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, And perfect witnes of all judging Jove; As he pronounces lastly on each deed, Of so much fame in Heav'n expect thy meed.

80

The mythological characters, Phoebus, Jove, are pagan, but the notion of a last judgement on fame is pulled in the direction of a Christian view of the world. Fame is the last infirmity of noble mind, but the culminating reward of fame may be prematurely cut off by death. But that hoped-for closure may be restored sub specie aeternitatis. Milton’s ‘solution’ has not, however, pleased all: the critic David Daiches comments ‘The pat aphoristic nature of that final couplet could not possibly be a solution to such a complex poem as Lycidas. There is almost a note of irony in the copy-book lesson. It is a deliberately false climax.’21 (My emphasis.) Before Milton, Petrarch had attempted a transcendental solution to the problem of fame in his Trionfi. Here the Triumph of Fame comes fourth in a series of six, after the Triumphs of Love, Chastity, and Death. Fame is a last thing that comes after the last thing of death, but Petrarch does not have the confidence of a Horace in the ability of words to endure the innumerabilis annorum series et fuga temporum ‘the countless sequence of years and the flight of time’, and in the fifth Triumph, that of Time, fame melts like snow under the envious gaze of the Sun, who measures out time’s unstoppable course. Time is finally trumped by Eternity. Petrarch’s vision of the ‘new world’ (mondo novo, TE 20-21) of eternity is also very much a return of the old, of the beauty and fame that had been destroyed by Death and Time, themselves now both consigned to death. There is a question left hanging as to whether the beauty and fame of Petrarch’s vision of eternity are different from or the same as those of this world.22 Perhaps the only difference is that in eternity the absent presences that are inseparable from both erotic desire and the desire for fame in a world subject to time are replaced by pure presence. The beauty and fame of Laura will be present in a re-vision (rivederla, TE 145) that is a revision of the conditions of a time-bound world, in which textuality (and its discontents) gives way to pure vision of the whole person (TE 142-145). Here’re line 121-145: Questi trionfi, i cinque in terra giuso avem veduto, et a la fine il sesto, Dio permettente, vederem lassuso;

21 22

Daiches 1957: 84. See Bertolani 2001: ch. 5.

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Philip Hardie e ’l Tempo, a disfar tutto così presto, e Morte, in sua ragion cotanto avara, morti inseme seranno e quella e questo; e quei che Fama meritaron chiara, che ’l Tempo spense, e i be’ visi leggiadri, che ’mpallidir f’ ’l Tempo e Morte amara, l’obblivïon, gli aspetti oscuri et adri, più che mai bei tornando, lascieranno a Morte impetuosa, a’ giorni ladri; ne l’età più fiorita e verde avranno con immortal bellezza eterna fama. Ma, innanzi a tutte ch’a rifar si vanno, è quella che piangendo il mondo chiama con la mia lingua e co la stanca penna; ma ’l ciel pur di vederla intera brama. A riva un fiume che nasce in Gebenna Amor mi diè per lei sì lunga guerra che la memoria ancora il cor accenna. Felice sasso, che ’l bel viso serra! ché poi ch’avrà ripreso il suo bel velo, se fu beato che la vide in terra, or che fia dunque a rivederla in cielo?

125

130

135

140

145 (Petrarch, TE 121-145)

Five of these Triumphs on the earth below We have beheld, and at the end, the sixth, God willing, we shall see in heaven above. Time, ever ready to destroy all things, And Death, so greedy in her evil power, One and the other, shall together die. And those who merited illustrious fame That Time had quenched, and countenances fair Made pale and wan by Time and bitter Death, Becoming still more beauteous than before Will leave to raging Death and thieving Time Oblivion, and aspects dark and sad. In the full flower of youth they shall possess Immortal beauty and eternal fame. Before them all, who go to be made new, Is she for whom the world is weeping still, Calling her with my tongue and weary pen, But heaven too desires her, body and soul. Beside a stream that rises in the Alps

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Fame – the Last Word? Love gave to me for her a war so long My heart still bears the memory thereof. Happy the stone that covers her fair face! And now that she her beauty hath resumed, If he was blest who saw her here on earth, What then will it be to see her again in heaven!

Eternity is as final a closure as one could wish for, but rather than stopping here I will end with another example of closural fama which involves a Christian revaluation of classical paradigms, and a closural fama that turns out to be not so much a marker of an ending as of a new beginning. Marco Girolamo Vida’s highly Virgilianizing Christiad (1535) in six books23 is an epic that broadcasts the praises of its hero Christ, and which also stages a contest between different kinds of fama-as-rumour, on the one hand the distorted rumours spread by the devils among the Jewish elders in an attempt to bring to an end the career of Christ, and on the other hand the growing rumours of Christ’s miracles and ministry that spread among the people, a sermo humilis that will lead to the triumphant fama of Christ. By the end of the story the rumours of the risen Christ become unstoppable, despite the continued attempts of the priests to stamp them out: Fama Palaestinas subito haec impleuerat urbes. iamque sacerdotes trepidare et quaerere, siqua multiplici uulgi sermoni occurrere possint rumoremque astu premere atque extinguere famam. custodes busti in primis, qui cuncta canebant, muneribus superant subiguntque haud uera profari, sublatum furto intempesta nocte cadauer. sed non ulla datur uerum exsuperare facultas. quoque magis tendunt serpentem sistere famam, amplius hoc uolat illa, omnemque exsuscitat oram. sunt etiam, qui se ore canant uidisse patentes sponte sua tumulos multosque exisse sepulcris, quorum iampridem tellus acceperat ossa.

395

400

(Vida, Christiad 6.392-404)

These tidings speedily spread through the cities of Palestine. And now the priests were appalled, and they looked for a way to counter the incessant talk of the people and craftily check the rumour and stamp out the story. First they overmastered with bribes the guards at the tomb who were telling and retelling all that had happened, and constrained them to say falsely that the corpse was stolen away in the dead of the night. But no 23

On the Christiad, see Di Cesare 1964.

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At the end of the last book the apostles, themselves of humble and un-heroic origins, are empowered as vehicles of the fame of Christ through the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. In the final interview in Heaven Christ asks his Father to strengthen his disciples against fear, reminding Him of His promise that they would spread the Gospel: tu tamen hos olim fore, qui praestantibus ausis per gentes canerent nostrum indelebile nomen, quacunque oceano terrarum clauditur orbis, et populos noua conuersos ad sacra uocarent. (Vida, Christiad 6.830-833) But, Father, you promised that these men would some day nobly dare and would proclaim our imperishable name to all the nations, wherever the lands of the earth are girded by ocean, and that they would convert the people, summoning them to new rites.

In response the Father, looking forward to Pentecost, confirms that the disciples will be made fearless: uerum ultra Gangen auditi, Bactra ultima supra, Ismara Bistoniasque plagas Seresque remotos Gadibus et uirides penetrabunt uoce Britannos. implebunt terras monitis, et cuncta nouantes templa pererrato statuent tibi maxima mundo.

860

(Vida, Christiad 6.860-864)

Even beyond the Ganges they shall be heard, and beyond the farthest reaches of Bactria, and Ismarus, and the plains of Bistonia, and China, far distant from Cadiz; and their voice shall come to the green isle of Britain. They shall fill the lands with your doctrines, and reshape everything in the world they have roamed, building great temples in your honour.

In the closing lines of the poem the voice of the apostles travels to the ends of the earth to set a seal on the ‘famous deeds of their leader’. At the same time this propagation of Christ’s fame is also the aition for a new religion and a new age. The Aeneid celebrates the fame of the ultimate founder of the Roman race, but Virgilian aitia will only be fully realised in a long-distant future. In the Christian

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ideology there is a much more immediate connection between the fame of the hero and the new order of things, since it is the spreading of the Word itself that converts and renews the world: ergo abeunt uarias longe, lateque per oras diuersi, laudesque canunt, atque inclyta uulgo facta ducis, iamque (ut uates cecinere futurum antiqui) illorum uox fines exit in omnes. audiit et siquem medio ardens aethere iniquo sidere desertis plaga diuidit inuia terris, quique orbem extremo circunsonat aequore pontus. continuo ponunt leges, moremque sacrorum urbibus. infectum genti lustralibus undis eluitur scelus, et ueteris contagia culpae, religioque nouas noua passim exsuscitat aras. protinus hinc populos Christi de nomine dicunt Christiadas. toto surgit gens aurea mundo, saeclorumque oritur longe pulcherrimus ordo.

975

980

985 (Vida, Christiad 6.973-986)

And so they went different ways far and wide in various lands, and openly proclaimed the glory and the illustrious deeds of the Lord, and now, as the ancient prophets foretold would happen, their words went out to the ends of the earth. Even he heard whom the pathless tracts of the desert, which burn beneath the cruel equatorial sun, divide from other lands, and even he heard who dwelt where the sea’s farthest waters thunder round the globe. Straightway they established canons and divine services in the cities. The taint of evil and the guilt of original sin were washed from the people with holy water. Everywhere the new faith raised up new altars. Henceforth, from the name of Christ, the people were called Christians. A golden race arose upon all the earth, and by far the fairest succession of the ages began.

Vida’s very Virgilian epic ends with allusion to an earlier work of Virgil’s, Eclogue 4, which starts by announcing an ending that is also a new beginning, the dawning of a new age: Vltima Cumaei uenit iam carminis aetas; magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.

(Virg. Ecl. 4.4-5)

The last age of the Cumaean song has now come; the great cycle of ages is born anew.

Epilogue The End of Mike Oldfield’s Amarok: Janet Brown’s Impersonation of the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher Hello everyone. I suppose you think that nothing much is happening at the moment. Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha. Well, that's what I want to talk to you all about: endings. Now, endings normally happen at the end. But as we all know, endings are just beginnings. You know, once these things really get started, it’s jolly hard to stop them again. However, as we have all come this far, I think, under the circumstances the best solution is that we all just keep going. Let’s keep this going in sight, never an ending. Let’s remember that this world wants fresh beginnings. I feel here, in this country, and throughout the world, we are crying out for beginnings, beginnings! We never want to hear this word ‘endings’. I know we all want to sit down. I know you want to take it easy. Of course, we’re looking for the good. Of course we’re looking for the fresh start. Isn’t that charming? Do you know, I really feel I could dance. Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha... (dancing) Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha … charming … ha-ha-ha … (CRASH!) …

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Index locorum ANDOCIDES 1.148-149

25

ANTIGONUS OF CARYSTUS 7 213 APOLLONIUS RHODIUS 2.498-527 2.669-719 4.654-659

73 73 73

APPIAN BC 2.90 Lib. 132 APULEIUS Apol. 10.6 Fl. 15 Met. 1.2 1.4 1.5 1.7 2.1 2.2 2.4 2.12 2.13-14 2.17 2.18 2.21-22

122 140

279 279 281 281-282 283 285 284-285 286 287-290, 306 291, 302 299 289 285 291

2.31 3.1-11 3.4-6 3.9-10 3.11 3.19 3.22 3.26 4.27 4.28 7.5-12 8.1-14 9.27-30 10.18-22 10.29-31 10.33 10.34 11.1 11.3 11.8 11.9-11 11.17 11.23-24 11.27 11.30

291-292 285 292 292 293 285 293 293 279 309 294 294 294 295 296 297 298 278 300 301 302-303 306 304-305 306 306

ARATUS 97-136 100-101

74 74

ARCHILOCHUS P.Oxy. LXIX 4708

7

ARISTINOUS P. Apollo 41-48

216

360

Index locorum

ARISTOTELES Poet. 1450b-1452b Rhet. 1409b8-12 1419b-1420a BELLUM ALEXANDRINUM 21 CALLIMACHUS Aetia fr. 1.25-28 Pf. fr. 43.84-85 Pf. fr. 75.32-37 Pf. fr. 75.40-43 Pf. fr. 75.50-52 Pf. fr. 104-110 Pf. fr. 143M fr. 144 M fr. 178 Pf. fr. 178.23-26 Pf. fr. gramm. fr. 403 Pf. fr. 405 Pf. fr. 462-463 Pf. Hecale Dieg. 10.31-11.7 p. 65 Hollis Hymns 2.28-31 2.105-112 3.225-239 CARMINA PRIAPEA 3.9-10 37 38 39 40 41 77.17

35 33

CATULLUS 8.1-2 8.11 51 76.15-18 85.2

237, 241 237 8 229 241

122

CHOERILUS SH 317

109

278

117 80 73 79 79 76-77 6 5-6 71 80 75 75 75

71 226 226-227 73

249 249-250 249-250 250 248, 250252 249 252

CICERO ad Att. 12.1.2 3.27 ad fam. 14 16 de inv. 1.98 part. 16-24 rep. 2.2

44 53 44 44, 49 33 33 85

DIODORUS SICULUS 1.37.5 11.37.6

133 258

DIO CASSIUS 42.40.4-5

122

EUENOS OF ASKALON AP 9.75

176

EUPHORIO Mopsopia CA fr. 34-36 SH fr. 417

71 71

EURIPIDES fr. TGF 515.1-2 Her.1410-1417 Hipp. 1423-1427

35 27 66-67

361

Index locorum Tr. 511-515

7

HERMOGENES Prog. 10.47-48

171

HERODAS Mim. 10

109

HERODOTUS 1.5.4 1.95 5.82-88

137 134 65

HESIOD Th. 22-34 27-28 22-46 104-115

224 38 210-211 212

HOMER Il. 1.472-474 7.81-90

209 73

10.80-132 11.74-78 13.159-187 23.296 24.80-84

150 73 269 32 73

Od.

HOMERIC HYMNS Apol. 14-18 19-24 30-32 45 140-146 151-155 165-178 190-193 204-206 207-215

221 218 221 221 222 203 222-224 203-204 224 219

545-546 Dem. 1 490-495 Herm. 578-579 HORACE C. 1.10 1.11 2.13 3.30 Ep. 1.20 Sat. 1.1.1-10 1.1.108 1.1.113-116

224-225 213 213 214

251 251 314 313-314 55 109-110 109 109-111

HYPERIDES 4.41

25

IBYCUS PMG fr. 342

74

JUVENAL 1.19-20 2.99

111 52

LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM AP 6.13 9.9.6 9.99

176 176 176

LIVY 1.1.1-3 1.1.8 1.1.10 1.2.3 1.4.1 1.6.3-4 1.7.1-2

97 97, 99 97 97 97 97-98 98-99

362

Index locorum 1.42.4 1.60.3 2.1.11 2.1.7 3.39.4 4.20.7 5.49.7-8 5.52.2 5.54.4 5.55.2-5 6.1.2-3 6.1.4 6.4.1 6.4.5-6 6.5.1 6.5.5 6.6.5 6.7.4 8.34.3 8.40 30.45.6-7 38.51.14 56.1 60.10

86 100 85 100 85 85 98 99 99 99 97 101 99, 101 99 100 100 99 101 85 315-316 315 317 317 317

1.68 1.167-170 1.291-295 1.294 1.316 1.403-404 1.465 1.511-514 1.625 1.645 1.695 2.186-187 2.434-444 3.115-118 3.153-156 3.362-364 3.369

117 117 117 120 117 117 117 117 117 117 118 117 117 117 117 121, 124 124

LUCAN

4.83-89 4.98-99 4.777 4.777-787 4.781 6.63 6.139 6.157-159 6.180-182 6.184-185 6.201 6.205 6.219 6.224-225 8.132 8.137 8.197-201 8.214 8.290-291 8.404-409 8.560-563 8.561 8.591-592 8.615 8.618-620 8.647-648 8.688-691 8.711 9.2 9.688-689 9.1035-1036 9.1043-1044 10.1 10.181-183 10.188-192 10.268-285 10.437-460 10.464 10.490-491 10.504 10.528-546 10.529 10.543

118 118 118 125 119 123 123 125-126 123-124 125 124 125 127 127 118 119 118 118 119 119 119 119 119 119, 126 125-126 119 119 119 118 126 126 127 121 135 135-136 136-137 120 121 123 120 122-124 126 126

363

Index locorum LUCIAN Asin. 55 Musc.Enc. 12 Salt. 10-12 VH 1.4 1.5 2.24 2.27 2.47 LUCRETIUS 6.92-94 6.1247-1251 MARTIAL epigr. 1.46.1-2 2.1 2.6 2.91 2.92 2.93 4.29 4.89.1-9 7.85.3-4 8.1 8.2 8.3 10.1 10.2 10.7 10.34 10.96 10.103 10.104 11.1 11.107 13.127

277 276

spect. 3 34

107-109 108

MELEAGER AP 12.257

249

NICANDER Ther. 343-358

74

296 270-271 267, 270 273-274 272 268-269

109 78

116 253 252 256 256 261 254 252-253 253 255 255 254-258 253, 261 259-260, 262 259 259 258 258 259 259 252 249

OVID Am. 1.2.31 2.9.31-34 3.2 3.11b.29-34 3.11b.40 3.14.30 3.15.20 Ars 1.35-40 1.109 1.174 1.771 2.727 2.731-732 2.733 2.745 3.809 ex P. 2.4.1 4.16.49-52 Fast. 1.27-36 1.147-152 1.161-164 1.353-358 Met. 4.657-662 15.114 15.434 15.868-879 15.877-878

238 243 115, 127 240-242 241 241 241 115 127 115 115 116 116 115 116 115 44 53 40-41 40-41 41 176 314 176 314 314-315 104

364

Index locorum

Rem. 362 385 389 391 394 609-612 Tr. 2.549 3.3.87-88 4.10.17-20 5.13.33 PAUSANIAS 1.38.3 2.30.4 2.32.1-4 PETRARCH Afr. 9.408-409

122 122 122 122 122 229 30 43 41 43

213 65 67

317

PHILODAMUS P. Dionysus 11-13

215-216

PHOTIUS Bibl. 320b12-29

208

PINDAR I. 2.1-5 I. 7.17-19 I. 8.61-63 N. 9.9-12 P.1.81-82 P. 10.65

109 109 109 65-66 32 109

PLATO Ap. 34d5-9

25

653d 656d5-657a2 657d

204-205 303-304 205

Lg.

Phdr. 243e-257b 244-247 258d7-11 Rep. 378c 382c9-10 394e1-4 397d4-5 598a7-b5 598c1-4 602c10-d10 Sph. 234e7-235b7 Ti. 21e-25d PLINY THE YOUNGER Ep. 1.1 1.2 1.5 1.6 1.8 1.12 1.15 1.20 1.22 1.24 2.1 2.6 2.9 2.11 2.12 2.11 2.17 2.20 2.31 3.1 3.9

279 115 38-39 280 284 294 280 280 281 283 307 134

44, 49-51, 54 56 46, 51, 5759 51, 59 53 46, 57 49 51, 58 49, 53 46 47 50 49 53, 58, 60 45 45, 58 52 46-47, 49, 58 47 49 45-46, 58

365

Index locorum 3.21 4.1 4.2 4.7 4.9 4.21 4.30 5.4 5.6 5.11 5.13 5.21 6.2 6.11 6.16 6.20 6.29 7.1 7.24 7.28 7.29 7.30 7.32 7.33 8.1 8.6 8.14 8.16 8.21 8.23 8.24 9.1 9.3 9.7 9.10 9.11 9.13 9.14 9.16 9.20 9.23 9.26

47-48 47, 51, 55 58 58 58 56 51 45 51 44 45 48, 50 58 59 45-46 45 59 51 59 49 45 56 48 43-46 49-51 45 58 51 260-261 50 50, 54 49-54 53 44 51 52-53 51, 56-60 51, 53, 5859 51 51 53, 59 51, 58

9.27 9.28 9.35 9.36 9.40 10.1 10.120-121 Pan. 5-10 88 PLUTARCH Caes. 49.7-8 Mor. 15c-d 30c-d 389a-b

56, 58-59 51, 54, 58 54 52 51-54, 59 55 54-55 60 60

122 282-283 290 207

POLYBIUS 1.2.7 38.21.1

139 140

POSIDIPPUS P.Mil.Vogl. VIII 309

8

PROPERTIUS 1.1.1 1.2.12 2.22a.1-12 3.7.15-16 3.7.33-36 3.24.1 3.24.1-6 3.24.2 3.24.5 3.24.9-16 3.24.15-16 3.24.19-20 3.24.25-28 3.24.31-38 4.1.70

236 246 236 244-245 244 239 234 236 239 234 243 234, 238 236-237, 241 235 114

366

Index locorum

PS.-DEMETRIUS On style 223

44

QUINTILIAN Inst. 4.2.45 4.2.50 4.2.91 4.2.111 4.5.5-6 6.1.1-54

37-38 34-35 37 34 36-37 33

RHETORICA AD ALEXANDRUM 36 33 RHETORICA AD HERENNIUM 2.47 33 SCHOL. HOM. (Dindorf) Il. 10.29 SCHOL. PIND. P. 1.157a-d

70

22 22-23 20 19 23 23 23-24 19

STRABO Geogr. 10.3.9 17.1.2-6 17.1-5

205-206 132 134

SUETONIUS Div. Iul. 64 Dom. 14 10.2

122 176 56

32

SENECA Ep. 22.12-13 75.1 88.40 108.29-30 Nat. 6.8.3

SOPHOCLES OT 1381-1385 1409-1445 1415 1424-1485 1480-1485 1489-1491 1500-1523 1524-1530

46 44 157 290 135

TACITUS Agr. 2.1 25.2 30.3 45.1 Germ. 1.1 46.6 Hist. 4.6

56 105 105 56 105 105

SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS Ep. 7.8 8.1 9.1

53 53 53

THEON Prog. 118.7

171

SIMONIDES Fr. 531 PMG

7

THUCYDIDES 3.104.4

213

318

367

Index locorum TIMOTHEOS Pers. 201-220

7

VIDA Christiad 6.392-404 6.830-833 6.860-864 6.873-986

321 322 322 322-323

VIRGIL Aen. 1.33 1.267 1.278 1.279 1.286-288 1.287 1.457 1.460 1.463 2.16 2.245 2.259-260 2.298-301 2.460 4.177 4.189 4.489-490 2.494-497 2.528-529 5.884-885 6.689-692 6.847-853 6.853 6.889 7.617 8.313 8.319-320 8.333-335 8.357-358 8.731 9.730

117 101 115-116 138-139 101 311 311 312 312 114 114 106 113 121 313 314 121 106 121 106 101 257 86 309 106 85 86, 89 86 85 311 121

9.759 12.474 12.741-745 12.749-750 12.763 12.806 12.836-837 12.893 12.924-925 12.929 12.938 12.950-951 Ecl. 4.4-5 Geo. 1.303-304 1.343-350 1.464-465 1.505-514 2.39-48 2.541-542 4.116-117 4.295-297 4.303 4.308-314 4.554-561 VITRUVIUS Arch. 7.5.2 8.2.6

121 121 106 106 106 106 93 106 106 107 106 94 323 242-243 176 112 111-112 242 242 242 112 112, 114 113 112-114

143-145 131