Ancient Narrative: Supplementum 1 Space in the Ancient Novel

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Table of contents List of illustrations Preface D AVID K ONSTAN Narrative Spaces

VII IX

1

C ATHERINE C ONNORS Chariton’s Syracuse and its histories of empire

12

M ARTIN M. W INKLER Chronotope and locus amoenus in Daphnis and Chloe and Pleasantville

27

S TEPHEN J. H ARRISON Literary Topography in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses

40

L UCA G RAVERINI Corinth, Rome, and Africa: a Cultural Background for the Tale of the Ass

58

M AAIKE Z IMMERMAN On the Road in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses

78

S TELIOS P ANAYOTAKIS The Temple and the Brothel: Mothers and Daughters in Apollonius of Tyre

98

J UDITH P ERKINS Social Geography in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles

118

M ICHAEL P ASCHALIS Reading Space: A Re-examination of Apuleian ekphrasis

132

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

RICHARD P. M ARTIN A Good Place to Talk: Discourse and Topos in Achilles Tatius and Philostratus

143

N IALL W. S LATER Space and Displacement in Apuleius

161

S TAVROS F RANGOULIDIS The Laughter Festival as a Community Integration Rite in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses

177

Indices

189

Index locorum

189

General index

190

List of illustrations Fig. 1 Girolamo di Benvenuto, The choice of Hercules (Panofsky 1930, fig. 53) 93 Fig. 2 Niccolò Soggi (?), The choice of Hercules (Panofsky 1930, fig. 52)

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Preface This special issue of Ancient Narrative Supplementum 1, entitled ‘Space in the Ancient Novel’, brings together a collection of revised papers, originally presented at the International conference under the same title organized by the Department of Philology (Division of Classics) of the University of Crete and held in Rethymnon, on May 14–15, 2001. This conference inaugurated what is hoped to become a new series of biennial International meetings on the Ancient Novel (RICAN, Rethymnon International Conferences on the Ancient Novel) which aspires to continue the reputable tradition of the Groningen Colloquia on the Novel, established by Heinz Hofmann and Maaike Zimmerman. Ancient Narrative Supplementum 1 includes two additional contributions by Catherine Connors and Judith Perkins, both originally presented in ICAN 2000 at Groningen in July 25–30, 2000 and included here in revised form, and an article by Stelios Panayotakis, which closely relates to the theme of the Rethymnon conference. The first contribution by David Konstan, ‘Narrative Spaces’, illuminates the concept of independent action spaces in Greek and Latin novels. The novels by Xenophon of Ephesus, Chariton and Longus, exhibit a pervasive doubling of action space as the narrative focuses alternatively on the activities that occur simultaneously in two or more unrelated arenas. The shift of focus from one action space to another is accomplished by the simple antithesis men and de, or by the simple transition de. This model of multiple action spaces, which is atypical of both drama and epic (with certain exceptions), possibly derives from historiography, where writers often shifted their focus abruptly from the military activities of one side to those of the other in accounts of war. By contrast, the Latin novels and that of Achilles Tatius as first-person narratives make use of the device of simple action space. In these novels the narrator, who is also a character in the story, follows the trail of the main characters from one place to another, like a camera tracking an actor. This technique has its model in the first-person narrative of Homer’s Odyssey.

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Catherine Connors, in her ‘Chariton’s Syracuse and its histories of empire’, advances an allegorical reading of Chariton’s Callirhoe, as she examines the possible implications of its historical setting. The child of Chaereas and Callirhoe, foretold to be the next king of Syracuse, corresponds to the historical Dionysius I, tyrant of Syracuse. Dionysius’ childhood in Ionia and the links of his ‘foster-father’ Dionysius to the Persian king may explain both his name and his tyrannical non-democratic rule. The robber Theron who abducts Callirhoe and initiates her adventures could be associated with Julius Caesar and his starting of civil war, while Chariton’s fictional refashioning of Syracuse under Dionysius I may correspond historically to Augustus’ newly refurbished walls and buildings of Syracuse that mark the end of civil strife. This allegorical reading of the novel’s erotic history as an allusive response to Roman as well as Greek history is reinforced by Chariton’s link to Aphrodisias, a city with a special relationship to Roman emperors. Martin Winkler’s article, entitled ‘Chronotope and locus amoenus in Daphnis and Chloe and Pleasantville’, takes its point of departure from Mikhail Bakhtin’s essay ‘Forms of Time and the Chronotope in the Novel’. The author juxtaposes Longus’ novel with a modern visual text, the 1998 film Pleasantville, written and directed by Gary Ross. Despite the differences of time and space between Daphnis and Chloe and Pleasantville and those of their respective chronotopes, and despite the differences between an ancient and a modern medium, there are noticeable similarities of story and of narrative stance in both works. Their very settings, respectively the pastoral landscape of Lesbos in the Greek novel and the eponymous town and its natural surroundings in Pleasantville, exhibit parallel aspects of the locus amoenus archetype. Two other articles shed new light on interrelated issues of space, literary topography and geographical inspecificity in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. Stephen J. Harrison’s ‘Literary Topography in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’ treats two key aspects of Apuleius’ literary topography: (a) the way in which several geographical locations reflect significant literary sources; and (b) the way in which some place-names and their associations point to important ideas and themes in the novel. Harrison’s definition of topography, therefore, becomes an integral part of the work’s literary program. These topographical allusions, which primarily appear in inserted tales, not only reveal familiarity with the elevated genres (epic, tragic) and events (epic battles of Greek and Roman history) but also make clear their parodic and ironic function when

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they reappear in the less elevated genre of the Roman novel. The article by Luca Graverini, entitled ‘Corinth, Rome, and Africa: a Cultural Background for the Tale of the Ass’, discusses geographical inspecificity in the novel, in contrast to the pseudo-Lucianic Onos in which the readers are able to follow the main character’s travels with a certain degree of precision. Graverini accepts the traditional interpretation of the novel’s ‘Romanocentric’ readership, which accounts for the geographical inspecificity in the work (the geographical details of Greece would presumably be of little interest to Apuleius’ Roman readers). He explains, however, geographical inspecificity in the novel also as a result of Apuleius’ literary choice to have Lucius come from Corinth and not from Patrai, as it happens in the pseudo-Lucianic Onos, and to place there his restoration to human form. In Apuleius’ time Corinth was a perennial though ambivalent symbol of the relationship between Greece and Rome. The author further proposes the possibility of ‘provincial’ interpretations for parts of the novel and the need for a more nuanced understanding of the notions of Romanization and Hellenization in the work. Hitherto unobserved aspects of metaphor, intertextuality, space symbolism and social geography in the novel are the focus of three contributions by Maaike Zimmerman, ‘On the Road in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, Stelios Panayotakis, ‘The Temple and the Brothel: Mothers and Daughters in Apollonius of Tyre’, and Judith Perkins, ‘Social Geography in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles’. Maaike Zimmerman’s contribution discusses the varied ways in which the protagonist/narrator describes road conditions in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, in an attempt to explore their meaningful function. Often these descriptions turn out to be projections of the emotional situation of characters. In the novel’s later part, however, there are moral connotations attached to road descriptions: the slippery road in which Lucius travels with the priests of the Dea Syria may be taken as direct allusion to the deceitfulness of the priests; while the flat and easy road which leads to Corinth may be suggestive of the easy and flat road which in Christian thought becomes equivalent to the road of sin, which had already appeared in the parable of Prodicus as the road of Vice and thus as opposite to the steep and arduous road of Virtue. The article by Stelios Panayotakis examines the function of two specific places in Apollonius, the temple of Diana in Ephesus and the brothel of Priapus in Mytilene, as separate accommodations respectively for Apollonius’

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wife and her daughter Tharsia. The temple and the brothel, which are traditionally regarded as places standing for purity against pollution, in Apollonius accommodate female virginity and chastity. Panayotakis discusses aspects of motherhood in this novel and suggests that the spiritual interpretation of motherhood is significant in the light of the possible Christian background of the author of Apollonius, who may have been influenced by contemporary discussions on motherhood and virginity as these are exemplified in the person of the Virgin Mary. The third contribution by Judith Perkins suggests that the narrative of the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles displays a project to reconstitute contemporary power relations through narrative recoding of some of the spatial categories of their culture. The Apocryphal Acts, by emphasizing how easy it is to penetrate and/or escape from both female quarters and prisons, works to resist the authority of contemporary social arrangements. In stressing boundary crossing/violation Christians metaphorically manifest their intent to ‘break out’ of the order of things and challenge the spatial bases of social boundaries. Michael Paschalis’ ‘Reading Space: A Re-examination of Apuleian ekphrasis’ and Richard P. Martin’s ‘A Good Place to Talk: Discourse and Topos in Achilles Tatius and Philostratus’ focus on the ekphrasis and descriptions of landscape in the novel. Paschalis sets the theoretical parameters of reading sophistic ekphrasis of works of art in the ancient novel. A sophistic ekphrasis differs considerably from classical ekphrasis as we know it from Homer, Hellenistic poetry, Catullus and Virgil. In the sophistic ekphraseis found in the ancient Greek novel, description (‘bodies in space’) takes precedence over narrative (‘actions in time’). Now describing becomes primarily a question of reading space. The person who describes is a professional expected to identify what is represented in a picture or sculpture, in order to be able to tell what is not represented or what is represented differently or what the meaning of the representation is. In sophistic ekphrasis and its antecedents, narrative is assigned the role either of a comment on, and interpretation of, the piece described, or of a discursive exposition on a work of art. These theoretical considerations then become a suitable hermeneutical tool both for reading Apuleian ekphrasis in general. The article examines in detail the description of Diana and Actaeon in 2.4 and briefly the pantomime performance on the judgment of Paris in 10.10–32. The contribution by Richard Martin examines the narrative techniques through which the varied descriptions of landscape in Book 1 of Achilles Tatius’ Leukippe and Kleito-

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phon are deployed with emphasis on the contrasts in ‘speaker’ and ‘plot’ spaces. The rhetoric of place as it relates to narrative makes explicit a deeply felt link between nature and culture. The author further traces the literary heritage and Second sophistic connections of several motifs and especially of the narrator as a gardener figure. Passages from Plato’s Phaedrus, Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, and Philostratus’ Heroikos are adduced to show that in using the locus amoenus as a place of talk Achilles Tatius stylizes traditional literary and religious conventions: beautiful places are good for talk because divine events have happened within such places and are traditionally localized there. Central to Martin’s thesis is the idea that the Greek novel is more like the aboriginal Australian narratives, in which the entire landscape is organized and understood by its inhabitants in terms of stories from the Dreamtime associated with every natural feature, and less like the so-called ‘novel’ which takes place in New York, London, Berlin or other centers of production. Two related but contrasting aspects of the theme of space, i.e. displacement and integration, in Apuleius’ The Golden Ass are the focus of contributions by Niall W. Slater, ‘Space and Displacement in Apuleius’, and Stavros Frangoulidis, ‘The Laughter Festival as a Community Integration Rite in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’. Slater presents a detailed examination of Apuleius’ disorienting use of space, first in the novel’s prologue and then in the tales of Aristomenes, Thelyphron and in the narrative of Lucius’ adventures. Lucius is a ‘displaced person’, like Aristomenes, Socrates, Thelyphron and Psyche. This pattern of constant movement through space and persistent displacement contributes substantially to the debate over the novel’s ending and meaning: the primary character Lucius does not return home, as happens in the cyclic pattern of the Greek novels where the hero and heroine ultimately reach home after their series of adventures, but is in a process of continuous motion, never reaching a goal. On the other hand, Stavros Frangoulidis argues against the communis opinio of the Laughter Festival as a scapegoat ritual and suggests instead that the narrative of Met. 3.1–12 represents a kind of integration rite that is enacted in the theatre. In this public space, Lucius and all other participants engage in the performance of ritual roles, the outcome of which leads not to his expulsion from the Hypatan community, but rather to a proposal for integration into it. That being said, there is a major difference between Lucius and all other participants in the festival: the former acts unwittingly, while the latter are conscious of their

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roles. The author further suggests that we contrast Lucius’ rejection of the offer of integration into the Hypatan community and their god of Laughter with the hero’s later acceptance of the offer of integration into the community of Isis. Thanks are due to a number of individuals for their contribution to the organization of the Rethymnon conference and the publication of this volume of proceedings: to all invited speakers, panel chairs and guests; to colleagues and friends in the Department of Philology, and especially to Athena Kavoulaki and Lizianna Delveroudi; to George Motakis, for placing his computer expertise at our disposal; and to Stavros Frangioudakis, Stavros Petropoulos and Manolis Skoundakis, undergraduate students, for their assistance. Special thanks are also due to the administration of the University of Crete, the Rector, Christos Nikolaou, and the Vice Rector, the late Angelos Kranidis, for their generous support that enabled us to cover the cost for this event. We would also like to thank the editorial board of both Ancient Narrative and The Petronian Newsletter Society and their publisher, Roelf Barkhuis, for hosting in the News Rubric of both journals our various conference announcements as the program progressively took shape. Finally, this volume would not have been possible without the support of Maaike Zimmerman and Stephen J. Harrison, who first suggested a special collaboration with Ancient Narrative that would bring together, in a single volume under the title Space in the Ancient Novel, the papers presented in the International conference at Rethymnon and two more presented in the ICAN 2000 at Groningen. Zimmerman and Harrison then collected, read and responded critically and in detail to all submissions featured in this special issue. To both these fellow-editors we would like to express our heartfelt thanks and gratitude. Michael Paschalis and Stavros Frangoulidis Rethymnon, March 2002

Narrative Spaces DAVID KONSTAN

Providence

Impressed by the broad geographical sweep of the ancient romances, and disappointed by what he perceived to be a lack of character development comparable to that found in modern novels, Mikhail Bakhtin drew the conclusion that space was the primary dimension of the genre, with the temporal axis reduced virtually to zero. For reasons I have discussed elsewhere, I do not consider this judgment to be justified.1 Time does matter in the ancient Greek novels: if erôs is to serve as the basis, not just of an infatuation, but of a lasting bond sealed by marriage, it must be put to the test, proved able to endure, and in the process transformed into a stable emotion that transcends the allure of physical beauty that was its origin. Space, however, is also crucial to this evolution, not simply as a way of marking the stages of the protagonists’ progress, but also because it separates them and hence obliges them to follow independent trajectories. This independence is, in turn, fundamental to the theme of the Greek novels, which is to exhibit a romance based on mutual and symmetrical passion; hence, it must be tested in each of the protagonists, not just in one. Space, then, is not just a matter of distance travelled, but also of the creation of separate spheres of action for the hero and heroine. The couple are initially brought together by a mutual attraction based on little more than good looks. This phase is preliminary to the main action, and is accomplished before the end of the first book. Once they have been united, there begins the core of the story, in which the pair resist or overcome obstacles to their bond. In the end they are reunited, and begin their married life as two mature and loyal individuals who have been tried by experience. ————— 1

See Konstan 1994, 11, 46–47; for a spirited defense of Bakhtin’s view, see Branham 2002.

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Not all the novels, however, make use of space in the same way. For the sake of clarity, let me introduce the idea of a ‘continuous action space.’ Every action requires an agent, and that agent, in turn, must be somewhere. If the agent stays in the same place – under a fixed spotlight, so to speak – then the action space is continuous. Of course, new characters may enter or leave the circle illuminated by the spotlight and interact with the primary agent, but this does not affect the spatial continuity. Now, it may happen that all the characters leave the initial scene of action. Imagine – to continue with our theatrical image – that the spotlight tracks them (or one of them), following their actions as they go. According to my definition, such a sequence of actions still constitutes a continuous action space – ‘space,’ rather than ‘place,’ because the place clearly changes. Though characters move from one spot to another, as long as they (or some of them) are continually in sight, so to speak, their movements constitute what I call a trail. If any agent leaves a trail, the action space is continuous. A character may enter the action space and report events that have occurred outside it, as in the case of a messenger speech in tragedy. Such reports do not interrupt the spatial continuity (though they may represent considerable digressions in the narrative), since the action – that of reporting what happens – goes on in the primary space. The effect of such reports is to integrate actions going on elsewhere into those occurring in the action space. Let us call such reports channels. Neither trails nor channels affect the continuity of the action space. An action space is discontinuous if there is temporal interval – a jump to next week or next year – even if the scene remains constant; we may imagine a spotlight winking out to indicate the passage of time. For the sequence of actions is broken or interrupted. If the action resumes in another location, the discontinuity is more radical. If the agents remain the same, however, there may be a kind of implicit trail, since we can imagine that we have followed them, or kept them in view, as they moved from one place to another, despite the leap in time. If the new scene involves different characters, it constitutes a new action space, although if the original characters enter at a later stage, they may connect the two spaces by a kind of splice. Finally, and most importantly, a narrative may contain two or more action spaces that overlap temporally. The theatrical analogy for this is not a spotlight that goes off and on again, but rather two spotlights simultaneously illuminating separate and independent scenes. Here, there is no continuity by

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means of trails, channels, or splices. Of course, a narrative, unlike the stage, cannot represent two action spaces at the same time; one must be recounted after the other. The narrator simply informs the reader that event Y occurred while event X was happening, as in the stereotyped formula, ‘Meanwhile, back at the ranch….’ Some narratives (and a few plays) are marked by a significant use of multiple action spaces, whereas others are limited to a single space. In the balance of this paper, I comment briefly on how the several ancient novels make use of action spaces (with a glance at some other genres as well), and then offer some suggestions concerning their function in three of the Greek novels. We shall then see whether the concept of action space has at least heuristic value. The Latin novels – to begin with them – by and large restrict themselves to a single action space. Petronius’ Satyrica and Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, like Homer’s Odyssey, are structured on the linear principle of a journey: the narrator follows the trail of the chief character from one place to another like a camera tracking an actor. Since both novels are first-person narratives, moreover, in which the narrator is also a character in the story, the action space is in a sense identical to the place where the narrator stands: he may report events that have occurred elsewhere, like the tales overheard by Lucius in the form of an ass, but these stories function like messenger speeches, bringing news from outside into the primary space. Put differently, situations in these novels do not normally unfold in parallel narrative domains. Within the inset tales, the narrator may recount simultaneous actions in two different spaces, as in the story of Cupid and Psyche, where the scene shifts from Cupid’s mysterious mansion to the homes of Psyche’s sisters, who are plotting her ruin.2 There are also shifts between earth and Olympus, but these are often connected by a trail, as we follow a deity ascending or descending from one realm to the other. The device is familiar from the Iliad, where Thetis’ trips to and from Olympus connect the action on earth to the councils of the gods, or again from the fifth book of the Odyssey, where Hermes carries the orders of Zeus to Calypso, instructing her to release Odysseus.3 ————— 2

3

It is indicative that the word interea appears in Apuleius’ novel for the first time at 4,32,1 and again at 5,4,14, 5,11,9, 6,1,1, 6,22,1, all in the Cupid and Psyche story; after that, only at 8,19,1, 9,34,11 (an inset tale), and 10,15,10. If the Roman novel, and particularly Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, prefers a more continuous action space than the Greek, it compensates by rendering the locale, and particularly

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Among the Greek novels, Achilles Tatius’s is like the Roman novels in being a first-person narrative,4 and in this sense is characterized by a single action space: everything is filtered through Clitopho’s awareness and reported from his perspective, so that even events that have occurred simultaneously are manifested sequentially in the narrator’s own space. Despite the radical experiments with suspense and narrative order in the first five books of Heliodorus’ Aethiopica, in which past events are revealed piecemeal and in reverse sequence,5 once the hero and heroine elope they remain together for virtually the entire journey southward from Thrace to Ethiopia. This linear motion constitutes the trail that defines a continuous action space. The remaining Greek novels, by Xenophon of Ephesus, Chariton, and Longus, exhibit a more pervasive doubling of the action space as the narrative focuses alternately on the activities of the hero and heroine, who follow independent paths that merge only when the couple is reunited at the end of the story.6 These novels make use of discrete action spaces, I suggest, precisely as a way of representing the hero and heroine as autonomous narrative agents in a way that is not paralleled in the other novels. In what follows, I examine the multiplication of action spaces in the final book of Xenophon’s Ephesiaca, preceded by a brief look at illustrative passages in Chariton and Longus.7 After indicating how these novels manage the construction and intersection of multiple action spaces, I conclude with a suggestion about a possible model for this narrative procedure. At the beginning of the fourth book of Chariton’s Callirhoe, the heroine stages a mock funeral for her husband Chaereas, who, she believes, has died at sea. Callirhoe is at this point a slave in the household of Dionysius, the regent of Miletus, who is enamored of her. As it happens, Mithridates, the satrap of Caria, is on a visit to Miletus at the time, and falls in love on the spot with Callirhoe. In fact, as the reader knows, Chaereas is a prisoner in Caria, where he working, under compulsion, on the land of Mithridates. ‘Now, Callirhoe [men oun],’ Chariton writes (4,2,1), ‘was burying Chaereas ————— 4 5 6 7

the beginning and end points of the narrative, geographically more indeterminate than its Greek counterparts; see the article by Niall Slater in this issue. On the role of the first-person narrator in this novel, see Reardon 1994. On Heliodorus’ complex narrative technique, see Winkler 1982; Morgan 1989. For the narrative structure of these novels, see Hägg 1971; Fusillo 1989. On Xenophon’s narrative technique, see O’Sullivan 1995, who emphasizes the oral elements in Xenophon’s style; Kytzler 1996. I agree with O’Sullivan that Xenophon is probably the earliest of five novelists; contra Ruiz-Montero 1994, 1996.

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in Miletus, but Chaereas [de] was bound and toiling in Caria.’ The transition from one action space to the other is effected by a simple contrast: the resumptive pair of particles, men oun, summarizes the event immediately preceding, while de announces the topic of the following paragraph.8 Shortly afterwards, Chariton continues (4,2,4): ‘Now they [Chaereas and his loyal friend Polycharmus] were [men] in this extremity, having lately learned to forget their freedom; but the satrap Mithridates [de] returned [epanêlthen] to Caria a different man from what he was when set forth [exêlthen] for Miletus.’ Here, the two spaces are joined by the movement of Mithridates, whose departure and return constitute a round-trip trail between Caria and Miletus. Chaereas’ independent action space is thus more like an interlude, sandwiched in as it is between Mithridates’ travels to and fro. It may be that Chariton employed the formula for simultaneous action, rather than make Mithridates’ movements the hinge for the transition, just in order to emphasize the simultaneity of the two spaces. Later, when the focus again returns to Miletus, Chariton manages the shift of scene by way of a letter from Chaereas to Callirhoe that falls into the hands of Dionysius (4,4–5). In Longus’ novel, the hero and heroine are never very far from one another, since the entire story is contained on the island of Lesbos, and mostly within the confines of a small vale. On one occasion, Chloe is carried off on a ship by young men from Methymne, while Daphnis is away in the woods. Daphnis weeps and prays at a shrine of the nymphs, and when he is reassured by a dream of her safe return, he spends the night with his foster parents: ‘He thought this the longest of all nights. During it [ep’ autês], the following things happened. The commander of the Methymnaeans, having pushed on for about ten stades, wished to relieve his soldiers, who were weary after the raid’ (2,24,4–2,25,1). The change of scene is introduced by an explicit marker of simultaneity; the new narrative segment, moveover, begins in asyndeton, indicating the start of an independent episode.9 Toward the beginning of Book V of the Ephesiaca, Xenophon reports (5,2,1): ‘Habrocomes [ho men] bewailed his fortunes, as Aegialeus consoled him, and he remained in Syracuse, where he now [êdê] shared the profession ————— 8

9

On the structural function of ‘transitional’ men oun … de, see Denniston 1959, 472; Immerwahr 1966, 58–62 notes that Herodotus commonly employs the conjunctions men dê or men nun to terminate the first segment. For a similar use of asyndeton to introduce a new incident, cf. 4,7,1. Longus, however, favors this construction even within a continuous stretch of narrative; cf. 1,1,2 for another formula involving a distance marker in stades.

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of Aegialeus [i.e., fishing]; but Hippothous and his companions [hoi de] had by now [êdê] acquired considerable loot, and decided to leave Aethiopia and apply themselves to still greater affairs’ (parallel expressions are indicated typographically). To expedite their movements, it is decided that Anthia, whom the gang is holding captive, should be killed. The shift of focus from Habrocomes’ situation in Sicily to the separate action space in Aethiopia, where Anthia and Hippothous are acting out their drama – two sites about as far removed from each other as romantic fiction can conceive – is accomplished by the simple antithesis of men and de, reinforced by the the contrast between Habrocomes’ unhappy resolve to stay where he is and the optimism of Hippothus’ men as they prepare to move on (note too the repetition of êdê). We are then told how Anthia is rescued by Polyidus, the archon of Egypt, who organizes an expedition and cleans out the bandits, although Hippothous manages to escape and reach Alexandria by night; here he hides out until he can board a ship that is heading for Sicily, where, he believes, he can best repair his fortunes (5,3,3). Unfortunately, Polyidus takes a fancy to Anthia, with the result that his wife, Rhenaea, arranges to have the girl murdered. The slave Clytus, to whom the task is assigned, takes pity on her, however, and sells her instead to a brothelkeeper in Italy. Up to this moment, the action space has been continuous, as the narrator follows Anthia’s movements, which intersect with those of Polyidus, and tracks her to Alexandria and thence to Italy. Xenophon then reports (5,5,8–5,6,2): ‘(1) When the brothel-keeper [ho de] saw in Anthia a beauty such as he had never before beheld, he realized that he stood to gain great profit from the girl, and within a few days he restored her, exhausted as she was from the journey and from the attacks of Rhenaea. (2) Clytus [ho de], in turn, went back to Alexandria and reported to Rhenaea what had happened. (3) Hippothous [ho de] completed his journey and landed in Sicily, not in Syracuse, however, but rather in Taormina, and here he sought an opportunity to acquire new resources. (4) But when Habrocomes [tôi de] had spent some considerable time in Syracuse, he began to experience discouragement and to despair that he would ever find Anthia or return safely to his country. He decided, accordingly, to sail from Sicily and reach Italy, and if there he could not find what he was seeking, to make the sad journey back to Ephesus.’

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There is a great deal of movement and shifting of focus in these few, spare sentences, in which the only connective is the particle de (joined with the pronominal article). Clytus’ return to Alexandria (2) opens a potential trail to that location, but the focus changes abruptly to Hippothous. Now, we know that Hippothous set sail from Alexandria for Italy (3), so in a sense we have a point of contact here: the camera, as it were, tracks Clytus and Anthia to Italy, follows Clytus back to Alexandria, then makes an abrupt turnabout and catches up with Hippothous as he arrives in Taormina. It is a complex sequence, but perhaps it can just qualify as a continuous action space. The switch to Syracuse (4), however, has no such link, and Xenophon motivates it by the arbitrary device of recording that Hippothous landed ‘not in Syracuse,’ where we left Habrocomes at the end of the previous continuous action, ‘but rather in Taormina.’ There is nothing intrinsically new or radical in such a shift from one action space to another. While Homer prefers in general to maintain continuity, for example by tracking a character to and from the battlefield as in Hector’s return to Troy in Book 6 of the Iliad, he is nevertheless quite capable of representing two simultaneous actions in different locations.10 Thus, in Book 4 of the Odyssey, while Telemachus is being entertained by Menelaus in Sparta, having set out in search of his father, Homer shifts the scene abruptly back to events in Ithaca, where the suitors are arranging their plot to assassinate the boy on his return journey (4.624–26): ‘While they [hoi men] were going about [penonto] their dinner in the halls [of Menelaus], the suitors [de] were playing [terponto] at discus in front of the hall of Odysseus,’ and so forth.11 The transition is softened by the repetition of the term megaron, just as in Xenophon the notice that Hippothus was not going to Syracuse connects his movements indirectly with the place where Habrocomes is in fact living. In Xenophon, the device seems more mechanical or arbitrary, since there are any number of places to which Hippothous is not travelling, ————— 10

11

See Rengakos 1995, Bakker 1997 chh. 4–5, both challenging Zielinksi 1899–1901 (followed by Fränkel 1968), who argued that Homer could only narrate events in succession, so that narrative time in epic moves uniformly forward. Aristotle states the case for simultaneity clearly (Poetics 1459b27–27): ‘in epic [as distinct from tragedy], because it is narrative in character, it is possible to represent many parts [or episodes] as occurring simultaneously’ (esti polla merê hama poiein perainomena). Cf. also Iliad 15,390–394: Patroklos d’, heiôs men…, tophr’ ho g’, etc.; 16,1–2: hôs hoi men per nêos…. Patroklos d’, picked up at 16,101–102: hôs hoi men toiauta…. Aias d’, etc.

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but I suspect that he was concerned to emphasize the coincidental proximity of two distinct action spaces, which would soon intersect in the narrative. So too, Habrocomes’ intention to sail to Italy (4) reminds the reader of the separation between his space and that of Anthia. Following immediately upon the last sentence quoted above, Xenophon introduces still further changes of locale (5,6,2–3): ‘By now, their parents and all the Ephesians were consumed by grief, since neither a messenger nor letters had arrived from Habrocomes and Anthia, and they kept sending people everywhere to seek them. Being unable to endure because of their discouragement and their advanced age, the parents of both departed this life. Habrocomes [ho men], then, set off for Italy, but Leucon and Rhode [ho de … kai hê], who had been reared with Habrocomes and Anthia, once their master in Xanthus had died and had left them his property (which was substantial), decided to set sail for Ephesus.’ In fact, Leucon and Rhode terminate their voyage in Rhodes, once they learn that Habrocomes and Anthia have disappeared and that their parents are now dead, and it is in Rhodes that both Anthia and Habrocomes will turn up as well, thus bringing the several strands of the story together and simultaneously uniting three distinct action spaces. The mention of the fortunes of Habrocomes’ and Anthia’s parents can be seen as a parenthetical aside on the part of the omniscient author, since it has no consequences for the action at this point. Where it does have an effect, namely in inducing Leucon and Rhode to cut short their homeward journey, we are told that it was precisely in Rhodes that they learned (5,6,4, mathontes) the fates of their erstwhile masters and their parents, and so the information concerning events in Ephesus here takes the form of a report (or what I have called a channel). The switch from Habrocomes’ movements en route to Italy to Leucon and Rhode’s decision to abandon Xanthus, however, is an authentic change of locale, and it is marked by contrastive men and de, analogous to the earlier cut (in cinematic terminology) from Habrocomes and the old fisherman in Syracuse to Hippothous and his men in Aethiopia. At this point, in a transition marked simply by de (5,7,1), Xenophon returns to the fortunes of Anthia in the possession of the brothelkeeper in Italy. Later, Xenophon will turn the spotlight briefly on Hippothous in Taormina, the shift of locale marked once more by a simple de (5,9,1). He wraps up events in that town, where Hippothous marries a rich old lady who obligingly dies shortly afterwards, leaving him her money, and then notes Hippothous’ decision to sail from

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Taormina to Italy (5,9,2, with the tell-tale verb, diagignôskô), where he will intersect with Anthia and end up purchasing her from the brothelkeeper. What conclusions can be drawn from this abbreviated survey of the novelists’ technique in multiplying action spaces? First, I suggest that all three deliberately highlight the distinctness of the action spaces as a way of emphasizing the autonomous actions of their characters, above all the hero and heroine. In this sense, Xenophon, and to a lesser degree Chariton and Longus, manifest through their use of space the sexual symmetry that, I have argued, is characteristic of the Greek novels, at least, as I would now stress, up to the point of the reunion or marriage of the protagonists, when the traditional structures of male authority are typically reasserted12 – though this is least the case, it should be said, in Xenophon of Ephesus’ narrative. That is, Xenophon’s spatial arrangements are as complex as they are because he is expressing by means of them one aspect of his theme. Second, we have noted that the use of multiple action spaces is atypical of drama, for more or less obvious reasons, and also of epic (with certain exceptions). If Xenophon and Chariton had a model for this kind of narrative pattern, what genre might have furnished it? One possibility is historiography, where writers characteristically shifted the focus from the military activities of one side to the other in accounts of war. Herodotus in particular marks such shifts of locus by the paired particles men and de; thus (6,25– 26): ‘When Miletus was captured the Persians immediately took Caria as well…. These events, then [tauta men dê], occurred in the manner described. Histaeus the Milesian [de], however, was in the area of Byzantium, where he assembled the ships of the Ionians that had sailed out of the Pontus and reported what had happened at Miletus.’ The shift from Miletus to Byzantium is facilitated by the echo of ‘Miletus’ in ‘Milesian’; in addition, Histaeus acts as a channel, reporting in Byzantium what occurrred back at Miletus. A little later, Herodotus writes (6,30–31): ‘This [ta men] is what happened with Histiaeus [peri Histiaion]. But [ho de] the Persian fleet wintered at Miletus [peri Milêton],’ etc. The technique for switching from one action space to another is comparable to that exploited by the novelists.13 ————— 12 13

See Couraud-Lalanne 2000. Immerwahr 1966, 59 suggests that ‘the term ‘parallel action’ should not be applied to the work of Herodotus,’ on the grounds that ‘the Histories are based on the single chain of events, with single attachments of smaller accounts, rather than on elaborate synchronous structures’ (60–61). Certainly, there is nothing so sophisticated in Herodotus’ deploy-

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If the novelists found in the historical writers some guidance and motivation in representing the intersection of two independent spheres of action, this might be one additional reason why the earliest of them, at least – that is, Xenophon and Chariton – chose to cast their tales in the form of histories.14

Bibliography Bakker, Egbert J. 1997. Poetry in Speech: Orality and Homeric Discourse. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Branham, R. Bracht. 2002. ‘A Truer Story of the Novel?’ In R. Bracht Branham, ed., Bakhtin and the Classics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2002) 161– 186. Couraud-Lalanne, Sophie. 2000. Heros et heroïnes du roman grec ancien: Etude d’une paideia aristocratique à l’époque impériale. Paris: dissertation Université de Paris I. Denniston, J.D. 1959. The Greek Particles. 2nd edition. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Fränkel, Hermann. 1960. [orig. 1931]. ‘Die Zeitauffassung in der archaischen griechischen Literatur.’ In Wege und Formen frühgriechischen Denkens. 2nd ed. (Munich: Beck, 1960) 1–22. Fusillo, Massimo. 1989. Il romanzo greco: Polifonia ed eros. Venice: Marsilio. Hägg, Tomas. 1971. Narrative Technique in Ancient Greek Romances; Studies of Chariton, Xenophon Ephesius and Achilles Tatius. Stockholm: Svenska Institutet i Athen. Hägg, Tomas. 1987. ‘Callirhoe and Parthenope: The Beginnings of the Historical Novel.’ Cl. Ant. 6, 184–204. Reprinted in Swain 1999, 137–160. Hunter, Richard. 1994. ‘History and Historicity in the Romance of Chariton.’ ANRW II.34.2, 1055–1086. Immerwahr, Henry R. 1966. Form and Thought in Herodotus. Cleveland: Western Reserve University Press = American Philological Association Philological Monographs 23. Konstan, David. 1994. Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kytzler, Bernhard. 1996. ‘Xenophon of Ephesus.’ In Schmeling 1996, 336–359. Luginbill, Robert D. 2000. ‘A Delightfull Possession: Longus’ Debt to Thucydides.’ CJ 97: 233–247. Morgan, John R. 1989. ‘The Story of Knemon in Heliodoros’ Aithiopika.’ JHS 109, 99–113. Reprinted in Swain 1999, 259–85.

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ment of simultaneous action spaces as what is found in Xenophon of Ephesus and Chariton. On the relationship between the Greek novels and Greek historiography, see Hägg 1987; Hunter 1994. See also Luginbill 2002 for Longus’ debt to Thucydides.

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O’Sullivan, J.N. 1995. Xenophon of Ephesus: His Compositional Technique and the Birth of the Novel. Berlin: W. de Gruyter. Reardon, B.P. 1994. ‘Achilles Tatius and Ego-Narrative.’ In J.R. Morgan and R. Stoneman, edd., Greek Fiction: The Greek Novel in Context (London: Routledge, 1994) 80–96. Reprinted in Swain 1999, 243–258. Ruiz-Montero, Consuelo. 1994. ‘Xenophon von Ephesos: ein Überblick.’ ANRW II.34.2, 1088–1138. Ruiz-Montero, Consuelo. 1996. ‘The Rise of the Greek Novel.’ In Schmeling 1996, 29–85. Schmeling, Gareth L., ed. 1996. The Novel in the Ancient World. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Swain, Simon, ed. 1999. Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Winkler, John J. 1982. ‘The Mendacity of Kalasiris and the Narrative Strategy of Heliodoros’ Aithiopika.’ YCS 27, 93–158. Reprinted in Swain 1999, 286–350. Zielinski, Thadaeus. 1899–1901. ‘Die Behandlung gleichzeitiger Ereignisse im antiken Epos.’ Philologus suppl. 8, 407–49.

Chariton’s Syracuse and its histories of empire CATHERINE CONNORS

Seattle

The ancient Greek novels tell their stories of young love and high adventure in a realm apart from the everyday world inhabited by their authors and audiences. In his marvellously bold project of constructing a history of novelistic discourse that would embrace the novel’s earliest beginnings, Bakhtin describes the ‘chronotope’ or setting in time and space, of the Greek novels as an ‘alien world in adventure time’ in which largely passive and unchanging characters endure experiences brought upon them by chance. In Bakhtin’s insistent formulation the novels depict their characters in a time and space wholly divorced or abstracted from social, historical and geographical reality (Bakhtin 1981, 100): The world of these romances is large and diverse. But this size and diversity is utterly abstract. For a shipwreck one must have a sea, but which particular sea (in the geographic and historical sense) makes no difference at all. For escape it is important to go to another country; for kidnappers it is important to transport their victim to another country – but which particular country again makes no difference at all....The nature of a given place does not figure as a component in the event; the place figures in solely as a naked, abstract expanse of space. Bakhtin’s larger point is that as a character moves unchanged through this ‘alien world in adventure time’ he ‘keeps on being the same person’; the novels thus function as a ‘test of the heroes’ integrity, their selfhood’ (Bakhtin 1981, 105, 106). The ‘abstract expanse of space’ of the Greek novels – so different from the historically contextualized topographies of Bakhtin’s beloved 19th century realistic novels – serve as the background against which an individual, private identity is constructed and affirmed: we could

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say that for Bakhtin in the Greek novels space reveals identity, an identity increasing organized around private, rather than political, life. For a long time the Greek novels have been understood, along the same lines sketched by Bakhtin, as artifacts that represent and enact a turn away from engaged political life and toward the secluded pleasures of private life. We are coming now to see this ‘private life’, the identity affirmed on Bakhtin’s testing ground of abstract space, itself more and more as a complex ideological negotiation. At the same time, space too is becoming more complicated. Modern geographers and philosophers use the term space to describe an abstraction that can be measured and charted, whereas place is used to mean a realm that is constructed, narrated, situated in time; as the ideological assumptions which inform even the most abstract representations of space are being increasingly made explicit, all space becomes place. 1 Accordingly, although the novels themselves give generally scanty descriptions of places and peoples, the shared body of geographical and historical knowledge and lore available to educated audiences in antiquity ensured that novelistic travels did not in fact unfold in a space that was ‘naked’ and ‘abstract’. Instead, novelistic characters move through a world of geographically significant and specific places. Within this broader (post-Bakhintian) critical framework, we could now say that in the Greek novels representations of places construct identities. Heliodorus’ Aithiopika, with its sophisticated problematization of the construction of identity and its focus on the immensely fascinating world of the Nile, is perhaps most responsive to this sort of approach. Tim Whitmarsh and Judith Perkins have each excellently analysed how the progress of Heliodorus’ characters up the Nile argues that Greek identity is an individual response to situation and context rather than an unchanging essence.2 I hope to demonstrate here that Chariton’s novel too – especially its historical setting in Syracuse – can contribute to our understanding of constructions of Greek identity under the Roman empire. Chariton’s novel sets romance in an historical frame to tell the story of Callirhoe, daughter of Hermocrates, the Syracusan general who led the defeat of the Athenian expedition against Syracuse in 413. The name of Hermocrates’ daughter is not given in the historical sources; Chariton’s name for her, Callirhoe, meaning ‘beautiful-flowing’, figures her as an embodiment of Syracuse’s famous spring Arethusa. Callirhoe’s swift marriage to Chaereas ————— 1 2

On these terms see: Casey 1997, esp. 75-78; Tuan 1979, and Clarke 1999, 1-45. Perkins 1999; Whitmarsh 1998, 1999.

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in Syracuse ends in apparent tragedy when he is tricked by her rejected suitors into a jealous rage and kicks her, evidently to death. Buried and then awakened from her coma, she is abducted from her tomb by the robber Theron who sells her to the fabulously wealthy Dionysius in Ionia; in time she bears Chaereas’ child but pretends Dionysius is the father. Dionysius becomes embroiled in a dispute over her with a Persian satrap named Mithridates, which is ultimately brought to court before the Persian king Artaxerxes in Babylon only to be interrupted by news of an Egyptian revolt. Reunited with Chaereas in the aftermath of the revolt (in which the Persians are defeated) Callirhoe entrusts the child to Dionysius (keeping the secret of his paternity from Dionysius but not from Chaereas) and she and Chaereas return to Syracuse in triumph. The novel’s opening sentence imitates the openings of Herodotus’ history of the Persian Wars and Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian war, and the precise relations of the novel’s plot and settings to historical fact have been charted in detail.3 The tender-hearted Perry maintained that the violent attack on Callirhoe and the decision to leave the child with Dionysius are too cruel not to be derived from historical anecdotes: the next man to emerge as a leader in Syracuse after Hermocrates was named Dionysius; he married the daughter of Hermocrates, who we are told, was attacked by a Syracusan mob and so violated that she committed suicide (Plut. Dion 3,1; cf. Diodorus Siculus 13,112).4 Once we suspect a connection between Callirhoe’s child and the historical Dionysius it is easy enough to speculate that Callirhoe’s child was named Dionysius after his putative father.5 Chariton’s privileging of atmosphere and theme over historical accuracy could simply be an index of the novel’s detachment from real events, its existence in Bakhtin’s ‘adventure time’. But to ignore the implications of Chariton’s history entirely would be a mistake. Even works that do not engage substantially and ————— 3

4 5

On Chariton’s uses of history see: Hunter 1994; Alvares 1993; Bompaire 1977; Billault 1981, 1989; Bartsch 1934. Chariton is untroubled by anachronisms: for example, the Persian king Artaxerxes did not begin his reign until 405, after the death of Hermocrates in 407; Chaereas’ military encounter at Tyre resembles narratives of Alexander’s siege of Tyre in 332 (or a later siege: see Jones 1992). Some features of the text display an outlook characteristic of Roman imperial times but this is not so obtrusive as to seriously undermine the coherence of the story’s setting in the classical period: Reardon 1996, 327; Baslez 1992, 203-204. Perry 1967, 137-140. It was more customary for boys to be named after a grandfather; however, the historical Dionysius was succeeded by his eldest son Dionysius (Plut. Dion 6).

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directly with historical facts of empire can still illuminate for us the discourses that uphold and justify empire in in the things they take for granted – what Raymond Williams calls their ‘structures of feeling’ or what Edward Said calls their ‘structures of attitude and reference’.6 In other words, just because Chariton’s novel doesn’t mention Rome doesn’t mean that it is not about – or at least a response to – Rome.

Hermocrates’ Syracuse At first sight, Chariton’s historical setting seems typical of much Greek literary and rhetorical discourse during the Roman period: the narrative creates a Greek world where the only real rivals to Greek power are not Roman but Persian, where Greeks always come out on the winning side.7 Here, readers can find refuge from a contemporary reality where Rome is the supreme global power. So, Chariton repeatedly stages the Greek-Persian conflict, – to the advantage of the Greeks, naturally. Greeks are democratic, Persians ruled by a king; Greeks are free, Persians are slavish, and so on. The celebration of Greek values over Persian ones is positively Herodotean. Yet the precise setting of the novel in Syracuse in the aftermath of the defeat of the Athenians by the Syracusans under Hermocrates in 413 brings Thucydidean complications to this picture. Hermocrates’ victory over the Athenians is a constant point of reference, starting in the novel’s second sentence (1,1,1). Saving Chaereas from his lovelorn melancholy will be the best of Hermocrates’ ‘trophies’ (1,1,11). As his daughter, Callirhoe is the embodiment of his success and the Athenian defeat; the Syracusan celebrations of their wedding were greater than their celebrations of victory (1,1,13). Callirhoe’s funeral procession puts on display the entire civic and military community of Syracuse and includes cavalry and infantry bearing semeia of the victory; Hermocrates added many of his war spoils to the funeral offerings (1,6,4). When abducted from the tomb by Theron Callirhoe sees her future as a tragic reversal of the Athenian defeat (1,11,2-3). When Dionysius learns that she is the daughter of Hermocrates, he acknowledges that the king of Persia admires Hermocrates for his victory over the Atheni————— 6 7

Williams 1973, 12; Said 1993, 52. Compare the representation of the Persian wars by Pausanias: see Alcock 1996. On the general plausibility of Chariton’s representations of the Persians see Alvares 1993, 180198.

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ans and is reluctant to force himself on Callirhoe (2,6,3); the king later mentions his own admiration for Hermocrates (5,8,8). When Theron is crucified, he overlooks the sea ‘over which he had carried off the daughter of Hermocrates, she whom even the Athenians had not captured’ (3,4,18). When the Great King’s eunuch Artaxates rebukes Callirhoe for preferring the enslaved Chaereas to the King himself, Callirhoe retorts: ‘Chaereas is well-born, a leading citizen (protos) of the city that defeated the Athenians, the ones who had defeated even your great king at Marathon and Salamis’ (6,7,10). Chaereas offers the Syracusan victory as his credentials when he offers his services to he Egyptians in their revolt againt Persia (7,2,3-4). Memories of the defeat of the Athenian expedition culminate in the return of the couple to Syracuse, when the numerous ships that sail out to escort them into the harbor make the harbor look like ‘the appearance (schema) it had after the battle with Athens’ (8,6,10). The world Chariton invites his readers to linger in is not the Herodotean world of the spectacular Greek repulsion of the Persian invasion, but the Thucydidean world where Athens has just come out on the losing side of what Thucydides ‘the greatest battle of Greek history, the most brilliant for the winners and most unfortunate for those destroyed’ (Thuc. 7,87,5). Even though it took another eight years for Sparta to seize control of Athens, the defeat at Syracuse was seen to mark the end of Athenian aspirations to exert control over distant territories (Thuc. 7,56,2, 7,66,2). Syracuse, then, is not just any Greek city, but a place with imperial stories to tell, stories of one empire giving way to another.

Dionysius’ Syracuse At Syracuse the Athenian empire crumbles and a Syracusan empire emerges. Although democratic institutions are valorized in the novels’ version of Hermocrates’ Syracuse and its contrast with the Persian court, in historical fact democracy did not long survive the defeat of the Athenians. Hermocrates himself attempted to seize sole power in 407 and was killed in the conflict he provoked. Subsequently, Dionysius builds an autocratic and extensive rule lasting from 405-367. He controlled most of Sicily, and his power extended into Italy and the Adriatic as far north as Ancona. As we have noted, the child of Callirhoe and Chaereas, whom Callirhoe has pretended is Dionysius’ child (3,7), is left at the end of the action to be raised by him in Ionia (8,4,5), but there are clear prophecies of his future: he is to come to

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Syracuse and be received in triumph (2,11,2; 3,8,8; 8,4,6; 8,7,11-12).8 The child’s projected life story would dovetail roughly with some of the facts audiences might remember about the historical Dionysius I: that there were conflicting stories about his origins,9 and that he was connected to Hermocrates through Hermocrates’ daughter, who suffered a violent attack. Certainly, Chariton rewrites history. The historical daughter of Hermocrates does not emerge alive from her tomb, and the historical Dionysius was her husband, not her son. Yet, despite the fact that the historical and fictional Dionysius-stories don’t match up exactly, the novel’s open-ended ending offers an aition for the re-emergence of tyranny in Syracuse. Dionysius’ childhood in wealthy Ionia and the links of his ‘foster-father’ Dionysius to the Persian king serve to ‘explain’ both his name and his tyrannical and nondemocratic rule, while his ultimate status as the child of the true Syracusans Callirhoe and Chaereas –whose wedding was requested and celebrated by the entire demos of Syracuse (1,1,11, 14) – imaginatively legitimates his position. Where Bakhtin would say that the ‘adventure time’ of the novel is totally sealed off from the historical time and circumstances of author and audience, I think we might say instead that this child’s implied future as Dionysius I of Syracuse serves as a portal between the ‘adventure time’ of the novel’s action and historical time. In contrast to the typical view of Dionysius as a bad tyrant, 10 Chariton’s optimistic imagining of the arrival of Callirhoe’s child in Syracuse presents an altogether sunnier picture of the tyrant’s future.

————— 8

9

10

So Naber 1901, 98-99. On Dionysius himself our main source is Diodorus Siculus 14-15; see further Caven 1990, 50-58. Diod. Sic 13,96,4 says that Dionysius started out as a grammateus and and an ordinary citizen; in a passage deriving from Philistus, Cicero (Tusc. 5,57) describes his birth and social position as bonus and honestus but mentions that others characterize Dionysius less favorably; cf. Caven 1990, 19-20. Certainly Diodorus Siculus, writing in the 30 years that precede the battle of Actium, is almost unrelievedly hostile (e.g. 14,2), and Cicero in the Tusculan Disputations uses Dionysius as paradigm of the moral evils of tyranny (Tusc. 5,57-63). The only known ancient biography of Dionysius (now lost) paired him with Domitian: see Caven 1990, 1, citing Photius cod. 131.

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Augustus’ Syracuse It remains to ask how this might reflect Chariton’s own historical situation. As a Latinist, I can’t help noticing that Chariton’s optimistic rewriting of the stories of Dionysius I as a bad tyrant parallels Augustus’ own process of controlling the script of his rise to power, doing everything he could to dissociate himself from the paradigms of tyranny and monarchy while actually gathering sole power unto himself and his successors. Is it reasonable to suppose that a Greek novelist working sometime between mid first and mid second centuries CE would be interested enough in the Roman emperors to construct such an allegorical dimension of his work? Yes, if he comes from Aphrodisias, a city with exceptionally strong links to Rome and its emperors because of its cult of Aphrodite, mother of Rome’s legendary founder Aeneas.11 Aphrodisians were granted freedom from taxation and other special privileges in 39 BCE under the sponsorship of Octavian, who traced his descent back to Aeneas and Aphrodite through his adoptive father Julius Caesar.12 The Sebasteion, a monumental portico complex erected by two wealthy local families, begun under Tiberius and completed under Nero, celebrated the empire, the emperor and the imperial family in an elaborate program of relief sculptures which combined Greek myth with Roman history (itself claiming origins in myths of Troy). 13 The prominence of Rome’s mythic Trojan origins in Aphrodisian civic consciousness, perhaps only fully evident with the publication of the Sebasteion sculptures in the mid -1980’s, brings a new immediacy to the question of Chariton’s uses of Trojan myths, ————— 11

12 13

See Erim 1986; documentation of links to Rome is set out in full in Reynolds 1982. The tradition of honoring Rome’s patron goddess Venus and the eastern origins of her founder Aeneas by making gifts to Aphrodite at Aphrodisias extends as far back as Sulla, who was directed by an oracle to make a dedication of a double axe to her: Appian BC 1,11,97, on which see Reynolds 1982, 3. Julius Caesar dedicated a golden statue of Eros to the goddess which no doubt advertised his claim to descend from Aphrodite via Aeneas: Reynolds 1982, doc. 12 lines 13 ff. He probably gave the right of asylum to the temple: Reynolds 1982, doc. 8 lines 41 f and Tacitus Ann. 3.69, with Reynolds 1982, pp. 5 and 79. Some attention has been paid to Chariton’s Aphrodisian origins: Schmeling 1974, 20-21; Alvares 1993, 172-175; Jones 1992b, 161-7, highlights nuances in the novel by his attention to social history from an Aphrodisian perspective; Edwards 1985 argues that since Aphrodisias claims a special closeness to Aphrodite, the role of Aphrodite in directing the action of the novel operates as an expression of Aphrodisian civic pride; he makes the case in more detail in Edwards 1996, 20-2, 33-6, 60-1, 80-1, 95-100, 130-1. Reynolds 1982, docs. 6-8 On sculpture in the Sebasteion see Smith 1987, 1988, 1990.

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already suggestively traced by Marcelle Laplace in 1980. She points to the ways that Callirhoe at some times plays a role similar to Helen’s (especially in Euripides’ Helen) and at others is an Aphrodite figure. In particular, Laplace argues, Callirhoe is like Aphrodite in leaving her child to be raised in the east without her: like Aphrodite’s Aeneas, Callirhoe’s child is destined for a westward journey that founds an empire.14 Indeed, she views the novel as an ‘histoire symbolique’, concluding, ‘Rome, the hope and future of Greece, such is the destiny that Chariton extols’.15 On this allegorical level, Chariton’s novel, like the Sebasteion itself, uses Trojan myth to celebrate both Aphrodisian civic pride and the coming of Rome. The shifting function of Syracuse in the Roman political and historical imaginary supports this allegorical interpretation. Syracuse, reputed to be the most beautiful of all Greek cities (Cic. Verr. 2,4,117), was defeated by Marcellus in a siege in 211; he adorned Rome with Syracusan spoils and was said to have boasted ‘even to Greeks,’ that in this way ‘he taught the ignorant Romans to honor and marvel at the beautiful and wondrous works of Greece’ (Plut. Marc. 21,5). This Marcellan narrative traces what is Greek and beautiful in Rome back to a Syracusan source. In the aftermath of Octavian’s conflict with Sextus Pompeius, Syracuse takes on another meaning: for Augustus, as for Chariton, Syracuse is a place where you solve a pirate problem and begin an empire. In the realm of fiction, the events of the novel’s ‘adventure time’ are set in motion when the bandit Theron (apparently based at Syracuse16) abducts Callirhoe from her tomb and it ends when the disruption caused by Theron has been restored to order and the couple returns to Syracuse. In the realm of history, the waters off Syracuse are the scene of events that make way for Augustus’ assumption of sole imperial powers. In a series of campaigns variously characterized as piracy and as political opposition to Octavian, Sextus Pompey had gained control of the ————— 14

15 16

Laplace 1980, 120. Even the name Callirhoe, Laplace adds, may subtly reinforce the imaginative link to Troy: the scholiast to Persius 1,134 says that Callirhoe is the name of a daughter of Scamander ‘abducted by Paris before Helen’; she cites Hermann 19761977 on this point (Laplace 1980, 123). On the parallel between Aphrodite as protectress of Callirhoe and her child and Aphrodite as mother and protectress of Aeneas see Edwards 1996, 35, 131 and, with emphasis on parallels between Aeneas and Callirhoe’s child as founders of a dynasty, Edwards 1991, 195-196. Laplace 1980, 125. Theron knows local men well (1,7) and is eventually recognized by a fisherman who has seen him before down on the docks (3,4,10).

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sea around Sicily, and thus interrupted the flow of grain to Rome.17 Octavian took steps to contain Sextus Pompey’s activities; these were only finally successful when his ‘lieutenant’ Agrippa defeated the Pompeians in 36. 18 In the Res Gestae Augustus refers to his war against Sextus from 42-36 as suppression of piracy.19 Appian marks the end of his narrative of the civil wars with the breaking of Sextus Pompey’s hold on Sicily and surrounding waters in 36 BCE.20 The suppression of Sextus Pompey’s Sicilian piracy was physically commemorated by Augustus in the restoration of Syracuse. Strabo writes: In our own time, since [Sextus] Pompey had mistreated other cities, and especially Syracuse, Augustus Caesar sent out a colony and restored a great part of the old settlement. For in earlier times there was a city of five towns with a wall of one hundred and eighty stadia. While it was not necessary to complete the full circuit, he thought it was necessary to improve only the settled part, which was near the island of Ortygia and which had a perimeter sufficient for a significant city. For Ortygia, which lies near the mainland, is joined to it by a bridge and has the spring Arethusa which sends out its stream straight into the sea. (Strabo 6,2,4) Like the closure of the gates of the temple of Janus at Rome in 29, at Syracuse the newly refurbished walls and buildings themselves mark a point of closure for civil strife. The full details of the Augustan building program – what exactly was rebuilt, what was a new construction – are difficult to recover and need not detain us here.21 After all, there’s no evidence that Chariton ever actually saw Syracuse. But he probably knew the bare fact that Augustus did some building that was described as restoration. The high point of Syracuse’s past, the time when it received its most notable fortifications and buildings, was the reign of Dionysius I: he fortified the island Ortygia (which he made into a gated community for his court and its protectors), ————— 17 18 19

20

21

Appian BC 4,11,83; 5,3,18; 5,9,77; 5,9,80. See de Souza 1999, 185-195. Appian BC 5,121. Augustus Res Gestae 25: mare pacavi a praedonibus. It was elsewhere characterized as the bellum Siculum or the bellum servile. Octavian’s conflict with Antony culminating in the battle of Actium was to be treated in Appian’s ‘Egyptian Wars’ which is lost to us (cf. Appian BC 1,pref. 6). For detailed discussion see Wilson 1990, 33-45.

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erected public buildings just in front of this wall (Diod. Sic. 14,7,1), and built strategic fortification walls to Epipolai (Diod. Sic. 14,18).22 Augustus’ restoration of Syracuse effaces the traces of its decline after the death of Dionysius. But recent history –the defeat of Sextus Pompey and the rise of Augustus – is clearly legible too. Even though there is little topographic detail in Chariton’s renderings of Syracuse, in offering readers a view of classical Syracuse and pointing forward to its Dionysian future Chariton engages in a project that is parallel to Augustus’ own. In fact, Chariton plants a verbal signal of the playfully allegorical relation between his novel and Roman history at the beginning of the narrative. After Theron sees Callirhoe’s funeral, he spends a sleepless night and asks himself why he should keep risking his life at piracy when he could get rich enough to retire just by robbing her tomb (1,7,1): well might we wonder why it takes a pirate so long to decide on robbery! Putting an end to his reflections he resolves on action with the words 1""4'ƒ!#, ‘let the die be cast’, and after thinking overnight about which men to recruit for his venture he assembles the group, ‘an army fit for such a general’ (1,7,3). The military parody here is all of a piece with Chariton’s project of historicizing the novel and novelizing history, while the image of a dice game sounds the theme of tyche (chance), a common feature of the novels, and one of the themes that they take over from New Comedy. 23 Indeed, when Athenaeus has his dinner-sophists discuss the evils of marriage, one of them cites a passage of Menander that contains exactly this expression. Two men discuss the prospect of marriage for one of them; the man embarking on marriage insists that he must go through with what he has started while the other warns of the dangers ahead (Deipn. 13,559d-e): – If you have any sense, you won’t marry and leave behind this life of yours. For I myself have married and that’s the reason I advise you against it. ————— 22

23

It is clear from what Strabo says that Augustus did not rebuild everything that Dionysius had built, but the fact that Strabo goes into such detail about his reasoning suggests that there may have been a perceived need to explain why Augustus didn’t comprehensively rebuild the Dionysian city. That is, the model of Dionysius may have been felt so strongly that Augustus (or Strabo) needs to explain the logistical reasons why it is not being followed in every particular. On the relation of the novel to New Comedy see Fusillo 1989, 43-55; and on Chariton’s use of comic elements: Laplace 1971, 103-111; Borgogno 1971; Corbato 1968.

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– It’s all settled. ‘Let the die be cast [1""4'ƒ!# ].’ – Go ahead then. But I hope you survive. You’ll be casting yourself now on a real sea of troubles, not the Libyan or Egyptian... where three ships of thirty survive; not even one man who has married has survived. Menander ironically reverses the typical contrast between the safe stay-athome world of the household and the dangerous world of merchant adventuring. Given this Menandrian context, Theron’s words are more than just a piece of the sententious comic furniture of which the novels are so fond. In a nicely judged ironic reversal of Menander’s already ironic description of the dangers of marriage, Theron chooses the ultimate merchant adventure– piracy. And in the end, chance does destroy Theron when he is discovered at sea through the agency of tyche (3,3,8) and executed for his abduction of Callirhoe (3,4,18). Amid the general atmosphere of military parody in the account of Theron’s decision and action, the specific target of Chariton’s parody is Julius Caesar’s decision to cross the Rubicon, and begin his civil war with Pompeius Magnus, in 49. In Plutarch’s account, Caesar rides eagerly to the Rubicon at night, but slows as he draws near and when he came to the river dividing Cisalpine Gaul from the rest of Italy (it’s called the Rubicon) awareness came over him as he got closer to the terrible deed and was overcome by the magnitude of what he was daring to do, and he halted his swift course and stopped his progress. For a long time he argued in silence with himself, changing his mind in turn, and making repeated changes to his plans. And he talked over his doubts with those friends who were there (one of whom was Asinius Pollio), calculating how great the troubles which the crossing would unleash would be for all men and what great fame for the deed they would leave to posterity. In the end, with some passion, as though hurling himself away from calculation and toward the future, and prefacing it with the expression men usually use when they take difficult and reckless chances, ‘let the die be cast’ [1""4' ƒ!#], he rushed toward the crossing; he went full speed the rest fo the way and rushed into Ariminium before daybreak and seized it. (Plut. Caes. 32,5-6)

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Plutarch specifies elsewhere that Caesar said 1""4' ƒ!# in Greek (Pomp. 60,2). Whether or not Caesar (or Plutarch, or Plutarch’s source, probably Asinius Pollio) feels this to be a quote from Menander, when Chariton makes it the opening of the action of his novel, he gives his mixture of the historical/comic/erotic a mischievously Caesarian precedent. Look there, says Chariton, Caesar had been messing about on the boundaries between the historical and the erotic long before I got down to work. And in terms of the novel’s structure, just as Caesar’s plunge across the Rubicon initiates the civil strife that is only fully brought to an end in Augustus’ empire, Theron’s decision initiates the travels of Callirhoe; it is in this sense the foundation of her adventure, an adventure whose happy ending in Syracuse restores to order what Sicilian piracy brought into chaos. Chariton’s ‘pathos erotikon’ (1,1,1) tells the story of one young love but its allusions to history tell stories of empire. Is it too bold to view Chariton’s Greek novel as engaging in the kinds of allegorical and playfully allusive responses to Rome’s imperium that have been traced here? Consider the long and vigorous tradition of writing about Roman history in Greek. In their various ways, Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, Appian and Dio make narratives of Rome available to two sorts of audiences: Greeks interested in Roman history and Romans interested in reading Greek versions of their history. Each group of readers could find piquant pleasures in Chariton’s allusions to Roman imperium. We know too, through papyri, that there was an audience for Latin literature translated into Greek, particularly the works of Vergil and Cicero.24 Chariton might not expect every reader to appreciate the Roman resonances of his erotic history, but he could certainly imagine that some – especially those aware of Aphrodisias’ special links to the founders of Rome’s empire – would enjoy this additional layer in his historical collage. Swain has characterized the world of the novels as a self-confident elite affirmation of imperviousness to Roman influence, an ‘expression of their cultural hegemony’,25 Chariton’s novel demonstrates that an elite Greek response to Roman imperium could also include playful mastery of Roman history. I’d like to close with a deliberately provocative question which relates to the problem of dating Chariton’s novel. The papyrological evidence indi————— 24 25

Rochette 1997, esp. ch. 4. Swain 1996, 109.

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cates that Chariton cannot have composed the novel much after mid-second century CE,26 while the relative lack of Atticist forms and language may suggest that he wrote before the Atticist fashion had really taken hold, perhaps in the first century CE rather than the second.27 Nothing I have said so far depends on assigning the novel to a particular time within this relatively short period, for an awareness of the civil wars and Augustus’ consequent establishment of peace would have continued to be central for understanding the history of Roman rule in the Greek east throughout the period. My question pertains to the tantalizing evidence for an early date for Chariton’s novel in the last line of the first satire of Persius, who died in 62. The poem sharply condemns Rome for the popularity of inconsequential literary forms and for the fact that Persius’ biting and harsh satire has no place there. He closes with a sneer of contempt: ‘his mane edictum, post prandium Callirhoen do’ (To these men I leave the morning’s magistrate’s decree [announcing upcoming entertainments], and Callirhoe after lunch, 1,134). Perhaps this bare reference cannot be definitive proof for an early date for Chariton. But just suppose this is Chariton’s Callirhoe being read after lunch at Rome:28 what did Persius hate about it? Just its escapist pleasures? or did Persius, a fierce critic of the principate who laments the loss of the days of the republic when a man could speak his mind, see the novel’s aition for the rise and legitimation of a tyrant’s empire in Syracuse and its allegorical support for Augustus’ version of empire? We’ll never know for sure, but the more we understand the imperial stories Chariton tells at Syracuse the more sense it would make for Persius to hate them.29 Works cited Alcock, S. E. 1996. ‘Lanscapes of Memory and the Authority of Pausanias, in Pausanias Historien, Entretiens sur l’antiquité classique 41, Geneva, 241-267. Alvares, J. 1993. The Journey of Observation in Chariton’s ‘Chaereas and Callirhoe’, Austin: diss. University of Texas.

————— 26 27

28

29

Lucke 1985; Petri 1963, 46-51, quoting correspondence from E. G. Turner. Arguments for an early date on stylistic grounds: Papanikolaou 1973, on which see the cautionary remarks of Giangrande, 1974. Arguments for a date in the late first or early second century: Ruiz-Montero 1989, 1991, 1994, 1008-1012. Among recent critics those who believe Persius is referring to Chariton’s novel include Goold 1995, 4-5, and Reardon 1996, 316-317. I am grateful to audience members at ICAN 2000, and to Denis Feeney, Alain Gowing, Sandra Joshel, Mark Nugent and David Scourfield for their helpful advice.

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Bakhtin, M. M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination, trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist, Austin: University of Texas Press. Bartsch, W. 1934. Der Chariton-Roman und die Historiographie, Leipzig: Diss. Univ. Leipzig. Baslez, M.-F. 1992. ‘De l’histoire au roman: la Perse de Chariton’, in : M.-F. Baslez, P. Hoffmann, M. Trédé eds. Le monde du roman grec, Paris: Presses de l’École Normale Supérieure, 199-212. Billault, A. 1981. ‘Aspects du roman de Chariton’, L’information littéraire 33, 205311. Bompaire, J. 1977. ‘Le décor sicilien dans le roman grec et dans la littérature contemporaine’, REG 90, 55-68. —. 1989. ‘L’histoire au roman: Hermocrate de Syracuse’, REG 102, 540-548. Borgogno, A. 1971. ‘Menander in Caritone’, RFIC 99, 257-263. Casey, E. S. 1997. The Fate of Place: a Philosophical History, Berkeley: University of California Press. Caven, B. 1990. Dionysius I: War-lord of Sicily, New Haven: Yale University Press. Clarke, K. 1999. Between Geography and History: Hellenistic Constructions of the Roman World, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Corbato, C. 1968. ‘Da Menandro a Caritone. Studi sulla Genesi del Romanzo Greco e i suoi Rapporti con la Commedia Nuova’, Quaderni Triestini sul Teatro Antico 1, 5-44. de Souza, P. 1999. Piracy in the Greco-Roman world, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 185-195. Edwards, D. R. 1985. ‘Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe: Religions and Politics do mix’, in: K. H. Richards, ed., Society of Biblical Literature 1985 Seminar Papers, Atlanta: Scholars Press, 175-181. —. 1991. ‘Surviving the web of Roman power: Religion and politics in the Acts of the Apostles, Josephus, and Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe’, in: L. Alexander, ed. Images of Empire, Sheffield: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplementary Series 122, 179-201. —. 1996. Religion and Power: Pagans, Jews and Christians in the Greek East, New York - Oxford: Oxford University Press. Erim, K. 1986. Aphrodisias, city of Venus Aphrodite, London. Fusillo, M. 1989. Il romanzo greco. Polifonia ed eros, Venezia: Marsilio Editori. Giangrande, G. 1974. Review of A. Papanikolaou, Chariton-Studien, JHS 94, 197198. Goold, G. P. 1995. Chariton: Callirhoe. Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hermann, L. 1976-1977. ‘La Callirhoe de Publius Celer’, REA 78-79, 157. Hunter, R. L. 1994. ‘History and Historicity in the Romance of Chariton’, ANRW 2.34.2,1055-1086. Jones, C. P. 1992. ‘Hellenistic history in Chariton of Aphrodisias’, Chiron, 91-102. —. 1992b. ‘La personnalité de Chariton’, in: Le monde du roman grec, M.-F. Baslez, P. Hoffmann, M. Trédé eds. Le monde du roman grec, Paris: Presses de l’École Normale Supérieure, 161-7.

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Laplace, M. 1980. ‘Les légendes troyennes dans le “roman” de Chariton, Chairéas et Callirhoé’, REG 93, 83-125. Lucke, C. 1985. ‘Zum Charitontext auf Papyrus,’ ZPE 58, 21-33. Naber, S. E. 1901. ‘ad Charitonem’, Mnemosyne 29, 92-99. Papanikolaou, A. 1973. Chariton-Studien, Hypomnemata 37. Perkins, J. 1999. ‘An Ancient “Passing” Novel: Heliodorus’ Aithiopika’, Arethusa 32.2, 197-214 Perry, B. E. 1967. The Ancient Romances, Berkeley: University of California Press, 137-140. Petri, R. 1963. Über den Roman des Chariton. Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie 11, Meisenheim am Glan: A. Hain. Reardon, B. P. 1996. ‘Chariton’, in: G. Schmeling, ed. The Novel in the Ancient World, Leiden: Brill, 309-335. Reynolds, J. M. 1982. Aphrodisias and Rome, Journal of Roman Studies Monographs 1, London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. Rochette, B. 1997. Le latin dans le monde grec: Recherches sur la diffusion de la langue et des lettres latines dans les provinces hellénophones de l’ Empire romain, Bruxelles: Collection Latomus 233. Ruiz-Montero, C. 1989. ‘Caritón de Afrodisias y el mundo real’, in: P. Liviabella Furiani and A.M. Scarcella, eds. Piccolo mondo antico: Appunti sulle donne, gli amori, i costumi, il mondo reale nel romanzo antico, Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 106-149. —. 1991. ‘Aspects of the Vocabulary of Chariton of Aphrodisias’, CQ 41, 484-489. —. 1994. ‘Chariton von Aphrodisias: ein Überblick’, ANRW 2.34.2, 1006-1054. Said, E. W. 1993. Culture and Imperialism, New York: Vintage. Schmeling, G. 1974. Chariton, New York: Twayne. Smith, R. R. R. 1987. ‘The imperial reliefs from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias’, JRS 77, 88-138. —. 1988. ‘Simulacra Gentium: The ethne from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias’, JRS 78, 50-77. —.1990. ‘Myth and Allegory in the Sebasteion’, in: C. Roueché and K. T. Erim, eds. Aphrodisias Papers Vol. 1: Recent work on Architecture and Sculpture. JRA Supplementary Series 1, 89-100. Swain, S. 1996. Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism and Power in the Greek World, AD 50-250, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tuan, Y.-F. 1979. ‘Space and Place: A humanistic perspective’, in: S. Gale and G. Olsson, eds., Philosophy in Geography, Dordrecht, Holland, 387-427. Whitmarsh, T. 1998. ‘The Birth of a Prodigy: Heliodorus and the Genealogy of Hellenism’, in: R. L. Hunter, ed. Studies in Heliodorus, Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society, Supplementary vol. 21, 91-124. —. 1999. ‘The Writes of Passage: Cultural initiation in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica’, in: Richard Miles, ed. Constructing Identities in Late Antiquity, London-New York: Routledge, 16-40. Williams, R. 1973. The Country and the City, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wilson, R. J. A. 1990. Sicily under the Roman empire: the archaeology of a Roman province 36 BC- AD 535, Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 33-45.

Chronotope and locus amoenus in Daphnis and Chloe and Pleasantville MARTIN M . W INKLER

Fairfax, Virginia

Longus’ novel Daphnis and Chloe may be characterized as a “song of innocence and of experience,” to appropriate a famous title by William Blake. In the novel, innocence and experience work on two levels. One is within the story, which describes the protagonists’ journey of erotic self-discovery from a state of naiveté to sexual knowledge, a journey that culminates in their marriage and parenthood. The other and more fascinating level of innocence and experience is the basis of Longus’ narrative strategy: an experienced author writes about inexperienced characters for experienced readers. While the novel’s setting is the idyllic countryside, the author and his readers are urban sophisticates. Longus’ narrative works mainly through the dramatic tension which arises from the difference between the story’s protagonists and its readers and the simultaneous presence of innocence and experience on the two levels mentioned.1 This tension in turn is the basis for the novel’s lasting appeal and for its earlier reputation as a naughty or dirty book. It is also the one aspect that elevates it above the level of a predictable adventure romance, just as Heliodorus’ non-linear plot is the chief glory of the Aithiopika. Nevertheless, the characters in these two as in the other surviving Greek novels firmly remain one-dimensional or, in E. M. Forster’s well-known term, “flat.”2 ————— 1

2

Bowie 1996 surveys the audiences of the Greek novels in general; Morgan 2002 discusses Longus’ readership and narrative strategy. Forster 1985, 67–78, on “flat” and “round” characters, and especially 68–72 on the narrative advantages of flat characters. See also Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1882 essay “A Gossip on Romance,” in Stevenson 1897, 327–343, a defense of formula fiction as eloquent as it is convincing.

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In “Forms of Time and the Chronotope in the Novel,” Mikhail Bakhtin devotes a long first section to “The Greek Romance.”3 In this paper, I will focus first on the aspect of chronos in Bakhtin’s chronotope and then turn to that of topos, closely related as the two of course are in what we today call the “space-time continuum.” My main purpose in doing so is to juxtapose Longus’ novel, a work of ancient popular art, with a work of modern popular art which works in comparable ways, although in a new medium. The latter, too, shows the journey from innocence to experience in matters of love and sexuality and, moreover, touches directly on classical themes. This is the 1998 film Pleasantville, written and directed by Gary Ross. Although Longus’ novel has been filmed three times, I have chosen Pleasantville as a more interesting cinematic reworking of several aspects of the ancient text.4 Thematic connections between works where one would not expect them can be more revealing than more or less straightforward adaptations.

————— 3

4

Bakhtin, “Forms of Time and the Chronotope in the Novel,” in Bakhtin 1981, 84–258, especially 86–110 on Greek romances. Subsequent quotations from and references to the text are according to this translation. I have also consulted “Formen der Zeit und des Chronotopos im Roman,” in Bachtin 1986, 7–209. Bakhtin wrote his long study in 1937– 1938 (with “Concluding Remarks” added in 1973); it was first published in Russian in 1975. For a classical perspective on the text see Branham 1995. Branham 2002 examines the temporal aspects in the ancient novels. Daphnis and Chloe was twice filmed in Greece, first by Orestis Laskos under its original title in 1931, then, more loosely (and indebted to the Idylls of Theocritus as well), as Young Aphrodites (Mikres Afrodites) by Nikos Koundouros in 1963. On the latter see Faulx 1969. A third version appeared in Spain in 1976 as La iniciacion en el amor, directed by Javier Aguirre. On these films see de España 1998, 414–418 and 427, 428, and 430 (filmography). De España, 417, in his caption to an illustration, calls twelve-year old Cleopatra Rota of Young Aphrodites “una Lolita helénica.” His picture explains why. An example of a modern analogy to Longus’ Chloe is Marcel Pagnol’s Manon in Manon des Sources (Manon of the Spring), filmed first by Pagnol himself in 1953 and again by Claude Berri in 1986. In the later version, more readily accessible, Emmanuelle Béart plays Manon. Here are some similarities to her classical predecessor: Manon is a goatherd; she dances and plays the harmonica, a modern equivalent to the rustic instruments played by Longus’ country folk; she innocently bathes naked in a spring by a grotto. The evil character who watches her doing so and immediately falls in love with her but is eventually rejected partly redeems himself in death (overtones of Longus’ Dorcon). When she marries, Manon in her bridal gown combines the purity of her natural beauty with the cultural refinement of society, a point which Longus emphasizes about Chloe (and to which I will turn below).

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I In Pleasantville, two modern teenagers, brother and sister, are supernaturally transported into a 1950s black-and-white television series called “Pleasantville,” which is set entirely within this eponymous town. This Pleasantville might as well be named Perfectville, because it represents the American dream at its suburban ideal: perfect weather, perfect town- and countryscape, perfect people, and no family, social, urban, or natural problems. Crime does not exist. The worst kind of crisis we see in the film involves a treed cat. What Bakhtin said about the Greek romance in the following two quotations is applicable wholesale to Pleasantville: In this kind of time, nothing changes: the world remains as it was, the biographical life of the heroes does not change, their feelings do not change, people do not even age. This empty time leaves no traces anywhere, no indications of its passing. It goes without saying that in this type of time, an individual can be nothing other than completely passive, completely unchanging….to such an individual things can merely happen. He himself is deprived of any initiative. He is merely the physical subject of the action. And it follows that his actions will be by and large of an elementary-spatial sort….he keeps on being the same person and emerges…with his identity absolutely unchanged.5 Since in the black-and-white world of Pleasantville we are in the wholesome 1950s, there is, of course, no eroticism or sex. Teenagers go on a date to the soda fountain, hold hands, sit side by side in a car in Lovers’ Lane looking at the natural surroundings – this is all that happens. But their idyllic existence is radically altered when David and Jennifer, our modern teenagers, arrive from the late 1990s. They, of course, are sexually experienced, Jennifer more so than David. (In an early scene set in the present, we learn that she had bought herself new underwear before an important date.) Longus’ description of Lycaenion partly fits Jennifer: both are “imported…from town” and

————— 5

Bakhtin 1981, 91 and 105.

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“young, pretty, and rather sophisticated.”6 In Pleasantville, Jennifer introduces first her 1950s date and then, indirectly, several other youngsters to their erotic nature. The irresistible spread of sexual knowledge among Pleasantville’s teenagers and adults, despite the futile attempts on the part of the town’s mayor and several other good citizens – in this patriarchal society, all of the latter are middle-aged males – appears on screen in a way as charming as it is clever. Director Ross takes full advantage both of the visual nature of his medium and of modern computer technology to present his characters’ gradual journey toward love and sexuality and, resulting from this, greater self-knowledge, a deeper emotional and intellectual life, and an awareness of the world around them. More and more, Ross infuses individual objects and people with color until, at the completion of this process, the originally black-and-white world of Pleasantville has become entirely polychrome. To his characters in the story as well as to his audiences in the theater, Ross shows the radical changes which knowledge of any sort demands from all who embark on a quest for it. In the biblical story of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God forbids Adam to eat the fruit of this tree; otherwise, he has to die the same day. 7 But when Eve and Adam eat the forbidden fruit, they do not die at all but acquire consciousness. Their first realization is not knowledge of good and evil but awareness of their nakedness. Nudity here symbolizes their sexual awakening, from which all additional and deeper knowledge may derive. A parallel perspective occurs in Plato’s Symposium, in which Socrates explains the true nature of Eros. Real love transcends the physical and ascends to the ultimate knowledge that “beauty is truth; truth, beauty,” as John Keats put it in the best-known phrase of his “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”8 Knowledge of good and evil and the Platonic ideal are two sides of the same coin. In Daphnis and Chloe, Longus is not quite this philosophical, but the concept that carnal knowledge leads to self-awareness and to a meaningful and happy life is the culmination point of his story. Only when Chloe’s natural beauty ————— 6

7

8

Daphnis and Chloe 3.15.1. I quote Longus in the translation by Christopher Gill in Reardon 1989, 285–348; quotations at 324. Genesis 2.16–17. Sir James G. Frazer’s reconstruction of the myth of the Fall of Man and his analysis of its likely original form is still worth reading (Frazer 1918, vol. 1, 45–77); it is readily accessible, if in the abridged version from a 1923 one-volume edition but with original notes restored, in Dundes 1984, 72–97. Socrates’ exchange with Agathon and his subsequent speech are in Plato, Symposium 198a–212c.

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is supplemented by her elegant bridal dress – when, in other words, nature and culture, physis and technê, are combined – can she embody true perfection, the ideal of both beauty and knowledge. As the narrator puts it toward the conclusion of his story: Then you could learn what beauty is like, when it is properly presented. For when Chloe was dressed and had put her hair up and washed her face, she seemed so much more beautiful to everyone that even Daphnis scarcely recognized her.9 Knowledge of one’s own nature leads to the development of other areas of knowledge: of one’s surroundings and society, of arts and sciences, of civilization. This latter aspect of knowledge is brought to the fore even more in Ross’s film than in Longus’ novel. The ignorant inhabitants of Pleasantville discover in their municipal library a great repository of culture. (This is a plot turn that appears quaint today and is more in keeping with the society of the 1950s.) In the film, culture is represented by two areas, painting and literature. Three novels receive prominence of place: Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, and D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. All three at some time have been banned or censored somewhere. Not only in the case of teenage readers, identification with the protagonists of Twain’s and Salinger’s novels has often been an initiation into literature and, by extension, into the arts – that is to say, into knowledge and civilization at large. This, along with their heroes’ irreverence toward “good society,” may be one of the reasons why the books are banned in some American middle and high schools even today. Lawrence’s novel in particular was as dangerous and notorious in the twentieth century as Daphnis and Chloe had been in the nineteenth. Here again, Bakhtin on the chronotope helps us see both similarity and difference between Daphnis and Chloe and Pleasantville. After stating that “the homogenization of all that is heterogeneous in a Greek romance…is achieved only at the cost of the most extreme abstraction [and] schematization,” Bakhtin goes on to observe:

————— 9

Daphnis and Chloe 4.32.1; quotation from Gill, 345.

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This most abstract of all chronotopes [the one in the Greek romance] is also the most static. In such a chronotope the world and the individual are finished items, absolutely immobile. In it there is no potential for evolution, for growth, for change. As a result of the action described in the novel, nothing in its world is destroyed, remade, changed or created anew. What we get is a mere affirmation of the identity between what had been at the beginning and what is at the end. Adventure-time [the time necessary for the development of the novel’s plot] leaves no trace.10 The latter part of this quotation does not apply to the final state of things in Pleasantville, which has completely changed from its earlier idyllic existence. But even this difference is analogous to the Greek novel, since the affirmation of the country life at the conclusion of Daphnis and Chloe occurs only because the dangers of the external world could be resisted successfully. In Pleasantville, the people from the outside world, the two who have arrived from today’s society, effect a radical change in the idyllic world, which turns out not to have been all that idyllic in the first place. The outside world, we may say, has conquered the idyllic one. But this conquest could take place only with the willing cooperation of most of the inhabitants of the idyllic world. For better or worse, any incursion of knowledge – exemplified by sexuality, as it was in Longus – destroys the paradisal state of innocence and ignorant perfection (or perfect ignorance). This is the price necessary to be paid for evolution, growth, and change.

II After these general connections between Daphnis and Chloe and Pleasantville I now turn to a specific scene in either work which best illustrates the simultaneous presence of innocence and experience from whose inherent tension the narrative development of a love story may derive its most irresistible force and greatest appeal. Both scenes are highly erotic, if in different ways. That in Pleasantville is indeed the most erotically charged one in the entire film. Neither scene is in any way pornographic. Both are presented with great delicacy, with sympathy for and understanding of the character or characters involved, and with a touch of humor. In terms of plot or situation ————— 10

Bakhtin 1981, 110.

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described, the two scenes have nothing at all in common, nor do I wish to imply that writer-director Ross in any way imitated, or was conscious of, Longus. But both very effectively illustrate a specific moment of sexual awakening and do so in analogous ways regarding the narrative moment at which they occur. One of the most charming erotic vignettes in Daphnis and Chloe is the episode with the grasshopper or cicada which flies into Chloe’s dress. This is a particularly significant moment in Daphnis’ and Chloe’s journey toward their discovery of love. The narrator tells us that Daphnis “put his hands between her breasts and took out” the cicada.11 He says nothing else about Daphnis’ act, but experienced readers – that is to say, all readers – know that in order to do so Daphnis must touch her chest. Mentally, readers automatically add this missing detail, the acme of eroticism in the little episode. That the very moment omitted from verbal description is indeed significant, perhaps even a turning point for Daphnis’ awakening to love, becomes evident from two authorial comments which prompt us to fill in the blank, as it were. Before reading that Daphnis put his hand into Chloe’s dress we have been informed that he did so taking advantage of the situation – prophaseôs labomenos. This is by no means an indication of lechery on his part because he is still far too innocent. Instead, his act shows his tender desire to be closer to Chloe than he can usually be and to come to her rescue. (The grasshopper has made her scream twice in surprise and fear.) More importantly, however, this comment is a nudge to the reader. The disarming charm of the moment and the equally disarming naiveté of Daphnis are expressed in the experienced author’s gently ironic phrase “that obliging grasshopper” (ton beltiston tettiga). The moment is one of great intimacy and erotic vulnerability on the part of the two young lovers. The corresponding moment in Pleasantville, also one of intimacy and vulnerability, occurs when Betty, the mother in the film’s central television family, discovers her sexuality. Our two time-travelers have replaced her children, who were of necessity conceived asexually. After she has obtained, to her initial disbelief and surprise, the requisite information about sex from her experienced “daughter” Jennifer, Betty takes a bath and discovers the true nature of her body – its erogenous zones – and of herself. But more importantly, Betty now becomes aware of her mind as well, for after her experience she is no longer willing to play the submissive housewife, her tradi————— 11

Daphnis and Chloe 1.26.3; this and the following quotation are from Gill, 300.

34

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tional and stereotypical 1950s role, and determinedly emancipates herself from husband and kitchen. (She even acknowledges and acts on her sexual feelings for a man not her husband.) While she is in the process of discovering her erotic self in the bathtub, she begins to see her surroundings in color. Soon after, she leaves behind her black-and-white existence for good and turns into color herself. In an informal audio commentary on his film, director Ross has observed about this scene: The sexual awakening is the first thing that occurs because it’s the most primal, it’s the most basic….If you look at this as kind of a growing up of the world that way, sort of that edenic allegory, this is the first impulse, and it’s a primal thing and it’s one that you can’t deny….But there’s higher levels of evolution than that; it’s only the first….There are so many other things that are on a higher level of evolution and complexity than just that sexual impulse, yet I think if you’re closed off to something that fundamental, it’s very hard to be open to other things….it gives rise to a whole new world of nuance and beauty that’s nonsexual…. Although Ross does not name Plato here, he might as well have done so, because his words are clearly in the tradition of Platonic philosophy. A later scene in the film, in which David takes Margaret, a Pleasantville girl who embodies a Chloe-like perfection of beauty and innocence, on a first date to Lovers’ Lane, equally harks back to the classical tradition, as Ross himself makes clear. The description, in his commentary, of the locus amoenus which we see on screen again sounds rather Platonic: We took to calling the sequence the Athenian sequence because it did have a certain mind-body ideal, and that’s the reason that the design of that gazebo in the background has certain Greek Revival elements in it, because I wanted that tableau across the lake to have almost an Elysian kind of quality to it in the same way that a lot of Greek Revival paintings of England in the eighteenth century would use a piece of Greek Revival architecture across a pond because they were all kind of in a romantic era drunk on that Athenian ideal.

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Readers of Plato will remember a comparable – indeed, a highly Longian – locus amoenus as the setting of the Phaedrus, whose subject, related to that of the Symposium, is the nature of love and beauty.12 The work culminates in the discussion of the true nature of knowledge. Socrates and Phaedrus converse under a high plane tree with a spring at its roots. A nearby grotto is sacred to Pan, the river god Achelous, and the nymphs. Pan and the nymphs will later play major parts in Daphnis and Chloe. (As they are in the novel, cicadas are present in Plato’s dialogue, too.) Obviously, Ross cannot include any gods in his modern story, although his narrative as a whole would not have worked without a supernatural figure. (This is the strange television repairman who makes it possible for David and Jennifer to appear in Pleasantville and who functions as a deus ex machina – indeed, at certain points, as a deus in machina.) But even so, Ross manages to infuse his Lovers’ Lane setting with a high degree of supernatural beauty. When David and Margaret approach in their car, a gentle rain of pink petals descends on them and swirls around their still partly black-and-white environment. On the soundtrack, the old standard “At Last,” a well-known love song from an earlier time of innocence, provides an aural complement to the scene’s visual magic. An observation by the narrator at the beginning of Daphnis and Chloe is applicable to this scene in the film. In the novel’s prologue, the narrator tells us that he saw “a painting that told a story of love” and that this painting inspired in him “a yearning to depict the picture in words.” His verbal account of the painting contains, in part, the following ecphrasis of nature and an evaluation of its artistic quality: The grove itself was beautiful – thickly wooded, flowery, well watered; a single spring nourished everything, flowers and trees alike. But the picture was lovelier still, combining great artistic skill with an exciting, romantic subject.13 These words apply, virtually without a change, to the locus amoenus in Ross’s film.14 ————— 12 13 14

Plato, Phaedrus 229a–230c. Daphnis and Chloe, prol. 1–2; quotations from Gill, 288–289. The tradition of the locus amoenus in ancient and later literature is far too extensive to be addressed here. In classical antiquity, the locus amoenus originally took the form of an

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III In Daphnis and Chloe and in Pleasantville, knowledge causes uncertainties, difficulties, even dangers, and it has unpleasant consequences. Dealing with these consequences brings increased knowledge to those whose lives had previously been simple and easy. But greater knowledge may come to the outsiders, too. In the novel, Chloe’s kidnapper Lampis, for instance, is eventually forgiven and allowed to be present at her wedding, and a full-scale war between the Methymneans and the Mytileneans is avoided with surprising effortlessness. The conciliatory ending of Shakespeare’s As You Like It is an apposite example from the later pastoral tradition. In the film, David and Jennifer also react to the changes they have brought to Pleasantville, but in different ways. Jennifer decides to stay in this world, simple and still backwards as it is despite its changes, whereas David returns to today. In an earlier scene he had comforted Betty by applying make-up to her face to allow her to appear in black and white after she has turned into color so that she might save face in front of her husband and the town’s mayor, both blackand-white reactionaries. In a moving reversal of this moment, David now comforts his real mother, who is stuck in a hopeless love affair after the breakup of her family, by wiping off her make-up to allow her face to regain ————— enclosed garden (paradeisos), beginning with the garden of the Phaeacian king Alcinous in Homer (Odyssey 7.114–131). Xenophon’s park (Anabasis 5.3.7–11) was modeled on Persian gardens; cf. Xenophon, Oeconomicus 4.13–14. For the wider context see Moynihan 1979. Cf. further the Greek and Roman tradition of idyllic, bucolic, and erotic poetry and, in Rome, that of the laudes Italiae. For some examples of loci amoeni see Pliny the Elder, Natural History 35.116–117, with which cf. Vitruvius, On Architecture 7.5.2, and Pliny the Younger, Epistles 5.6.7–13, 8.8, and 9.39. The walled garden at Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon 1.15, is an example of such a garden in the Greek adventure-romances. Cf. also Bruno Snell, “Arkadien: Die Entdeckung einer geistigen Landschaft,” most recently in Snell 1984, 257–274 and 320–321 (notes). On the influence of classical literature on medieval culture see especially Curtius 1993, 191–209 (a chapter on ideal landscape), with discussions of Homer, Plato, Theocritus, and Virgil, among others, and with a section on the locus amoenus at 202–206. Curtius, 202–203, quotes and translates Petronius, Satyricon 131.8, and a fourth-century poem by Tiberianus (Anthologia Latina 1.2.809) as prime examples from Roman literature. Snell’s and Curtius’ books are easily accessible in English, albeit in earlier editions: Snell 1953; Curtius 1952. For the Renaissance see the classic overview by Burckhardt 1995, 190–197 (“Discovery of the Beauty of Landscape”), and more recently Jäger 1990, 87–99 and the textual excerpts at 272 (Lorenzo de’ Medici on the paradise garden), 275–276 (Leonardo), 280 (Isabella d’Este), 282–283 (Ariosto), and 303–304 (Armina’s garden in Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata).

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its natural beauty. David and Jennifer, Ross makes evident, have been both teachers and learners. A question which may arise, both for Daphnis and Chloe and for Pleasantville, is whether these works are instances of the Bildungsroman. Bakhtin’s argument about the Greek romances leads to an answer in the negative for Longus’ novel – rightly so, because the psychological realism of the modern novel in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries cannot be expected from its ancient precursors. The same answer is appropriate for Pleasantville: despite the process of learning and insight and the larger issues of knowledge and recent American history on which the film touches, such as McCarthyism and race relations, the characters even in the film’s modern frame story are intentionally left too schematic to be “round” in Forster’s sense of the word. But nevertheless, one particular aspect of the Bildungsroman to which Bakhtin refers applies, mutatis mutandis, to the film. Bakhtin observes that in the novels of Stendhal, Balzac, and Flaubert the issue is primarily one of overturning and demolishing the world view and psychology of the idyll, which proved increasingly inadequate to the new capitalist world….the capitalist world is…not idealized, its inhumanity is laid bare, the destruction within it of all ethical systems…, the disintegration of all previous human relationships…, love, the family, friendship… – all of these are emphasized.15 In its frame story, Pleasantville shows us a capitalist world whose social fabric is fraying. But we might update Bakhtin’s observations and take them a stage further by replacing the term “capitalist world” with “technological world” to describe the life and society of today. In regard to Pleasantville, supernatural power (the quasi-divine TV repairman) linked to technology makes it possible for David and Jennifer to return to the past – which, being on television, is itself a creation of modern technology. In today’s visual media, such technology creates a new variant on the idyllic chronotope which Bakhtin had found in the ancient novels. More importantly for the art of storytelling today, advanced computer technology has made it possible for writer-director Ross to tell his story the most effectively. All the black-andwhite images that we see on the screen are really color images – that is to say, they were originally filmed in color and then digitally turned into black ————— 15

Bakhtin, 1981, 234–235.

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and white. Only in this way was it possible for him to show both colors and black-and-white side by side in individual frames and entire scenes in a way which appears convincing and realistic to sophisticated and technologically savvy modern viewers. From this perspective, we might be justified to call Pleasantville a kind of visual Bildungsroman: a highly technological world becomes both the subject and the means of telling a story about the journey from innocence to experience and knowledge. That this kind of story has numerous points of comparison with literary works almost two millennia old makes the phenomenon only the more remarkable and attractive. Despite the differences of time and space – of chronos and topos – between Daphnis and Chloe and Pleasantville and those of their respective chronotopes, and despite the even more obvious differences between an ancient literary medium and a modern medium of moving images, the similarities of story and, more importantly, of narrative stance in both works are too noticeable to be overlooked. (Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.) So those familiar with novel and film may readily think of Pleasantville when they remember what the narrator of Daphnis and Chloe has to say about the purpose he pursues with his attempt to transpose the painting he describes at the beginning into a story. His work is meant to be something for mankind to possess and enjoy. It will cure the sick, comfort the distressed, stir the memory of those who have loved, and educate those who haven’t. For certainly no one has ever avoided Love, and no one will, as long as beauty exists, and eyes can see.16

Works cited Bachtin, Michail M. 1986. Formen der Zeit im Roman: Untersuchungen zur historischen Poetik. Ed. Edward Kowalski and Michael Wegner; tr. Michael Dewey. Rpt. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1989. Bakhtin, M. M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist; tr. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press; rpt. 1996. Bowie, Ewen. 1996. “The Ancient Readers of the Greek Novel,” in: Schmeling 1996, 87–106.

————— 16

Daphnis and Chloe, prol. 3–4; quotation from Gill, 289.

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Branham, R. Bracht. 1995. “Inventing the Novel,” in: Mandelker 1995, 79–87 and 200 (notes). —. 2002. “Representing Time in Ancient Fiction.” in: Ancient Narrative Volume 1 (2000–2001), 1–31. Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing. Burckhardt, Jacob. 1995. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Tr. Samuel George Chatwynd Middlemore. 3rd ed. London: Phaidon. Curtius, Ernst Robert. 1952. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Tr. Willard R. Trask. Rpt. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. —. 1993. Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter. 11th ed. Berne: Francke. Dundes, Alan (ed.). 1984. Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. de España, Rafael. 1998. El Peplum: La Antigüedad en el Cine. Barcelona: Glénat. Faulx, Jacques. 1969. “L’antiquité toute proche: ‘Les Jeunes Aphrodites’ de Nikos Koundouros.” Otia 17: 18–22. Forster, E. M. 1927. Aspects of the Novel. Rpt. San Diego, New York, and London: Harcourt Brace, n.d. [1985]. Frazer, Sir James. 1918. Folklore in the Old Testament: Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend and Law. 3 vols. London: Macmillan. Jäger, Michael. 1990. Die Theorie des Schönen in der italienischen Renaissance. Cologne: DuMont. Mandelker, Amy (ed.). 1995. Bakhtin in Contexts: Across the Disciplines. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Morgan, J. R. 2002. “Nymphs, Neighbours and Narrators: a Narratological Approach to Longus”, forthcoming in S. Panayotakis, M. Zimmerman, W.H. Keulen (eds.), The Ancient Novel and Beyond, Leiden – New York – Köln: Brill Moynihan, Elizabeth B. 1979. Paradise as a Garden in Persia and Mughal India. Rpt. London: Scolar Press, 1982. Reardon, B. P. (ed.). 1989. Collected Ancient Greek Novels. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. Schmeling, Gareth (ed). 1996. The Novel in the Ancient World. Leiden – New York – Köln: Brill. Snell, Bruno. 1953. The Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature. Tr. Thomas G. Rosenmeyer. Rpt. New York: Dover, 1982. —. 1984. Die Entdeckung des Geistes: Studien zur Entstehung des europäischen Denkens bei den Griechen. 6th ed. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. Stevenson, Robert Louis. 1897. The Travels and Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson, vol. 13: Virginibus Puerisque: Memories and Portraits. New York: Scribner’s .

Literary Topography in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses S . J . HARRISON

Oxford, UK

Scholarly interest in the topography of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses has largely been concerned with the study of its description of landscapes with an eye to realism, or with exploring Apuleius’ use of symbolic or conventional descriptions of nature.1 Here I want to look specifically at literary topography, and two interconnected aspects in particular: the way in which some geographical locations mentioned and described in the Metamorphoses look back to and reflect significant literary sources, and the way in which some place-names and their associations consequently suggest or point to important themes and ideas in the novel. This amounts to considering topography as part of the work’s literary programme, as part of its self-construction and message to the reader. Prime amongst the extant literary texts related to the Metamorphoses, of course, is the Onos attributed to Lucian. I (with many scholars) regard this work as an accurate epitome of the lost Greek Metamorphoses attributed to Lucius of Patras, which in turn I regard as Apuleius’ major model.2 Here I am interested in how far the locations of the original Greek Metamorphoses, which ( I believe) can accessed by us through the Onos, underlie Apuleius’ version of the story and how far they have been adapted for a Roman readership. But there are also many other literary sources which the descriptions of place in the Metamorphoses evoke, from a wide range of texts and genres, further evidence of the rich literary texture and epideictic demonstration of learning which I believe to be fundamental to the Metamorphoses.3

————— 1 2 3

E.g., De Biasi 2000 for the first, Schiesaro 1988 and Trinquier 1999 for the second. For the issue see Lesky 1941, Walsh 1974, Holzberg 1984, Mason 1999. Cf. Harrison 2000, 211–235.

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1 The Tale of Aristomenes (1.5–19) Omitting the complexities of the prologue, now extensively illuminated by the volume edited by Ahuvia Kahane and Andrew Laird,4 the first significant element of literary topography is to be found in the self-identification of Aristomenes near the beginning of his tale at 1.5: , Aegiensis. There is of course an issue of whether Aristomenes’ name should be supplied here:5 given Apuleius’ well-known habit of postponing naming for new characters,6 most obviously for Lucius himself, not named until 1.24, it may well be right to keep the transmitted text and not supply the name. But more interesting than the name is the indication of origin: Aristomenes is from Aegium, a small town east of Patras. This piece of evidence has not as far as I know been taken into account in the long-standing scholarly discussion on whether the tale of Aristomenes in fact derives at least part of its content from an original tale in the lost Greek Metamorphoses.7 This seems to be clear in its implication: Aristomenes comes from the area of Patras just as his tale comes from the Metamorphoses attributed to Lucius of Patras. Likewise, the friend whom Aristomenes finds filthy and destitute, the ironically named Socrates,8 also goes to places of literary association. He states that he set off for Macedonia on business, but got only as far as Larissa in Thessaly before being attacked by robbers. The reader infers that Socrates comes from the same region or even city as Aristomenes, since when Aristomenes meets Socrates the first thing he says is that his family at home have given Socrates up for dead (1.6); there is no way of telling whether or not this is an element from the Greek Metamorphoses. Aristomenes encounters Socrates at the place to which both he and Lucius are travelling as the tale is being narrated, Hypata in Thessaly. As has been pointed out,9 this coincidence is meant to be a warning for Lucius that if he goes to Hypata he too will encounter danger in the context of sex and magic, a warning which Lucius characteristically ignores. Scholars have sometimes been puzzled by the hyperbolic description Aristomenes gives of Hypata, quae ————— 4

5 6 7 8 9

Kahane and Laird 2001. The contributions of Katherine Clarke and Doreen Innes to that volume (101–122) both treat in detail the topographical allusions in the prologue. See the discussion by Scobie 1975, 89–90, and that of Keulen 2000, 312. Cf. Brotherton 1934. Cf. esp. Lesky 1941, Keulen 2000. Cf. e.g. van der Paardt 1978, 82. Cf. Tatum 1969, 497 (reprinted in Harrison 1999, 166).

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civitas cunctae Thessaliae antepollet (1.5), since in the Roman Empire Hypata seems to have had some economic importance but was not the most important city in Thessaly, which was Larissa. This phrase appears to be a pun on the derivation of the name ‘Hypata’ from the Greek adjective Y/3# ‘highest, outstanding’ or verb ]/31$“'‘be highest, be outstanding’ explicitly made after Apuleius in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica (2.34.2): Yy3/€3!ã 3í í Y/31ƒ1 /~ "%1 h!/2{.10 Since Hypata is Lucius’ destiny in the Onos too (Onos 1), there is every likelihood that Heliodorus shares this etymological play with the lost Greek Metamorphoses, and that its slightly confusing appearance here is a literary allusion rather than a report on the city’s current socio-political status, and possibly also a source of humour.11 Aristomenes’ tale also contains two well-known topographical allusions to Plato, as one might well expect in a narrative where one of the main characters is called Socrates. The Apuleian Socrates in the story is attacked en route to Larissa (1.7); the mention of this Thessalian city as a destination seems to recall a famous philosophical example put by the Platonic Socrates to the Thessalian Meno in Plato’s Meno, arguing that a man who knows the way to Larissa would be able to guide others there (Meno 97a). Equally literary is the moment when Aristomenes invites his friend the Apuleian Socrates to sit down by a plane tree (1.18) which turns out to be beside an attractive river (1.19); this, as many have noted,12 recalls the famous invitation of Phaedrus to the Platonic Socrates in Plato’s Phaedrus to sit down à deux under a plane tree next to the attractive river Ilissus (Phaedrus 229a–b). The effect of these two allusions is in my view a double one: not only literary allusion to some well-known texts (these are not the most obscure Platonic dialogues, and the author’s reading of Plato is meant to be noted),13 but also a programmatic suggestion early on in the novel that Plato may have some importance. This is not to say that the novel is in any sense a Platonic allegory, but rather that knowledge of certain Platonic dialogues will be a useful ————— 10

11

12 13

Scobie 1975, 91 cites the Heliodorus passage but does not note the shared pun. It is noted by Gianotti 1986, 12 n.4, who there regards this praise of Hypata as a major city as simply conventional (but see next note). Gianotti 1986, 22 attractively suggests en passant that the pun is ironically used – Hypata has a big name but a small reality. E.g. Tatum 1979, 27–8. On the prominence of the Phaedrus in the second century AD cf. Trapp 1990, esp. 171 on the popularity of the famous mise en scène in literary imitations.

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tool for the reader’s literary repertoire (to use a reader-response term)14 in interpreting the Metamorphoses.

2 Lucius, Corinth and Patrae One of the clearest modifications to the geography of the Onos in the Metamorphoses is the replacement of Patrae by Corinth as the home city of Lucius.15 The identity of Lucius’ home city is (like Lucius’ name) something that we learn only late in Book 1 of the Metamorphoses and then only by implication (1.22), typical of indirect Apuleian naming technique.16 This alteration seems to be for the benefit of the Roman reader, for whom Corinth was a much more prominent city than Patrae, both because of its richer cultural history and earlier contact with Rome17and because of its greater administrative and economic importance as the capital of the Roman province of Achaia by the second century A.D. (cf. Met.10.18 Corintho, quod caput est totius Achaiae provinciae). But it is also for the benefit of Apuleius’ plot: this relocation of Lucius allows his appearance in the arena at Corinth and his arrival at the Isis-festival at Cenchreae, the port of Corinth, to be a journey home, a kind of nostos, one of a number of ways in which the Metamorphoses echoes the plot-shape of the Odyssey.18 Consequently, in the Metamorphoses Corinth and Achaia replace the Thessalonica and Macedonia of the Onos (49) as the scene of Lucius’ appearance in the arena which forms the dénouement of the plot. This seems unlikely to be an alteration for the benefit of the Roman reader, since by the second century Thessalonica was the capital of the province of Macedonia and one of the major cities of the Empire; it may be that Apuleius wants to restrict his locations to central rather than northern Greece, perhaps reflecting his own career travels (though that can only be speculation). ————— 14

15

16 17 18

Associated with Wolfgang Iser (cf. Iser 1978). ‘Repertoire’ is conveniently defined by Maclean 1986, 131 as ‘the set of social, historical and cultural norms which the reader supplies as the necessary adjunct of his reading, but which the text calls forth and in some sense contains’. For other discussions of the motivation of the change see Luca Graverini’s paper in this volume, and especially Zimmerman 2000, 18 (with bibliography). Cf. n.6 above. See especially Luca Graverini’s paper in this volume. On the Odyssey and the Metamorphoses see the material gathered at Harrison 2000, 223.

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Apuleius’ change of Lucius’ birthplace is accompanied by other significant changes in the names of his family and associates. Lucius’ father in Apuleius is Theseus (1.23), a detail I have argued to be an invention for literary effect in evoking Callimachus’ Hecale;19 in the Onos, the name of Lucius’ father is famously missing when Lucius identifies himself to the magistrate at the arena in Thessalonica (55), most likely through textual damage, but since he is Lucius and identifies his brother in the same passage (55) as Gaius, picking up the two most common Roman praenomina, his father seems unlikely to have had the name of a Greek mythological hero. Lucius’ mother in Apuleius is named as Salvia (2.2), a firmly Roman name, with possible connections with high-ranking Romans of the period;20 in the extant Onos the name of Lucius’ mother is not recorded.21 The person who provides letters of introduction for Lucius in Hypata in the Onos is Decrianus of Patrae, a sophist (2); as we would expect, the Metamorphoses changes this person’s origin to Corinth (1.22), but also suppresses his profession and changes his name to Demeas. The suppression of the word ‘sophist’ may again be a concession to a Roman readership, for whom the word was not so significant; the change of name is certainly such a concession, since it bestows on the character a name which would be readily recognisable as belonging to New Comedy; characters named Demea(s) occur in the fragments of Menander, Caecilius and (most famously) Terence’s Adelphoe; this is one of many indications of Apuleian interest in Roman New Comedy, typical of his archaising age.22

3 Thelyphron – Miletus and Larissa (2.21). In the major tale of Book 2, Thelyphron narrates his own story of how he lost his nose and ears through contact with witches. This begins with two ————— 19 20

21

22

Cf. Harrison 1997, 56–7. Cf. Harrison 2000, 215. It is not clear how this can be related to the claim that Lucius’ mother is related to Plutarch, L. Mestrius Plutarchus (Met.1.2; Harrison 2000, 252). For more symbolic interpretations of the name Salvia cf. Van Mal-Maeder 1998, 82. It is quite possible that it too has fallen out at Onos 55 (though the Greek Lucius of the Onos elsewhere makes nothing of his maternal lineage, something important to Apuleius’ Lucius because of its supposed connection with Plutarch (see n.18 above). This aspect of Apuleius will be fully treated in the forthcoming Oxford doctoral dissertation of Regine May, ‘A Comic Novel: Roman and Greek New Comedy in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’.

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geographical indications. First, Thelyphron tells us that he comes from Miletus, originally came to mainland Greece to visit the Olympics, and that he only got as far as Larissa where he had his unfortunate experience as a watcher of corpses (2.21): Pupillus ego Mileto profectus ad spectaculum Olympicum… peragrata cuncta Thessalia fuscis avibus Larissam accessi. This story-pattern of only getting as far as Larissa on a longer journey, and of encountering there a life-changing, ghostly and magical experience, clearly links him with the Aristomenes of Book 1, and Thelyphron’s tale clearly resembles that of Aristomenes in providing another unheeded warning to Lucius about the dangers of Thessalian magic.23 It is hard here to attribute any further literary significance to Larissa, apart perhaps from a small Platonic allusion. But plainly literary is Thelyphron’s Milesian origin. As I have noted elsewhere, Thelyphron’s claim to come from Miletus is a claim that his tale is Milesian in literary colour,24 showing the low-life sensationalism and (perhaps) witty reversal associated with the tradition of Milesian Tales associated with Aristides in Greek and Sisenna in Latin. Here a place has almost generic significance as a literary indicator; Thelyphron’s tale may be set amongst the witches of Thessaly, but its literary level and values are firmly Milesian.

4 Failed Expeditions: History, Epic, Tragedy and Robber Tales (4.9–21) The robber tales of Book 4, which may pick up some similar tales from the lost Greek Metamorphoses,25 have been discussed in various ways – as indicative of a whole tradition of robber-tales shared as a source with Greek novels,26 as echoes of suicides in historiography,27 as a confirmation of the existence of divine justice,28 and as parodies of epic heroism.29 Here I want to follow these general lines but to introduce new angles of literary allusion. ————— 23 24

25

26 27 28 29

Cf. Tatum 1969, 500–03 (reprinted in Harrison 1999, 168–71). Cf. Harrison 1998a, 69; the article as a whole attempts to reconstruct the character of the Milesian tradition. See still Lesky 1941, 54–5 and Onos 21 where there are clear indications that (similar?) narratives by the robbers have been omitted in the summarising process. Cf. Mackay 1963. Cf. Loporcaro 1992. Cf. Gianotti 1986, 53–77. Cf. Westerbrink 1978, Frangoulidis 1991, 1992.

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In this group of tales (Met.4.9–21) three sequential stories of robberexpeditions which are presented as glorious failures are narrated by an anonymous survivor who is anxious to defend his part of the robber-band for having seized little plunder. All three episodes concern heroic and tragic deaths of robber commanders – Lamachus, Alcimus and Thrasyleon. The last two names are clearly speaking names (‘Mighty’ and ‘Bold as a Lion’);30 I shall return to the name Lamachus in due course, but what is interesting from the perspective of literary geography is the pair of locations at which these deaths take place: Thebes and Plataea. The expedition led by the bold Lamachus to Thebes, I would argue, is a parody of the legendary epic and tragic expedition of the Seven Against Thebes. When Thebes is first named in the tale, it is named with a reference to its traditional seven gates which specifically recalls the seven doomed heroes of the mythological expedition, one at each gate (4.9 vix enim Thebas heptapylos accessimus).31 Furthermore, there is a clear structural parallel between the heroic failure of the Seven and the heroic failure of Lamachus, praised for his courage as if he were a legendary king or hero (4.8): inter inclitos reges ac duces proeliorum tanti viri memoris celebrabitur. That Lamachus gets his arm nailed to a door trying to break into a house, has to have it amputated to escape and then dies by suicide of course suggests that his expedition is a low-life and incompetent version of that of the Seven Against Thebes, but here as often we are dealing with the accommodation of high literary material of epic and tragedy to the more low-life and humorous world of the novel. In both cases we have a bold heroic enterprise which comes unstuck in ways appropriate to the particular literary genre. While the location of Thebes and the stress on heroic failure look back to the expedition of the Seven in epic and tragedy, Lamachus’ name looks back to another tragically failed expedition, this time from Athenian history. Both in name and in fate he recalls the Lamachus who perished as joint commander of the Sicilian expedition of 415 B.C. The Athenian Lamachus, the initial advocate of a full frontal attack on Syracuse, was killed with a few men in 414 after crossing a ditch and becoming isolated from the rest of the Athenian forces (Thucydides 6.101); this characteristic fatal overboldness is precisely picked up by the similar qualities of the Apuleian Lamachus, who is specifically said to have perished from excessive bravery (Met.4.8.8 sed ————— 30 31

Cf. e.g. Walsh 1970, 158. The seven gates of Thebes of course go back to Homer – cf. Hijmans et al. 1977, 78.

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illum quidem utcumque nimia virtus sua peremit). The bodies of both commanders are recovered and honourably disposed of by their troops; as has been noted, the maritime burial of the Apuleian Lamachus (4.11 mari celandum commisimus) is topographically very improbable as he dies at Thebes, a considerable distance from any coastline, but would be very suitable for the Thucydidean Lamachus killed in Sicily.32 This has been taken by earlier interpreters as a sign of Apuleian carelessness,33 but is better seen as an indication of a literary source and a direction of the reader’s attention to a classic heroic death.34 This echo of Athenian history, and of a tragic episode of Thucydides, is consistent with the location of the last of the three stories of heroic failure. There the robber-band, now under Thrasyleon, ‘bold as a lion’, move on to Plataea after their disasters at Thebes, where Thrasyleon perishes gloriously after a cunning plan to disguise him as a bear goes disastrously wrong. Again to readers of Athenian history this line of march has a notable model, namely the march of Mardonius, Persian commander and brother of Xerxes, towards the battle of Plataea: in Herodotus’account Mardonius goes to Thebes, a friendly power, and then on to defeat and death at nearby Plataea (Herodotus 9.13ff). There are resemblances between Herodotus’ Mardonius and Apuleius’ Thrasyleon other than the place of their death, though as ever the Apuleian version is a comic low-life parody. Both Mardonius and Thrasyleon perish fighting bravely, and in both cases the fate of the hero’s body is somewhat indeterminate: Thrasyleon’s body is abandoned to the men of Plataea still wrapped in its bearskin and nothing more is heard of it after the skin is taken off (4.21), while that of Mardonius disappears and there are many who claim to have buried it (9.84). Once again the echo is culturally plausible: Herodotus’ account of the Persian Wars was eagerly read by the Greeks of the Second Sophistic in their nostalgia for Hellenic greatness, and here, as in his use of Thucydides and in many other aspects of his work, Apuleius reflects the tendencies of the Greek literary culture of his own time.35 ————— 32

33 34

35

Cf. Walsh 1970, 158. There is no extant account of how the Athenian Lamachus was in fact buried. Cf. Walsh loc.cit., Perry 1967, 254. We may compare the evocation of the death of Pompey in that of Priam at Vergil Aeneid 2.554–8, which also involves logistical difficulties – cf. Austin 1964, 214. On the uses of Herodotus and Thucydides in the second century cf Swain 1996, 89–100, 486, 498.

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5 A Fantasy World? Literary Topography in Cupid and Psyche 5.1 Where does Psyche come from? The inserted tale of Cupid and Psyche is notoriously unspecific about its location, especially at its famous beginning, Erant in quadam civitate rex et regina (4.28),36 where neither city nor king and queen are named, an anonymity which persists throughout the tale; Psyche’s evil sisters and their husbands are never named, and even Psyche herself is named only after the tale is well under way (4.30). This lack of specific detail has been viewed as evidence of folk-tale origin, but is is rather a literary feature which is characteristic of this work in particular: the delayed naming of Psyche is a standard technique in the Metamorphoses,37 while the lack of specific names and location is a common feature of many of the inserted tales, perhaps something owed to the similarly anonymous scenarios of Roman declamation, which clearly exercises some influence on the plots of Apuleian sub-narratives.38 With in quadam civitate we may compare (for example) the opening of Seneca Contr.1.7: quidam alterum fratrem tyrannum occidit, alterum in adulterio deprecante patre interfecit. This unspecific monarchy is clearly not at Rome but is likely to be in the Greek world, probably in the Aegean; this can also be inferred from 4.29, which talks of the fame of Psyche’s beauty passing from her native city to neighbouring islands, and from 4.32, where Psyche’s father consults Apollo’s oracle at Didyma, presumably because Delphi is harder to get to. When Psyche is whisked off to the palace of Cupid, all specific geographical hints are abandoned, and the wanderings of Book 5–6 are not located in any recognisable landscape, apart from the use of Laconian Taenarus as the entrance to the underworld (see below). They do, however, as we shall see, refer to specific literary topographies.

————— 36

37 38

On the literariness (and novelistic colour) of the ‘once upon a time’ formula cf. Harrison 1998b, 64. Cf. n.6 above. Cf. Hijmans et al 1995, 297, Zimmerman 2000, 426, 428, and a paper by Danielle van Mal-Maeder at ICAN 3 2000 in Groningen, ‘La mise en scène déclamatoire chez les romanciers latins’ (summary in Zimmerman et al. 2000, 69–70). We look forward to her further researches on this topic.

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5.2 The irruption of Rome Given this general and unspecifically Greek character of the setting of Cupid and Psyche, it is all the more surprising when at Met. 6.8 Venus’ advertisement for the supposed runaway slave Psyche makes specific allusion to a well-known feature of the landscape of the city of Rome: Si quis a fuga retrahere vel occultam demonstrare poterit fugitivam regis filiam, Veneris ancillam, nomine Psychen, conveniat retro metas Murcias Mercurium praedicatorem… Here there is a clear reference to the long-established temple of Venus Murcia in the environs of the Circus Maximus, scornfully referred to by Apuleius’ fellow-African Tertullian a generation later in his attack on the immorality of the Circus (De Spectaculis 8).39 While any consistently realistic effect here is undermined by the evident contradiction that a king’s daughter is a slave-girl, there is clearly a reality jolt for the Roman reader, called back from the fantasy world of Cupid and Psyche to a very specifically Roman environment. This detail surely cannot belong to the perspective of the narrator of the tale of Cupid and Psyche, an anonymous and poor old woman who keeps house for a robber band in Boeotia; nor is it much more likely to belong to the reteller of the story, Lucius of Corinth the exass, even though he will have been living in Rome for some time by the point at which he narrates the events of the Metamorphoses.40 Here we see one of the reminders in the Metamorphoses that its ultimate narrator as author, its extradiegetic narrator, is Apuleius of Madauros, who here refers to a Roman landmark to show his readers his cosmopolitan acquaintance with the great metropolis of Rome itself.41 The reference is there for the Roman reader to get a handle on this otherwise unspecifically located tale, but it is also there as an index of the Latin culture of the writer, working in a province in Roman North Africa which is relatively close to Rome itself and could assume in its élite a knowledge of the imperial capital’s topography.42 ————— 39 40

41 42

Cf. further the discussion of this allusion in Luca Graverini’s paper in this volume. On the diversity of viewpoints in the narrative of Cupid and Psyche see Van Mal-Maeder and Zimmerman, 1998. On Roman colour in the Metamorphoses see Dowden 1994. On the Roman culture of Apuleius see esp. Harrison 2000, 1–3.

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In fact, this evocation of the Roman world in the midst of a Greek environment should not have come as a surprise in the context of the tale of Cupid and Psyche. For already there has been a strong indication of the Roman identity of the ultimate written narrator of the tale, in one of the more famous passages of the novel. At 4.32, when Psyche’s anonymous but kingly father enquires of Apollo’s oracle at Didyma as to what he should do about his daughter’s ill-health, the god replies in Latin: Sed Apollo, quamquam Graecus et Ionicus, propter Milesiae conditorem sic Latina sorte respondit … This reply in Latin is motivated by the Roman identity of the author of this Milesian tale (propter Milesiae conditorem); this can only be an allusion to Apuleius himself, as has been rightly emphasised,43 but it re-introduces an important literary toponym in the form of Milesiae. Here the Milesian links of the novel are stressed, just as they were in its prologue (sermone isto Milesio, 1.1) and in the tale of Thelyphron (see section 2 above). This has seemed paradoxical to some, since the tale of Cupid and Psyche in which this reference occurs is in many ways the least ‘Milesian’ part of the whole novel, with less low-life and sensationalist material. But as I have argued elsewhere, this allusion to Milesian tales may point not to their obscene content but to their narrative framework of inserted tales, a framework which the tale of Cupid and Psyche particularly exemplifies.44 5.3 Epic Topographies in Psyche’s Labours? I have argued elsewhere that the four labours set by Venus to Psyche and performed by the latter at Met.6.10–21 are a suitable reduction in both scale and tone for the context of the novel of the twelve labours of Hercules from Greek epic and tragedy.45 The first labour of sorting out seeds and grains has no specific location (6.10). The second labour of obtaining a tuft of wool from the flock of fierce golden sheep (6.11) is evidently something of a parody of the heroic quest for the Golden Fleece, as has often been noted. But commentators have not noted that the topographical details themselves too ————— 43 44 45

Cf. van der Paardt 1981 (reprinted in Harrison 1999, 237–46). Cf. Harrison 1998a. 69–70. Harrison 1998b, 61–3.

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look to the story of the Argonauts. The sheep with golden wool which are evidently a living version of the Golden Fleece also resemble the Fleece in their location as announced by Venus as she assigns the labour to Psyche (6.11): Videsne illud nemus, quod fluvio praeterluenti ripisque longis attenditur, cuius imi frutices vicinum fontem despiciunt? Oves ibi nitentis auri vero decore florentes incustodito pastu vagantur. Inde de coma pretiosi velleris floccum mihi confestim quoquo modo quaesitum afferas censeo. Here the sheep wander in a fearsome grove next to a river. This is surely an amusing version of the grove of Mars in the Argonaut saga, where the Golden Fleece is guarded by a fierce serpent, which is also close to the great river Phasis by which the Argonauts reach Colchis. In Apollonius’ account, which Apuleius surely knew, the Argonauts can see this grove as they sail up the Phasis (Arg.2.1268–9), and when they go to get the fleece they do so in the Argo, since the grove is close to the bank of the great river (Arg.4.100– 211).46 The third labour of fetching water from a fountain enters a conventional literary topography, that of the Underworld, but the only specific allusion there is to the waters of the infernal rivers of Styx and Cocytus. These conventional streams of the Underworld do suggest a Greek location, since Apuleius’ contemporary Pausanias at least identified them with two real Greek rivers; but their pairing here does not point to a realistic geographical location, since the ‘real’ river Styx was thought to be in Arcadia (Pausanias 8.17.6), the ‘real’ river Cocytus in Epirus (id.1.17.5). The fourth labour, that of bringing back some of the beauty of Proserpina from the Underworld, puts us firmly in the realm of the epic katabasis, though once again this is tempered by comic and parodic details which remind us that we are still in the world of the novel: the only route Psyche can initially think of to the Underworld is through suicide (6.17), but the tower from which she is about to jump in one of the traditional forms of suicide (a version of an old joke

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These details occur only in the Apollonian version (that of Valerius Flaccus does not describe the grove), though of course the lost version of Varro Atacinus may have been a source here. For the likelihood that Apuleius knew Apollonius directly cf. e.g. Mattiacci 1998, 130,134 and the list of allusions in Cupid and Psyche at Kenney 1990, 240.

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from Aristophanes’ Frogs)47 tells her of another way. Here we find a quite specific geographical location, for the first time in the tale (6.18): Lacedaemo Achaiae nobilis civitas non longe sita est: huius conterminam deviis abditam locis quaere Taenarum. ‘Sparta, that noble city of Achaea, is located not far away; look for its neighbour Taenarus, concealed in an out-ofthe-way region’. Here we have a famous Greek city (Sparta) and its contemporary location in a province of the second-century Roman empire (Achaia), presumably as some kind of realistic detail for the Roman reader who would certainly recognise these names; but we are not dealing with great precision here, since Taenarus, said here to be close to Sparta, is in fact more than fifty miles away across the great range of Taygetus. Taenarus itself, a location which has already occurred in the prologue to the Metamorphoses, apparently as a metonym for Sparta (1.1.Taenaros Spartiatica), has a strongly literary role in Psyche’s katabasis, since (as I have argued elsewhere) it points us towards one of the two Vergilian sources for Psyche’s descent to the world below.48 That Psyche’s katabasis is a version of that of Aeneas in the sixth book of the Aeneas is well known,49 but that katabasis of course took place through an Italian entrance to the Underworld at Lake Avernus on the Bay of Naples. Taenarus as gateway to the world below comes from the other great Vergilian katabasis, that of Orpheus in Georgic 4: Taenarum at Met.6.18 picks up Taenarias… fauces at Georgics 4.472. This is clearly symbolic and intertextual topography, indicating that Psyche’s katabasis will have a significant relationship to that of Orpheus, as indeed it will: both Psyche and Orpheus go to the Underworld to fetch something back to the world above but ruin their enterprises by looking at the object they have been ordered to fetch but also not to look at,50 though of course Apuleius’ story, being in a novel, ends in a happy result which Vergil’s tale does not.

6 Haemus the Thracian (7.5–8) The story of Charite, the narratee of the tale of Cupid and Psyche, who is melodramatically rescued by her fiancé Tlepolemus disguised as a robber, ————— 47 48 49 50

Frogs 129–135; Cf. e.g. Kenney 1990, 212. Cf. Harrison 1997, 68. Cf. esp. Finkelpearl 1990 (reprinted in Harrison 1999, 290–306). Cf. Kenney 1990, 216–7.

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and who then perishes in an equally melodramatic episode of revenge and suicide, is one of the passages from the original Greek Metamorphoses which is most obviously expanded and modified in Apuleius’ version. The Greek original has a much smaller role for the unnamed fiancé, also fails to give any name to the Charite character, and has her and her new husband perish in a tragic accident rather than in a lurid cycle of murder and suicide. Apuleius’ version of Charite’s end has long been observed to owe much to the suicide of Dido in Vergil’s Aeneid,51 and his version of the false story told by Tlepolemus of his daring deeds as the robber-chief Haemus is also heavily elaborated with detail which we can assume is Apuleian, not least the way in which Tlepolemus, with his cunning disguise, his lying tale, his defeat of a hostile group against the odds and his recovery of his rightful wife is a clear version of the Homeric Odysseus.52 Here, however, I want to concentrate on the topography of the lying tale of banditry which Tlepolemus, presenting himself as Haemus, tells to the robbers. The topographical references found near the beginning of the tale clearly form a strategy of detailed authentication, urging respect for and belief in the speaker through detail, as well as a further handle for the Roman reader in mentioning the real province of Macedonia (7.5): Nam praefui validissimae manui totamque prorsus devastavi Macedoniam. Ego sum praedo famosus Haemus ille Thracius cuius totae provinciae nomen horrescunt, patre Therone aeque latrone inclito prognatus … As has been pointed out,53 Haemus’ name both alludes expressively to his bloodthirstiness through its association with Greek /C/ and points to the mountain-range of Haemus in his supposed home region of Thrace. But as has also been pointed out,54 the reference to Haemus’ father Theron (‘Hunter’) is a literary allusion, to the robber Theron in Chariton’s Callirhoe, who kidnaps Callirhoe and sells her into slavery in the first book of that novel but later gets his just deserts in the third where he is crucified. The effect of the double fictionality of Haemus, named with clear improvisation after a Greek mountain landscape and after a previous fictional robber, is here surely ————— 51 52 53 54

Cf. Harrison 1997, 63–5. Cf. Harrison 1990, Frangoulidis 1992. Cf. Hijmans 1978, 115. Hijmans 1978, 116 n.46.

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a clever hint to the reader (if not to the listening Charite) that Haemus’ claimed descent is as fictional and pretended as the rest of his disguise. The main content of the false Haemus’ tale is the story of Plotina, a noble lady who was instrumental both in saving her husband and in destroying Haemus’ own previous robber-band, clearly intended to suggest that Charite too will be reunited with her husband and that the robbers will be destroyed. Here once again we are given some realistic locations: Plotina (a good Roman name, possibly echoing that of Trajan’s empress Pompeia Plotina)55 and her unnamed husband clearly originate in Rome, since the husband is multis officiis in aula Caesaris clarus atque conspicuus, ‘famed and renowned for his many services at the court of Caesar’ (7.6), and their place of exile is set as the Greek Ionian island of Zacynthos (Zante), which they head for by ship. It is on this journey that they supposedly encounter the robber-band of Haemus at a very specific location (7.7): Sed cum primum litus Actiacum, quo tunc Macedonia delapsi grassabamur, appulisset … invadimus et diripimus omnia – ‘but as soon as he landed on the Actian shore, where we were then in operation having come down from Macedonia … we charged in and ransacked the whole lot’. Haemus’ band has come to the western edge of the Roman province of Macedonia, to the shore of Actium. This is a realistic point to intercept a seavoyage from Rome to Zante, but it is also of course an extremely famous military location, and in Latin before Apuleius the adjective Actiacus is used largely in contects referring to the battle of Actium in 31 B.C.56 What we have here is a second, novelistic battle of Actium, suitably transformed to suit the different genre – not a mighty conflict on sea and land to determine the fate of the known world, but a one-sided affair in which the land-based robbers pillage a ship which has put at the shore. The very Roman and virtuous Plotina, travelling supportively with her unnamed husband to exile, can also be seen as an inverted version of the historical Cleopatra, a foreign paramour, but similarly defeated with her husband (though in different ships) at the same place. In conclusion, these examples show that topographical references in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses can operate as bearers of intertextual literary allusion, either by themselves or as part of a larger complex. This is true not ————— 55 56

Cf. Hijmans et al. 1981, 121. Propertius 2.15.44 Actiacum … mare, Manilius 5.52 Actiacosque sinus (= Petronius Sat. 121v.115).

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only in respect of the Greek Metamorphoses, the major putative model of Apuleius’ novel, but also in respect of a wide range of other literary texts. It is therefore not surprising that most of the literary topographical allusions occur in the inserted tales, which allow Apuleius the greatest flexibility of invention. These allusions, characteristically, not only demonstrate knowledge of famous and elevated genres and events (epic, tragedy, the great battles of Greek and Roman history and literature), but also adapt those elements by parody and ironic reprocessing for their reappearance in the less elevated genre of the Roman novel.57

Bibliography Austin, R.G. 1964. P.Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Secundus, Oxford: Oxford UP. Brotherton, B. 1934. ‘The introduction of characters by name in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius’, CPh 29: 36–52. De Biasi, L. 2000. ‘Le descrizioni del paesaggio naturale nelle opere di Apuleio: aspetti letterari’ in G. Magnaldi and G.F. Gianotti, eds., Apuleio: storia del testo e interpretazioni, Alessandria: Turin, 199–264. Dowden, K. 1994. ‘The Roman Audience of the Golden Ass’ in J. Tatum, ed., 419– 34. Finkelpearl, E. 1990. ‘Psyche, Aeneas and an Ass: Apuleius Met. 6.10–6.21’, TAPA 120: 333–348 Frangoulidis, S.A. 1991. ‘Vergil’s Tale of the Trojan Horse in Apuleius’ RobberTale of Thrasyleon’, PP 46: 95–111. Frangoulidis, S.A. 1992. ‘Epic inversion in Apuleius’ tale of Tlepolemus/Haemus’, Mnemosyne 45: 60–74. Gianotti, G.F. 1986. ‘Romanzo’ e ideologia: studi sulle Metamorfosi di Apuleio. Napoli: Liguori. Harrison, S.J. 1997. ‘From Epic to Novel: Apuleius as Reader of Vergil’, MD 39: 53–74. Harrison, S.J. 1998a. ‘The Milesian Tales and the Roman Novel’, Groningen Colloquia on the Novel 9: 61–73 Harrison, S.J. 1998b. ‘Some Epic Structures in Cupid and Psyche’, in M. Zimmerman et al., Aspects of Apuleius’ Golden Ass II: Cupid and Psyche: Groningen, Egbert Forsten, 51–68. Harrison, S.J., ed. 1999. Oxford Readings in the Roman Novel, Oxford: Oxford UP.

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I would like to thank Michael Paschalis and Stavros Frangoulidis for their kind invitation to speak in Rethymnon, for their organisation of an enjoyable conference, and for their warm hospitality. I am also very grateful to Maaike Zimmerman for her very helpful editorial comments on my paper.

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Harrison, S.J. 2000. Apuleius: A Latin Sophist, Oxford: Oxford UP. Hijmans Jr., B.L., ‘Significant Names and their Function in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’ in Hijmans and van der Paardt 1978, 107–22 Hijmans Jr,. B.L et. al 1977. Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses Books IV 1–27, Groningen: Egbert Forsten. Hijmans Jr.,B.L et al. 1981., Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses Books VI 25–32 and VII, Groningen: Egbert Forsten. Hijmans Jr., B.L et al. 1985. Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses Book VIII 1–27, Groningen: Egbert Forsten. Hijmans Jr., B.L et al. 1995, Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses Book IX, Groningen: Egbert Forsten. Hijmans Jr., B.L. and van den Paardt, R. Th., eds. 1978. Aspects of Apuleius’ Golden Ass Groningen: Egbert Forsten. Holzberg, N. 1984. ‘Apuleius und der Verfasser des griechischen Eselromans’, WJA 10: 161–78. Iser, W. 1978. The Act Of Reading, London: Routledge. Kahane, A. and Laird, A. eds. 2001. A Companion to the Prologue of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Oxford: Oxford UP. Kenney, E.J. 1990. Apuleius: Cupid and Psyche, Cambridge, Cambridge UP. Keulen, W. 2000. ‘Significant Names in Apuleius: A “Good Contriver” and his Rival in the Cheese Trade (Met.1,5)’, Mnemosyne 53: 310–21. Lesky, A. 1941. ‘Apuleius von Madauros und Lukios von Patrai’, Hermes 76: 43–74 Loporcaro, M. 1992. ‘Eroi screditati dal testo: strutture della parodia nelle storie di briganti in Apuleio Met. IV.9–21’, Maia 44: 65–78. Mackay, P.A. 1963. ‘Klephtika: the Tradition of the Tales of Banditry in Apuleius’, G&R 10: 147–52. Maclean, I. 1986. ‘Reading and Interpretation’, in: Ann Jefferson and David Robey, eds., Modern Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction, London: Batsford, 122–144. Mason, H.J. 1999. ‘The Metamorphoses of Apuleius and its Greek sources’ in H. Hofmann, ed., Latin Fiction: The Latin Novel in Context. London: Routledge, 103–112. Mattiacci, S. 1998. ‘Neoteric and Elegiac Echoes in the tale of Cupid and Psyche’ in M. Zimmerman et al., eds., 127–50. Perry, B.E. 1967. The Ancient Romances. Berkeley: California UP. Schiesaro, A. 1985. ‘Il ‘locus horridus’ nelle ‘Metamorfosi’ di Apuleio, Met.IV.28– 35’, Maia 37: 211–223. Scobie, A. 1975. Apuleius Metamorphoses (Asinus Aureus) I, Peter Lang: Meisenheim am Glan. Swain, S.C.R. 1996. Hellenism and Empire, Oxford: Oxford UP. Tatum, J. 1979. Apuleius and the Golden Ass. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UP. Tatum, J., ed. 1994. The Search for the Ancient Novel. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP Trapp, M.B. 1990. ‘Plato’s Phaedrus in Second-Century Greek Literature’ in D.A.Russell, ed., Antonine Literature, Oxford: Oxford UP, 141–174. Trinquier, J. 1999. ‘Le motif du repaire des brigands et le topos du locus horridus: Apulée, Métamorphoses, IV, 6’, RPh 73, 257–277.

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van der Paardt, R.Th. 1978. ‘Various aspects of narrative technique in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’ in Hijmans and van der Paardt, 75–94. van der Paardt, R.Th. 1981. ‘The Unmasked ‘I’: Apuleius Met.XI.27’, Mnemosyne 34: 96–106. van Mal-Maeder, D. 1998. Apulée, Les Métamorphoses. Livre II,1–20. Groningen: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. van Mal-Maeder, D. and Zimmerman, M. 1998. ‘The Many Voices in Cupid and Psyche’ in Zimmerman et al., eds., 83–102. Walsh, P.G. 1970. The Roman Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Walsh, P.G. 1974. ‘Bridging the Asses’, CR n.s. 24: 215–8. Westerbrink, A.G. 1978. ‘Some Parodies in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’ in Hijmans and van der Paardt, eds., 63–73. Zimmerman, M. et al, eds., 1998. Aspects of Apuleius’ Golden Ass II: Cupid and Psyche. Groningen: Egbert Forsten. Zimmerman, M. 2000. Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses X. Text, Introduction and Commentary. Groningen: Egbert Forsten.

Corinth, Rome, and Africa: a Cultural Background for the Tale of the Ass LUCA GRAVERINI

Siena – Arezzo

The pseudo-Lucianic Onos, even though its geographical references are not particularly detailed, allows the reader to follow the main character’s travels with a certain degree of precision. Lucius is from Patrae, in Achaia; he arrives in Hypata and then, by travelling northwards in Thessaly and Macedonia, proceeds up to Thessalonike. In that city he is restored to human shape, and from there he sails back to his homeland. In Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, on the other hand, Lucius is from Corinth.1 At the beginning of the novel, we find him on the road to Hypata but then, after his abduction by the robbers, the geographical setting becomes indefinite and it is clear only that he is wandering in Thessaly. We return to a recognisable, concrete world again only when the ass arrives in CorinthKenchreai (10,19,1)2 where the final metamorphosis takes place. Here too, as in the Onos, this metamorphosis is followed by a sea voyage. But instead of travelling to his homeland the hero is taken to Rome (11,26,1) where, in the novel’s final chapter, he undergoes his final initiation. The uncertainty of Lucius’ whereabouts after his initial metamorphosis is normally explained either as a folk-tale feature of the novel, and/or a concession to Apuleius’ ‘Romanocentric readership’:3 his readers, the argument ————— 1

2

3

In 1,22,4 he claims to have a letter of presentation by a Corinthian named Demeas; more explicitly in 2,12,3 Lucius says Corinthi… apud nos (‘at Corinth, where I live’). Cf. Zimmerman 2000, 11 and n. 18; and Niall Slater’s contribution to this volume, p. 173. The arrival of the ass in Corinth has been carefully prepared for in the first two books by the allusions to Lucius’ Corinthian origins: cf. Zimmerman 2000 ad 10,19,1. Anyway, it should be noted that, when he arrives in Corinth, he gives no sign of recognizing the city as his fatherland. Harrison 1998, 64 f.

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goes, were probably not interested in details about the geography and landscape of central Greece, and presumably not really able to understand them. I think that these are valid points, and I shall try to offer a more detailed analysis of the second of these in a later part of this paper; but I would also like to suggest that the novel’s lack of geographical specificity results also from other literary choices made by Apuleius, especially his decision to have Lucius come from Corinth and to place there his restoration to human shape. After making these changes to the plot, Apuleius still had to carry through with the plot of his model, now in a different geographical setting. For the most part, then, he leaves Lucius’ travels unmapped. Now we could ask ourselves why, by placing Lucius’ origins and his retransformation in Corinth instead of Patrai and Thessalonike, Apuleius introduced such an important change to the original plot. Scholars of course have already debated this issue, the most important treatment being a contribution by Hugh Mason.4 Here are, briefly, the most important reasons which have been adduced so far for this change: – Corinth was better known to the Latin audience than Thessalonike (again the idea of a ‘Romanocentric readership’). – Corinth was also well known as a rich but corrupt and immoral city: therefore it was, by contrast, a good setting for the chastity and purity of Lucius, converted to the Isiac faith. – Corinth was an important centre of the cult of Isis. There is also the point made made by Stephen Harrison:5 Lucius makes an Odyssean nostos (homeward journey) by returning to Corinth at the end of his wanderings, and this is of course a point well worth considering to explain the high-level structure and the epic flavour of the novel. Anyway, if Lucius is a Roman citizen (this is clear in the Onos, though the point is not stressed in the Metamorphoses6), then maybe his real nostos is the travel to ————— 4 5 6

Mason 1971, 160–165; see also Veyne 1965, 241–251 and Zimmerman 2000, 18. Harrison, in this volume p. 43. In Onos 55 Lucius has the tria nomina of a Roman citizen: ‘my name is Lucius, and that of my brother Gaius, and the other two names we share with our father’. Metamorphoses 9,39,3 makes clear that Lucius can understand the Latin-speaking soldier, and the Latin language is necessary of course also in the forensic activity he will practice in Rome (11,28,6). Cf. also Bowersock 1965, 289; Mason 1983; Mason 1994, 1681 f.; Harrison 2000, 215 f.; a different view in Walsh 1968.

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Rome: a sea voyage, the direction from East to West, and Rome as the final destination also seem more in keeping with Odysseus and Aeneas. The idea of a nostos to Rome could also make more sense in a comparison with the Onos where the hero, as we have seen, sails back to his homeland after the end of his (mis)adventures.7 In my opinion, each of the other arguments considered above has its pros and cons. However, I think that the most important, the one which in a sense encapsulates all the others, is the first: Corinth was more familiar to the ‘intended audience’ of a novel written in Latin. Indeed, even if it was not so rich as Corinth, Patrae was also a very prosperous city;8 and the cult of Isis, Osiris and Sarapis is well attested for Thessalonike too.9 Rome itself was of course very rich, had temples and devotees of Isis, and in terms of its fame for moral corruption the city was probably second to none. Apuleius could have chosen Rome as the setting for the whole plot, or at least for the part from the retransformation onwards, and not only for the last chapters of the novel. On the contrary, we must note that the Metamorphoses also corresponds well enough with the lost Greek original in terms of topography, so much so that almost the whole plot is set in central Greece. The most remarkable exception, which is probably the main cause of the novel’s geographical inspecifity, is the important role played by Corinth: for some reason, the Corinthian setting and the journey from Greece to Rome were tempting choices for Apuleius.10 Corinth was indeed well known for its wealth, moral corruption and the cult of Isis11 but, as we have seen, these facts become meaningful only at the end of the Metamorphoses, when they contrast with the retransformation and conversion of Lucius; they have little point at the beginning, when Corinth is simply introduced as the birthplace of the main character. I also wonder if ————— 7

8

9 10

11

See anyway Niall Slater’s paper in this volume (p. 175), where Lucius’ voyage to Rome is regarded as an exile. Corinth, Athens and Patrae were ‘the three centers of commercial and banking activities in Greece’: Wiseman 1979, 507. Sources in Griffiths 1975, 15 and n. 4; 330; 349 f. As a minor suggestion, it is also worth mentioning the fact that Corinth was a centre of the cult of Pegasus and Bellerophon: see Engels 1990, 99 ff. The mythical couple is alluded to at 6,30,5; 7,26,3; 8,16,3; 11,8,4; the winged horse (a winged ass in the last passage) seems to be a paradoxical symbol for Lucius, who tried to become a bird and was turned into an ass. Wealth and corruption: Wiseman 1979, 508; cult of Isis: Engels 1990, 102 ff.

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wealth, corruption, and the cult of Isis were actually the first ideas that a reference to Corinth evoked in the literate Latin reader. I would point rather to a fact which, while obvious perhaps, has always been neglected in this field of study: Corinth was one of the most prosperous Greek cities until it was razed to the ground by a Roman army led by Lucius Mummius in 146 BC; after that year, Corinth was on the whole deleted from Greek geography until it was rebuilt and repopulated as a Roman colony by Caesar.12 In order to evaluate the conjecture that this history of Corinth is somehow meaningful in the Metamorphoses, it is useful to consider briefly the immense resonance that it had in both Greek and Latin culture. The destruction of Corinth, and that of Carthage which occurred a few months earlier, marked a turning point in the Mediterranean politics of Rome: by that time the City was confident in its dominant role and ready to defend its interests at any cost. So Corinth and Carthage, ‘the two jewels of the sea-cost’ (Cicero, ND 3,91), two cities that could ‘bear the weight and the name of an empire’, were destroyed ‘so that they could never rise again’ (Cicero, Agr. 2,87). This Ciceronian embarrassment sets out the reasons for a Roman policy which, however, was not entirely without remorse; the orator himself acknowledges that ‘through a specious appearance of expediency wrong is very often committed in transactions between state and state, as by our own country in the destruction of Corinth’13 (Off. 3,46). Even more telling is Florus, Epit. 1,32,1: ‘as though that age could only run its course by the destruction of cities, the ruin of Carthage was immediately followed by that of Corinth, the capital of Achaea, the glory of Greece… this city, by an act unworthy of the Romans, was overwhelmed before it could be accounted in the number of their declared enemies’.14 If the Romans cried crocodile tears, we can easily imagine the universal mourning that the destruction of Corinth, ‘the bright star of Greece’ (Diodorus Siculus 32,27,1), aroused in the Hellenistic world. As far as I know, its first literary echo is in an epigram by the Egyptian Polystratus (AG 7,297):

————— 12

13 14

On the history and archaeology of Corinth, besides Wiseman 1979 and Engels 1990, see Gilman Romano 2000. On Kenchreai: Hohlfelder 1976. Trans. Miller 1975. Trans. Forster 1984.

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Lucius has smitten sore the great Achaean Acrocorinth, the star of Hellas… and the sons of Aeneas left unwept and unhallowed by funeral rites the Achaeans who burnt the house of Priam.15 The general’s identity is here partially concealed, since only his praenomen Lucius is quoted (whereas the Greek version of his nomen, Mommios, would also have fitted the meter); the result is a generic mention of a Roman destroyer. In Polystratus’ view, the destruction of Corinth is more the nemesis of history than a consequence of the acts of a single general: it is vengeance taken by the descendants of Aeneas on the Greeks for the destruction of Troy. It was an epic deed and Virgil, who alludes to Mummius also in the show of heroes (A. 6,836 f. ‘he… triumphant over Corinth, shall drive a victor’s chariot to the lofty Capitol, famed for Achaeans he has slain’16) seems to share this view in Aen. 1,284 ‘there shall come a day… when the house of Assaracus shall bring into bondage Phthia and famed Mycenae, and hold lordship over vanquished Argos’.17 Servius clears up the mythological reference: ‘house of Assaracus: that is the Trojan family… Assaracus begot Capys, Capys begot Anchises, and he gave birth to Aeneas progenitor of the Romans; from them came Mummius, who defeated the Achaeans’.18 In other texts, a paternalistic attitude replaces the idea of vengeance for Troy: a trend started by Titus Flamininus, who in an inscription in Delphi calls himself the Aineadas Titos vouching for the freedom of the Greeks (Plutarch, Flam. 12,11). Plutarch (Quaest. conv. 9,2,737A) describes to us a Mummius moved to tears at the sight of a young Corinthian slave, who compares his fate with that of the Greeks who died before Troy writing a verse of Homer (Od. 5,306). Mourning for the loss of such an important city and for the countless great works of art that adorned it19 naturally recurs in Greek historians and geogra————— 15 16 17 18

19

Trans. Paton 1960. Trans. Fairclough 1999. Trans. Fairclough 1999. These verses of Virgil, and their interpretation by Servius, are influenced for Nenci 1978, 1016 by a propagandistic tradition started by the same L. Mummius. Anyway, this seems to be impossible, since the idea is already in the epigram by Polystratus quoted above in the text; for a confutation of Nenci’s point see Graverini 2001, 143 ff. Alcock 1993, 179 rightly emphasizes also the religious and political implications of the plunderings suffered by Corinth and other Greek cities: ‘depriving one’s enemy of sacred

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phers like Polybius, Pausanias and Diodorus Siculus. However, after the end of the war between Greece and Rome, it became common (and safer) to add to this grief a sense of relief for the generosity of Julius Caesar, who made the city come back to life.20 Even though it was the thoughtlessness of the leaders of the Achaean League that saddled them with full responsibility for the conflict, the severity of the Roman response was hard for the Greeks to accept, even for those most loyal to Rome (like Polybius, who seems to consider the doom of Corinth a just price to pay for a higher purpose). When Pausanias describes the monuments of Corinth, he also thinks back to the history of the city; and, although there is no explicit anti-Roman criticism, nevertheless ‘his detailed narrative reflects his own often expressed concern for Greece’s freedom and dignity’.21 Crinagoras, in Greek Anthology 9,284, regrets in no uncertain terms the quality of the new population of Corinth: What inhabitants, O luckless city, hast thou received, and in place of whom? Alas for the great calamity of Greece!22 As part of the Corinthian war booty, enormous wealth and a massive quantity of works of art arrived in Rome and this was not without effect on Roman society. Pliny the Elder disapproves of the laxity of morals induced by the great Mediterranean victories in the 2nd century BC and specifies that ‘the victory over the Achaean League, from which statues and paintings came to Rome, had a great importance in the decline of morality’ (NH 33,149; cf. also Livy 34,4,4). Eutropius 4,14,2 describes for us the three great triumphs celebrated in Rome in that year 145 BC: Africanus Minor and Metellus had, respectively, Hasdrubal and Andriscus marching before their chariots; but before the chariot of Mummius, who had no captured enemy generals to show, ‘bronze statues and paintings and other ornaments of that most celebrated city were carried’. Here we have no space to discuss the link between the Corinthian booty and the unbridled enthusiasm of the Romans for Greek and Oriental art; nor can we speak about their distinctive eclectic ————— 20 21 22

objects and possessing them yourself served two related purposes: defeating them in perpetuity and adding the power of their gods to your own symbolic arsenal’. Polybius 39,2 (from Strabo 8,6,28); Pausanias 7,17,17; Diodorus Siculus 32,27,1. Swain 1996, 338; see also Bowie 1996, 216 ff. Trans. Paton 1960.

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tastes induced by the continuous stream of works of art flowing from every nation into public and private collections in Rome. Instead it will suffice simply to mention the celebrated ‘Corinthian bronze’: the ancients believed that this alloy had been created in the destruction of Corinth, when the immense heat of the fire melted and mixed bronze and noble metals. Modern scholars debate not only the composition but the very existence of such an alloy. And yet, the metal unquestionably had a long and glorious literary life and this is attested, for example, by a brilliant Petronian parody.23 It was almost inevitable that Corinth should become a perennial symbol of the relationship between Greece and Rome: it was here that Flamininus and later the emperor Nero announced the freedom and independence of Greece;24 between these two announcements there was, in sharp contrast, the armed intervention by Mummius. In the characterization of the city, history seems to echo and/or foreshadow the same ideological patterns we can trace in the literary sources. The Romans, thanks also to the Corinthian booty, intensified their Hellenization and developed a passion for Greek art; the Greeks, however, were always reluctant to lay down the crown of their cultural excellence. It is precisely in Corinth that Favorinus of Arles (an author whose spiritual proximity with Apuleius is stressed by Paul Vallette and Gerald Sandy25) played upon this feeling of superiority, itself deeply rooted in the genetic code of the Greeks, but also powerfully felt among the Romanized Greeks, citizens of a Corinth that was by then a Roman colony: If some one who is… a Roman, not one of the masses but of the equestrian order, one who has affected, not merely the language, but also the thought and manners and dress of the Greeks… – for while the best of the Greeks over there [i. e. in Rome] may be seen inclining toward Roman ways, he inclines toward the Greek,… not only to seem Greek but to be Greek too – taking all this into consideration, ought he not to have a ————— 23

24

25

Petronius 50,5. On the infusion of Greek art into Rome as war booty see Pape 1975; on Corinthian bronze, Jacobson-Weitzman 1995. The cutting of the Isthmus by Nero also gave the opportunity for a dispute concerning Roman and Greek identities: cf. Whitmarsh 1999. On the tight connection of Corinth to Rome, and the ‘informal and symbolic threads’ that bound the Greek city to the capital of the empire, see Alcock 1993, 168 f. Vallette 1908, 187 ff.; Sandy 1997, 93 ff.

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bronze statue here in Corinth? Yes,… because, though Roman, he has become thoroughly hellenized, even as your own city has…26 Favorinus praises Corinth as a Roman colony that by that time was thoroughly Hellenized: and it is clear that, for the orator as well as for his audience, this was a remarkable improvement. Favorinus was himself a Roman who became Hellenized, but many others remained true specimens of ignorance. Thus, beyond chastising Mummius as the destroyer of Corinth, Favorinus criticizes him as a typically ‘ignorant’ Roman who wrote the name of Nestor and Priam (two heroes always described in ripe old age) under the statues of two young Arcadian men. The whole population of Rome fell into the same error: the Roman mob, as might have been expected, imagined they were beholding those very heroes, and not mere Arcadians from Pheneus.27 With this brief survey I hope to have enriched the picture of the ideas and emotions that Corinth could awaken in a literate reader of Apuleius’ age, Greek or Roman. Not only was it a rich city, and immoral, and a centre of the cult of Isis; it was, even more, a powerful symbol of cultural identity. Its expressive potential was always ambivalent: a Roman could use the symbol of Corinth to celebrate the greatness of his people and the vengeance of Aeneas’ descendants over the destroyers of Troy. A Greek could use it to lament his loss of freedom, and to give vent to his bitterness for the injustices he had suffered, or even to make of it the emblem of his cultural superiority. In this context, it is not difficult to see the close relationship between the city of Corinth and the Metamorphoses. Corinth is not only the native town of the main character and the place where he regains human shape: it is also mentioned in the prologue – together with Athens and Sparta, the two other symbols of Greek civilization – as the fatherland of the novel itself (of course, I am accepting here Harrison’s hypothesis of the book itself as the speaker of the prologue28). It is at once an ideal and a literary connection: ————— 26

27 28

[Dio Chrysostom] 37, 25–26; trans. Crosby 1986. On the construction of Greek identity in Favorinus’ Corinthian oration see Whitmarsh 2001, 295 ff. [Dio Chrysostom] 37, 42; trans. Crosby 1986. Harrison 1990; cf. also Harrison 2000, 227 f. and Nicolai 1999, who adopts Harrison’s point to some extent. Kahane-Laird 2001 appeared too late to be considered in this paper.

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Athens, Corinth, and Sparta are called ‘fruitful lands preserved for ever in even more fruitful books’.29 The book is thus deeply rooted in a literary tradition which is connected with Greece as a whole. The prologue describes also a book that travels. After an ‘early youth’ spent in Greece, it moves very soon (mox) to Rome, where with hard work (aerumnabilis labor) it improves its language. We can see in this passage a clear allusion to the Greek origins of the ass’s story which Apuleius imported to Rome, translated into Latin and elaborated with hard work to gain higher literary glory. By placing Lucius in Corinth, the novel alludes from its very beginning to the relationship between Greece and Rome, which is indeed an important idea in the Metamorphoses, a Latin adaptation of a Greek original. The main character of the novel follows this pattern, since his adventures begin in Greece and conclude in Rome. Rome itself was full of artworks, marbles, bronzes and paintings which either came from Corinth and Greece as a result of war booty or were imported by art dealers; we can integrate the Metamorphoses, defined as a fabula graecanica by the prologue, into this same trend. The constant exploitation of preceding literature, and the frequent practice of literary furtum, are characteristic of its style and composition: just like the Romans of the 2nd century BC, Apuleius could be defined, with a bit of exaggeration and fancy, as a plunderer of works of art. Of course, when speaking about the idea of Corinth as a literary symbol well suited to the genesis, contents and style of the Metamorphoses I have tackled only a part of the problem. We have seen that Corinth and its history could also be used to define a Greek cultural identity in contraposition to Rome. Is it possible that this side, too, of the ‘Corinthian myth’ is meaningful in Apuleius? Although his use of Corinth seems to be absolutely neutral, I think that the Metamorphoses lends itself to being read, in some measure, as a study in the problem of the relationship between Greece and Rome (or, better, the relationship between the empire’s periphery and its centre). Let us come back for a moment to the Onos, and, through it, to the lost Greek original. Even though the Onos makes no mention of Corinth, it nevertheless offers some opportunities to discuss our problem. In particular, I find it difficult to imagine that a Greek author could describe the transformation of a character named Lucius into an ass, a character clearly identified as a Roman citizen (quite an exceptional case for the ancient novel), without ————— 29

Trans. Hanson 1989.

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some small thrill of satisfaction.30 We could ask ourselves if the lost Greek original had a similar attitude,31 and if Apuleius somehow inherited it – or developed it independently. The problem of Apuleius’ cultural identity has been at the forefront, more or less explicitly, of much recent scholarship on the Metamorphoses. Particularly notable here is the useful survey of Apuleius’ Greek culture produced by Gerald Sandy.32 For reasons explained below, I think that Apuleius’ Hellenic underpinnings are only part of his bilingual culture, and probably not the most important.33 The subtitle of Harrison’s book (A Latin Sophist) presents a welcome counterbalance to, or completion of, this view. On the contrary Ken Dowden, in attempting to demonstrate that the Metamorphoses were written during Apuleius’ Roman period (perhaps around A.D. 155), has maintained that the novel was specifically written for an audience of readers living in Rome.34 I will try to reproduce briefly his arguments, at least those which are relevant to my subject (though my selection is of course arbitrary, I will be using Dowden’s words almost verbatim): – there is little evidence for the existence of literature beyond that which was produced for the élite of Rome and for the imperial circle; Latin authors usually wrote and published at Rome; if Apuleius had been primarily addressing provincial audiences and the North African market, he would be practically unique. The Florida and Apologia themselves were written for the Roman market: the Carthaginian audience is painted in Roman colours. – Apuleius’ works survived into the modern era only because they were sent, read and copied in Rome, as is shown by Sallustius’ subscriptio preserved in the manuscript F. ————— 30 31

32 33

34

Cf. Perry 1967, 220 ff.; contra, Walsh 1968. This could seem unlikely, since Photius states that the Onos has a satirical tone, while the lost Metamorphoseis has not. Anyway, Photius’ judgements do not always prove reliable, and the whole problem of the relations between the Onos, the lost Greek Metamorphoseis, and Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, is a vexata quaestio. Sandy 1997. An overestimation of Apuleius’ Greekness is found e.g. in Paratore 19422: Apuleius ‘conservò sempre la mentalità di un Greco’ (p. 71); ‘la sua opera e la sua personalità sono permeate di elementi greci, in quanto si distaccano fortemente dalla tradizione latina’ (p. 79). Dowden 1994.

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In a work that contains a number of autobiographical reflections, Carthage is surprisingly absent from the Metamorphoses.

Dowden’s first argument is too general to be fully considered here. I shall limit myself to suggesting that it is a little a priori, while we should at least leave due space for exceptions that prove the rule; and that, after all, the Florida and Apologia seem to have been written at least for both an African and Roman audience.35 The Florida are a selection of Apuleius’ speeches; and, given the relation that so many of the fragments show with Carthage and Africa, it is probable that ‘the anthologist (whether Apuleius himself, or, more likely, someone else) did his work from a personal sense of national pride, or with his eyes set on a clearly marked audience, e.g. the city elite in Carthage’.36 This leads us to the question of the transmission of Apuleius’ works. If it was Rome and not Africa that ensured their preservation, this was due to historical processes, and not necessarily to Apuleius’ intention. Their survival proves only that somebody in Rome read Apuleius, and not necessarily that Apuleius himself intended them to be read primarily in Rome – nor that he was actually read there more than in Africa. Instead, St. Augustine (Epist. 138,19) suggests that Apuleius, as an African, was more familiar to the Africans; and the Historia Augusta relates that Septimius Severus complained about Clodius Albinus’ reputation of being a litteratus, while he used to read only ‘the Milesian stories from Carthage that his friend Apuleius wrote’.37 Regarding the absence of Carthage in the novel, this is indeed very striking, all the more so because almost all the Mediterranean world finds at least a small place in the prologue: Greece (Hymettos Attica et Isthmos Ephyrea et ————— 35

36

37

On the Carthaginian audience of the Florida see e.g. Vössing 1997, 444 ff. The Spanish Martial repeatedly and proudly states that his work is read all over the world: cfr. e. g. 1,1,2; 7,88,1 ff.; 8,3,4; 8,61,3–5; 11,3,3 ff.. An useful collection of similar passages in other authors (especially Ovid) is in Citroni 1975, 15 (ad 1,1,2) and Nisbet-Hubbard 1978, 333 ff. (ad Horace, C. 2,20), who point out that ‘the ambition for world-wide fame is attested as early as Alcman… and becomes a commonplace with Hellenistic and Roman poets’. Generally speaking, a view of Latin literary production less ‘centripetal’ than that of Dowden is offered e. g. by Gualandri 1989a. So Hunink 2001, 13; see also Harrison 2000, 132–134, who is more inclined than Hunink to think that Apuleius himself was the editor of the original four-book anthology from which our extant Florida seems to derive. Hist. Aug. Alb. 12,12 (trans. Magie 1967). For the early diffusion of Apuleius’ works in Africa cf. Stramaglia 1996, 139 ff.

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Taenaros Spartiatica), Rome (the urbs Latia), Egypt (papyrus Aegyptia argutia Nilotici calami inscripta), Asia Minor (Milesius sermo). Anyway, this absence can be explained by the fact that the Metamorphoses are after all the adaptation of a preexisting Greek work, so that its Greek setting was an almost unavoidable choice. The other geographical indications in the prologue mark specific literary choices made by Apuleius, i.e. the connection with sermo Milesius, Isiac cult and oriental religion, and the final movement to Rome (on which see supra). Therefore, it was difficult and pointless to integrate Africa into the prologue, or into the plot of the ass’ story. Nevertheless, Africa is not completely absent from the novel. First of all, celsa Carthago is referred to at 6,4,1 with regard to the worship of Juno; but the most interesting passage is the notorious Madaurensem of 11,27,9. At the end of the Onos, there is a near-explicit invitation to identify the main character with the author. We can leave out the question of the author’s name (there are definitely too many Lucii in this story!),38 but I think it is meaningful that the newly reshaped Lucius declares that he is a writer of tales (55: historion eimi syngrapheus). I think that the lost Greek original may have had a similar joke (a fact which possibly contributed to the confusion between the character Lucius, and the writers Lucius of Patrae and Lucian). Apuleius evidently echoes this joke when, near the end of his novel, he unexpectedly identifies himself with his character.39 He chooses to do this with a geographical indication, the Madaurensem, which could very well be, among other things,40 a nice way to give a hint to an African audience, invited to sympathize with an African character-author. Aside from these considerations, the case for an extended and pervasive presence of Roman culture in the Metamorphoses is of course very strong. Modern scholarship has increasingly tended to highlight the importance of the Latin literary tradition for our novel. And in at least one case, I think, we can identify a process of ‘translation’ of literary allusion: where the Onos exploits a Greek intertext, Apuleius seems to ‘reply’ with a Latin one.41 Interesting above all here is the wide influence that Roman culture has on the ‘Realien’ of the Metamorphoses: the languages of Roman law, religion, and ————— 38 39

40 41

For this problem, cf. e. g. Mason 1994, 1669 ff. the Madaurensem passage in book 11 represents, I think, a small but remarkable exception to the standard opinion that ‘the end of book 10 is the point where Met. and Onos diverge permanently’ (cf. Zimmerman 2000, 18, with further references). For the different interpretative possibilities see Harrison 2000, 228 ff. Graverini 2001b, 444 f.

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daily life are frequently employed throughout the novel, and even toponyms referring to places in the city of Rome appear here and there. The details are often duly highlighted by commentaries and have been collected in a well informed paper by G. Rosati.42 These specifically ‘Roman’ cultural notes, he shows, are many in Apuleius’ novel, and could easily form the basis of a book on ‘The Roman World of Apuleius’ – a book that Rosati suggests needs to be written. Nevertheless, I still wonder if there is anything in these details that a literate, Latin-speaking reader in Africa (or in Greece, or elsewhere in the Empire far from the city of Rome) could not understand. Again, since it is impossible here to discuss every single point, I will try to challenge just a few of the strongest arguments that can be used in favour of a Roman audience for our novel. Three times (1,24,3; 1,25,1; 2,2,1) Apuleius mentions a forum cupidinis in Hypata; Scivoletto argues that this is a (very) learned allusion to an old forum cupidinis that existed in Rome three centuries before Apuleius, rather than to a real place in the Greek town of Hypata.43 In other words, the allusion is obscure and utterly ‘Roman’, referring to a particular place that had long ceased to exist in the city of Rome. Anyway, Scivoletto himself emphasizes that Apuleius knew it from antiquarian and literary sources: which of course were available, and read, not only in Rome. The second case, concerning the metae Murtiae in the Circus Maximus, is more interesting, since these structures still existed in the times of Apuleius. In 6,8,2 Mercury mentions them, saying that there Venus will reward with eight kisses the index who reveals the place where the fugitive Psyche has taken refuge. The sketch is even more humorous if one knows that inside the Circus Maximus, where the old shrine of Venus Murtia was located, ‘passeggiavano gli scortilla di maggior pretesa’,44 to whom Venus is playfully assimilated. Because this shrine of Venus Murtia45 is sometimes referred to in literature, I think we have reasonable grounds for doubting that the reference was obscure and unintelligible to people not living in Rome: close to ————— 42 43

44 45

Rosati, forthcoming. Scivoletto 1963, 236 ff. Cf. also van Mal-Maeder 1998, 76 ad loc., who emphasizes the pun (‘pour un Lucius en quête d’une pleine satisfaction des ses désirs… tout les chemins mènent au forum cupidinis’) but is more sceptical about Scivoletto’s conclusions. Marmorale 1965, 203; cf. also Harrison 1998, 64 f. For information about the shrine and the goddess, the best sources are Humphrey 1986, 60 f. and 95 ff.; Coarelli 1996; Coarelli 1999.

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Apuleius’ times, we have e. g. Plutarch (Q. Rom. 20, 268E) and Tertullian (spect. 8: curious and well informed Africans abound, as it seems!), who probably did not think of people living in Rome as their primarily intended audience. Of course their writings had certain didactic aims, while the Metamorphoses are more allusive, and difficult to understand. But I think that neither Plutarch nor Tertullian would have dealt with things that were totally abstruse for their readers. Because the Circus was also reproduced in coins, mosaics and reliefs, its shape was familiar throughout the Empire, as were its restorations and reconstructions by various emperors. In these iconographic media, the shrine of Venus Murtia/Murcia is sometimes recognizable (e.g. a relief in Foligno; a mosaic in Piazza Armerina; some coins of Trajan46). Finally, it is worth quoting the elogium of M. Valerius Maximus (CIL I2 p. 189 n. V), originally located in the Forum Augustum, that survived to us in a copy found in Arretium. The inscription says that the dictator obtained the honour of a curule seat ad Murciae spectandi causa, that is in a privileged place in the Circus, near the shrine. The elogia of the Forum Augustum, as well as other monuments, were reproduced in Arretium and elsewhere. It is therefore through literature, inscriptions, iconography, and coins that the shape of the capital of the empire, its monuments, topography, and toponyms, were made familiar even to those who never visited it.47 In any case, the Apuleian text does not seem to make well defined claims regarding its readers’ cultural horizons48 and their knowledge of the city of Rome. Even though a well informed reader (the ‘careful reader’ of 9,30,1) might easily comprehend these references, others could well ignore everything about the forum Cupidinis or the metae Murtiae (taking them at face ————— 46 47

48

Sources in Humphrey 1986, and Coarelli 1996 and 1999. In Carthage, we know of copies of the Ara Pacis Augustae and of the elogium of M. Claudius Marcellus: see Torelli 1975, 99–100 and Galinsky 1996, 150 (with further bibliography). We might also assume that on the periphery of the Empire there were a great number of Roman citizens carrying out their administrative functions, or doing their own business, and that local élites often travelled to Rome: Ann Kuttner suggests to me per litteras that ‘a shared knowledge of the city of Rome’ contributed to the bonding of Roman élites abroad. Of course, poetry and iconography also made the whole empire familiar to the citizens of Rome. For a short but dense survey of geographical and iconographical themes in imperial poetry cf. Connors 2000, 508 ff. On the metae Murtiae and Apuleius’ cultural identity see also Stephen Harrison’s paper in this volume, pp. 49 f. On the readership of the ancient novels, and its degree of literary education, see Wesseling 1988 and Stephens 1994. For the Florida, too, we must imagine a broad Carthaginian audience, provided with highly different levels of culture: cf. Vössing 1997, 444 ff. (esp. 466 f.).

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value, i.e for simple toponyms), and still enjoy the sketches of the curator annonae Pythias trampling the fish Lucius has just bought, or of Mercury advertising the voluptuous reward promised by Venus. Thus, in the end, I think that none of these ‘specific’ references to the city requires an audience living in Rome, or even terribly familiar with it. But is this enough to prove a non-Romanocentric point of view in Apuleius? As I stated above, Corinth does not help us – and e silentio we can also affirm that, if Apuleius really desired to show or suggest a polemical attitude towards Rome, it is strange that he missed the easy occasion that the Corinthian setting offered.49 Nevertheless, there are some points that can be made to challenge still further the idea of a novel ‘written in Rome for the Romans’, and to emphasize the possibility that an African, or more generally a provincial audience was also important for Apuleius. Here is a rough list: –

Rome is the setting of the last chapters of the novel, but it is never described in minute detail; a detailed Roman setting could alienate nonRoman readers much more than the allusive passages that I have mentioned supra, and probably Apuleius did not want to take such a risk. there are two episodes, in which the donkey tries to appeal to the Emperor, or to the people of Rome.50 Of course, this is a joke made at the expense of Lucius, but maybe it is not very polite or respectful for Apuleius (and of the author of the lost Greek original, which had at least one of these episodes) to transform the name of Caesar and of Quirites into the braying of an ass.51 the famous episode of the Latin-speaking soldier who beats the poor gardener who cannot understand him (9,39,2 ff.) is worth quoting as well. The phraseology seems to imply that the superbia shown by this miles is typical of all soldiers, and most probably of all Latin-speaking

–

–

————— 49

50 51

Apuleius also held, in Carthage, the office of sacerdos provinciae, connected with the cult of Rome and the emperor: cf. Florida 16. On the office see Vössing 1997, 429 ff. Anyway, Rives 1995 argues that a truly ‘Roman’ religious identity did not develop in Carthage, where the local elite had strong familiar and religious bonds with Africa. 3,29,2–3; 8,29,5. Cf. also 7,3,3 and 7,13,3. An opposite view is found in Millar 1981, 66: the episode ‘offer a very significant image… of how the Emperor was conceived of as an ever-present protector’. But on the very next page the author states that ‘it was only in special circumstances that the Emperor would make his distant presence felt’.

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soldiers (‘a legionary… inquired in a haughty and arrogant tone where my master was taking his empty ass… the soldier, unable to restrain his natural insolence…’52). And certainly the episode is a sharp representation of the brutality and arrogance with which the central imperial power could sometimes manifest itself.53 the character of Charite recalls the Dido of Virgil, but is more faithful than Dido to her husband. This reaction to the literary model could be ascribed, as Ellen Finkelpearl has shown in a well documented study,54 to a kind of African national pride.

–

The praises of Carthage in the Florida (e. g. the famous 20,9–10, where Carthage is commended as ‘heavenly Muse of Africa’, and the Carthaginians as ‘very learned’), and the praise of provincial life in Hypata pronounced by Byrrhena in Metamorphoses 2,19,5–6, make it clear that a provincial milieu did not mean ipso facto frustration of someone’s ambition for an interesting life or even for literary glory – even though, of course, the provincial cities are painted as a ‘derivative Rome’.55 The province offered a vital environment for literary activity and, as the passage of St. Augustine I mentioned above seems to imply, a receptive market for Apuleius’ works. To sum up, I think that we can confidently define Apuleius’ cultural identity as a Latin one (not forgetting his bilingual education), and indeed ‘Romanocentrism’ offers a good interpretative category for the Metamorphoses. However, we should be cautious to place the city of Rome at the centre of Apuleius’ interests and to make its residents his primary ‘intended audience’.56 Of course Apuleius has been read, and intended to be read, also in ————— 52 53

54

55 56

Trans. Hanson 1989. Summers 1970, 526: ‘this scene, which is found in the asinus (44–45), has been adapted by Apuleius to place in clear focus the resentment of provincials toward the system of requisitions by the imperial government’. See also Hijmans et al. 1995, 325 (ad 9,39,2 superbo atque adroganti sermone) and 326 (ad 9,39,4 Graece). Finkelpearl 1998, 131 ff. Of course I also agree with Finkelpearl’s argument (pp. 141– 143) about Apuleius’ intended audience, not limited to the city of Rome. There was also some difference between Roman and Carthaginian cultural identities, as Finkelpearl states; anyway, Gualandri 1989b, 521 correctly points out that ‘l’africanità... difficilmente potrebbe apparire come resistenza culturale a Roma’. Dowden 1994, 423. This is more or less the conclusion also of Méthy 1983, who states (p. 46) that ‘le patriotisme d’Apulée et de Fronton se définit… comme un patriotisme occidental’ (as opposed to Roman, Greek and African patriotism). I recommend her paper for a valuable analysis of a number of points I could not consider here; however, I would not subscribe to the

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Rome. But the Empire was full of learned Romans travelling abroad, and of learned provincials visiting Rome for various reasons and becoming acquainted with its culture, its way of life, its monuments.57 And provinces in general, and Africa in particular, were not short of learned people able to understand the subtleties of language and culture that Apuleius incorporates into his works.58 Since the hypothesis of a stylistic and lexical Africitas in Apuleius has been rightly rejected,59 there have not been many attempts to evaluate the importance that the provincial milieu can have had in the composition of the Metamorphoses; I hope that my arguments are at least suggestive of the possibility of ‘provincial’ interpretations of (parts of) the novel, and of the need for a more nuanced understanding of the role that issues such as Romanization and Hellenization play in this context.60

Bibliography Alcock, S. 1993. Graecia capta. The Landscapes of Roman Greece, Cambridge: University Press. Bowersock, G. W. 1965. ‘Zur Geschichte des römischen Thessaliens’, RhM 108, 277– 289. Bowie, E. L. 1996. ‘Past and present in Pausanias’, in: J. Bingen (ed.), Pausanias historien, Genève: Fondation Hardt, 207–230 + 231–239 (Discussion). Citroni, M. 1975, M. Valerii Martialis Epigrammaton liber primus, Firenze: La Nuova Italia. Coarelli, F. 1996. ‘Murcia’, in: E. M. Steinby (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, III, Roma: Quasar, 289–290.

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use of the term ‘patriotisme’ here, nor am I so completely sceptical as she is about the possibility of identifying sometimes an African, or provincial, point of view in Apuleius. Cf. Noy 2000; in particular, see pp. 252 ss. for people coming from North Africa. See also Fantham 1996, 236 ff. on the African travelling poet Annius Florus; and p. 253 on the cultural level of the African elite. For a similar view cf. Dewar 2000, 521; on the African cultural milieu, see also Fick 1987. Harris 1989, 267 states that ‘only Africa Proconsularis, Numidia, Dalmatia and Narbonensis are likely, as provinces, to have reached Italian levels of literacy’. For an evaluation of the size, wealth, and importance of the city of Carthage from the 2nd century AD onwards, see Hurst 1993, 327–337. Norden 19092, 588 ff. Anyway, Kenney 1990, 29 affirms that Apuleius’ language suggests ‘the experimental exploitation of an adopted tongue’. I am grateful to Alessandro Barchiesi, Ann Kuttner, and Kirk Freudenburg, who gave me useful advice on this paper; Gianpiero Rosati also let me read a preliminary version of his forthcoming paper.

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Coarelli, F. 1999. ‘Venus verticordia, aedes’: in: E. M. Steinby (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, V, Roma: Quasar, 119–120. Connors, C. 2000. ‘Imperial space and time: The literature of leisure’, in: O. Taplin (ed.), Literature in the Greek and Roman Worlds. A new perspective, Oxford – New York: Oxford University Press, 492–517. Crosby, L. H. 1986. Dio Chrysostom, Cambridge (Mass.) – London: Harvard University Press. Dewar, M. 2000. ‘Culture wars: Latin literature from the second century to the end of the classical era’, in: O. Taplin (ed.), Literature in the Greek and Roman Worlds, Oxford – New York: Oxford University Press, 519–545. Dowden, K. 1994. ‘The Roman Audience of The Golden Ass’, in: J. Tatum (ed.), The Search for the Ancient Novel, Baltimore – London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 419–434. Engels, D. 1990. Roman Corinth, Chicago – London: University of Chicago Press. Fairclough, H. R. 1999. Virgil. Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–VI (revised by G. P. Goold), Cambridge (Mass.) – London: Harvard University Press. Fantham, E. 1996. Roman Literary Culture from Cicero to Apuleius, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Fick, N. 1987. ‘Le milieu culturel africain à l’époque antonine et le témoignage d’Apulée’, BAGB, 285–296. Finkelpearl, E. D. 1998. Metamorphosis of Language in Apuleius. A Study of Allusion in the Novel, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Forster, E. S. 1984. Lucius Annaeus Florus. Epitome of Roman History, Cambridge (Mass.) – London: Harvard University Press. Galinsky, K. 1996. Augustan Culture, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gilman Romano, D. 2000. ‘A tale of two cities: Roman colonies at Corinth’, in: E. Fentress (ed.), Romanization and the city. Creation, transformations, and failures. Proceedings of a conference held at the American Academy in Rome to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the excavations at Cosa, 14–16 May, 1998, Portsmouth: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 83–104. Graverini, L. 2001. ‘L. Mummio Acaico’, Maecenas 1, 105–148. Graverini, L. 2001b. ‘L’incontro di Lucio e Fotide. Stratificazioni intertestuali in Apul. met. II 6–7’, Athenaeum 89, 425–446. Griffiths, J. G. 1975. Apuleius of Madauros. The Isis-Book (Metamorphoses, Book IX), Leiden: Brill. Gualandri, I. 1989a. ‘Per una geografia della letteratura latina’, in: G. Cavallo, P. Fedeli, A. Giardina (eds.), Lo spazio letterario di Roma antica, vol. II, La circolazione del testo, Roma: Salerno Editrice, 469–505. Gualandri, I. 1989b. ‘Persistenze e resistenze locali: un problema aperto’, in: G. Cavallo, P. Fedeli, A. Giardina (eds.), Lo spazio letterario di Roma antica, vol. II, La circolazione del testo, Roma: Salerno Editrice, 509–529. Hanson, J. A. 1989. Apuleius. Metamorphoses, Cambridge (Mass.) – London: Harvard University Press. Harris, W.V. 1989. Ancient Literacy, Cambridge (Mass.) – London: Harvard University Press.

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Harrison, S. J. 1990. ‘The Speaking Book: The Prologue to Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, CQ 40, 507–513. Harrison, S. J. 1998. ‘Some Epic Structures in Cupid and Psyche’, in: M. Zimmerman et al. (ed.), Aspects of Apuleius’ Golden Ass II: Cupid and Psyche, Groningen: E. Forsten, 51–68. Harrison, S. J. 2000. Apuleius. A Latin Sophist, New York: Oxford University Press. Hijmans, B. L. et al. 1995. Apuleius Madaurensis. Metamorphoses Book IX. Text, Introduction and Commentary, Groningen: Egbert Forsten. Hohlfelder, R. L. 1976. ‘Kenchreai on the Saronic gulf: aspects of its imperial history’, CJ 71, 217–226. Humphrey, J. H. 1986. Roman Circuses, London: Batsford. Hunink, V. 2001. Apuleius of Madauros. Florida, Amsterdam: Gieben. Hurst, H. 1993. ‘Cartagine, la nuova Alessandria’, in: A. Momigliano – A. Schiavone (edd.), Storia di Roma. III,2 I luoghi e le culture, Torino: Einaudi, 327–337. Jacobson, D. M. – Weitzman, M. P. 1995. ‘Black bronze and the “Corinthian alloy”’, CQ 45, 580–583. Kahane, A. – Laird, A. 2001. A Companion to the Prologue of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kenney, E. J. 1990. Apuleius. Cupid & Psyche, Cambridge – New York et al.: Cambridge University Press. Magie, D. 1987. The Scriptores Historiae Augustae, Cambridge (Mass.) – London: Harvard University Press. Marmorale, E. V. 1960, ‘Un appuntamento al Circo Massimo’, in: Id., Pertinenze e impertinenze, Napoli: Armanni, 194–203 (= GIF 11 [1958], 61–65). Mason, H. J. 1971. ‘Lucius at Corinth’, Phoenix 25, 160–165. Mason, H. J. 1983. ‘The distinction of Lucius in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, Phoenix 37, 135–143 Mason, H. J. 1994. ‘Greek and Latin Versions of the Ass-Story’, ANRW 34, 1665– 1707. Méthy, N. 1983. ‘Fronton et Apulée: Romains ou Africains?’, RCCM 25, 37–47. Millar, F. 1981. ‘The world of the Golden Ass’, JRS 71, 63–75. Miller, W. 1975. Cicero. De Officiis, Cambridge (Mass.) – London: Harvard University Press. Nenci, G. 1978. ‘Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit. Hor. Ep. II 1,156’, ASNP 8, 1007–1023. Nicolai, R. 1999. ‘Quis ille? Il proemio delle Metamorfosi di Apuleio e il problema del lettore ideale’, MD 42, 143–164. Nisbet, R. G. M. – Hubbard, M. 1978. A Commentary on Horace: Odes, Book II, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Norden, E. 19092. Die antike Kunstprosa, II, Leipzig-Berlin: Teubner. Noy, D. 2000. Foreigners at Rome: Citizens and Strangers, London: Duckworth. Pape, M. 1975. Griechische Kunstwerke aus Kriegsbeute und ihre öffentliche Aufstellung in Rom, diss. Hamburg. Paratore, E. 19422. La novella in Apuleio, Messina: Remo Sandron editore. Paton, W. R. 1960. The Greek Anthology, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press.

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Perry, B. E. 1967. The Ancient Romances, Berkeley – Los Angeles: University of California Press. Rives, J. B., 1995. Religion and Authority in Roman Carthage from Augustus to Constantine, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rosati, G., forthcoming. ‘Quis ille? Identità e metamorfosi nel romanzo di Apuleio’, in: Proceedings of the Conference on Memoria e identità. La cultura romana costruisce la sua immagine (Florence, October 2000). Sandy, G.N. 1997. The Greek World of Apuleius, Leiden – New York – Köln: Brill. Scivoletto, N. 1963, ‘Antiquaria romana in Apuleio’, in: Id., Studi di letteratura latina imperiale, Napoli: Arimanni, 222–253. Stephens, S. A. 1994. ‘Who Read Ancient Novels?’, in: J. Tatum (ed.), The Search for the Ancient Novel, Baltimore – London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 405– 417. Stramaglia, A. 1996. ‘Apuleio come auctor: premesse tardoantiche di un uso umanistico’, Studi Umanistici Piceni 16, 137–161. Summers, R. J. 1970. ‘Roman Justice and Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, TAPhA 101, 511–531. Swain, S. 1996. Hellenism and Empire. Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World, AD 50–250, New York: Oxford University Press. Torelli, M. 1975. Elogia Tarquiniensia, Firenze: Sansoni. Vallette, P. 1908. L’Apologie d’Apulée, Paris: Klincksieck. van Mal-Maeder, D. K. 1998. Apulée. Les Métamorphoses. Livre II,1–20, diss. Groningen. Veyne, P. 1965. ‘Apulée à Cenchrées’, RPh 39, 241–251. Vössing, K. 1997. Schule und Bildung im Nordafrika der Römischen Kaiserzeit, Bruxelles: Latomus. Walsh, P. G. 1968. ‘Was Lucius a Roman?’, CJ 63, 264–265. Wesseling, B. 1988. ‘The Audience of the Ancient Novels’, in: H. Hofmann (ed.), Groningen Colloquia on the Novel, I, Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 67–79. Whitmarsh, T. 1999. ‘Greek and Roman in dialogue: the pseudo-Lucianic Nero’, JHS 119, 142–160. Whitmarsh, T. 2001. ‘‘Greece is the World’: exile and identity in the Second Sophistic’, in: S. Goldhill (ed.), Being Greek under Rome. Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 269-305. Wiseman, J. 1979. ‘Corinth and Rome I: 228 B.C. – A.D. 267’, ANRW 7.1, 438–548. Zimmerman, M. 2000. Apuleius Madaurensis. Metamorphoses Book X. Text, Introduction and Commentary, Groningen: Egbert Forsten.

On the Road in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses MAAIKE ZIMMERMAN

Groningen

“The most characteristic thing about this novel is the way it fuses the course of an individual’s life (at its major turning points) with his actual spatial course or road – that is, with his wanderings. Thus is realized the metaphor of “the path of life”. The path itself extends through familiar, native territory, in which there is nothing exotic, alien or strange. Thus a unique novelistic chronotope is created, one that has played an enormous role in the history of the genre.” Thus Bakhtin in his essay Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel.1 Indeed, the importance of travel as a theme in this novel is highlighted from the Prologue onward. The first sentence of the story proper meaningfully starts with an expression of movement to a place: Thessaliam …petebam (“To Thessaly …I was heading”).2 Any reader of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses will remember the complaints of the protagonist about the hardships suffered during his existence as an ass, and specifically the complaints about the often laborious journeys which he is forced to make at the hands of various masters. In this essay I will examine more closely the roads as an important element in the space of this novel, and the ways in which the narrator describes them to his audience. I will examine how the protagonist’s remarks on the road and on the conditions of the road, made at several stages of his journey, become increasingly meaningful and appear to fully justify Bakhtin’s observation that the metaphor of the “path of life” is realized in this novel.

————— 1 2

Bakhtin 1981, 120. See Clarke 2001, 101 f.

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In general, landscape descriptions in Apuleius’ novel quite often are in some ways ‘symbolic’ of the narrative itself; in this respect, Apuleius employs procedures which may be found in Latin epic and other Latin lyric genres as well. One may, for instance, think of the harbour description in Verg. Aen. 1,159 ff., or Propertius’ elegies 1,17 and 1,18. Many passages in Ovid‘s Metamorphoses reveal a “… strong figurative collusion … between landscape and action”.3 In an interesting article, De Biasi has, with several examples, shown that often the elaborate landscape descriptions in Apuleius’ novel testify to such a figurative collusion; moreover, these sometimes reflect, or are in contrast with, the emotional state of the protagonist.4 In this essay I will single out for discussion precisely those passages on travelling and those roaddescriptions which De Biasi has mentioned only in a cursory way, because he does not consider the descriptions of the landscape in such passages to be functional. Indeed, they are not conceived as literary showpieces, as are some of the landscape descriptions studied by De Biasi, and he is probably right in leaving them out of his investigations. However, they are often meaningful on more than one level, and increasingly so as the novel proceeds.

Entering the world of the novel Our first meeting with the protagonist of Apuleius’ novel is a meeting on the road – the road to Thessaly. The description of his journey to Thessaly, immediately after the prologue, is elaborate and highly stylized: Postquam ardua montium et lubrica vallium et roscida cespitum et glebosa camporum emersi, equo indigena peralbo vehens iam eo quoque admodum fesso, … I had emerged from steep mountain tracks and slippery valley roads, damp places in the meadows and cloddy paths through the fields. I was riding a native-bred pure white horse; as he too was now quite tired, … (Apul. Met. 1,2.2)5 ————— 3

4

5

Hinds 2001, 132 ff. offers an intriguing discussion of this aspect of Ovid’s landscapes, with references to other literature; the quotation in my text is from Hinds 2001,132, with his emphasis. De Biasi 2000, 199–264 (repr. of De Biasi 1990); see esp. pp. 219 ff., on “il collegamento psicologico tra paesaggio e personaggio”. Translations of passages from Apuleius’ Metamorphoses are, unless expressly stated otherwise, from Hanson 1989.

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This is a journey over land, and the description especially concerns the conditions of the soil trodden by the traveller, or rather by his mount. The length of the journey is suggested by the elaborateness of the sentence with its four kola of equal length. Lucius’ host Milo is quite right when he later refers to this journey by his guest as ‘quite a difficult and extensive journey’. (Apul. Met. 1,23.8: satis arduo itinere atque prolixo). This description, at the very beginning of the story proper, marks the entrance of the protagonist, and at the same time our own entrance as readers, into the world of the novel. Within this world we will move along with the ass continuously until his flight – at the end of the tenth book – from the interior to the coast, to the beach of Cenchreae, and then further on into the world of Isis. … iam cursu memet celerrimo proripio, sexque totis passuum milibus perniciter confectis Cenchreas pervado, quod oppidum audit quidem nobilissimae coloniae Corinthiensium, alluitur autem Aegeo et Saronico mari. I … hurled myself forward with the utmost rapidity. I covered six whole miles at full speed and arrived at the town of Cenchreae, which is well-known as part of the illustrious territory of the Corinthians, and is washed by the Aegean Sea and the Saronic Gulf. (Apul. Met. 10,35.3) In my view, both the passages just quoted clearly indicate transitional phases, suggesting liminal experiences, as discussed by Margaret Anne Doody in the section ‘Tropes of the Novel’ of her book The True Story of the Novel.6 Book Eleven evolves in a different world: After his flight from Corinth, Lucius the ass enters the sacred places of Isis, the beach of Cenchreae, and the temple precinct there. In the eleventh book of the Metamorphoses, Lucius, who has regained his human shape, and has become an initiate of Isis’ cult, no longer mentions journeys along roads. He stays for some time in Cenchreae, then pays a short visit to his home town, after which he travels to Rome; his journey is swift and also profitable – probably because he has undertaken it ‘at the powerful goddess’s urging’ (deae potentis instinctu):

… digredior et recta patrium larem revisurus meum … contendo paucisque post diebus deae potentis instinctu … nave conscensa Romam ————— 6

Doody 1998, 319 ff., Ch. 14, ‘Marshes, Shores, and Muddy Margins’.

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versus profectionem dirigo tutusque prosperitate ventorum ferentium Augusti portum celerrime pervenio ac dehinc carpento perviolavi … sacrosanctam istam civitatem accedo. I … departed and hurried straight to visit my ancestral hearth … After a few days there, at the powerful goddess’s urging I … boarded a ship, and set out towards Rome, Safely driven by favourable winds, I arrived very quickly at the Port of Augustus, and hurried from there by carriage … I reached the holy, inviolate city. (Apul. Met. 11,26,1–2) From this passage it becomes clear that the world of the eleventh book evolves in a different space, whithout difficult roads to travel. It will therefore be the first ten books on which I will concentrate in this essay ‘on the road’. Equally, I will reserve for brief mention at the end the space of the Tale of Cupid and Psyche (4,28 – 6,24), since that tale does not concern journeys by the protagonist of the novel.

On the road with Lucius, the ass In the first ten books of the novel we encounter numerous passages where roads are being travelled under various circumstances. I will now turn to these. First I will give an overview, while discussing interesting intertextual references and possible connections. Then I will try to answer the question of whether we are entitled to ascribe a meaningful function to the way in which road conditions are described in the first ten books of the Metamorphoses. As soon as Lucius – transformed by error into an ass – has been stolen by the robbers to carry the booty from Milo’s house, he is led through a mountainous region, where there seem to be no roads at all: … nos … per avia montium ducunt concitos. [They] … took us through the trackless mountains at full speed. (Apul. Met. 3,28.6) As Gianotti 1995 remarks,7 many elements of this first journey of Lucius in the shape of an ass, per avia montium (through the trackless mountains) to ————— 7

Gianotti 1995, 117.

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the robbers’ cave, suggest his progressive estrangement from the civilized world and from his existence as a human being. The poor ass suffers badly: Iamque rerum tantarum pondere et montis ardui vertice et prolixo satis itinere nihil a mortuo differebam. With the weight of all those goods and the height of the steep mountain and the extreme length of the march, I was as good as dead. (Apul. Met. 3,29.1) At this point, it is useful to remember that in this novel Apuleius is working from the model of a Greek ass tale. This Greek example has not been passed down to us, but is described by the ninth-century Byzantine bishop Photius,8 who mentions the title of this work: 13/!"4…21#, and designates its author as being Loukios of Patras. What we do have, however, is the shortened version of the Greek 13/!"4…21#, an epitome, handed down to us in the corpus of Lucian’s works, and entitled !ƒ!#0V!#.9 I will refer to this epitome as ‘the Onos’. Now, also in the Onos Loukios, the ass complains about the hard journey with the robbers, as follows:  /~ !]3'# {/ %!# 4{"!3/# -»# ƒ!# /!31# 0/$! 1<# 3€ P"!#3"3ëM0î41ƒ11"…1!3xz!^/3}!X$%' 1<1ÔQ3$/2%1„0z$03!#2$}#„{3"/#L 1/# /' 3!2/ã3/ 21ƒ 4{"' 'ƒ Despite such a heavy load, they drove us, beating us with sticks, towards the mountain, attempting to escape by an unused path. I can’t say what the other animals felt, but I myself, feet unshod and unused to such travel, moving over sharp rocks and carrying such heavy stuff, I was practically dead. (Onos 16,3 f.)10 It can be seen immediately that at this point the Latin Metamorphoses runs parallel to the text of the Onos.

————— 8 9

10

Photius Bibl. 129. For a recent discussion of the Greek sources of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, with literary references, see Mason 1999. Translations of passages from the Onos are from Sullivan 1989.

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Only a short while later, remarkably enough, just after the ass has heard the robbers mention that the day’s journey is almost over, the narrator descibes the last part of the road as follows: Nam et secum eos animadverteram colloquentes, quod in proximo nobis esset habenda mansio et totius viae finis quieta eorumque esset sedes illa et habitatio. Clementi denique transmisso clivulo pervenimus ad locum destinatum. I had also gathered from their conversation that we would shortly be making a halt and taking a rest after the end of the journey, and that their headquarters and residence were there. We then climbed a gentle slope and arrived at our destination. (Apul. Met. 4,5.6–7) It is instructive to compare the corresponding passage in the Onos: /~3íÄ23í0z0!$!i#!X1@$3!‚3Æ#M0!ã!/~Q3 /3/1!ã2 $/ /3/ƒ2!$2Ý m231 3/ã3/ y3/ 0"ë !!1/~"€3Æ#2{"/#0!11<#3x!<1Ô/ And I heard the bandits saying that there wasn’t much of the journey still left and that they would be staying where they unpacked. So we carried all this stuff at a trot, and we arrived at their home base before dusk. (Onos 20,2 f.) This last passage of Apuleius’ text and its counterpart in the Onos reveal that only in the Latin text is the emotional situation of the protagonist – whose hopes are raised since he has heard that the journey will soon end – reflected in his perception of the road conditions:11 suddenly the last part of the mountain road, which only a short moment ago was steep and unbearable, becomes a clemens clivulus; the use of the diminutive heightens the affective value of this ‘gentle slope’. I do not agree with the Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius,12 which, in line with Junghanns (1932, 62), consider this phrase ironic. We see repeatedly that the narrator’s descriptions of the condition of the roads along which he – being the ‘I’ and the protagonist of this story – travels either reflect his own emotional state at the time, or are in some other way suggestive of the particular situation in which he finds himself. In this ————— 11

12

One may wonder whether in the lost, larger Greek version more extensive remarks on the road conditions were present (see for one possible case below, note 16). However, since we only have the epitome, the Onos must remain our point of comparison. Hijmans et alii, eds. 1977, 54.

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connection, it may sometimes be worthwile to note that even the narrator’s silence about the hardships of the road can be meaningful, as will be illustrated by the discussion of the following cluster of passages: The robbers lead their newly acquired beasts of burden, loaded with booty, to their hiding place. The road leading there is, as we might expect, steep and full of sharp rocks and thorny bushes: Mons … in primis altus fuit. Huius per obliqua devexa, quae saxis asperrimis et ob id inaccessis cingitur, convalles lacunosae cavaeque nimium spinetis aggeratae et quaqua versus repositae naturalem tutelam praebentes ambiebant. The mountain was … pre-eminently high. Its precipitous slopes, where it was ringed with jagged and hence inaccessible rocks, were encircled by pitted, hollow gullies, well fortified by thick thorn-bushes and isolated on every side, furnishing a natural defence. (Apul. Met. 4,6.2–3) Later, the robbers take the ass to another hide-out to fetch some loot, and the path to that place is described as very difficult: … multisque clivis et anfractibus fatigatos prope ipsam vesperam perducunt ad quempiam speluncam…toward evening, when we were exhausted from many a hill and winding dale, they brought (us) to a cave … (Apul. Met. 6,25.4) and they follow the same difficult path back again: … unde multis onustos rebus rursum ne breviculo quidem tempore refectos ociter reducunt. Tantaque trepidatione festinabant, ut me plagis multis obtundentes propellentesque super lapidem propter viam positum deicerent, unde crebris aeque ingestis ictibus crure dextero et ungula sinistra me debilitatum aegre ad exurgendum compellunt …, loaded us with quantities of loot, and, not even allowing us a brief moment to regain our strength, started us back again with all speed. They were so agitated and in such a hurry that with their frequent battering and shoving they made me fall over a rock at the side of the road. They continued none the less to rain blows on me, eventually forcing me to get

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up, though I found it difficult, for I had gone lame in my right leg and left hoof. (Apul. Met. 6,25.4 (rest) + 5) And yet, when the ass attempts to escape from the robbers’ den with a beautiful young woman on his back, we hear no complaints about the extremely difficult conditions of the road, which must be the same as when the ass arrived there. He runs with the speed of a racehorse: Ego simul voluntariae fugae voto et liberandae virginis studio, sed et plagarum suasu quae me saepicule commonebant, equestri celeritate quadripedi cursu solum replaudens … I was moved not only by the desire to effect my own self-chosen escape and eagerness to rescue the maiden, but also by the persuasion of the blows which admonished me from time to time; and so I smote the earth in a four-footed gallop with the speed of a racehorse. (Apul. Met. 6,28.1) From the second half of the eighth book of the Metamorphoses and onward Lucius, the ass, travels more regularly. Schlam,13 who structures the novel in terms of travel, has with reason entitled section 8.15 – 10.31 ‘On the road’. I will now turn to some striking passages from that section. After the destruction of the household of Charite and Haemus, the familia of the household, slaves with their family, cattle and possessions, travel as a group to find a new settlement. The narrator has already informed us that he, the ass, is delighted to leave the place where he had been threatened by castration. He does not complain about his burden: Nec me pondus sarcinae, quanquam enormis urguebat, quippe gaudiali fuga detestabilem illum exectorem virilitatis meae relinquentem. But the weight of my load, though enormous, was no burden to me: it was a joyous escape, after all, to leave behind that detestable amputator of my manhood. (Apul. Met. 8,15.4) The road described immediately hereafter, leading from mountainous terrain to more level roads, again reflects the emotional state of the protagonist, who escapes from an imminent danger, and hopes to remain intact. It is ————— 13

Schlam 1992, 30; 36 f.

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remarkable that in this description the length of the journey is merely reported, but not, as so often before, complained about. The ass is happy to move very far away from the place where they had planned to castrate him: Silvosi montis asperum permensi iugum rursusque reposita camporum spatia pervecti, iam vespera semitam tenebrante pervenimus ad quoddam castellum frequens et opulens. We crossed the rough ridge of a wooded mountain and traversed the length of the low-lying plain beyond. Just as dusk was darkening the road, we came to a wellpopulated and prosperous hamlet.14 (Apul. Met. 8,15.5) Although the travelling group encounters several dangerous adventures and loses some companions, they finally find a place to settle:

… rursum pergimus dieque tota campestres emensi vias civitatem quandam populosam et nobilem iam fessi pervenimus. Having walked all day across the plain, we now arrived exhausted at a large and famous city. (Apul. Met. 8,23.1) Note the qualification campestres (‘level’) for the roads. This adjective as a qualification of roads is used three times in the Metamorphoses; I will discuss it below, in the section on `Difficult and easy roads’.

Slippery roads The ass is then sold to a travelling band of Galloi, priests of the Dea Syria, described by the narrator with considerable disgust. They are not only sexually perverse, but also devious, greedy, and cruel in their behaviour towards the ass. After having piled up huge amounts of money by deceiving ————— 14

It is instructive to note that the Onos in the parallel passage (Onos 34,4–5) mentions an ‘uncomfortable road’, covered overnight: „ 0z ,% z 4{"' 4!"3! P!$ !ã p !^ 21!# 3€ 0! 3!ã3! 3Æ# Æ# 01 y 3!Æ# /~ 3| ƒ3/ Q 31# M0€ "/{/ /~ 3"í ' -1"í 3| M0€ ƒ2/31# "%1/#3Æ#/10!/#û{"!/1y/~!$y"'! I was angry at carrying a real ass’s load, but on the other hand I was happy to get this reprieve from castration. Traveling the whole night on an uncomfortable road, we came to the end of it after three more days and arrived in Beroea, a large and well-populated city of Macedonia.

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gullible villagers, they take to their heels. The road along which they take the ass is described at length:

… rursum ad viam prodeunt, viam totam, quam nocte confeceramus, longe peiorem, quidni? Lacunosis incilibus voraginosam, partim stagnanti palude fluidam et alibi subluvie caenosa lubricam. Crebris denique offensaculis et assiduis lapsibus iam contusis cruribus meis vix tandem ad campestres semitas fessus evadere potui. … they took to the road again, a road from beginning to end far worse than the one we had covered by night. For it was muddy, with the drains full of puddles, in some parts waterlogged by stagnant pools, in other places slippery with slush and mud. As a consequence my legs were by now bruised by the numerous obstacles and constant falls, and only with great difficulty could I finally escape, tired out, on to level paths.15 (Apul. Met. 9,9.1–2) In the Onos, too, the Galloi leave stealthily, and the passage in the Latin novel runs fairly parallel to Onos 41,4; it is, however, only Apuleius’ text that has this elaborate description of the road. Our attention is enlisted all the more by the address to the reader: ‘quidni?’. The emphatic quality of this particle is lost in the translations, which render it by ‘for’, or ‘since’: indeed, it introduces a more detailed explication of the previous statement; the translation by Annaratone 1977 acknowledges its discursive force: Non ci credete? We find here, again, as in the previously quoted passage from Book 8, the combination of a notion of escape (evadere potui) with the qualification of `level-ness’ of the road (campestres semitas). The qualification ‘level’ (campester) will be discussed more extensively below, in the section on `Difficult and easy roads’. The phrase viam … lubricam deserves closer scrutiny. The adjective lubricus, used to denote slippery ground, occurs in the Metamorphoses already earlier, when the young tormentor of the ass refuses to help him after he stumbles heavily laden with wood at a slippery riverbank. The other occurrence is in 1,2.2, quoted above (lubrica vallium, ‘slippery valley ————— 15

Here I have followed the more literal translation of Hijmans, B.L. et alii, eds., 1995, 92– 94, with one change: they have at the end of this sentence: `country roads’; I prefer ‘level paths’ (Hanson: ‘a level path’).

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roads’). At other places in the Metamorphoses, the adjective is sometimes used in a positive sense, meaning ‘sinuous’, but it is also often used in reference to persons, meaning ‘shifty, deceitful’, or, as in the famous speech of the priest of Isis in 11,15.1, in a moral sense, referring to the tendency of youth to take false steps: ‘… lubrico virentis aetatulae ad serviles delapsus voluptates…’ (‘on the slippery path of headstrong youth you plunged into slavish pleasures’). It seems obvious that in this road description the slippery road is a direct allusion to the deceitfulness of the priests in whose company the ass is travelling, and whose theft of a temple utensil is about to be exposed. There are other instances in Latin literature of a metaphorical use of the combination lubrica via. For instance in Cicero: Si L. Flacco tantus amor in bonos omnes, tantum in rem publicam studium calamitati fuerit, quem posthac tam amentem fore putatis qui non illam viam vitae quam ante praecipitem et lubricam esse ducebat, huic planae et stabili praeponendam esse arbitretur? If Flaccus’ affection for loyal citizens, his devotion to the Republic have been so great as to bring disaster upon him, who, do you think, will be so demented now as not to think that way of life which he previously considered steep and slippery preferable to the firm and level path that is ours? (Cic. Flac. 105; transl. MacDonald 1977). A relevant parallel to our passage is Propertius 4,4,49, where lubrica via denotes the road along a muddy river which the Vestal Tarpeia convinces herself to travel on, in order to be the bride of the enemy Tatius. In that context, the expression is unmistakably a metaphor for Tarpeia’s perfidious undertaking: cras, ut rumor ait, tota pigrabitur urbe: tu cape spinosi rorida terga iugi! lubrica tota via est et perfida: quippe tacentis fallaci celat limite semper aquas. Tomorrow, says rumour, the whole city will be off its guard: it is then you must climb the dewy ridge of the thorn-covered hill. The whole

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route is slippery and treacherous, for a deceptive track of grass covers up the waters hidden beneath. (Prop. 4,4,47 f.; transl. Goold 1990) This metaphorical use of lubrica via becomes a favourite expression for the ‘road of sin’ in the language of the Church Fathers. I quote only two instances: Quod si primus ille homo, qui cum deo loquebatur in paradiso positus, labi tam facile potuit, … quanto facilius postea lubrica ad peccandum via maius advexit humano generi praecipitium, cum deterior tolerabiliori per vices generationis successerit! But if the first man, who was placed in paradise, and talked with God, could fall so easily, … how much more easily later on has the slippery road to sin brought the human race to a greater precipice, since one generation in turn succeeds another, a generation more base succeeding one less wicked? (Ambr. Epist. 6,34,13) quantum etenim discors agno lupus et tenebris lux, tantum dispescunt via divitis et via Christi. nam via lata patet, quae prono lubrica clivo vergit in infernum, quae dites urget avaros, molibus impulsos propriis in tartara ferri. at via, quae Christi est, quae confessoribus almis martyribusque patet, paucis iter ardua pandit. As much, in fact, as the wolf differs from the lamb, and light from darkness, the road of the rich and the road of Christ are separate. For wide open is the large road, which, slippery, sloping downward, descends to hell; this road pushes the greedy rich with the weight of their own possessions to be hurled into Tartarus. But the road which is of Christ, and which is open to beneficent confessors and martyrs, opens for few a difficult path. (P.- Nol. Carm. 21,538 f.)

Difficult and easy roads After the priests have been exposed as thieves, and thrown in prison, the ass is sold at a public auction. The mention of a difficult road along which the

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new owner of the ass, a miller, takes him to his mill, appears to be the announcement of hard times to come:16 me … quidam pistor… praestinavit, protinusque frumento etiam coemto adfatim onustum per iter arduum scrupis et cuiusce modi stirpibus infestum ad pistrinum … perducit. A miller … bought me …. Immediately he loaded me to capacity with grain that he purchased as well, and took me, by way of a steep path dangerously full of sharp stones and all sorts of underbrush, to the mill …(Apul. Met. 9,10.5) At the end of Book 9 a soldier confiscates the ass, and in the first chapter of Book 10 he takes the ass with him. Quite unexpectedly, the narrator here tells us that the road was easy and passed through level country: Confecta campestri nec adeo difficili via ad quandam civitatulam pervenimus nec in stabulo, sed in domo cuiusdam decurionis devertimus. At the end of a level and not very difficult journey we came to a small town, where we put up not in an inn, but at the home of one of the towncouncillors. (Apul. Met. 10,1.3) There is no equivalent of this in the Onos. It appears that the seemingly gratuitous mention of an easy and level road is an anticipation of the life of ease and luxury lying ahead of the ass. As we have seen before, the mention of a level road often reflects an uplifting in the emotional state of the protagonist. This reminds one of the remarks of Artemidorus about the meaning of dreaming about roads: P" 0z /~ y/ /~  /~ 4y"/1# /~ ]/ »2 0$2$/# /~ 4!$#/~3/"/%x#/~1"/2/#2/!$2f1~0z1!3/ã3/ 011"»/~3x#/X3!Ô#M0!‚#1Y"21/~€3!ƒ3'1<#10/ /3{/ f/= M0!~  z x" /31Ô/ /~ M//~ /~  10ë !^2/ !|1Xy"1/3!Ô#"/33!{!#"!/!"1ƒ!$2/=0z1Ô/z y31# 0z 13x /"!Æ# /~ 0$2$/# 2/!$2 ƒ21 3x "!11/ f 231/~ 0z /31í# 0$2$/# 2/!$2
Mountains, ————— 16

In the comparable passage of the Onos (42,2) this road is summarily called a ‘difficult road’ (M0€"/{/). This may point to a more extensive road description in the lost, larger Greek 13/!"4…21#.

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valleys, mountain glens and clefts, and woods mean for all people sorrow, terror and disturbances and periods of idleness … it is always better to traverse those entirely, to find the roads there and to descend from them into plains … level, even roads which are in a plain, predict many good opportunities in business, and smooth but steep roads mean that, amidst delay and trouble, one’s undertakings will be completed … but narrow roads altogether mean trouble. (Artem. Onirocriticon 2,28) Another interpretation might be possible for this conspicuous mention of the flat and easy road. As the ‘second reader‘17 of the Metamorphoses knows, this road will eventually lead to the depraved society of Corinth as described in the later chapters of Book 10.18 In this respect, it is remarkable that in this episode – namely, during the journey to Corinth – we find the one and only passage where, contrary to what we have seen thus far, it is the Onos that mentions a difficult road, without any equivalent for this in the parallel passage in the Latin Metamorphoses.19   1/ƒ!1 %'1 „ 3€ 0123 $41"! 1@ !31 %'"!1@3Æ# M0!ã 3"/%‚ /~ 3!Ô# L%}/2 /1 %/1 So we moved off at dawn, and I carried my master wherever there was a rough stretch of the road that made it difficult for the carriages to proceed. (Onos 49,3) In Apuleius (Met. 10,18) the procession of the journey to Corinth is described lavishly, but without any mention of a difficult stretch of road.

The two roads in life We may well wonder whether in the strikingly easy roads in Book 10 there is an allusion to the widespread image of the two roads in life, found for the first time in a famous passage of Hesiod: ————— 17

18

19

For the importance of the concept of the ‘second reader’ for the interpretation of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses see Winkler 1985, 10 f. (and passim); see also Hofmann 1997, 167, and n. 86, for this concept in ancient rhetorical theory. For other associations which Corinth might evoke in the reader of the Met. see Graverini in this volume. It must be added that in the Onos the journey is to Thessaloniki, not to Corinth.

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3|{3!/33//~</023{2/ âÄ0'#Ý1zM0#y/0pƒ/1Ý 3Æ#0p"13Æ#=0"í3/1!~"!y"!1$/ y/3!Ý/"€#0z/~P"!#!B!##/X3} /~3"%‚#3€"í3!® … Badness can be got easily and in shoals; the road to her is smooth, and she lives very near us. But between us and Goodness the gods have placed the sweat of our brows; long and steep is the path that leads to her, and it is rough at the first …(Hesiod. Op. 287 ff.)

Hesiod’s formula had a rich afterlife, and was picked up by Prodicus in his fable of Heracles at the crossroads; Prodicus’ allegory has been preserved for us in the version presented by Xenophon in his Memorabilia, 2,1,20 f. The allegory of Heracles at the crossroads is at the root of expressions like the Latin proverb per aspera ad astra. The history and background of this proverb in Latin literature have been carefully studied by Hommel 1976. The fable of Heracles at the crossroads as a parable for a choice between a life of virtue and a life of vice, as suggested by the image of a steep, narrow and difficult road opposed to a flat and wide-open road, has found numerous expressions in Greek and Roman philosophy and literature. A famous and elaborate re-working of this fable is the Dream of Scipio in Silius Italicus’ Punica, 15,18–130. It was still very much alive in Apuleius’ day, and may be recognised, among other places, in Lucian‘s The Dream, 5 ff. A passage in Philostratus’ “Life of Apollonius of Tyana” attests to the existence of ancient art works depicting this fable:  ýB01#'"/4/#!#/~3€3!ã"!0!$5"/{/i#$4!# zM5"/Æ#!\'0z/="{213!ã!$//0p/X3€/~"13| 0//!ã2//"x24»#!$2|z%"$2î31/3/21$/2{/~ P"!#2Æ331!"4ƒ"ë/~/"1»#1/~%/3#/!/Ô# /~"/4/Ô#Ly3'$230p/X3Ç/~%"$2!ã{0!{"/3/x" /~ 3!ƒ3ë 2!!ã2/ - 0p /^ 1!$¹ z "!241"}# 3"/%‚ 0z M"í2/3€0z/X%€1!{2//~$013!#-"13|/~ 3| 3| 2Æ3/ /~ $| 0p  4/13! 1< | '21 3€  1/# 1\2%! “You have seen in picture-books the representation of Hercules by Prodicus; in it Hercules is represented as a youth, who

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has not yet chosen the life he will lead; and vice and virtue stand on each side of him, plucking his garments and trying to draw him to themselves. Vice is adorned with gold and necklaces and with purple raiment, and her cheeks are painted and her hair delicately plaited and her eyes underlined with henna; and she also wears gold slippers, for she is pictured strutting about in these; but virtue in the picture resembles a woman worn out with toil, with a pinched look; and she has chosen for her adornment rough squalor, and she goes without shoes and in the plainest of raiment, and she would have appeared naked if she had not too much regard for feminine decency.”20 This later became a widely used image in Christian moralising literature and art, as these two examples illustrate:

Fig. 1. Girolamo di Benvenuto, The choice of Hercules (Panofsky 1930, fig. 53)

————— 20

Philostratus, VA 6,10; ed. and transl. Conybeare.

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Fig. 2. Niccolò Soggi (?), The choice of Hercules (Panofsky 1930, fig. 52)

In allegorical interpretations of the poets another mythical tale was apparently often interpreted as a choice between pleasure and virtue: the tale of the Judgement of Paris; this tale was sometimes explicitly compared to the parable of the choice of Heracles, as for instance by Athenaeus: „ 0{ 4 /~ 3| 3!ã y"0!# "2 Y€ 3í //!3{"' 1!Æ2/ -0!Æ# "€# "13| !^2/ 2ƒ"2Ý "!"12# !ã 3Æ# 4"!03# /]3 0p 23~ - -0!} x3/ 2$13/"y% / ! 0!1Ô/~M/€#-í 1!4í3€1"~3€5"/{//~3|"13| ã! 31ã1 1/{/: And I for one affirm also that the Judgement of Paris, as told in poetry by the writers of an older time, is really a trial of pleasure against virtue. Aphrodite, for example – and she represents pleasure – was given the preference, and so everything was thrown into turmoil. (Athen. Deipnosophistai 12, 510c; transl. C. Burton Gulick) Remarkably, the pageant of the tenth book of Apuleius’ novel ends with a pantomime representing just that mythical tale of a choice: ‘The Judgement of Paris’. In the description of that spectacle, Apuleius has at least once clearly and unmistakably inserted an allusion to the famous tale of Heracles at the crossroads, as it is found in Xenophon’s Memorabilia 2,1,22: (First the appearance before Hercules of the woman personifying ‘Virtue’ is described, then ‘Vice’:) … 3|0p3{"/31"/{z1<# f/33/1/'2{0z3€z%"í/f2Æ3/0{ 3# y23/m"/0/y!fthe other was well-developed to the point

ON THE ROAD IN APUL EI US ’ METAMORPHOSES

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of … sensuality, her complexion made up …, and robed in a way that revealed as much as possible of the blossom of her youth. (Xen. Mem. 2,1,22) Compare the passage in Apuleius’ description:

… introgressit alia, visendo decore praepollens, gratia coloris ambrosei … nudo et intecto corpore perfectam formonsitatem professa, nisi quod tenui pallio bombycino inumbrabat spectabilem pubem. …ut … pateret flos aetatulae … another girl made her entrance, surpassingly beautiful to look at, with a charming ambrosial complexion … She displayed a perfect figure, her body naked and uncovered except for a piece of sheer silk with which she veiled her comely charms. … to reveal the flower of her youth. (Apul. Met. 10,31.1–2) Conclusion It is not my intention to claim that the many harsh, steep and difficult roads which the protagonist and narrator of Apuleius’ novel so often and loudly bewails could in any respect be suggestive of the difficult road to virtue. Certainly, no uniform message can be identified in the various ways in which the image of the road is applied throughout the story of the journey of Lucius, the ass. Rather, the different ways in which the protagonist experiences and describes the conditions of the roads along which he must travel have often been shown to be projections of his emotional situation at the time. And yet, as the Latin novel draws to its end – and especially from the ninth book of the Metamorphoses onward – I have, I hope, shown that the moral connotations attached to the road descriptions increase, and this development goes hand in hand with the Latin text deviating ever more strongly from the Greek Onos.21 For instance, I have discussed the possible metaphorical use of the ‘slipperiness’ of the road in connection with the devious priests of the Syrian Goddess, a use which is entirely missing in the parallel episode in the Onos. Moreover, in the tenth book the seemingly gratuitous mention of an easy and flat road along which the soldier takes the ass towards a new life, on a journey which will eventually lead to the Vanity ————— 21

See also Zimmerman 2000, Introd. 2.3 (pp. 17 f.) on this phenomenon

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Fair of Corinth, is suggestive of the flat and easy road which becomes – in Christian thought – the road of sin, but which already in the parable of Prodicus is presented as the road of Vice, opposed to the steep and arduous road of Virtue. It is probably a universal phenomenon that people express their multiform relation to the world and to life in that world by using the image of the road. Becker 1937 has traced the development of this phenomenon from early Greek literature onward. Without suggesting a unified, moralizing message in the treatment of road images in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, I hope to have shown that into the final books of his version of the ass tale Apuleius, playfully, teasingly, or even unconsciously, has woven some suggestions of the image of different roads leading to different goals in life.22 In this essay I have concentrated on the main narrative of the Metamorphoses, and I have therefore deliberately left out the journeys described in the embedded tales, as for instance in the Tale of Cupid and Psyche. Psyche in that tale travels from her home country to a mysterious landscape inhabited by divine beings, but still (with help of Zephyrus) within the reach of mortal beings like herself and her sisters. The heroine thereafter walks on her own feet in search of her lost husband; she even travels as deep down as the Underworld, and ends up (borne by Mercury) as high as Olympus. From this survey it becomes immediately clear that the world of the Tale of Cupid and Psyche is far outside the dimensions of the world of the main narrative through which Lucius travels (see also section 5 of Harrison in this volume: “A Fantasy World?…”, p. 48 f.). Bibliography Annaratone, C. 1977 (14th ed. 1996). Apuleio. Le Metamorfosi o L’Asino d’oro (Latin-Italian; with an introduction by R. Merkelbach, and a premessa al testo latino by S. Rizzo). Milano. Bakhtin, M.M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. Edited by M. Holquist. Translated by C. Emerson and M. Holquist, Austin.

————— 22

This essay issues from a paper presented at a colloquium held at the University of Crete, Rethymno, in May 2001; I want to thank Michael Paschalis and Stavros Frangoulidis for their warm hospitality and flawless organization. I also thank the audience on that occasion for their reactions; a special word of thanks goes to Stephen Harrison, Stelios Panayotakis, Victor Schmidt, and Ben Hijmans for their careful reading of, and helpful remarks on a previous version of this essay.

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Becker, O. 1937. Das Bild des Weges und verwandte Vorstellungen im frühgriechischen Denken, Berlin. Clarke, K. 2001. ‘Prologue and Provenance: Quis ille? or Unde ille?’, in: A. Kahane and A, Laird, eds., A Companion to the Prologue of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Oxford, 101–110. Conybeare, F.C. 1912. Philostratus. The Life of Apollonius of Tyana. 2 Vols, Cambridge, Massachusetts. – London (Loeb Classical Library). De Biasi, L. 1990. ‘Le descrizioni del paesaggio naturale nelle opere di Apuleio. Aspetti Letterari’, Memorie dell’ Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, Classe di Scienze Morali, serie V, vol. 14. Reprinted in: Magnaldi, G. and Gianotti, G. F., eds. 2000. Apuleio. Storia del testo e interpretazioni, Torino, 199–264. Doody, M.A. 1998. The True Story of the Novel, (orig. New Brunswick 1996), Paperback (Fontana Press). Gianotti, G.F. 1995. ‘In viaggio con l’ asino’, In: Rosa, F. and Zambon, F., eds. Pothos. Il viaggio, la nostalgia. Trenta, 107–132. Hanson, J.A. 1989. Apuleius. Metamorphoses, Cambridge Massachusetts – London: Loeb, 2 Volumes. Hijmans, B.L. et alii, eds. 1977. Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius. Apuleius Madaurensis, Metamorphoses Book IV. 1–27. Text, Introduction, Commentary, Groningen. Hijmans, B.L. et alii, eds. 1995. Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius. Apuleius Madaurensis, Metamorphoses Book IX. Text, Introduction, Commentary, Groningen. Hinds, S. 2002. ‘Landscape with figures: aesthetics of place in the Metamorphoses and its tradition’, in: P. Hardie, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Ovid, Cambridge, 122–149. Hofmann, H. 1997. ‘Sprachhandlung und Kommunikationspotential: Diskursstrategien im Goldenen Esel’, in: Picone, M. – Zimmermann, B., eds. Der antike Roman und seine mittelalterliche Rezeption, Basel – Boston – Berlin, 137–169. Hommel, H. 1976. ‘Der Weg nach Oben. Untersuchungen zu lateinischem Spruchgut’, Symbola I, Hildesheim – New York, 274–289. Junghanns, P. 1932. Die Erzählungstechnik von Apuleius’ Metamorphosen und ihrere Vorlage, Philologus Suppl. 24, Leipzig. Mason, H.J. 1999. ‘The Metamorphoses of Apuleius and its Greek Sources’, in: Hofmann, H., ed., Latin Fiction. The Latin Novel in Context, London – New York, 103–112. Panofsky, E. 1930. Hercules am Scheidewege, Leipzig. Schlam, C. 1992. The Metamorphoses of Apuleius. On Making an Ass of One Self, London. Sullivan, J.P. 1989. Pseudo-Lucian. The Ass, in: Reardon, B.P., ed., Collected Ancient Greek Novels, Berkeley – Los Angeles – London, 589–618. Winkler, J. 1985. Auctor & Actor. A Narratological reading of Apuleius’ “The Golden Ass”, Berkeley – Los Angeles – London. Zimmerman, M. 2000. Groningen Commentaries on Apuleius. Apuleius Madaurensis, Metamorphoses Book X. Text, Introduction, Commentary, Groningen.

The Temple and the Brothel: Mothers and Daughters in Apollonius of Tyre STELIOS PANAYOTAKIS

Groningen

The anonymous Latin narrative entitled Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri (The Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre, hereafter Apollonius) relates the fascinating adventures and wanderings of a small family (Apollonius, his wife, and their daughter Tarsia) around the Eastern Mediterranean of the Hellenistic period. This fictional tale survives in numerous versions, the earliest of which—in Latin—dates approximately to the late fifth or early sixth century AD, and ultimately derives, according to scholarly consensus, from a narrative originally composed in the third century AD. It is a matter of old and as yet unresolved debate whether or not Apollonius is a Greek pagan romance that has been not only abridged and translated into Latin, but also adapted and variously interpolated by Christian redactors. However, any interpretation of the diversity of style and content in Apollonius should also take into account the fluidity of similar popular narratives, the inventiveness and erudition of its author(s), and the cultural and religious polyphony of the late antique world in which the earliest extant versions were produced.1 My purpose in this article is to examine the family roles of mother and daughter, as represented in the wife and the daughter of Apollonius, respectively. I am particularly interested in exploring how these roles are interrelated and redefined against the setting of two prominent locations, namely, the temple of Diana in Ephesus, and the brothel of Priapus in Mytilene. These places feature as accommodation for Apollonius’ wife, and her daughter Tarsia, respectively, over a long period of time in the story. It will be ————— 1

Recent introductions on Apollonius include Archibald 1991; Schmeling 1996; Kortekaas 1998. Essential further reading is Konstan 1994, 100–113; Robins 1995. I am currently preparing a commentary on the earliest version of Apollonius.

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shown that both mother and daughter share very similar adventures in very different environments, for, in the case of these female characters, the temple and the brothel, though traditionally representing purity and pollution, respectively, accommodate to the same extent female virginity and chastity. As it is argued below, widespread literary motifs, such as the theme of the Prostitute-turned-Priestess, earlier found in declamation, and general beliefs, such as the sexual purity of the Ephesian priestesses, serve as models after which notions of female physical and moral integrity are constructed in this narrative. Moreover, the concept of motherhood undergoes transformation during the adventures of Apollonius’ wife, who apparently dies in labour (biological mother), and is reanimated to become a high priestess of the Ephesian Diana, the virgin goddess (spiritual mother). This interpretation of motherhood is significant in view of the possible Christian background of this narrative’s author(s) or redactor(s), who may have been influenced in the portrayal of Apollonius’ wife by the combination of motherhood and virginity as exemplified in the literary portrayal of the Virgin Mary.

The Absent Mother “In the city of Antioch there was a king called Antiochus, from whom the city itself took the name Antioch. He had one daughter, a most beautiful girl” (In ciuitate Antiochia rex fuit quidam nomine Antiochus, a quo ipsa ciuitas nomen accepit Antiochia. Is habuit unam filiam, uirginem speciosissimam, A 1).2 The opening of the earliest extant version of Apollonius, conventionally known as recension A, significantly indicates the author’s focus on the relationship between fathers and daughters, which is subsequently explored in an extreme form, as the king Antiochus eventually falls in love with his own daughter and rapes her. The deflowered girl considers suicide, but her nurse readily persuades her to continue indulging her father’s desire. The absence of a reference to a queen, Antiochus’ wife and/or mother of the princess, puzzled ancient and modern readers alike; the earliest attempt to explain away the absence of the mother in the initial episode in recension A is found in the roughly contemporary recension B of Apollonius. According ————— 2

References are given by recension and chapter number(s). All quotations and translations from recension A of Apollonius are from Archibald 1991, 112–179. Passages from rec. B are cited from Schmeling 1988.

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to this version, Antiochus’ wife is explicitly said to be deceased at the very beginning of the narrative: “He had a daughter by his wife, who was dead” (Hic habuit ex amissa coniuge filiam, B 1).3 This piece of information— though vaguely phrased—may provide a hint about the circumstances of the queen’s death, for amissa coniunx elsewhere in Apollonius refers to the hero’s wife who, having given birth to a girl, apparently dies (‘Scheintod’) in labour (in amissam coniugem, A 28). While the physical absence of the princess’ mother conveniently enables Antiochus to start an incestuous affair with his daughter, it also functions as a programmatic element in the story. For the character of the mother is remarkably absent throughout this narrative that is dominated by the presence of fathers and daughters, and is substituted by the character of the nurse or the foster-mother. The mother’s absence should be understood not only in terms of the mother’s physical separation from her children, but also in terms of her inability to fulfil her family role that includes her involvement in the growth and education of her children. The notion of the almost extinct mother-figure is illustrated—arguably at its best—in the fatal riddle set by the incestuous king Antiochus to the suitors of his daughter: “I am carried by crime, I eat my mother’s flesh” (scelere uehor, maternam carnem uescor, A 4). Here the elements of incest and cannibalism are impressively combined in an appropriately ambiguous phrasing that suggests both the loss of the mother and the father’s ‘devouring’/sexually abusing of the daughter. In her recent work on Apollonius, Elizabeth Archibald has persuasively argued that this narrative features a series of authoritative male figures (the kings Antiochus, Archistrates, and Apollonius, the prince Athenagoras, and the citizen Stranguillio), who combine the role of the ruler with that of the father of an only daughter. These characters exercise their paternal authority in a way that reflects their exercise of royal power; thus, Antiochus serves as a negative example of a father/ruler, Archistrates and Athenagoras provide a good one, while Apollonius is an ambivalent case. The feature of the incomplete family is also underlined by the facts that Apollonius, according to some versions (B 4), is an orphan of both parents, and that every major male char-

————— 3

Compare Warner 1991, 27–28, on eighteenth century versions of Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella: “The absence of the mother from the tale is often declared at the start, without explanation, as if none were required”; also Warner 1994, 201–217; Archibald 2000, 54 note 14.

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acter in the story, with the sole exception of Stranguillio, appears to be a widower.4 Stranguillio’s wife, Dionysias, a mother herself, not only features in the plot, but also plays the role of the dominant wife to her husband, the cruel mistress to her slaves, and the evil foster-mother to Apollonius’ daughter Tarsia. Hers is the only image in Apollonius of a mother walking on the street alongside her children, her own daughter (Philomusia) and her fosterchild (Tarsia) (A 31). There is, unfortunately, little indication of Dionysias’ virtues as a mother, for she is given the conventional literary role of the wicked stepmother. It is through the machinations of the greedy and envious Dionysias that the young Tarsia runs the risk of losing her life in the hands of a bailiff, only to be abducted by pirates, and to become a prostitute. The wicked Dionysias hypocritically justifies her murderous plans against Tarsia as the result of care for her own daughter: “My plan cannot be accomplished unless I do away with her, by the sword or by poison; and I shall adorn my daughter in her finery” (Non potest fieri hoc, quod excogitaui, nisi ferro aut ueneno tollam illam de medio, et ornamentis eius filiam meam ornabo, A 31).5 Unlike the variety and scales of paternal attitudes portrayed in Apollonius, this is the only expression of ‘motherly care’ we find in the narrative, and it can hardly provide a positive image. It may thus be argued that mothers in Apollonius perform only their biological role as bearers of (female) children, without really being involved in their daughters’ lives, because they usually die (or, as in the case of Dionysias, are egocentric). The physical absence of a biological mother has in some cases serious consequences in the life of a young girl—consider Antiochus’ and Apollonius’ daughters, whose fate possibly suggests that substitute mothers or other mother figures (such as nurses) are potentially harmful for their foster children.6 It cannot be said, however, that the presence of a bio————— 4 5

6

See Archibald 1989; Schmeling 1998, 3287. It is instructive to compare this sentence with the altered version Dionysias presents to her husband: “I will get rid of Tarsia and adorn our daughter with her finery” (32). Apollonius later rightly regards with suspicion the grief of Dionysias: “He looked at the woman and said: ‘My daughter Tarsia died a few days ago. Surely her money and jewels and clothes have not gone too?’” (37). See Doody 1998, 86. The relation between a Roman mother and her daughter was expected to be characterized by mutual support and common interest; see Dixon 1988, 210–232. For the complex phenomenon of fosterage in Roman society see Bradley 1987; Dixon 1999; Krause 1994, 61–63; cf. Bremmer 1999.

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logical mother is considered vital for a young girl, as there are simply no examples of such situations. Apollonius’ wife seems to be motherless too, but it is the love and support she receives from her father, the king Archistrates, that make her a talented and generous person and pave the way to a fortunate marriage (A 15–24). On the other hand, Tarsia, though in the hands of the wicked Dionysias, enjoys the care of her faithful nurse Lycoris who, as long as she lives, stays close to her nurseling (A 29–30).

Like Mother like Daughter The romance of Apollonius is well known for its paratactic style and episodic structure, as well as for the recurrence, with variations, in it of significant themes and motifs, such as incest and riddles. Scholars have identified three major elements of narrative technique in Apollonius, namely repetition, parallelism, and contrast.7 It is worth stating the most notable parallels between the hero Apollonius and his daughter Tarsia. Both father and daughter show remarkable wisdom and expertise in fine arts and in riddling alike, and both are persecuted by malignant enemies (an incestuous king and an evil foster-mother, respectively). Likewise, both suffer extreme poverty and, in that state, meet their partner-for-life (the shipwrecked Apollonius meets Archistratis, the daughter of the king Archistrates,8 while Tarsia, in her capacity as prostitute, meets Athenagoras, the prince of Mytilene). However, what is of particular interest here is whether or not Tarsia, apart from being a female version of her father Apollonius, is also a child of her mother Archistratis. The relation between the heroine and her mother in Apollonius has so far received little attention. Each of these female characters undergoes different adventures in the latter part of the narrative, and the author’s focus is undeniably upon those of the daughter.9 During a sea-journey from Cyrene to Antioch, Apollonius’ pregnant wife prematurely gives birth to a girl and, as ————— 7 8

9

See Ruiz-Montero 1983–84, 321–324; Schmeling 1998, 3283–3288. It should be noted that Apollonius’ wife is named Archistratis only in rec. B, whereas in rec. A she is referred to as “the daughter of king Archistrates”. The name Archistratis renders in Latin the Greek öú"%23"/3È#(Kortekaas 1998, 186 note 31). In this article I often apply the name Archistratis to Apollonius’ wife, but I find that the name hardly characterizes her as an individual, for it essentially relates her to her father Archistrates. Cf. Archibald 2000, 54 note 16: “one might argue that the role of the female protagonist is divided between mother and daughter, and that they cannot both take centre stage at the same time.”

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a result of complications caused after the child’s birth, falls in a coma. She is believed to be dead and, while lamented by her husband, she is put in a coffin and thrown into the sea. The coffin reaches the shore of Ephesus and a physician finds Archistratis’ apparently lifeless body. Apollonius’ wife is resuscitated thanks to the acute treatment she receives by a clever pupil of the physician, and is accordingly adopted by that same physician. She then requests to enter the temple of the Ephesian Diana, in order to spend the rest of her life in chastity among the virgin priestesses: Post paucos dies, ut cognouit (sc. medicus) eam regio genere esse ortam, adhibitis amicis in filiam suam sibi adoptauit. Et rogauit cum lacrimis, ne ab aliquo contingeretur. Exaudiuit eam et inter sacerdotes Dianae feminas fulsit et collocauit, ubi omnes uirgines inuiolabiliter seruabant castitatem. (A 28) After a few days, when he [i.e. the physician] learned that she was of royal birth, he summoned his friends and adopted her as his daughter. She made a tearful plea that no man should touch her. He took heed, and supported her and placed her among the priestesses of Diana, where all the virgins preserved their chastity inviolate. Apollonius’ wife stays at the temple of Diana for approximately fourteen years, a period of time during which the reader is given very little information about the life of Archistratis or the whereabouts of Apollonius (he is said to be in Egypt). The reunion of the family takes place at the temple of Diana in Ephesus, where Apollonius and his recently found daughter Tarsia travel upon advice of a supernatural messenger. The novice Archistratis has by that time become a beloved and respected high priestess in charge of the Ephesian temple, in other words, a spiritual mother (coniunx eius inter sacerdotes principatum tenebat “his wife was the chief priestess”, A 48). She is superior among the priestesses (maiori omnium sacerdotum, A 48), or, as another version has it, a ‘mother’ to them (matri omnium sacerdotum, B 48). Once the recognition among the members of the family takes place, Apollonius’ wife leaves Ephesus—not without difficulty (cum planctu amarissimo, eo quod eos relinqueret “very bitter lamenting that she was leaving them”, A 49). Her social reintegration is completed when, some years later,

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she gives birth to a son, a male heir to the kingdoms of her father and her husband,10 and dies having lived a peaceful life close to Apollonius (A 51). On the other hand, her daughter, Tarsia, enjoys an altogether different life, and becomes the ‘heroine’ in the latter part of the narrative (A 29–36; 40–47). After the apparent death of Archistratis, she is entrusted to the care of Stranguillio and Dionysias, Apollonius’ friends from Tarsus, who, out of gratitude to their benefactor Apollonius, accept to raise Tarsia together with their own daughter. Tarsia grows up believing that Stranguillio and Dionysias are her natural parents, and it is only through the last words of her dying nurse that she finds out the truth about her origins and her real parents. However, Dionysias, envious at the beauty of Tarsia and filled with greed for the wealth of the girl’s father, employs a bailiff to murder the young girl; nevertheless, Tarsia survives this attack, for she is carried away by pirates and sold to a greedy brothel-keeper in Mytilene who worships the god Priapus. Now, Tarsia asks her customers to spare her virginity, and listen to her life-story; indeed, they feel pity and compassion for her misfortunes, and not only leave her untouched, but also give her money to enable her to obtain her freedom from the greedy pimp (A 34). Thus, Tarsia, through her cleverness and her eloquence, retains her virginity, and becomes a major attraction for men and women alike, who visit the public place to listen to her as she solves riddles, performs music, and narrates her life-story (A 36). In a way, the adventures experienced by the wife and the daughter of Apollonius are both contrasting and identical. At the starting point of their parallel lives, both women have double family-identities. Tarsia, the daughter of Apollonius and Archistratis, believes herself to be the daughter of Stranguillio and Dionysias, whereas Archistratis, daughter of Archistrates and wife of Apollonius, becomes the adopted child of the Ephesian physician and a devoted virgin. Both women are given away by Apollonius. His wife is entrusted to the care of the sea and the kindness of a stranger who would find the coffin and bury the corpse, whereas his daughter is given to the care of old friends who would raise her as their own child. Both of them eventually appear to be dead in the eyes of Apollonius, and are mourned as such with equal grief by the hero.11 Both of them will meet each other again ————— 10

11

Archibald 2001, 95 considers this detail as the triumph of patriarchy in the story, and the solution to the problem of potential father-daughter incest. Konstan 1994, 103 subtly discusses the way in which these analogies influence our understanding of Apollonius as novelistic hero.

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through Apollonius, who, as hero, husband, and father, is thus the agent of both separating and uniting mother and daughter. However, the most striking similarities concern the concepts of virginity and purity, which each of these women represents. Tarsia, a prostitute and a virgin at the same time, is, at some point in the story, sent to entertain her own father, who does not recognise in her his daughter. Apollonius takes Tarsia for a common prostitute, but the girl assures him of the contrary: Salue, quicumque es, laetare: non enim aliqua ad te consolandum ueni polluta, sed innocens uirgo quae uirginitatem meam inter naufragium castitatis inuiolabiliter seruo. (A 40) Greetings, whoever you are, and be cheerful. I am no fallen woman who has come to console you, but an innocent girl, who keeps her virginity intact in the midst of moral shipwreck. The highly charged language of purity and pollution, and the pointed, as well as common, metaphor of shipwreck12 underline the integrity of the heroine, both literal and metaphorical. The author of Apollonius uses similar language once more in the story, when referring to the enclosure in the temple of Diana of Tarsia’s mother, and to her vows of perpetual chastity (ubi [sc. in templo Dianae] omnes uirgines inuiolabiliter seruabant castitatem, A 27). Thus, the bodies of the mother and the daughter, emblematic though they are of the pure temple and the impure brothel, respectively, feature as inaccessible and impenetrable bodies of virgins. On the other hand, the temple and the brothel, both public places par excellence and mainly male territories, are in this way put on a par, for they accommodate to the same extent the untouchable and undefiled bodies of Archistratis and Tarsia. As I will next argue, although the literary backgrounds against which each of those narrative situations may have developed, namely Roman declamation and Christian discourse on the Virgin Mary, are of a different nature, they equally communicate ideas on purity, which the author of Apollonius appropriates and connects with the notions of wealth and royal status.

————— 12

The expression naufragium castitatis with reference to the lupanar is frequently attested in Roman hagiography; see Kortekaas 1998, 180 note 8; also Robins 2000, 537.

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The Prostitute, the Princess, and the Saint Tarsia, though an alleged orphan and a prostitute, is proud of her noble origins. In her song to her (as yet unrecognised) father, she stresses the impenetrability of both her body and her reputation. “I walk among corruption, but I am unaware of corruption... / Now I have been sold to a pimp, but I have never tarnished my honour” (Per sordes gradior, sed sordis conscia non sum ... / Lenoni nunc uendita numquam uiolaui pudorem, A 41). Tarsia heroically raises herself from the infamous world of prostitution, and loudly proclaims her purity. Her ill-famed accommodation and profession—if she cannot be named a prostitute, she is a public performer, after all—have done no damage to her reputation, as her increasing popularity among the locals has shown. Tarsia’s purity, cleverness, and strong will overcome the dangers that might incur not only upon her body but also, more importantly, upon her status. Once she has regained her royal position, she expresses her compassion for the ‘girls’ (puellae) at the brothel by granting them wealth and freedom (A 40). Her ‘sympathetic’ view of prostitution by no means lacks moralising tone or deviates from traditional ideas. Nevertheless, as she is given a voice of her own, she questions the established attitude towards the socially marginalized women of this profession. Tarsia claims for prostitutes the right of individuality.13 The narrative situation in which a virgin is kidnapped or captured by pirates, and sold to a brothel-keeper, is found, prior to Apollonius, both in Roman comedy (Plautus’ Curculio, Persa, Poenulus, and Rudens), and in ancient fiction (Xenophon of Ephesus, Apuleius).14 However, in Plautine comedy kidnapped freeborn girls such as Planesium in Curculio or Palaestra in Rudens, who are in the hands of greedy pimps, do not normally take action themselves to obtain their freedom or escape from the brothel. They count on the (usually, meagre) financial help of their beloved ones or have to be rescued by means of the help of a scheming slave.15 Similarly, in Apu————— 13

14

15

For the infamy related to the profession of a prostitute in the Roman mind see e.g. Herter 1960, 107–108; Edwards 1997, 81–82; Flemming 1999, 50. I do not take into account here the notion of sacred prostitution, of which the historicity and authenticity are in doubt; see Beard and Henderson 1998. For the motif of the abducted heroine who preserves her chastity in a brothel, in comedy and in fiction see Klebs 1899, 303–305; Trenkner 1958, 108; Herter 1960, 79; Raffaelli 1984, 126; Schmeling 1996, 542. Cf. Plaut. Curculio 213; Persa 656; Poenulus 100–101; Rudens 664–676.

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leius’ second-century novel Metamorphoses, a group of robbers who abduct the noble Charite, consider selling her to a brothel-keeper (7,9,5–6); the girl is eventually saved through the intervention of her cunning fiancée. On the other hand, in Xenophon’s novel Ephesiaca, which is prior to Apuleius’ novel and has often been compared, in terms of content and style, to Apollonius, the heroine Anthia is sold to a brothel-keeper. Facing the danger of losing her virginity, Anthia feigns epilepsy, and succeeds in deterring her clients (5,7). In yet another critical situation, which, however, does not involve a brothel, Anthia does not hesitate to kill her potential rapist (4,5). The otherwise passive novelistic heroine reveals her resourcefulness in words and deeds, when her virginity (rather than her life) is at stake. The infamy and dangers involved in the life of a female common prostitute (as opposed to a, perhaps less endangered, courtesan) are best illustrated in a fictional case from Roman declamation, namely the second of the controversiae transcribed by Seneca the Elder and entitled Sacerdos Prostituta “the Prostitute Priestess”. The content of this rhetorical piece is of particular interest for this study, since it reveals striking thematic similarities with the plot in Apollonius (that much has often been noticed),16 and explicitly deals with the issue of the reciprocal influence between space and individual, as exemplified in a brothel and a prostitute, respectively. The theme of the rhetorical exercise is as follows: Quaedam uirgo a piratis capta uenit; empta a lenone et prostituta est. Venientes ad se exorabat stipem. Militem qui ad se uenerat cum exorare non posset, conluctantem et uim inferentem occidit. Accusata et absoluta et remissa ad suos est. Petit sacerdotium. A virgin was captured by pirates and sold; she was bought by a pimp and made a prostitute. When men came to her, she asked for alms. When she failed to get alms from a soldier who came to her, he struggled with her

————— 16

Scholars usually compare the theme of this rhetorical exercise with the adventures of Tarsia. However, I would argue that this declamation, if taken as potential source of Apollonius, anticipates the adventures of both Tarsia (the prostitute) and Archistratis (the priestess). The adventures of the heroine in this declamation encapsulate the adventures of the two heroines in Apollonius.

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and tried to use force; she killed him. She was accused, acquitted and sent back to her family. She seeks a priesthood.17 The Roman schools of declamation, originally instituted to train advocates in public speaking, were, under the Empire, heavily criticised by contemporaries for striving after extravagance and sensationalism, instead of cultivating the true form of pleading. Declamations were notorious for their artificial style and sensationalised themes, in which pirates, kidnappers, rapists, evil stepmothers, and poisoners featured in various situations with a marked disregard for realism.18 The controversiae consisted of an, often imaginary, law and a brief outline of the facts. In the case of the Sacerdos Prostituta the statute reads: “A priestess must be chaste and of chaste parents, pure and of pure parents” (Sacerdos casta e castis, pura e puris sit). The declaimers take part in a debate, in which they adopt the character of the plaintiff or the defendant, and plead for either side (argumentum in utramque partem), specifying the motives and circumstances underlying the argumentation of either side. It is important to note that the purpose of these rhetorical pieces is neither to come to a judicial closure nor to offer a final judgement, but to let both sides speak, to argue in utramque partem. The freedom provided in these ‘open-ended’ narratives gave the declaimers the opportunity to create life-like situations that touch the extreme, to employ socially marginal characters (such as prostitutes), and to define values such as (in our example) the virginity and purity of a female. Placed at the centre of this declamation are the issues of sexual pollution and of female chastity as defined by male authorities. “Is chastity to be judged merely by virginity or by abstinence from all shameful and obscene things?” (Vtrum castitas tantum ad uirginitatem referatur an ad omnium turpium et obscenarum rerum abstinentiam, Sen. contr. 1,2,13). The prosecutor in this case insists that the Prostitute Priestess is legally liable to stuprum, violation of her own sexual integrity. Even if she has retained her virginity, her experience has irrevocably defiled her. For the prosecutors, the ————— 17

18

Text and translation are by M. Winterbottom, The Elder Seneca. Declamations vol. I (The Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, Mass., and London 1974. On Roman declamation during the Empire see e.g. Bonner 1969; cf. Russell 1983. The relation of the themes of rhetorical exercises with contemporary reality is a matter of continuing discussion; see e.g. Migliario 1989, especially 543–546 on rape and prostitution in declamation; and Bonner 1969, 32–33, 104; Helms 1990, 320–323 on the “Sacerdos Prostituta”.

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pollution is primarily material, and derives from the place itself. “You offered yourself, a girl, in a brothel. Even if nobody outraged you, the place itself did so” (Stetisti puella in lupanari: iam te ut nemo uiolauerit, locus ipse uiolauit, ibid. 1,2,7). The sacred space of the temple and the profane space of the brothel are incompatible in this line of argument, and correspond to clearly marked definitions of the pure versus the defiled body. “It is not without reason that a lictor attends a priestess: he removes a prostitute from her way” (non sine causa sacerdoti lictor apparet: occurrenti meretricem summouet, 1,2,7–8). On the other hand, the advocates of the Prostitute-turned-Priestess posit an internal purity that avoids sexual pollution. Bad fortune, they argue, has forced that woman to the brothel, and, despite the harsh conditions, she has managed to preserve her chastity. Thus, while those who argue against her equate the woman’s defilement with the material circumstances of her imprisonment, her advocates stress the discrepancy between her invincible chastity and the physical conditions of the brothel (licet illam ponatis in lupanari; et per hoc illi intactam pudicitiam efferre contigit, 1,2,20). The declamatory motif of the Prostitute Priestess, variations of which we find in Plautine Comedy, the Greek Ephesiaca and the Latin Apollonius (see above, p. 106–107) re-emerges in Acts of Christian martyrs and in hagiography.19 In these texts, a noble lady or a young virgin of noble origin is confronted with the Roman authorities, because she usually refuses to sacrifice to pagan deities, and/or declines a marriage proposal by a non-Christian. She is therefore threatened with, or is actually condemned to, being put in a brothel (see e.g. the third-century Martyrdom of Pionius 6,7). It is instructive to set the treatment of this popular motif as found in the account of the death of Saint Agnes (Acta Sanctorum Jan. XXI), herself a virgin martyr and a model for virgin ascetics, against Apollonius and the Senecan declamation. The choice of the specific Saint and of the account of her death is purposeful. For, on the one hand, Apollonian scholars often find similarities between the episode of Tarsia in the brothel and the legendary account of the death of

————— 19

The classic treatment of this topic is Augar 1905. Shorter discussions include Söder 1932, 148–149; Trenkner 1958, 109 note 14; Herter 1960, 79–80 note 163; Cataudella 1981, 944; Archibald 1991, 34. My account is particularly indebted to Helms 1990 and Rizzo Nervo 1995.

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Saint Agnes,20 and, on the other, this late Latin account resumes the issues of pollution and purity in an infamous place. The martyrdom of the famous Roman Saint Agnes is known from diverse accounts that were extant at the end of the fourth century, namely a treatise by, and a hymn attributed to, the bishop Ambrose, an epigram by Pope Damasus, and a poem by Prudentius. Among these early sources of the Saint’s martyrdom, Agnes’ condemnation to a brothel features only in Prudentius’ account (Peristefanon 14) and may have been borrowed by a popular legend of this Saint or modelled after similar episodes referred to by Christian writers.21 This characteristic detail reappears in the Latin Gesta (Deeds) of Saint Agnes, which are incorrectly attributed to Ambrose and dated from the fifth or the sixth century.22 There the heroine, at the age of thirteen, is sent to a brothel, because she both declines the marriage proposal of the son of the Prefect, and refuses to sacrifice to the goddess Vesta. Her mere presence at the brothel causes a supernatural intervention, for an angel appears at her side and a bright light encircles her so that she can be neither seen nor touched. Those who enter the brothel remain to pray to God, and the place of infamy becomes a place of purity and prayer: Interea lupanar locus orationis efficitur; in quo omnis qui fuisset ingressus, adoraret et ueneraretur et, dans honorem immenso lumini, mundior egrederetur foras quam fuerat intus ingressus. (Ps. Ambr. epist. 1,9) Meanwhile the brothel becomes a place of prayer; anyone who entered it, adored and worshipped, and, having paid honour to the immense light, came out purer than he was when he came in.23 The son of the Prefect, surrounded by his companions, appears and is determined to have Agnes by force. He boldly enters and, as he is about to lay hands on her, is struck dead by the devil. The young man’s companions ac————— 20 21

22

23

See Kortekaas 1984, 105; 236–237 note 582, with references. For the diverse accounts of Agnes’ death see the fundamental studies by Franchi de’ Cavalieri 1899 and 1908, 141–164, and by Jubaru 1907. For the relation of Prudentius’ account to earlier tradition see Malamud 1989, 150 note 3, 157 note 5; Palmer 1989, 250–254, with bibliography; Burrus 1995. For the issues of authorship and dating of the Gesta see Dufourcq 1900, 214–217; Jubaru 1907, 121–136; Franchi de’ Cavalieri 1908, 157 note 1; Consolino 1984, 99–101. Text by Jubaru 1907, 358–363, at 360. The translation is mine.

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cuse Agnes of having killed the son of the Prefect by magic. The Prefect hurries to the scene, and is informed of the situation from both Agnes and the companions of his son. He advises Agnes to pray to the angel who killed his son, and ask him to raise the man back to life in order that she may avoid all suspicion of being a magician. She agrees and through her prayers the youth is brought back to life. But the priests of the pagan temples, in fear of her power and thinking that she will alienate the people from the cult of the gods, condemn the girl to be burnt alive. However, the flames do not harm Agnes, and one of the guards is ordered to thrust a sword through her throat. Thus Agnes dies a virgin and a martyr. I argued above that the motif of the Prostitute Priestess outlasted its declamatory origins and reappears in two major forms, one being the virgin martyr from Christian hagiography, the other the kidnapped heroine of the romances. The hagiographers and the romance writers adapt the rhetorical performance into their prose narrative texts, but, in doing so, they impose an one-sided interpretation on this literary figure; in other words, they take away much of the intentional rhetorical dilemma surrounding the characterisation of the virgin held at the brothel. The authors of hagiography and romance choose a clear ending for the case of the Prostitute Priestess, allowing her either to die or to get married. The Passion of Saint Agnes differs from the story of the Prostitute Priestess, as the killing of the soldier is replaced by the martyrdom of the virgin. In fact, the threat of rape features in both texts (the soldier of the declamation becomes, in the Passion of Saint Agnes, the son of the Prefect), but rape itself is avoided in a miraculous way. The Prostitute Priestess’ aggressive self-defence is substituted by the Christian virtue of passive endurance, so the option of killing one’s potential rapist is not raised in the hagiographic text.24 The literary treatment of the theme of the Prostitute Priestess is given a new perspective in Apollonius: here the scenes in the brothel are significantly devoid of the judicial context of violence and death and are placed against the economic context of money and marriage. Princess Tarsia, like the Prostitute Priestess and Saint Agnes, is held in a brothel against her will. However, the violence that marks so forcefully the episodes in the declamatory piece and in the hagiographic text, is only peripheral, and gives way to an emphasis on rhetorical performance and commercial exchange. The female body in this novel is primarily a means of financial exploitation, and ————— 24

See the perceptive analysis by Helms 1990, 323–325.

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this handling of female sexuality clearly echoes similar situations in Roman comedy (see above p. 106). The virgin Tarsia possesses eloquence and courage and employs her talents in order not only to preserve her virginity, but also to raise money for her freedom. The education in music and oratory displayed by Tarsia at the brothel is the means through which she is reunited with her father (and possibly echoes her mother’s similar juvenile performances at the palace).25 In Tarsia’s story, eloquence alone is substantial and enables the daughter of Apollonius to preserve her chastity without bloodshed.26 Unlike the Prostitute Priestess and Saint Agnes, Tarsia needs neither to kill nor to die to avoid rape and prostitution. Hence Tarsia does not adopt the role of the aggressor, as the Prostitute does in her act of killing the soldier. Tarsia triumphs: not only does she secure her existence but she, moreover, wins the respect and admiration of everybody. After the reunion with her father, and the punishment of her cruel pimp, the virgin Tarsia is given to the prince Athenagora. The royal marriage at the end of the story restores traditional and patriarchal order, as Tarsia regains her former social status and is bestowed to the authorities of her father and her husband.27

The Virgin Mother An important and still unresolved issue in scholarly studies regarding Apollonius is whether or not this narrative has been composed in a hagiographic environment, and, if so, to what extent the story has been Christianised. Does the alleged process of Christianisation of this text refer only to the use of Biblical and Patristic Latin, or, more essentially, also to the endorsement of Christian values? The present analysis is relevant to this issue too, for, as I shall next argue, the depiction of Archistratis in the temple of Ephesus shares significant features with the literary portrayal of the Virgin Mary. It should first be noted that Archistratis’ decision to enter the temple of Diana and take the vows of chastity is somewhat at odds with the fact that she (unlike the ————— 25

26

27

Cf. Schmeling 1996, 523: “In Tarsia’s performances of music the reader can recall to Tarsia’s advantage the musical performances of her mother: Tarsia is an educated young woman, whereas her mother had simply displayed natural abilities; education is equated with royalty.” Cf. Bradley 1984, 117: “Tarsia’s ability to protect herself by eloquence, however, is not likely to have been the fate of many prostitutes in real life.” See Helms 1990, 326.

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priestesses of the Ephesian virgin goddess) is no longer a virgin herself. The adventures of Apollonius’ wife, and the acceptance of a new identity after her ‘Scheintod’, place her in a rather similar position with a ‘virgin mother’, namely a Christian widow who vows sexual abstinence after her first marriage (Lane Fox 1986, 367). But more may be at play here. Throughout antiquity the Ephesian Diana enjoyed the title of the virgin goddess and sexual purity was required of her clergy (Strabo 8,13,1). Plutarch (an seni respubl. gerend. 24, 795D–E) compares the priestesses of the virgin goddess to the Vestal Virgins and speaks of three classes: (in ascending order) 1{", õ {", and /"{". According to Achilles Tatius (7,13,2–3; 8,6,1) and Artemidorus (4,4 p. 247,21–23 Pack), entrance to the temple of the Ephesian Artemis was forbidden, on the penalty of death, to free women who were not virgins. On the other hand, priestesses of the Ephesian Artemis were actually allowed to leave their sacred duty and marry; they would then ideally raise their daughters to become priestesses.28 Archistratis in Ephesus, in an unexpected way, combines simultaneously the notions of motherhood and virginity, which are, in the Western tradition, exemplified only in the figure of the Virgin Mary, who, moreover, according to early legends, spent the last years of her life and was even buried also in Ephesus.29 The nature of Christ and the virginity of Mary, with emphasis on the details of her physical integrity, have been topics of major discussion among Christian authors around the latter part of the fourth century and the early fifth century AD. The image of the sealed, closed space is often found in patristic texts as a metaphor for the intact body of Mary before and after the birth of Christ. The culmination of these discussions takes place— significantly for our argument—at the Council of Ephesus (431 AD), in which Mary is officially given the title Theotokos ‘Mother of God’.30 Among the terms Christian authors use to denote the physical integrity that paradoxically defies the laws of nature, are inuiolabilis and inuiolabiliter; the ————— 28

29 30

On literary and epigraphic evidence about the hierarchy and the required chastity of the Ephesian priestesses see RE V 2758 s.v. ‘Ephesia’ [O. Jessen]; Kukula 1906, 254, 282; Oster 1976, 28, and 1990, 1721–1722; Bammer 1984, 254; Elliger 1985, 127; JennyKappers 1986, 43, 51. For the male priests of the Ephesian Artemis see Smith 1996. See Warner 1976, 87–88; Foss 1979, 33 and 95; Jenny-Kappers 1986, 115–126. For the Council at Ephesus see Jenny-Kappers 1986, 151–159; Karwiese 1995, 135–138. Cameron 1991, 165–170 sees the figure of the Virgin as Mystery and Paradox in the Christian discourse. A similar background may be related to the origin of the problematic phrase in Apollonius, nodum uirginitatis eripere; see Panayotakis 2000, 601–603.

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latter term, which is not attested before the fourth century AD, is found in Apollonius twice, as we mentioned above (see p. 105). Examples of the specific use of these terms in patristic texts include Ambros. in Luc. 2,1 seruatur itaque sanctae Mariae sicut pudore integra ita inuiolabilis opinione uirginitas; Gaudent. serm. 9,11 per inuiolabilem feminam mundi huius intrauit hospitium, claustrum uirginei pudoris ... conseruans (Christus).31 The use of these terms with reference to the preservation of female virginity/chastity in a non-Christian context is rare but not unattested. Inuiolabilis characterises (in metaphorical sense) the female companions of the virgin goddess Diana in Claudian (24,241–243 socias ... pudicas et inuiolabile ... concilium “virgin companions and ... chaste band”, transl. M. Platnauer, The Loeb Classical Library). However, if the earliest version of Apollonius is a substantial adaptation of a pagan text in a hagiographic environment (Kortekaas), or an altogether Christian narrative (Hexter), the aforementioned possible thematic and verbal similarities in the literary portrayals of Archistratis and Mary, may well be intentional.32 To conclude: in Apollonius, Archistratis and Tarsia represent, not a mother and a daughter, respectively, but two different types of daughter. The author of this narrative, who appears to sensitively react to earlier literary tradition as well as contemporary discourse on female purity and integrity, creates these female characters as figures that achieve their goal of chastity in contrasting environments and through different means. Simultaneously, the locations that accommodate the mother and the daughter are redefined in their function under the influence of these women’s excessive will for chastity: the brothel turns into a place of purity and sexual abstinence, the temple of the virgin goddess opens its doors for a mother.33 ————— 31 32

33

Further see ThLL VII.2 216,10–15. We should also mention here lexicographical evidence, which may have similar implications. According to the evidence listed in the Thesaurus linguae Latinae, the construction of principatus with inter + accus. of noun to denote the person over whom one exercises power is rare; the instances include Hier. tract. p. 414,2 quomodo Maria uirgo ... inter omnes mulieres principatum tenet, ita inter ceteros dies haec (sc. dominica paschae) omnium dierum mater est; compare Hist. Apoll. A 48 coniunx eius inter sacerdotes principatum tenebat. A shorter version of this paper was delivered at two Seminars in Latin literature given at the Classics Departments of the Universities of Lausanne and of Neuchâtel (March 2001). I wish to thank Jean-Jacques Aubert and Danielle van Mal-Maeder for their hospitality and the helpful comments they made on those occasions. I would also like to thank Costas Panayotakis and Ioulia Pipinia for reading this version, and the editors of this vol-

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Social Geography in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles JUDITH PERKINS

West Hartford

Employing the paradigms of critical geography, this article offers that the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles display the Christian project to reconstitute contemporary power relation through their narrative recoding of some of the dominant spatial categories of their culture. The theme of broken boundaries is central to the Acts as seen in their repeated emphasis on women escaping domestic space (and apostles entering it) and characters entering and exiting prison space at will. Through these themes, Christians manifest their intent to ‘break out’ of the order of things and to resist spatial formulations that keep certain people in their place or out of place. By redefining prison as a place of community, Christians in particular create an alternative space from those defined through the hierarchical practices operating in the contemporary society. For after the division of the empire into humiliores and honestiores and the calibration of judicial punishment to social status, prison became a space where the elite were patently ‘out of place.’ By offering the prison as the center of community and the apostles as the sort of people who socially might find themselves in prison, the Acts create a countersite to the public spaces where the elite of the period forged their community. Henri Lefebvre, in his monumental work, The Production of Space, posited the basis for any social transformation: ‘to change life...we must first change space.’1 Considerable theoretical attention has recently been directed toward the importance of space in articulating relationships of power. Space is not, as too often has been assumed, some inert, innocent backdrop. Rather, as are all cultural productions, space is a social construct and plays a constitutive role in ————— 1

Lefebvre 1991, 190.

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a society’s instrumentality of power – ‘it tells you where you are and puts you there.’2 Space is central in every society’s imagining of itself, and it is through the covert mechanisms of social spatialities that asymmetrical relations of power get inscribed in societies – things and people have places where they do and do not belong.3 That space acts as a means of control also simultaneously makes it a means of resistance.4 In this paper I suggest that the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles work to resist the spatialities (and the power) of their contemporary society and to institute new spatial imaginaries and a new site for power through their narrative focus on breaking domestic, and political boundaries.5 As Deleuze and Guattari have suggested: ‘ any struggle to reconstitute power relations is a struggle to reorganize their spatial bases.’6 In this paper I will suggest as one project of the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles the narrative recoding of some contemporary notions of space, thereby laying the foundation for reconstituted power relations. Challenge to the spatial bases of social boundaries is a central theme in the Acts, and shows up prominently in their repeated emphasis on the permeability of domestic and carceral space. As John Bender has noted boundaries are ‘the emblematic formulation of authority.’7 The Apocryphal Acts by emphasizing how easy it is to penetrate and/or escape from both female quarters and prisons works to resist the authority of contemporary social arrangements. In a patriarchal and hierarchical society such as that of the early empire, domestic space is a particularly heavily charged social space. It exists in a dialectic with ‘public’ space and, in Donald Moore’s words, is ‘freighted with histories of seclusion, subordination and control.’8 The domestic space of the ancient Greek city suggests a social geography that maps both male authority over females and female subordination and ————— 2 3 4 5

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M. Keith and S. Pile 1993, ‘Introduction: The Place of Politics,’ 37. Curry 1996, 90 S. Pile 1997,1–4. For recent interpretive work on these texts, see Bremmer 1996; Bremmer 1998; Bovon et al. 1999; Hock et al. 1998. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari 1977. The sentence preceding the one quoted begins: ‘If space is indeed to be thought of as a system of ‘containers’ of social powers..., then it follows that the accumulation of capital is perpetually deconstructing that social power by reshaping its geographical bases.’ The context thus refers to capitalist societies. LeFebvre 1991 asserts: ‘a revolution that does not produce a new space has not realized its potential...’ 54. J. Bender 1987, 44. D. Moore 1997, 91.

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exclusion.9 This especially holds true for elite women; a scene from Achilles Tatius’s romance, contemporary with the Acts, indicates, even as it mocks, conventions of female confinement. Kleitophon, the hero of the romance, describes the sleeping arrangements of his beloved, Leukippe: Her room was situated as follows: one wing of the house had four rooms, two on the right, two on the left. A narrow hallway ran down the middle, which was closed by a single door at one end. This was where the women lodged. The farther two rooms were occupied by the girl and her mother, directly opposite each other...Each night Leukippe’s mother tucked her in bed and locked the door of the wing from the inside. She had someone else lock the door from the outside and pass the key to her through the opening. She kept the keys with her all night until the next morning, when she called the servant and passed him the key again to open the door.10 The scene depicts the protection of a virgin’s body, but it is noteworthy that her mother and the other women of the household are described as sharing this same segregated and heavily bounded space.11 Domestic space is clearly one of those spaces that ‘keeps you in your place,’ where individuals are taught to experience their social position and subjecthood. It is for this reason, I suggest, that the Apocryphal Acts so often ————— 9

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See B. Egger 1990, L. Nevett 1999, M. Jameson 1990, S. Walker 1983. Jameson comments: ‘the household was the domain of women. The stranger was admitted only within limits, physical limits when possible, but conceptual limits always’ (192). Egger examining the Greek novel, narratives contemporary with and thematically related to the Apocryphal Acts, says: ‘Classic romance heroines just do not move or act, leave the domestic sphere, let alone travel the world on their own account’(270); ‘Female confinement in the house, then, is a prominent romance fiction and a major aspect of the female image’ (271). Egger also notes that acting outside of the house was a characteristic of the anti-heroine (270). Egger recognizes that the portrayal of women confined inside the house may have been actually anachronistic for the period, but it was a ‘popular myth in Graeco-Egyptian society in which the Greek novel was read’ (275). This is the same society as that of the Apocryphal Acts. Achilles Tatius 2.19. Translations of the novels are taken from B. P. Reardon 1993. Did husbands and wives share the same bedroom? This is a contested question. In her study of the Greek novel, Egger (1990) states that married couples generally do share a bedroom (248). Jameson (1990) points to the evidence from forensic speeches for separate sleeping rooms, but believes that a bedroom for married couples was normal (192 note 30). Keuls (1985) proposes that men and women slept in the same bed only to have sex (212).

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represent violations of female space, either the wrong males entering it, or females brazenly exiting it. By representing the breakdown of this central social boundary, the Acts metaphorically challenge all boundaries that exclude certain groups from influence in the public sphere. The Acts of Andrew particularly emphasizes the motif of the penetration of private space. Andrew Jacobs notes, for example, how often in this text elite bedrooms are turned into Christian meeting places.12 In an early episode, the Christians are meeting in the the governor’s house when his arrival is unexpectedly announced, Andrew notices that Maximilla, the governor’s wife, fears the group will be discovered. He prays that they may exit without her husand’s detecting them. The Lord answers this prayer: ‘As the governor came in, he was troubled by his stomach (1<21„Y€3Æ# /23"€#h%}), asked for a chamber pot, and spent a long time sitting, attending to himself. He did not notice all the brethren exit in front of him.’13 As soon as Aegeates recovers, he rushes into the bedroom to see his beloved wife. But Maximilla rejects her husband, having embraced Andrew’s preaching on sexual continence. When the proconsul leaves her, Maximilla instructs her maid: ‘go to the blessed one so that he may come here to pray and lay his hand on me while Aegeates is sleeping...[and] Andrew entered another bedroom where Maximilla was.14 In the representational context of this period, there could hardly be a clearer image for penetrated boundaries than a strange man in a woman’s bedroom at night. Moreover the two scenes, a wife denying her husband access to her body, only to entertain in her bedroom a socially excluded male visitor, emphasizes the connection between the function of these two spaces in the Acts. One’s body is, in Lefebvre’s phrase, ‘at the every heart of space,’15 and the woman’s reappropriation of her body from her high ranking husband as well as her reorganization of female space signify a radical Christian recoding of social space for their own ends.

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Jacobs 1999, 127. Jacobs points out that Andrew’s conversion speech to Stratocles takes place in Maximilla’s bedroom, and that the baptism of the brethren also ‘takes place in this elaborate network of bedrooms’ (fn 106, 127). Andrew, Passion 13; MacDonald 1990, 341–3. For the Acts of the Apostles, I am using the following editions: Andrew, MacDonald 1990; John, E. Junod and J.-D. Kaestli 1983; Peter, Paul, Thomas, R. Lipsius and M. Bonnet reprint 1959. Translation are based on J. K. Elliott and M. R. James 1993, except MacDonald 1990 for Andrew. Andrew, Passion 13–4; MacDonald 1990, 345. H. Lebfevre 1976, 89.

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The Acts of Andrew repeats the theme of the wrong person showing up in the wrong place in the rather discordant episode where Maximilla in her effort to remain continent disguises Euclia, her maid, as herself and sends her to her husband’s bed. The switch goes unnoticed for eight months, until Euclia’s boasting annoys her fellow slaves and they betray Maximilla’s plot to her husband. He learns that Maximilla had rejected sex with him as ‘a heinous and despicable act’ and that ‘Euclia had shared his bed as though she were his spouse’(-2ƒ!#).16 The narrative explicitly represents that the apostle’s entrance into the proconsul’s space has disrupted and confused both position and identity. For immediately preceding this episode describing the detection of Euclia’s ruse, the narrative tells how Maximilla, returning home earlier than expected from spending the night with Andrew, had disguised herself and tried to sneak in the gates. The household servants, however, stop and detain her, mistaking her for some foreigner (!0/Æ#).17 The apostle’s presence results in radical displacement of the normal spatial arrangements of the elite household: to the point that the mistress entering her house is stopped as a stranger, and the master of the house does not even know who shares the space of his own bed. Since any ‘metaphor of displacement,’ according to Kaplan, ‘includes referentially a concept of placement, dwelling, location, position,’18 the text here introduces the possibility of changed positionality, of individuals occupying spaces other than those allotted to them. If part of any society’s dominating practices is to insure that ‘things and people have places where they do and do not belong,’ the representation in the Acts of Andrew resists these practices. This theme of disruption and resisted social confinement continues in the depiction of Andrew’s imprisonment. A servant identifies Andrew for Aegeates in terms that emphasize his unsettling effect on domestic space: ‘there is the man by whom your house is now disrupted.’19 It is specifically for his invasion of this forbidden domestic space that Aegeates castigates Andrew: ‘you stranger, alien to this present life, enemy of my home, destroyer of my entire house. Why did you decide to burst into places alien to you.…’20 Moreover, Andrew provokes others to burst boundaries. When Aegeates orders An————— 16 17 18 19 20

Andrew, Passion 21–22; MacDonald 1990, 351–353. Andrew, Passion 20; MacDonald 1990, 351. Kaplan 1996, 143. Andrew, Passion 26; MacDonald 1990, 357. Andrew, Passion 51; MacDonald 1990, 393.

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drew imprisoned, Maximilla immediately determines to visit him. She shows her unfamiliarity with public space, however. She must first send her maidservant, Iphidama, to find out where the prison is. Iphidama finds the prison and Andrew. He prays that the Lord will protect the women when they return to visit him that night because, in his words, ‘they have made every effort to be bound together with me’(2$0101{/).21 Earlier in the narrative a servant had used the same image of the Christian community, when he explained to Aegeates that Maximilla ‘had bound, tied up (1"{021) your brother with the same passion for [Andrew] that has bound her (0{013/).22 In the Acts the only bounds that hold are those of Christian love. For Andrew assures Iphidama that the prison gates will be open for her. When Iphidama returns to Maximilla, the theme of breakable and broken boundaries is reinforced. For Maximilla exults: ‘I am about to see your apostle...even if an entire legion kept me locked up; it would not be strong enough to keep me from [him].’23 Aegeates tries mightily to confine his wife. He orders four guards to go to the prison and tell the jailer to secure the prison doors and let no one in under any circumstances, not even himself; or he would have his head. He orders four more guards to stand outside his wife’s bedroom.24 All to no effect, that night, the women leave the bedroom and reach the prison and find the doors open for them and a beautiful young boy (the Lord?) awaiting to lead them to Andrew.25 Until Andrew’s death, the Christian group, including Maximilla and Iphidama, continue to gather together at the prison guarded by the ‘Lord’s grace and protection’(3Ǎ1"!Ç, enclosure).26 Christian boundaries protect, but all other boundaries, even those most emblematic of social confinement – the woman’s bedroom, the prison – are represented as vulnerable in the Acts. When the powerful control space resistance can be no more than acting out of place.27 The Acts of Andrew with its emphasis on strangers in female bedrooms, and elite women in prisons can be read as a text resisting and transgressing prevailing spatial configurations.28 The motif of the apostle’s subver————— 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Andrew, Passion 29; MacDonald 1990, 363. Andrew, Passion 25; MacDonald 1990, 356. Andrew, Passion 30; MacDonald 1990, 365. Andrew, Passion 31; Macdonald 1990, 365. Andrew, Passion 32; Macdonald 1990, 365. Andrew, Passion 34; Elliott 1993, 369. S. Pile 1997, 16. Prison escapes are also a feature in the Greek ideal romance. When elite women fall into

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sion of normative spatial practice is prevalent throughout the Apocryphal Acts. In the Acts of Thomas, for example, Mygdonia, escaping the sexual advances of her husband, Charisius, runs naked from the bedroom. Her husband is shocked, in his words that ‘she, a woman of nobility, in whom none of the servants had ever detected a flaw, ran uncovered from her chamber.’29 Her husband reads her leaving her proper place as a transgression of her status position (a woman of nobility) and decides she must be mad, driven out of her mind by the apostle. Charisius had already attempted to come to terms with the apostle’s putative madness through a complex of spatial/status metaphors: ‘I will speak of the madness of the stranger, whose tyranny throws the great and illustrious into the depths.’30 Charisius translates the apostle’s threat into terms of status displacement. The Acts of Thomas also represents the elite forsaking their own places and entering the prison to be instructed by the apostle. The King and Charisius, for example, had both locked up their wives to keep them from the apostle. But Thomas’s twin, the Lord, frees the women and leads them to the prison. There they bribe the guards and enter to find the apostle instructing Vazan, the king’s son, and his family, along with the other prisoners. When the jailer orders the group to put out their lamps lest they give themselves away, Thomas prays and the Lord illumines the whole prison.31 Later when Prince Vazan wishes to leave and finds the doors locked, Thomas reassures him: ‘Believe in Jesus, and you shall find the gates open.’32 Thomas is represented as coming and going from the prison at will. In the Acts of Paul, not only Thecla, but the wife of the governor of Ephesus, Artemilla, visits Paul in prison. Paul greets her invoking a rhetoric of spatial displacement: ‘Woman, ruler of the world, mistress of much gold, citizen of great luxury...sit down on the floor and forget your riches and your beauty and your finery.’33 Artemilla wishes to get a smith to remove Paul’s fetters, —————

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prison, this is represented as outside the boundaries of their own cities. In Achilles Tatius, Melite does visit the confined Kleitophon, but he is imprisoned in her own home (5.23ff). See Pervo 1987, fn.15,147 for citations for prison escapes in ancient narratives. See T. Cresswell 1996 for the dialectic of place and transgression. Thomas 99; Elliott 1993, 485. Thomas 99; Elliott 1993, 485. Thomas 153; Elliott 1993, 503. Thomas 154; Elliott 1993, 503. Paul, for Thecla 18; Elliott 1993, 367. For Artemilla, see Schmidt 1936 for text; Elliott 1993, 377.

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but Paul refuses, trusting, he says, in God who delivered the ‘whole world from its bonds,’ and a young man appears and frees him. After Paul baptizes Artemilla, he freely returns to the prison past the sleeping guards. In these episodes the permeability of domestic space is matched with that of the carceral space. If boundaries are emblematic of power, the depiction of prisons unable to confine their prisoners would seem to be a direct assault on contemporary institutions of power. Richard Pervo has shown that prison escapes were a favorite literary topos of the period.34 What is distinctive in the Apocryphal Acts, however, is that, while the narratives consistently represent that neither bonds nor doors have the power to confine, nevertheless the prison, ultimately, is not escaped, but rather redefined as a space of instruction and community building. With the trope of the elite woman’s escape from domestic space, the Acts metaphorically worked to expose and to resist all spatial formulations that keep certain people in their place or out of place. Similarly the recoding of prison from a place of confinement to one of community is an example of the Acts’ agenda to create alternative spatialities from those defined through the hierarchical practices operating in the contemporary society. For the prison is quite emphatically not the space of the elite and to make it the center of community is to imagine a community where the elite are patently ‘out of place.’ Christians by redefining the prison, the public space of social containment, manifest their intent to ‘break out’ of the order of things, to de-center and displace things as they are. Recall that it was around the period of the earlier Apocryphal Acts (the late second century) that society became legally divided into two groups, honestiores and humiliores (note the spatial reference of the latter term – ‘the more low’), and, on this basis, the severity of judicial punishment was calibrated to status. Belonging to the honestiores, that is being a member of the group in society with high social standing based on ‘power, style of life or wealth,’ exempted a person from many punishments.35 Only in exceptional circumstances would a member of the honestiores be found in a prison.36 Thus prison, in the context of the social divisions of the early empire, ————— 34 35 36

Pervo 1987, 18–23. P. Garnsey 1970, 235–259. P. Garnsey 1970, 147–148. Garnsey suggests honestiores were usually only imprisoned for capital crimes. He also notes that with respect to the harsher punishment in the second and third century ‘it was not...the position of the honestiores in general which improved, but that of the humiliores which worsened’ 152.

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is a striking example of how social space can be used to tell people who they are and to inscribe asymmetrical relations of power onto shared social life. Ramsay MacMullen has described the mechanics of the very public display of power in the Roman empire and how such practices taught people from childhood to know their place.37 In the public spaces of the ancient cities, the powerful ostentatiously displayed their rank through retinues and insignia and arrogance. In the Acts of Thomas, for example, Mygdonia’s actions before her conversion can be considered typical of her rank (the wife of a ‘near relative of the king’): ‘And she was carried by her slaves, but could not be brought to him [Thomas] on account of the great crowd and the narrow space. So she sent to her husband for more servants. They came and went before her pushing and beating the people.’38 By focusing on the prison, the Acts look away from the public spaces, the streets, temples, gymnasia, theaters, agorai, palaces, where the elite manifested their power and the have-nots learned their place.39 Instead they focus on a civic space that is outside the order of privilege, in fact, legally, the place of the unprivileged; and they recode this space as their place of instruction and community building. In its focus on the prison, Christian narrative opens new space, undeniably civic space (the apostles are always consigned to prison by a ruler or high magistrate), but at the same time an anti-civic space, the space reserved for those without honor. By reinscribing the prison as a place for community and instruction, Christian narrative metaphorically rejects the social structures that confine all except the established elite to the position of the ‘more low.’40 If the the first step in reconstituting power relations is to reor————— 37

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MacMullen 1988, 58–84. MacMullen describes how people learned their social place early: ‘Indeed a great deal of the arrogant behavior [of the Haves] had the more or less conscious intent of instructing other people, even causal observers, in the responses that would be expected of them. Those who had wealth, esteem and influence secured these things ever more completely by asserting them; those who lacked them understood how they must conduct themselves; and their education of the one or the other sort was no doubt well begun while they were still children...’ 70. Thomas 82; Elliott, 1993, 479. Macmullen 1974 and 1988, 58–84, provides many examples of the methods the ‘Haves’ had for publicly inscribing their power. For the hierarchical ordering of theatrical space: J. Kolendo 1981, 301-315; E. Rawson 1987, 83-114. For the hierarchy of dining: J. D’Arms 1990, 308-320. For the relation of status to food choices: P. Garnsey 1999, 113-147. This is not to say that the apostles do not also at times in the Acts enter these public places and display their own power through miracles and preaching. H. Lefebvre 1991, 40 identified in cultures what he called ‘spaces of representation.’ D. Gregory 1994, 403 discusses these counterplaces, spatial representations that ‘arise from the

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ganize their spatial bases, coding prison as ‘good space’ is just such a maneuver; it opens a new public space for a new kind of actor. Moreover the description of prisons as spaces that can be entered and exited at will rejects any notion of space that keeps you in your place. During the early empire prison was a place of shame and social abandonment.41 Saundra Schwartz has shown how the Greek novel regularly employs the motif of the hero’s reduction in status and liability to the punishment of humiliores (prison, chains, and torture) to provoke sympathy for the hero and horror at his situation.42 Schwartz notes: ‘In order to expose a noble hero to a punishment typically restricted to humiliores and slaves, the author must change his hero from a noble, free man to a person of lower status...’43 Prison was the place of degradation, ‘bad space’ par excellence, but the Apocryphal Acts the Apostles make it the space of Christian community. In the Acts of John, for example, the Lord’s particular focus on prisoners and the spaces associated with them is noted: ‘he keeps watch even now over prisons for our sakes, and in tombs, in bonds and dungeons, in shame and reproaches...at scourgings, condemnations, conspiracies, plots and punishments ... as he is the God of those imprisoned.’44 The fact that the Lord himself in both the Acts of Andrew and Thomas conducts elite visitors to the prison shows his approbation of the site. Repeatedly in the various Acts, an apostle is described not only instructing the elite who visit him in the prison, but also the other prisoners. In The Acts of Paul, Paul is described ‘in great cheerfulness’ laboring and fasting with the other prisoners.45 In the Acts of Thomas, Thomas prays with the prisoners and when he is taken from the prison, the narrative describes their reaction: ‘all the prisoners were sad because the apostle went away from them, for they all loved him very much and ————— 41

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clandestine or underground side of social life’ and from the critical arts to imaginarily challenge the dominant spatial practices and spatialities.’ Rapske 1994, 288–298. Rapske cites examples. Apollonius of Tyana’s followers abandoned him on account of their fear of imprisonment, VA 4. 37. Lucian in his Toxaris celebrates a friendship so exceptional that one friend goes so far as to follow the other to prison to support him. Lucian’s point would seem to be that prisoners are more commonly abandoned by friends. Ignatius of Antioch writes the Smyrneans to thank them for treating him, in bonds, without the expected ‘hautiness nor shame,’ Smyrn. 10.2. In Achilles Tatius’ novel, the epithet ‘jail-bird’ is one of contempt, 8.1.3. Schwartz 1998, 379. Schwartz 1998, 117. John 103; Elliott 1993, 322. Paul 8; Elliott 1993, 380.

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said: ‘ even this consolation which we had is taken from us.’’46 Andrew also associates with the other prisoners: ‘speaking with his fellow inmates, whom he had already strengthened by encouraging them to believe in the Lord.’47 The apostles in the Acts are represented as allying themselves with the other prisoners. This differs from the depiction in the Greek novel, where, for example, Chariton shows Chaereas imprisoned in Caria segregating himself from the other prisoners because of their laziness.48 But Chaereas is himself an elite person socially displaced in imprisonment, and the Acts show clearly that this is not true of the apostles, nor of their Lord. All of whom are clearly represented in the Acts as belonging socially to the have-nots. A demon explains in the Acts of Thomas how Jesus was able to overpower them: ‘He...left us under his power, because we knew him not. He deceived us by his unattractive form and his poverty and his want.’49 In the contemporary society good looks, good breeding, and wealth all are understood to entail each other, to denote status, and to keep one out of prison.50 Like their Lord, the apostles display none of these signs of social power. Thus, in the Acts of Andrew, a group of slaves unfamiliar with Andrew’s appearance take him for a mean and paltry person.51 When Aegeates first meets Andrew, he comments on his appearance: ‘you appear in this manner like a poor, simple old man.’52 Similarly in the Acts of Thomas, Charisius is incredulous that his wife could prefer a man like Thomas: ‘Look at me. I am far more handsome than that sorcerer. I have riches and honour, and everybody knows that none has such a family as mine.’53 Charisius lists all the qualities of high status: good looks, wealth, elite family. When Thomas describes himself to Tertia, the king’s wife, it is plain how far he falls from this standard: ‘What have you come to see? A stranger, poor and despised and beggarly, who has neither riches nor possessions.’54 In fact, Charisius had tried to persuade his wife to ————— 46 47 48

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Thomas 125; Elliott 1993, 495. Andrew, Passion 28; MacDonald 1990, 363. Chariton 4.2. It is Chaereas, ironically, who is too lovesick to work. In Achilles Tatius, Kleitophon is also represented as ignoring the overtures of other prisoners until he overhears the name of Melite: 7.2–3. Thomas 45; Elliott 1993, 466. P. Garnsey 1970, 279. Andrew, Passion 3; MacDonald 1990, 329. Andrew, Passion 26; MacDonald 1990, 357. Thomas 116; Elliott 1993, 492. Thomas 136; Elliott 1993, 499.

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discount the apostle’s fasting and asceticism. He shares with her his horrified recognition that this was no philosophical stance, but real poverty: ‘he rather does it because he has nothing...he is poor.’55 Paul’s description ‘a man small in size, bald headed, bandy legged, of noble mein, with eyebrows meeting, rather hook nosed, full of grace’ is also ‘absolutely not idealized.’56 In the Acts of John, the apostle rejects a portrait of himself requiring, instead, another palette of colors for the soul: ‘which cure your bruises and heal your wounds and arrange your tangled hair and wash your face...’ 57 This depiction specifically images that of a prisoner whose filthy condition and matted hair are often referred to in contemporary testimony.58 By offering the prison as the center of community and the apostles as the sort of people who socially might find themselves in prison, the Acts create, I suggest, a countersite to the public spaces where the elite of the period forged their community. In their attempt to rearrange the spatial bases of community, the Acts of the Apostles can be seen to be engaged in ‘a struggle to reconstitute power relations. The imaginary offered in the Apocryphal Acts was in reality enacted in the Martyr Acts, which also offered the prison as the focus of Christian community. Both sets of texts opened new social space and both with their representation of the prison resisted the contemporary celebration of civic institutions and revealed the existence of those excluded from its ideal harmony.59 This new social space in turn empowered new voices to enter the cultural dialogue of the period.

Bibliography Ballok, J. 1996. ‘The description of Paul in the Acta Pauli’ in J.N. Bremmer (ed.) The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla. Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1–15. Bender, J. 1987. Imagining the Penitentiary: Fiction and Architecture of Mind In Eighteenth Century England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Thomas 96; Elliott 1993, 484. Ballok 1996, 3. John 29; Elliott 1993, 314. Junod and Kaestli 1983, 452–456 provide a discussion of this portrait with bibliography. For the filthy condition of prisoners, see C. Wansick, 1996, 33–38; B. Rapske 1994, 216– 219. In a paper that provides a companion piece to this one, I examine the Acts of the Martyrs to show how they also offered themselves as prison narratives and functioned to authorize and empower new voices from a newly defined social site, the prison, a countersite to the multiple cultural spaces authorizing the elite voice. J. Perkins 2001, 117–137.

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Bovon, F., Brock, A.G., and Matthews, C.R. (eds.) 1999. The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bremmer, J.N. 1996. The Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla. Kampen: Kok Pharos. Bremmer, J.N. 1998. The Apocryphal Acts of Peter: Magic, Miracles and Gnosticism. Leuven: Peeters. Cresswell, T. 1996. In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology and Transgression. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Curry, M.R. 1996. The Work in the World: Geographical Practice and the Written World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. D’Arms. J. 1994. ‘The Roman convivium and the ideal of equality’ in O. Murray (ed.) A Symposium on the Symposion. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 308–320. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. 1977. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. New York: Viking Press. Egger, B. 1990. ‘Women in the Greek Novel: Constructing the Feminine’. Ph. D dissertation. University of California at Irvine. Elliott, J.K. and James, M.R. 1993. The Apocryphal New Testament: a Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Foucault, M. 1972. Power/Knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books. Garnsey, P. 1970. Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Garnsey, P. 1999. Food and Society in Classical Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gregory, D. 1994. Geographical Imaginations. Oxford: Blackwell. Hock, R.F., Chance, J.B. and Perkins, J. (eds.) 1998. Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative. Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press. Jacobs, A.S. 1999. ‘A Family Affair: Marriage, Class, and Ethics in th Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles’. JECS 7.1, 105–138. Jameson, M. H. 1990. ‘Private Space in the Greek City’ in O. Murray and S. Price (eds.) The Greek City:From Homer to Alexander. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Junod, E. and Kaestli, J.-D. 1983. Acta Iohannis. Turnhout: Brepols. Kaplan, C. 1996. Questions of Travel. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. Keith, M. and Pile, S. 1993. ‘Introduction: Part I: The Politics of Place’ in M. Keith and S. Pile (eds.) Place and the Politics of Identity. London and New York: Routledge, 1–21. Keith, M. and Pile, S. 1993. ‘Introduction: Part II: The Place of Politics’ in M. Keith and S. Pile (eds.) Place and the Politics of Identity. London and New York: Routledge, 22–40. Keuls, E.C. 1985. The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens: An Illustrated History. New York: Harper & Row. Kolendo, J. 1981. ‘La répartition des places aux spectacles et la stratification sociale dans l’empire romain’. Ktèma 6, 301–315. Lefebvre, H. 1976. The Survival of Capitalism: Reproduction of the Relations of Production. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Lefebvre, H. 1991. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell.

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Lipsius, R.A. and Bonnet, M. 1891–8 (reprint1959). Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha. Darmstadt: George Olms. MacDonald, D.R. 1990. The Acts of Andrew and the Acts of Andrew and Matthias in the city of the cannibals. Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press. MacDonald, D.R. 1994. Christianizing Homer: the Odyssey, Plato, and the Acts of Andrew. New York: Oxford University Press. MacMullen, R. 1974. Roman Social Relations, 50 B.C. to A.D. 284. New Haven: Yale University Press. MacMullen, R. 1988. Corruption and the Decline of Rome. New Haven: Yale University Press. Malherbe, A.J. 1986. ‘A Physical Description of Paul’. Harvard Theological Review 79: 165–70. Moore, D. 1997. ‘Remapping Resistance’ in S. Pile and M. Keith (eds.) Geographies of Resistance. London; New York: Routledge, 87–106. Nevett, L. 1999. House and Society in the Ancient Greek World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Perkins, J. 2001. ‘Space, Place,Voice in the Acts of the Martyrs and the Greek Romance.’ in D.R. MacDonald (ed.) Mimesis and Intertextuality in Antiquity and Christianity. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 117–137. Pervo, R. 1987. Profit with Delight: The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles. Philadelphia: Fortress. Pile, S. 1997. ‘Introduction’ in S. Pile and M. Keith, M. (eds.) Geographies of Resistance. London: New York: Routledge, 1–32. Prieur, J.-M. 1989. Acta Andreae. Turnhout: Brepols. Rapske, B. 1994. The Book of Acts and Paul in Roman Custody. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans. Rawson, E. 1987. ‘Discrimina Ordinum: the Lex Iulia Theatralis’. Papers of the British School at Rome 55, 83–114. Reardon, B.P. (ed.)1989. Collected Ancient Greek Novels. Berkeley: University of California Press. Saïd, S. 1993. ‘The City in the Greek Novel’. in J. Tatum (ed.) The Search for the Ancient Novel. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 216–236. Schwartz, Saundra. 1998. Courtroom Scenes in the Ancient Greek Novels. Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University. Soja, E.W. 1989. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso. Stallybrass, P. and White, A. 1986. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Walker, S. 1983. ‘Women and Housing in Classical Greece’ in A. Cameron and A. Kurhrt (eds.) Images of Women in Antiquity. London: Croom Helm, 81–91. Wansink, C.S. 1996. Chained in Christ: The Experience and Rhetoric of Paul’s Imprisonments. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Reading Space: A Re-examination of Apuleian ekphrasis MICHAEL PASCHALIS

Crete

In his seminal article entitled ‘Narrate and Describe: The Problem of ekphrasis’ Don Fowler dealt with the ways in which a literary ekphrasis interacts with the surrounding narrative.1 One of the ways is through the various levels of focalization, in the sense that a work of art may represent the viewpoint of the artist, observer, author or other party, and of their respective audiences. In discussing the case of the pictures in Dido’s temple he quotes, with regard to Aeneas, Eleanor Leach’s observation that ‘the order of presentation creates confusion between the visual image and Aeneas’ thoughts’. I would like to re-phrase the problem as follows: is Aeneas describing the picture, telling a story or both? The boundaries between description and narrative are blurred not only in this ekphrasis but in all the major ekphrastic pieces of the Aeneid.2 Beginning with Homer’s description of the Shield of Achilles and over the course of the development of literary ekphrasis in antiquity the ‘tension’ between description and narrative has existed not only in relation to the surrounding narrative but also within the ekphrasis. This last point has not received proper attention. Some studies treat ekphrasis as something fixed in time and unchanging3 while others give this point partial and inadequate attention. I single out two of the most sensitive approaches to literary description, precisely in order to show the degree of scholarly awareness of the problem. Andrew Laird’s distinction between ‘obedient’ and ‘disobedient’ ekphrasis, based on what can and what cannot be visually represented, has ————— 1 2

3

Fowler 1991. Literature on ekphrasis in the Aeneid is vast; the most recent comprehensive treatment is Putnam 1998. Laird 1996; Laird 1997, 60 f.

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the disadvantage of being static, i.e. it is not concerned with patterns of change and development.4 Giovanni Ravenna’s study of Latin poetic ekphrasis departs from the point that ekphrasis combines description and narrative. But he focuses almost exclusively on the internal temporal relation of scenes, in order to show how this relation gradually achieves, from Homer to Hellenistic poetry, greater unity and eventually true temporal sequence in Virgilian ekphrasis. As for his overall distinction between ‘theoria greca’ and ‘temporalità latina’, this is hardly applicable, for instance, to Apuleius’ Diana and Actaeon.5 Gotthold Lessing’s famous Laokoon: oder über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie (1766) provides the most important starting points for any theoretical discussion of ekphrasis in modern times.6 Lessing argued that the visual arts can enter into what he called a ‘suitable relation’ only with ‘bodies in space’, while the verbal arts can do so only with ‘actions in time’; the reverse in both domains can be done only by suggestion, and is something that Lessing regarded in any case as a transgression of boundaries and greatly disapproved of. Despite his axiomatic views on poetry and his censuring of Homer for attempting to describe the surface appearance of a work of art, Lessing’s observations possess an inherent value in the sense that they raise the issue of spatial and temporal relations vis-à-vis artistic representation and its description. In a condensed form Lessing’s distinction is found in Richard Heinze’s classic statement that narrative deals with temporal relations (‘das Nacheinander’), while description deals with spatial relations (‘das Nebeneinander’).7 In Decoding the Ancient Novel Shadi Bartsch discussed the role and significance of ekphrasis in Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius against the backdrop of the rhetorical practices of the period of the Second Sophistic. In my opinion the impact of the professionalization of description during this period is best seen in the fact that the domains of describing and of visual art are clearly demarcated. Works of art, like paintings and statues, now have an existence of their own. The fact that they may be exhibited in (real or imaginary) art galleries is in essence emblematic of their autonomy. Writers of progymnasmata are quite clear on the distinction between ekphrasis and ————— 4 5 6 7

Laird 1993. Ravenna 1974. Becker 1995, 9–22 offers a summary presentation of Lessing’s work. Heinze 1915, 396 ff.

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diêgêsis (‘narration’): the former deals with ta kata meros (‘particulars’) and the latter with ta katholou (‘universals).8 The person who describes a work of art is concerned with placing scenes and objects firmly in space. In sophistic ekphrasis and its antecedents narrative is assigned two major roles, which usually allow little room for confusion in the mind of the reader between what is and what is not visually represented. Its first role is to function as a comment on, and interpretation of, the piece described. This is often achieved by engaging the viewer, an interlocutor or interlocutors, and the reader in the game of interpreting.9 Its other role is to function as a discursive exposition of a work of art. Two famous instances of this latter case are the opening of Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, and Petronius’ Satyricon 89. In the former the narrator claims that the story he will tell lies behind a painting he once saw in a grove of the Nymphs on the island of Lesbos, the scenes of which were explained to him by an exêgêtês (‘explicator’).10 In the latter Eumolpus recites verses that presumably ‘explain’ (uersibus pandere) a painting representing the capture of Troy.11 Eumolpus’ poem is, of course, pure narrative that has nothing whatsoever to do with the tabula in question. Slater believes that ‘the painting in the gallery is no more than an excuse for recital of the Troiae halosis’.12 Irrespectively of Eumolpus’ motives we end up with what might be seen, in Lessing’s terms, as a statement on ‘the Limits of Painting and Poetry’. A third instance is perhaps more illuminating: at the beginning of Leucippe and Clitophon the author gives a description of a painting of Zeus and Europa, which the narrator next uses as a point of departure to tell his story as illustration of the power of Eros (1.1–2). To sum up, the game in the Second Sophistic is called ‘Description and Interpretation’. A fundamental rule of the game is that you have to identify what is represented in a picture or sculpture, in order to be able to tell what is not represented or what is represented differently or what the meaning of the representation is. Sophistic description displays an enhanced awareness of spatial relations and describing becomes primarily a question of reading ————— 8

9 10

11 12

Theon in Spengel 2.118–120; Nicolaus in Spengel 3.491–493 (Nicolaus is the only one who mentions artwork as the subject of ekphrasis). Bartsch 1989, Ch. 1. On the initial ekphrasis of Daphnis and Chloe see Hunter 1983, 38–52 with literature; Zeitlin 1990. Connors 1995; and for the context see Elsner 1993. Slater 1990, 97.

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space. In the lengthy Zeus and Europa ekphrasis at the beginning of Achilles Tatius’ novel there are more than four dozen spatial deictics (adverbs, prepositions and prefixes) and not a single temporal deictic. The rendering of time and aspect cannot, of course, be entirely eliminated. The imperfect of description is used copiously throughout to indicate not only static details but also action unfolding before the eyes of the viewer (as in tauros enêcheto, ‘a bull was swimming’). The representation of duration is perhaps the most conspicuous instance where the limits between description and interpretation are (unavoidably) violated, in the sense that – to use Lessing’s terms – the description renders simultaneously ‘bodies in space’ and ‘actions in time’. As we take a fresh look at the ekphrasis of Diana and Actaeon in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses 2.4,13 we realize first that the person who describes is highly concerned with locating his description firmly in space. This is done with the help of deictics, which tell fairly accurately where each figure of the group and the background are placed within the atrium and in relation to one another. To the order in which the items of the sculptural group are presented I will come back later. My immediate task is to see how the ekphrasis deals with ‘actions in time’. Under this label I include movement but also sound (specifically the barking of dogs understood as a durative or repetitive emission). Two interrelated issues should be considered here: first the rendering of temporal and aspectual relations and, secondly, the mechanisms through which the sculptural representation of Diana and Actaeon is perceived as a narrative sequence. As noted above, the rendering of duration is a critical test for determining the kind of ekphrasis we have before us, in the sense that it cannot be visually represented and is therefore inherently a question of interpretation. It cannot be eliminated but it can be drastically reduced in the description itself, while part of it can be transferred to the domain of interpretive comments. In the present ekphrasis this is achieved in a number of ways. First, the description focuses on completed action and privileges the use of adjectives, which are devoid of aspect and which the modern translator14 is sometimes forced to render with present participles. Here is the description of the statue of Diana: signum perfecte luculentum (adj., ‘an absolutely brilliant statue’), ueste reflatum (past participle, ‘robe blowing in the wind’), procursu uegetum (adj., ‘vividly running forward’), introeuntibus obvium (adj., ————— 13 14

For literature on this ekphrasis see van Mal-Maeder 1998, 99–100. Most, but not all, translations of passages are drawn from Hanson 1989.

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‘coming to meet you as you entered’) et maiestate numinum uenerabile (adj., ‘awesome with the sublimity of godhead’). Secondly, the person who describes uses verbs which suggest a static rather than dynamic representation, as in the description of the dogs: aures rigent (‘their ears are stiff’) and nares hiant (‘their nostrils are wide open’). Thirdly, in the case of the barking of the dogs the narrator uses a neutral verb (ora saeuiunt, ‘their mouths gape savagely’), which bypasses the emission of sound.15 The fourth device is the viewer’s interpretive comment at this point: ‘so that if the sound of barking burst in from next door you would think it had come from the marble’s jaws’. Taking advantage of the very target of ekphrasis, which is to ‘bring the subject before our eyes with enargeia’,16 the person who describes steps in occasionally to manipulate the viewers’ and readers’ perception by channeling it in the direction of interpretation: ‘you would think them to be in flight’; or ‘if you bent down and looked in the pool, you would think that the bunches of grapes … possessed the quality of movement, among all other aspects of reality’. In this way the illusion of life, an inherent feature of ekphrasis, becomes a foil for coping with the rendering of sound and movement and ultimately of temporality. It should be noted that enargeia was in a number of ways (by etymology, by association with energeia, and, sometimes by definition) associated not just with visual vividness but also with action and movement.17 Strictly relevant is the fact that the person who describes turns the dynamic process of metamorphosis into an accomplished fact and hence into a static situation. Iam in cervum ferinus means that Actaeon ‘has already taken the shape of a beast’.18 In other words, iam here marks not a beginning but a completed action, which is in addition rendered not with a participle but with an adjective.19 There are indeed representations of Actaeon beginning to turn into a stag before he commits the crime proper.20 The choice of a synchronic ————— 15 16

17 18

19

20

On saeuiunt see van Mal-Maeder 1998, 109. For rhetorical definitions of ekphrasis see Becker 1995, 24 ff.; Bartsch 1989; Dubel 1997. On enargeia see, among others, Zanker 1987 and Manieri 1998. Cf. Manieri 1998, 97 ff. For this interpretation see van Mal-Maeder 1998, 120; Robertson-Vallette 1940–1945, ad loc. For the syntax see Callebat 1968, 229 ff. Those who take iam as marking the beginning or the process of transformation (Hanson 1989: ‘in the very act of changing into a stag’) are apparently unhappy with the idea that transformation has already taken place before Diana steps into the bath. Schlam 1984, 95 ff.; van Mal-Maeder 1998, 120.

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(descriptive) over a diachronic (narrative) version21 is intended to render the visual text as faithfully as possible. Moreover, in the present ekphrasis artistic creation (ars) and metamorphosis are closely related. First in the description of Actaeon vis-à-vis the statue of Diana: iam in cervum ferinus picks up lapis Parius in Dianam factus (‘a piece of Parian marble made into the likeness of Diana’); and next in the description of Actaeon himself: first comes ‘a marble figure in the likeness of Actaeon’ (inter medias frondes lapidis Actaeon simulacrum) and there follows ‘Actaeon in the likeness of a beast’ (iam in cervum ferinus). In both cases artistic creation (the statues of Diana and figure of Actaeon) and transformation (the metamorphosis of Actaeon) are perceived as accomplished facts and as having become ‘bodies in space’. It is the person who describes that steps in to interpret and transform a visual text representing bodies in space into a verbal text representing actions in time. The entire Actaeon section consists of a single sentence with one finite verb: uisitur (‘is seen’). Several of the things that we are told about him are the projection of the viewer’s gaze and hence they are a question of interpretation. Just as earlier the person describing provided various comments in order to render the realism of artistic representation, so here he interprets Actaeon’s gaze as ‘inquisitive’ (curioso optutu) and conjectures that the hero is ‘waiting for Diana to step into the bath’ (loturam Dianam opperiens). The statue itself represents only Diana’s robe ‘blowing in the wind’ (ueste reflatum); it is the viewer who provides the motive of voyeurism. In broader terms, it is the viewer that creates a narrative sequence out of bodies arranged in space, and it is also he who creates a single narrative out of two separate artistic traditions (the striding Diana and Diana’s bath).22 Apuleius’ acute awareness of spatiality and temporality and of the different possibilities of representation is evident in Ch. 14 of the Apology, recently discussed by Niall Slater and Yun Lee Too.23 A statue or a painting, he says, fails to register the motion and change of the individual it represents, which thus displays the rigidity of a corpse; by contrast, a mirror image is far superior, because it registers every motion and change in the person it reflects. By ‘motion’ and ‘change’ he means such things as a nod, a change of expression, and the biological changes brought about by the advance of years. Had Lessing been interested in mirror reflections, he would ————— 21 22 23

See van Mal-Maeder 1998, 120; cf. Sharrock 1996, 106. Schlam 1984; Slater 1998; Heath 1992, 123. Too 1996; Slater 1998, 41 ff.

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undoubtedly have said that mirrors are capable of rendering both ‘bodies in space’ and ‘actions in time’. Reflections (in the pool) of the grapes and of the marble figure of Actaeon function as yet another means to render temporality and specifically motion and change. To be precise, reflections complement the viewer’s interpretive comment, and they suggest the dimension of time by engaging the viewer: ‘if you looked into the water, you would think that the bunches of grapes … possessed the quality of movement’. This is quite different from movement being actually represented and also allows the person who describes to stimulate the viewer’s imagination. This way of looking at things would, I think, answer the questions raised by Slater, such as the difficulty of representing a reflection in three-dimensional art or of picking out a reflection on the moving surface of the pool.24 We can now look at the order in which the items of the sculptural group are presented. Heath claims that Lucius describes Byrrhena’s courtyard ‘as objects meet his eye’.25 This is not accurate. Spatial deictics make the statue of Diana the very center of the arrangement and the very focus of attention. The four statues of Isis-Victoria-Fortuna26 stand at the four corners of the atrium. The statue of Diana, singled out with the introductory ecce, occupies in balance the center of the whole area: the visitor relates directly to it as he enters, the dogs are placed at its flanks, the cave with its vegetation is placed behind the goddess’ back, the marble statue’s brilliance glistens in the interior of the cave, the pool runs along by (or from under) the goddess’ feet and Actaeon is leaning towards the goddess waiting for her to step into the bath. What Heath says would be true not of the present ekphrasis but of Ch. 1 of book 2, where Lucius casts his eyes around with impatient and passionate curiosity giving a random description of nature (rocks, birds, trees and fountains), which he perceives as transformed human beings. Apparently, this Lucius, who reads space exclusively on the basis of his own desire, has nothing to do with the Lucius who describes the atrium of Byrrhena’s house with a formality which strikes the reader from the very beginning. This other Lucius of Ch. 4 of book 2 is a professional, a sophist (to use the title of Stephen Harrison’s recent book) versed in describing works of art and simi————— 24 25 26

Slater 1998. Heath 1992, 123. Peden 1985.

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lar.27 The contrast with Ch. 2.1 is even more pronounced, considering the relative affinity of the subject-matter in the two passages. Taking everything into account, I would suggest that the person who describes the Diana and Actaeon group is Lucius-auctor (the retrospective narrator of action)28 and not Lucius-actor (the currently acting protagonist). Lucius-actor is inserted rather abruptly immediately after the formal description: ‘I was staring again and again at the statuary enjoying myself enormously, when Byrrhena spoke’. The enormous pleasure Lucius-actor takes in looking at it means that he does not absorb the warning; but he cannot be held responsible and accused of ‘blindness’ on account of the brevity of the description or of focusing on ‘details,29 because this is the domain of the other Lucius, the retrospective narrator. In addition, the narrative provides in the person of Byrrhena the typical interpreter figure (exêgêtês). She performs this function not merely by uttering the cryptic phrase ‘tua sunt … cuncta quae uides’30 but also by using the description as a point of departure in order to talk of Pamphile’s powers and warn Lucius of them. This latter feature is reminiscent of a technique discussed above, namely the relation between description and narrative in the case of the Zeus and Europa ekphrasis at the beginning of Achilles Tatius’ novel. What was said above applies more or less to other descriptions in the Metamorphoses. I mean the ekphrasis of the palace of Cupid in 5.1, the robber’s cave in 4.6.1–4 and the cliff in 6.14.2–4. Worthy of consideration is also the longest ekphrasis in the novel, the pantomime performance on the subject of the judgment of Paris in 10.30–32.31 The case is, of course, different because a performance involves temporal relations as well, and specifically movement and change of scenes. But even here there are striking similarities with the Diana and Actaeon ekphrasis. The person who describes does not easily yield to the temptation of narrating instead of describing. Hardly any temporal adverbs are employed to indicate transitions and the entrance of characters. The introduction of characters is rendered paratacti————— 27

28 29 30

31

Harrison 2000, 74, 103, 114, 221, and all of Ch. 2: ‘A Sophist’s novel: The Metamorphoses’. Correctly so van Mal-Maeder 1997, 192. Van Mal-Maeder 1998, 117 speaks of ‘aveuglement’, which she explains in these terms. Slater 1998, 36 n. 23 believes that this statement portrays Byrrhena as a ‘parody’ of the interpreter figure. Recent literature on this ekphrasis includes Fick 1990; Finkelpearl 1991; Zimmerman 1993 and 2000.

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cally and in a way that brings to mind a series of tableaux: adest (‘There appeared’), insequitur (‘Next came’), irrupit alia (‘On came another girl’), super has introcessit alia (‘After these another girl made her entrance’), Venus ecce …constitit (Now Venus … took her position’), Et influunt (‘Then in streamed’), etc. With astonishing awareness of the function of temporality the person who describes accumulates temporal indicators in the climactic scene, when Venus comes before Paris and receives the prize (32).32 All in all, in the Metamorphoses we are far removed from the ekphrasis of Dido’s temple pictures (Aen. 1.456–493), where one cannot tell between the ‘visual image and Aeneas’ thoughts’ and where Aeneas may be narrating events of the Trojan war instead of describing scenes on the walls. The person who describes is now well trained to distinguish between what is and what is not visually represented. His job is to render spatial relations (‘bodies in space’) as accurately as possible so that he can supply himself the nonrepresentable elements and comment upon the meaning of the representation.

Bibliography Bartsch, Sh. 1989. Decoding the Ancient Novel: The Reader and the Role of Description in Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius, Princeton. Becker, A.S. 1995. The Shield of Achilles and the Poetics of Ekphrasis, Lanham, Maryland. Callebat, L. 1968. Sermo cotidianus dans les Métamorphoses d’Apulée, Caen. Connors, C. 1995. ‘Beholding Troy in Petronius’ Satyricon and John Barclay’s Euphormionis Lusini Satyricon’, in: Hofmann, H., ed. Groningen Colloquia on the Novel, vol. VI, Groningen, 51–74. Dubel, S. 1997. ‘Ekphrasis et enargeia : la description antique comme parcours’, in : Lévy, C. and Pernot, L., eds. Dire l’évidence (Philosophie et rhétorique antiques), Paris – Montreal, 249–264. Elsner, J. 1993. ‘Seductions of Art : Encolpius and Eumolpus in a Neronian picture gallery’, PCPS 39: 30–47.

————— 32

I mean the use of iam for the beginning of flute playing; the use of a present participle to synchronize the playing of charming melodies (quibus spectatorum pectora suaue mulcentibus, ‘while these tunes were delightfully charming the spectators’) with the moment Venus starts to move towards the judge; the use of a temporal clause to indicate the moment when Venus ‘arrives in sight of the judge’ (Haec ut primum ante iudicis conspectum facta est); and the use of tunc (‘then’) for the moment when Paris hands Venus the apple.

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Fick, N. 1990. ‘Die Pantomime des Apuleius (Met.X,30–34,3)’, in: Blänsdorf J., ed. Theater und Gesellschaft im Imperium Romanum, Tübingen, 223–32. Finkelpearl, E. 1991. ‘The Judgement of Lucius: Apuleius Metamorphoses 10,29– 34’, CA 10: 221–36. Fowler, D. P. 1991. ‘Narrate and Describe: The Problem of ekphrasis’, JRS 81: 25– 35. Hanson, J. A., ed. and tr. 1989. Apuleius: Metamorphoses, Cambridge, Mass. – London. Harrison, S. J. 2000. Apuleius: A Latin Sophist, Oxford. Heath, J. 1992. Actaeon, the Unmannerly Intruder, New York – San Francisco – Bern. Heinze, R. 1915. Virgils epische Technik, Leipzig – Berlin. Hunter, R. L. 1983. A Study of Daphnis &Chloe, Cambridge. Laird, A. 1993. ‘Sounding out ecphrasis: Art and Text in Catullus 64’, JRS 83: 18– 30. — 1996. ‘Vt figura poesis : Writing Art and the Art of Writing in Augustan Poetry’, in: Elsner, J., ed. Art and Text in Roman Culture, Cambridge, 75–102. — 1997. ‘Description and Divinity in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, in: Hofmann, H. and Zimmerman, M., eds. Groningen Colloquia on the Novel, vol. VIII, Groningen, 59–85. Lessing, G. E. 1766 (1988). Laokoon: oder über die Grenzen von Malerei und Poesie, Frankfurt am Main. Mal-Maeder, D. van 1997. ‘Descriptions et descripteurs: mais qui décrit dans les Métamorphoses d’Apulée?’, in: Picone, M. and Zimmermann, B., eds. Der Antike Roman und seine mittelalterliche Rezeption, Basel – Boston – Berlin. — 1998. Apulée. Les Métamorphoses. Livre II, 1–20. Introduction, texte, traduction et commentaire, Diss. Groningen. Manieri, A. 1998. L’immagine poetica nella teoria degli antichi, Pisa – Rome. Peden, R. G. 1985. ‘The Statues in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses 2.4’, Phoenix 39: 380–383. Putnam, M. 1998. ‘Virgil’s Epic Designs: Ekphrasis in the Aeneid’, New Haven – London. Ravenna, G. 1974. ‘L’ekphrasis poetica di opere d’arte in latino’, Quaderni dell’istituto di filologia Latina (Università di Padova, Facoltà di Magistero), 3: 1–52. Robertson, D. S. and Vallette, P. eds. 1940–1945. Apulée. Les Métamorphoses. Paris. Sharrock, A. 1996. ‘Representing Metamorphosis’, in: Elsner, J., ed. Art and Text in Roman Culture, Cambridge, 103–130. Schlam, C.C. 1984. ‘Diana and Actaeon: Metamorphosis of a Myth’, CA 3: 82–110. Slater, N. W. 1990. Reading Petronius, Baltimore – London. — 1998. ‘Passion and Petrifaction: The Gaze in Apuleius’, CP 93: 18–48. Too, Yun Lee 1996. ‘Statues, Mirrors, Gods: Controlling Images in Apuleius’, in: Elsner, J., ed. Art and Text in Roman Culture, Cambridge, 133–152. Zanker, G. 1987. Realism in Alexandrian Poetry: A Literature and its Audience, London – Sydney – Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.

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Zeitlin, F. 1990. ‘The Poetics of eros: Nature, Art and Imitation in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe’, in: Halperin, D.M. et alii, eds. Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, Princeton, 417–464. Zimmerman, M. 1993. ‘Narrative Judgement and Reader Response in Apuleius' Metamorphoses 10.29–34: the Pantomime of the Judgement of Paris’ in: Hofmann, H.,ed. Groningen Colloquia on the Novel, vol. V, Groningen, 143–61. — 2000. Apuleius Madaurensis Metamorphoses X. Text, Introduction and Commentary. Groningen.

A Good Place to Talk: Discourse and Topos in Achilles Tatius and Philostratus RICHARD P . MARTIN

Stanford University

We might think more germane to architects, urban planners, restaurateurs and telephone companies the question: what makes a place good for talk? Yet the evidence of ancient Greek novels suggests that tellers of those tales were equally concerned with this issue and its implications. In this paper I would like to explore the place taken up in one such ancient tale, the story of Leukippê and Kleitophôn attributed to Achilles Tatius. I shall propose that his attention to place is, in fact, a way of being attentive to the qualities of his own artistic creation. In other words, for Achilles Tatius, topos is more than just a topos. Furthermore, I shall argue that the rhetoric of place as it relates to narrative makes explicit a deeply felt link in Greek literature and culture between the ground on which one walks and the people of whom, as well as with whom, one speaks. This latter point will take us on short treks into other territory—Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, Plato’s Phaedrus, and a possible contemporary of Achilles Tatius, the Philostratus who authored the Heroikos. If in the end we come to think of this Greek novel as being more like aboriginal Australian narratives and less like the “novel” so-called, I will have achieved part of my purpose.1 On this textual journey there are seven stops, best viewed as a series of transformations. As in the Ovidian model (itself perhaps a forerunner of the ancient novel), so with my chosen topos, people become trees, trees people, ————— 1

In a wonderful convergence of theme and scene, the organizers of the May 2001 Rethymno conference on space in the novel provided us with exactly the right place to talk, at the right time of year, with the best of company. I wish to take this opportunity to thank all our hosts at the University of Crete, and in particular Michael Paschalis and Stavros Frangoulidis, for their generous hospitality, gracious conversation, and good counsel.

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and love is enacted not only in but as a landscape. The events transpire, one should note, not only as surface topographical occurrences, but also in conjunction with what lies beneath the earth. There are roots to the approach, regarding which it will be useful to make one theoretical point before moving to the first text. Drawing on the Russian Formalist distinction between fabula and sjuzhet, or “story” and “discourse,” I shall organize my comments in terms of “speaker space” and “plot space,” respectively. 2 This elementary contrast is meant to account for two sorts of description in the texts that follow: on the one hand, the fairly common detailing of landscape features through which a novel’s characters move—“plot space” by my term—and on the other, the much less common, but crucially foregrounded description by a narrator of the place in which his own discourse is generated. The distinction is perhaps obvious; what is perhaps less predictable, and what poses more interesting questions, is the way in which the two “spaces”—narrator’s and characters’—intersect and merge. It is precisely through such mergers that Achilles Tatius works his art. We should begin at the beginning of the novel. The narrator of Leukippê and Kleitophôn tells us right away that he once escaped shipwreck and went to the temple of Astarte in the Phoenician city of Sidon to give thanks. There he saw a painting of a famous mythic scene. Actually, he describes the scene, but never explicitly says that it is a myth. Thus the effect is, from the start, one of blending everyday life in the narrator’s present with an unspecific past—perhaps a point not very far in the past. The style of the painting is virtuosic, a combination of landscape and seascape, with realistic touches, such as the pick-holding gardener placed in the scene (1.1.3): 3  ýX"…#-"/4}’.!'-y/22/’ 0í!#-Æ&3ÇÇ1„ /~ %!"€# /"{'  3Ç /y33Ä 3/ã"!# }%13! /~ 3!Ô# …3!# /| /"{!# 1y3! ~
"}3 3î 3/ƒ"ë {!$2/ / !!Ô# 12 M 1…Ý 0{0"' /X3!Ô# 1{3! 4y/  /~ 4$3íÝ2$1%Æ3x0{0"/Ý2$"14Æ3x{3//Ý2$ƍ3!!=3"!3x 4ƒ/ /~ 13! 3!Ô# 12 P"!4!# - 3í 4ƒ' 2$!} $"/&1M31%3#Y€3x{3///~3|2y/~M1!#,"{/3!ã 1í!# y3' 2!"y0 0{""1 Q2! 3€ 2$"14z# 3Æ# 3í 4ƒ' #{ë 1M"/41ƒ#Q!31%13€1í/1"!}Ý1@2'0z ————— 2 3

On the distinction and its history, see Chatman (1978) 19–22 and Erlich (1981) 239–50. Text and translation from Loeb edition by Gaselee revised by Warmington (1969)

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3!ã 3í L"4' 2314/…/3!# M 1„ y3! /= 0z "/2/~ 3í {'Y€3x{3//3í4$3í23!%0€14ƒ12/y"22!#/~ â0//~ƒ""/]0'"0z/3x{2!$""13!ã1í!#3Æ#"/4Æ# 3€z/ƒ!y3'1€3Æ#Æ#3€0z3!Ô#12/~3!Ô#4$3!Ô# 1"%11! L%13# 3# {"/3! 01/ /3{%' /~ 1"~ / y"/1$4„#/~!'3|M0€3îâ1ƒ/3 “The painting was of Europa; the sea depicted was the Phoenician Ocean; the land, Sidon. On the land part was a meadow and a troop of girls; in the sea a bull was swimming, and on his back sat a beautiful maiden, borne by the bull towards Crete. The meadow was thick with all kinds of flowers, and among them was planted a thicket of trees and shrubs, the trees growing so close that their foliage touched; and the branches, intertwining their leaves, thus made a kind of continuous roof over the flowers beneath. The artist had also represented the shadows thrown by the leaves, and the sun was gently breaking through, here and there, on to the meadow, where the painter had represented openings in the thick roof of foliage. The meadow was surrounded on all sides by an enclosure, and lay wholly within the embowering roof; beneath the shrubs grass-beds of flowers grew orderly—narcissus, roses, and bays; in the middle of the meadow in the picture flowed a rivulet of water bubbling up on one side from the ground, and on the other watering the flowers and shrubs; and a gardener had been painted holding a pick, stooping over a single channel and leading a path for the water.” Three aspects of this ekphrasis deserve our attention—its syntax, its metaphorical language, and its imagery. All three combine to make the description something like a programmatic presentation of the novelist’s own craft.4 First, syntax. Readers of the great Los Angeles mystery writer Raymond Chandler may hear echoes of his hard-bitten laconic style in the way that our passage begins. The Loeb translator was clearly too highbrow to reproduce such effects literally. A closer version, capturing the word-order and style, would run something like this: “the painting—it’s Europa. The sea— Phoenician. Territory—Sidon. In it, a meadow. A maiden chorus.”5 The ————— 4

5

On ekphrasis see especially Bartsch (1989). I have not been able to consult Harlan (1965). On Achilles Tatius’ style as baroque and Asianic, see Bowie (1999) 51.

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author starts out employing a strikingly paratactic syntax with no connective particles of the type one expects in Attic prose, and even without overt verbs or verb phrases. The effect is painterly, as if striving for pure static depiction rather than for a dynamic forward-moving narrative. Alongside this pointillist technique runs another, the Hemingwayesque. Notice the incantatory repetition of essential words in sequence: thalassa, gê, gê, leimôn, parthenôn, thalassa, parthenos, leimôn, dendrôn, dendra.6 The insistence on a few key nouns once again makes us perceive a freezing of the narrative, producing a static, panel-painting effect, rather than a verb-driven storyline. Now when he turns to describe the meadow, the same repetition of key elements (2$1%Æ“joining together,”2$"14Æ“roofing together,”2$ƍ3! “twined together,”2$!}“weaving- together”)becomes a verbal icon for the dense interweave of foliage shading the place. In sum, Achilles Tatius strives to make text mimic topos. The second aspect, metaphorical language, is what enables us to accept this unusual blending of world with language. For the author consistently applies “culture” words to the natural scene he paints.7 Note such phrases as dendrôn phalanx, “a phalanx (culture word) of trees” (nature). Or, to take another example, tois anthesin orophos, “a roof (culture) for flowers” (nature). In fact, the entire image of a meadow enclosed as if in the room of a house is the perfect expression for nature enclosed in a painting. But also—more to the point—it is the most apt image for a living world enclosed in the bounds of text, which is exactly the novelist’s accomplishment. Finally, the imagery of the passage includes a detail that we might see as equivalent to the writer writing himself into the text—the gardener. If the novelist, as weaver of words, is like the one who arranged this cultured, cultivated bower of intersecting leaves and trees, then the Brueghel touch of the little man with a pick directing the stream of water within the meadow is nothing other than a generic self-portrait. As we shall see shortly, the gardener figure in a cognate novelistic work even more explicitly stands for the cultivator of stories. By the way, in connection with this affiliation of the one who arranges landscapes with the one who lines up words, it is worth pointing to the word stoikhedôn in section five of the passage above. Literally, it describes the orderly disposition of grassy flower plots. But of course the ————— 6 7

Compare the opening of e.g. For Whom the Bell Tolls. On the relation of metaphor to the theme of metamorphosis within “baroque” poetics, see Mignogna (1995) 24–29.

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same adverb, “in lines,” can describe the arrangement of Greek words on stone or page. Once again, the novelist takes the guise of landscape artist. So much for what we can call the painted landscape. If the opening passage signals to us that we are dealing with a highly self-conscious narrator, the next passage to be considered (1.2.1) reinforces the links between tale and topography. For convenience, I shall call the narrator, who is apparently the author, narrator #1. We do not in fact know whether this is supposed to be Achilles Tatius. As Brian Reardon has pointed out, much of the artistry of this novel lies in the play of various “ego-narrators” and what they know.8 As an “ego-narrator,” teller #1 reveals only a little about himself. We learn especially from this passage that he is “a lover” himself, and thus paid particular attention to the painted love story of Europa, with its symbolic inclusion of Eros. Just after hearing this from the narrator, we get another blending of art into life. A young man standing near claims to be a victim of Eros, just like Zeus in the painting. Observe narrator #1 and his reaction at this juncture. First, he wants to obtain pleasure from the young man’s many reallife stories, “even if they are like fiction”(ei kai muthois eoike). This coy reference to fiction within a work of fiction obviously is meant to emphasize the “reality” of the fiction, but of course simultaneously reminds us that it is a fictional reality into which we are being drawn.9 After this paradoxical statement of the narrator’s desire, he proceeds to make an interesting move, taking the young man by the hand and leading him to a grove (alsos), which, it emerges, is the perfect place for talk:  /~ 3/ã3/ 0| {' 01 !ã/ 31 /X3€ /~  3!# 2!$# ' 13!!#$/y3/!z14ƒ12/!/~/~$//"{""10z ]0'" &$%" 31 /~ 0/${# !C! € %!# "3 $12# $"%13/ /2/# !^ /X3€  3!# …!$ %//}!$ /~ /X3€# /"//2y1!# qu"/ 2!r $4 q3Æ# 3í ' x"!y21'#Ý y3'#0zM3!#-0‚#/~ƒ' !#"'3ír “And while I was speaking I took him by the hand and led him to a grove at no great distance, where many thick plane-tress were growing, and a stream of water flowing through, cool and translucent, as if it came from freshly-melted snow. There I bade him sit down on a low bench, and I ————— 8 9

Reardon (1999). On the paradoxical relation of reality and appearance in this book, see Mignogna (1995).

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sat by him, and said: “Now is the time to hear your tale; and the surroundings are pleasant and altogether suitable for listening to a lovestory.” This is a place for erotic fiction. But why is this exact spot so suitable? First, because both it and love (we presume) are hêdus, “pleasant.” This may make us think the spot is merely an example of the locus amoenus motif in its erotic context, a topos that goes all the way back to Homer and Hesiod. In the immediate context, however, it appears that a good deal more is happening. Significantly, this is an alsos, and not a leimôn. The latter, the flowerfilled meadow, often associated with the abduction of marriageable girls, is a well-known erotic landscape.10 But the former, a shady grove with plane trees, snow-cold water and a bench, signals a different topos, literally and in literary genealogy. If anything, it recalls the mysterious divine grove of the Oedipus at Colonus (668–719), a text also featuring a wandering victim of a god who tells his story to a fascinated audience. In addition, one cannot help but be reminded of the love discourse recited at a beautiful spot in Plato’s Phaedrus, a passage to be discussed at the end of this paper. At any rate, it is this implicit contrast in narrative places that bears the semantic weight. “Speaker space” is a much cooler, less erotically charged place, a location where Eros is put into the properly distanced perspective. Perhaps it is not accidental that the stream running through this space is described as “translucent” (diaugês), a term reminiscent of simple prose writing with its stylistic ideal of calm saphêneia. The third landscape we encounter in Leukippê and Kleitophôn comes at 1.15.1–7 and is described, unlike the opening pair of (painted) meadow and (real) grove, in the words of narrator #2, Kleitophôn, the hero of the tale. We can call this the lovers’ landscape. By this early point in Kleitophôn’s story, he has already fallen in love at first sight with Leukippê and is eager to see her at every opportunity. After the funeral of his friend’s erômenos, killed in a riding accident, Kleitophôn rushes to his own beloved. They meet in a landscape that is elaborately detailed. Once again, the scenery on its own might be taken as conventional, another locus amoenus. But taken as the third landscape in a closely related sequence, it reveals more intriguing de————— 10

Cf. H. Dem.6–16. to Demeter; the Cologne epode of Archilochus (196a West) 14–16 makes the ravished girl a virtual landscape.

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tails, features that say something by way of contrast with the earlier depictions we have seen (1.15.1–7): M 0z /"y012!# 2!# 2 {/ 3 %"Æ/ "€# L4/í -0!}Ý /~ 1"~3€2!#31%!2/\3/"1#1<#]&!#/~y231$"x31%!$ 3{22/"1# 0z22/1$"/ /3y231!#Y€%!"î'ÝY€0z3!Ô# !2 $0! 2 - 3í 0{0"' /}$"# $/! != y0! 2${3! }!# !# p !Ý /= 13!1# 3í 13y' 1"!/3í4ƒ'1"!/3í/"í2$!/3!/ƒ33# 2M/3í4$3í!#0z3í0{0"'3í0"!3{"'33€#/~ 2Ô/  /"114ƒ1Ý - z  "3{ /3y!$ /~ 1"$y!$2/ â/0Ç3ǁÄÝM0z33€#1"~1ƒ%1~#¦1!ã3!3€0{0"! 3/Ô#1"!/Ô#/~13!3î33îP%/3€4$323{4/!#0zM 33€# 3!ã 4$3!㠍1! 0z /3{"'1 3!ã 0{0"!$ /y!# !%!ƒ1/3!Ô#4ƒ!#$/!/~M/"€#i"//1B%13| /~0x3Æ#LÆ#3í/y' 1"{/3!/~223"$%!#3!ã4$3!ãÝ 3í 0z 4ƒ' '1 /<'"!${' Y4p -ë "€# º1! 2$1Ô h%"x y"/"1 - Æ 3| 2y 3x 0z  ! $%!3/ 3| %"!y{"12$1 {4/13€y!#/~23!ã3!3Æ#Æ#!"4ƒ"/ /~ y"22!# /~ â0! / z 3î â0ë /~ 3î /"22ë - y$  Q2!1<#1""/4}Ý/~24y3!ã4$3!ã-%"!x0z3í1"~3| y$/4ƒ'2%2{'3î"0ëz/A/3!#3€'/~y/3!# 3€ y3' 3!ã 4ƒ!$ /~ M y"22!# 2 3€ » Q!! 3î y3' 3!ã â0!$ 3î @ë y$  z !X0/!ã %"!x 0z !A/ - 3Æ# /y22# 23"y31 /}  {2!# 0z 3!Ô# 12 | {$1 /~ 1"1{"/3! 313"y'!# %/"y0"/ %1"!!3!# 3î â1ƒ/3 3€ 0z ]0'" 3í {' 2 /33"! i# 0!1Ô 3€ 2!# 1Ô/ 0!ã 3€ z3Æ#x1/#3€0z3Æ#2»# “This garden was a meadow, a very object of beauty to the eyes; round it ran a wall of sufficient height and each of the four sides of the wall formed a portico standing on pillars, within which was a close plantation of trees. Their branches, which were in full foliage, intertwined with one another; their neighboring flowers mingled with each other, their leaves overlapped, their fruits joined. Such was the way in which the trees grew together; to some of the larger of them were ivy and smilax attached, the smilax hanging from planes and filling all the interstices between the

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boughs with its soft foliage, the ivy twisting up the pines and embracing the trunks, so that the tree formed support for the ivy, and the ivy a garland for the tree. On either side of each tree grew vines, creeping upon reed supports, with luxuriant foliage; these, now in full fruitage, hung from the joints of the reeds, and formed as it were the ringlets of the tree. The leaves higher up were in gentle motion, and the rays of the sun penetrating them as the wind moved them gave the effect of a pale, mottled shadow on the ground. Flowers too of many hues displayed each their own beauty, and this formed the earth’s gay color—the narcissus and the rose. Now the calyx of the narcissus and the rose was alike so far as shape goes—the cup in fact of the plants. As for the color of the muchdivided petals round the calyx, the rose was like blood above and milk below, whereas the narcissus was wholly of the color of the lower part of the rose; there were violets, too, whose cup-shaped blossoms you could not distinguish, but their color was as that of a shining calm at sea. In the midst of all these flowers bubbled up a spring, the waters of which were confined in a square artificial basin; the water served as a mirror for the flowers, giving the impression of a double grove, one real and the other a reflection. In several ways this is a landscape we have viewed already. Like the meadow of the painting (1.1.3–6), it is a carefully arranged space, a paradeisos made to please the eyes. The space is bounded and enclosed by a wall, each side of which is like a portico. Again, like the painted meadow, intertwining branches and leaves form a house-like roof for the space below. As if to key us into the resemblance, the portico’s construction is described in a quite unusual image, easily lost in translation: katastegos hupo khorôi kionôn, “roofed with the support of a chorus of pillars.” The primary reference seems to operate by means of a poetic elision of pillars with human forms. Perhaps we are meant to have in mind something like the Caryatid Porch of the Erechtheum on the Athenan acropolis, with its chorus of lightly stepping women in the role of supporting columns. In its immediate local context, however, surely the image of a chorus in a garden space recalls the khoros parthenôn that accompanies Europa in the painted image (1.1.3). And yet this is not quite a garden. Unlike the erotic leimôn of the painted landscape, this scene as described by Kleitophôn both recalls the entwining trees of the opening landscape passage and also is explicitly called an alsos

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(1.15.1), like the speaker’s space of the second landscape (1.2.1–3). A further link with the cool grove where the story is told is the detail that this paradisal grove is for pleasure (mega ti khrêma pros ophthalmôn hêdonên: 1.15.1). How can one explain this blended landscape, a flowery but forested combination of cool and humid environs? If we follow the transformative logic of the novel, it is not unexpected. The blending captures on an imagistic level exactly what co-occurs on the narratological level: for at this point, a character, Kleitophôn, has achieved his full voice as narrator #2. So speaker space (the grove of narrator #1) blends into plot space (the trysting spot described and used by narrator #2 as also that of Europa’s abduction). But the transformative logic that we have been tracing goes even further. In this scene of the lovers’ landscape, we are given unmistakable hints of a loving landscape. Closeness and intimacy, human contact and touch, are all implied in the diction that flourishes so lushly here. The trees form a panêguris (1.15.2). Branches fall onto one another like bodies (1.15.2). The homoioteleuton of periplokai, peribolai, and sumplokai makes a verbal icon of wrappings, overlappings, entrappings (1.15.2). Trees and vines embrace (1.15.3). Plants have a “converse” with one another (homilia:1.15.3). Moreover, the plant life takes on the appearance of humans. The vines, for example, are “ringlets”(bostrukhos:1.15.4) for the trees, as if trees are women. The metaphor latent in the Greek habit of calling foliage “hair” (komê) is extended by such tropes. The ensuing description of flower shapes and colors has its own erotic overtones, nor can we forget that one of these— the narcissus—is already a story embedded in the earth, a tale of selfreflexive love.11 The image with which the narrator sums up this depiction brings us back to the dilemma of nature’s relation to art, reality’s ties to imitation, that we have already seen at play in the shady grove of 1.2.1–3. The natural spring (pêgê) confined in its tetragonal, artificial basin (itself like writing, inasmuch as it has been “lined off,” periegegrapto) provides a watery mirror “giving the impression of a double grove, one real and the other a reflection.” Were it not for the terms already set by narrator #1 in his desire to hear reality “even if it is like fiction,” we might treat this contrived image

————— 11

See Pellizer (1988) for a sophisticated interpretation of the tale’s various reflexivities at the level of myth.

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as merely a baroque manner of extending the description.12 As it is, the image supplements and continues the crucial thematizing of novelistic art. This theme is also a concern in the next landscape to meet our eyes, 1.17.3–5:  1"~ 0z 3í 4$3í {!$2 /Ô01# 2!4íÝ /~ ã! $1!  3€ ! 1B/ 1< | /~ /Ô01# $1! 1'"í M 0z !#Ý ! z !$4$3€"»3î0z4!3€$"'3/»!!%1ÔÝ{!$20z 3€ z ""1/ 3í 4!' 3€ 0z Æ$ M "" !^ 3!ã }1!# "¼Ý  M Æ$# ë2{!# œ 3Ç 3Æ# 4$31/# 23y21 M "/23|# /X/13/2$2!^M1'"€#3|ƒ3!ã4$3!ã/~1<#3|3!ã %'"!$ 1"'| 1… 4!"¼ !Ô {1$1Ý 13/ x" 1<# 3€ "…1!Ý/~/…1"/1ƒ13!ã4$3!ã3|2!3"!x"3!ã }1!# 4!!# /… 1<# 3| 3!ã ""1!# /"0/ 32 /~ {&$ 1 z 3| &$%| 3!ã 4$3!ã 3€ 0z 2í/ !Æ2! y 1'ƒ"21/~ /{23%/Ô"!~3Ç3Æ#"'{#2$!Ç/~ 3!ã323y!#4$3í “As for plants, the children of wisdom have a tale to tell, one that I should deem a fable were it not that it was borne out by countrymen; and this it is. Plants, they say, fall in love with one another, and the palm is particularly susceptible to the passion: there are both male and female palms; the male falls in love with the female; and if the female be planted at any considerable distance, the loving male begins to wither away. The gardener realizes what is the cause of the tree’s grief, goes to some slight eminence in the ground, and observes in which direction it is drooping (for it always inclines towards the object of its passion); and when he has discovered this, he is soon able to heal its disease: for he takes a shoot of the female palm and grafts it into the very heart of the male. This refreshes the tree’s spirit, and the trunk, which seemed on the point of death, revives and gains new vigor in joy at the embrace of the beloved: it is a kind of vegetable marriage.” Here the second narrator, Cleitophon, recalls a time in the past when he himself was acting consciously as a narrator: we might call him narrator #2b. As ————— 12

Mignogna (1995) sees it as part of the author’s baroque interest in mirrors, doubling, and metamorphosis.

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the artful taleteller, speaking so as to seduce Leukippê, he uses the sophistic topos of truth vs. fiction (one we have already heard—but she has not). “The children of wisdom” have a story that we might call a mythos (so he begins) were it not that the “children of farmers” call it a logos, or true account. The remarkable logos, that plants fall in love with one another (allo men allou phuton eran) gives Kleitophôn his opening to spin out a suggestive discourse decorously clothed in agriculturist parlance. His description of the erotics of the garden—the pining of the palms, the happy gamos phutôn—is, in one way, another meditation on man’s role within nature, or, more specifically, on how nature requires the work of humans (in the form of gardeners) in order to achieve fulfillment. The gardener is doctor and go-between, a dendropathologist. In the florid rhetoric of Kleitophôn’s hot-house prose, the gardener is also a miracle worker of sorts, gifted at giving new life to a withering tree: anepsuxe tên psukhên tou phutou (1.17.5).The consequent revival is like a resurrection, as the dying body once again stands up (exanestê, 1.17.5). If we apply this new praise of gardeners to the association pointed out previously, of novelist as gardener, we begin to approach a view that Philostratos will finally make completely explicit. But more on that shortly. Meanwhile, we can note that the spatial transformations have begun to form a chain, in which earlier scenes make best sense only in light of their later metamorphoses. Thus, the lovers’ landscape of the third passage (1.15.1–7) can now be seen to foreshadow the dendroerotics of the fourth, the landscape as lover ( 1.17.3–5). Or, we could say that narrator #2b (Kleitophôn as he was when composing his seductive speech) is embedded within narrator #2 (Kleitophôn as he tells the tale and embroiders the landscape for his latest hearer, narrator #1). In the same vein, the seductive speech will be seen to foreshadow 1.19.1–2, a short while later. For here we see the effects of Kleitophôn’s botanical blandishments. Leukippê, who has been listening to his fluent words, is pleased as we might expect given such a pleasurable landscape. But in her pleasure, the beloved becomes a landscape:13 

/ã3/{'$1!/3|"í#$%1"€#3|"/23| "'3}Ý - 0z Y12}/1 !X 0í# !ƒ1 3€ 0z y!# 23"y3!3!ã3/„333!01!3!ã1$#1B/"!2…!$3€ x" 3!ã 2…/3!# y!# /X3|# "€# 3x 3!ã 1í!# 0"1 Ý /"22!$z3€"2'!$231%"!yâ0!0z{3113Æ# ————— 13

On the further purposes and techniques of this passage, see Morales (1995) 43–45.

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/"1»# @! 0z - 3í L4/í y"/"1 /X} /= 0z / !23"$%!ƒ1/ »! 1=33!3! 33!ãÝ 3!!ã3!# 2 1$# ~ 3í"!2…'M1… “While recounting all these stories, I kept at the same time glancing at the maiden, to see how she felt while hearing all this talk of love; and there were some indications that she was not listening without pleasure. The gleaming beauty of the peacock seemed to me nothing in comparison with Leukippê’s lovely face; indeed, her beauty was rival of the flowers of the meadow. Her skin was bright with the hue of the narcissus. Roses sprang from her cheeks, the dark gleam of her eyes shone like the violet, the ringlets of her hair curled more tightly than the ivy— Leukippê’s whole appearance was that of a flowery meadow.” In rapid succession she takes on the character of several flowers familiar to lovers (or forms of former lovers—like Narcissus). Moreover, the comparison of her ringlets to ivy is an obvious reminder of the earlier trysting spot, where the reverse is used to describe ivy as ringlets for trees (1.15.4).14 In the teller’s cultivated version, the loved one turns into the place par excellence for love, the leimôn, a flower-filled meadow. The narrative pleasure produced by the rhetor-lover causes the land/lady/listener to burst into flower. Teller and gardener are, once again, related in their trades, the arts of teasing out fulfillment. I will not pause here to pursue the deeper associations of Leukippê-asleimôn. We might think of the earlier mythopoeic tradition, in which the rape of the Leukippidae by the Diokouroi figured; it may be that the very name conjures up images of this famous abduction and its landscape, a story apparently narrated in Alcman’s first Partheneion. Instead, it is time to compare the progression we have been tracing within Book One of Achilles Tatius with three other relevant passages, in order to bring out as sharply as possible the differences between seemingly similar scenes, and the similarity, at a deeper level, between what might at first strike one as disparate descriptions. First, one should take into consideration the famous proem of Longus’ pastoral romance Daphnis and Chloe:  ————— 14

Mignogna (1995) 31.

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& {2ë "í  21 $4í {// 1B0! y23! o 1B0! 1<!# "/4} =23!"/ $"'3!#
/€ z /~ 3€ 2!# !ƒ010"! " /3y""$3!Ý / | y3/ $3"141 /~ 3x  /~ 3x 0{0"/Ý p - "/4| 31"!3{"/ /~ 3{% $%!$2/ 1"33|/~3ƒ%"'3}Ý Once, hunting in Lesbos, I saw in a grove of Nymphs the finest sight of any I had seen, a painted image, a story of love. Fine was the grove, with many trees, flowery, irrigated. One spring was nourishing everything , flowers and trees. But the painting was more pleasurable, with its surpassing artistry and erotic Fortune.15 Froma Zeitlin has written extensively about this passage, and I forbear to repeat the delicate interconnections that she has explicated between mimesis on the authorial level and character-imitations of nature in that novel.16 What I do wish to focus on is the difference between this rococo proem and the art of spatial description as practiced by Achilles Tatius. To begin with, we must notice the generic landscape of Longus’ ekphrasis; it is over in a tossaway sentence, in which we learn that the grove has trees, flowers, and water. This superficiality makes sense inasmuch as Longus’ purpose is altogether different. In his version of the curtain-raising ekphrasis, the narrator is inspired to compose a novel that will both explain and rival a painted narrative, itself already “more pleasing and artful” (1.1) than the grove in which it is discovered. In Achilles Tatius, on the other hand, it is the landscape itself that subtly, through its various changes in the first book, tells a concomitant story of love. Whereas in Longus it is the painting that gives pleasure (as does the narrative Longus zealously spins out of it), in Achilles Tatius pleasure arises from the actual landscape, the stories that grow from it and, as we have seen, are rooted in it. Finally the sense we have of a merging between the realms of narrative and life is expressed in Achilles Tatius by the device of having Kleitophôn, a second narrator, be the exegete of the Europa painting. He is a reliable explicator since he himself is a living example of the power of Eros. Longus, on the other hand, merely finds a nondescript guide somwhere around the place, one whose only role is to enable the author to decode the painting before him. Exegesis does not become the tale itself, as ————— 15 16

Translation mine. Zeitlin (1994).

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told by someone who has been a participant in the story. The consequent two-dimensional feeling to Longus’ proem is perhaps encapsulated in the collapse there of what in Achilles Tatius comprised three distinct landscapes. We had the space of love, the leimôn, with its chorus of young women. Apart from that, we saw the alsos as the space for narration—the spot, as I argued, for a cooler and more rational narrative perspective, distanced from the heat of the erotic meadow. In Longus, however, we find an alsos of the Nymphs: in other words, a blend of the place of telling and dedication with the (quite different) space of erotic activity, whether of the nymphs who typically consort with Pan or of the abduction of young maidens. All of this is to say that, wherever Longus’ artistry and interests might lie, they are not invested in the manipulation and transformation of depicted spaces. So, then, where does one find a parallel to Achilles Tatius’ fascination with speech and its locales? Another narrator of the Second Sophistic, an author not usually considered a novelist, provides the closest connection. It is true that in Longus we find, in Book 2, a gardener who is also a poet, Philetas. But in the Heroikos of Philostratus, we go one step beyond and discover a gardener who is a kind of mystic, a dresser of vines who becomes a medium for the greatest narratives of the past. Like the tale by Achilles Tatius, the opening of the Heroikos involves a Phoenician. He is a traveler who has come to the Chersonese and is walking in the hills, looking for weather signs. Like the first narrator in the story of Leukippê and Kleitophôn, he encounters a man with strange experiences to relate. But the adventures of this narrator, the vinedresser, are linked to the very ground he cultivates. The ancient hero Protesilaos, says the vinedresser, though long dead, comes to visit him in this spot. “Lucky you,” says the Phoenician, “for the conversation and the ground, if you gather not only grapes and olives in it but also pluck the fruit of pure divine wisdom. In fact, perhaps I do an injustice to your wisdom even calling you a vinedresser” (/y"13Æ# $!$2/# /~ 3!ã "!ã 1< | ! y/# /~ 3"$#  /X3î 3"$¼# x /~ 2!4/ 0"{Ä 1/ 31 /~ }"/3! /~ @2'# 0í 3|  2!~ 2!4/ /í11!$":Her. 4.11).17 The vinedresser insists that it is in this working role that he should be praised, as this enables his connection with the hero. “You would gratify Protesilaos in naming me a farmer, gardener, and the like,” he reassures the visitor (4.12). Indeed, he proclaims that Protesilaos and he work together (4.7–10). ————— 17

The text used here is the Teubner of De Lannoy (1977); translations are mine.

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As the two living men chat they come to the spot where these mystic dialogues with the hero occur. Without being directed, the Phoenician guesses that this is the place for the talks, for, to him, it seems “most sweet and numinous” (hêdiston…kai theion: 5.2). Thus far we remain close to the rhetoric of the appropriate narrative space, as seen in Achilles Tatius 1.2.3. In this spot, notices the visitor, grow age-old lofty trees, and there is excellent running spring water. Moreover, as he observes, his host has woven trees together to produce a sort of enclosure—explicitly compared to a theatrical skênê—so tightly woven that it surpasses a crown from an uncut meadow (ek leimônos akêratou: 5.3).18 From the details, it is clear that Philostratus and Achilles Tatius are working with the same conventions: gardener as artist and as narrator. But in Philostratus, the gardener is further one who brings back to life nothing less than the Hellenic past itself—not just withering, love sick plants. The metaphor is not pushed too hard. The Phoenician says “whether anyone might come to life again (anabiôiê) in this spot, I do not know. But one might live (biôiê) very pleasantly, without a doubt, and very painlessly, having moved away from the throng” (5.2). The locus amoenus, in this view, turns out to be a spot so powerful that it produces not the effects of love, as in the romantic novel, but of new life. This renewed life has to be mediated by the gardener. And of course the crucial fact is that this gardener works the soil near a hero-shrine. At this point one might object that we have a unique case. What can such a marginal, not to say downright weird, story have to tell us about narrative spaces, or spaces for narrating, in what look to be more mainstream fictions? Is not the Heroikos simply an ultra-precious, supremely archaistic piece of work by a slick and sophisticated member of an advanced intellectual dynasty? Well, yes. But that is its virtue. In seeking his own connection to the roots of Greek tradition, this scion of the Philostrati has struck deep into a millennium-old cultural formation, the institution of hero-cult.19 The cultural root-system of hero worship bring with it number of tenacious tendrils that give Greek literature of all periods a very different and distinctive soil in which to grow. First, if one believes—as Greeks seem to have done—that certain spots (more than 900 of which we hear tell of) retain the bones of heroes, the landscape becomes a living palimpsest. Or, in other words, ————— 18 19

The diction recalls Eur. Hipp. 73–78 and Ibycus PMG 286. On the mythopoetics of this institution, the most important work is Nagy (1999); on the archaeology and its implications, see Antonaccio (1995).

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ground is story. Every rock and tree and hill has the inherent potential to tell a tale, needing only a devoted local exegete to activate the epichoric heroic narrative. This is to say that the intellectual and cultural framework is in place for treating certain localities as both good to talk about and good to talk in. And so one might seriously compare the situation of the Greek novelist, even in late antiquity, to that of tale-tellers among Australian aboriginals. As many ethnographers have shown, the entire landscape of inner Australia is organized and understood by its inhabitants in terms of the stories from the Dreamtime associated with every natural feature. 20 The ancient heroes made the landscape and still dwell within it, in Greece as well as in Australia—and as not in London, Berlin, New York or other centers of production for the modern novel. A further refinement on this theme of rooted connection to the ground of history occurs in Philostratus. We learn from the vinedresser that on the spot where Protesilaos is buried (a kolônos) there grow trees that the Nymphs themselves planted to commemorate the dead hero. These elms have a unique feature: all the leaves on them that face in the direction of Troy bloom early and die young, in imitation of the pathos of Protesilaos. To explain the cycle of foliage, the vine-dresser must know the distant origin of the trees and their roots in the heroic past. In sum, the gardener and his landscape form a continuity with the primeval planters and plantings—another reason why this figure makes a good tale-teller. A coda: although Hollywood has inherited the ancient novelistic convention that beautiful stories happen in beautiful places, it is with the added twist that they happen exclusively to beautiful people. This tradition has its grounding in the idea that certain places are heroically numinous and therefore beautiful; of course, the modern version assumes, instead, that places are beautiful because they cost a lot. In the harsh glare of Los Angeles, such a dominant tradition—that beautiful places are made for beautiful talk— turns out to make a contrast we might not have realized before when we turn to the limpid light of ancient Attica and a famous passage from Plato. This text (Phaedrus 229b–230d) has inevitably been cited as the parallel for the topos that we have been tracing in later Greek prose works. Commentaries note it, but abandon it at the level of parallel. It is true that Socrates at 230b ————— 20

On the Dreamtime and Aboriginal myth organization, see Luomala (1984) and Roberts (1973).

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praises the locus amoenus to which Phaedrus has led him for their dialogue in terms very much like those we have seen in Achilles Tatius:  | 3| 9"/ /} 1 - /3/'} 1 31 x" y3/!# /]3 yp 4/4}# 31 /~ Y&} 3!ã 31 !$ 3€ ]&!# /~ 3€ 2ƒ2! y/!/~i#|$%13Æ##i#1X'0{23/3!/"{%!3€ 3!Ý 1 31 /^ | %/"123y3 Y€ 3Æ# /3y!$ â1Ô y/ &$%"!ã ]0/3!# m231 1 3î !0~ 31}"/2/ $4í 3{ 3' /~ %1ì!$ =1"€€3í!"í31/~/y3'$!11B/ “By Hera, the resting place is indeed fine. This plane-tree is widespreading and tall, and the height and shade of the chaste-tree is very fine, and as it is at the height of its bloom it can provide the most fragrant spot. The most gratifying spring flows out from under the planetree, with water that is very cold (at least as the foot tests it). It seems, from the statues and votive offerings, to be a shrine of some Nymphs and of Acheloos.” The place is touched with the erotic and religious simultaneously, having a shrine of the nymphs and the loving river Acheloos. There is, moreover, a chorus—not of maidens, but of cicadas (230c1)—and soft grass to lie upon. All in all, a perfect spot. Lulled by the later illustrations of this locus, we might not remember the irony with which the locale is framed, however. At first the Phaedrus seems to support the claim that I have been forwarding: that beautiful places are good for talk because divine events are traditionally localized within such places (as is made explicit in the Heroikos). What divine event happened here, then, at the topos to which the interlocutors have come? It is the spot from which Boreas, wind and hero, snatched his beloved Oreithuia once upon a time as she played with her maidens. At least, that is what Phaedrus believes (229b4–5), and we would like to believe with him. After all, that is what beautiful places are for; they should resonate still from the touch of the holiness they once felt. The waters here are pure, clean, transparent, and it seems a spot where girls might play (229b7–9). But Socrates casually shoots us down. “No, it is two or three stades lower downstream—there’s an altar somewhere there to Boreas” (229c1–3). If there is a polar opposite to the novel, philosophy is it. If there is an antipodes to the gardener, it is Socrates. Even his praise of the locus amoenus is deeply un-

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dercut in the Phaedrus by the fact that, by his own admission, he never gets out of the city. Any old tree would be as beautiful or indifferent to him, as unnecessary a feature as are the beautiful stories set in their exquisite places. But then again, Socrates never did know what was proper to talk about, or how to use beautiful phrases, or even when to shut his mouth.

Bibliography Antonaccio, C. (1995) An archaeology of ancestors: tomb cult and hero cult in early Greece. Lanham, MD. Bartsch, S. (1989). Decoding the Ancient Novel: The Reader and the Role of Description in Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius. Princeton. Bowie, E. (1999). “The Greek Novel,” pp. 39–59 in Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel. Ed. S. Swain. Oxford. (original 1985). Chatman, S. (1978) Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY. De Lannoy, L. (ed.) 1977. Flavii Philostrati Heroicus. Leipzig. Erlich, V. (1981). Russian Formalism. 3rd edition. New Haven. Gaselee, S. and Warmington, E. (1969). Achilles Tatius. (Loeb Classical Library). 2nd. edition. Cambridge, Mass. Harlan, E. (1965). The Description of Paintings as a Literary Device and its Application in Achilles Tatius. Diss. Columbia. New York. Luomala, K. (1984) “Australian Aboriginal Mythology,” pp.92–94 in Funks and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend. Ed. M. Leach and J. Fried. San Francisco. Mignogna, E. (1995). “Roman und Paradoxon: Die Metamorphosen der Metapher in Achilleus Tatios’ Leukippe und Kleitophon,” Groningen Colloquia on the Novel (6) 21–37. Morales, H. (1995) “The Taming of the View: Natural Curiosities in Leukippe and Kleitophon,” Groningen Colloquia on the Novel (6) 39–50. Nagy, G. (1999). The Best of the Achaeans. Revised edition. Baltimore. Pellizer, E. (1988). “Reflections, Echoes, and Amorous Reciprocity: On Reading the Narcissus Story, “ in: Bremmer, J. (ed.) Interpretations of Greek Mythology. London, 107–20. Reardon, B.P. (1999) “Achilles Tatius and Ego-Narrative,” in: Swain, S. (ed.) Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel. Oxford, 243–58 (original 1994). Roberts, A. (1973). The dreamtime book; Australian Aboriginal myths in paintings by Ainslie Roberts and text by Charles P. Mountford. Adelaide. Zeitlin, F. (1994). “Gardens of Desire in Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe: Nature, Art, and Imitation,” in Tatum, J. (ed.), The Search for the Ancient Novel. Baltimore, 148-170.

Space and Displacement in Apuleius N . W . SLATER

Atlanta

Space. For Americans of a certain generation, among whom I number myself, it is almost impossible to hear that word without hearing a continuation: “Space – the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise….” I begin with this cliché of contemporary popular culture, not just for an easy laugh, but more importantly as a reminder of how fundamentally anachronistic so much of our depiction of the category of space is for the literature of the ancient world. Not just the three-dimensional (or more!) universe we have learned to see through NASA television images from space and science fiction film and television, but even the two-dimensional projections of space we call maps are in many ways profoundly modern imaginings. In recent years there has been an efflorescence of interest in ecphrasis in ancient fiction, both in the modern sense of literary depictions of works of art and more generally as the language of visual description.1 Apuleius is a master of the full range of ecphrasis in his invocation and manipulation of the reader’s “visual repertoire,”2 for want of a better term, in the process of reading. Reader response theory has examined in some detail the reader’s literary repertoire, that is, the texts and literary concepts already present in the reader’s mind which a given text quotes, paraphrases, alludes to, parodies, or otherwise employs. Ancient readers possessed a similar, non-literary, and largely visual repertoire of images and experiences which a text can also invoke. At one end of the spectrum, these are recognizable and specific masterpieces of art and architecture, the Venus Anadyomene or the Stoa Poikile. At the other end, they are equally recognizable but generic elements of the ————— 1 2

See Bartsch 1989, followed by many others. On this concept, see Slater 2001.

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visual environment: an amphitheatre, a warship, a flock of sheep on a hillside. Conceptions and visualizations of space are a fascinating and underexplored category within visual repertoire. The present study seeks simply to raise a few points about Roman imagination of space as implicated in, and applied to, the world of the Golden Ass. The pattern I seek to discern in Apuleius, one of persistent displacement, is relatively simple and perhaps not revolutionary, but its persistence is still under-appreciated and, in combination with other arguments, does contribute substantially to the debate over the ending and the meaning of this remarkable novel. What tools did a Roman have to imagine space? As a first reader of this novel which begins somewhere in Thessaly, I had at least the outlines of a map in my head on which I could place Thessaly to the north of, and at some distance from, the more familiar places of central Greece, such as Athens, and more generally in the eastern Mediterranean world. Did a Roman reader imagine things this way? The general notion of a map, even a world map, is quite plausible for the second century AD reader, though it would have been far less detailed than the maps we imagine. Six or seven centuries earlier Socrates in Aristophanes’ Clouds (200ff.) already possesses a map with Athens, Sparta, and Euboea on it. Plutarch, in his Life of Nicias, gives us a vignette of men and boys on the eve of the Sicilian expedition drawing their own maps of Sicily and its harbors:  m231 /~ {!$#  //23"/# /~ {"!3/#  "/23"!# /~ -$!# 2$/1!{!$# Y!"y41 3€ 2%Æ/ 3Æ# 1/# /~ 3| 4ƒ2 3Æ# 1"~ /X3| /y22# /~ {/# /~ 3!$# !C# 3{3"/3/ "€# ƒ - Æ2!# !X x" ! !!ã3! 3!㠍!{!$ 1/ p M"3}"! i# p /X3Æ# 0/'21! "€#
/"%0!!$# /~ 2%}2!31# / ƒ /~ 3| 3€# õÿ"/1' 23í//22/(Plutarch, Nic. 12,1-2) so that the youth in their training-schools and the old men in their workshops and lounging-places would sit in clusters drawing maps of Sicily, charts of the sea about it, and plans of the harbors and districts of the island which look towards Libya. For they did not regard Sicily itself as the prize of the war, but rather as a mere base of operations, purposing

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therefrom to wage a contest with the Carthaginians and get possession of both Libya and of all the sea this side of the Pillars of Heracles. (trans. Perrin 1916)3 A skeptical reader might wonder if such knowledge and spatial thinking was in fact so common in the fifth century BC – but it surely must be quite imaginable for Plutarch’s own audience in the second century AD. Maps of some kind were certainly available in public spaces of the Hellenistic world. The philosopher Theophrastus in his will (c. 286 BC) requested that panels showing maps of the world (periodoi ges) be set up in his school.4 The Roman general Agrippa assembled information to prepare a world map, which was completed by Augustus after Agrippa’s death in 12 BC and set up in the Porticus Vipsania in Rome.5 Yet this kind of map would offer only a general visual orientation: they were not survey or road maps in a modern sense, tools to follow in moving through space. For actual travel, a Roman might well be more familiar with an itinerary, a sequenced list of places, often enumerating distances between, by which one moved from one place to another. First century examples of these survive in the form of the Vicarello goblets, now in the Palazzo Massimo in Rome: four silver goblets listing an overland sequence of staging points between Cadiz and Rome itself.6 Such maps and itineraries then are two means for the Roman reader to imagine space and movement through space – and yet even by these standards, it is clear that Apuleius prefers to disorient – rather than orient – his readers. The pattern is set at once by the Prologue to the Golden Ass: At ego tibi sermone isto Milesio varias fabulas conseram, auresque tuas benivolas lepido susurro permulceam, modo si papyrum Aegyptiam ar————— 3

4 5 6

Virtually the same anecdote recurs in Plutarch, Alc. 17, 3: “Many were they who sat in the palaestras and lounging-places mapping out in the sand the shape of Sicily and the position of Libya and Carthage” (/~ 3!‚# z {!$# /X31 1B%1 00 3/Ô# 2 "{!$# 3í 0z "12$3{"' ,"!í3! !x /$y2/ 1"~ 3Æ# 23"/31/# 1"/3'm231!!‚#3/Ô#//23"/#/~3!Ô#-$!#/{12/3Æ#31 }2!$3€2%Æ//~{2ƒ#/~
/"%0!#Y!"y4!3/#). Cf. Dilke 1985, 2526. Quoted in Dilke 1985, 30-31. Dilke 1985, 41-53. Dilke 1985, 122-124.

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gutia Nilotici calami inscriptam non spreveris inspicere. figuras fortunasque hominum in alias imagines conversas et in se rursum mutuo nexu refectas, ut mireris, exordior. quis ille? paucis accipe. Hymettos Attica et Isthmos Ephyrea et Taenaros Spartiatica, glebae felices aeternum libris felicioribus conditae, mea vetus prosapia est. ibi linguam Atthidem primis pueritiae stipendiis merui; mox in urbe Latia advena studiorum Quiritium indigenam sermonem aerumnabili labore, nullo magistro praeeunte, aggressus excolui. en ecce praefamur veniam, si quid exotici ac forensis sermonis rudis locutor offendero. iam haec equidem ipsa vocis immutatio desultoriae scientiae stilo quem accessimus respondet: fabulam Graecanicam incipimus. lector intende: laetaberis. But let me join together different stories in that Milesian style, and let me soothe your kindly ears with an agreeable whispering, if only you do not scorn to glance at an Egyptian papyrus inscribed with the sharpness of a reed from the Nile. I begin a tale of men’s shapes and fortunes transformed into different appearances and back again into themselves by mutual connection, that you may wonder at it. ‘Who is this?’ Hear in brief. Attic Hymettus and the Corinthian Isthmus and Spartan Taenarus are my origins of old, ever fertile regions recorded in even more fertile books. There it was that I acquired the Attic tongue in the first campaigns of boyhood; thereafter in the Latin city as a foreigner to the studies of Rome I took on and developed the local language with laborious effort and without the lead of a master. Look then, I ask your pardon at the beginning if I commit any offence, being an inexperienced speaker of the language of the forum which is foreign to me. Indeed, this very change of language corresponds to the style of switchback lore which I have approached. I begin a story of Greek origin. Reader, pay attention: you will be pleased.7 Note that some ten percent of the prologue’s 118 words are place names or geographical adjectives, depending on how one counts. I have highlighted thirteen here, and a dizzying assortment they are: Milesian, Egyptian, Nilotic, Athenian, and Latian, along with Attic Hymettus, the Ephyrean (Co————— 7

For the text and translation of the prologue only, I give that of Harrison and Winterbottom 2001. Elsewhere both text and translations of the Golden Ass are those of J. A. Hanson 1989 in the Loeb.

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rinthian) Isthmus, and Spartan Taenarus – not to mention a Greek(ish) story told by one who has studied with the Quirites. These place names do as much as anything else in this opening to embody the narrator’s “switchback lore,” his acrobatic abilities for leaping from one language and culture to another and back again. While much more can be said about this prologue,8 at the moment I simply want to point to two aspects of its geographical language: the narrator’s starting point is much less clear than it may seem on first hearing or reading, yet the overall language does indicate movement through space as well as time, a movement leading generally from a Greek to a Roman sphere. The narrator claims three different Greek city states as his singular vetus prosapia (“my origins of old”): Athens, Corinth, and Sparta. A Roman reader surely had enough experience with mapping to imagine these three – and realize they are not the same. Stephen Harrison solves this problem of geographic confusion with the notion of the speaking book: unlike a person, a book can indeed be from three different places at the same time. 9 This is an intriguing notion, but it remains a question whether all or most first-time readers will grasp such a conceit at once. Instead, Apuleius seems to be deliberately fogging our geographical imagination here, inviting us as readers first to think spatially and then realize that this will not quite work. At the same time, he clearly indicates that his growth and education took him from this Greek-speaking area to the single Latian city of the Quirites, where he cultivated the language in which he writes his “Greekish” tale. In this the prologue accurately anticipates the movement of the whole narrative, from our discovery of Lucius in an indeterminate space, on the road into Thessaly, to his final appearance as a priest of Isis in Rome. Let us focus on the relation between the geographical movement of the overall narrative and the first two of the inset tales. My suggestion is that these show similarities in their patterns of movement, similarities which may have significance for our understanding once again of the novel’s ending. Other characters in this novel beside our narrator end up as “displaced persons.” Their fates may suggest something about our narrator’s own. The first inset tale in the novel is the familiar and oft studied one told by Aristomenes, to beguile his companion and the newly met Lucius on their way. The narrative proper begins thus: ————— 8 9

See Kahane and Laird 2001 for a range of approaches. Harrison 1990.

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Thessaliam – nam et illic originis maternae nostrae fundamenta a Plutarcho illo inclito ac mox Sexto philosopho nepote eius prodita gloriam nobis faciunt – eam Thessaliam ex negotio petebam. postquam ardua montium et lubrica vallium et roscida cespitum et glebosa camporum emersimus…. (1, 2, 1-2) I was travelling to Thessaly, where the ancestry of my mother’s family brings us fame in the persons of the renowned Plutarch and later his nephew, the philosopher Sextus. Thessaly, I say, is where I was heading on business. I had emerged from steep mountain tracks and slippery valley roads, damp places in the meadows and cloddy paths through the fields. Its first word is Thessaliam, Thessaly, and yet in a typical Apuleian move, we discover only with the last word of that first sentence, petebam (“I was travelling to…”), that we do not know quite where we are, only that we are travelling in that direction. The next sentence begins with a montage of mountains, valleys, and plains, which could be anywhere.10 Only after he encounters and begins to converse with Aristomenes and the other traveller does Lucius volunteer that he is on his way from Athens, indeed from the very heart of Athens, the Agora,11 into Thessaly. The narrative that Lucius hears contains two itineraries, one for the narrator Aristomenes, the other for his unfortunate friend Socrates. Aristomenes tells his tale because they are all headed to Hypata. He identifies himself as a merchant, travelling through Thessaly, Aetolia, and Boeotia: At ille: ‘istud quidem quod polliceris aequi bonique facio, verum quod inchoaveram porro exordiar. sed tibi prius deierabo Solem istum videntem deum me vera comperta memorare; nec vos ulterius dubitabitis, si Thessaliam proximam civitatem perveneritis, quod ibidem passim per ora populi sermo iactetur quae palam gesta sunt. sed ut prius noritis, cuiatis sim, [qui sim,] Aegiensis. audite et quo quaestu me teneam: melle ————— 10

11

De Biasi 2000, 238-240 identifies a series of passages exhibiting “error geographico” in the novel, beginning with this sentence (1, 2, 2) and ending with the remarkable sentence at 11, 26, 1, in the course of which Lucius returns home to Corinth and then sails off to Rome (see further below). De Biasi finds “l’error geographico come 3!# letterario non è più pertinente” (240), but I shall argue otherwise. Since he there saw a performance in front of the Stoa Poikile (1, 4).

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vel caseo et huiusce modi cauponarum mercibus per Thessaliam Aetoliam Boeotiam ultro citro discurrens. (1, 5) I focus here especially on the second part of this (after the italics): “I consider that a fair promise,” he replied, “and I shall forthwith continue the story I had started. But first I shall swear to you by the Sun, this seeing god, that I am narrating events which I know at first hand to be true; and you will have no further doubts when you arrive at the next town in Thessaly, for the story is circulating there on everyone’s lips about what occurred in plain daylight. But first, so that you may know where I am from, I am from Aegium. Hear too how I make my living. I deal in honey and cheese and that sort of innkeepers’ merchandise, travelling back and forth through Thessaly, Aetolia, and Boeotia. The text here is not without problems. Many editors, including Helm, follow Castiglioni and add Aristomenes sum (“I am Aristomenes”) after qui sim, though Hanson is right to note that characters in Apuleius often delay in giving their names. The more immediate concern is the geographical adjective Aegiensis, which Hanson and most others translate as “from Aegium,” an Achaean city on the gulf of Corinth.12 Wytse Keulen has now made an intriguing case that Apuleius means his reader to understand the adjective as “from Aegae.”13 There were several towns named Aegae in Greece; if this is Apuleius’s intention, then, he is once again deliberately confusing the reader about geographical origins. Moreover, instead of an itinerary of one stop after another on his journey, we get a field of operations, through which Aristomenes moves “back and forth,” (ultro citro discurrens). Keulen finds a pun on the Greek word for goat (/@ ) implicit in the town name (whether Aegium or Aegae) and notes the ancient etymologies which connected that noun with the verb 22', to dart, move rapidly, as goats did.14 Aristomenes’ business travels gambol over three regions, so how precisely he came to Hypata on the trip in question is left uncertain. ————— 12

13 14

This is certainly the meaning of the adjective in Livy 38, 30, 1 and 5 and Tacitus Annals 4, 13, 1. I have not been able to determine what text Lindsay 1960 is reading; his translation says Aristomenes is “from Aegina.” Keulen 2000. Keulen 2000, 313-314.

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In Hypata Aristomenes finds his old friend Socrates, given up at home for dead, living here in desperate circumstances. Although the narrative does not specifically say so, the reader’s likeliest assumption is that they know each other from their home city; therefore Socrates too comes from Aegium. He has arrived in Hypata by a different route, however, as he tells Aristomenes: “me miserum”, infit, “qui dum voluptatem gladiatorii spectaculi satis famigerabilis consector, in has aerumnas incidi. nam, ut scis optime, secundum quaestum Macedoniam profectus, dum mense decimo ibidem attentus nummatior revortor, modico prius quam Larissam accederem, per transitum spectaculum obiturus in quadam avia et lacunosa convalli a vastissimis latronibus obsessus atque omnibus privatus tandem evado et utpote ultime adfectus ad quandam cauponam Meroen, anum, sed admodum scitulam, devorto, eique causas et peregrinationis diuturnae et domuitionis anxiae et spoliationis miserae refero. (1, 7) “Woe is me,” he began. “I was pursuing the pleasure of a famous gladiatorial show when I fell into these tribulations. As you very well know, I had gone to Macedonia on a commercial venture, and after nine months of work there I was on my way home a more moneyed man. A little before reaching Larissa – where I was going to stop for the show on my way – as I was walking through a desolate and pitted valley, I was set upon by monstrous bandits and stripped of everything I had. I finally escaped and, in my desperate state, stopped at the house of an innkeeper named Meroë, an old but rather attractive woman. I explained to her about my long travels and my anxiety to return home and the miserable robbery. Returning home from a trip to Macedonia, Socrates diverted to Larissa in order to see some gladiatorial games. Plundered and beaten by robbers, he takes refuge with Meroë, an innkeeper soon to be revealed as a witch, and then becomes sexually ensnared by her.15 This sounds a bit more like an itinerary: out from Aegium (by implication) to Macedonia, then back via ————— 15

One might here expand on the suggestion of Keulen 2000 about Aegiensis. If Socrates too is a man “from Goat-Town,” this might further explain his goat-like nature in yielding to Meroë’s sexual temptations.

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Larissa. The first-time reader, however, might guess that Meroë’s inn is in Larissa. We are not yet told that her inn is at Hypata, although that later becomes clear in the narrative. Socrates enumerates her powers to a skeptical Aristomenes; these include powers over space: the ability to pull down the sky and lift up the earth (divini potens caelum deponere, terram suspendere, 1, 8) and to cast love spells on the most distant inhabitants of the earth (ut se ament efflictim non modo incolae, verum etiam Indi vel Aethiopes utrique vel ipsi Anticthones).16 Indeed, the name of the witch herself, Meroë, is that of the supposed capital of Aethiopia.17 After learning of her neighbors’ plan to eliminate her by stoning, she uses her magic to reverse inside and outside, conjuring demons to trap them all inside their houses until they agree to leave her alone. Not satisfied with this, however, she punishes the instigator of the plot against her by magically picking up his house, walls, foundations, and ground underneath (cum tota domo, id est parietibus et ipso solo et omni fundamento, 1, 10)18 and dropping it outside the walls of a city a hundred miles away on a mountain top, thus exiling him both from his home city and the protection of what is perforce his new home. Aristomenes receives lurid demonstration of Meroë’s powers over space that night when he attempts to shelter Socrates. Meroë and another witch named Panthia burst into their room at the inn, overturn everything, remove Socrates’ heart and replace it with a sponge – then withdraw, magically replacing the door and mending the broken hinges. The spatial categories of inside and outside here are desperately confused – and then seemingly restored, enough at least for Aristomenes to think that it all might have been a nightmare. Only when he attempts to take Socrates away to safety is the real and permanent disruption revealed: when Socrates leans over a stream to drink, the sponge pops out, and he drops down dead.

————— 16

17 18

A telling demonstration of her power. Rabinowitz 1998, 79: “Meroe … is a creature whose lust is so great it cannot be described in physiological terms alone - its range is geographical …” (a reference for which I thank Wytse Keulen). So named by both Herodotus (2, 29) and Pausanias (1, 33, 4; 5, 7, 4). Scobie 1975, 130, 134, Pl. III, reproduces from the 1538 German translation of Apuleius by Johan Sieder, Lucii Apuleii von ainem gulden Esel a woodcut showing the naked witch Meroë flying through the air and carrying her opponent’s house. There are six figures below her on the ground, two of which are certainly Socrates and Aristomenes.

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Socrates never returns home – but then neither does Aristomenes. His guilt over his friend’s death causes him to abandon his home and wife for exile and a new marriage in Aetolia: relicta patria et lare ultroneum exilium amplexus. nunc Aetoliam novo contracto matrimonio colo. (1, 19) I abandoned my country and my home and embraced voluntary exile. I now live in Aetolia and have remarried. Even though he survives, therefore, Aristomenes’ adventures permanently displace him. Aristomenes’ travelling companion doubts the veracity of this story at its end just as much as he did at its beginning, but Lucius is more credulous. With Hypata in sight, the travellers part, and Lucius goes looking for Milo, his prospective host. He asks an innkeeper: ‘estne’, inquam, ‘Hypata haec civitas?’ adnuit. ‘nostine Milonem quendam e primoribus?’ arrisit, et: ‘vere’, inquit, ‘primus istic perhibetur Milo, qui extra pomerium et urbem totam colit.’ (1, 21) “Is this town Hypata?” I asked. She nodded. “Do you know someone named Milo, one of the foremost citizens?” “Foremost is the right word for your Milo,” she replied, “since he lives outside the city-limits and the whole town.” Let us not allow the bad pun here to distract us from an interesting point: Milo lives on the edge of the city. We are not told much about walls and gates, but it looks as though his house, like that of Meroë’s opponent, is outside their protection. Only when he arrives here do we as readers learn where Lucius is really from. Athens proves not to be his true starting point, for he announces that he has a letter of introduction from his friend Demeas at Corinth (‘litteras ei a Corinthio Demea scriptas ad eum reddo,’ 1, 22). This information is repeated and made most explicit the next night at dinner, when Lucius tells his host Milo about a Chaldean prophet now working at Corinth (Corinthi nunc

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apud nos), whom he consulted about his journey. His response was the famous prophecy: nunc enim gloriam satis floridam, nunc historiam magnam et incredundam fabulam et libros me futurum. (2, 12) on the one hand, my reputation will really flourish, but on the other I will become a long story, an unbelievable tale, a book in several volumes. Milo immediately undercuts this prophecy by telling a story of the same Chaldean prophet, Diophanes, when he was in Hypata. A merchant named Cerdo consults him about a propitious day to travel, receives his prophecy, and is in the process of paying when Diophanes is accosted by another friend and in his joy blurts out his own disastrous tale of travel to Hypata, having been shipwrecked and robbed and his brother murdered on the trip thither from Euboea. Having heard this tale, Cerdo grabs back his money and runs off before Diophanes realizes what is happening, to the great amusement of the spectators. Milo means the story as a disproof of the prophecy about Lucius, and the first-time reader certainly will take it so. A re-reader, however, knows that the prophecy is quite true: Lucius does become a book. Moreover, a sensitive reader may note that Diophanes himself survives his adventures and in doing so anticipates some of the movement of Lucius’s own experiences, from the wilds of Thessaly back to Corinth. The second major inset story, that of Thelyphron, exhibits motivations and patterns of displacement which are intriguingly parallel to those in the first tale, that of Aristomenes. When the talk at Byrrhena’s dinner turns to witches and their mutilations of both dead and living, a joke at his expense turns the spectators’ attention and laughter to Thelyphron. His story and, let us be frank, his mutilated state exert a horrified fascination upon most readers, so much so that we may miss some of those parallels. Here is the first part of his narrative, for example: Pupillus ego Mileto profectus ad spectaculum Olympicum cum haec etiam loca provinciae famigerabilis adire cuperem, peragrata cuncta Thessalia fuscis avibus Larissam accessi. (2, 21)

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When I was still a minor I set out from Miletus to see the Olympic games. Since I also wanted to visit this area of the celebrated province, I travelled through the whole of Thessaly and, under dark omens, arrived at Larissa. Like both Aristomenes and Socrates, Thelyphron set out from his home in order to see a spectacle and ends up diverted to Thessaly – in particular, to Larissa, Socrates’ goal. I omit all the details of his very familiar story which leaves him, again like Socrates, unknowingly missing a few body parts – though in his case they turn out not to be essential to life. As the final laughter inside his narrative merges with the renewed laughter of the banquet audience for his narrative, we learn that he too ended up displaced by his experiences: nec postea debilis ac sic ridiculus Lari me patrio reddere potui… (2, 30) I could never afterwards return to my ancestral home so maimed and so ludicrous… Too ashamed to return home, Thelyphron has ended up a spectacle at Byrrhena’s dinner party. The first two inset tales of the Golden Ass, then, give us more spatial and geographical details than most of the stories which follow, but in doing so they do not so much fix events spatially in our minds as give us a sense of arbitrary motion, the vulnerability of space itself to magical manipulation, and the subjection of the characters to displacement by the forces surrounding them. Let us turn now to the overall patterns of movement through space in the novel. Through his curiosity Lucius succeeds in transforming himself into the ass and on that very night is stolen away by robbers to their cave in the mountains. We leave aside here any discussion of spatial patterns and themes of displacement in the tale of Cupid and Psyche, though a number beckon. Rather, let us simply note that Charite and Lucius are rescued by Charite’s bridegroom and brought back to town – but not the town of Hypata. We never learn the name of Charite’s native city, though it must be somewhere near Hypata. Charite sends Lucius into the country, intending to reward him but in fact condemning him to dire abuse. Eventually news of the drama of

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lust and revenge which takes the lives of Charite and her husband reaches Charite’s dependents in the country, and they seize the opportunity to escape. As Maaike Zimmerman notes in her commentary,19 from the tale of Cupid and Psyche until the end of Book Ten, when the action finally moves to Corinth, place names are entirely absent from our narrative: we wander in a geography without markers, without fixed points to attach events to, and in a similarly foggy chronology. Our introduction to that landscape is perhaps the most surreal part, for the fugitives from Charite’s country estate wander into the world of monsters, where an old man, weeping for his grandson, turns out to be a giant serpent who eats the travellers he tricks. Only on the road to the amphitheatre at Corinth does Lucius finally rejoin the recognizable geography of the world. He then escapes from the amphitheatre to the arms of Isis. And yet, having returned home to Corinth, he is not at home. Like Aristomenes, like Thelyphron, like Psyche for that matter, he cannot remain at home. Although after much hesitation and preparation he is initiated into the cult of Isis at Corinth, his monitory dreams continue and he eventually travels to Rome for further initiations and a new career as a legal advocate. A typical if not universal spatial pattern of the Greek novels sends hero and heroine away from their homes through a series of disasters and adventures but ultimately brings them back home. Even if there are variations on this pattern,20 the five major novels do suggest a cyclic pattern through space, and one quite consistent with the novels’ affiliation with the cycles of New Comedy: after tribulation, the young couple settles down to marriage and the production of the next generation, which may undertake the cycle again. Apuleius and, to the extent that we can guess, Petronius embody a different pattern, one of displacement, where we cannot join end to beginning and simply start over again. Apuleius’s novel momentarily offers a “false closure,” suggesting the narrator can go home again, but as Stephen Harrison so succinctly puts it, “even before the very sentence describing his journey ————— 19 20

Zimmerman 2000, 11 and n. 18. The title figures of Daphnis and Chloe return to a home in the city they do not remember, as does the heroine of Heliodorus’s Aethiopian Story. The cyclic pattern is also a bit confused in Achilles Tatius’s Leucippe and Clitophon, where they may or may not end up back in Tyre.

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home has had time to conclude, Lucius is called by a vision of the goddess to travel to Rome”:21 tandem digredior et recta patrium larem revisurus meum post aliquam multum temporis contendo paucisque post diebus deae potentis instinctu raptim constrictis sarcinulis, nave conscensa, Romam versus profectionem dirigo …22 (11, 26, 1) I finally departed and hurried straight to visit my ancestral hearth again after a long time away. After a few days there, at the powerful goddess’s urging I hastily gathered my luggage together, boarded a ship, and set out toward Rome. Unlike the hero of the Greek tale of The Ass, Apuleius’s Lucius apparently can’t go home again. But is this a good or a bad thing? Traditional interpretations which take the final book as a serious, even proselytizing account of the salvific power of Isis certainly see it as a good thing. The ancient mystery religions promised that one would not end up where one began, but in a different and profoundly better place. But is our narrator in a better place at the end of the Golden Ass? Most Roman readers would quickly answer yes: he is in the imperial capital, at the end of a journey from provincial obscurity to professional success. For a great many of the imperial elite, displacement was a necessary pre-condition of advancement. Yet the examples of Aristomenes, Socrates, and Thelyphron might suggest that we be a bit more cautious as to whether displacement is always a good thing. Biographical criticism tempts me here. It would be very useful to know if the Golden Ass is indeed, as Stephen Harrison and others have argued, a product of Apuleius’s later career.23 If so, the novel’s author had gone home again, if not to Madauros, at least to Carthage and the province from which he had set out on his distinguished career. This would reinforce for me the

————— 21 22

23

Harrison 2000, 246. Note, however, that Hanson punctuates this as two sentences, with a full stop after contendo. Harrison 2000, 9-10; cf. also 249-252 and the suggestion that Book 11 in part satirizes or parodies the Sacred Tales of Aelius Aristides.

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sense that our youthful narrator’s sudden displacement in the last book from home to Rome is not so much a promotion as an exile. Finally, where do we end? Nowhere in particular, I submit, but in motion which is not rest. The tense of the novel’s last word has been the subject of some discussion, but let us consider also the sense of the final two phrases of the novel (11, 30): sed quoquoversus obvio, gaudens obibam. “Wherever I went, I encountered joyfully….” The imperfect tense of the last word makes for an endless loop, a process continually in motion, never reaching a goal. The spatial pattern of displacement here noted in the Golden Ass does not alone determine its meaning – but nothing in that pattern itself suggests that the story should or even does end where our text does. The undiscover’d country, where Lucius’s story reaches its final goal, as yet eludes our grasp.24

Bibliography Bartsch, S. 1989. Decoding the Ancient Novel. Princeton: Princeton University Press. De Biasi, L. 2000. “Le descrizioni del paesaggio naturale nelle opere di Apuleio. Aspetti letterari.” pp. 199-264 in Apuleio: Storia del testo e interpretazioni, ed. G. Magnaldi and G. F. Gianotti. Turin. Dilke, O. 1985. Greek and Roman Maps. London: Thames and Hudson. Hanson, J. A., ed. and tr. 1989. Apuleius: “Metamorphoses.” Loeb Classical Library. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Harrison, S.J. 1990. “The Speaking Book: The Prologue to Apuleius’ Metamorphoses.” CQ 40: 507-513. Harrison, S.J. 2000. Apuleius: A Latin Sophist. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harrison, S.J. and M. Winterbottom. 2001. “The Prologue to Apuleius’ Metamorphoses: Text, Translation, and Textual Commentary,” pp. 9-15 in Kahane and Laird 2001. Kahane, A. and A. Laird, eds. 2001. A Companion to the Prologue to Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keulen, W.H. 2000. “Significant Names in Apuleius: A ‘Good Contriver” and his Rival in the Cheese Trade (Met. 1,5).” Mnemosyne 53: 310-321. Lindsay, J., trans. 1960. The Golden Ass. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press. Perrin, B. 1916. Plutarch’s Lives with an English Translation. Loeb Classical Library. 10 vols. London and New York: Harvard University Press.

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I am most grateful to the conference organizers, Michael Paschalis and Stavros Frangoulidis, for their generous invitation and to the audience for a stimulating discussion of the ideas of this paper. David Konstan was most generous with his responses after the conference as well. The errors which remain fall to my own account.

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Rabinowitz, J. 1998. The Rotting Goddess: The Origin of the Witch in Classical Antiquity’s Demonization of Fertility Religion. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Autonomedia. Scobie, A. 1975. Apuleius Metamorphoses (Asinus Aureus) I: A Commentary. Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie 54. Meisenheim am Glan: Hain. Slater, N.W. 2001. “The Horizons of Reading,” pp. 213-221 in Kahane and Laird 2001. Zimmerman, M. 2000. Apuleius Madaurensis, Metamorphoses Book X. Text, Introduction, and Commentary. Groningen: Forsten.

The Laughter Festival as a Community Integration Rite in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses STAVROS FRANGOULIDIS

University of Crete

In 2.32 Lucius returns late at night from Byrrhene’s dinner party to Milo’s house, accompanied by his slave. In his drunken state he sees what he thinks are three robbers trying to break into Milo’s house, and kills them one by one with his sword. The following morning Lucius weeps as he envisages his likely prosecution for the murders. There is a marked contrast between this hung-over remorse and the drunken bravado of the previous night. The protagonist’s differing perceptions of the same event may be considered as plots, and tie in neatly with the novel’s key theme of metamorphosis. The Hypatans take advantage of Lucius’ pessimistic scenario and stage a mock trial, during the course of which Lucius acts out two roles: the accused criminal begging for mercy and the orator, defending the heroism of his deed. Lucius’ unwitting performance in the festival acquires the ritual function of dokimasia, trial, in rites of passage, in this case celebrated in the public space of the theatre. Lucius is an outsider staying in Milo’s home, which is located outside the city limits: extra pomerium et urbem totam, ‘outside the city-limits and the whole town’ (1.21). The Hypatans offer Lucius the splendid opportunity of staying in their town by testing his abilities to generate laughter. Although Lucius passes the test and the Hypatans make him patron of their city, offering to cast his image in bronze, he shows reluctance to accept these high honours. The refusal to integrate into the Hypatan community on Lucius’ part may be explained by the fact that their Laughter god has offered him sorrow instead of joy.

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Scholars have traditionally interpreted the Laughter Festival as a scapegoat ritual.1 Habinek offers the most illuminating discussion in this regard, but interprets the festival as a rite of communal identity in which Lucius plays the pharmakos—a marginal figure, whose presence in the town threatens harmony, and whose expulsion ensures communal identity. 2 Such a pharmakos ritual is informed by a centrifugal movement out of the city, whereas at Hypata the opposite spatial direction is taken: from Milo’s home, outside the city limits, to the theatre, the figurative centre of the city. My aim in what follows is to counter the prevailing view of the Laughter Festival as a scapegoat ritual and argue instead that the narrative of Met. 3.1–12 represents a kind of integration rite enacted in the theatre. In this public space, Lucius and all other participants engage in the performance of ritual roles,3 the outcome of which leads not to his expulsion from the Hypatan community, but rather to a proposal for integration into it. That being said, there is a major difference between Lucius and all other characters involved in the festival: the former acts unwittingly, while the latter are conscious of their roles. After the end of Thelyphron’s tale, Lucius’ aunt Byrrhene informs him that the Laughter Festival is due to take place the following day, and advises him to find some witty way to celebrate this great god (2.31). Lucius promises to do his best, taking leave of the dinner party in a drunken state. The torch held by his accompanying slave blows out the moment he leaves Byrrhene’s house, thus rendering his account of events unreliable. Upon his arrival at Milo’s house, Lucius sees three ‘men’ beating on the door; he mistakes them for robbers and cuts them down with his sword. These ‘robbers’ later turn out to have been wineskins animated by Pamphile’s magic. As narrator, ————— 1

2

3

James 1987, 87 and 97, n. 1; and McCreight 1993, 46–47. On the other hand, Robertson 1919, 110–15, interprets the festival as a ritual drama of the carnival type. Habinek 1990, 54; Bartalucci 1988, 50–65; Finkelpearl 1998, 91–92, compares Lucius to Sinon in Vergil’s Aeneid 2 in their common role as scapegoats. For the ritual of pharmakos see Burkert 1985, 82–84. Tatum 1979, 49, considers Lucius’ experience in the festival as a replay of the misadventures previously suffered by Aristomenes and Thelyphron, but does not develop the point any further. Penwill 1990, 5 points out the theatrical substructure in the narrative. Zimmerman 2000, 25–26 compares Lucius’ performance in the theatre at Corinth, averted at the last moment, to his performance in the Laughter Festival. She also nicely points out that, given the fact that Lucius’ performance is averted at the last moment, one may say that it is replaced by the spectaculum in Cenchreae.

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Lucius compares his encounter with the bandits to that of Hercules’ slaughtering of Geryon: in vicem Geryoneae caedis, ‘in the manner of the slaughter of Geryon’ (2.32). On the morning of the Laughter Festival, the Hypatans take advantage of the protagonist’s guilty conscience and put him on mock trial, charging him with triple ‘murder’. The previous night Lucius has killed three ‘men’. As a common criminal, then Lucius must undergo a ritual ‘catharsis’ before his integration into the Hypatan community and their ‘fellowship of Laughter’.4 The complete lack of historical evidence relating to Laughter Festivals5 bears out Byrrhene’s earlier remark to Lucius that the Hypatans are the only people in the world who celebrate this rite (quo die soli mortalium sanctissimum deum Risum hilaro atque gaudiali ritu propitiamus, ‘on that day we alone in the world seek to propitiate the most sacred god Laughter with merry and joyful ritual’ 2.31). However, the narrative in question may offer some useful insights into the motivation for the festival. It appears to be an institutionalised ritual of integration in which the entire community participates, thus symbolising its cohesion as a group. The procedure seems to involve some sort of a mock trial, the literal equivalent of dokimasia that informs rites of passage. The Hypatans most probably prefer to set up either strangers or fools (ideally both, like Lucius) precisely because such people are ignorant of the rite and can thus ensure a triumphant celebration for Laughter.6 Lucius’ credulity in believing that the courts are functioning as normal on what has clearly been described to him the previous night by Byrrhene as a public holiday helps characterise him as completely foolish. The performance of this mock trial begins when the magistrates, the lictors and a mob of citizens burst into Milo’s house to arrest Lucius and take him to court to face murder charges. Lucius surrenders to the lictors ————— 4

5 6

Intratextually, Lucius’ re-evaluation of the events of the previous night recalls Aristomenes in the eponymous tale (Book 1): Lucius is convinced that something which did not happen did occur, whereas Aristomenes tries to persuade himself of the opposite regarding the events with the witches that took place the previous night in the inn. The connection between the two episodes is reinforced as both Lucius and Aristomenes are under the spell of magic. See Schlam 1992, 43. One may recall Fotis’ earlier remark in 2.18 that the Hypatans are hostile to foreigners, (perhaps because they prefer to set them up in the festival and thus ensure its success): ‘tibi vero fortunae splendor insidias, contemptus etiam peregrinationis poterit adferre’, ‘envy of your fine fortune, as well as contempt for you as a foreign visitor, could cause you to be ambushed.’

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without resistance, therefore implicitly acquiescing to the role of criminal as he is led around the town.7 Lucius’ arrest signals the transition from the private space of Milo’s house, outside the city limits, to the public space of the city, first of the streets, then the forum and finally the theatre. The fact that Lucius is led around town, thus prompting self-comparison to an animal, has been taken by some scholars as evidence for his role as pharmakos (lustralibus ... hostiis, ‘sacrificial animals’ 3.2; also a few lines later: velut quandam victimam ‘like a sacrificial victim’ 3.2).8 This reading is clearly in alignment with Lucius’ reading of the events. However, there are two features that militate against this view: (1) Lucius is led through the citystreets, unlike the pharmakos who is driven through the city gates and then chased across the boundaries;9 and (2) Lucius is handsome, whereas the pharmakos is a figure who is chosen on account of his ugliness.10 Only after his metamorphosis into an ass is Lucius truly ugly. In the context of this interpretation, Lucius’ comparison of himself to an animal may be interpreted as designed to foreshadow his imminent metamorphosis into an ass through magic and his subsequent misadventures (Books 3–10). In his capacity as narrator, Lucius describes the entire crowd as laughing at him throughout the procession to the forum. The laughter suggests enjoyment and approval of the protagonist’s performance, given that the Hypatans are aware of his innocence.11 When the procession reaches the forum, the magistrates take their seat in the lofty tribunal, sublimo suggestu ‘on the lofty dais’, and thus assume the role of judices, ‘judges’ (3.2). The forum is so overcrowded that the procedure is moved to the theatre, as there is serious danger of a genuine disaster, which would be most unfitting at a Laughter Festival. At the same time, the civic space of the theatre serves as the most appropriate setting for the enactment of this staged trial. It may further be taken as a metaphor for the city ————— 7 8

9 10 11

For the sacrificial language in the Laughter Festival, see McCreight 1993, 46–52. Bartalucci 1988, 58; also Robertson 1919, 113–14. In this context, Lucius’ lavish dinner at Byrrhene’s house the night before the festival may correspond to the ritual detail in which the pharmakos is fed lavishly before his expulsion from town. On this point see Burkert 1985, 82. Burkert 1985, 82. Burkert 1982, 82. For an assessment of the (sadistic) laughter in the festival, see Shumate 1996, 83–86. For an excellent discussion of the theme of laughter and humiliation in the Laughter festival see also Lateiner 2001, 226, 231, 239, 243 and 247.

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itself, since the entire community is gathered there (3.2). Lucius emerges as all the more stupid for failing to take note of this change of venue, particularly if one considers that his aunt has already informed him about the festival and hinted that he will be called upon to play a role. In the performance proper, the crier calls for silence and asks the watchman to come forward to deliver his speech. The reference to the water clock is designed to reinforce the verisimilitude of the events. The watchman then assumes the role of prosecutor (accusator 3.3), and delivers the accusation in accordance with the form prescribed in rhetorical textbooks: an exordium (3.3.2–3), a narratio (3.3.4–8) and a peroratio (3.3.9).12 In the exordium, the prosecutor points out the importance of the case and asks for the punishment of the murderer. The narratio relates the facts of the case. The previous night, it is alleged, the defendant killed three men and then entered a house. The prosecutor dutifully ensured that he was brought to justice the next day, which coincided with the holiday. In the peroratio, the prosecutor appeals to the judges to punish the murderer, whom he specifically characterizes as peregrinus, foreigner. This punishment would take the form of expulsion from the town. When the crier then calls upon the accused to defend himself, Lucius bursts into tears, not so much because of the accusation, but out of his own foolish sense of guilt. Still, he musters some courage, which he attributes to divine inspiration, and presents his case in terms of the heroic nature of his deed (3.4). Scholars have interpreted Lucius’ defence in the trial as evidence for his dual role as auctor and actor: he creates a speech and proceeds to deliver it to the audience at the trial.13 This role as auctor becomes even more apparent when he devises the two plots, one for the morning of the Laughter Festival and the other for the night before it. During the festival Lucius acts out two roles, first as criminal in the procession and then as orator in order to defend his innocence in the performance of the ‘trial’. These two roles seem to correspond to his two differing perceptions of the same event that took place the previous night outside Milo’s front door. Moreover, Lucius’ defence in the ‘trial’ exhibits a rhetorical structure, consisting of an exordium (3.4.3–4), a narratio (3.5–6.1–3) and a section of ————— 12

13

van der Paardt 1971, 47. The reference to the text is to the Budé edition of Robertson and Vallette 1940–45. Finkelpearl 1998, 89.

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proofs (3.6.4–5), like the watchman’s speech before it.14 In the exordium Lucius does not deny the charge of killing three men, but argues that the accusation against him is unreasonable. In the narratio, he relates the facts of the case (as he wants them to be understood by his audience). Lucius represents this encounter with the robbers he saw trying to break down Milo’s door as a duel, thus lending an epic dimension to the scene. Through his intrepid action he has protected his host’s house from robbery and thus views himself as worthy of public praise (salute communi protecta … me … laudabilem publice credebam fore ‘having … protected … public safety … I trusted that I would be … praiseworthy in the public eye’ 3.6). In retrospect, the community of Hypata will praise Lucius not for ridding society of criminals, but for his skill in generating laughter and hence duly honouring the god of Laughter. In the closing section of his speech, Lucius refers to the esteem in which he is held among his own people as well as to the absence of any sinister motive for committing the crime.15 When Lucius is sure that he has won over the audience with his defence, he stares at them, but discovers to his amazement that everyone, including his host Milo, has dissolved into laughter.16 One way of interpreting Milo’s response is as that of informed spectator: he is aware of the positive development that awaits his guest, and is thus in a position to enjoy the excellent performance in the ‘trial’.17 Following this, two women appear in the orchestra (3.8) to act out the roles of the widows and mothers of the dead men. The reference to their black dress must be interpreted as ‘costume’. In their turn, they deliver an emotional appeal to the court, seeking the defendant’s blood in order to placate the dead (3.8). They further identify Lucius as latro, ‘robber’, thus switching around the charge. As we would expect in this staged trial, their appeal is successful. ————— 14

15

16

17

van der Paardt 1971, 64. The reference to the text is to the Budé edition of Robertson and Vallette 1940–45. In Cicero’s Pro Milone 9, the orator mentions the law of the XII tables, according to which anyone could kill night robbers carrying weapons without legal penalty on grounds of self-defence. Penwill 1990, 3, observes the error of the Hypatans in ignoring the role of magic in the animated wineskins. See also Finkelpearl 1998, 90. Shumate 1996, 87, views Milo both as a trickster figure who laughs at Lucius’ expense, and as Lucius’ only friend in the crowd. Smith 1989, 130, characterizes Milo as “an ominous and disturbing character.”

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The elder of the magistrates (another actor in this ‘trial’ plot) orders that Lucius be severely tortured in order to reveal the identity of his accomplices, since his slave has run off and is unavailable for cross-examination. Here there is an element of talio: the magistrates intend to wipe out Lucius and his gang, just as Lucius has done earlier when he had killed the three ‘men’, in order to protect both Milo’s house and the community of Hypata. Lucius undergoes the worst kind of humiliation, taking the place of his slave and facing the prospect of corporal punishment, which was forbidden for Roman citizens, let alone nobles of his stature. At this point, the older of the two women appeals to the citizens to pull off the shroud over the corpses, on the grounds that the horrific sight beneath will lead them to call for an even more severe punishment. Lucius’ refusal to lay the ‘corpses’ bare reveals his unwillingness to gaze on the havoc he wrought the previous night. Under pressure from the lictors Lucius is forced to remove the shroud, only to discover that his ‘victims’ were wineskins, pierced in the place where he struck them the night before outside Milo’s house. It is only then that he fully perceives the illusion of events. The people in the audience respond with uncontrolled laughter and congratulate Lucius as they exit the theatre. Their laughter is more intense at this moment since nobody represses it, thus signifying their earlier masked assumption of the role as spectators in the performance of this ‘trial’. When Lucius perceives the illusion of his creation, he portrays himself as figuratively dead (3.10). His ‘rebirth’ occurs only when Milo approaches him and leads him home ever inconsolable after his humiliation during the festival.18 The walk home through Hypata’s narrow streets contrasts with the earlier parade through the main streets, throughout which Lucius was the object of public attention and ridicule (3.2). The fact that Lucius plays the part of defendant in the festival, albeit unwittingly, offers him a rare opportunity to integrate into the community. Everything depends on his skill in generating laughter and thereby assisting in the festival celebrations. The ensuing entrance of the magistrates into the private space of Lucius’ room, in stately attire, signals the abandonment of their earlier role of judices in the enactment of this staged trial. Their speech performs the function of explaining every aspect of the rite to him (3.11). First, the magistrates reveal their awareness of Lucius’ noble birth and learning, while encouraging him ————— 18

For the theme of rebirth, from either presumed or real death, see Zimmerman 2000, 23, together with n. 83.

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to dispel his grief.19 The reference to the protagonist’s origins only serves to stress his foolishness in failing to comprehend that he has merely fallen victim to a mock trial without further repercussions. The magistrates proceed to define the annual celebration as lusus, a ‘public holiday’ which the entire community celebrates in honour of the god Laughter. The success of this lusus, they explain, depends on its novelty value, in this way implicitly making a ‘literary’ comment on the novel aspect of Lucius’ creation. Third, the magistrates assure Lucius that the god always takes the auctor and actor under his protection, never letting him experience grief (auctorem et actorem, ‘producer and performer’ 3.11): Lucius can be seen as the auctor, since he unconsciously devises his two plots and then performs the roles of criminal and the orator in the ‘trial’, defending the heroism of his ‘deed’. Later in 3.12 Lucius admits that he has been the creator of the laughter in the theatre: quem ipse fabricaveram, risum, ‘laughter which I myself had manufactured’. Finally, the magistrates inform Lucius that the city has decided to proclaim him patron, patronus, and to cast his image in bronze: ‘at tibi civitas omnis pro ista gratia honores egregios obtulit; nam et patronum scribsit et ut in aere stet imago tua decrevit’, ‘and the city has unanimously offered you special honours in gratitude for what you have done’ (3.11).20 The awarding of exceptional honours to the foreigner Lucius for his brilliant performance in the festival, so alien to the role of pharmakos, signals his integration into the Hypatan community with the new social status of ‘honorary citizen’. In his reply, Lucius pretends to acknowledge the import of the distinctions conferred upon him, but tactfully declines the offer of a statue, proposing instead to have it cast in the form of his superiors, perhaps because, unlike Lucius, they were aware of their roles. The fact that Lucius views himself as a victim rather than an honoured guest explains his refusal of the exceptional honours conferred. Later, Lucius puts on yet another act in his reply to Byrrhene’s slave, who comes to Milo’s home to invite him to dinner for a second time. Lucius’ feigned reply to both the magistrates and Byrrhene’s slave is set in remarkable opposition to his earlier unwitting per————— 19

20

Harrison 2000, 215–19 collects evidence in the text which reveals Lucius as a sophist in the making. Kenney 1998, 228, observes: “in the real world patronus was a sort of ambassador, a man of substance and influence appointed to watch over the city’s interests at Rome. Lucius’ appointment, like the statue which he tactfully declines, is purely honorific.”

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formance in the Laughter Festival. Moreover, his reluctance to return to Byrrhene’s house makes clear his terror of further ridicule, and in retrospect explains why he turned down the honours offered by the Hypatan magistrates. In Hypata Lucius has two completely opposite experiences. As listener of the Thelyphron tale in the controlled space of Byrrhene’s house, he can join with her guests in laughing at the disfigured man’s misfortune. On the other hand, during the Laughter Festival, in the open space of the procession, in the public streets and the theatre, he finds himself in the position of the victim and is reduced to tears. The community of Hypata seems to enjoy sadistic laughter at the expense of individuals who have fallen victim to them. This feature is set in remarkable contrast to the reaction of the crowd at Kenchreae (in Isis’ festival) who do not laugh at Lucius’ misfortunes when he enters the procession in the form of the ass and then regains his human form amidst the amazement of all participants in the procession.21 Yet in rejecting the honours bestowed on him by the Hypatan magistrates, Lucius also loses the guarantee that the god will never let him suffer grief (3.11). This turn of the plot takes place in the narrative sequence following the Laughter Festival. Fotis explains to Lucius the contribution played by witchcraft in his ordeal in the Laughter Festival. Moreover, in her explanation Fotis also emerges as an inferior witch in comparison to her powerful mistress Pamphile. Lucius, however, fails to perceive this. Instead he asks his ————— 21

There are a number of intriguing parallels between the Ploiaphesia festival and the Laughter Festival. First, in encouraging Lucius to enter the procession in the Ploiaphesia, Isis (11.5) may recall Byrrhene, who advises her nephew to think of something witty and take part in the Laughter Festival the next morning (2.31). Second, like the Laughter Festival, all participants in the procession of the Ploiaphesia festival engage in role-play, as they are expected to act according to the demands of the ritual of the ceremonial launching of Isis’ new ship (11.7–11). Finally, the priest who encourages Lucius to assume a more cheerful disposition and enter Isis’ fellowship for even greater protection (11.16), brings to mind the similar exhortation of the magistrates, who encourage Lucius to dispel his grief and offer him high honours (3.11). These parallels, however, are designed to reinforce the stark contrast between the two episodes: in the Laughter Festival Lucius is ridiculed. His foolishness foreshadows his later metamorphosis into an ass. By contrast, in the Ploiaphesia festival Lucius turns from ass to man, to the amazement and admiration of the crowd (11.13). This difference, in turn, explains why Lucius has turned down the offer of integration into the Hypatan community and gladly integrates himself into the Isiac fellowship: the Hypatans’ god of Laughter offers Lucius sorrow, whereas Isis grants him joy and the prospect of a happy life under her protection.

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mistress to change him into an owl, after secretly watching Pamphile transform herself into the very same bird so that she can fly to her Boeotian lover (3.21).22 Fotis agrees to change Lucius into a bird only after obtaining assurances that he will not run away from her. He then undresses and rubs himself with Fotis’ ointments, thus mimicking Pamphile’s previous performance. Far from becoming an owl, however, Lucius is transformed into an ass.23 Here there may be a latent play on the fact that the owl is a symbol of wisdom, while the ass is one of stupidity: Lucius asks to be changed into the former, but ends up the latter. Lucius’ metamorphosis into an ass marks the end of his affair with Fotis, whose misuse of magic ointments has led to the disastrous turn in events. One way of interpreting the Laughter Festival is as that of a trial to test Lucius’ foolishness, so that in successfully passing it he can rightfully turn into an ass, an animal renowned for its stupidity. Moreover, his tears and sorrows in the theatre hint at the sufferings that are in store for him in the near future. Later a group of robbers really do break into Milo’s house, steal goods and remove Lucius/the ass from town to their mountain lair. If we are to believe the spy of the thieves in Book 7, the Hypatans blame Lucius for the attack on Milo’s house. The fact that the Hypatans accuse Lucius of the theft in Milo’s house further argues against the notion as pharmakos: the pharmakos is a figure to whom the entire community is indebted after his expulsion from town, thus allowing the continuation of the order.24 Only after his metamorphosis into an ass Lucius could somehow be seen as a pharmakos figure: he is truly ugly by that time, and is forcefully removed from town against his own will, although not in ritualistic terms, to live with a group of social outcasts. Thus Lucius’ experience in Hypata which is not originally intended to resemble the pharmakos ritual, ends up being so perhaps owing ————— 22

23

24

Despite their tremendous powers, witches are comic figures, given that they are unable to exercise control over their lovers: Pamphile, for instance, cannot control her Boeotian lover, just as earlier Meroe is unable to make her lover Socrates stay with her. In the novel, metamorphosed characters retain those personality traits that underlined their individuality as humans. Thus all ex-lovers and opponents of Meroe retain the aspects that distinguished them as human beings when metamorphosed into animals: her unfaithful ex-lover turns into a beaver because that animal cuts off its genitals and thus saves itself from its pursuers; an inn-keeper turns into a frog swimming in his own wine; a lawyer turns into a pleading ram, and so on (1.9). Moreover, the witch Pamphile, who practices her arts at night, appropriately turns herself into an owl, a nocturnal bird (3.21). Burkert 1985, 84.

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to his refusal to integrate into the Hypatan community and to his foolish interest in magic. Lucius’ forced departure from town marks the beginning of the long sequence of his asinine adventures in the novel, in which he suffers all manner of trials and tribulations (Books 3–10). The presence of certain themes from the narrative of the Laughter Festival in Lucius’ subsequent adventures as an ass renders the latter a mirror of the former in several ways. First, in his asinine adventures everybody is privy to a joke except for him, just as was the case in his ordeal in the Laughter Festival. Secondly, Lucius is reduced to the status of a complete outsider, just as he was a foreigner in Hypata. Finally, Lucius is reduced to his animal state by the same kind of misguided overconfidence he displayed towards magic before his painful experience in the Laughter Festival. In this way, Lucius’ ordeal in the Laughter Festival may be interpreted as foreshadowing his subsequent adventures as an ass. To sum up, the peregrinus Lucius’ movement from Milo’s home, outside the city limits, to the theatre, the figurative centre of the city, argues in favour of an integration rite. In the performance of the rite, all participants act out ritual roles: Lucius unwittingly plays roles both as criminal and defendant in order to prove the heroic nature of his deed, the wineskins appear as robbers, the magistrates perform as judges; the two women play the widows and mothers of the ‘dead men’, and so forth. The town-magistrates bestow exceptional honours on the protagonist for his brilliant performance in the festival. Lucius, however, not only shows reluctance to accept the honorific offer of integration, but also continues to display the same naive overconfidence towards magic as before his ordeal in the Laughter Festival. This insistence leads to his transformation into an ass, an animal known for its ugliness, and to his forced removal to the uncivilized space of wild nature by a gang of robbers, thus marking the beginning of his woeful adventures in the novel.25

————— 25

I wish to thank Stephen Harrison, Maaike Zimmerman, John L. Penwill and Ben Petre for helpful suggestions. The text of Apuleius is quoted from Helm’s Teubner edition (1992). All Latin translations are from Hanson’s Loeb edition (1989). An analysis of the Laughter Festival from the Greimasian perspective of Roles and Performances appears in my recent book, Roles and Performances in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (Frangoulidis 2001).

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