Motherhood and the Other: Fashioning Female Power in Flavian Epic (Oxford Studies in Classical Literature and Gender Theory)

OX F O R D S T U D I E S I N C L A S S I C A L L I T E R AT U R E A N D G E N D E R T H E O RY General Editors David Ko...

Author: Antony Augoustakis

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OX F O R D S T U D I E S I N C L A S S I C A L L I T E R AT U R E A N D G E N D E R T H E O RY General Editors David Konstan

Alison Sharrock

Oxford Studies in Classical Literature and Gender Theory publishes substantial works of feminist literary research, which offer a gendersensitive perspective across the whole range of Classical literature. The ﬁeld is delimited chronologically by Homer and Augustine, and culturally by the Greek and Latin languages. Within these parameters, the series welcomes studies of any genre.

Motherhood and the Other Fashioning Female Power in Flavian Epic

A N TO N Y AU G O U S TA K I S

1

3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. If furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With ofﬁces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York # Antony Augoustakis 2010 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department. Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn ISBN 978–0–19–958441–3 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Ø ŁºÆÆ, & Ø ŒÆÆ Ø . . . (Aeschylus, Agamemnon 958) o magni mihi numinis instar, cara parens . . . [et] care pater . . . (Pun. 13.623–4, 654) parentibus meis Cretensibus optimis

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Contents List of Illustrations Preface Texts and Translations Used List of Abbreviations Introduction: Other and Same: Female Presence in Flavian Epic (Fe)Male perspectives on cosmopolitanism and identity Motherhood and the Other deﬁned: Julia Kristeva in the choˆra of Strangers Epic within epic: Lemnos and Theban civil war in Statius’ Thebaid Patrio-tic epic? Same and other in Silius’ Punica 1 Mourning Endless: Female Otherness in Statius’ Thebaid Deﬁning the periphery: Thebes and Lemnos Between Lemnos and Argos: Hypsipyle’s transgressed boundaries Eumenidum antiquissima: Jocasta the warmonger or helpless bystander? In the choˆra of sisterhood: Antigone and Ismene—public gaze and private lament Lament and the poet: Boundaries (re)transgressed 2 Deﬁning the Other: From altera patria to tellus mater in Silius Italicus’ Punica Fathers, sons, and the poetics of patria Capua: Another Rome? A city in the periphery Saguntum as same and other: Breaking the bond with patria Rome Germana Elissae: A Carthaginian reborn The renewal of tellus

ix x xiii xiv

1 1 14 21 23 30 34 37 62 68 75

92 97 109 113 136 144

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Contents

3 Comes ultima fati: Regulus’ Encounter with Marcia’s Otherness in Punica 6 Regulus and the Punica: Bridging traditions? Literary convention or subversive speech? Lucan’s Marcia and the foreboding of doom Marcia’s Didoesque farewell—impenetrability wounded ‘Securing’ the future Transgressing against nature: The serpent and Virgil’s Camilla Fashioning a new generation: Marcia ‘sowing the seed’ Li occhi casti di Marzia tua: Embedding Marcia in the Punica 4 Playing the Same: Roman and Non-Roman Mothers in the Punica Edonis ut Pangaea: Imilce’s art of dissuasion Ne bella pavescas: Mothers as ‘educators’ and the regeneration of the female Tempus cognoscere manes femineos: The female choˆra in the geography of the Underworld Caelicolum Phrygia genetricem sede: A foreign goddess in Rome

156 159 164 167 176 178 182 188 192

196 198 213 221 229

Epilogue: Virgins and (M)others: Appropriations of Same and Other in Flavian Rome

238

Bibliography Indices

254 287

List of Illustrations 1. Rome, Cancelleria Relief B, Vespasian’s Aduentus (Neg. D-DAI-Rom 2007.0010). 2. Rome, Cancelleria Relief B, Vespasian’s Aduentus, detail of Roma (Neg. D-DAI-Rom 2007.0011). 3. Rome, Cancelleria Relief A, Domitian’s Profectio (Neg. D-DAI-Rom 2007.0013). 4. Rome, Domus Augustana, lower peristyle, author’s own picture. 5. Rome, Domus Augustana, lower level, from W. L. MacDonald, The Architecture of the Roman Empire, vol. I: An Introductory Study (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1982), ﬁg. 58.

243 243 244 250

251

Preface Until the last decade of the twentieth century, Flavian epic poetry remained in the margins of classical scholarship, as an area in Latin literature that deserved little attention, if any at all. Fortunately, this trend has been reversed in the past ﬁfteen years, and the authors previously known as ‘poets of the Silver Age’ (or even ‘of the decline’) now ﬁgure regularly in both professional conferences in the ﬁeld of Classics and also in critical studies on each of the individual authors, Valerius Flaccus, Silius Italicus, and Statius. This book is the ﬁrst study on the role of women in Flavian epic, in particular the Punica and the Thebaid, and offers a new venue of interpretation, from the perspective of Julia Kristeva’s theories on foreign otherness and motherhood, but at the same time it follows in a long tradition of gender studies and their application to the ancient Greek and Latin texts. While not claiming to be exhaustive, since I only treat two of the four epic poems of the period, I hope that my reading will shed light on the importance of female ﬁgures in the epic poetry of the Flavian age and will initiate further discussion that applies to texts such as Valerius’ Argonautica or Statius’ Achilleid. This exciting ‘journey’ in the waters of Flavian epic began as a dissertation on women in Silius Italicus, completed at Brown University in 2001 and approved by an especially supportive dissertation committee under the direction of M. C. J. Putnam. Michael offered much valuable guidance and suggestions throughout the process, while David Konstan, Jeri DeBrohun, and Joe Pucci lent much appreciated encouragement and help that led to the completion of the dissertation thesis. This book, however, owes its inception to a section of one of my dissertation’s chapters that focused on female otherness. Since then the dissertation itself changed scope and shape: in this book, I have only kept part of the second and third chapters of my original thesis, drastically changed, and refashioned from the perspective of foreign otherness and the dichotomy between centre and periphery, while the introduction, the epilogue, and the ﬁrst and second chapters are

Preface

xi

completely new additions. A version of the third chapter of this book appeared in Ramus, and a version of the fourth chapter appeared in Classical Philology. I would like to extend my warmest thanks to the editors of the series for Oxford University Press, David Konstan and Alison Sharrock, for the enthusiasm with which they embraced this project from its inception, their constant support, encouragement, patience, and erudition, as well as their constructive criticism that saw to its completion. The anonymous reader offered valuable suggestions and corrections that helped me improve the manuscript. I would also like to thank Hilary O’Shea, senior editor for Classics, Ancient History, and Archaeology at Oxford University Press, Dorothy McCarthy, assistant commissioning editor, Classics, Ancient History, and Archaeology, and the production editor, Kathleen Fearn, who oversaw the swift journey of this book from its manuscript stage to publication. I am indebted to the copy editor, Jane Bainbridge, whose erudition and experience have been of tremendous assistance in the process. I would also like to thank the Deutsches Archa¨ologisches Institut in Rome and Yale University Press for permission to reproduce copyright illustrations. I owe special thanks to many people and audiences who heard, read, and commented on earlier drafts and who shared many insights and ideas with me during this process: Neil Bernstein, William Dominik, Brent Froberg, Randall Ganiban, Julia Hejduk, Alison Keith, Joy Littlewood, Ray Marks, and Carole Newlands. I am grateful for the support I received from Baylor University and the Department of Classics, with a summer sabbatical in 2001 to plan the initial stages of the book and a semester sabbatical in 2005 to complete a large portion of the volume’s draft, which was ﬁnished and submitted in the summer of 2006. During my stay at Corpus Christi College at the University of Oxford as a visiting fellow in the autumn of 2008, I was able to supplement the manuscript with up-to-date bibliography. I am in Stephen Harrison’s debt for the excellent hospitality, including the unrivalled resources at the Bodleian, Sackler, and Corpus Christi College libraries. During the long process from the beginning to the ﬁnal touches to this opus, I have been blessed by the presence of many good friends in my life, who have brightened my days in so many ways and who have

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been present in good or bad moments with their constant support and encouragement: Lucia Athanassaki, Costas Busch, Carol J. King, Kostas Kourtikakis, Eleni Manolaraki, Vassiliki Panoussi, John Thorburn, and Angeliki Tzanetou. First and foremost, however, this magnum opus is dedicated to my parents, Georgia and Charidemos Augoustakis, who have incessantly inspired me with their love and encouragement, rightly and without exaggeration deserving the titulus to this volume, parentibus optimis. Antony Augoustakis— Heraklion, Greece August 2009

Texts and Translations Used The consonantal ‘v’ and ‘j’ in the Latin texts has been printed as ‘u’ and ‘i’ and ‘V’ and ‘I’ in capitals. The following standard editions have been used for quotations from the original Greek and Latin texts (BT ¼ Bibliotheca Teubneriana; OCT ¼ Oxford Classical Texts): Livy 21–25 Livy 26–30 Lucan Ovid’s Metamorphoses Pliny the Younger Silius Italicus’ Punica Statius’ Thebaid Suetonius’ Lives Valerius Flaccus Virgil

Walters, C. F., and Conway, R. S. OCT 1967. Conway, R. S., and Johnson, S. K. OCT 1968. Shackleton Bailey BT 1997, 2nd edn. Tarrant, R. J. OCT 2004. Mynors, R. A. B. OCT 1963. Delz, J. BT 1987. Hill, D. E., ed. (1996) P. Papini Stati ‘Thebaidos’ Libri XII, 2nd edn, Leiden. Ihm, M. BT 1908. Ehlers, W. W. BT 1980. Mynors, R. A. B. OCT 1969.

Translations of major authors used throughout this book have been adapted with many changes from the following sources: Lucan Silius Italicus Statius Valerius Flaccus

Braund, S. Oxford World Classics 1992. Duff, J. D. Loeb 1934. Shackleton Bailey, D. R. Loeb 2003. Mozley, J. H. Loeb 1934.

List of Abbreviations Greek authors and works are abbreviated according to the system of the LSJ, while Latin authors and works follow the system of the OLD. Any gaps are supplemented from the abbreviations of the OCD, 3rd edn. The abbreviation Pun. is used instead of Sil. Periodicals have been abbreviated on the basis of L’Anne´e Philologique. LSJ

Liddell, H. G., Scott. R., and Jones, H. S., eds (1940) A GreekEnglish Lexicon, 9th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

OCD

Hornblower, S., and Spawforth, A., eds (1996) The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

OLD

Souter, A., Wyllie, J. M., and Glare, P. G. W., eds (1968–82) Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

MODERN WORKS ANRW

Vogt, J., Temporini, H., and Haase, W., eds (1972– ) Aufstieg und Niedergang der ro¨mischen Welt (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter).

BMC

Mattingly, H., ed. (1930), Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum 2: Vespasian to Domitian (London).

Ernout-Meillet

Ernout, A., and Meillet, A. (1932) Dictionnaire ´etymologique de la langue latine (Paris: Klincksieck).

LIMC

Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (1981– ) Zurich. Lloyd-Jones, H., and Parsons, P., eds (1983) Supplementum Hellenisticum (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter).

Suppl. Hell. TLL

Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (1900– ) Leipzig.

Introduction: Other and Same: Female Presence in Flavian Epic (FE)MALE PERSPECTIVES ON COSMOPOLITANISM AND IDENTITY omnibus hunc potius communem animantibus orbem communes et crede deos. patriam inde uocato qua redit itque dies; nec nos, o nata, malignus cluserit hoc uno semper sub frigore mensis. (V. Fl. Argon. 7.227–30) Rather deem that this world is shared by all living souls, and shared too are the gods. Thence call this your country, where the sun goes forth and back again; nor should, my daughter, the inclement climate imprison us always in this eternal cold alone.

In the seventh book of the Argonautica, Valerius Flaccus expands on material he draws from Apollonius Rhodius’ third book, where Medea famously falls in love with Jason. In the passage quoted above, Venus, disguised as Circe, Medea’s aunt, advises the young girl to pursue her dream and love, following Jason to Greece, far from her patria, Colchis.1 When we compare Valerius Flaccus’ adaptation of Chalciope’s similar pronouncement from Apollonius’ own Argonautica, it becomes apparent that the Flavian poet transforms the Greek

1 See Mozley (1934), 377 n.1: ‘There is a touch of Stoic cosmopolitanism.’ See also Stadler (1993), 92; Perutelli (1997a), 278; and Liberman (2002), 300 n.125.

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epic into a Roman saga of the imperial age—by acclimatising in this case Chalciope’s words to ﬁt the poet’s Roman standpoint:2 Zçºº Œ ø H Æ NæÆ Åb ºØ, Iºº Kd ªÆÅ æÆØ ÆØØ, ¥ Æ Å æ h Æ ˚ºåø. (Ap. Rhod. Argon. 3.678–80) How I wish that I did not look upon this palace of our parents or city, but that I lived at the edge of the world, where no one had ever heard the name of the Colchians.

Apollonius’ version underscores Chalciope’s escapist tendencies, an inﬂuence on the Hellenistic poet from the Euripidean tragedies, where characters in distress commonly express the wish to take wing and ﬂy away to the far ends of the cosmos, an escape from the unpleasant realities on the stage.3 Chalciope envies Medea’s potential, bright future away from what she considers to be the barbaric northern lands of the Colchians. In Valerius’ version, however, Venus’ exhortation to Medea is expressed emphatically as a piece of advice from a mother (not an aunt) to her daughter (o nata, ‘oh, child’, V. Fl. Argon. 7.229) and constitutes a paradigm unique in imperial epic, a feature that marks the difference between Flavian epic narratives and the foundational poems of the Augustan age, in particular those of Virgil and Ovid. In this case, the dichotomy between Roman vs Barbarian, Greek vs non-Greek, same vs other is negotiated from the perspective of an idealised cosmopolitanism.4 In Virgil and Ovid the epic, ktistic narrative hastens towards the foundation of a centre in Rome, in the heart of Italy, with a mixture of positive and negative effects, analeptically and proleptically attached to the future of the empire: consider for instance the words of Jupiter to Juno in Aeneid 12, where the supreme ruler of gods and humans elucidates how the two races will merge into one (faciamque omnes uno ore Latinos, ‘I shall make them all Latins, 2 See Hunter (1989), 172: ‘These verses help to plant the seed of ﬂight in Medea’s mind.’ 3 See e.g. the second stasimon in the Hippolytus (732–51) and Barrett (1964), 297–306. Cf. Euripides’ Hel. 1478–86 and Ion 796–99. 4 Invaluable is Hall’s (1989) study of the construction of ‘Greekness’ and ‘Athenianness’ in tragedy.

Introduction: Other and Same

3

speaking one tongue’, Aen. 12.837).5 Conversely, the post-Augustan epic narrative becomes increasingly centrifugal, as it hastens away from the centre to the periphery of the epic landscape: in Valerius, for instance, the Argonauts set out to seek the golden ﬂeece, but the epic narrative shifts from Magnesia to Colchis, where the heroes even participate in a civil war (Argonautica 6), before they embark on the return trip (a journey that incidentally is never completed, because of the epic’s breaking off in mediis rebus, in the eighth book).6 Likewise, as we shall see in the subsequent analysis of the Thebaid and the Punica, on the one hand Statius indulges in rebalancing the ‘middle’7 of the poem from Thebes itself to ‘the trip towards Thebes’, namely the details of the Argive expedition on its way to the centre of the action: this reconﬁguration ultimately leads to a destabilisation of the epic genre that struggles to ﬁnd its own expression, wavering between different genres at the very end, just before the authorial voice intervenes to put an end to such ‘dangerous’ enterprises; and on the other hand, Silius opts for a theme that showcases the long struggle of Africa to impose itself on the centre—Italy—from which struggle Rome emerges victorious, yet not unscathed. My discussion centres on two of the four epic poems of the Flavian period, as they reﬂect best a crystallisation of the socio-political and cultural mechanisms of the Domitianic regime with respect to the reception of foreign otherness and the periphery by the centre, as well as the

5 Cf. readings of Roman identity in the Aeneid, such as Toll (1997), who delves into the long process that constitutes the making of Romanness in Virgil, as an enterprise of the many, not just one man’s show (namely Augustus). Most recently, Reed (2007) offers a perceptive discussion of the creation of a multiple and multivalent Roman identity out of other nationalities in the Aeneid. As Reed points out, the Aeneid becomes endlessly rereadable, ‘every angle from which we read it offers a different way to be Roman in the world’ (12–13). 6 The question here is whether Valerius intends to bring this journey to an end or leave the poem open-ended, in the tradition of Lucanian epic; cf. Hershkowitz (1998b), 32: In a sense the Argonautica does not need an end. The conclusion of this most familiar of tales has already been written and rewritten. Every reader knows how the story ends, and so every reader can ‘write’ his or her own ending, guided by external intertextual knowledge and by internal prolepses. 7 On ‘middles’ in Statius and Silius, see McNelis (2004) and Tipping (2004) respectively.

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amalgamation of ideas of universal cosmopolitanism. Though Valerius’ Argonautica and Statius’ Achilleid can be used as insightful comparanda for drawing similar conclusions, their unﬁnished state and the earlier composition of Valerius’ poem during the transitional period of the Vespasianic regime8 have led me to focus solely for the purposes of this study on the Thebaid and the Punica, a mythological and a historical poem respectively, as representative trends in Flavian, imperial epic. The passage from Valerius Flaccus, however, with which this chapter opens, offers an unrivalled glimpse into the ideas concerning universalised cosmopolitanism, later fully developed by Valerius’ epic successors. When Valerius reconﬁgures Chalciope’s secret wish, voiced to Medea in hypothetical terms, the poet transforms it into a piece of advice given to Medea by Circe, a person already experienced in the KåÆØÆ, at the other side of the known world, in the extrema mundi: Circe has found a new dwelling in Ausonia as the royal wife of Picus (nunc Ausonii coniunx ego regia Pici, ‘now I am the royal wife of Italian Picus’, V. Fl. Argon. 7.232). In other words, Circe is already Romanised (meque vides Tusci dominam maris, ‘you see me being the mistress of the Tuscan sea’, 7.234),9 and her language precisely reﬂects this metamorphosis, since she stresses her ﬂight from the uncivilised Colchians uniquely as an act of fas, a strong term borrowed from Roman ritual and religious activity (fas mihi non habiles, fas et tibi linquere Colchos, ‘it was right for me to abandon the uncouth Colchians; it is permitted to you too’, 7.231). That is why, when she urges Medea to follow Jason to Greece, the location seems of secondary signiﬁcance—the journey is stressed instead, while the disasters of the future are never revealed by the skilled and unscrupulous goddess Venus, in disguise. In this play of idealised cosmopolitanism, the centrifugal mechanism at work is at times adjusted into a centripetal force, since from the extrema mundi 8 For the dating of Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica, in the early years of the Flavian regime, see now Stover (2008) with further bibliographical references; see also n.20. 9 Cf. Virg. Aen. 7.189–91: Picus, equum domitor, quem capta cupidine coniunx aurea percussum uirga uersumque uenenis fecit auem Circe sparsitque coloribus alas. Picus, the tamer of horses, whose wife, Circe, possessed by lust, having struck him with her golden stick, changed him with her potions into a bird and sprinkled colours on his wings.

Introduction: Other and Same

5

Medea is ultimately destined to come to the centre, Greece, whence all action initially begins for the Argonauts. The most important transformation in the Valerian passage, however, can be located in the identity of the speakers, two women from the periphery, to whom the epic, male perspective gives voice, engage in a dialogue on idealised cosmopolitanism, a paradox in itself, since the topic is conventionally limited to philosophical discourse and therefore ﬂourishes in an exclusively male environment, as we shall see next. This system of ideas concerning universal citizenship found in Valerius’ Romanised Argonautica (communem animantibus orbem / communes et crede deos) is positively based ﬁrmly in Stoic philosophy, as exempliﬁed in Roman thought especially by Seneca and circulated in the literary circles of the Neronian and early Flavian literature. An example from the philosopher’s eighth book of the Dialogi, the De otio, serves to illustrate Seneca’s convictions as a Œ ºÅ-çØºç, with regard to universal community:10 Duas res publicas animo complectamur, alteram magnam et uere publicam qua di atque homines continentur, in qua non ad hunc angulum respicimus aut ad illum sed terminos ciuitatis nostrae cum sole metimur, alteram cui nos adscripsit condicio nascendi; haec aut Atheniensium erit aut Carthaginiensium aut alterius alicuius urbis quae non ad omnis pertineat homines sed ad certos. (De otio 4.1) Let us try to take in two kinds of states: one big—and truly a state, in which both men and gods inhabit, in which we do not look at such or such corner, but where we measure the borders of our city with the sun; the other is the one in which our accident of birth enrolled us (as citizens); this can be either the city of the Athenians or of the Carthaginians or of any one else, a city, which does not reach out to include all human beings, but just certain ones.11

10 Konstan (2009) traces the word Œ ºÅ back to the fourth century BCE, in Euripides (fr. 1047.2; cf. frs. 777, 902 Kannicht), the Socratic thought, Diogenes the Cynic, and especially Zeno’s Republic. See also Kleingeld and Brown (2002). In Strangers to Ourselves, Kristeva (1991), 57–63, extensively discusses Stoic cosmopolitanism in the context of Greeks vs non-Greeks in the Hellenistic age and beyond. For recent contributions to the theory of cosmopolitanism, see Konstan (2009), 484 n.7. 11 See Williams (2003), 79–80; cf. Ep. 28.4–5: cum hac persuasione uiuendum est: ‘non sum uni angulo natus, patria mea totus hic mundus est’ (‘one must live with this conviction: “I am not born in one corner, my country is the whole world”’).

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Seneca’s hyperbolic articulation terminos ciuitatis nostrae cum sole metimur is nuanced in Valerius’ adaptation, qua redit itque dies: the natural world fulﬁls the role of an inﬁnite, visible, and yet almost invisible, boundary, which nevertheless is incapable of enfolding the universality of a cosmopolitan human being. Valerius sets the limits of the cosmos both in the far east and the far west, measuring the extrema mundi by the course of the Sun’s chariot from sunrise to sunset, just as the Neronian philosopher does with the phrase cum sole metimur. In addition, it is perhaps not coincidental that Seneca chooses to illustrate the example of the minor res publica by a reference to Athens and Carthage, two of Rome’s greatest opponents, after whose conquest Rome emerges as the sole power in the Mediterranean; this subjugation therefore facilitates Rome’s transformation into an all-encompassing empire.12 The sophisticated nuance evokes the long-standing association of Athens with the Greek institution of the polis, into the conﬁnes of which she returns after losing an empire; Carthage, similarly, features as the former power, which in addition exempliﬁes the other, because as a Phoenician city it is marked by a well-deﬁned foreignness in the GraecoRoman literary imagination. After all Greece is never conquered in Roman thought in the same terms as the enemy par excellence, Hannibal, must be conquered, a moment in history that epitomises the apogee of glorious success for the empire (and the beginning of the end, at the same time). But most importantly, in Seneca’s Weltanschauung, Rome constitutes a successful model on the map of cosmopolitanism, acculturating, but at the same time capable of absorbing the qualities of the peripheral peoples she conquers. In this complex panorama of ideas exchanged concerning universal citizenship, which by implication necessarily becomes a discourse on empire, it is important to remember, as Konstan maintains, that cosmopolitanism according to Cynic thought is an elite status and takes the form of membership in the international community of the wise and good, an idea adopted by the Stoics of the early empire in

12

Williams (2003), 80, observes: ‘not chosen at random, as S. already identiﬁes two major centres of political opposition to free philosophical speculation . . . Both also have turbulent histories . . . with their prime long past.’

Introduction: Other and Same

7

Rome.13 This is important for our consideration of imperial epic as a case study of ongoing negotiation between same vs other. And by elite status, one must understand the idealised position such a utopian urbs occupies in the mind both of the philosopher and the Flavian epicists. According to Konstan, cosmopolitanism is divided into two categories, ‘a negative, that is, the rejection of allegiance to any polis, which we associate with the Cyrenaic philosopher Aristippus, and a positive, which presupposes some kind of commitment to society beyond the conﬁnes of the city-state’.14 This second category that is akin to the ideas recurring in Valerius Flaccus and in Flavian epic in general, is further distinguished into two groups: the ﬁrst, where foreign customs are acknowledged and differences are respected; and the second, where an inborn sameness in all human beings is presupposed, resulting in the collapse of the polarity between same and other.15 Though Seneca subscribes to the ﬁrst category, that is, to a universal citizenship that rejects the narrow boundaries of the urbs, he also treads on the territory of the second, as he is not interested in ‘a supportive blueprint for or an ideal in conﬂict with Roman imperial government’.16 In other words, this philosophical debate is by default uninterested in the historical 13

Konstan (2009), 476. Konstan (2009), 477. As Reydams-Schils (2005), 100, observes: ‘the idea that what would be good for Rome could be at odds with the well-being of other peoples or with universal humanity was not unfamiliar to the Romans.’ She also cites the example of Carneades who talks about the ‘advantages of the fatherland’ being the ‘disadvantages of another state’: 14 15

quae sunt enim patriae commoda nisi alterius ciuitatis aut gentis incommoda, id est ﬁnes propagare aliis uiolenter ereptos, augere imperium, uectigalia facere maiora? (Lactant. Div. inst. 6.6.19) For what are then the advantages of the fatherland, if not the disadvantages of another city or people, that is to extend borders by stealing them from others violently, to augment the empire, and to impose greater taxes? Reydams-Schills concludes that ‘according to this scenario, Romans and non-Romans are locked into a zero-sum game’. Carneades is famous for his advocacy of a philosophical truth that is free of ﬁxed and stable binarisms, applicable of course to the dichotomies discussed here (see Janan [2001], 73 and nn.18–19). 16 Williams (2003) 80; cf. also Williams’s introduction on how this view is reconciled with Seneca’s thought of practical ethics as a way of life in the ‘real world’.

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realities encountered throughout the empire in the hic et nunc of the late ﬁrst century CE and rather constitutes a ‘romanticised’ discourse on the possibilities created by large empires, in this case Roman hegemony, and the effects of cosmopolitanism on the shaping of Roman identity.17 This idealised cosmopolitanism, then, is intertwined with the perception of Romanness, pervasive in the empire of the late ﬁrst century, namely what it means to be a ciuis Romanus, within or without the ever changing boundaries of a geographically vast terrain.18 In the extensive analysis of the Thebaid and the Punica that follows, as we shall see, from the perspective of the epic poets of the period there seems to be a ﬂuidity in concepts as to what constitutes Romanness as opposed to non-Roman otherness, with a shift of focus from the centre of the empire to the periphery and its inhabitants. This study speciﬁcally addresses the split representation of women along two axes, the intersection of gender and ethnicity, or more particular Roman vs other,19 and aims at uncovering the insights we can glean from female action in the long, male dominated, narrative of two diverse poems.20 The larger purpose of this book 17 One may contrast Kristeva’s ideas on cosmopolitanism in modern nations, as we shall see below. As Sjo¨holm (2005), 62, afﬁrms: ‘Cosmopolitanism offers a way of disinvesting the nation: no longer primary objects of identiﬁcation, but transitory spaces, preparing the entrance into other, larger communities.’ 18 In light of various discussions on what constitutes Romanness, the all but nonexistent Romanitas (used ﬁrst in Tert. De pallio 4) is used in this study as the allencompassing term for the individual concepts of uirtus, ﬁdes, and pietas; see, for instance, the use of the term by Galinsky (1981), Burck (1981a), Janan (2001), Adams (2003), Dewar (2003), Dominik (2003a), 474 n.8. On Roman ‘nationalism’, Bonjour’s (1975) study remains extremely useful. 19 This study follows a similar approach to Janan’s interpretation of the split representation of the erotic and the political in Propertius’ fourth book, though Janan applies the Lacanian model of subjectivity; naturally, Janan’s analysis and my interpretation are applied to two very different genres, epic and elegy. As Janan is keen in observing throughout her insightful study, binary polarities are all the more emphasised by the poet as he strives to present a surface of uniformity and sameness, when in truth what breaks forth is a divided subjectivity of variation and otherness. In Flavian epic, the Lacanian use of the symbol of the phallus has been explored by Heslin (2005), 277–300, on Achilles’ rape of Deidamia in Statius’ Achilleid. 20 Although we cannot be certain about dating the poetry of this period, we can roughly place Martial’s ﬁrst book of the Epigrams in 85–6 CE (Howell [1980], 5), the completion of Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica before 92 CE (the year of his death and of the publication of the Thebaid, according to its author), and Silius’ composition of

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then is to explore the dynamics of Romanness and otherness in the light of female representation and the manipulation of women’s actions in the poems in order to highlight the ﬂuidity and mobility of gender and cultural hierarchies. Ultimately, as we shall encounter in the individual chapters and in the conclusion, the poets of the Flavian period adopt a rather Senecan point of view, since their idealised discourse on gender and ethnicity aims at destabilising boundaries, in a reconstruction according to which sameness and otherness seemingly converge, while at the same time, surprisingly, these same boundaries are reshaped from the male perspective of the epic diction, a narrative destined and often hastening to celebrate the Œº Æ IæH, thus satisfying the generic expectations for a marginal, abject female voice. More speciﬁcally, this study is concerned with the tensions between same and other in the epic poetry of the Flavian age, and especially with the development of the role of those women, mothers-daughters-wives, who are portrayed as other, while they also exemplify the traditional moral values and ethics expected from Roman matronae. From the analysis of various, often diverse, characters, the conclusion can be drawn that the construction of Roman identity ultimately rests upon the absorption of elements from outside, which bear the marks both of the radically different— the monstrous—and of Rome’s truest self, that is, its idealised virtues and merits.21 My discussion of the Thebaid and the Punica is

Punica 15 around 94 CE or shortly thereafter, with the epic’s (hurried?) conclusion around the time of the death of the emperor, Domitian, in 96 CE (see Marks [2005a], 288). For the chronology of Silius’ work see Wistrand (1956), whose opinion that Silius starts the composition of the Punica around 80 CE I espouse (cf. the Introduction in Augoustakis [2010a]) and also Smolenaars [1994], xvi–xviii). Smolenaars’s study (1996) underscores the need for more comparative work on Flavian epic. Cf. Hutchinson (1993), 121–3, on Statius and Silius. I think that Steele (1930) is right to conclude that there is clearly interaction among the three Flavian epicists; such method is adopted by Lovatt (2010) as she looks for possible readings back and forth between Statius and Silius, regardless of the issue of priority of composition. 21 David Konstan correctly reminds me of the truth that we inevitably ground identity and values in a confrontation with the other that in the end proves unstable. In her analysis of the fourth book of Propertius’ poems, Janan (2001) points to the inherent fragility and tenuousness of polarities such as Man/Woman, Roman/non-Roman that

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grounded in recent reﬂections on ethnicity and geographics in the Roman world. As interest in non-Roman otherness and identity has increased in the past few years, scholars have sought to re-examine the Roman perspective concerning the people the Romans conquer in the process of the formation of the empire. For example, in a perceptive study on ethnicity and power in the Roman empire, Konstan has commented on how geographics impinges upon the construction or (I dare say) deconstruction, of gender roles.22 By examining the portrayal of foreign queens in Strabo’s Geography, Konstan shows that in the global, multinational world of the Roman empire, the polarities between barbarians and civilised people on the one hand and between male rulers and capable female leaders on the other seem often to be destabilised during the early empire; thus the emergence of powerful female ﬁgures outside the Roman centre is poignantly underscored.23 Though based on the literary portrayal of the foreign/other, as nourished in the literary imagination of Graeco-Roman authors and their perception of historical realities, this assessment is also aligned with the results of anthropological studies on the complex mechanisms of Romanisation throughout the Roman Empire. Wells, for instance, seeks to restore the voice of the subjugated nations and to trace the inﬂuence wrought on the structure of Roman Europe, by emphasising those methods that work counter to the forces of Romanisation and mobilise an intermingling of cultural systems that ultimately result in the amalgamation of a vast, dynamic empire.24 Likewise, in a recent study on unity and diversity in the Roman Empire, Hingley offers a subtle evaluation of the empire’s elasticity in adopting and adapting foreign elements; as he rightly observes: lead to their own instability and ultimately collapse: ‘Rome’s identity, founded on her primordial virtues, contains within itself its own inversion’ (61). 22 Konstan (2000). 23 In an earlier study, Konstan (1993) has persuasively pointed out the contrast between centre and periphery in Juvenal’s Satire 2, where corrupted Rome is shown also as infecting the periphery. One could also mention Satire 3, where Umbricius explains his decision to abandon the metropolis (esp. 58–125: ‘true’ Romans ousted by foreigners). See Freudenburg (2001), 264–77, and Keane (2006), 31–3. 24 Wells (1999).

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Roman culture did not directly replace other more localised forms of elite identity. Part of its strength lay in its malleability, which allowed it to be used to incorporate and manipulate other cultures and identities in order to deﬁne ﬂexible joint identities that communicated on both the local and the global level.25

Whether reﬂecting historical realities or not, Roman identity as a literary construct invites similar responses from various authors and texts in the Flavian and post-Flavian periods, as much so as it does in Virgil’s Aeneid. In two studies of the Germania and the Agricola respectively, O’Gorman (1993) and Rutledge (2000) have explored the dynamics of Tacitus’ negotiation of Romanitas and otherness. More speciﬁcally, both authors investigate the historian’s textual strategy of transforming Germany and Britain into a Roman space, where one ﬁnds Roman values and ideology. At the same time, however, Tacitus’ narrative reveals certain tensions, since there is a displacement of ideal morality from the Roman into the German territory. As the city itself has become alien to its inhabitants, the Romans now seek recourse to the periphery in order to ﬁnd true Romanitas there.26 Similarly, in a recent study on Saguntum in the ﬁrst two books of the Punica, Dominik (2003a) persuasively argues that it is not the Romans themselves, but non-Romans, who become the true exemplars of ﬁdes and pietas in Silius’ poem. Thus, Dominik continues, the deﬁning bearers of Romanitas are situated at the empire’s periphery, and not in the centre itself. It comes as no surprise that among such indispensable components of Romanitas, like ﬁdes and pietas, female morality plays a signiﬁcant role.27 For Tacitus, for instance, as mentioned above, the wives of the Germans become paragons of what Roman matronae should exemplify (but unfortunately, the historian complains, do 25 Hingley (2005), 71. Hingley is rightly careful in avoiding espousing the notion of Romanisation as a simple progression of barbarism toward civilisation. Roth’s (2007) study of Italian pottery is an excellent example of how evidence from material culture mirrors the complexities of Romanisation in central Italy during the Hannibalic wars and beyond. 26 Likewise in Shumate (2006), 81–127. 27 See Langlands’s (2006) study of women’s sexual morality in the Roman world, especially the section on imperial narratives (319–63). On women and uirtus, see McDonnell (2006), 161–8.

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not).28 To be sure, women can hardly be ignored in this negotiation of universal citizenship, as they by default represent the other, the foreign, the marginal, in a word the social group most prone to acculturation and assimilation into a patriarchal society, such as the Roman. As early as in the second century BCE in Rome, for instance, women of upper-class Roman families are being educated at the elementary and sometimes intermediate level,29 a tradition aiming precisely at propagating the Roman ideals of motherhood and matronhood.30 Thus, we learn from our sources that an educated matrona would embody the exemplary virtues of chastity, prudence, modesty, unselﬁshness, veracity, and dedication to her husband and children.31 Several illustrious women appear in the sources as paragons of success and prosperity in a Roman family: besides taking care of their household affairs, Roman mothers supervise the moral and intellectual education of their children. Apart from securing generational continuity, the task of a mother consists in nurturing her children, especially the young men of the house, according to the mos maiorum (disciplina ac seueritas).32 Such historical realities are often included in literary representations of the female sex, especially in genres, outwardly traditional, such as epic. As expected in a genre valorising the elite male identity through the didactics of manliness (uirtus), fertile ground for such portrayals of women is found in epic narratives, the examples of women who may exemplify but also at times may not fulﬁl social expectations.33 In promoting the ideals of the glorious Roman past, such as the victory over the Carthaginians, or underscoring the failure of mythological heroines as mothers and wives, as they become participants in the vicious and ethically corrupting Theban civil war, the Flavian poets represent ideals that conform to the world-view of the male audience 28

Cf. Joshel (1997). See Hemelrijk (1999), 17–58. 30 Ibid., 59–96. 31 See Dixon (1990), 71–98. For instance Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, daughter of Scipio Africanus, and therefore granddaughter of Pomponia, Scipio’s mother, whom we shall examine in the course of our discussion of the Punica. For Cornelia, see Hemelrijk (1999), 64–7. 32 Dixon (1990), 61–5. 33 Keith (2000), 35. Keith (2000), 8–35 offers a stimulating discussion of the correlation between epic and the construction of Roman masculinity. 29

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and foster the alignment of female behaviour in accordance with the mos maiorum. To educated female readers and audience members in the recitationes,34 epic heroines from the periphery are shown as espousing Roman ideals of motherhood and matronhood and propagating the male ideology of the empire. And yet, this old, male ideology is simultaneously destabilized, as mothers assume a key role in securing and promoting their sons’ prosperous future. Thus, not only do women promote Roman ideals of the glorious past but also, and most importantly, they question the decisions taken by the male protagonists: without the intervention and presence of the Magna Mater, that is personiﬁed Motherhood herself, at the end of the Punica, an end to the war is unfeasible. Though these epics may reﬂect on the socio-political environment in which they are created,35 nevertheless we should bear in mind that we can only glance at the ‘anxiety’ and idealism of their respective composers: therefore, our interpretation of female action is based on the reconstruction of the materials gleaned from the narrative but by no means can it aim at the recovery of historical realities; one can hope for a partial reﬂection of such realities, from the subjective perspective, perception, and political orientation of the author.36 Ultimately, these female ﬁgures under consideration represent literary constructs, remaining enclosed and mapped onto the geography of

34

See Markus (2000). For a socio-cultural, as well as historiographical, study of foreigners in Rome and their integration in Roman society, politically and religiously, see Noy (2000), as well two important contributions to the subject by Ricci (2005), especially 3–24 (on demographics), and (2006), especially 35–52 (on immigration from Africa). Ricci’s studies focus on the situation in the metropolis of the empire, the centre, not the periphery, where materials are often irrecoverable. One should note the different terminology used in everyday life material evidence, such as peregrinus or aduena (even transmarinus or prouincialis), and the sharp dichotomies cultivated in (epic) poetry, such as barbarus. On terminology, see Noy (2000), 1–3. 36 For instance, Noy’s conclusion (2000), 287, converges with the ideal representation of homogeneity and diversity concurrently preserved in the epic tradition: ‘Once they were settled at Rome, foreigners could try to integrate or to retain at least some aspects of their “foreign” identity; they might also try to pass this on to their children.’ Similarly, Ricci (2006), 106: ‘La storia della vita degli stranieri a Roma si identiﬁca, come in ogni grande citta`, con la sua stessa storia, . . . constituendo . . . il segno e la garanzia di soppravvivenza e scambio vitale proprio di una grande metropoli.’ 35

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Roman epic as ideally successful or blatantly failing wives and mothers, from the centre or the periphery.

MOTHERHOOD AND THE OTHER DEFINED: JULIA ˆ RA OF STRANGERS KRISTEVA IN THE CHO My theoretical apparatus in reading women and motherhood in Flavian epic is indebted to Julia Kristeva’s theory of the role of motherhood and foreigners in literature, culture, and society, a point of departure in my analysis of the two epic poems under consideration. Julia Kristeva’s contribution of several intriguing analyses of motherhood in Western culture is undeniably of great signiﬁcance. She draws a distinction between the symbolic and the semiotic: the symbolic enables language to refer (conventions such as grammar and linguistic structures),37 whereas the semiotic is expressed in body language (the movement, or the babbling of an infant, for instance).38 By means of this distinction, Kristeva understands poetry as the necessary process in which the semiotic is discharged into the symbolic. This is a shared and mutual process, inasmuch as, without the symbolic (male, paternal), signiﬁcation would not make sense—therefore signiﬁcation requires the rupture (coupure) of the semiotic continuum—while, without the semiotic (feminine, maternal) all signiﬁcation would be devoid of creativity and effectiveness.39

37 See Miller (2004), 5: ‘The Symbolic . . . is the world of rules and codes. It includes language and all other shared semiotic systems . . . Poetry as a linguistic practice takes place in the Symbolic . . . ’ 38 Moi (1986), 12: ‘The semiotic is linked to pre-Oedipal primary processes, the basic pulsions of which Kristeva sees as predominantly anal and oral, and as simultaneously dichotomous (life/death, expulsion/introjection) and heterogeneous.’ Whereas the semiotic may be expressed verbally, it is not subject to regular rules of syntax, as McAfee (2004), 17, points out. 39 See Oliver (2005): Kristeva describes the relation between the semiotic and the symbolic as a dialectical oscillation. Without the symbolic we have only delirium, while without the semiotic, language would be completely empty, if not impossible. We would have no reason to

Introduction: Other and Same

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In effect, Kristeva calls this semiotic domain, choˆra, borrowing the term from the Platonic åæÆ, the third ontological kind, a space between the archetypical paradigm (ÆæÆª Æ r ) and its replicas ( Ø ÆÆ): æ Æs ª k e B åæÆ I, çŁæa P æå , æÆ b Ææ å ‹Æ åØ ª Ø AØ . . . (Tim. 52a–b) There is then a third kind, that of the eternal space, that is not subject to destruction but provides a seat to everything that comes to life . . .

Kristeva deﬁnes this space as ‘rupture and articulations (rhythm), [that] precedes evidence, verisimilitude, spatiality, and temporality’.40 In other words, in this scheme, the semiotic is preverbal, since it ‘precedes the establishment of the sign, it is not . . . cognitive’.41 Being pre-Oedipal, the semiotic choˆra is linked to the mother, whereas the symbolic is dominated by the Law of the Father;42 yet this concept of motherhood is not conﬁned to biological gender, but is rather transformed into what we can call (m)otherhood.43 The receptacle womb, therefore, adopted as maternal space (choˆra), is closely related to what Kristeva conceived as genotext, the powers that bring a text into being. The energies, pulses that take place in this receptacle, are captured only through the splitting of the semiotic choˆra into the signifying symbolic, which in turn is associated with

speak if it were not for the semiotic drive force. The oscillation between the semiotic and the symbolic is both productive and necessary. 40 Kristeva (1984), 26. As Moi (1986), 13, points out, Kristeva is aware of the paradox of trying to theorise ‘the untheorisable choˆra’. See also Moi (2002), 169–72, for possible criticism levelled against Kristeva’s theories. Kristeva’s re-evaluation of poetic language, in terms different from Lacan’s male-oriented Imaginary and Symbolic Order, was the starting point for her further studies in psychoanalysis, such as, for instance, in the Powers of Horror (1982), Tales of Love (1986), and Black Sun (1989). 41 Kristeva (1984), 27. 42 Moi (2002), 164. 43 My use of the neologism (m)otherhood here is based on the use of m/other by Jensen (2002) in her analysis of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Jensen examines Whitman’s struggle with the polarity feminine/masculine through the lens of Kristeva’s theory of the semiotic and the symbolic. Whereas at the end the symbolic takes over having repudiated the abject semiotic (m/other), nevertheless, the abject cannot be fully repressed and resurfaces creating a subject who is ‘forever in process/trial’ (111).

16

Motherhood and the Other

the phenotext, the grammatical or linguistic structures that result from the genotext.44 The Kristevan semiotic is marginal to language, just as the feminine is marginal under patriarchy.45 Kristeva points to the paradoxical status of women as both central but at the same time marginalised, a condition that, as we shall see, is key to our understanding of the role of women in Flavian epic. Spentzou has recently employed proﬁtably the Kristevan choˆra in her interpretation of Ovid’s Heroides, where she deﬁnes the choˆra as the place where the heroines’ suppressed monologue takes place, ‘a discourse that disrupts the Symbolic accounts of the forefathers of classical narratives, marking their absences, contradicting their complacent certainties, and occasionally keeping a silence that can mufﬂe the clamour of boisterous epic and tragedy’.46 The Ovidian, if we can call it so, choˆra of female proliﬁc writing, however, a marginal topos of creative melancholy, curbed by the restrictions of gender and genre, can account for several female characters in Flavian epic, as we shall see, since I submit that the poetry of Statius and Silius displays a supple grafting of the epic (Virgil) and elegiac (Ovid’s Heroides) traditions. But for our analysis of female action in epic poetry, the Kristevan choˆra becomes only partly an informative tool; another 44 Konstan (2005), 2: ‘Kristeva understands good poetry to be an irruption of unconscious or semiotic processes into the logical order of language (the two domains, while analytically distinct, are always to some degree mixed).’ Konstan applies Kristeva’s theory to explain Plato’s vision of the mental state of divinely inspired, possessed poets in Plato’s Ion (533e–534a). Davis (1995) applies Kristeva’s theory of the abject on Sophocles’ Antigone. 45 As Moi (2002), 166, aptly observes:

If patriarchy sees women as occupying a marginal position within the symbolic order, then it can construe them as the limit or borderline of that order . . . [W]omen will then come to represent the necessary frontier between man and chaos; but because of their very marginality they will also always seem to recede into and merge with the chaos of the outside . . . they will be neither inside nor outside, neither known nor unknown. 46 Spentzou (2003), 103; on Kristeva, see 99–104. Spentzou uses the Platonic/ Kristevan choˆra as the space, where Penelope ﬁnds refuge in the isolation of her bedroom, for instance. Spentzou calls attention to studies on gendered time, such as Segal (1977). In her most recent study of feminine discourse in Roman comedy, Dutsch (2008), 220–22 (see 214–16 on the Platonic åÆ), examines the Kristevan model of interpretation, though she goes on to adopt Irigaray’s theories in order to elucidate Roman comedy patterns.

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aspect of Kristeva’s work will speak well for the interpretation of foreign otherness, with which this study is occupied. The implications of the semiotic choˆra as a maternal space, however, are salient in all of Kristeva’s writings, especially those related to politics and feminism. As a foreigner in Paris, where she came in 1966 from her native Bulgaria (where she was born in 1941), Kristeva has eloquently been emphasising her otherness from her very ﬁrst essays: ‘To work on language, to labour in the materiality of that which society regards as a means of contact and understanding, isn’t that at one stroke to declare oneself a stranger/foreign (e´tranger) to language?’47 As Moi points out, Kristeva’s writings are inﬂuenced by her ‘own exiled and marginalised position as an intellectual woman in Paris’48—in other words in her place as a peripheral outsider in the centre. As Kristeva maintains in ‘Women’s Time,’ motherhood is intimately and inextricably associated with the sujet-en-proce`s, that is with alienation and otherness: Pregnancy seems to be experienced as the radical ordeal of the splitting of the subject: redoubling up of the body, separation and coexistence of the self and of an other, of nature and consciousness, of physiology and speech. This fundamental challenge to identity is then accompanied by a fantasy of totality—narcissistic completeness—a sort of instituted, socialised, natural psychosis. The arrival of the child, on the other hand, leads the mother into the labyrinths of an experience that, without the child, she would rarely encounter: love for an other. Not for herself, nor for an identical being, and still less for another person with whom ‘I’ fuse (love or sexual passion). But the slow, difﬁcult and delightful apprenticeship in attentiveness, gentleness, forgetting oneself. The ability to succeed in this path without masochism and without annihilating one’s affective, intellectual and professional personality—such would seem to be the stakes to be won through guiltless maternity.49 47

Moi (1986), 3, quoting from Kristeva’s ﬁrst book, the Å ØøØå (1969). Moi (1986), 3. Roland Barthes (1970) famously reviewed Kristeva’s ﬁrst book (see above n.47) in an article called ‘L’e´trange`re’, which pointedly alluded to Kristeva’s Bulgarian nationality but also to her ‘unsettling impact’ as someone who ‘subverts authority, the authority of monologic science’. See Barthes (1970), 19; Moi (2002), 149; Lechte and Zournazi (2003), 11–14. For a brief and concise account of Kristeva’s life, see McAfee (2004), 4–9. Kristeva’s relation to feminism has been ambivalent; see Moi (1986), 9; Oliver (1993), 176–80; and Leitch (2001), 2168. 49 Kristeva (1981), 31; ﬁrst published in French (1979). 48

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Kristeva implicitly correlates the semiotic choˆra with the womb of the pregnant woman,50 where the separation and coexistence of the self and other occur, like the rupture of the semiotic into the symbolic. In other words, motherhood becomes the locus for the expansion of otherhood. At the same time, however, mother and child bond, as the mother experiences love. Kristeva deﬁnes this ‘love’ as the process whereby one forgets oneself in a continuous effort to discover the other. The phrase ‘mother’s species’, which Kristeva borrows from James Joyce’s phrase ‘father’s time, mother’s species’, points to the female choˆra, the space where time is enacted through the constant repetition of the regeneration of the human species by means of motherhood; it also, inevitably, avails itself of a ‘sense of the eternity of the species’,51 that is to say, the inescapability of lending itself to becoming ‘man’s time’. This is an important element in Kristeva’s discourse of the choˆra, when we consider woman- and motherhood in Flavian epic poetry: mothers become marginalised either as absorbed into the symbolic of male ideology or as subversive voices of the distorted landscape of civil war, a locus with no future ‘man’s time’. In one of her political works,52 Strangers to Ourselves, Kristeva discusses the role of foreigners as others, with special emphasis on women as the ‘ﬁrst foreigners’ or the ‘strangers within us’.53 In the introductory chapter, Kristeva engages in a multiple dialogue of both the internal and external manifestations of otherness. The displaced foreigner emerges as someone who has lost the mother ﬁgure: ‘misunderstood by a loved and yet absent-minded mother, discreet, or worried mother, the exile is a stranger to his mother’.54 Symbolising the ﬁrst foreigners, the Danaids illustrate Kristeva’s discussion of ‘an 50

See Payne (1993), 170. McAfee (2004), 94. 52 The book is obviously preoccupied with the contemporary issue of foreign workers in France. 53 In 1977, Kristeva establishes the link between exile and women (text quoted from Moi [1986], 296): ‘A woman is trapped within the frontiers of her body and even of her species, and consequently always feels exiled both by the general cliche´s that make up a common consensus and by the very powers of generalisation intrinsic to language.’ As Lechte (1990), 79, points out, a woman provides ‘a unique insight . . . with alienation also comes an insight unavailable to men.’ 54 Kristeva (1991), 5. 51

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age-old time when an endogamous society became exogamous’.55 Since the Danaids are virgins, what is preserved is ‘the symbolic power of the sole father, to the exclusion of any other man’.56 As Schultz observes, ‘and yet it is precisely the acceptance of the foreigner into the community that insures increasing degrees of civilisation, that is, of a civilisation that recalls in the ﬁgure of the stranger its own unconscious resources, its own radical otherness’.57 Female ﬁgures embody the otherness in patriarchal societies, especially where the factor of alien otherness intrudes. Kristeva expands her idea of revolution in poetic language by extending the semiotic choˆra into what becomes foreign otherness on a social map.58 In her Powers of Horror, for example, the foreigner is viewed as abject. In particular, Kristeva identiﬁes abjection as ‘an operation of the psyche through which subjective and group identity are constituted by excluding anything that threatens one’s own (or one’s group’s) borders’.59 And more speciﬁcally, this abjection is linked to the maternal body. As Kristeva has also pointed out in Tales of Love, in patriarchal cultures, women have been condensed to the maternal function of reproduction and to abjection, oppression, and marginalisation. While Kristeva correctly identiﬁes the abject status of women, especially applicable to the Greek and Roman societies, she offers a window of interpretation for many of the female ﬁgures under discussion in the Thebaid and the Punica. In Strangers to Ourselves, Kristeva maintains that the foreigners are within us, as we are all foreigners with an uncanny strangeness and disturbing otherness. Though Kristeva, however, ‘documents how people are both fascinated and repelled by the foreignness in their midst’, she also discerns, as McAfee states, ‘this attitude towards “foreignness” as a necessary and constitutive feature of our self-identity’.60 The status of exile and foreignness become necessary components of what 55

Ibid., 45. Ibid., 44, and in 46: ‘[T]he bride was thought of as a foreigner, a suppliant . . . neither as a prey nor as a slave.’ 57 Schultz (1994), 318. 58 Oliver (1993), 5, observes that ‘just as she sees the pattern and logic of language within the body, she sees the pattern and logic of alterity within the subject . . . she makes the social relation interior to the psyche’. 59 Oliver (1998). 60 McAfee (2004) 3. For the voicing of criticism concerning the implications of Kristeva’s theory on the political and nationalism, as well as a defence, see Ziarek (2003) and McAfee (2004), 122–5. 56

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constitutes female otherness in Roman epic of the Flavian period, out of which self-identity, that is Romanness, clearly a component of male identity and manliness, emerges. Women are seemingly excluded from the genre traditionally preoccupied with the Œº Æ IH, and yet they ﬁgure in the margin of our narratives with a distinct, either subversive or complicit, voice. What will become important terms in the ensuing discussion are also the following: as Kristeva maintains, the status of a foreigner in a given culture gives one the autonomy (my emphasis) to ‘confront everyone with the asymbolia (my emphasis), that rejects civility and returns to a violence laid bare’.61 As Smith comments on Kristeva’s theory of abjection and otherness, ‘all women are female voyagers in perpetual transit over foreign lands in which they never quite feel at home. Kristeva represents women as foreigners unable to extricate themselves from abjection . . . estranged from language, women are visionaries, “dancers who suffer as they speak”’.62 Hence, Schultz correctly identiﬁes the interconnections in the corpus of Kristeva’s writings: ‘does not “the stranger within/without” compel us to negotiate our identity and difference from the tenuous position of being “subjectsin-process,” a position that well might enable us, as Kristeva urges, “to live with the others, to live as others”?’63 In examining the Flavian poems, I particularly focus on the exclusion of women from heroic, male action, which results in their marginalisation, the status of asymbolia, according to Kristeva. This asymbolia is directly related to the status of women in the semiotic choˆra: women who have only recourse to Bacchic, frenzied behaviour as a manifestation of their marginalised otherness. These women activate a powerful presence in the male world of Roman epic. At the same time, I trace the process whereby female ﬁgures, especially other, Roman or non-Roman women, intervene, in their status of autonomy, to voice their opposition to decisions taken by the male leaders, especially when the latter work to the detriment of the populace in both the private and public spheres. This portrayal of 61 Kristeva (1991), 7. The term ‘asymbolia’ is understood here as applied to the marginal status of foreigners and to their shadowy, abject presence. 62 A. Smith (1996), 29. 63 Schultz (1994), 319. On the subject-in-process, see Oliver (1993), 91–113.

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21

female ﬁgures allows us to examine the change of attitudes toward otherness, especially when the notions of otherness and motherhood are fused in the narrative to suggest a change in the concept of what constitutes sameness, or in other words Romanness, through depictions of otherness, of women from the (either literal or ﬁgurative) periphery.

EPIC WITHIN EPIC: LEMNOS AND THEBAN CIVIL WAR IN STATIUS’ THEBAID In our examination of the two poems, one with a mythological and one with a historical theme, as representative, coeval movements in Flavian literature, foreign otherness acquires a broader implication: women ﬁgure as the other, the foreign in our narratives. Though the ﬁeld of female ﬁgures in Roman epic of the Augustan age has been well explored by classicists in the past, attention has only recently been paid to their ‘successors’ in imperial epic. Poets such as Lucan, Valerius Flaccus, Statius, and Silius Italicus, though relegated for a long time to the margin of classical studies, have in the past two decades begun to win their way back to the literary canon.64 For instance, Keith’s study of women in Roman epic constitutes a landmark for subsequent studies on the role of female ﬁgures in the male world of epic poetry, as characters who open to further scrutiny the masculine world-view.65 In the ﬁrst chapter, I turn my attention to the manifestations of foreign otherness in Statius’ Thebaid. The central part of the epic is occupied with a long digression from the main narrative, an error, in 64 Negative criticism of the Flavian epicists (e.g. Butler [1909], 179–250) will not be replicated here, as I ﬁnd that in recent studies authors such as Silius Italicus and Statius are commendably redeemed (cf. on Silius: Ariemma [2000b] and Marks [2005a], 7; on Statius: Heslin [2005], Ganiban [2007], and McNelis [2007]). Bassett (1953) and Muecke (2010) offer a magisterial overview of different, positive attitudes concerning imperial epic (and more precisely Silius) in previous centuries. 65 As Keith (2000), 133, recognises: ‘the genre’s negotiation of modes of masculinity . . . requires further scrutiny’, a scrutiny to which the present work hopes to contribute.

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Motherhood and the Other

which Hypsipyle, an exiled former queen of Lemnos, entertains the Argive warriors with stories from her homeland and her personal travails in search of a new home, in the court of the Nemean king Lycurgus as a nurse to the royal offspring, Opheltes. In Kristevan terms, Hypsipyle is the exiled foreigner, a displaced mother with misplaced affections: in her eagerness to quench the thirst of the Argive army, she entertains the warriors with a didactic story from her past, the bloody civil war and slaughter of the Lemnian males. In her Kristevan asymbolic status in the outskirts of the Theban landscape, Hypsipyle remains a Lemnias, marked from the outset as the other, who nevertheless voices her autonomy by recounting the Lemnian labours and entertaining the Argive troops with her belligerent narrative: how she saves her father in the midst of Bacchic frenzy but ultimately loses her children. The semiotic choˆra of the Lemnian women’s frenzy breaks into the symbolic choˆra of Hypsipyle’s narrative. Hypsipyle’s digression lends itself to a Kristevan reading, not just because of her status as a foreigner but precisely because as a mother she lulls the Argives into listening to her story, in a seemingly safe place, that is her own choˆra of weaving and rewriting her (Euripidean and Ovidian) past, a landscape that nevertheless highlights the horrors that they will soon encounter in Thebes, in Statius’ own Thebaid, the centre of their murderous actions. Motherhood turns into an indispensable aspect of the Theban civil war, as the accursed mother, Jocasta, prominently ﬁgures as the mediator between the two brothers. But both Jocasta and her daughter Antigone are eventually transformed into Maenads in their ﬁnal attempts to appease the brothers in book 11 and forestall the inevitable fratricide. Both are transformed into the abject other, while Ismene ﬁnds consolation by regressing into her private chambers, a personal space/choˆra, which however is not safe at all either. The frenzy of the Theban civil war penetrates deep into the Theban oikos, with no hope for a better future, as the threat of the next generation of hostilities, launched by the Epigonoi, looms large over the Theban territory. Even Hippolyte who comes to Athens accompanying Theseus’ victorious chariot, is still portrayed as a barbara: the future in store is uncertain. Within the civilised space of Greece, the Amazon remains monstrous, therefore asymbolic, and yet paradoxically autonomous.

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In both the middle and the last book, consolation proves impossible, inasmuch as the persistent lamentation comes full circle at the end of the Thebaid. What begins in the semiotic choˆra of Lemnos, with the frenzied slaughter of the Lemnian husbands, is repeated by the Theban women, now assimilated to Bacchants about to commit nefas. The semiotic choˆra, however, to use Kristeva’s term, once again ﬁnds space in the symbolic choˆra of the Thebaid, as the poet rehearses the female lament that takes place at the very end of book 12, only to dismiss it and confess powerlessness in front of such great task.66 Thus, the semiotic remains a genotext, left to the reader’s imagination, since female lament as ululation lies outside the territory of the male world of epic poetry, trespasses the limitations of the genre, and is therefore discarded. In the world of the Thebaid, in Kristevan terms, ‘Woman can never feel at home in the symbolic as can man. She becomes the female exile.’ 67

PATRIO-TIC EPIC? SAME AND OTHER IN SILIUS’ PUNICA Silius’ preference to compose an epic with a historical theme follows in Lucan’s footsteps but at the same time announces the Punica as the literary precursor of and antagonist to the De bello ciuili. The choice of subject provokes a closer reading of representations of foreignness in the poem, as Rome is struggling against its chief rival, the other par excellence, Carthage. The Punica offers a way out of the stalemates of the Thebaid, especially with regard to the role of the periphery and its inﬂuence on the centre. In Silius’ reconstructed version of the past, and in his idealistic vision of, and hope for, a prosperous future, the conﬂation of Romanness and otherness does not constitute a danger but rather a condition for Rome’s success and stability as a cosmopolis. Absorbing otherness, however, is experienced throughout the 66 What Janan (2001), 30, aptly observes for the fourth book of Propertius is true for Statius’ conclusion to the Thebaid: distinctions such as Roman/non-Roman, male/female collapse under ‘the weight of their own instability’. 67 A. Smith (1996), 28.

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Motherhood and the Other

course of events as a prolonged process, reaching its climax in the ﬁnal book of the epic, after the stumbling blocks of an ineffective Roman male leadership have been overcome by the rise to power of Scipio Africanus. In the second chapter, attention is paid to the construction of what constitutes same and other in the early books of the poem, by looking at the role of patria, Italy and Africa respectively: the word patria is closely associated with the male protagonists of the poem who try to protect their respective fatherlands, quite unsuccessfully. By studying several pairs of fathers and sons, not only is the ground prepared for our examination of mothers and sons in subsequent chapters, but what comes to the surface from these pairs of male heroes in the Punica is the close relationship fostered between the warriors and their respective patriae or the lack thereof. This close association reveals the problematics of a periphery recalcitrant to Roman rule and civilisation, while at the same time it often discloses the lack of care for the Roman patria on the Roman side. In the process of discovering and organising the semantic register of true Romanness, the Romans fail miserably: paradoxically, Hannibal is the ‘hero’ who embodies the very elements of ‘Roman’ identity, namely care for his patria, pietas towards his ancestors, uirtus in battle operations. And yet until the very end of the poem, Hannibal is portrayed as utterly confused, displaying uncharacteristic attachment to the Italian tellus, which nevertheless endeavours to expel and reject him from her body. Hannibal becomes asymbolic, in Kristevan terms, the foreigner that cannot be absorbed by the centre, the other that cannot become same. Alienation from one’s patria is also evident in Rome’s allied cities, especially Saguntum. A closer look at the construction of the second book, however, elucidates Silius’ organisational strategy of this miniepic around transgressive women. On the one hand, the poet introduces Asbyte, an African Amazon, whose telling silence, IØÆ, and decapitation in the ﬁrst half of the book locates her in the asymbolic, semiotic choˆra, in Kristeva’s terms. Her death unleashes Hannibal’s rage against what he perceives to be a Romanised city, Saguntum, a hybrid existence like Rome, whereas in reality the Spanish city embodies the other, having been transformed into the

Introduction: Other and Same

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foreign, with its women metamorphosed into ‘Amazons’. The book comes to a close with the suicide of the Saguntine people, instigated by the Fury Tisiphone, Juno’s docile instrument, in order to wreak havoc on the Romans. We witness the Saguntines striving to erase all vestiges of their identity, either Greek or Roman, by burning their heirlooms. Saguntum expunges her ties with the Roman state, a state absent from the allied city’s tribulations. The women, urged on by Tiburna’s Bacchic voice, constitute a salient case of asymbolia and autonomy: like Asbyte, the Saguntine women are in truth silent; their voice is not their own but instead borrowed, as they submissively reproduce the commands of the Fury. Another symptom of a misplaced patrio-tic affection occurs in book 8, where Anna Perenna emerges from the waters of the River Numicius to help the Carthaginian general. Anna’s status as both Roman and non-Roman at the same time constitutes a key in the interpretation of her presence in the middle of the poem. Anna’s exiled, foreign, position gives her a subversive autonomy to act as both a Roman and a Carthaginian, a role fully ﬂeshed at the end of the poem with the importation of the cult of the Magna Mater in Rome. Nevertheless, contrary to the trend we observed in the Thebaid, where mothers like Hypsipyle and Jocasta are portrayed as displaced others, in the Punica it becomes apparent from a look at the appearance of Tellus in book 15 that the reorganisation of the Roman army under Scipio Africanus is not a process that takes place without the implicit transformation at the level of patria as well: Tellus transforms our expectation of what ‘fatherland’ really is, from a concept closely linked to fathers and sons into a female presence that counters the models of Dido–Hannibal and (Italian?) Anna–Hannibal. Tellus here is metamorphosed into the ultimate incarnation of the female space, the choˆra, the same and other at the same time, into which the male warrior can recede and from which he can recover the powers necessary for success. This imagery of mother-earth empowering the male warriors to initiate war constitutes the ﬁrst step in what, as we shall see, becomes the process of discovering a new identity, a new Romanness, where same and other, male and female, are merged, a condition for the future success of the Roman state.

26

Motherhood and the Other

From the imagery of same and other with regard to patria and tellus, especially as mother-earth, the third chapter moves on to an examination of Roman motherhood, and in particular a distinct Roman mother in book 6, Marcia, the wife of M. Atilius Regulus. Within the time frame of the poem’s narrative, Marcia represents the near past, as Silius offers a long digression on Regulus’ adventures in Libya and his death in Carthage; in this sense, the analeptic narrative on the hero’s exploits during the First Punic War is proleptically exploited by the poet to reﬂect on Roman affairs in the Second Punic War. Marcia’s appearance is centred on the ﬁgure of her husband and son. Her offspring, Serranus, wounded after the battle at Lake Trasimene, ﬁnds refuge at the house of Marus, his father’s faithful companion during his capture in Carthage. Marus offers an authorial, androcentric narration of Regulus’ heroic and Stoic resistance during the First Punic War and thus through inspiration educates the young man. Yet the ﬁgure of his mother, Marcia, and her reaction to the presence of the uncompromising Regulus at Rome, present us with the narrative of a distraught woman, who attempts to dissuade her husband and son from taking part in enterprises that under other circumstances would betoken a heroic attitude. In Regulus’ representation in the Punica as the Stoic hero par excellence, there are some dark traits, as attested in book 6, underscored by Silius, in particular the killing of the serpent at the Bagrada river. An important aspect, on which I place particular emphasis in this episode, is Marcia’s presence at the threshold of her house, an aspect that underlines her liminality as an outsider to her own culture, as her autonomous voice distinctly differentiates her from the behaviour expected from a Roman matrona. Marcia undermines Regulus’ heroic stature by emphasising his status as a self-exile, a foreigner in his own patria, painting a portrait contrary to the Roman philosophical tradition of Regulus, inherited by Silius, as the hero par excellence. In this episode, the poet again stresses the weaknesses of the Roman political leadership at the time of the First Punic War. Even during the ﬁrst years of the Second Punic War, Rome has not yet found any ﬂawless general who might extol her glory in heaven. And Silius chooses Marcia as the primary author of her husband’s subversive portrait, a woman who deconstructs and suspends the androcentric narrative of Marus, before being relegated to her marginal space in the periphery

Introduction: Other and Same

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of the narrative, as her voice is silenced by the oars of the boat that takes Regulus back to Carthage. As I have noted before, in this instance also, Marcia’s motherhood becomes the locus for the expansion of her otherhood and alienation from the patria, the fatherland as traditionally represented by the men in her household. In fact, Marcia’s autonomous and subversive voice cancels this mechanism of transition that would allow her presence to be absorbed into the symbolic of the male ideology and signiﬁes that in the search for Romanness there may be no future ‘man’s time’, until Scipio’s emergence in Roman politics. Finally, the fourth chapter shifts the focus on two classes of women juxtaposed to Roman matronae, like Marcia. By contrast to Marcia’s non-Roman presence in the centre of action—Rome—Imilce, Hannibal’s wife, is portrayed as a Roman matrona but is nevertheless marginalised in the narrative by being assimilated to a frenzied Bacchant. The second category comprises those women who prove to be catalysts, as wives and mothers, for the Roman victory over Carthage. The disparity between the two pairs of female ﬁgures reveals an ideological orientation of the poem with regard to Romanness and Otherness. More speciﬁcally, at the end of book 4, Imilce, Hannibal’s wife, tries to stop the sacriﬁce of her child, thus refusing to comply with the ancestral customs of the Carthaginians. Imilce deﬁes the poet’s portrait of her transformation into a Bacchant by delivering a powerful speech in which she condemns the nefas of the impending sacriﬁce. To borrow from Kristeva’s language, Imilce’s Bacchic behaviour is contained within a semiotic choˆra at ﬁrst, that of the woeful lamentation of a mother, nearly bereaved of children. However, Imilce forthwith delivers a persuasive speech, denouncing the barbaric custom of sacriﬁce, thus implementing a successful evolution from the semiotic to the symbolic. Imilce’s autonomous voice encompasses the reasonable thoughts of a civilised Roman philosopher denouncing nefas, while at the same time her voice is marginalised and becomes asymbolic. She becomes, what I call a hybridic, unclassiﬁed, other. Her presence constitutes a telling paradox, as she is a non-Roman, who nevertheless espouses Roman ideals, unavailingly, as her husband leads Carthage to utter destruction.

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Motherhood and the Other

Conversely, in the last pentad of the Punica (books 13–17), an important phase in the development of Scipio’s ‘career’ is his encounter with signiﬁcant members of his family in the Nekyia. The meeting with his mother constitutes the missing link without which Scipio may not become a true Roman. During his descent to the Underworld in book 13, Scipio ﬁrst meets his mother, Pomponia, who unlike Imilce or Marcia, urges her son to pursue war and to ﬁght intrepidly for his country’s common weal. Scipio’s ‘educational’ encounter takes place symbolically in a neutral—and by deﬁnition marginal—place, the choˆra of the dead; by reconnecting with his mother, Scipio acquires the missing link that equips him with the essential valour to defeat the Carthaginians. At the same time, Masinissa’s mother displays the characteristics of a woman-uates who urges her son to pursue alliance with the Romans. Both Pomponia and the anonymous aged mother in book 16 possess prophetic power. However, unlike the prophetic power of Imilce’s foreboding in book 3 and Marcia’s warnings in book 6, Pomponia and Masinissa’s mother conform to the Roman ideals of a matrona. While Imilce and Marcia give in to grief and sorrow and thus appear frantic and distraught, Pomponia and the aged woman in book 16 totally reverse this negative image of motherhood by turning it into a picture of the ideal (Roman) mother. As the poem comes to a close, Silius opts for a positive portrayal of female action which reﬂects the successful shift of power in the Roman political scene, that is, Scipio’s emergence as supreme commander. This change is sanctioned by a woman (Masinissa’s mother) and culminates in the image of Claudia Quinta: here, Romanness and otherness are joined, while Roman values are reshaped in such a way as to enable both to become an ideology of empire. What takes place at the end of the Punica conforms with a wellknown pattern throughout the history of humanity, according to Kristeva’s analysis of foreign otherness and the semiotic choˆra: We cannot gain access to the temporal scene, i.e., to political affairs, except by identifying with the values considered to be masculine (dominance, superego, the endorsed communicative word that institutes stable social exchange) . . . Others, more bound to the mothers, more tuned in as well to their unconscious impulses, refuse this role and hold themselves back,

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sullen, neither speaking nor writing, in a permanent state of expectation punctuated now and then by some kind of outburst: a cry, a refusal, an ‘hysterical symptom’.68

As Oliver points out, ‘Kristeva argues that Western culture puts women into a double-bind. Either women can enter the symbolic—language, politics, time, culture—only by identifying as men, or they can withdraw into their silent bodies as hysterics.’69 Silius does portray such a transition, whereas Statius professes the inability to carry on female lamentation within the boundaries of his epic poem. Silius’ idealised vision translates into the mutual interdependence of ethnicity and motherhood and into the gradual collapse of polarities such as same and other, male and female. In the epilogue to this book, we return to the coda of those two poems and to the poets’ complex negotiation of gender boundaries, to glean an insight into possible political and literary strategies as reﬂected in Domitian’s Flavian and cosmopolitan Rome. The feminine ending of the Thebaid,70 a poem about to compete with the divine status of its predecessor, the Aeneid, confronts us with the impossibility of female lament, as we witness a return into the semiotic choˆra—the boat returns to a safe haven, the port where female (literary) voice is silenced. On the other hand, in the Punica, Silius jubilantly celebrates the apotheosis of Scipio (and Domitian), who is hailed as a parens patriae and son of Jupiter in the very last line of the poem (prolem . . . Tonantis, Pun. 17.654), a strong reminder of the hero’s descent, not only from the king of gods but also from Pomponia, his Roman mother, who is ultimately responsible for revealing to the Roman general his genealogy. 68 Quoted from Moi (1986), 155, from Kristeva’s essay ‘About Chinese Women’ (published in 1974). 69 Oliver (1993), 108. 70 See Dietrich (1999).

1 Mourning Endless: Female Otherness in Statius’ Thebaid Not belonging to any place, any time, any love. A lost origin, the impossibility to take root, a rummaging memory, the present in abeyance. The space of the foreigner is a moving train, a plane in ﬂight, the very transition that precludes stopping. As to landmarks, there are none. His time? The time of a resurrection that remembers death and what happened before, but misses the glory of being beyond: merely the feeling of a reprieve, of having gotten away. (Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves, 7–8)

Many critics have suggested that the ending of Statius’ Thebaid is noteworthy and unique in Roman epic, especially because the poet fuses female lamentation together with the impossibility of poetic expression.1 The poet’s sphragis has also attracted the attention of scholars examining Statius’ relationship with Virgil and his own insertion in the line of a long epic tradition.2 In what follows, I shall try to examine some of the same well-studied passages from a different perspective; my focus will be on the role of foreign otherness in terms 1

See e.g. Dietrich (1999); Lovatt (1999); Paga´n (2000a). An overview of female ﬁgures in the poem is given by Lesueur (1986) and (1992) but with an emphasis on the typology of the characters rather than an interpretation of their action. Dominik (1994b), 120–23, offers an outline of the stylistic features (topoi) of lament in the Thebaid. Braund (1996), 17–18, surveys the three predominant trends in the interpretation of the Thebaid: the optimistic, the pessimistic, and the pluralistic. 2 See e.g. Pollmann (2000), Dominik (2003b), and Markus (2003).

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of gender differentiation. By studying the ending of the poem in conjunction with the Lemnian digression of books 4–6, with particular attention to manifestations of otherness through female lamentation,3 I shall touch on several related questions: What is the distinction between Theban and Argive women? How does the Lemnian digression contribute to the framework of the Thebaid? Does the epilogue constitute a step towards the dissolution of boundaries that separate the two sides of the war? And ﬁnally, how does the connection between lament and poetics contribute to our understanding of the poem’s closure? In Hypsipyle’s narrative, as we shall see, the poet exploits the Lemnian woman’s otherness as a foreigner (Lemnias), the epitome of the Kristevan autonomous, yet asymbolic other, who fails in her tasks both domestically and publicly. First and foremost, the Lemnian queen is a dislodged mother, without time and place. As we saw in the preceding pages of the introduction, Kristeva insists on the formation of motherhood as otherhood from pregnancy: the arrival of the child escorts the mother into an experience that, without the child, she would rarely encounter, namely love for an other, what Kristeva calls, ‘the slow, difﬁcult and delightful apprenticeship in attentiveness, gentleness, forgetting oneself ’. This is precisely the problematic locus for Hypsipyle’s misplaced affections: separation from her children and by extension her country, though she is still identiﬁed as Lemnias and mater. Hypsipyle’s task is to tend to Opheltes, to lull him into sleep, to nurse him as a mother does in the Platonic/Kristevan semiotic choˆra of a symbolic womb/lap, to protect him against the dangers hidden in the Nemean landscape. Her forgetfulness, however, turns Hypsipyle into a ‘lost’ (m)other, who chooses an unreliable proxy, tellus, for the completion of a task that should have been her own, and thus perpetuates the horror of death and destruction. The heroine orchestrates the role of a (m)other with supplanted attentiveness to another gender (genre?), the men who arrive in Nemea, and especially their prime ‘leader’ Polynices, himself an exile also. Her asymbolic status of a foreigner 3

On the long tradition of lament, see Alexiou (2002) and on its oppositional power, see Holst-Wahrhaft (1992). Indispensable for this study has been Loraux (1998).

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and exile gives Hypsipyle the autonomy to recount her toils and weave a story that lulls the Argives into a metaphorical sleep, during which they forget the purpose of their expedition: it is the genre itself ultimately that ﬁghts the war with elegy, as the middle of the Thebaid is transformed into an extensive Herois,4 borrowing a well-known script from Ovid upon which Hypsipyle embroiders her personal, post-Ovidian story: how she saves her father in the midst of Bacchic frenzy but ultimately loses her children. The semiotic choˆra of the Lemnian women’s frenzy breaks into the symbolic choˆra of Hypsipyle’s narrative. This space may seem maternal and therefore safe, but soon enough, with its manifestations into the symbolic, it infests the male (battle)ground with death, despair, and lament, a rehearsal and repetition of the end of the poem, even though Hypsipyle herself is reunited with her two sons, who serve as supporters of their mother’s lamentation. The baby’s death underscores Hypsipyle’s narrative’s disastrous effects; she disrupts generational continuity for Lycurgus’ Nemean house, the place where the Argive army ﬁnds temporary relief from thirst. Furthermore, Hypsipyle’s narrative is transformed into the narrative of civil conﬂict, foreshadowing the forthcoming war against Thebes: Hypsipyle’s failure as a queen on the public level, and as a daughter (her saving of Thoas is marked as fraus) and mother in the private arena,5 forebodingly anticipates a mingling of warlike violence and endless lamentation, with which the last book both opens and closes (just as does its counterpart, book 6). Immense loss and destruction, now on Theban territory, are laid before the reader. Not only then is Hypsipyle’s digression both incorporated and abject in the poem, but the heroine herself by embodying a ‘disﬁgured’ mother puts an end to what Kristeva calls ‘man’s time’, since the heroine’s neglected task as a nurse aborts the act of the

4

See Parkes (2008), 382, on the Achilleid: The tension between amor and arma is at the poem’s core, in terms of both content (the protagonist is torn between desire for battle and desire for Deidamia) and style (the narrative veers between high epic manner, as exempliﬁed by the catalogue, and language of a more elegiac hue drawn from the Heroides and Ars Amatoria). 5 Newlands (2006) perceptively points to the lack of ideal mothers in Statius’ poetry and the abundance of ‘dangerous mothers’ instead; cf. Jamset (2005), 100–65.

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repetition of the generation of the human species. In other words, the Thebaid becomes a landscape replete with death but no regeneration, with the story of the Epigonoi marginalised in the background of the narrative but never proleptically becoming part of the Statian epic cycle.6 And most importantly, the didactic story narrated by Hypsipyle translates into the unsuccessful mingling of same and other, as Theban or Argive identity cannot be clearly deﬁned in the nefarious world of the poem:7 Hypsipyle remains an exile and the Argives’ ﬁrst stop in Nemea becomes just a ﬁrst test and taste for the war at Thebes that will result in the permanent alienation of the two peoples. In this sense, Nemea may be construed as alterae Thebae, whereas Argos at the end remains alienum Argos. The dichotomy established by the poet’s digression on Hypsipyle and the Nemean adventures is further exploited by Statius in his portrayal of Jocasta and her two daughters. The accursed mother strives for a peaceful resolution to the conﬂict, accompanied by Antigone and Ismene: in book 7 she digresses from—and transgresses—the seemingly safe boundaries of the Theban house; and yet the development of the plot deprives her of the fruition of an unfeasibly happy ending to the poem. Jocasta enters the world of male uirtus but her problematic (m)otherhood as mother/wife of her own child (and therefore mother/grandmother of Oedipus’ offspring) prohibits the resolution of the crisis and is doomed to utter failure. As Antigone and Jocasta are both transformed into Maenads in their ﬁnal attempt to appease the brothers in book 11, Ismene ﬁnds consolation by regressing into her chambers, the safe choˆra of the Theban oikos, an act that nevertheless now proves equally perilous because of the death of Atys, her foreign ﬁance´, and Jocasta’s suicide. Atys exempliﬁes the uneasy relationship between Thebans and others, an association that can only be realised in the surreal choˆra of dreams. Nothing remains impervious to the frenzy of the Theban civil war. At the end of the epic, there appears a clear dichotomy between Antigone and Argia in their attempt to bury Polynices, and by extension between 6 Compare Parkes’s (2005) comments on Arcadia as a land famously associated with ‘primitivism’ that is now infected by the fraternal quarrel. 7 I borrow the term ‘nefarious world’ from Ganiban’s recent discussion of the poetics of nefas in the Thebaid (2007).

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the Theban and Argive women, just as there is one between the brute Amazons and the Athenian population upon Theseus’ return from his campaign. Both Theban and Argive women share losses and unbearable pain, both are assimilated to Bacchants, and we are faced with the impossibility of a solution to the civil war that has shattered the lives of so many, a conﬂict that results in endless lamentation and poetic powerlessness. In an effort to bring the two peoples together and to celebrate the collapse of binarisms, such as same/other, male/female, Theban (Roman)/Argive (non-Roman),8 and by extension epic/elegy, Statius professes the breakdown of the authorial voice and brings the poem to an end. Boundaries are reset, as same and other cannot converge at this junction, while there is utter refusal to provide any future hope for a possible resolution. With lament, we return to the semiotic choˆra, where the Kristevan genotext results in asymbolia, not in the expected phenotext: the cries of the women, unutterable by the poet, ultimately signify the collapse of the traditional epic genre, as the ground of celebration for the Œº Æ IæH, now subsumed into a landscape of the ŒºÆ-Æ ªıÆØŒH.9

DEFINING THE PERIPHERY: THEBES AND LEMNOS The poet noticeably states at the beginning of the Thebaid that the centre of his poem and its action will be Thebes:10 8 On Thebes as Rome, see Hardie (1990), McGuire (1990), 28, and most recently Keith (2004–5) and Braund (2006). Braund replaces the prevalent Iliocentric view with a Thebano-centric perspective concerning the role of Thebes in the ancient literary imagination, especially in Statius. Braund also argues for the role of the poem as a ‘lesson about the Romans’ fear of lapsing into the ancient pattern of self-destruction’ (271); constrast Ganiban (2007), 43: ‘Statius’ Thebes represents an anti-Rome, a place where the imperial ideology of the Augustan Aeneid has gone terribly wrong.’ 9 The two verbs Œºø (> Œº ) and ŒºÆø are not of course etymologically related in Greek, but the pun is intended here merely to illustrate the departure from the traditional arma uirumque theme of martial epic. 10 For Statius’ choice of mythological, as opposed to a historical, epic see Ahl (1986), 2812–16. For an extensive consideration of the opening of the Thebaid, see Kytzler (1960); Schetter (1962); Vessey (1973), 60–67; Criado (1998); Mauri (1998); A. Barchiesi (2001a), 321–32; Keith (2002), 382–5 (on Ovidian inﬂuence on the prologue); as well as the relevant commentary in Heuvel (1932) and Caviglia (1973).

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Fraternas acies alternaque regna profanis decertata odiis sontesque euoluere Thebas Pierius menti calor incidit. (1.1–3) The Pierian ﬁre falls upon my mind to unfold the strife of brothers and alternate reigns fought for in unnatural hatred and the guilty city of Thebes.

For a moment, Statius sets clear boundaries (limes) by conﬁning his topic to the distraught house of Oedipus and by omitting any mention of Argos, a city that consequently becomes peripheral to the poet’s song:11 limes mihi carminis esto / Oedipodae confusa domus, . . . (‘The troubled house of Oedipus shall be the limit to my song . . . ’, 1.16–17). Ahl has rightly contended, however, that Statius acknowledges ‘the arbitrary nature of his focus on the house of Oedipus and admits his deﬁned boundaries are indistinct’.12 I submit that the poet makes clear that the bulk of his composition will revolve around the cursed house of the Labdacids: the narrative of the ﬁrst six books ‘progresses’ towards Thebes. Compare, for instance, the beginning of the Theban epic cycle in the Greek tradition: @æª ¼Ø, Ł, ºıłØ, Ł ¼ÆŒ . . . (‘Muse, sing of thirsty Argos, whence the kings . . . ’, Theb. fr. 1 W). Conversely, Statius excludes Argos from the prologue13 and thus demarcates the two places that will constitute the centre and the periphery of the poem. Reference to Argos as the semina belli is saved until later, when in his ﬁrst appearance in the poem14 Jupiter uses the same phrase as Statius in the prologue to locate the seed of the strife 11 Cf. Heuvel (1932), 64, for limes as initium. Aptly and poignantly, Henderson (1991) ends his exploration of the Thebaid as the ‘antipolitics of Thebes’ with a question: ‘ . . .And Argos?’ (61). 12 See Ahl (1986), 2821. Cf. also Hershkowitz (1995), 63: ‘Statius endeavours to set a limit for his subject . . . but like the widespread destruction caused by the avalanche, his epic spreads in all directions, limite non uno.’ Consider the two brothers in Theb. 1.135–6: in diuersa trahunt atque aequis uincula laxant / uiribus et uario confundunt limite sulcos (‘they pull in different directions, with equal strength they relax the harness, and they mix up the furrows with their separate course’). Georgacopoulou (2005), 188, calls attention to the generic struggle between carmen (epic song) and confusa domus (tragedy). 13 See Georgacopoulou (1996b),184 and n.56, who, pace Carrara (1986), points to the absence of the Muse and the focalisation on heroes. 14 On the role of gods, and Jupiter among them, in Statius, see Legras (1905), 157–205; Schetter (1960), 21–9; Vessey (1973), 82–91 and 230–69; Schubert (1984); Feeney (1991), 337–91; Criado (2000); and most recently Hill (2008). On divine madness, see Hershkowitz (1998a), 260–68.

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precisely in Adrastus’ court, the marriage of Argia to Polynices, a fated wedlock that will wreak havoc on both houses, of Oedipus and of Tantalus:15 belli mihi semina sunto / Adrastus socer et superis adiuncta sinistris / conubia. (‘Let Adrastus’ gift of his daughter in a marriage unblessed of heaven be my seed of battle’, 1.243–5). From the limes esto, we now progress to the belli semina sunto.16 As the epic progresses from the initial hostilities to the marching of the Argive army against Thebes in the fourth book, various oppositions between sameness and otherness operate simultaneously on different levels in the Thebaid. As Thebes constitutes the desired centre of the action, where the fratricide will take place, Argos is perceived as the hostile periphery, driven in haste to attack the city of Cadmus. The same pair of oppositions, however, can be reversed: the Argives venture an expedition into the unknown territory of Theban otherness. Polynices returns to a different city, as his patria has now become hostile ground; what used to be familiar has changed colours. In books 2 and 3, the action moves back and forth, from Argos to Thebes, until the beginning of book 4, when Statius proceeds to catalogue the Argive army (4.38–344).17 As Lovatt has recently suggested, it is no easy task to establish ﬁxed identities or identiﬁcations in the Thebaid.18 The Thebans resemble the Trojans and the Carthaginians, whereas the Argives represent the Greek world at large. While Thebes as another Rome destroys itself, Argos is unable to achieve any victory, engaging instead in ‘an expedition to foreign parts that ends in chaotic retreat’. And of course, Argos itself can be conceived as another doublet for the Romans, since their Peloponnesian expedition maps onto Roman imperialism.19 As we will see, the problematics of transgressing boundaries becomes a 15 Consider, however, that Polynices identiﬁes himself to Adrastus as a son of Jocasta, not of Oedipus, in 1.681: est genetrix Iocasta mihi (‘my mother is Jocasta’). 16 See Cowan (2002), 144–244 on foundation myths in the poem: from the fratricide of the Spartoi, to the sons of Oedipus, and ﬁnally Romulus vs Remus in Rome. 17 On the structure of the catalogue, see Kytzler (1969), 219–26; Georgacopoulou (1996a), 103–7; McNelis (2007), 81–8; and the relevant sections in the recent commentaries by Parkes (2002), Steiniger (2005), and Micozzi (2007). Lovatt (2005), 181–8, identiﬁes the regional voices in the catalogue that ‘splinter any idea of a united Greece’. 18 See Lovatt’s discussion (2005), 146–91 on national identity in the poem. 19 Though see Lovatt (2007) for the impossibility of deﬁning an Argive identity either; in a sense, Argos and Thebes share a lot in common. Lovatt investigates how Argos and Thebes are assimilated in the parade at Opheltes’ funeral (6.268–95).

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salient topos inside the Theban house, but also on the battleground, because the poet exploits the polarity of same vs other to reveal the prominence of female ﬁgures as indispensably momentous both for the progress of the Thebaid and for its desired ending (or lack thereof).

BETWEEN LEMNOS AND ARGOS: HYPSIPYLE’S TRANSGRESSED B OUNDARIES Right in the middle, as the Argive army advances from the periphery towards the centre of the epic’s theme (beginning at 4.646), comes a digression that occupies a large section of the Thebaid. By deﬁnition, the digression itself constitutes a displacement of the action from the centre to the margin, into the unknown, nefarious, and deadly Nemean landscape. Needing an invocation to Phoebus,20 when the poet is about to digress from his subject matter, Statius makes clear that what follows is an error, a wandering from the main narrative:21 quis iras ﬂexerit, unde morae, medius quis euntibus error, Phoebe, doce: nos rara manent exordia famae. (4.649–51) Who turned their wrath aside, whence their long wait, how, halfway there, they went astray, great Phoebus tell; we have only scattered beginnings of the story.

Desirous of a halt to the Argive army’s advancement, Bacchus causes the streams to dry up (4.652–715), with the exception of the stream Langia,22 who will become famous (manet ingens gloria nympham, 20

On invocations in Statius, see Steiniger (1998). See Feeney (1991), 339, on Statius’ Virgilian motif of ‘divagation’. The death of Opheltes, according to Feeney, is not only the beginning of æ (‘death’), but also of mora (‘delay’): an epic of ‘stasis’ (Henderson [1998], 250). 22 Appropriately alluding to languidus (‘indolent’), the toponymic deﬁnes the long time the Argives will spend in Nemea. Lesueur (2003a), 1.150 n.59, observes that the motif of thirst could have been drawn from Antimachus or Euripides’ Hypsipyle ; on the problems of establishing the exact relationship with Antimachus, see Vessey (1970c), Venini (1972), and Matthews (1996) for a thorough introduction to the poet and his fragments. The discovery of the Lille Papyri of Callimachus’ Victoria Berenices has also revealed that Statius owes much to Callimachus’ description of Nemea; cf. Parsons 21

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‘a great fame awaits the nymph’, 4.727) precisely on account of the Argive ‘digression’ and its aftermath.23 Finally the Argives ﬁnd fair Hypsipyle nearby.24 Hypsipyle is from the outset marked as different, not just because of her gender but also on account of her pulcher maeror :25 tandem inter siluas (sic Euhius ipse pararat) errantes subitam pulchro in maerore tuentur Hypsipylen; illi quamuis et ab ubere26 Opheltes non suus, Inachii proles infausta Lycurgi, dependet (neglecta comam nec diues amictu), regales tamen ore notae, nec mersus acerbis extat honos. (4.746–52) At last as they wander in the forest (so Bacchus himself had planned it), suddenly they see Hypsipyle, fair in her sadness. Opheltes, not hers but the

(1977). As McNelis (2004), 275, has argued, ‘the interest in the foundation of the Nemean games retards the Argive march towards battle . . . [t]he Argive army is stopped by Callimachean geography . . . by Statius’ interest in Callimachean poetry’; cf. McNelis’s recent study (2007) on the poetics of civil war and Callimachean aesthetics. 23 See Vessey’s apt comment (1986), 2993: The narrative of Hypsipyle may be read as a domain inscribed in a domain, a digression, a detour in absolute textual terms. In it a past is re(-)presented in a present that is always already both past and future. The Argives wish to ‘know,’ and we, knowing already, to read . . . it is a diversion, which is both within and outside the Theban story. Our expectation that a diversion should lead us continuously to the same destination as a straight road should not blind us to the fact that it may be as much a divertissement as a de´viation: that the mora may have no moral. 24 The similarities and differences between this scene and Virgil’s Aeneid 1–4 (Aeneas, Venus, Dido) have been well discussed: Go¨tting (1969), 60–61; Gruzelier (1994); Nugent (1996); Frings (1996); Casali (2003); and Gibson (2004). 25 Although dismissed as a frivolous digression in early Statian criticism (see e.g. Legras [1905], 152 and 277: ‘parfaitement inutiles’), the Hypsipyle episode has received deserved notice in the past few decades: Go¨tting (1969); Vessey (1970a) and (1973), 170–87; Brown (1994); Taisne (1994a), 238–44; Dominik (1994a), 54–63; Delarue (2000), 333–7; Rosati (2005); Ganiban (2007), 71–95; Lo¨sch (2008). For its relationship with Valerius Flaccus’ version of the slaughter in Lemnos in Argon. 2.77–427 (and Apollonius’ Argon. 1.601–909), see Helm (1892), 153–6; Bahrenfuss (1951); Krumbholz (1955), 125–39; Vessey (1985); Arico` (1991); and most recently Augoustakis (2010b), as well as the relevant commentary in Poortvliet (1991). On the role of Valerius’ Hypsipyle within the Argonautica, see Hershkowitz (1998b), 136–46; Schenk (1999), 341–87; and most recently Clare (2004). 26 I prefer the reading ab ubere (in Hall’s new edition of the Thebaid) to Hill’s ad ubera.

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ill-starred child of Inachian Lycurgus, hangs from her breast (her hair is dishevelled, her clothing poor); yet on her face are marks of royalty, and her dignity, not sunk in her misfortune, is evident.

Notice how the poet alienates the child from Hypsipyle in 749, non suus, and then unites the two by means of the enjambment dependet, in 750. Also from the outset, the dual nature of Hypsipyle in terms of binarisms is established by a series of nec . . . nec . . . tamen: she maintains a royal appearance, though obviously in a servant’s attire. Statius alerts the reader that Hypsipyle may be hiding more under the surface after all. And indeed by losing her own children, Hypsipyle’s motherly feelings have already undergone a psychological change. Opheltes hangs from her breast, the very source of motherhood, ab ubere, while the nurse readily forsakes him on the grounds of pursuing another task: simul haerentem, ne tarda Pelasgis dux foret, a! miserum uicino caespite alumnum (sic Parcae uoluere) locat ponique negantis ﬂoribus aggestis et amico murmure dulces solatur lacrimas. (4.785–9) The poor baby, alas!, clings to her; and lest she be too slow a guide for the Argives, she places him on the ground nearby (so the Parcae wished), and when he refuses to be put aside, she consoles his tears with bunches of ﬂowers and loving murmurs.

The heroine’s bosom becomes a receptive choˆra, where as we expect the baby boy is nursed, the safe receptacle before the male’s emancipation and entrance into the heroic, martial world. And yet, the grouping of simul haerentem with alumnum betokens the close bond between nurse and child, which if examined in depth is unnatural, because it functions merely as a substitute: Hypsipyle is not the real mother and therefore is ready to replace Opheltes (uicino caespite . . . locat). But the baby boy is not ready for the transition (ponique negantem) from the genotext to the phenotext, from the semiotic to the symbolic, whereas Hypsipyle hastens and forces the transition of status, as she feels the urge of entering the male landscape of epic and of ‘quenching’ the Argives’ thirst with her tale. In fact, she tries this ﬁrst on Opheltes: she sets the boy on the ground and lulls him with soothing words (solatur), with a lullaby, (amico murmure), a genotext itself, not with words/speech, as she does later with the men of Argos. Opheltes is

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ﬁnally memorialised as the ﬁrst victim of the war and becomes forever inscribed in the Nemean landscape as the ‘sacriﬁced’ male, an ‘exile’ without a mother.27 As Hypsipyle helps the Argives discover Langia, she becomes negligent of her own maternal duty by dropping Opheltes. Thus Hypsipyle betrays the trust of Eurydice, the mother of Opheltes, who claims to have relied on the Lemnian woman and to have entrusted the baby to Hypsipyle’s motherhood, a safe and rich source for Opheltes’ health and security: primitias egomet lacrimarum et caedis acerbae, ante tubas ferrumque, tuli, dum deside cura credo sinus ﬁdos altricis et ubera mando. quidni ego? narrabat seruatum fraude parentem insontesque manus. (6.146–50) I bore the ﬁrst fruit of tears and untimely death before trumpet and sword, while in indolent neglect I believed in a nurse’s trusty bosom and handed over my baby to her breasts.28 But why not? She was telling me how she saved her father by cunning and kept her hands innocent.

In reality, Eurydice herself has fallen prey to Hypsipyle’s mesmerising narrative of saving Thoas as well, a story able to halt an army from its decided (fated) destination, as if the bereft mother attended Hypsipyle’s ‘lecture’ of the Lemnian massacre once upon a time. To be sure, Hypsipyle has rehearsed the script many a time in the past! In her tirade, Eurydice blurs the boundaries between ﬁlial piety and motherhood, by underscoring Hypsipyle’s asymbolia in both. The emphasis on the verb narrabat undercuts Hypsipyle’s voice as a narrator and reduces her narrative into a collection of ﬁctions. Eurydice constructs the Lemnian nurse into the other, who intrudes in the narrative proper to delay, digress, and deviate from the prescribed course of the epic telos, by leading astray the army into a feminine discourse akin to elegy and by rewriting her story and its aftermath.

27 See Jamset’s (2005) study of Parthenopaeus in the Thebaid as a warrior unable to break free from his mother Atalanta: his ambition and claim to be an epic hero is therefore challenged by the narrator. Cf. also Sanna (2008). 28 See Ha˚kanson (1973), 39–40, for the expression ﬁdos altricis et ubera mando, as an inversion of mando uberibus (sc. infantem).

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Hypsipyle’s yearning to avoid being a tarda dux (4.785–6) results in a ‘bankruptcy’ towards her alumnus: at puer in gremio uernae telluris et alto gramine nunc faciles sternit procursibus herbas in uultum nitens, caram modo lactis egeno nutricem clangore ciens iterumque renidens et teneris meditans uerba inluctantia labris . . . (4.793–7) But the boy in the bosom of the vernal earth, the lush herbage, now butts and levels the soft grasses with his forward plunges, now calling for his dear nurse, crying thirsty of milk; and again he smiles and endeavours for words that struggle with his tender lips . . .

The baby cannot survive in isolation; even the idyllic surroundings cannot sufﬁce to console him. He ﬁnds a substitute nurse in gremio uernae telluris. The negligent nurse easily forsakes her role to another nurse, the mother-earth, who manifests herself as other, as a different and new environment that will lure the baby to his death. Opheltes longs for his cara nutrix by crying loud, in need for milk (modo . . . egeno, 795), in other words in need of staying within the maternal space, a space however provided by a (m)other.29 Hypsipyle’s negligence and casual display of trustworthiness towards tellus, speaks for the Lemnian woman’s effort to take off her garment as a nurse and put on the garment of the narrator. The innocent clangor of the baby in book 4 will be transformed into the lament of Hypsipyle in book 5 and of Eurydice in book 6, in this ongoing ﬂuctuation back and forth between the semiotic and the symbolic, and eventually into the lament of the Argive widows at the end of the poem, which the poet will all too readily silence. The female receptacle exempliﬁed by the presence of the tellus/earth in this signiﬁcant juncture in the narrative, when Hypsipyle lays Opheltes on the grass, works as a signiﬁer for the complete perversion of the mother-earth as a symbol for an all-encompassing Motherhood. Tellus becomes a proxy, but unbeknownst to Hypsipyle, tellus and patria are terrains of death and utter destruction, in the Peloponnese, 29

Jamset (2005), 145–64, examines the ﬁgure of Chiron in the Achilleid as a substitute ‘mother’ to Achilles, just as Hypsipyle is to Opheltes. See also Heslin (2005), 157–91.

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Thebes, and Lemnos. Consider the role of humus, for instance, in the swallowing up of Amphiaraus in book 7 (humus . . . / dissilit, ‘the ground is split’, 7.816–17). When the Argives elect Thiodamas as the seer’s successor, one of his ﬁrst acts is to placate the earth (Tellurem placare parat, ‘he prepares to placate Tellus’, 8.297), by praying to the goddess and begging for conciliation. In his invocation, Thiodamas captures the essence of the role of mother-earth as generator of the animate and inanimate world,30 but also as the ground upon which he expounds Stoic theories on universal citizenship, which nevertheless cannot function properly within the disordered cosmos of the Thebaid: o hominum diuumque aeterna creatrix, . . . nos tantum portare negas, nos, diua, grauaris? . . . . . . an quia plebes externa Inacchiis huc aduentamus ab oris? omne homini natale solum, nec te, optima, saeuo tamque humili populos deceat distinguere ﬁne undique ubique tuos; maneas communis . . . (8.303, 317, 318–22) O eternal creatress of gods and humans . . . why do you, goddess, refuse to bear us alone, why do you ﬁnd us too heavy? . . . Or is it that we have come here from the foreign shores of Inachus? Every soil is common to man by birthright, nor would it beﬁt you, noble one, to differentiate by means of such a cruel and base boundary between peoples, who are yours from everywhere and anywhere. May that you stay common (to us all) . . .

Thiodamas here rehearses the topoi of a universal citizenship that we have seen in Valerius’ Argonautica in the Introduction. With the phrase omne homini natale solum, the seer tries to elicit an alliance between Tellus and the Argives. A state without boundaries (distinguere ﬁne), however, contradicts the imperialistic aims of the Argive expedition: the army has trespassed into hostile territory to claim back the throne, a prize that should have been communis between the two brothers but is not. Thiodamas’ futile prayer is undercut by his claim that any Theban, Nemean, or Argive territory can open up to 30 Though Legras (1905), 165–8, sees an irreconcilable contradiction in the invocation to Tellus as creatrix with the role of Jupiter as creator of the cosmos in the poem, Vessey (1973), 267, calls the prayer ‘one of the most exalted and noble passages’. See also brieﬂy Gesztelyi (1981), 439–40, on the ritual.

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receive the other: conversely what has just opened up is a chasm that leads to the netherworld and has swallowed up Amphiaraus, the ﬁrst of the seven heroes to die at the end of the ﬁrst Iliadic book of the poem (book 7).31 Thiodamas trusts that the Argives can enjoy such cooperation with Tellus, since he points exactly to the reason why she has become hostile: an quia plebes / externa Inacchiis huc aduentamus ab oris. The word ora deﬁnes the boundary between the land of Inachus and the land of the Aonians: Thiodamas subconsciously replaces boundaries, while he thinks he is able to bring about their collapse. Such is then in the Thebaid the nature of mother-earth, Tellus, to whom Hypsipyle entrusts the baby: she will soon swallow up Amphiaraus in book 7, as the Argives have all too quickly forgotten that tellus, Nemean or Theban, personiﬁes hostility, a (m)other, much like Hypsipyle, who ‘kills’ her own offspring.32 But Hypsipyle’s failure is not only located in her choice of a perilous proxy for Opheltes, but also in her eagerness to replace the narrator and enter the male-centred, heroic world of Œº Æ IæH. At Adrastus’ request to revive the Argives’ lost strength (tu refugas uires et pectora bellis / exanimata reple, ‘you, replenish our tumbling strength and our hearts exhausted by wars’, 4.766–7),33 Hypsipyle assumes the difﬁcult task of ﬁlling time with her story. In fact, the beginning of the ﬁfth book promises the resumption of the march of the Argives, as they have now quenched their physical thirst and yearn for war (monentur / instaurare uias, ‘they are advised to take up the expedition again’, 5.8–9), when Adrastus, consciously or subcon-

31 Cf. Vessey (1973), 268: ‘As soon as he has ended [the prayer], war begins again and in the following day Tydeus, Hippomedon and Parthenopaeus are all slain.’ 32 Compare the role of Tellus in Silius’ Punica, who, as we shall see in the next chapter (144–55), supplies the Romans with the required energy to beat the Carthaginians at Metaurus, and most importantly reorganises the semantics of patria not just as fatherland but as a beneﬁcial female mother-earth. 33 The well-chosen adjective refugas provides a parallelism with Hypsipyle’s status as an exile, fugitive Lemnias. Cf. also Euripides’ etymological play in fr.64.72 Bond: çıªa . . . L çıª (‘the ﬂight I ﬂed’). What Statius underlines is the impasse to which Hypsipyle’s aid leads the Argives: the replenishment of power will be absolutely temporary.

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sciously, because he has repeatedly tried to halt the Argive expedition thus far,34 inquires into Hypsipyle’s own patria: dic age, quando tuis alacres absistimus undis, quae domus aut tellus, animam quibus hauseris astris. dic quis et ille pater. neque enim tibi numina longe, transierit fortuna licet, maiorque per ora sanguis, et adﬂicto spirat reuerentia uultu. (5.23–7) Come tell us, as we briskly leave your waters, what is your home and country, under what stars you drew your breath. And say, who is that famous father of yours? For the gods are not far, though fortune may have deserted you, noble blood is in your aspect, awe breathes in your afﬂicted face.

Adrastus strikes a tender chord in Hypsipyle’s heart by discerning all those traits that make her otherness manifest. He uses the demonstrative ille (et ille pater), having no idea that Thoas is indeed a famous father of a celebrated daughter. His language reﬂects the Argive army’s subconscious desire to stray, as he resumes the authorial voice of the narrator of the poem and refers to Hypsipyle’s dual nature, the obvious and the hidden, based on her appearance (neque enim . . . licet ; cf. nec . . . tamen . . . nec, 4.750–1). Adrastus’ technique of holding the army is exploited at the end of the book, when Amphiaraus prays to Phoebus for even more causes of delays, which will come in the form of the funeral games for Archemorus: . . . atque utinam plures innectere pergas, Phoebe, moras, semperque nouis bellare uetemur casibus, et semper, Thebe funesta, recedas.35 (5.743–5) . . . and, Phoebus, may you go on to weave more delays, and we be barred from war by ever new chances, and may you, deadly Thebes, ever further recede.

34

See Vessey (1973), 165–7. Cf. for instance, his instruction to Argia in 3.718–19: neu sint dispendia iustae / dura morae: magnos cunctamus, nata, paratus (‘and let there not be any cruel waste of time, even if it is just: we postpone, daughter, a great enterprise’); see Snijder (1968), 267, for the poet’s pun and allusion to Fabius’ delaying tactic. On the scene in book 3, see Hershkowitz (1997) for its intertextual relationship with Jupiter’s speech to Venus in Aen. 1. 35 I follow Hall in reading recedas with the vocative Thebe as opposed to Hill’s recedat with the nominative.

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Amphiaraus gives voice to his hitherto secret wish for the prolongation and ultimate cancellation of the coming (yet inexorable) war. Phoebus could weave, via the poet, another digression. The seer’s wish to delete Thebes from the landscape of this war begins with his diminution of the noun from plural to singular, in an exorcism of sorts:36 Thebe funesta, recedas. The centre of the poem has to be reached, however, and the prayer for the opposite will only temporarily come to effect: the Nemean games will prove an ultimate rehearsal of the ﬁnal battle on Theban ground. With the embedded story that Hypsipyle obliges to be narrated at length, the poet shifts the focus of his attention to a different opposition of sameness and otherness, centre and periphery: the action shifts to the island of Lemnos and its hostile encounters with neighbouring Thrace and the alien forces of the Argonauts. The reader should not forget, however, that Hypsipyle’s narrative takes place in Nemea. In her long ﬂashback, the former queen associates Lemnos with destructive fury:37 ingemit, et paulum ﬂetu cunctata modesto Lemnias orsa refert: ‘inmania uulnera, rector, integrare iubes, Furias et Lemnon et artis arma inserta toris debellatosque pudendo ense mares; . . . ’ (5.28–32) The Lemnian woman sighs, pauses awhile in modest tears, and then answers: ‘Ruler, you bid me revive terrible wounds, the tale of Lemnos and its Furies, blades thrust home in narrow beds and manhood overwhelmed by wicked swords . . . ’

The inﬁnitive integrare signals a new beginning, as well as a new authorial voice in the narrative:38 Hypsipyle will resume where she has stopped in one of her previous literary appearances, namely Ovid’s Heroides 6. This promises to be a story that will soothe the hearts and minds of Argives, but instead of pacifying the baby, Hypsipyle will enter the terrain of epic poetry, just to transgress it 36 Cf. 1.680, 4.610, 4.676, 5.681, 5.745, 6.515, 9.255, 9.294, 10.594. Perhaps the singular after all equates the two cities, Thebe and Argos. 37 Cf. Franchet d’Espe`rey (1999), 212–15. 38 OLD, s.v. integro 2 (on resuming a story), but also cf. 6.42 (on resuming lamentation).

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by trespassing into elegy by picking up her Ovidian story: the massacre in Lemnos and the extended stay of the Argonauts. It is notable that Ovid’s Hypsipyle displays an obsession with her competitor for the heart of Jason, Medea; she writes her letter in the immediate aftermath of Jason’s return to Greece accompanied by Medea, but she writes from Lemnos (me mea Lemnos habet, ‘my Lemnos holds me’, Her. 6.136); her exile has not yet taken place. Ovid’s heroine is also conspicuously villainous, even though she is known for her pietas. She unleashes a furious attack against Medea for her barbarousness (barbara, Her. 6.19), and as Fulkerson correctly observes on Hypsipyle’s sympathy towards her fellow Lemnians’ abominable act of androphony, the heroine’s kinship with the ‘murderous Lemnians perhaps provides a genealogical disposition for her own “barbarousness”’.39 Since the Ovidian Hypsipyle avoids the dangerous territory of the Lemnian murders,40 she does not spare the details in the Thebaid, but rather expands her elegiac narrative with epic overtones, oscillating between the two genres, in the outwardly idyllic landscape of the Nemean countryside. Hypsipyle nevertheless chooses this choˆra of motherhood to reproduce the continuation of her Ovidian story. As Spentzou has observed on individual letters in the collection of the Heroides, the heroines are often relegated to the isolation of their room (Penelope, for instance, in Her. 1), where they ﬁnd an ‘unpredictable resourcefulness [in] the feminine åæÆ’.41 Likewise, Hypsipyle indulges in this choˆra of rewriting by fashioning her story in epic and elegiac terms, but is inevitably confronted by the perils of having entered the world of heroic poetry, where her (m)otherhood is threatened by obliteration.

39 Fulkerson (2005), 54, and especially pp. 40–66, on Hypsipyle and Medea with further bibliography. 40 Oblique allusions to the massacre are made through her association with Thoas in Her. 6.114 and especially 135 (rapui de caede Thoanta, ‘I seized Thoas from the slaughter’). See Knox (1995), 198, on the interpolation of lines, such as Her. 6.139–40: Lemniadum facinus culpo, non miror Iason; / quamlibet ignauis iste dat arma dolor (‘I condemn the crime of the Lemnian women, Jason, I do not admire it; that pain, however, gives weapons to the powerless’). 41 Spentzou (2003), 104.

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47

What is emphasised then in Hypsipyle’s recomposition of her story, a Euripidean palimpsest with Ovidian overtones, is that both the island and the place of Archemorus’ death are signalled as other, alien places where fury and bloodshed abound. While we listen to Hypsipyle’s adventures and the Lemnian slaughter, another abominable deed takes place in Nemea, thus connecting the two narratives of nefas:42 ac dulce nefas in sanguine uiuo / coniurant . . . (‘In living blood, they swear the delicious crime . . . ’, 5.162–3); huc magno cursum rapit effera luctu / agnoscitque nefas . . . (‘She rushes hither to look in agony of grief and recognises the ghastly crime . . . ’, 5.591–2). This digression, partly as the narrative of Hypsipyle and partly as the events in the wake of Opheltes’ murder by the monstrous snake,43 on the surface draws the focus away from the two civil war sites of the poem, Thebes and Argos. This digression, however, also marks a turning point in the Thebaid. Many similarities exist between the island of Lemnos and the Argive and Theban parties, inasmuch as Lemnos constitutes a peripheral place that reﬂects the madness prevailing in both camps of the civil war and foreshadows the impending nefas of the fratricide.44 Within the embedded narrative, in which the former queen exposes the horror of the Lemnian slaughter, the reader comes across further manifestations of otherness, as in a set of Russian dolls. To our pair of central and peripheral constituents, namely the Argive expedition against Thebes and the army’s encounter with Hypsipyle, another is added: Lemnos and Thrace. In the minds of the Lemnian women, Thrace represents the other, a place of orgiastic activity, the landscape of their husbands’ adulteries. Lemnos, for a moment, represents what is fas, as opposed to the nefas of the Thracian land. The Lemnian husbands are being slaughtered precisely because they have spent a long period of time in Thrace. In fact, the Lemnian women seem obsessed with the shores across from their native soil:

42 The role of furor as a result of divine and human acts has been well explored in Schetter (1960), 5–21; Venini (1964); Taisne (1994a), 86–92 (and passim); cf. Rosati (2005) on Lucretian echoes of furor/amor in the Hypsipyle episode. On Hypsipyle as embodying this nefas and defying our expectations of a Virgilian understanding of pietas, see Ganiban (2007), 71–95. 43 Taisne (1972) discusses the role of the snake in the episode. 44 Go¨tting (1969), passim.

48

Motherhood and the Other illae autem tristes (nam me tunc libera curis uirginitas annique tegunt) sub nocte dieque adsiduis aegrae in lacrimis solantia miscent conloquia, aut saeuam spectant trans aequora Thracen.

(5.81–4)

Their wives in sadness—for I was sheltered then by youth and carefree maidenhood—by day and night in endless tears, sick at heart, seek solace in conversation or gaze across the sea at savage Thrace.

The dichotomy between the Lemnian women and the coast across their island comes to the foreground of Hypsipyle’s narrative as a regression into the semiotic choˆra, where endless lament is permissible and mute silence is replaced now by conversation, now by meaningful gaze that arms the female hands with weapons. Otherness cannot be easily fathomed or comprehended, it appears. The need of self-deﬁnition is recurrent, but at times impossible. Furthermore, Hypsipyle deﬁnes her island with respect to the position of the Thracian shore: Thraces arant contra, Thracum fatalia nobis / litora, et inde nefas. (‘Opposite the Thracians plough, the Thracian shore fatal to us, the source of crime’, 5.53–4). One of the frenzied women, Polyxo, claims that the threat of foreign invasion is imminent (Bistonides ueniunt fortasse maritae, ‘perhaps Thracian wives are coming with them’, 5.142). Thracian women may well accompany the Lemnian men back from war. And yet, the day following the Lemnian slaughter reveals that the island has suffered not because of external enemies but because of civil conﬂict:45 insula diues agris opibusque armis uirisque, nota situ et Getico nuper ditata triumpho, non maris incursu, non hoste, nec aethere laeuo perdidit una omnes orbata excisaque mundo indigenas: . . . (5.305–9) The island with its dower of lands and wealth, of arms and men, famous in its site and enriched by recent victory in Thrace, had lost, not to the sea’s onslaught or to the enemy or to heaven’s curse, its whole community, orphaned and cut out from the world . . .

45

Micozzi (1999), 384, traces this motif back to Lucan.

Mourning Endless

49

As Keith has observed, gender differentiation materialises prominently in the Lemnian episode, because the massacre thematically pairs conﬂict between the sexes with civil war.46 What is striking in this passage is that the dichotomy of same vs other collapses under the weight of the inherent differentiation found in the concept of sameness itself: clearly, the Lemnian identity is split between male and female, and when one of the two components is erased, there is the need for regression and self-obliteration of the whole population in general: perdidit una omnes orbata excisaque mundo / indigenas. By default, Lemnos loses its male citizens and is therefore cut out from the world altogether. Notice the emphasis on the enjambment of indigenas, for instance. The territory of Lemnos becomes the other, the place where devastation is proliferated, where unspeakable actions result in an asymbolia, where the female can exist marginally without the male, until the arrival of the next group of men, who will deﬁne stability in the island, temporarily at least. The arrival of the second group of males invading the island mobilises primeval fears on the part of the Lemnian women, who now suspect that this Thracian ﬂeet is preparing an attack: nos, Thracia uisu bella ratae, uario tecta incursare tumultu, densarum pecudum aut fugientum more uolucrum.

(5.347–9)

But at the sight we thought them foes from Thrace and ﬂed in wild confusion to our homes, like ﬂocks of jostling sheep or ﬂeeing birds.

As the barbarian land of Thrace is closely connected with the cult of Dionysus, Bacchic behavioural elements are expected across the island of Lemnos. The Lemnian women, however, are the ones likened to Bacchants. More speciﬁcally, when Polyxo urges her companions to take action, she assumes the character of a Thyad from Temeusos in Boeotia:47

46 Keith (2000), 97. It is important to remember, however, as Dominik (1997), 33, stresses, that the massacre is divinely inspired by Venus’ anger against the Lemnian women (pace Vessey [1970a] and [1973], 172, who attributes the action to mere furor). Cf. also Delarue (2000), 315–17. 47 As Mozley (1933), 34, observes, Statius borrows from the Aeneid most closely:

50

Motherhood and the Other insano ueluti Teumesia Thyias rapta deo, cum sacra uocant Idaeaque suadet buxus et a summis auditus montibus Euhan: . . . (5.92–4)

Like a Teumesian Bacchant seized by god-sent madness, when the sacred rites summon her, and Ida’s boxwood urges, and from the peaks of mountains the Bacchic cry is heard . . .

Moreover, Hypsipyle herself is a descendant of Bacchus.48 As the Lemnian women give way to their fury and frenzy, a transformation takes place: from the civilised centre of their world, they become the uncivilised other, even though otherness was heretofore relegated and conﬁned in the Thracian coast across the sea. And even if Bacchus’ own intervention to save his son Thoas could constitute a successful step towards the integration of the two places and the imposing of peace on the island, his intervention instead ultimately leads to the expulsion of the female ﬁgure, Hypsipyle, as soon as her citizens discover the truth about her contrivance of saving her father. Hypsipyle’s action, inspired by pietas toward the pater familias, remains nevertheless a fraus.49 To be sure, Hypsipyle paradoxically becomes an alien to her native environment by transgressing the (transgressive) rules set by the other Lemnian women. The poet creates a version of Hypsipyle that deﬁes any norm or categorisation. At the outset of the digression in book 4, Statius associates Hypsipyle, as she tends the baby Opheltes, with a foreign goddess, the mother of the gods, who gives orders to the Curetes for the nursing of Jove: qualis commotis excita sacris Thyias, ubi audito stimulant trieterica Baccho orgia nocturnusque uocat clamore Cithaeron. (Aen. 4.301–3) Like a Bacchant stirred by the shaking of the sacred objects, when having heard the name of Bacchus she is roused by the biennial orgies and is called by the shouting on Mount Cithaeron at night.

But Statius may also have in mind the Euripidean ˆæª (Hyps. fr. 64.77 Bond). 48 Bacchus plays a larger role in the Thebaid than in Valerius’ Argonautica; see Dominik (1997), 39. 49 Pace Vessey (1973), 176, who reads it as a preﬁguration of the pietas displayed by Argia and Antigone; followed by Kytzler (1996), Ripoll (1998), 295, and Scaffai (2002). Nugent (1996) explores the role of the absent father Thoas in Hypsipyle’s narrative and links it to the ever present, poetic father ﬁgure in Statius’ poetry, Virgil: ‘She would have no narrative without him; but she would have no narrative with him’ (71).

Mourning Endless

51

. . . qualis Berecyntia mater, dum paruum circa iubet exultare Tonantem Curetas trepidos; illi certantia plaudunt orgia, sed magnis resonat uagitibus Ide. (4.789–92) . . . like Cybele, while she bids the trembling Curetes dance around the infant Thunderer; they sound their mystic cymbals in competition, yet still the baby’s mighty wails resound around Ide.

In addition, just as in Thrace, Lemnos, and Thebes, so Statius also casts a Maenadic shadow over the Nemean landscape from the outset, this time as the place of the baby’s death, an event to be remembered by a festival not coincidentally called trieteris, a noun appropriate for the cult of Bacchus (4.729). The ﬁrst invasion of Lemnos from the uncivilised periphery of Thrace is followed by a second, the arrival of the Minyans. Their inﬂuence on the women seems favourable in the beginning, as the advent of the male Argonauts coincides with the return of the collapsed gender boundaries and hierarchies in the island. The female ﬁgures, once out of their sexus, are now reconstructed: rediit in pectora sexus (‘our sex returned to our hearts’, 5.397). The threat of matriarchy is safely closeted for the time being. And yet, even when everything seems to tag on life’s natural order, Hypsipyle fashions herself as a dislocated person. Although previously a virgin, when the slaughter began, she now loses her innocence to Jason and by him becomes impregnated: cineres furiasque meorum testor ut externas non sponte aut crimine taedas attigerim (scit cura deum), etsi blandus Iason uirginibus dare uincla nouis . . . iam noua progenies partusque in uota soluti, et non speratis clamatur Lemnos alumnis. nec non ipsa tamen, thalami monimenta coacti, enitor geminos, duroque sub hospite mater nomen aui renouo; . . . (5.454–7, 461–5) By the ashes and the avenging ghosts of my own kin, I swear—the gods care and know—that by no will of mine and guiltless I became a stranger’s wife, though Jason used his charm to ensnare young virgins . . . Now comes new progeny and births to answer prayer. Lemnos is loud with unhoped-for children. I too with the rest bring forth twins, memorials of a forced bed

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Motherhood and the Other

though they be, and made a mother by my rough guest I revive their grandfather’s name . . .

Words such alumnus, applied to Hypsipyle’s offspring, remind us of similar use in the case of Opheltes, who is now placed in the dangerous lap of Tellus (4.786–7). Hypsipyle describes her reluctance, well apprised that it is not unmotivated.50 The Argonauts soon leave, while she is forced into exile. Repetition proves unstable, such as the naming of Jason’s child after Thoas, a stark reminder of Hypsipyle’s hidden truth about her father. Substitution betokens an aborted renewal and a fresh start doomed to failure. And indeed, a new beginning for the island, a renovation of gender hierarchies has failed anew. Moreover, Hypsipyle’s unwilling impregnation by Jason is underscored in her narrative. While Hypsipyle strives to hide her attachment to the best of the Argonauts, we may infer from Eurydice’s claims that Opheltes has served as a substitute for Hypsipyle’s lost children and her love for Jason: { atquin et blandus ad51 illam nate magis solam nosse atque audire uocantem

50 Hypsipyle’s actual infatuation with Jason is evident in her reunion with her sons (Thoas and Euneos, 6.342–3). Her ﬁrst reaction is cold, but when she recognises them as the true offspring of Jason, she completely changes her attitude towards them:

illa uelut rupes inmoto saxea uisu haeret et expertis non audet credere diuis. ut uero et uultus et signa Argoa relictis ensibus atque umeris amborum intextus Iason, cesserunt luctus, turbataque munere tanto corruit, atque alio maduerunt lumina ﬂetu. (5.723–8)

She like a stony rock, with a gaze unmoved, does not react nor does she dare to believe the gods she knows well. But when she recognised their faces and the signs of Argo on the swords left behind and Jason's name interwoven on their shoulders, her grief departed and collapsed disturbed by such great gift; her eyes became wet by other tears. Contra Dominik (1997), 46, who claims that Hypsipyle’s refusal to submit to erotic, baser passions inspired by Venus demonstrates ‘the nobility of her character and shows that she is morally superior to the other Lemnian women’, Micozzi (2002), 65–70, examines extensively the elegiac motifs in Jason’s departure. 51 Cf. Fortgens (1934), 98, and Lesueur (2003a), 2.146 n.15, for the unusual construction of blandus with ad.

Mourning Endless

53

ignarusque mei { nulla ex te gaudia matri. illa tuos questus lacrimososque impia risus audiit et uocis decerpsit murmura primae. illa tibi genetrix semper dum uita manebat, nunc ego. (6.161–7) And yet, my child, you were fonder of her: her only you knew and heard when you called, me you ignored, your mother had no joy of you. She, the undutiful, heard your complaints and tearful laughter: she culled the murmurs of your earliest speech. She was your mother always, while you lived; I now.

The adjective blandus applies to Opheltes, as it was previously used for Jason by Hypsipyle herself, thus undercutting her argument that she was forced to marry the Argonaut. Opheltes serves as substitute for Hypsipyle’s lost children, but he equally functions as a living reminder of Jason himself.52 The Lemnian woman’s disentanglement from her temporary husband, Jason, comes to a climax in her alienation from her country. She becomes a foreigner in the eyes of her fellow citizens because of her piety towards Thoas, her father. This distancing is followed by her alienation from her own offspring and her exile: uaga litora furtim / incomitata sequor funestaque moenia linquo, . . . (‘Alone I follow the winding shore in secret and leave the accursed city . . . ’, 5.494–5). While her piety may seem a successful act of selﬂess love, it points at the same time to her failure as a mother. At the time of Opheltes’ death, Hypsipyle is called an exiled Lemnian, a name that corroborates her alienation from every maternal environment, Lemnian or Nemean: talia Lernaeis iterat dum regibus exul / Lemnias et longa solatur damna querela . . . (‘While Lemnos’ exiled queen tells her tale anew to Lerna’s princes and in lengthy plaint ﬁnds consolation for her losses . . . ’, 5.499–500). Statius uses the substantive adjective Lemnias time and again (in the beginning of the hexameter: 5.29, 5.500; as the ﬁfth foot’s dactyl: 4.775, 5.588),53 to underscore both Hypsipyle’s foreign country, from which at this 52 See Gruzelier (1994), 161 n.10, and Gibson (2004), 164, who observes that Hypsipyle’s claim to the opposite goes against Ovid’s Her. 6. 53 An epithet otherwise used in the poem for Vulcan (2.269; and for the Ovidian reminiscence, see Keith [2004–5], 192) and Hypsipyle’s offspring, Euneos (6.509).

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Motherhood and the Other

very moment she is obviously absent, as well as her alienation from, and asymbolia in, the other sites of the poem, namely the two cities of the civil crisis. Moreover, Hypsipyle’s status of exul aligns her with another famous exul of the poem, Polynices, who from the outset is marked as the other in the brotherly conﬂict (uagus exul . . . / pererrat, ‘a wandering exile he roams’, 1.312–13). Hypsipyle’s identity as a Lemnian woman, never invoked by herself, is problematic in the larger framework of her narrative. As we have seen, while she is a slave nurse in the court of King Lycurgus in Nemea, Hypsipyle ﬁnds in the baby Opheltes a substitute for her missing children: o mihi desertae natorum dulcis imago, Archemore, o rerum et patriae solamen ademptae seruitiique decus, . . . (5.608–10) My child, sweet reminder of my own sons who have forsaken me, Archemorus, comfort for my long-lost estate and country, pride of my slavery . . . 54

The verb solor, nevertheless, only further manifests the lack of consolation which in reality takes place in Nemea. During the large digression on Hypsipyle’s misfortunes, Opheltes tries to replace his nurse by ﬁnding comfort in the idyllic, yet dangerous, environment procured by his new nurse, the mother-earth. Hypsipyle tries to lure the baby with ﬂowers and lullabies to keep him quiet (ﬂoribus aggestis et amico murmure dulces / solatur lacrimas, 4.788–9), as she is too hasty to abandon him in her concern for the well-being of the Argive army. Here, as we saw above, Statius opts for an unexpected simile: the Mother of the Gods, who is not herself nursing Jove, but who bids the Curetes to keep the future king of gods and men entertained. When the baby is mortally bitten by a snake, Hypsipyle’s own failure to secure generational continuity for Lycurgus is laid bare.55 Like Polynices in the court of King Adrastus, a foreigner among

54

Cf. Euripides’ ıºÆ (‘slavery’, fr. 85.6 Bond). For the connection with the myth of Psamathe and the baby, Linus, in 1.571–95, see Vessey (1973), 101–7. On the myth of Psamathe, see Arico` (1960); Vessey (1970b); Kytzler (1986); Taisne (1994a), 244–7; Dominik (1994a), 63–70; McNelis (2007), 37–40. 55

Mourning Endless

55

strangers, who will only bring about disasters for the Argive ruler, disrupting generational continuity in the Peloponnese—by transmitting the cursed stigma of his house to the next generation of the Epigonoi56—likewise Hypsipyle’s displaced and frustrated maternal instincts do not succeed in promoting safety in Nemea. Opheltes’ death underscores how misplaced and destructive the nurse’s feelings are towards her fatherland. When Hypsipyle calls Archemorus the solamen patriae and seruitii decus, we are invited to ponder the deadly consequences that Hypsipyle’s role in her own country have brought about in her present, foreign abode. Keith has correctly observed that Hypsipyle’s failure conﬁrms her position as alien to the landscape of Nemea and ultimately denies her integration into that setting.57 As the episode ends, it yet remains unclear how much her otherness has beneﬁted the Argive army on its way to initiate civil war: Hypsipyle’s failure, with its ramiﬁcations on the public level and in the private sphere as a daughter and as a mother, forebodes a catastrophe. For a moment, she may seem to have quenched the thirst of the Argive army by leading them to Langia, but the ensuing digression on her adventures and the death of Opheltes conclude with lament and funeral games that preﬁgure part of the last book of the poem, the aftermath of the Theban civil war. In her lament, Hypsipyle reiterates the well-known fact that she used to narrate the hapless story of her fatherland to baby Opheltes, as a bedtime story:58 quotiens tibi Lemnon et Argo sueta loqui et longa somnum suadere querela!59 sic equidem luctus solabar et ubera paruo iam materna dabam . . . (5.615–18)

56

As Bernstein (2003), 355, has rightly observed concerning Polynices, ‘sons reproduce only their fathers’ crimes, and violence within the kingroup poses a constant threat to generational continuity’. 57 Keith (2000), 60. 58 See Casali (2003) on the unreliability of Hypsipyle as a narrator, like Aeneas in Aen. 2. Gibson (2004), 161, points to the repetitions in the Hypsipyle story as evidence for her role as epic narrator qua poet. 59 Mozley (1963–4), 25: ‘beautiful effect of combined assonance and alliteration’.

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Motherhood and the Other

How often would I talk to you of Lemnos and the Argo and lull you to sleep with my long tale of woe! So I would console my sorrow and give the little one a breast now belonging to a mother . . .

This is the moment, too little too late, when Hypsipyle reconnects with her motherly task to guard Opheltes against the dangers of the outside world, with the adjective materna (modifying ubera in the preceding verse) placed in the beginning of the hexameter in 618 with the temporal iam. Having emphasised her pietas towards her father, Hypsipyle has at the same time forsaken her duties as mother—a repetition of her abandonment of Lemnos, without her sons. Hypsipyle’s motherly affections bear only disasters: to put the baby to sleep with tales of Lemnos and the Argonauts, after we have witnessed the terrible slaughter of the Lemnian men and sons (pueri, 5.260)! As her ‘dangerous’ narrative used to constitute in the past a proleptic rehearsal of Opheltes’ death, the same story now recounted before the Argive army heralds the coming events in the Iliadic books of the poem (7–12). What does such practice portend for the Argive army? Hypsipyle’s lulling story works to the detriment of the Argive army, as it reviews the sad ending of the expedition. Fittingly perhaps, Lycurgus calls mendacia (5.659) the story that Hypsipyle has memorised and repeated so many times. Hypsipyle’s dual nature, as mother and a Lemnian exile with a loaded past as part of a murderous, monstrous female population, comes to the surface repeatedly during the digression in the middle of the Thebaid. To recall the Kristevan quote in the epigraph in this chapter then, what is Hypsipyle but ‘a rummaging memory, the present in abeyance’? She is the asymbolic, foreign other that symbolises the impossibility of incorporation, the role of motherhood as forgetting oneself: Hypsipyle cannot forget; she is able to repeat endlessly the story of her past and project it onto the future of the heroes themselves. Another manifestation of Hypsipyle’s attachment to the past occurs when in the recognition/reunion scene the two boys rush to their mother, as soon as they are identiﬁed in the court of Lycurgus. Hypsipyle’s feelings of shock and disbelief, however, dominate: per tela manusque inruerant, matremque auidis complexibus ambo diripiunt ﬂentes alternaque pectora mutant.

Mourning Endless illa uelut rupes inmoto saxea uisu haeret et expertis non audet credere diuis.

57 (5.720–4)

They rush through weapons and hands and both weeping tear their mother apart with greedy embraces, taking her to their bosoms in turn. She stays ﬁxed like a stony rock, her eyes unmoving, and does not dare to believe the gods.

Only when she recognises the name of Jason tatooed on their shoulders, does Hypsipyle display any signs of emotion, but yet again the emphasis is laid on the cries, this time of joy: turbataque munere tanto corruit, atque alio maduerunt lumina ﬂetu. addita signa polo, laetoque ululante tumultu tergaque et aera dei motas crepuere per auras.

(5.727–30)

And disturbed by such a gift, she collapsed; her eyes were bedewed with another kind of tears. Signs too were manifest in the sky. The air was stirred resounding with a happy uproar of cries and drums and cymbals of the god.

A Bacchic reunion, beﬁtting the descendants of the god! The word pairing of ululante tumultu, however, anticipates Eurydice’s lament in 6.137, longis . . . ululatibus, as the cries of joy and of grief set off one another in the context of Opheltes’ unfortunate death and of Hypsipyle’s reunion with her sons. Moreover, Hypsipyle’s sons will reappear supporting their mother and yielding to her lamentation at the funeral of her baby-substitute: nec Hypsipyle raro subit agmine: uallant Inachidae memores, sustentant liuida nati bracchia et inuentae concedunt plangere matri.

(6.132–4)

Nor is Hypsipyle present without accompaniment: the mindful sons of Inachus surround her, while her sons hold up her bruised arms and allow their newly found mother to lament.

Statius emphasises the role of the sons as supporters of their mother’s grief and lament, while the Argive men form a protective wall, manifesting their presence as a reminder of the events in the previous book but also as a group that has not forgotten (memores) their female saviour’s story. In what follows in the remainder of the sixth book, we rarely see the two sons of Hypsipyle again, but just a glimpse of their participation in the games honouring Archemorus

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(6.342–3, 464, 466, 476). Their momentary appearance, therefore, as supporters of their mother’s lamentation underscores the inconclusive nature of this reunion: Hypsipyle’s motherhood cannot be fully restored to its former, Lemnian status. By recalling the Lemnian story, Statius through Hypsipyle reviews the future tragedy and female lament in Thebes. The sixth book of the poem starts with the lamentation for Opheltes’ death that occurs within the imperial house of Nemea, where Eurydice is unable to fathom the disaster that has struck her house (orba parens, lacerasque super procumbere nati / reliquias ardet totiensque auulsa refertur, ‘the bereaved mother burns with desire to lie upon the mangled remains of her son and though they remove her away so many times, she returns’, 6.35–6). In addition, Adrastus now unavailingly assumes the role of the consolator : ipse, datum quotiens intercisoque tumultu conticuit stupefacta domus, solatur Adrastus adloquiis genitorem ultro, nunc fata recensens resque hominum duras et inexorabile pensum, nunc aliam prolem mansuraque numine dextro pignora. nondum orsis modus, et lamenta redibant.

(6.45–50)

Adrastus himself, whenever he has the chance, and the noise is suspended, and the stunned house falls silent, unprompted consoles the father with words of comfort. Now he rehearses destinies and the cruelty of man’s condition and the inexorable thread of Fate, now speaks of other progeny, pledges, with heaven’s blessing, long to last. But before he ended, back the wailing came.

Consolation proves impossible, despite Adrastus’ efforts to comfort Lycurgus.60 Like Hypsipyle, Adrastus prepares for the ﬁnal battle, the fratricide, and its aftermath, when, however, there will be no poetic power adequate to express lamentation. Indeed, in book 11, Adrastus and Polynices weep together (ibant in lacrimas, ‘they fell to weeping’, 11.193), but Tisiphone has other plans.

60

Statius’ Adrastus replays the Euripidean Amphiaraus’ consolation to Eurydice (Hyps. fr.60.90–96 Bond); the Flavian poet, however, transfers the pair lamentation– consolation to men.

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59

Added to the male wailing, Eurydice produces a lamentation, matching Hypsipyle’s in book 5, an endless lament similar to the one that will seal the end of the epic.61 Eurydice stresses how Hypsipyle has saved her father but in her effort to avoid nefas has now committed one. Eurydice expresses her wish to unleash violence against Hypsipyle, an act that will come to fruition at the end of the poem, when Argia and Antigone ﬁght in their efforts to bury Polynices: ‘illam (nil poscunt amplius umbrae), illam, oro, cineri simul excisaeque parenti reddite, quaeso, duces, per ego haec primordia belli cui peperi; sic aequa gemant mihi funera matres Ogygiae.’ . . . ‘reddite, nec uero crudelem auidamque uocate sanguinis: occumbam pariter, dum uulnere iusto exaturata oculos unum impellamur in ignem.’ talia uociferans alia de parte gementem Hypsipylen (neque enim illa comas nec pectora seruat) agnouit longe et socium indignata dolorem: ‘hoc saltem, o proceres, tuque o, cui pignora nostri proturbata tori: prohibete, auferte supremis inuisam exequiis. quid se funesta parenti miscet et in nostris spectatur et ipsa ruinis?’ (6.169–73, 174–83) ‘Her (the shades demand no more), her I beg, give back, captains, to the ashes and the parent she has destroyed. I ask you by these beginnings of war, the war for which I gave birth; so may Theban mothers mourn deaths matching mine . . . Give her back, nor call me cruel and bloodthirsty. I shall die with her, as long as having satisﬁed my eyes with the just stroke we may be thrown on the same pyre.’ Thus crying, she recognised Hypsipyle from afar lamenting in another place (for she was not sparing hair or breast) and she was indignant that her grief should be shared: ‘At last, you nobles and you, for whose sake the pledge of our marriage bed has been thrust forth, this alone I ask: take that hateful woman away from the funeral rites.

61 Dominik (1994b), 129: ‘her overwhelming grief and resentment of Hypsipyle transmute into anger and jealousy . . . in much the same way that Creon is consumed by indignation and bitterness in response to the death of Menoeceus.’ The Menoeceus episode poses the same problematisation as the death of Opheltes; see Heinrich’s (1999) perceptive analysis of Menoeceus’ deuotio as self-destruction, and contra Vessey (1971b) and Ripoll (1998), 361–6, for a positive evaluation of the sacriﬁce.

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Why does she mingle her accursed self with his mother? Why is she too on view in our tragedy?’

Eurydice hints at the lament of the Ogygian mothers, who will lose their kin in the war. At the same time, however, she would like to see Hypsipyle die by diving into the ﬂames of Opheltes’ pyre, an act reserved for Evadne alone at the end of the poem.62 In Nemea, as in Thebes, there is no place for socium . . . dolorem (179): this moment is claimed by Eurydice alone.63 As we shall see in book 12, Antigone likewise claims for herself alone the task of burying Polynices, calling the night her own night exclusively (nocte mea, 12.367). In this scene in book 6, the endless and physically exhausting lament, begun by Hypsipyle in book 5, is placed now in the margin of the narrative, since the nurse falls silent, weeping in the background. The poet has reclaimed his own narrative from Hypsipyle’s hands and will not allow for two lamentations, side by side. Hypsipyle remains the other, the foreign, unsuccessful nurse. Neither will there be space for shared grief in Thebes, because the two groups of women, Theban and Argive, will be distinctly separated by the poet. The persistence of lamentation comes full circle at the end of the Thebaid, where the poet decides that it is time to berth his opus in a safe haven at the very moment when his poetic ability falls short of expressing the grief of the Argive women.64 The lamentation of book

62

Fantham (1999), 228, calls Eurydice’s demand ‘unwomanly’. Hypsipyle’s silence in book 6 plays off against her dialogue with Eurydice in Euripides’ play (Arico` [1961] does not point out the divergence; see Vessey’s caution [1970a], 51), where she calls upon her love for Opheltes while begging for her life: 63

P e ØŁ Å n K K ÆEØ IªŒºÆØ ºc P ŒFÆ ¼ººÆ ª ‰ K e Œ æªı çæ , Tç ºÅ K d ªÆ. (Hyps. fr. 60.10–12 Bond)

My nursling, whom in my embrace I nourished and fed in every way except that I did not give birth to him, a great benefit for me. 64 Pace Holland (1976), 212, who sees positive result from the immense grief, such as the new notion of uirtus, supplemented by pietas and clementia.

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6 and the funeral of Opheltes provide only a rehearsal, a preparation for what follows. The long digression serves as a post in the narrative, as the meta preparing the rider for the ﬁnal course. After all, Hypsipyle is memorialised not only in the dactylic hexameters of her narrative but also in the ekphrasis on Opheltes’ tomb:65 stat saxea moles, templum ingens cineri, rerumque efﬁctus in illa ordo docet casus: fessis hic ﬂumina monstrat Hypsipyle Danais, hic reptat ﬂebilis infans, hic iacet . . . (6.242–6) There stands a mass of stone, a great temple for the ashes, and therein a sculptured series tells the story: here is Hypsipyle showing the stream to the weary Danai, here crawls the poor babe, here he lies dead . . .

At the end, Hypsipyle is transformed from mobile to static, from narrator to the object of the narrative, from woman to marble, from animate to inanimate. In the end of book 5, as we saw above, only momentarily, she was assimilated to a rock, as she becomes petriﬁed in front of her newly found sons, Thoas and Euneos. Now Statius completes her portrait as part of a stone: the poet transfers the heroine’s former mobility to the eternal ﬂowing of the ﬂumina, as if Hypsipyle had merged into the landscape of Nemea forever. In a word, Hypsipyle is now inscribed into the symbolic world in terms of ekphrasis by means of semiotic terms that exclude language: through the anaphora of hic, we are left only with some pointers of Hypsipyle’s former presence in the poem, as the phenotext is retreating into a genotext that generates meaning through silence, a mute stillness that nevertheless speaks volumes.66

65

See Gibson (2004), 171: Whereas Valerius reported that the cloak made by Hypsipyle for Jason (V.Fl. 2.408–17) contained her account of her rescue of Thoas . . . in Statius, Hypsipyle’s account of events on Lemnos is contained in her epic narrative . . . [T]he poet also monumentalises her . . . as she appeared in his own composition, the story of Archemorus. 66 On the silence of women in Statius, see Anzinger (2007), 287–306.

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Motherhood and the Other EUMENIDUM ANTIQUISSIMA : JOCASTA THE WARMONGER OR HELPLESS BYSTANDER? 67

As expected in a poem associated with the city of Thebes, imagery of female ﬁgures assimilated to Bacchants is exploited as a salient and recurrent theme in the Thebaid. Jocasta makes her entrance in book 7 as an arbitrator between her two sons.68 Though in book 11 Jocasta is portrayed as Agave (318–20),69 a vivid reminder of the Lemnian women in book 5, in book 7, Jocasta is cast as a Fury (Eumenidum uelut antiquissima, ‘as if the most ancient of the Eumenides’, 477), and more speciﬁcally Allecto70—an ironic assimilation since Furies can bear no children, and furthermore, it is the Fury herself, Tisi-

67 I borrow the term ‘helpless bystander’ from Dewar (1991), 126, who applies it to Ismenis in book 9 (351–403) and by extension to Ide (3.133–68), Atalanta (9.570–636), the anonymous mother of Menoeceus (10.792–826), and Eurydice—all the bereaved mothers who as helpless viewers can do nothing to stop this pitiless war but just lament for their lost offspring. See Dominik (1994a), 124–5, and Micozzi (1998) for lament as an expression of the general sense of loss and sorrow. 68 Cf. the Stesichorus Lille Papyrus (P. Lille 76, PMGF fr.222(b)), Euripides’ Phoen. 452–585 (with Mastronarde’s [1994] commentary on the scene), and Seneca’s homonymous play 443–664 (with Frank’s [1995] commentary on the scene, that abruptly ends the tragedy). On Jocasta’s portrayal in Statius, see Vessey (1973), 270–82; Frings (1991), 106–35; Taisne (1994a), 320–21; Smolenaars (1994), 213–18 and appendix VIb; and Bernstein (2008), 85–94. For the inﬂuence of Euripides, see Reussner (1921), 16–18, and Venini (1961); of Seneca’s Theban tragedies, see Helm (1892), 35–58, Legras (1905), 96–8, Venini (1965a and b) and (1967), and most eloquently, Fantham (1997), Bessone (2006), and Ganiban (2007), 159–65; of Livy’s portrait in book 2 of Veturia and Volumnia, see Soubiran (1969). Hershkowitz (1998a), 280–82, explores the sexual innuendo in Jocasta’s embassies to her sons, by examining the pervasive sexual drive that forces Polynices to return to Thebes for a reunion with his mother’s womb (especially 271–82). 69 For the simile in book 11, see Venini (1970), 91; Vessey (1971a); Frings (1991), 124–5; Jamset (2005) 113; Ganiban (2007) 163–5. 70 See Smolenaars (1994), 223, on antiquus as grauis; as Smolenaars shows (220–21), the description of Jocasta

ecce truces oculos sordentibus obsita canis exangues Iocasta genas et bracchia planctu nigra ferens ramumque oleae cum uelleris atri nexibus . . . (7.474–7)

behold, Jocasta, wild-eyed, with her hoary unkempt hair falling about her worn-out face, comes bearing her arms bruised by beating and a branch of olive entwined with dark coloured wool . . .

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phone, who thwarts Jocasta’s efforts for reconciliation.71 Jocasta’s presence as Allecto, however, also plays off against the provocation to war by Tisiphone, who has just stirred up hostilities between the Thebans and the Argives (7.452–69): . . . portis egreditur magna cum maiestate malorum. hinc atque hinc natae, melior iam sexus, aniles praecipitantem artus et plus quam possit euntem sustentant. (7.477–81) . . . she goes out of the gates in all the majesty of her sorrows. On either side her daughters, now the better sex, support her as she hastens her aged limbs and moves faster than she can.

Jocasta is on the one hand a Fury-like ﬁgure, incapable of maternity, and on the other hand accompanied by her daughters, who paradoxically are also her grandchildren. As the accursed mother strives for a peaceful resolution to the conﬂict, accompanied by Antigone and Ismene, in book 7 she lapses from the ostensibly safe boundaries of the Theban house (portis / egreditur, 477–8). Jocasta is able to prevail in Polynices’ heart for a moment, although the mother’s plea ultimately has to fail:72 . . . et raptam lacrimis gaudentibus implet solaturque tenens, atque inter singula, ‘matrem, matrem’ iterat, nunc ipsam urguens, nunc cara sororum pectora, cum mixta ﬂetus anus asperat ira: ‘quid molles lacrimas uenerandaque nomina ﬁngis, rex Argiue, mihi? . . . a miserae matres! hunc te noctesque diesque

closely matches Allecto’s disguise as Calybe in Aen. 7.415–18 (a scene already imitated in Lucan’s portrait of the witch Erichtho in Luc. 6.654–6; Statius appropriates the intertextual reference to represent Jocasta as both a Fury and a witch). Cf. Laius’ similarly ominous disguise as Teiresias in 2.95–100; see Mulder (1954), 89–93. 71 Cf. Hershkowitz (1998a), 58: ‘Jocasta functions as an ever-present Fury in the Theban house’; and Ganiban (2007), 165: ‘She may also seem more Fury-like than maternal.’ 72 Cf. Vessey (1973), 274: ‘Jocasta attains to a greater moral stature than in the tragedians—she is the helpless victim of fate; her love, her grief, her dignity are all of no effect.’

64

Motherhood and the Other deﬂebam? . . . . . . ad uestrum gemitus nunc uerto pudorem, Inachidae, liquistis enim paruosque senesque et lacrimas has quisque domi . . . ’ . . . tumidas frangebant dicta cohortes, nutantesque uirum galeas et sparsa uideres ﬂetibus arma piis . . . ipse etiam ante oculos nunc matris ad oscula uersus, nunc rudis Ismenes, nunc ﬂebiliora precantis Antigones . . . (7.493–8, 503–4, 519–21, 527–9, 534–6)

. . . and seizing her, he ﬁlls her with tears of joy, comforting her as he holds her and repeating between this and that ‘mother, mother’, now pressing her to his breast, now his dear sisters, when the aged mother embitters the grief with anger: ‘Argive king, why do you feign tender tears and reverend names for me? . . . Ah, unhappy mothers! Is this you that I wept for day and night? . . . Now sons of Inachus, I turn my sorrows to your sense of shame; for each one of you has left little ones and elders and tears like mine at home . . . ’ Her words soften the proud troops. You might see warrior’s helmets nodding and arms scattered with pious tears . . . He himself before their eyes turns to kiss his mother, now young Ismene,73 now Antigone as she entreats with more copious tears . . .

Jocasta’s strategy of reaching the desired reconciliation of the two brothers centres on her role as mother (she calls herself impia belli / mater, 7.483–4).74 By exploiting the potential afforded by her status, Jocasta makes a bold innovation: she rejects lamentation, as an effective means of winning Polynices over. The son extends his embrace to his mother and sisters (an inversion of the usual epic scene of a son in vain aiming to embrace his dead parents, as do, for instance, Odysseus or Aeneas), to be immediately reprimanded by an irate Jocasta and to be addressed as a foreign king (rex Argive). Polynices weeps and invokes his mother’s name twice (matrem,

73

Shackleton Bailey (2003) translates rudis as ‘innocent’ (after Lesueur’s pure). Keith (2000), 96: ‘a formulation that hardly inspires conﬁdence in her ability to promote a peaceful settlement at this juncture . . . as she recognises . . . her marriage and motherhood align her with the Furies in promoting the conﬂict (nupsi equidem peperique nefas, 7.514).’ 74

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matrem);75 Jocasta utilises male lamentation as an inventive method to realise her ultimate plan. As she appeals to the Argives’ longing for their families, Jocasta directly addresses female lament, the one performed by Argive women in Argos: liquistis enim paruosque senesque / et lacrimas has quisque domi. The anti-epic image of sparsa ﬂetibus arma ensues, while the poet ekphrastically apostrophises his reader (uideres),76 alerting us that this unheroic moment requires an intervention for the restoration of the proper order in the Thebaid, that is to say, the (re)sumption of hostilities. The illusion that this war can be prevented on account of motherhood gains ground, until Tydeus opposes the mother’s proposal. Success does not crown Jocasta’s effort to cross the boundary set by the walls into the hostile, male Argive camp.77 Both her daughters, as we shall see, retreat within the safety of their private bedrooms. In book 11, Jocasta transgresses once again (non sexus decorisue memor, ‘unmindful of her femininity and dignity’, 318),78 this time within the limits of the walls, trying, to no avail, to stop Eteocles from leaving the gates for the murderous, ﬁnal duel with his brother: non comites, non ferre piae uestigia natae aequa ualent: tantum miserae dolor ultimus addit robur, et exangues crudescunt luctibus anni. (11.321–3) Her companions cannot keep pace with her, nor can her pious daughters. Such strength does ultimate grief give the unhappy woman; her exhausted years grow young with her sorrows.

The two daughters are unable to compete with the maddened woman’s speed. In her ﬁnal public appearance, the mother of the two brothers 75 Polynices is transformed by Statius into a ﬁgure close to many females in the poem; cf. his lament for Tydeus in 9.49–85 (see Dominik [1994b], 133–4). For his positive characterisation here, see Frings (1992), 41. 76 Georgacopoulou (2005) offers an exhaustive study of poetic apostrophes in the poem (on this one in particular, see 109). 77 Bernstein (2008), 85, rightly observes: ‘As Jocasta and Oedipus dramatise the conﬂict between maternal and paternal imperatives, they invert epic’s typical praise of virtuous paternal emulation and marginalisation of women who attempt to prevent their sons from ﬁghting.’ 78 Cf. the Lemnian women: pellite sexum (‘drive away your femininity’, 5.105), rediit in pectora sexus (‘our sex returned to our hearts’, 5.397); and Argia: sexu relicto (‘with her femininity forsaken’, 12.178).

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does not emphasise lament: she stresses her physical opposition between Eteocles and Polynices79—she has become the boundary itself: prius haec tamen arma necesse est experiare domi: stabo ipso in limine portae auspicium infelix scelerumque inmanis imago. haec tibi canities, haec sunt calcanda, nefande, ubera, perque uterum sonipes hic matris agendus. . . . tu limina auita deosque linquis et a nostris in fratrem amplexibus exis? (11.338–42, 352–3) But ﬁrst you must try out your weapons at home. I shall stand in the very threshold of the gate, a grim omen and a frightful image of crimes. This my white hair, these breasts, wicked one, must be trampled by you, and this horse must be driven through your mother’s womb . . . You leave your ancestral threshold and gods and you go forth from our embrace against your brother?

Motherhood is now cast as the ﬁnal stumbling block, the ﬁnal barricade that could prevent the fratricide.80 And yet Jocasta’s assimilation to ﬁgures like Tisiphone emphasises the other side in this unfortunate mother, the side of an alienated, asymbolic self. As Jocasta exits the tragic stage of her previous literary appearances and enters the male ground of warlike operations, the landscape of epic that is, she becomes the other, the Amazon-like persona, traditionally condemned to be marginal and ineffective, therefore silenced and eventually even dead. In book 11, Jocasta regresses into a defensive approach, different from her ﬁrst attempt to change Polynices’ mind. She sacriﬁces the mother’s vital organs, ubera and uterum, to save her children.81 Thus Jocasta sacriﬁces motherhood, in this ﬁnal attempt at reconciliation. By contrast, in her plea to Polynices, immediately following this scene, Antigone highlights lament as a likely powerful tool to attract her brother’s attention, again in vain, at the eleventh hour: 79 See Coffee (2006) for an interpretation of the two brothers’ motivations in terms of economic language, Eteocles as a merchant and Polynices as a young prodigal. 80 Pace Bernstein (2008), 91, who sees the failure of the mother as a step towards the completion of the epic’s telos. 81 This imagery of motherhood is in line with the idea of the earth being a mother to all human beings, therefore underscoring the impiety of attacking one’s ‘motherland’; cf. Ogilvie (1965), 334, on Liv. 2.40.3–5 (Veturia’s speech): ‘The impiety of ravaging one’s motherland is denounced by Amphiaraus in Aeschylus’ Septem 580–3, Euripides’ Hecuba 550–3 and 342–78, and Seneca’s Phoenissae 446–58.’

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at parte ex alia tacitos obstante tumultu Antigone furata gradus (nec casta retardat uirginitas) uolat Ogygii fastigia muri exuperare furens; . . . . . . magno prius omnia planctu implet et ex muris ceu descensura profatur: ‘comprime tela manu paulumque hanc respice turrem, frater . . . . . . saltem ora trucesque solue genas; liceat uultus fortasse supremum noscere dilectos et ad haec lamenta uidere anne ﬂeas. illum gemitu iam supplice mater frangit et exertum dimittere dicitur ensem: tu mihi fortis adhuc, mihi, quae tua nocte dieque exilia erroresque ﬂeo . . . ’ (11.354–7, 361–4, 372–8) From another quarter Antigone steals rapidly her silent steps through the opposing tumult (nor does her chaste virginity retard her), mad to surmount the summit of the Theban wall; . . . First she ﬁlls all around with loud lament and speaks as though about to throw herself from the walls: ‘Brother, hold your weapons and look for a moment back towards this tower . . . At least relax your frowning look. Let me recognise, it may be for the last time, the face I love and see whether you weep at my lament. Him our mother already softens with her suppliant tears and he is said to be letting go his drawn sword. Are you still strong of purpose to me, to me, who bewail your exile and wanderings night and day . . . ’

With its emphasis on tears and the power of a lamenting female voice, Antigone’s suasoria fails but only temporarily. Like her mother’s, Antigone’s speedy transgression (nec casta retardat uirginitas)82 is again limited by the walls (ex muris ceu descensura)83 and the potentiality of the 82 As Venini (1970), 100, correctly points out, this comes as a contrast to Antigone’s conversation with Jocasta in Euripides’ Phoen. 1274–6:

. . . Iºº ı. `. E, ÆæŁHÆ KŒºØF ; . Ia æÆ. `. ÆN Ł Zåº. . PŒ K ÆNåﬁÅ a .

JO. . . . but follow me. AN. Where, having left my maiden chamber? JO. To the army. AN. We feel shame before the crowd. JO. Your own are not for shame. 83 See Franchet d’ Espe`rey (1999), 255–9, for Antigone and Jocasta in book 11: ‘le furor les a de´nature´s.’

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particle ceu that indicates a comparative conditional rather than actuality. As Ganiban says, ‘we cannot tell whether she is pia or whether she has always been infected by the nefas of her family’.84 While her public performance fails, it prepares us for the events in book 12 and her encounter with Argia.

ˆ RA OF SISTERHOOD: ANTIGONE IN THE CHO AND ISMENE—PUBLIC GAZE AND PRIVATE LAMENT What we see in the above passage is not Antigone’s ﬁrst encounter with the public, male gaze. Whereas Hypsipyle becomes directly acquainted with the Argive army, Antigone acquires indirect knowledge of the Theban allies who will ﬁght defending her city. In the teichoscopia of book 7, Antigone keeps all the traits of her uirginitas, when the aged Phorbas introduces to the maiden each of the Theban warriors.85 Viewed on the map of the epic’s geography, Antigone’s own gaze is enabled towards the ﬁghters, at the same time as she gains direct knowledge of the male other who will inhabit the Theban plain for the following four books of the poem. Antigone’s innocence becomes exposed to the dangers of the otherness that threatens to ruin the royal palace, a foreignness that is deﬁned by ‘the prickly passions aroused by the intrusion of the other in the homogeneity of . . . a group’,86 as we have seen in Lemnos’ various encounters with the other. The failure and death of many of the Theban allies will cause the fall of the already tottering Theban oikos, as it lays bare the lack of homogeneity, especially between the two brothers, as well as 84

Ganiban (2007), 167. On the Homeric inﬂuence on the scene, see Kytzler (1969); Juhnke (1972), 116–18; Vessey (1973), 205–9; Smolenaars (1994), 119–23; Georgacopoulou (1996a), 112–17. For the relationship between this scene and Medea’s teichoscopia in Valerius Flaccus’ Arg. 6, see Frings (1991), 74–84; and Lovatt (2006), as well as the relevant commentary in Fucecchi (1997), Wijsman (2000), and Baier (2001). Lovatt (2006), 64–5, correctly points out Phorbas’ role as the poet in his narrative—a fallible poet, however, who professes poetic inability to continue, as Eteocles takes over the battle and the narrative. 86 Kristeva (1991), 41. 85

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among the members of the incestuous house of Oedipus. This teichoscopia prepares Antigone for the mission to which Jocasta puts both girls, in book 7, as we have just examined: turre procul sola nondum concessa uideri Antigone populis teneras defenditur atra ueste genas . . . ‘spesne obstatura Pelasgis haec uexilla, pater? Pelopis descendere totas audimus gentes: dic, o precor, extera regum agmina . . . ’ (7.243–5, 247–50) Distant on a lonely tower Antigone, whom the people are not yet allowed to see, covers her tender cheeks with a black cloth . . . ‘Father, is there hope that these banners will withstand the Pelasgians? We hear that all the races of Pelops are coming against us: tell me, I pray, of the foreign kings and their troops . . . ’

Antigone longs to become familiar with the extera regum / agmina, because she is already aware of the resources that the Theban city herself has to offer. Beyond its ﬁrst and foremost aim, namely to afford the poet the opportunity for another catalogue,87 thus drawing extensively from the Euripidean tragedy,88 the teichoscopia puts en relief Antigone’s curiosity, a curiosity similar to Hypsipyle’s, to acquaint herself with the other, to enter the manly world of epic uirtus, from the androcentric perspective of Phorbas. As Antigone takes a ﬁrst step beyond the boundaries of the girl’s inner chamber, we can gaze at her black veil of mourning. While hiding under her cover,89 within the appropriate conﬁnes set by her gender and age (nondum concessa uideri), Antigone is nevertheless gazing directly at the male outsiders, the soldiers who have come to ﬁght against Polynices, her beloved brother. This is the tower from which we have already seen Antigone in book 11 trying to persuade her brother to change his mind. In book 11, Antigone has crossed the boundaries set for her in book 7, in an effort to take the plot into her own hands, as Hypsipyle does at the helm of the narrative in the digression of 87 See McNelis (2004) and (2007), 97–123, on Statius’ delaying technique in this catalogue. 88 Cf. Euripides’ Phoen. 88–201. 89 See Lovatt (2006), 62–3.

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books 4 and 5. Despite her portrayal in books 7 and 11, as a sister who just like her mother strives for the restoration of order in the Theban house, we have the opportunity in book 8 to catch a glimpse of both sisters, in their personal space, as well. Towards the conclusion of the eighth book, Menoeceus reproaches the Thebans for ﬂeeing from the rage of Tydeus who has just killed Atys,90 a foreign ﬁghter, a hospes (notice the anaphora in 603). Atys dies defending Thebes, his future wife’s patria: ‘pudeat, Cadmea iuuentus, terrigenas mentita patres! quo tenditis,’ inquit, ‘degeneres? meliusne iacet pro sanguine nostro hospes Atys? tantum hospes adhuc et coniugis ultor infelix nondum iste suae; nos pignora tanta prodimus?’ (8.600–5) ‘For shame’, he says, ‘youth of Cadmus, belying your earthborn fathers! Where are you making for, degenerates? Should Atys, a stranger, rather lie dead defending our blood, still but a stranger, poor youth, avenging a wife not yet his? Do we betray such pledges?’

The paradox in Atys’ behaviour is emphasised by his foreignness and consequently his unsuitability to defend an urbs aliena, as well as the fact that Ismene is not yet his (emphasised by the delay of this piece of information until the beginning of the second line; after the forceful coniugis ultor, follows the paradoxical, if not surprising, phrase nondum iste suae). This is the perfect moment for Statius to showcase the sharp contrast between the outside world of arma uirique and the inside of the Theban oikos. Antigone and Ismene, an ‘unusually paciﬁc pair’,91 spend their time secluded from the war action that rages around the walls of Thebes. They are wavering between the two sides of the war. Frustrated by the failed efforts of Jocasta to stop hostilities in book 7 and therefore unwilling and reluctant to admit the harsh reality of the external world, the two sisters now conﬁne themselves in their private 90 On Atys, an episode greatly elaborated in the Romain de The`bes, 6173–508, see Legras (1905), 102–4; Schetter (1960), 50–51; Juhnke (1972), 130; Vessey (1973), 288–92; La Penna (2000), 155–6. On the similarity between Parthenopaeus and Atys, see Jamset (2005) brieﬂy at 135. 91 Keith (2000), 98; cf. also Franchet d’Espe`rey (1999), 315–16.

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rooms.92 The isolation of their chamber proves safe for the two young women, while at the same time it conﬁrms their seclusion and detachment from the reality of the impeding fratricide: interea thalami secreta in parte sorores, par aliud morum miserique innoxia proles Oedipodae, uarias miscent sermone querelas. nec mala quae iuxta, sed longa ab origine fati, haec matris taedas, oculos ast illa paternos, altera regnantem, profugum gemit altera fratrem, bella ambae. (8.607–13) Meanwhile in a secret inner chamber, the sisters, a pair of another character, innocent offspring of unhappy Oedipus, mingle various complaints in their talk—not of present ills but from Fate’s origin far back. One laments their mother’s wedding torches, the other their father’s eyes; one the reigning brother, the other the exiled, both the wars.

The poet lays emphasis on the manner in which the two sisters mingle their conversation in complaint, by fusing the voices of the two girls into an indistinguishable exchange, just as he does in book 12 with Argia and Antigone, as we shall see. The two sisters are of another kind, par aliud morum (608), different from their furyinspired brothers.93 Their stories go far back, longa ab origine fati, as they weave their querelae, their complaints, into a lament on the many ills that torture their oikos. Antigone and Ismene enact a superﬁcial calmness of the semiotic choˆra, where they may afford the luxury to reﬂect on the evils that befall them but also draw on an unusual resourcefulness available in this feminine space, namely to consider counterfactual scenarios that can only come true in dreams.

92 The episode has received relatively little attention among Statian critics. See Vessey (1986), 2993–3000, who focuses on aspects of pathos; Taisne (1994a), 182–3; Lesueur (1996), 78, who considers Atys ‘un personnage e´pisodique’. Micozzi (2001–2) offers an excellent intertextual reading of the episode, tracing the models as far back as Mimnermus (fr. 21W), in epic poetry (Apollonius’ Medea, Virgil, Ovid), and in elegy (Propertius and Ovid). 93 Cf. melior iam sexus (‘the better sex now’, 7.479), as the two daughters support their mother. As a metapoetic comment, Statius points to Ismene’s usurping the role of the Sophoclean Antigone, betrothed to Haemon.

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The narration of Ismene’s dream further supports her otherworldliness, since she dreams of a desired union that can never take place.94 Ismene’s insistence that she is not afraid of the omen, as long as there is still a chance for reconciliation between their brothers, heralds the disaster of the unfolding events immediately after the dream narrative:95 ecce ego, quae thalamos, nec si pax alta maneret, tractarem sensu, (pudet heu!) conubia uidi nocte, soror; sponsum unde mihi sopor attulit amens uix notum uisu? semel his in sedibus illum, dum mea nescio quo spondentur foedera pacto, respexi non sponte, soror. turbata repente omnia cernebam, subitusque intercidit ignis, meque sequebatur rabido clamore reposcens mater Atyn. quaenam haec dubiae praesagia cladis? nec timeo, dum tuta domus milesque recedat Doricus et tumidos liceat componere fratres. (8.625–35) See, I, who would have nothing to do with wedding chambers knowingly, even if peace were still abiding, for shame alas, I saw nuptials, sister, in the night. Whence did mindless slumber bring me my betrothed, scarce known to me by sight? Once I looked at him in this dwelling, not of my will, sister, while in some fashion or other my pledges were contracted. Suddenly I saw everything in turmoil, a sudden ﬁre came between us, his mother was following me with frantic cries, demanding Atys back. What sign is this of doubtful calamity? Not that I am afraid, as long as our house is safe, the Dorian army stays here, and we may make peace between our angry brothers.

Ismene’s dream of coming disasters is interpreted as a fantastic hallucination of future happiness: the maid still hopes for a joyful union with her ﬁance´ Atys.96 Ismene carefully weaves a veil of secrecy around her unintentional gaze directed to her beloved one (mea . . . respexi non sponte), while she openly rejects the possibility of a 94

Cf. Ilia’s dream in Ennius’ Ann. (34–50 Skutsch). For a typological examination of such dream manifestations in Statius (Atalanta’s series of dreams in 9.570–601 and Ismene’s dream), see Bouquet (2001), 123–6; Taisne (1994a), 182–3, examines the two dreams as praesagia. 96 Vessey (1973), 292: ‘Statius usually treats his female characters with intense propriety. In them, we see models of virtue, perfect specimens of womankind on a model which the Romans traditionally cherished as their own.’ 95

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wedding to Atys at the present moment. At any rate, how could she think of marriage during the time of war? And yet, by referring to thalamos (nuptials) within her own thalami (bedroom), Ismene reveals her secret hopes: to see Atys anew, to fulﬁl her wish of marrying and therefore the possibility of becoming a mother. But the dream is clear: the other intrudes, in the form not only of Atys but also of his mother, who asks for her son back (notice the iunctura of mater Atyn), as expressed in the repetitive reposcens. Instead, Ismene feeds her hope by wishing the retreat of another foreign ‘body’ from Thebes, the Dorians/Argives (milesque recedat / Doricus), thus stressing the threatening role of the enemy in the beginning of the hexameter by enjambment, while also underscoring the ambiguous outcome of the brothers’ quarrel, in terms of pregnancy: tumidos . . . componere fratres.97 Ismene’s uirginitas circumscribes her within the area of the semiotic, the coupure of the semiotic into the symbolic through dreaming her potential, yet counterfactual future. Her wish to see Atys is fulﬁlled, since she is indeed going to look at him for the last time in the same place as the ﬁrst time (during her betrothal, his sedibus), and her gaze will be counterbalanced by her later closing of Atys’ eyes (ibi demum teste remoto / fassa pios gemitus lacrimasque in lumina fudit, ‘ﬁnally, with no one to witness it, she confessed her devoted sorrow and poured her tears upon his wounds’, 8.653–4): quater iam morte sub ipsa ad nomen uisus defectaque fortiter ora sustulit; illam unam neglecto lumine caeli aspicit et uultu non exatiatur amato. (8.647–50) Four times at the very point of death he bravely raises his eyes and failing head at her name. Only at her does he gaze, neglecting the light of heaven, and cannot get enough of her beloved face.

As Vessey rightly observes, ‘the peace of the palace is disturbed as Atys, moribund but still conscious, is borne within’.98 I submit that Atys’ otherness, male and foreign, upsets the seeming peace of 97

For tumidus denoting pregnancy elsewhere in the poem (cf. 2.204) see Mulder (1954), 156–7. 98 Vessey (1973), 291.

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the inner palace, a place still immune to the wild war raging outside the walls of Thebes. The inner chamber of innocent Ismene (whose saeuus pudor is underscored by the poet as the paradoxical aspect of her character)99 serves as the place where her union with Atys will take place. Ismene is conﬁned in her bedroom to lament the death of her foreign ﬁance´, Atys, to suffer the bereavement of a private loss as a result of a public, nonsensical disaster, the quarrel between the two brothers.100 Ismene is deﬂowered by Atys’ gaze,101 an act reciprocated by Atys in Ismene’s dream. The foreigner has intruded in the chamber; the virginity of the house is lost, the girls are no longer protected. The two sisters are exposed to a question that is never directly addressed in the narrative but essentially underlies the irrationality of the Theban war: do female ﬁgures take sides, and if so whose? Although Atys ﬁghts for the Thebans, and Antigone’s allegiance rather lies with Polynices, nevertheless the two sisters remain united. This rehearsal of a lament, as in the case of Hypsipyle and Eurydice in book 6, now in book 8, puts in relief the impossibilities of lament in book 12, when the two peoples, the Thebans and the Argives, are clearly distinguished into winners and losers, despite the apparent union concealed under lament. Furthermore, it is not coincidental that the poet alters the Euripidean scene of Jocasta’s suicide.102 Jocasta dies within the boundaries of the palace, only in the presence of Ismene (et prono uix pectore ferrum / intrauit tandem, ‘and with her breast scarcely leaning forward, she ﬁnally “entered” the sword’, 11.639–40).103 As Hershkowitz has aptly observed in the Thebaid, virginity ‘does not prove an adequate defense against the sexually charged force of madness’.104 Once again, we see Ismene 99 Vessey (1986), 2996: ‘Ismene is not merely chaste; she is an in(de)scription of castitas and pudor (within the lexicon of the Thebaid).’ 100 Dominik (1994b), 126–7, points out the weakness and helplessness of women in war, and especially of Antigone and Ismene in this case. 101 Vessey (1986), 2998–9, and Hershkowitz (1998a), 290. 102 In Euripides’ Phoen. 1427–59, Jocasta commits suicide on the spot of the fratricide and is then carried inside by Antigone, not Ismene; cf. Fiehn (1917), 76–7: ‘Fortasse animi legentium defatigati essent, si regina post Oedipum, qui ad corpora ﬁliorum querebatur, prodisset, ut dolorem suum aperiret.’ 103 Jamset (2005), 113, correctly notices the implicit contrast between Jocasta’s pronum pectus here and her nudum pectus in 7.281. On the different versions of Jocasta’s suicide in the Graeco-Roman tradition, see now Smolenaars (2008). 104 Hershkowitz (1998a), 282.

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experiencing the disastrous effects of the outside world that intrudes to wreak permanent havoc on her, now orphaned of family: illius exili stridentem in pectore plagam Ismene conlapsa super lacrimisque comisque siccabat plangens: qualis Marathonide silua ﬂebilis Erigone caesi prope funera patris questibus absumptis tristem iam soluere nodum coeperat et fortes ramos moritura legebat. (11.642–7) Ismene collapsed upon the blow that shrieked in the meagre bosom and dried it with tears and hair as she lamented: just so sorrowful Erigone weeping in the Marathonian wood beside the body of her slain father, her plaints exhausted, began to untie the sad knot and choose sturdy branches, intent on death.

The Erigone–Icarius simile proves ominous. Ismene’s departure from the narrative is accompanied by the allusion to possible suicide: are we to think that as she repeats the scene of Atys’ death, she is going to repeat her mother’s ﬁnal act? As Erigone unties the knot that led her father to death, she loosens it to ﬁt her own head in it and commit suicide on the spot.105 There is no safe place for Ismene, inside or outside the cursed Theban house, but only death, possibly by hanging, the deﬁnitive act of silencing the other’s voice. Furthermore, the contrast between public gaze and private lament is going to play out in the last book of the poem, where the female Argives undertake a foray to voice their private, house-conﬁned ŁæB, in the public sphere and terrain of an otherwise masculine genre.

LAMENT AND THE POET: B OUNDARIES (RE)TRANSGRESSED Her ioyous presence and sweet company In full content he there did long enioy, Ne wicked enuie, ne vile gealosy His deare delights were able to annoy: Yet swimming in that sea of blisfull ioy, 105

See Venini (1970), 162, on soluere as laxare and Lesueur (2003a), 3.175 n.49.

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Motherhood and the Other He nought forgot, how he whilome had sworne, In case he could that monstrous beast destroy, Vnto his Farie Queene backe to returne: The which he shortly did, and Vna left to mourne. Now strike your sailes ye iolly Mariners, For we be come vnto a quiet rode, Where we must land some of our passengers, And light this wearie vessell of her lode. Here she a while may make her safe abode, Till she repaired haue her tackles spent, And wants supplide. And then againe abroad On the long voyage whereto she is bent: Well may she speede and fairely ﬁnish her intent. (E. Spenser, The Faerie Queen, 1, Canto 12, 41–2) The Thebaid ends with lamentation for the dead, not with paeans of Theseus’ victory. (F. Ahl, ‘Statius’ Thebaid: A Reconsideration’, 2897)

The opening of the last book recalls the beginning of the sixth: before the reader’s eyes immense loss and destruction are laid (aegra . . . pax, ‘uneasy peace’, 12.7–8), only now on Theban territory: amant miseri lamenta malisque fruuntur. nec subiere domos, sed circum funera pernox turba sedet, uicibusque datis alterna gementes igne feras planctuque fugant; . . . (12.45–8) In their misery, they love weeping and delight in sorrows. No one went home, but all night long they sit around their dead and, voicing grief in turn, by tears and wailing drive the beasts away with ﬁre and breast-beating . . .

The Thebans, afﬂicted by loss and destruction, have developed a pathological connection with lament and grief (ruunt planctu pendente et ubique parato, ‘they rush with hands everywhere ready for lament’, 33).106 This joining serves as a counterpart to the ending of 106 Just as Antigone prevents Oedipus’ suicide attempt in book 11 and lets him mourn for his sons’ fratricide (saeuum gaudens planxisse parentem, ‘rejoicing in her harsh father’s lament’, 11.633). Helzle (1996), 146–59, observes that the twelfth book can be read independently from the rest of the poem as a Greek tragedy.

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the poem itself, which will close with the lament of the Argive women, a lament ethnically distinct from that of any Theban mothers. Even after the death of the brothers, the cursed city of Thebes can ﬁnd no peace. Creon, Oedipus’ brother-in-law and self-proclaimed monarch of the city, forbids burial of the Argive dead,107 especially of Polynices, denounced as an outsider: . . . Argiuus haberi / frater iussus adhuc atque exule pellitur umbra (‘ . . . his brother by command is still held an Argive and is driven away, his shade banished into exile’, 12.58–9).108 By mobilising the group of Argive women travelling to Athens (12.105–72) to seek aid from Theseus, at the Altar of Mercy (481–518),109 for the burial of their husbands, Statius directs the poem to its (destined?) end.110 Simultaneously, however, the emphasis lies in the women’s status not only as suppliants but also, above all, as desolate mourners: ﬂebilis . . . comitatus (‘sorrowful band’, 105), orbae uiduaeque (‘bereaved and widowed’, 106), planctu (‘by wailing’, 110), deﬂenda (‘rousing tears’, 122), digno plangore (‘with due grief ’, 122), gementum / agmina (‘groups of mourners’, 124–5), lacrimans (‘weeping’, 128). This is a group of female foreigners who venture a penetration into the centre of the action. As the Argive women travel to Athens to complete their mission, and as Argia strays off to Thebes to bury Polynices against Creon’s edict, another group of women is forced to 107 Creon’s dictatorial character extends into the territory of lament, when he hubristically claims the prerogative to mourn for his son Menoeceus: mihi ﬂebile semper numen eris; ponant aras excelsaque Thebae

templa dicent: uni fas sit lugere parenti. (12.77–9) I will always mourn you as a deity; let Thebes place an altar and dedicate a lofty temple: to the parent alone let it be allowed to mourn.

Cf. Fantham (1999), 231: ‘Such is the king’s angry fury of grief that servants have to drag him away, as if he were some woman out of control.’ 108 Cf. Pollmann (2004), 104. 109 On the description and ekphrasis of Clementia, see Burgess (1972); Vessey (1973), 309–12; Ahl (1986), 2890–94; Ripoll (1998), 440–46; Ganiban (2007), 214–17; McNelis (2007), 163–5. 110 As Pollmann (2004), 115–17, correctly observes, the scene comes as a contrast to book 4, the march of the Argive army: this is a crowd of women truly concerned for their dead and the fulﬁlment of funeral rites.

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follow the world-conqueror towards Athens, the centre of civilisation. Just before Theseus’ victory over Creon, the poet presents us with a group of outsiders, barbarian women, in the heart of Athens. Theseus has just returned from his campaign against the Amazons, who now follow behind his chariot in a display of a ‘Roman’ triumph:111 ante ducem spolia et, duri Mauortis imago, uirginei currus cumulataque fercula cristis et tristes ducuntur equi truncaeque bipennes, quis nemora et solidam Maeotida caedere suetae, gorytique leues portantur et ignea gemmis cingula et informes dominarum sanguine peltae. ipsae autem nondum trepidae sexumue fatentur, nec uulgare gemunt, aspernanturque precari et tantum innuptae quaerunt delubra Mineruae. primus amor niueis uictorem cernere uectum quadriiugis; nec non populos in semet agebat Hippolyte, iam blanda genas patiensque mariti foederis. hanc patriae ritus fregisse seueros Atthides oblique secum mirantur operto murmure, quod nitidi crines, quod pectora palla tota latent, magnis quod barbara semet Athenis misceat atque hosti ueniat paritura marito. (12.523–39) Before the chief spoils are led and, image of hard Mavors, virgin chariots, wagons piled with crests, sad horses, broken axes with which the women were accustomed to cleaving forests and frozen Maeotis; light quivers are carried and belts blazing with gems and bucklers marred by the blood of their mistresses. They themselves have no fear as yet nor confess their sex; they do not lament in the common fashion and scorn to plead, they seek only the shrine of virgin Minerva. First desire is to see the victor, borne by four snowy horses. Hippolyte too draws the people to herself, now charming in look and patient of the marriage bond. Aside among themselves the women of Athens mutter, wondering that she has broken the austere usages of her country in that her hair is sleek and her bosom all covered by her mantle, that she blends herself, a barbarian, with great Athens and comes to bear children to her foeman husband. 111 See Vessey (1973), 312. On Theseus as a person who imposes civilisation on the barbarian Amazons, see Ripoll (1998), 426–51; Laird (1999), 287–91 (Theseus linked to Jupiter); Keith (2000), 99; Pollmann (2004), 212–13; contra Dominik (1994a), 92–8. As Helzle (1996), 156, correctly points out, we are also reminded of the sinister case of Aeschylean Agamemnon.

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Although the Amazons still remain ﬁerce and do not show any signs of weakness (such as lament, nec uulgare gemunt), nondum trepidae sexumue fatentur, their queen seems subdued, iam blanda genas. What a sinister description! As we have already examined, the adjective applies to Jason’s alluring methods of courting Hypsipyle in Lemnos and impregnating her, while the same adjective is attributed by Eurydice to the dead Opheltes, for his loving attachment to his treacherous nurse. But this time, the adjective acquires a more precise negative connotation, since in book 9 the exact periphrasis is used to describe Tisiphone, who disguises her true self to cheat Hippomedon of Tydeus’ body (9.155): blanda genas. Are we looking at one of Hippolyte’s own metamorphoses too? When Theseus urges her not to participate in the forthcoming war because of her pregnancy, we witness a twist in the portrayal of the Amazon, the domesticated woman-warrior:112 isset et Arctoas Cadmea ad moenia ducens Hippolyte turmas: retinet iam certa tumentis spes uteri, coniunxque rogat dimittere curas Martis et emeritas thalamo sacrare pharetras.

(12.635–8)

Hippolyte too would have gone, leading Arctic squadrons against Cadmus’ walls, but hope of her swelling womb, now assured, keeps her back and her husband asks her to dismiss thoughts of war and dedicate her quiver, its service done, in the marriage chamber.

Hippolyte will still bear offspring for the king. And yet she remains a barbara, at whom the Athenians gaze with wonder since she is subject to being acculturated,113 to becoming an Athenian. The Athenians are amazed at the transformation of the Amazons, since it is beyond expectation that they may be portrayed with their body covered (quod pectora palla / tota latent). Hippolyte is assimilated to her new environment, but not without a price paid on Theseus’ part. She will be a mother who does not lose her identity as a barbarian but who will give birth for a husband explicitly called an enemy

112

On Camilla and Hippolyte, see Fucecchi (2007). Aptly called ‘voyeuristic’ by Pollmann (2004), 213. Ahl (1986), 2894: ‘Statius highlights the irony by endowing the barbarians with civilised calm and nobility, and the Greeks with barbaric chattering.’ 113

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(hosti . . . paritura marito).114 Moreover, a salient feature in the description of the Amazons in the previous two passages is the lengthy description of their weapons, ﬁttingly exposed in detail by the poet, only to emphasise, however, their marginal role: the Amazons have been defeated and are therefore virtually disarmed, despite the extensive references to their accoutrements—these weapons are now part of the ritual, as they will be consecrated and conﬁned to the marital chamber (thalamo sacrare pharetras). Although in Athens there is a dynamic relationship between the autochthonous Athenians and the newly arrived Amazons, with a glimpse of a possible (not necessarily realised) future amalgamation between the two peoples,115 I should like to emphasise the utter failure of reconciliation between the Thebans and the Argives, memorialised in the epilogue of the poem. Just before the end of the poem, there occurs an effort for reconciliation between the Thebans and the Argives, when Argia comes to bury Polynices in Thebes, where she ﬁnds the body in the battleﬁeld and addresses her dead husband. As she separates from the group of the Argive women who head for Athens instead, Argia keeps high hopes of her ability to intrude into the hostile city, not as an outsider but as a hospes and a daughter-in-law of Oedipus: hic non femineae subitum uirtutis amorem colligit Argia, sexuque inmane relicto tractat opus: . . . contemptrix animae et magno temeraria luctu . . . hortantur pietas ignesque pudici. ipse etiam ante oculos omni manifestus in actu, nunc hospes miserae, primas nunc sponsus ad aras, nunc mitis coniunx, nunc iam sub casside torua maestus in amplexu multumque a limine summo respiciens:116 . . .

114

See Dominik (1994a), 94: ‘Theseus, like Oedipus, will adjudge he has been wronged, will curse his offspring who will endure a tragic death and will suffer banishment . . . ’ 115 See Keith (2000), 99, following DuBois (1982), 66: ‘Theseus’ victory over the Amazons restores the order of the cosmos by reinstating the “natural” hierarchy of gender.’ 116 Paga´n (2000a), 441–6, on respexit and the end of the poem in terms of Orphic gaze.

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‘ . . . me sinite Ogygias, tantae quae sola ruinae causa fui,117 penetrare domos et fulmina regni prima pati; nec surda ferae pulsabimus urbis limina: sunt illic soceri mihi suntque sorores coniugis, et Thebas haud ignoranda subibo . . . ’ ‘urbs optata prius, nunc tecta hostilia, Thebae, . . . iuxta tua limina primum Oedipodis magni uenio nurus? improba non sunt uota: rogos hospes planctumque et funera posco . . . ’ (12.177–9, 185–91, 198–202, 256, 259–61) Here Argia conceives a sudden passion for unwomanly courage and engages in monstrous work, abandoning her sex . . . despising her life, rash with mighty mourning. Piety and chaste ﬁres of love urge her on. He himself is plain before her eyes in his every act: now, alas, as guest, now her betrothed before the ﬁrst altars, now a gentle husband, now under his grim helmet sad in her embrace and often looking back from the outermost threshold . . . ‘Let me, who was sole cause of the disaster, penetrate the Ogygian halls and suffer the ﬁrst thunderbolts of the reign. And the gates of the ﬁerce city will not be deaf to my knocking. My husband’s parents are there, and his sisters and I shall not come to Thebes as a stranger . . . City of Thebes, once my desire, now enemy abode, . . . I come near your gates, I, daughter-in-law of great Oedipus? My prayer is not inordinate. A stranger, I ask a pyre, a lament, a corpse . . . ’

Virtus is juxtaposed to sexu relicto,118 the hope of transgressing gender boundaries is renewed, with the authorial caveat concerning the immense (immane) act Argia is about to undertake. In an ongoing process of looking back to the beginning of the poem but also of rehearsing its end, as we have often seen in the preceding analysis, Argia’s efforts concentrate on surpassing the limitations set by the walls of Thebes, by the familial curse, and by gender hierarchies (which are reinforced by Creon’s appropriation of lament as a male privilege). Upon the discovery of the corpse, through her lament, Argia reveals her intentions to ‘penetrate’ with her gaze the city of Thebes, clearly as an outsider: 117 For the inversion of Aen. 6.458 (funeris heu tibi causa fui, ‘alas, I was the cause of your death’, of Aeneas to Dido), see Helzle (1996), 151–3, and Pollmann (2004), 137–8. On Argia as Dido, see Dietrich (2004), 9–12. 118 Cf. Pollmann (2008), 365: ‘Successful uirtus seems only possible in the private sphere, performed by women, in the context of burial, as a manifestation of religion and humanity.’

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Lift your eyes to me, eyes that see no more. Argia has come to your Thebes. Up now, lead me into the city, show me your father’s house, return our hospitality . . .

This set of requests comes as response to Polynices’ own promise to Argia in 2.361–2: fors aderit lux illa tibi, qua moenia cernes / coniugis et geminas ibis regina per urbes (‘perhaps the day will come for you, on which you will see the city walls of your husband and you will go as a queen through two cities’).119 Argia’s futile request to the corpse of Polynices, as she urges him on to raise and direct her gaze into the city of Thebes, is sharply contrasted to the last look of Polynices at his wife in book 4:120 iam regnum matrisque sinus ﬁdasque sorores spe uotisque tenet, tamen et de turre suprema attonitam totoque extantem corpore longe respicit Argian; haec mentem oculosque reducit coniugis et dulces auertit pectore Thebas. (4.88–92) Already in hope and prayer he possesses his realm and his mother’s bosom and his faithful sisters, yet looks far back to Argia as she stands out with all her body from a turret-edge distraught. She calls back her husband’s mind and eyes and turns sweet Thebes away from his heart.

Argia preﬁgures Antigone’s reaction in book 11, who inspired by the Fury almost jumps off the wall to keep her brother from the fratricide. Also in book 11, Polynices dreams of Argia, just when Megaera is ready to lead him up to his ﬁnal moment in the fratricide (coniugis Argiae laceram cum lampade maesta / efﬁgiem, ‘[he had seen] the distorted ﬁgure of his wife Argia holding a sad torch’, 11.142–3).121 119

Hoffmann (1999), 31. See Ahl (1986), 2880, and Micozzi (2002), 62–5 (who refers to the episode as part of the ‘memoria interna’). Cf. also Bessone’s (2002) exhaustive discussion of elegiac motifs in the scene and in Argia’s appearance in books 2 and 3. 121 Ahl (1986), 2883: ‘signiﬁcantly, the vision is of his Argive wife not of his Theban family.’ See Vessey (1973), 163 n.4, for the preﬁguration of efﬁgies in the games in book 6 (treated by Lovatt (2005), passim) and Venini (1970), 48. 120

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That same night Antigone and Argia will unite their efforts to bury their beloved, a union that nevertheless takes place in a manner of lament (ecce122 alios gemitus aliamque ad busta ferebat / Antigone miseranda facem, ‘behold, wretched Antigone was bringing other woes and another torch to the place where the corpses lay’, 12.349–50), by remembering the dead person’s deeds and by re-enacting the poem:123 ‘cuius’ ait ‘manes, aut quae temeraria quaeris nocte mea?’ . . . ‘mene igitur sociam (pro fors ignara!) malorum, mene times? mea membra tenes, mea funera plangis . . . ’ . . . hic pariter lapsae iunctoque per ipsum amplexu miscent auidae lacrimasque comasque, partitaeque artus redeunt alterna gementes ad uultum et cara uicibus ceruice fruuntur dumque modo haec fratrem memorat, nunc illa maritum, mutuaque exorsae Thebas Argosque renarrant, longius Argia miseros reminiscitur actus . . . (12.366–7, 382–3, 385–91) ‘Whose body do you seek?’ she says. ‘And who are you that dare do it in my night?’ . . . ‘Do you fear me then (ah ignorant coincidence!), me the partner in your woes? It’s my limbs you hold, my corpse you mourn . . . ’ Here both collapse and with joint embrace eagerly mingle tears and hair over the body, dividing the limbs between them; then they go back to his face, lamenting by turns, and enjoy his beloved neck in alternation. As one recalls her brother, the other her husband, and each in dialogue tells again of Thebes and Argos, Argia remembers at length the sad story . . .

What begins as a hostile reaction on behalf of Antigone (Cadmeia uirgo, ‘Theban maiden’, 12.380), progresses into the recognition of 122 The exclamatory particle ecce is used ﬁve times in the last book and is coupled with sinister images: Ornytus’ squalid appearance in 141; the grim image of the brothers ﬁghting as their corpses are consumed by ﬁre in 429; Theseus’ last apostrophe to the Argive souls, as he kills Creon in 773; and the last simile in 789 (examined below). 123 On the burial scene with Argia and Antigone, see Schetter (1960), 11–12; Vessey (1973), 131–3 and (1986), 3003–7; Frings (1991), 139–54; Henderson (1991), 55–6; Taisne (1994a), 76–7; Dominik (1994b), 130–33; Helzle (1996), 166–74; Hershkowitz (1998a), 293–6; Franchet d’Espe`rey (1999), 317–19; Lovatt (1999), 136–40; Delarue (2000), 358–9; Bernstein (2008), 94–101; Heslin (2008), 114–20. Pollmann (2004), 46–7, interprets Argia as a counter-ﬁgure to Theseus, a woman who acts out of wifely devotion.

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the two women and Antigone’s change of attitude, now asking for Argia’s sharing in the grief and labour. What is not possible between Eurydice and Hypsipyle takes place for a moment within the boundaries of the poem’s centre, Thebes. Argia and Antigone share their respective stories in alternation (just like the Thebans in the beginning of the book, uicibusque datis, 12.47):124 they divide Polynices’ membra, just as they unite their lamenting voices. This apparent reconciliation will not last for long, since Argia and Antigone eventually ﬁght over the body of Polynices. The pyre, split in two, foreshadows the eternal rift between the brothers and the two nations. Argia and Antigone threaten to jump into the ﬁre if the discord continues: sedate minas; tuque exul ubique, semper inops aequi, iam cede (hoc nupta precatur, hoc soror), aut saeuos mediae ueniemus in ignes. (12.444–6) Calm your threats. And you, everywhere an exile, always denied justice, yield now. This your wife begs, this your sister; or we shall come into the ﬁerce ﬂames to part you.

Antigone’s words are fashioned to represent the unanimity of the two sisters, who would even jump into the ﬂames to part the ever quarrelling brothers.125 When the two women are caught performing the prohibited act of burying the dead, a sudden furor recalls them to their former behaviour,126 inasmuch as each woman appropriates the honour for herself individually: haec fratris rapuisse, haec coniugis artus contendunt uicibusque probant: ‘ego corpus’, ‘ego ignes’, ‘me pietas’, ‘me duxit amor’. deposcere saeua supplicia et dextras iuuat insertare catenis. nusquam illa alternis modo quae reuerentia uerbis, iram odiumque putes; . . . (12.457–62)

124

Hoffmann (1999), 61 and n.168. An unparalleled threat, see Hoffmann (1999), 86 and n.241. 126 Hoffmann (1999), 90–91, claims that both women preserve their inner freedom because of their amor mortis, a motif traced back to Lucan. See Hershkowitz (1998a), 294 (also Frings [1991], 143), on the women’s appropriation of Polynices’ furor; ‘Argia ﬁts right in with the family’ (296). 125

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Against each other they claim to have stolen the body, she her brother’s, she her husband’s, and by turns they prove their guilt. ‘I took the body’; ‘I lit the ﬁre.’ ‘Affection drove me’; ‘Love drove me.’ They demand cruel punishment and rejoice to put their hands in chains. Gone the mutual respect in their exchanges, you might think it anger and hate . . .

What begins as a distinct voice, of Antigone and Argia separately taking pride in their deed in 457, is then merged into an indistinguishable uttering: ego corpus, ego ignes, me pietas, me amor. The voice of the two women becomes thus identical, as it is impossible to differentiate who utters what. The two women’s demeanour, however, yields an image distinct from their previous demearour, as they quarrel once again. Argia, as her name reminds us of the peripheral city that launches the attack on Thebes, and Antigone, the famous sister of the Theban house,127 do not provide a closure for the epic, where the two cities are ultimately uniﬁed, and peace is imposed. The madness of war has now penetrated into the hearts of women, who compete as their male counterparts have done in the previous books. This madness is sealed by the narrator’s address to the reader with the apostrophe putes—inviting us to look back to the beginning of the poem and the causes of the war.128 When the hostilities end with the intervention of an Athenian other,129 the Argive women’s lament brings the poem to a

127 As Hershkowitz (1998a), 296, observes, Antigone’s behaviour sharply contrasts that of Ismene, who is a weak ﬁgure and ‘stagnates into oblivion’. Antigone’s power ultimately lies in her appropriation of madness. 128 Cf. Hardie (1993a), 45–6: ‘The effect of the pious labour of Argia and Antigone is more akin to the criminal interference of Lucan’s Erichtho . . . as the two women are separated by their pious discord, they also dismember the identity of Polynices . . . ’ 129 Theseus’ intervention (from Soph. OC and Eur. Supp.; cf. Mills [1997]) has been interpreted by some critics, e.g. Braund (1996), as a human deus ex machina, as the good king (see also Vessey [1973], 307–16; Ripoll [1998], 446–51). Other critics point to the ambiguities in his portrayal; e.g. Feeney (1991), 362: ‘Theseus’ intervention has a rushed, even perfunctory air . . . the resolution generates a barren sense of anticlimax: the human agents appear to be operating in a vacuum rather than standing proudly alone’; see also Ahl (1986), 2895–8; Dominik (1994a), 92–8; Hershkowitz (1998a), 268–71 and 296–301; Dietrich (1999), 43–5; Pollmann (2004), 37–43; Ganiban (2007), 207–32; McNelis (2007), 160–77; Bessone (2008) on a combination of exemplarity and pessimism in Theseus’ portrait. Most recently, Heslin (2008), 128, aptly observes that ‘Athens is not only a cosmopolitan model for Rome to emulate, but also an imperial fate to beware.’

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close.130 The poet again ponders the problematics of reconciliation between the two peoples, Thebans and Argives. A resolution, however, seems impossible. At the end of the epic, there is a clear dichotomy between Theban and Argive women. Though both share losses and pain and both are assimilated to Bacchants, there exists a degree of difference between the two groups in terms of their otherness: gaudent matresque nurusque Ogygiae, qualis thyrso bellante subactus mollia laudabat iam marcidus orgia Ganges. ecce per aduersas Dircaei uerticis umbras femineus quatit astra fragor, matresque Pelasgae decurrunt: quales Bacchea ad bella uocatae Thyiades amentes, magnum quas poscere credas aut fecisse nefas; gaudent lamenta nouaeque exultant lacrimae; rapit huc, rapit impetus illuc, Thesea magnanimum quaerant prius, anne Creonta, anne suos: uidui ducunt ad corpora luctus. (12.786–96) The womenfolk of Thebes rejoiced, as once Ganges, subdued by Bacchic wands, praised unwarlike revels, already in liquor. See, over in the shades of Dirce’s height, a cry of women shakes the stars and the Pelasgian matrons are running down like mad Thyiads summoned to Bacchic wars; you might think they were demanding some great crime, or had committed one. Lamentations rejoice, new tears exult. Impulse sweeps them hither and thither—should they ﬁrst seek great-hearted Theseus or Creon or their loved ones? Widows’ mourning leads them to the corpses.

The Ogygian-Theban mothers celebrate their liberation from Creon, the tyrant, as the river Ganges performs ritual celebration in honour of Dionysus’ conquest of India.131 The Pelasgian-Argive wives, how130 And I agree with Hardie (1997), 153, that Thebaid 12 offers many signs of closure. Cf. Pollmann (2004), 26–7, on the unendingness that nevertheless has a closural effect. 131 Keith (response to the panel ‘Cultural Constructions in Flavian Poetics,’ Annual Meeting, APA 2004) sees an imagery of integration in the language of cohesion between Theban and Athenian forces, as they stream onto the battleﬁeld and mingle with one another: accedunt utrimque pio uexilla tumultu permiscentque manus; medio iam foedera bello, iamque hospes Theseus; orant succedere muris dignarique domos. nec tecta hostilia uictor aspernatus init; . . . (12.782–6)

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ever, mourn (amentes . . . gaudent lamenta, novaeque exultant lacrimae, ducunt . . . luctus), as Thyads who have committed or are about to commit nefas.132 The Argive wives are assimilated to Bacchants, like the Lemnian women or the women of the Theban royal family, and their lament becomes almost unbearable for the poet to pronounce.133 As the Argive other, the male threat, has been driven from the walls of the city, and the miasma of the Theban tyrant is eclipsed, what remains is to relegate the mothers and wives to the margins of the poem, as the poet himself is ready to bring the boat of the Thebaid to harbour. Statius’ list of lamenting wives only encompasses the other, that is to say, the Argive women mourning their losses: non ego, centena si quis mea pectora laxet, uoce deus, tot busta simul uulgique ducumque, tot pariter gemitus dignis conatibus aequem: turbine quo sese caris instrauerit audax ignibus Euadne fulmenque in pectore magno quaesierit; quo more iacens super oscula saeui corporis infelix excuset Tydea coniunx; ut saeuos narret uigiles Argia sorori; Arcada, quo planctu genetrix Erymanthia clamet, Arcada, consumpto seruantem sanguine uultus, Arcada, quem geminae pariter ﬂeuere cohortes.

From both sides the banners meet in a pious tumult and they join hands; now in the midst of the battlefield, there are treaties, now Theseus is a guest. They beg him to enter the walls and deem their homes worth visiting. Not refusing the invitation, the victor comes to the dwellings of his enemies. 132

Pace Braund (1996), 5, who sees the collapse of boundaries as a special emphasis on Theseus’ conciliatory power (‘the categories of friend and enemy have been erased’). Also a similar view in Hershkowitz (1994), 146 n.49; Franchet d’ Espe`rey (1999), 310–12; Delarue (2000), 240. This is the view already noticeable in Lactantius (793 GAVDENT [LAMENTA] luctus mutantur in gaudia, a reading not supported by the text, but followed by Pollmann [2004], 279; Statius emphasises the novae lacrimae). Contra Newman (1975), 86: ‘cum iam non de pace audiamus, sed bella Bacchea sola nobis repraesententur.’ 133 Von Moisy (1971), 91, confesses inability to reconcile the use of nefas with the pietas of the Argive women which, he observes, Statius dismisses with the use of credas; therefore, the critic relegates the incongruity to the poet’s Kunst, by which not everything can be interpreted logically.

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Were some god to loose my breast in a hundred voices I could not in worthy effort do justice to so many pyres of captains and common folk alike, such a chorus of groaning: telling how Evadne boldly strewed herself on beloved ﬂames, seeking the thunderbolt in the mighty breast; in what fashion Tydeus’ hapless wife excuses him as she lies over the savage corpse’s kisses; how Argia tells her sister of the cruel sentinels; with what lamentation the Erymanthian mother bewails the Arcadian, who keeps his beauty though his blood is spent, the Arcadian, for whom both armies wept alike. Hardly would a new frenzy and Apollo’s coming have discharged the task; and my bark in the wide ocean has already earned her harbour.

Evadne at the end of the poem leaps into the ﬂames and dies, thus achieving what Hypsipyle has not dared to do at the funeral pyre of Opheltes, although Eurydice demands it (6.174–6).134 Atalanta’s plangent voice is meant to reverberate, as the toponymic Arcas clearly points to the diverse ethnicity of the Argives and their allies; they come from outside the centre, from the Peloponnese. The two armies join their laments for the boy, Parthenopaeus, the son of a mother who is distinguished from the group by means of her echoing voice.135 Motherhood, not widowhood, is meant to reverberate in the ears and lips of the reader in this last scene. At the end of the poem, we face the impossibility of a solution to the civil war that has shattered the lives of so many, resulting in endless lamentation and

134 As in Euripides’ Suppliants 1034–71. See Feeney (1991), 363: ‘Evadne persuades Theseus to bring about the de´nouement, and her speech is the clearest expression of the justice of humanity’s claim to vindication, yet she commits suttee on the pyre of Capaneus, and has no part in the resolution which she helped to instigate.’ 135 As Hardie (1993a), 48, eloquently puts it:

Grief for the Arcadian (temporarily) monopolises the theatre of epic warfare. The spending of his blood immobilises the boundary between boyhood and manhood (806) . . . Paradoxically this most unstable of epic characters, the ‘girl-boy’, whose ‘maiden-face’ ( . . . Partheno-pai-os, Parthen-op-aios) is the sign of that wavering identity, is . . . privileged to remain true to that identity . . . [D]eﬂoration . . . ﬁxes for ever the transient liminal state rather than affording a passage from virginity to adulthood.

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poetic powerlessness.136 As Lovatt has pointed out in the Thebaid, lament is doubly unsatisfying as a means of closure, both because it is not completed and because it has been shown to be ineffective.137 Similarly, McNelis concludes that ‘the poem offers an end to conﬂict, but not its consequences, and thus points out a gap between the grand narratives of martial valour and heroism and more mundane stories about those who live non-heroic lives’.138 As Argive women bewail their dead, and as Statius bids farewell to his book, the Thebaid, the poem about Thebes, it becomes clear how the boundaries between the two cities have not been destabilised at all: Thebes remains the centre, whereas Argos is relegated to the periphery, where women can safely mourn for their dead, outside the male world of the poem. The boundaries of epic are deﬁned, as the poet will trespass into the territory of elegy, should he pursue their woes further.139 The ‘mo(u)rning after’,140 as it has been called, occurs in Thebes by Argive women. And yet these are women assimilated to frenzied Bacchants. Bacchus the liberator and Bacchus the binder appears in both guises in the above passage, Bacchus who conquers for the Theban women and Bacchus who defeats for the Argive mothers. The limits between the two groups are clearly marked, as there is no

136 On the topos of hundred tongues, see Hinds (1998), 91–8, with a focus on Statius and ‘secondary epic’. Also Georgacopoulou (2005), 229–31. See Feeney (1991), 363, on Statius’ refusal to follow the resolution at the end of the Iliad but also the divine oversight at the end of the Odyssey. On Statius’ confession of poetic powerlessness at the end of the Siluae (5.3), see Augoustakis (2008b). 137 Lovatt (1999), 146. Similarly, Dietrich (1999), 49, sees the marginalisation of Statius’ voice at the end, inasmuch as it becomes aligned with the female voice of lament. Lesueur (2003b) interprets the ending of the Thebaid as feminine in the sense that it is meant as a tribute to Statius’ wife Claudia (cf. longi sola laboris / conscia, cumque tuis creuit mea Thebais annis, ‘you alone know my long toil, and my Thebaid grew with your years’, Silu. 3.5.35–6). 138 McNelis (2007), 171. 139 Fantham (1999), 232: ‘Lament has triumphed over heroics and put them to shame.’ By contrast, Bernstein (2008), 101–4, in what he calls ‘poetics of bereavement’, sees in lament the possibility of ‘constructing the relationships between parents, children, and spouses through reference to principles that contrast with earlier epic’ (88), which is an alternative approach to intrafamilial dynamics. Cf. also Pollmann (2004), 47: ‘[Statius] envisages here a new type of epic concerned with the description of the painful consequences of war and the part women could play therein.’ 140 Paga´n (2000a).

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interaction between them. The Theban women will bury their dead, beseech Theseus, and rejoice with the ﬁnal imposition of a superﬁcial peace. For the Argive women, lament and the impossibilities of poetry remain.141 Limitations are renewed, since the poet will address his poem the Thebais, which is both grammatically feminine and ends with a feminine ﬁnale, by marking the centre once again as Thebes, not as Argos (o mihi bissenos multum uigilata per annos / Thebai?, 12.811–12).142 Thebes or Rome should rejoice with the poetic activity. But what about Argos? What about non-Theban (non-Roman?) otherness? Whether pessimistic or optimistic, the ending of the Thebaid, I submit, secures the crystallisation of spatial and sexual boundaries that inevitably shape identity.143 In this chapter, I have examined motherhood as the locus of expansion of otherhood. In a male world of heroic action, where the Œº Æ IæH has infected with nefas the terrain of Thebes, Nemea, and Argos, the presence of women is exploited by the poet to stress the impasse faced at the end of the poem, where hierarchies are rebuilt: a new presence in Thebes can only temporarily guarantee peace between the two peoples, whereas the Bacchic end of the poem provides an image of alienation and retreat towards the semiotic from the symbolic, and climaxes in professing poetic powerlessness. On the map of heroic verse narrative, same and other converge in the last book, only to be sharply distinguished in the epilogue, where foreignness becomes ‘the present in abeyance’. The retreat into the semiotic, namely the utterance of Bacchic cries (Ismene in book 11, the Argive women in book 12) or complete silence (Hypsipyle’s ekphrastic stillness in book 6) speak volumes for the relegation of

141 For a more positive approach, see Masterson (2005), 313: ‘in this particular moment of grief . . . Statius ﬁgures the unavoidable presence of contingency, life, and love in the company of the eternal, death, and hateful strife.’ 142 Henderson (1993), 188: ‘Not the Warrior display of arma virumque, but its disﬁguration and displacement before the pain of Woman’s Bereavement.’ On the sphragis, see the Epilogue. 143 Markus (2003), 467: ‘Statius refashions the traditional ideology of epic . . . and turns it into a locus not of memory, but of lament.’ Hartmann (2004), 147, points to the same practice used by Statius in both the proemium and the epilogue but views the epilogue as ‘keineswegs depressiv und resignativ’.

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the female to the fringes of the epic landscape and the reinforcement of gender and generic boundaries. By contrast, as we shall see in the Punica next, a progress from this deadlock is achieved through the idealisation of motherhood and its promotion to reﬂect and to sway authority over the masculine arma uirique and the shaping of Romanness to encompass Otherness.

2 Deﬁning the Other: From altera patria to tellus mater in Silius Italicus’ Punica altrix bellorum bellatorumque uirorum tellus nec ﬁdens nudo sine fraudibus ensi. (Pun. 1.218–19) An earth nurse of wars and of warlike men, loyal to the naked sword and guile as well.

From the outset of the Punica, as expected in a poem on the Second Punic War, Silius meticulously distinguishes between the two parties and their native qualities. The subject matter of the poem revolves, as the poet announces in the proemium, around the struggle between the Romans and the Carthaginians for world domination (1.7–8 and 14); while the Romans will come out of the conﬂict victorious, the Carthaginians are destined to be subdued and forced to endure Roman rule (Oenotria iura, 1.2). The Carthaginians, in particular, are deﬁned by their trickery and perﬁdia, a topos exploited widely in Latin literature:1 the continent of Africa and its native people in general share these same (inherent) qualities.2 Thus the theatre of the war operations in the periphery, outside Rome, is deﬁned as a belligerent and hostile ground, ﬁercely opposing the Roman forces. 1 For instance, as early as in Plautus’ Poen. 112–13: dissimulat . . . Poenus (‘the Carthaginian is lying’). See Thomas’s (2001) discussion of the stereotypical Punic perﬁdia and Danesi Marioni (1989) on the episode of Tagus’ death in Pun. 1.144–81. 2 Cf. Ripoll (2000b), 12: ‘Hannibal est une e´manation de la terre africaine et une expression accomplie de sa nature profonde . . . C’est bien cette Afrique myste´rieuse et inquie´tante, menac¸ante et fascinante . . . qui est l’ennemie he´reditaire et l’antagoniste privile´gie´e de la uirtus Romana.’

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Indeed the geographical digressions, a well-established feature in Greek and Roman epic poetry, work to this effect. Silius does not hesitate to go into lengthy detail concerning the peculiarities of various cultures in everyday life and thereby underscores their otherness. At the same time, however, the poet creates an image of the periphery as an idiosyncratic ‘body’, very different from Roman society and culture, which is nevertheless going to be imposed on it.3 Many a time, the periphery of the future Roman Empire creates strife, while at the same time it proves contemptuous of any attempt at civilisation.4 In a word, outside the centre of Rome, there is a diverse, barbarian (from the Roman perspective) world, which Rome must reform and civilise. The close relationship, therefore, that ties the protagonists of this poem to their land, patria, comes as no surprise; this association also explains the passion with which they ﬁght so long for the safety of their respective patriae, whether Carthage or Rome. The development of a paternal connection with fatherland is corroborated by an elaboration on the relationship between fathers and sons,5 as we shall see, since the former recurrently impart to their offspring the required instruction on how to love, ﬁght, and ultimately even sacriﬁce one’s life for the patria: loaded with masculine connotations, the word patria is especially exploited in a ‘masculine’ genre, such as epic. The concept of

3 For instance, see the list of Carthaginian allies in 3.222–414 (cf. Auverlot [1992]), the aetiological myths related to the crossing of the Pyrenees and the Alps, such as the rape of Pyrene in 3.415–41 (cf. Bona [1995] and [1996], Asso [2001], Augoustakis [2003a] for further bibliographical references, and Ripoll [2006b]), or the catalogue of the Roman allies in 8.356–621 (cf. the discussion in Venini [1978], Spaltenstein [1991], McGuire [1995], and Marks (2005a), 123–5). On Silius’ geographic and ethnographic interests, Nicol’s study (1936) remains invaluable (cf. also Bona [1998]); on the Flavian poet’s amalgamation of poetry and historiography, see Gibson (2010) and Pomeroy (2010). 4 See, for example, the åÅ ÆæÆ Ø at the River Trebia in book 4, where nature’s elements show determination to ﬁght against the Romans, until Venus’ capricious plea to Vulcan to intervene on Scipio’s behalf against the enraged river causes the destruction of nature and the reaction of the Nymphs (4.682–97); see Ripoll (2006a). For a study of natural phenomena in Silius, see Burck (1978) and Morzadec (2003); see Santini’s (1991), 43–113, treatment of rivers in the Punica and Manolaraki (2010) on seascapes. 5 For a discussion of the role of fathers and sons in Virgil’s Aeneid, see Hardie (1993a), 88–119 and Farrell (1999).

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‘fatherland’, however, also incorporates a complex nexus of implications concerning categories, such as same vs other, male vs female. By establishing a generational link between fathers and sons, the poet stresses the resulting passionate attachment of the younger generation to their patria, even though many times such an association proves a stumbling block towards the fulﬁlment of the epic telos. As we shall see in this chapter, the masculine rapport with one’s patria often discloses, on the Roman side, the lack of care for the Roman fatherland, since irrationality of battle decisions and the canvassing practices of the Roman Forum lead to utter negligence for Rome’s future, especially conspicuous in the early books of the Punica. Such failure on the Romans’ part reﬂects intimately a ﬁssure in the construction of the semantic register for true Romanitas: in front of the other, the same loses its identity, an identity that must be rebuilt in a slow process, especially in the years before and immediately after the destructive battle at Cannae.6 Paradoxically, then, Hannibal embodies the very elements of what could make up ‘Romanness’: he is portrayed as the warrior who expands his empire by displaying characteristic love for his patria, respect and pietas towards his ancestors, unbridled uirtus in war;7 in other words he is the incarnation of the future leader of the orbis and the urbs, an aspiration that becomes his ultimate goal and obsession. The Carthaginian general’s attachment to his patria, however, reveals a problematic relationship with the creatrix of the Libyan city, Dido, who appears in the poem as the proto-source of this war, the Urmutter,8 not only as the ﬁrst ancestor, but also as the Carthaginian mother ﬁgure par excellence, even though, again as in the case of mothers in the Thebaid, Dido is presented as a displaced mother, an other, someone who longs to play the role of a mother but

6 On the Roman defeats at the Ticinus, the Trebia, Trasimene, and Cannae, early in the Punica, see Niemann’s (1975) study. 7 Cf. Bernstein (2008), 135: ‘Silius’ representation of the effects of Hannibal’s devotion towards his ancestors on his leadership demonstrates the limitation of an otherwise laudable virtue.’ 8 The queen represents the city of Carthage, Hannibal’s native soil, and by extension the mother-earth, the primordial earth of Libya. I use the term Urmutter here to point out the distance between Hannibal and his ancestress, as well as to underscore the lack of a maternal presence in Hannibal’s formative years, a gap ﬁlled by Dido, as we see throughout Punica 1.

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actually never becomes one.9 In Kristevan terms, Hannibal shows an extreme attachment to Dido, to the absent mother ﬁgure, who represents the choˆra, the feminine space, where the same meets the other. But in the process, Hannibal becomes lost in an asymbolia, as he ﬁnds himself in a new country and makes the ultimate mistake of substituting his own patria, Carthage, with another patria, Italy (whether in Rome or in Capua). While Hannibal’s patria depends on him alone, he is portrayed as bemused until the end, while he ties himself to the Italian tellus, a hostile ground, a hostile mother-earth, that eventually discharges him as an abject: Hannibal in the end is the misplaced foreigner, the other, pre-emptively doomed to wander around the globe, until he dies in Asia Minor. At the same time, however, we observe a complex process whereby the other strives to ﬁnd its identity by becoming assimilated, while the same, the centre of action, displays a remarkable scarcity of potential leaders: the Roman generals are mere protagonists in this or the other defeat, Flaminius in Trasimene or Varro at Cannae, for instance. Even potent men, such as Fabius, Paulus, or Marcellus, do not rise to the stature of the man who will save Roman affairs from defeat and disaster. Such collapse of Roman identity is situated also outside the centre, in cities that reﬂect the same, the Roman, like Capua or Saguntum. Both hybrid cities sever their ties with the ‘metropolis’, the urbs, and create an ambience of alienation that is pervasive throughout, until Scipio’s emergence in Roman politics. As we shall see in the second part of this chapter, Saguntum becomes a case study in our examination of Romanness and nonRoman otherness. From fathers/sons and the problematisation of their relationship to patria, we shall move on to examine the mini-epic on Saguntum, which is centred around transgressive women and the dissolving of the bonding ties with Rome, the fatherland. Asbyte, an African Amazon, with a vociferous silence emerges as an example of Kristeva’s asymbolic semiotic choˆra. Marginalised and abject, Asbyte is decapitated by Theron and thus is converted into the hunted victim, 9 See Dido’s expressed wish in Aen. 4.327–30, replayed by Ovid in Her. 7.133–8. Dietrich (2004) correctly points out that the Flavian poets exploit the question of Aeneas’ ‘marriage’ to Dido in the Aeneid as an actual wedding, by calling Aeneas her maritus.

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whose masculine otherness is beheaded and burned: though excised from the text, Asbyte sets in motion the action of a series of Amazonian women in the second book, culminating in the mass suicide of the Saguntine population. The episode, I submit, is built around two ﬁres, the funeral pyre of silenced Asbyte and the big ﬁre lit by the Saguntines in order to burn their heirlooms and thus silence their ties with Rome. As Silius stresses, Saguntum, the Graeco-Roman city in the periphery, traces its foundations back to the Greeks (Zacynthians) and Romans (Rutulians). What we witness, however, is the Saguntines’ effort to delete their identity by burning every reminder of their former self. Saguntum expunges her association with the Roman state, while Rome herself is conspicuously absent from Saguntum’s ordeal. The women’s Bacchic voice of horror, lamentation, and crime reminds us of Hypsipyle and the Lemnian women, or the lamenting Argive women at the end of the Thebaid, as the cosmos of the Punica is threatened by the same chaotic powers that pervade the nefarious world of Statius’ epic landscape. Here the women’s asymbolic, and yet autonomous, status acutely interrogates what true Romanness betokens: while it is found lacking in the centre, Romanness may be situated in the margins. Tiburna and her Saguntine companions are in truth silent; their voice is not their own but instead on loan from the Fury, Tisiphone. Just as Saguntum becomes a monument of ﬁdes for future generations, so does the act of her people obliterate any traces of what is tantamount to their former identity. The Romans ought to search for the signiﬁcation of Romanitas10 and abandon their inertia: the need for a new spin in the Roman centre, a new ‘political subject’ based on the asymbolia and autonomy of ‘the other in ourselves’, according to Kristeva,11 conspicuously emerges as a very important issue in the ﬁrst decade of the poem. But in book 8, we shall come across another instance of a misplaced search for the antiqua patria, since Anna Perenna’s status as 10 On the notion that Romans have to learn through suffering, see Marks (2005b) and (2006). Marks (2005b) sees, for instance, the deaths of leaders, such as Flaminius and Paulus, as acts of deuotio, a position that I do not espouse, since I do not see how the actions of demagogues, like Flaminius, correspond to the models of legendary deuotio, such as the Decii. Contra see also Cowan (2007b), 25–7. 11 See Sjo¨holm (2005), 59–86.

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simultaneously Roman and non-Roman underlies her presence in the middle of the poem. While Anna is fully acculturated to the Roman landscape, Juno abuses her as a pro-Carthaginian instrument, exploiting the Italian goddess’s longing for her old country. The exiled Anna, a foreigner with a subversive autonomy, irresolutely vacillates between both identities. Nevertheless, as we shall see at the end of this chapter, the appearance of Tellus in book 15 reﬂects a tremendous transformation of the masculine role of patria in the poem, from the often failed relationship between fathers and sons, to an integrated link between motherearth and the male warrior, who now draws from the very masculine power of his motherland to face the enemy and return victorious. As the personiﬁed image of Tellus urges Claudius Nero to challenge Hasdrubal at the Metaurus, the mother-earth Italian goddess reincarnates and resurrects the female space, the choˆra, the safe receptacle where same and other merge. The female goddess inspires the male warrior to conquer Hannibal’s brother and thus overturn the course of the war, to the detriment of the Carthaginians. The imagery of a wounded motherearth, however, mirrors the everlasting effects that the Carthaginian other has left on Italian soil. Even at Hannibal’s departure, as we shall see at the end of this chapter, a clear dichotomy between effeminate Carthaginians and masculine Romans is eschewed in favour of an image of patria absorbed and inﬂuenced by Tellus, as the latter displays an overt androcentrism and commitment to the masculine goals of her prote´ge´s.

FATHERS, SONS, AND THE POETICS OF PATRIA Let us begin by looking at the following pairs of fathers and sons as an illustration of the dynamic, triangular relationship among parents, their children, and patria. In the very beginning of the Punica, the reader comes across young Hannibal’s training by his father in Carthage (1.70–139).12 In Dido’s temple, ﬁlled with the imagines of his Tyrian 12

Cf. Liv. 21.1 and V. Max. 9.3.ext.3.

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ancestors, the future Carthaginian general is exposed both to his past and to his future by learning how to cultivate an eternal hatred towards the Romans: ut fari primamque datum distinguere lingua Hannibali uocem, sollers nutrire furores, Romanum seuit puerili in pectore bellum. (1.78–80) As soon as Hannibal could speak and utter his ﬁrst comprehensible words, knowing how to feed angry passions, [the father] sowed war with Rome in the child’s heart.

Here the father assumes a role normally ascribed to one’s mother. Hannibal’s separation, however, from the semiotic choˆra of the womb gives rise to a symbolic genotext that reproduces the father’s sly nature, from the formative moment when Hannibal moves from the semiotic to the symbolic, in a transition from the genotext to the phenotext, which however is marked as failed: the genotext of the baby boy’s ﬁrst utterances does not result in a phenotext of grammatical and syntactical structures but is rather relegated to the bewildering domain of furor and bellum, madness and war cries. The sacred temple with the efﬁgies of Hannibal’s ancestors, tracing their genealogy back to Phoenix, constitutes the very place where the boy acquires the ﬁrst hints of his future identity and destiny.13 This same legacy, as we shall see in chapter 4, Hannibal will try to leave

13 On the proleptic and analeptic function of this ekphrasis, see Harrison (2010). On this episode, see Ku¨ppers (1986), 73–92; Bernstein (2008), 136–9; Ganiban (2010); and Keith (2010). When the sacerdos in the Carthaginian temple of Dido prophesies Hannibal’s future, Juno stops the priestess from telling the whole story (1.137–9). Kissel (1979), 36–7, sees in Juno’s reaction the need to thicken the plot and considers Hannibal himself responsible: ‘Hannibal ist der Tat von Anfang an zum Scheitern verurteilt, doch liegt keine Tragik im engeren Sinn beschlossen, wohl aber eine Schuld: Schuld is Hannibals Wesen, das ihn zum Opfer Junos werden la¨ßt.’ For the gods as subjects to fate see Kissel (1979), 78–85. Von Albrecht (1964), 48, correctly notices that Juno is aware of Hannibal’s failure from the beginning onwards: ‘Es is von Anfang an gesagt, daß er scheitern wird.’ See also Laudizi (1989), 82 and 84, and Ganiban (2010), who argues for Hannibal’s tragic heroism. Consider also the following episodes in which the revelation of the whole truth is prevented: in 3.204–13 Mercury does not foreclose to Hannibal future events beyond the crossing of the Alps; in 3.700–712, Hammon does not prophesy the Carthaginian defeat; and in 4.122–30, Bogus’ interpretation of the omen of the hawk and the eagle is false ceu suadente deo (‘as though a god were urging him on’, 4.135).

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behind for his baby son to carry out, to no avail, however, since there is no continuity in store for the family of the Carthaginian general. What strikes the reader in this scene, however, is Hannibal’s attachment to Dido, the Carthaginian Urmutter, whom in a staggering manner, Silius calls genetrix, emphasising at the same time her Carthaginian name as Elissa, not Dido (1.81).14 Dido takes up the role of a substitute mother for young Hannibal: she sets this poem in motion by means of her curse in Aeneid 4, in the footsteps of which Silius follows, by establishing his narrative as the continuation of the Virgilian epic. The queen of Carthage, however, constitutes a perplexing example, a mother who never experiences motherhood. Such a displaced relationship between Hannibal and his genetrix situates the Carthaginian hero in the middle of a chaotic whirlpool: in his quest for the lost female, motherly space, he will strive to replace his country with another, in an eternal, vicious circle. In fact, the position of the young boy in the temple is open to a reading of the effeminisation of Hannibal from the very outset: the poet frames this episode in the parameter of Jupiter’s speech to Venus in Aeneid 1 (223–96), the talk of a father to his daughter. By introducing the father’s talk by the phrase olli permulcens genitor caput oscula libat (‘by caressing the boy’s head, the father kisses him’, Pun. 1.104), Silius invokes the intertext of Aen. 1.254 and 256 (olli surbridens . . . oscula libauit), as well as the context of the ﬁrst simile in Aen. 1.153, where the verb mulcet is used.15 In this context of a false mother ﬁgure, represented by Dido, Hamilcar instructs his son how to defend his patria (Pun. 1.108) and how to remove the stain of the First Punic War, by annihilating the very process of motherhood for the Romans: partusque recusent / te surgente, puer, Latiae producere matres (‘and at your rise, let the Roman mothers refuse to produce offspring’, 1.111–12). This 14 On the names Elissa and Dido, see Pease (1935), 300. As Spaltenstein (1986), 17, observes, Silius uses the noun genetrix instead of conditor urbis (cf. Ov. Met. 15.862–3, genitor Quirine / urbis). 15 Keith (2009), 362 observes: By emphasising the Eastern origins of Dido and her Carthaginians in his ekphrasis of the temple, Silius assimilates the historical ﬁgure of Hannibal to the plane of classical (Virgilian) myth and marks him from the start as the feminised loser in a renewed struggle between Phoenician East and Roman West.

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cancellation of motherhood underscores sharply the existent dichotomy in the ﬁgure of Hannibal, who is the protector of his patria but also the person who eradicates motherhood at its inception. In this sense, Hannibal embodies the other, the foreign, alien, effeminate East, which Hesperia, the West, will try to absorb and reject at the same time. As Bernstein perceptively observes ‘in his [Hannibal’s] mind, his personal obligation to avenge his ancestors supersedes his civic responsibilities. Interest in the welfare of Carthage never provides an equal stimulus for his leadership.’16 Too quickly Hannibal forgets his patria, as if he were an alien to his own land, an alien in a ‘foreign’ narrative. As the poem progresses, Hannibal ﬁnds solace for his confused and misplaced feelings towards his patria by adopting other cities as his home. The Capuans’ desidia makes their city another Rome, on the fringes of Rome, where vices only showcase the city’s decadence and inevitable doom, an accurate portrait of Rome herself in the ﬁrst years of the war as well. When Hannibal enters Capua and looks around, we are in fact reminded of Rome (11.262–6). Capua then becomes a substitute for the urbs, where Hannibal gives in and enjoys the allurements the city has to offer. As reported by Proteus in book 7, Venus intervenes to soften the Carthaginians’ hearts for the ﬁrst time, an indication of their upcoming and ﬁnal defeat in book 17. Hannibal succumbs to the magnetism of the city, as his vision becomes blurred, in a Bacchic manner, resembling Pentheus. He thinks that this is altera . . . patria . . . / altera Carthago (‘another fatherland, another Carthage’, 11.424–5).17 This disorientation, however, is crucial, because this is not another Carthage, but another Rome, conquering Hannibal for the ﬁrst time. Hannibal is absorbed by that very desidia, which for so long has been destroying the Romans themselves. The mistake of the Carthaginians lies in their transplantation into the wrong fatherland, as their military prowess becomes loose, sluggish, and therefore more vulnerable (cf. torpentia membra ﬂuebant, ‘their sluggish limbs were loosening up’, 12.19).18 16

Bernstein (2008), 138. On Hannibal in Capua, see Bettenworth (2004), 338–94 18 It is not coincidental that Teuthras, from Euboean Cyme, entertains the Carthaginian guests with a cosmogony song (11.288–97), tracing the Capuan ancestry back 17

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When Hannibal exhorts his soldiers to active battle in the beginning of book 13, by summoning the personiﬁed image of Carthago, the soldiers’ own patria, his words sound futile, since the soldiers have now come upon another patria: si nunc exsisteret alma Carthago ante oculos turrita celsa ﬁgura, quas abitus, miles, causas illaese dedisses? ‘imbres, o patria, et mixtos cum grandine nimbos et tonitrus fugio.’ procul hanc expellite gentis femineam Tyriae labem . . . (13.12–17) If now our mother Carthage rose up before our eyes, her high head crowned with towers, what excuse would you give, soldier, for your retreat? ‘O fatherland, I ﬂee the rain, the storms mixed with hail, and the thunders.’ Drive away from the Tyrian race this effeminate weakness . . .

By summoning the turrita ﬁgura patriae,19 the feminine personiﬁcation of his fatherland, Carthage, Hannibal deludes himself into thinking that he has delivered the best rhetorical battle harangue ever. And yet he unconsciously undercuts its effect by alluding to the feminea labes, that is, ﬂight from the battle, which they have just committed: they ﬂed away from Rome’s walls at the end of book 12, nor will they ever come near the city again. This failure on Hannibal’s part mirrors his limitations in connecting with the motherly space of his own patria, the lack of the appropriate mother ﬁgure: mothers instruct their sons and secure generational continuity by fostering

in time, in the family of Capys, whose descent goes back to Jupiter himself and directly links him to the Trojans (Dardanus, Tros, and Ilus). Also, Teuthras’ second song is again concerned with Rome (11.440–80): he sings of those uates who are celebrated in Roman, Flavian epic poems, such as Amphion and Arion, the ancestors of Thebes; Chiron and Achilles; Orpheus and the Argonauts. Therefore, Hannibal is conquered by Roman civilisation, by Roman (imperial epic) poetry, as Teuthras’ song bends his uncivilised heart (pectora Castalio frangebat carmine Teuthras, ‘Teuthras was breaking their hearts with his Castalian song’, 11.482). Teuthras’ Orphic song has a magical, alluring tone, enticing Hannibal through Venus’ help and Bacchus’ potion. On Teuthras’ songs see Schenk (1989); Bettenworth (2004), 361–71; and Manolaraki (2010). 19 For the image of fatherland summoned as a rhetorical device, cf. Cicero’s Catil. 1.24 and Luc. 1.188 turrigero uertice (Rome appearing to Julius Caesar); see Spaltenstein (1990), 205.

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the bond between male and female, same and other, whereas Hannibal is doomed to remain the other, attached to the wrong tellus, as we shall see at the end of this chapter. The Carthaginian’s ultimate failure to protect his patria effectively is stressed throughout the poem. Consider, for instance, Hannon’s critique of the Hannibalic War in book 2, when he questions the outcome of Hannibal’s enterprises: quo ruis et patriae exitio tibi nomina quaeris? (‘Where are you heading? Why do you seek a fame for yourself to the detriment of your fatherland?’ 2.311). In his misguided judgment, Hannibal remains the only hope for his patria until the very end, as he claims in book 17: ‘nunc patriae decus et patriae nunc Hannibal unus / subsidium, nunc in nostra spes ultima dextra’ (‘Hannibal is now the glory and only refuge of his country, now in our right hand lies the last hope . . . ’, 17.197–8). In his prebattle harangue at Zama, the Carthaginian comes to the realisation that there is no more room for substitutions, that his patria is collapsing: diuum ipse fauore uincendoque senex patriam post trina labantem lustra et non uisos tam longa aetate penates ac natum et ﬁdae iam pridem coniugis ora conﬁsus uobis repeto. non altera restat iam Libyae nec Dardaniis pugna altera restat. (17.331–6) I myself, favoured by the gods and by conquering, an old man now, after ﬁfteen years return to my collapsing country and my household gods, whom I have not seen for such a long time, and to my son and my ever loyal wife, relying upon you. No other ﬁght is left now for Libya or the sons of Dardanus.

Hannibal knows this is the last battle: the litotes non altera . . . pugna and the juxtaposition of the two countries, Libya and Italy, accentuate the cancellation of the Carthaginian’s futile efforts to ﬁnd another country, another home, another land in Carthage’s stead. His own patria is on the verge of breaking up (labantem), and Hannibal is called to her aid. Hannibal’s substitution of his patria, however, is not limited in the Carthaginians’ imperialistic plans to extend their empire and therefore absorb other patriae into their own. It extends to the Roman camp also. Varro, for example, represents the Roman military

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leadership at its nadir.20 As Silius stresses in the speech given by Paulus (Varro’s colleague in the consulship) before the battle at Cannae, in Varro’s case boundaries and identities are completely blurred; Varro could have been a consul in Carthage, without any difference! So much does his policy help the enemy: consul datus alter, opinor, / Ausoniae est, alter Poenis (‘of the two consuls, one has been given to Italy, I believe, the other to the Carthaginians’, 8.332–3). After the complete destruction of the Roman army at Cannae, while the threatening Hannibal is looming ad portas, at Canusium Metellus suggests that the Romans should leave Italy, in search of another country, where no Carthaginians can penetrate:21 is mala bello pectora degeneremque manum ad deformia agebat consulta atque alio positas spectabat in orbe, quis sese occulerent, terras, quo nomina nulla Poenorum aut patriae penetraret fama relictae. (10.421–5) He was leading a band of degenerate men, their spirits bent because of the war, toward shameful plans, as he was contemplating lands in another part of the world, in which they could hide themselves, where neither the names of the Carthaginians nor the rumour of their abandoned fatherland could penetrate.

Scipio puts a stop to Metellus’ disastrous solution of creating another patria, a cheap imitation of Rome, a hiding place that could possibly secure their everlasting safety. In his prayer, Scipio invokes the Capitoline Triad (even hostile Juno, nondum / Iliacis mutata malis, ‘not yet softened by the Trojans’ sufferings’, 10.433–4); he bids the Romans to swear never to forsake their country and therefore their identity. The Romans respond by remaining steadfast to their resolution to protect their patria (obstringunt animas patriae, ‘they pledge their lives to their country’, 10.447). The Romans’ reconnection to their patria, however, and consequently their reclaiming of a hurt identity proves a lengthy process, subject to a faltering relationship between fathers, sons, and their

20 21

On demagogues like Varro and Flaminius, see Ariemma (2010). Cf. Liv. 22.53.4–13. The episode is discussed extensively in Cowan (2007b).

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fatherland. Consider, for instance, Marcellus’ death in Apulia, in book 15, a demise closely associated with Marcellus’ son and the attempt to instruct the latter about war.22 Marcellus’ son is too young during the siege of Syracuse, when his father is at the peak of his military career (as immortalised in book 14 of the Punica): Marcellus, ut arma aptantem natum adspexit laetumque tumultu ‘uincis’ ait ‘nostros mirando ardore uigores. sit praematurus felix labor. urbe Sicana qualem te uidi, nondum permitteret aetas cum tibi bella, meo tractantem proelia uultu! huc, decus, huc, nostrum, lateri te iunge paterno et me disce nouum Martem temptare magistro.’ (15.353–60) When he saw his son ﬁtting on his armour and enjoying the preparations for battle, Marcellus said: ‘By your amazing zeal, you conquer our own strength. May your youthful toil be successful! How I admired you in the Sicilian city, when, since your age would not yet allow you to ﬁght, you tried the arms observing my own countenance! Here, this way, pride of my heart, attach yourself to your father’s side and with me as your teacher, learn how to manage war, a situation new to you.’

The phrase disce Martem alludes to Aeneas’ similar apostrophe to Ascanius in Aen. 12.435, disce uirtutem.23 Despite Marcellus’ efforts to educate his son in war, however, his own rashness accounts for the coming destruction: . . . ni telum aduersos nati uenisset in artus. tum patriae tremuere manus, laxataque luctu ﬂuxerunt rigidis arma infelicia palmis. obuia nudatum tramittit lancea pectus, labensque impresso signauit gramina mento. (15.376–80)

22 See Spaltenstein (1990), 365–6. Livy mentions this son as a military tribune in 27.26.12, which makes Silius’ choice of rejuvenating the general’s son a unique reconstruction of events and an exploitation of the father and son relationship. For Silius’ reworking of the Livian account, see Burck (1984b), 60–68, and Fucecchi (2010); on Marcellus’ comparison to Fabius, in particular, see Fucecchi (2010). 23 Cf. Groesst (1887), 26. See also Burck (1984b), 65–6, for similarities with Mezentius and Lausus in Aen. 10.

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. . . except that a spear had struck his son’s body in the front. Then the father’s hands trembled, and his ill-starred weapons, loosened by his grief, fell from his stiffened hands. A lance came and pierced through his unprotected chest, and while falling he marked the grass with the imprint of his chin.24

Marcellus’ paternal authority brings about one of the last disasters the Romans face in the poem, because of the general’s haste to give up life: his son is only hurt,25 but the crestfallen father believes he is dead and therefore surrenders to the commands of the Fates. His alignment with Daedalus’ mythological example underscores, I believe, the connection between Marcellus and the exiled architect, who seeks a new home in Italy and a new identity, but also the mythical hero’s failure to represent his family’s disaster on the ekphrastic level. Silius portrays Marcellus leaving his imprint on the grass, a memorial of the father’s failure, by using the verb signare (OLD, s.v. signo 6), which in turn alludes to the creation of a piece of art and therefore to ekphrastic descriptions. Let us now look at the next pair, of a son worthy of a better father, Hampsagoras and Hostus, in book 12. When Hampsagoras invites the Carthaginians to start afresh the campaign in Sardinia,26 the poet goes into detail about his Trojan descent, which the degenerate Hampsagoras has besmirched: namque ortum Iliaca iactans ab origine nomen in bella Hampsagoras Tyrios renouata uocarat. proles pulchra uiro nec tali digna parente Hostus erat. cuius fretus fulgente iuuenta ipse asper paci crudos sine uiribus annos barbarici studio ritus refouebat in armis. (12.344–9) For, haughty of his name from Trojan origin, Hampsagoras had invited the Carthaginians to renew the war. He had a beautiful son, Hostus, not worthy of such a parent. Hampsagoras was relying on his son’s youthful vigour, since he was harsh to peace and with devotion to barbarous customs he was rejuvenating his feeble and powerless old age in wars.

24 25 26

See Burck (1981b), 464, on Marcellus’ burial by Hannibal. See Spaltenstein (1990), 367, and Liv. 27.27.7. Cf. Liv. 23.34.10 and 23.40.1.

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The insistence on the barbarici studio ritus (12.349) assimilates the Trojan Hampsagoras to the barbaric rituals of the Carthaginians.27 After Hostus is killed by Ennius the poet, Hampsagoras pierces his own chest with a spear, uttering a groan barbaricum atque immane (‘barbaric and hideous’, 12.418).28 He fails to live by the rules of his ancestors, and thus to choose the right alliance, that with Rome. Ennius kills Hostus, who becomes a hostia, a sacriﬁce to compensate for his father’s folly (ultrix . . . harundo, ‘the avenging spear’, 12.414).29 Ennius is the chosen poet to sing ﬁrst of the Roman wars in verse, as Apollo himself proclaims (hic canet illustri primus bella Itala uersu, ‘he will sing ﬁrst the Italian wars, in his famous verses’, 12.410). Thus Silius crowns with the laurels of martial victory and poetic achievement his literary predecessor and poet-father, a foil to the failing pair of father and son, as portrayed in the case of Hampsagoras and Hostus,30 but also an afﬁrmation of Silius’ allegiance to his own patria. Conversely, on the Roman side, no general until Scipio is exposed to a profound experience of learning and integrating one’s past, in search of one’s true identity and mission.31 As we shall see,

27 Compare, for instance, Hannibal’s killing of Crista and his six sons in 10.134–69. Crista is compared to a she-eagle, who trains her babies to look directly to the sun, while his sons are like puppies, who have not yet been trained for hunting. Hannibal beheads the middle son, Vesulus, an act apostrophised by the poet as barbara uirtus (10.146). 28 Cf. Luc. 1.450, barbaricos ritus, for the Druidae; see also in Pun. 16.19–20, tot dissona lingua / agmina, barbarico tot discordantia ritu (‘army so diverse in language and so different in terms of barbaric custom’), for Hannibal’s army. 29 On the presence of Ennius as a historical ﬁgure here and his inﬂuence on the Punica in general, see Sechi (1947); Pinto (1953); Bettini (1977); Runchina (1982); Matier (1991); Deremetz (2004), 23–4; Casali (2006); Manuwald (2007), 74–82; and Dorfbauer (2008). 30 See Hardie (1993a), 88–119, for the father and son imagery in terms of literary inﬂuence. 31 We learn, for instance, about Fabius’ past in various places in the poem (2.3–6, 6.627–40, 7.34–68, as Cilnius narrates the story to Hannibal). In effect, Hannibal becomes the privileged ‘student and reader’ of the Roman historical past, as he learns from several Romans, for instance, about Cloelia (10.476–502; see chapter 4, (223–5) and the Palladium (13.30–81); cf. also his tour of the Phlegraean ﬁelds in book 12 (see Muecke [2007]). The story of the Palladium foreshadows the coming of the Magna Mater in book 17, as the image constitutes the token of reconciliation between two people, Diomedes (Daunians) and Aeneas (Trojans). On genealogies in Flavian epic, see A. Barchiesi (2001a); on the story of the Palladium see Ripoll (2001b). Fucecchi (2005) considers these stories as a dynamic intervention of the Roman past

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Scipio’s true identity is revealed to him in the Underworld, when he learns from his mother that he is the son of Jupiter and the chosen general to beat the Carthaginian other.32 As early as book 4, Scipio has the opportunity to save his father from a spear wound, but he is completely overcome by emotion and is on the verge of committing suicide.33 Though this intervention is brought about by Jupiter’s and Mars’ mediation, Scipio himself attempts to commit suicide before his father twice by turning the sword against his own body:34 hic puer ut patrio deﬁxum corpore telum conspexit, maduere genae, subitoque trementem corripuit pallor, gemitumque ad sidera rupit. bis conatus erat praecurrere fata parentis conuersa in semet dextra, bis transtulit iras in Poenos Mauors. (4.454–9) When the boy saw the spear lodged in his father’s body, tears wetted his cheeks, and suddenly he trembled, becoming pale, and he let out a loud groan to the stars. Twice he had tried to die before his parent by turning his right hand against his own self, twice did Mars turn his fury against the Carthaginians.

What begins as madness is transformed into the slaughter of the enemy, whereby Scipio presents his father with ante oculos . . . optata piacula (4.465).35 Unlike the pair we have seen, such as Marcellus and his son or Hampsagoras and Hostus, or, as we shall examine in Capua, Pacuvius and his son, or the tragedies of fathers dying with

in the narrative (through exemplarity) that puts a stop to Hannibal’s threatening advances against the city itself. 32 See chapter 4 (213–21). Regulus’ close connection with his patria proves problematic in the digression of book 6, as we shall see in chapter 3. 33 Liv. 21.46.7, Plb. 10.3.3, V. Max. 5.4.2. See Ripoll (1998), 282–5; cf. Marks’ (2005a), 115–22, discussion of the episode and the intertextual allusions to Homer, Virgil, and Ovid. Marks, however, does not discuss the episode in the context of fathers and sons in the poem. 34 On this episode, see Marks (2005a), 115–23. 35 This constitutes a reversal of Virgilian imagery: the phrase bis conatus erat alludes to Daedalus’ failure to depict Icarus’ death in Aen. 6.32–3, where a father has survived his son; whereas Scipio’s victories (sacriﬁcial victims) ante oculos patris, reverses the Virgilian ante ora patrum, those who died before their fathers’ eyes, in Aen. 1.95.

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their children (in books 2 and 9),36 Scipio succeeds in saving his father, preﬁguring the rescue of his patria at the end of the war: tum celso e curru Mauors ‘Carthaginis arces exscindes’ inquit ‘Tyriosque ad foedera coges. nulla tamen longo tanta exorietur in aeuo lux tibi, care puer. macte, o macte indole sacra, uera Iouis proles. et adhuc maiora supersunt, sed nequeunt meliora dari.’ (4.472–7) Then from his high chariot Mars said: ‘You will sack the citadel of Carthage and will force the Tyrians to a peace treaty. But no other such great day will rise for you in your life, dear boy. Honoured, honoured you are with your sacred talent, true son of Jove. And greater things still await you, but no better things can be given to you.’

The poet, however, delays the discovery of Scipio’s true identity, until the hero meets his mother, Pomponia, in the Underworld (book 13), though Mars here hastens to recognise the general’s parentage by Jove. As we will see, Scipio’s reunion with his mother precedes his meeting with his father in the Underworld (13.663–86), a signiﬁcant shift of focus from fathers to mothers. Nevertheless, from the beginning of Scipio’s involvement in battles, in book 4, a close relationship is being established between his earthly father and their patria. And this pair of father and son constitutes the example par excellence in the poem. And yet, Scipio, the saviour of this country, is also subject to the rash decisions in store for the patria in the years after the Second Punic War, when the Romans will exile Scipio in 187 bce. In fact, when the Sibyl foresees this development, she stresses the words patria and urbs: ‘pudet urbis iniquae / quod post haec decus hoc patriaque domoque carebit’ (‘I am ashamed of the unfair city, since after these events, this glory [i.e. Scipio] will be deprived of his country and his home’, 13.514–15). Within Silius’ idealised vision of the Second Punic War as the most successful moment in Roman

36 See below on Mopsus and his sons. For Satricus’ story in book 9, see Brue`re (1959), 229–32; Beaty (1960), 12, 59, 104; Niemann (1975), 174–7; Hardie (1993b), 67–8; Mezzanotte (1995), 362–3, Fucecchi (1999), Dominik (2006), 124–5 (with reference to Tac. Hist. 3.25; cf. also Burck [1971]).

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affairs, we get a glimpse of Rome’s eventual decline and fall, as her children turn against one other or as the patria becomes increasingly ungrateful and ‘kills’ her own offspring.

CAPUA: ANOTHER ROME? A CITY IN THE PERIPHERY In book 11, Perolla (who remains anonymous in Silius), the son of the Capuan Pacuvius, proves braver than his own father (Pacuuio genitus patrias damnauerat artes, ‘the son of Pacuvius had spurned his father’s intrigues’, 11.311), as he conceives of a plan to kill Hannibal in Capua (11.303–68).37 The aged father stalls this project by offering himself to be killed instead of Hannibal and thus protects his son from the ensuing havoc. Silius apostrophises the youth in the beginning of the section, praising him for his initiative (11.304–6).38 Although the father’s initial plea cannot ultimately stop the impetuous young man from pursuing his undertaking, the ﬁnal gesture of the aged man toward his abdomen succeeds in persuading Perolla: per si quid superest uitae, per iura parentis perque tuam nostra potiorem, nate, salutem, absiste inceptis, oro, ne sanguine cernam polluta hospitia ac tabo repleta cruento pocula et euersas pugnae certamine mensas . . . hoc iugulo dextram explora. namque haec tibi ferrum, si Poenum inuasisse paras, per uiscera ferrum nostra est ducendum. tardam ne sperne senectam. (11.332–6, 356–8) In the name of my remaining life, of the rights of a father, and of your own safety, son, which is more important than mine, abandon your undertaking, I beg you. Let me not see hospitality deﬁled by blood or see cups ﬁlled with bloody gore or tables be overturned by the contest of battle . . . Try your right 37 Cf. Liv. 23.8–9. For the Pacuvius episode, see Burck (1984a), 18–21; Bettenworth (2004), 375–92; Bernstein (2008), 145–50. 38 The phrase magnae indolis (‘of a great character’) in 11.306 echoes Mars’ apostrophe to Scipio, macte, o macte indole sacra (4.475), an allusion to Virgil’s Aen. 9.641.

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hand on this neck. For, if you intend to kill the Carthaginian, you must drive your sword through this stomach, through my stomach. Do not despise my slow old age.

In this case, the son’s determination falls short of its intended target, since the Fates have commanded otherwise. Pacuvius’ feminine mode of persuasion, reminiscent of Jocasta’s futile effort in Thebaid 11,39 as we saw in chapter 1, accentuates the father’s liminality and his alienation from his own patria, as he dissuades his son from a heroic deed that is perceived by the authorial voice as a step towards the right direction, that is Capua’s return to the maternal space of mother Rome. Such an act, however, would have countered the epic’s scope and telos and invites Silius’ ‘intervention’ to re-establish the boundaries: Hannibal has to be conquered by Scipio’s, a true Roman’s, own hand, not by a Capuan, a man perceived as an externus: et magni superum cura seruatus in arma Scipiadae Poenus, nec tantum fata dederunt externa peragi dextra. pulcherrimus irae et dignus ﬁeri compos memorabilis ausi, amisit quantam posito conamine laudem, cui tantum est uoluisse decus! (11.361–6) And by the Providence of the gods, the Carthaginian was preserved for the arms of Great Scipio; nor did the Fates allow that such a great accomplishment be performed by a foreign hand. The young man was most beautiful in his anger and worthy of accomplishing his memorable daring. How much fame did he, who wished such a glorious deed, lose by abandoning his plan!

The episode between the brave young man and his father invites us to look at Capua closely, a city that becomes infamous for her perﬁdia towards the Romans, since in the beginning of the eleventh book its inhabitants defect to the Carthaginians:40 the pretext is the Capuan 39 Bernstein (2008), 148 and 150: ‘The episode resists an oversimpliﬁed reading of ﬁlial devotion. Its indication of the proper response to a negative example instead assists in clarifying the rules of ancestral emulation and ﬁlial obedience established throughout epic.’ 40 Decius tries to dissuade the Capuans from mixing fasque nefasque (11.185) by pointing to the barbarity of the Carthaginian army (179–84, and barbara pubes, 196), as opposed to the supremacy of the Julian and Roman clan. Decius’ punishment,

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demand from the Romans to elect consuls from the Italian periphery; their request is rejected. As Silius proleptically avows, better times will materialise for the Capuans, since after the Social War they will have citizen rights and will be able to partake of the beneﬁts of Romanitas:41 ueniet quondam felicior aetas, cum pia Campano gaudebit consule Roma et per bella diu fasces perque arma negatos ultro ad magnanimos referet secura nepotes. poena superborum tamen haec durabit auorum, quod non ante suos Capua ad suffragia mittet, quam Carthago suos. (11.123–9) A happier age will come one day, when pious Rome will rejoice in a consul from Campania and of her own accord, free of fear, will bestow upon the great descendants [of Capua] the rods, which were denied in times of war and conﬂict. This punishment of their arrogant ancestors, however, will last for ever, since Capua will not send her own candidates to Rome for election, before Carthage also sends hers.

The poet maintains that the felicior aetas will coincide with the Romanisation of the periphery both in the Italian peninsula and on African soil. Carthage itself will be a Roman colony also, by the time the citizenship rights are extended to include those traditionally considered as non-Romans.42 Silius endows his anachronistic when he is led away covered up, reminds the reader of Regulus’ own behaviour in book 6, as we shall see in chapter 3 (Decius dies in Alexandria and not Carthage, as intended initially; cf. 11.377–84). On Decius’ insistence on the bonds of ıªª ØÆ with the Romans, see Bernstein (2008), 187–90. 41 For the Capua episode, see Burck (1984a); Cowan (2002), 34–143 and (2007a); Bettenworth (2004), 338–94; Bernstein (2008), 187–90. As Cowan (2007a), 1, observes: Capua in Silius Italicus’ Punica stands for Carthage and Rome in numerous ways, as locus of luxury, Oriental colony, and rival for world hegemony. Capua also stands for both Carthage and Rome inasmuch as she is a city to be sacked. Guilty though she is, she is a victim of Rome. In her role as rival for supremacy she resembles Alba Longa, Veii and all the other cities which must by necessity fall for Rome to stand. 42 The Capuans are elevated to their new status after the Social War in 90 bce. Carthage, on the other hand, becomes a Roman colony as early as 122 bce. See Spaltenstein (1990), 113. It remains difﬁcult to ascertain whether Silius refers to a recently elected friend of his from Campania (Vessey 1984).

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prophecy with a metapoetic quality by alluding to the fourth Eclogue (ultima Cumaei uenit iam carminis aetas, ‘the last age of the Cumaean song has now arrived’, Virg. Ecl. 4.4), a poem itself preoccupied with the arrival of new age (new consuls and a new treaty),43 and also by repeating the exact line from Lucan’s epilogue to the eighth book: ueniet felicior aetas / qua sit nulla ﬁdes saxum monstrantibus illud . . . ‘A happier age will come, when people may not believe those who show this rock . . . ’, Luc. 8.869–70). The rock in Lucan’s sarcastic comment is nothing other than Pompey’s tomb, hurriedly prepared to cover the wretched, decapitated body.44 Behind Silius’ prediction about Capua’s future and the idealistic incorporation of diverse peoples under one government, one may detect the reality of contemporary Roman politics: will this age be happier after all? The uniﬁcation of the system is not seamless, it seems.45 The young man’s plan to assassinate Hannibal comes at the crossroads in the narrative of the war. As the Romans and their former (and future) allies are in search of an effective method to recoup their strength and face the enemy, Hannibal himself discovers another patria, in Capua. The defection of cities to the Carthaginian side is the result of titubante Fortuna (‘unstable Fortune’, Pun. 11.4). Since the majority of these turncoats are Greek cities, the poet underscores the instability of the Roman rule outside Rome itself. This volatility serves as a foil to the later uniﬁcation of these cities under Roman control and Hannibal’s expulsion from Italy, since his presence abets the ﬁckleness. The periphery, however, is not only inhabited by people recalcitrant to Roman rule and civilisation or altogether hostile to the Trojan race. In the ﬁrst colossal event of the war early in the poem, the reader encounters a city outside the borders of Rome, Saguntum, an ally of the Romans, which has the potential of excelling in its ﬁdes, displayed towards its metropolis. 43

Cf. Clausen (1994), 119–29. On the intertextual relationship between Silius and Lucan, see Marks (2010) with further bibliography. On this allusion to Lucan’s Pompey, see also Cowan (2007a), 40, who overemphasises, however, Silius’ pessimism concerning a happier age that never comes. 45 Bernstein (2008), 189, notes: ‘The defection of Capua exposes the fragility of this myth of Italian unity and suggests the contingency of political relationships based on shared descent.’ 44

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SAGUNTUM AS SAME AND OTHER: BREAKING THE B OND WITH PATRIA ROME In the eyes of their allies the Romans, the city of Saguntum and its inhabitants exemplify loyalty, ﬁdes, which ﬁnally leads them to commit mass suicide, before Hannibal victoriously enters the besieged city and claims her as his own.46 A special connection, therefore, is established between Rome and Saguntum from the beginning of the poem, linking the two cities in terms of their common heritage, or in other words, in terms of Saguntum’s Romanness.47 Von Albrecht supports the idea that the account of Saguntum and the ﬁght around its walls (1.271–end of book 2) initiates the moenia-motif in the Punica: the emphasis on Hannibal’s attack against the muri, the walls of the beleaguered city, preﬁgures his attack against Rome’s own walls by the Carthaginians later in the poem (12.479–752).48 The contrast between the perﬁdious Carthaginians and the pious, loyal Saguntines has also been well explored and analysed by scholars in the past.49 46 For an examination of the episode of Saguntum’s siege, see von Albrecht (1964), 25–8, 55–62, 181–3; Vessey (1974); Ku¨ppers (1986); McGuire (1997), 207–19; Ripoll (1998), 406–11; Fucecchi (2003); Bernstein (2008), 179–87 (my reading differs from Bernstein in my emphasis of the Saguntines’ effort to erase any sort of ıªª ØÆ with the cities with which they were formerly associated). McGuire and Ripoll connect this episode with the suicide of the noble Capuans in 13.256–98 (cf. Liv. 26.13–14). The events of the siege are also well known from the historical record: cf. Liv. 21.7–15, App. Hisp. 12, Diod. Sic. 25.15, Plb. 3.17, Dio Cass. 13 (Zon. 8.21). On Silius’ use of historical sources for the episode, see Heynacher (1877), 15–19; Klotz (1933), 12–14; Nicol (1936), 84; Nesselrath (1986), 204–10; Lucarini (2004), 106–11; Pomeroy (2010). Livy’s inﬂuential role in the Punica is beyond doubt, although the aforementioned critics point to the possible inﬂuence of other annalistic sources, such as Valerius Antias or Coelius Antipater; see Gibson (2010) on the inﬂuence of Polybius and Graeco-Roman historiography in general. The fall of Saguntum has also been linked to the fall of Massada (see Rupprecht-Mallersdorf [1995]). 47 See Dominik (2003a), 480: ‘The reader becomes sensitised to think of Saguntum as another Rome and to interpret the qualities attributed to her citizens in terms of traditional Roman virtues. It is non-Romans, not Romans, who are true exemplars of ﬁdes and pietas.’ Pace Fucecchi (2003), 272. 48 See von Albrecht (1964), 24–8. 49 Ibid., 55–86, where von Albrecht explores the ﬁdes-motif as a Grundlinie in the poem. On ﬁdes see also Kissel (1979), 96–100, Burck (1988), 54–8, and Hardie (1993a), 81–3. Vessey (1974), 28, correctly notices that ‘the struggle is a confrontation of ﬁdes and perﬁdia and an emblem of the eternal battle between order and chaos,

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The following section will centre its attention on the presence of otherness in the siege of Saguntum, and what this differentiation betokens for the world of the Punica. By examining the ﬁgure of the Amazon Asbyte, whose IæØÆ and subsequent death occupy the ﬁrst part of book 2, and the mass suicide brought about by the Maenadism of the Saguntine women at the end of the same book, we shall see that Silius organises this book around women, whose behaviour in a peripheral city is marked as other, transgressive. And yet there is a deeper signiﬁcance to these ﬁgures in this ‘female’ book:50 the contest between Theron and Asbyte brings to the surface a latent competition between Roman and non-Roman elements, between Hercules and Hammon, between male and female.51 This competition will reach its peak, though it remains unresolved, with the destruction wrought by the Saguntine women on their own families, an act that bolsters their effort to eliminate any trace of Romanness left at Saguntum. Theron’s Herculean efforts to save his city are thwarted by Hannibal, whereas Hercules’ own endeavours to exempt Saguntum from utter destruction are spoiled by his stepmother’s intervention on behalf of the Carthaginians. The only path to eternal fame available to Saguntum is by occupying the middle ground through an exploitation of its hybridity, being a city outside the boundaries and ideologies of either Rome or Carthage. Let us ﬁrst look at the city’s history, as reported by the Flavian poet. Saguntum is a colony that should not—and indeed could not—be exclusively labelled Roman. Its inhabitants descend from Greek colonists, from Zacynthus, who subsequently merge with immigrants from Italian Ardea.52 The name Zacynthus represents both the island of the Ionian sea and Hercules’ homonymous friend, who dies on site in Spain (1.273–90).53 Mythologically, therefore, Saguntum between spiritual law and anarchy.’ I disagree with Ripoll (1998), 405–16, who considers this episode a mere addition of a pathetic tone in the poem. 50 Consider also that the city of Saguntum is identiﬁed as casta (3.1), just like a Roman matrona, a spouse faithful to her husband (to death). 51 See Fincher (1979), 36: ‘The episode of Theron and Asbyte, during the siege of Saguntum, is thematically important because of Theron’s position as a priest of Hercules.’ 52 Both McGuire (1997), 210, and Dominik (2003a) emphasise the role of Saguntum as another Rome, an approach, however, that minimises the Greek origins of the city. 53 See Asso (2003) and (2010).

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predates the arrival of Hercules in the future site of Rome. The Greek identity of the city is emphasised throughout the narrative. In effect, in a dream sent to Hannibal by Jove, Mercury calls it a Greek city (Graia Saguntos, 3.178). The mixture of peoples and civilisations is indicative of the city’s past and present.54 While Saguntum has established close ties with the Romans, the Greek elements of its past remain visible, resurfacing in the women’s Bacchic murder of the population, a behaviour fused with the elements of Roman Stoic suicide. In particular, one of Saguntum’s greatest warriors, Murrus, epitomises the blending of the two cultures from the Saguntine past. His mother is Greek and his father Rutulian: . . . Rutulo Murrus de sanguine (at idem matre Saguntina Graius geminoque parente Dulichios Italis miscebat prole nepotes). (1.377–9) . . . Murrus was from Rutulian blood (but he also had Greek blood, descending from a Saguntine mother; and with both his parents he combined with his Italian descent a lineage from Dulichium).55

Murrus’ defence of Saguntum is suggestive of his descent, as he ﬁghts a last battle, striving to protect the walls of his own city and thus to procure help and salvation for the walls of the city of Rome itself, a gesture strongly reinforced by his name (1.384–5 and 389–90).56

54 During the battle, Hannibal is taunted by his combatant, Daunus (a name reminiscent of Turnus’ father), that Saguntum is not effeminate: non haec Sidonia tecta feminea fabricata manu pretioue parata . . . fundamenta deum Romanaque foedera cernis. (1.444–7)

This is not a Sidonian city, built by a woman’s hand or bought for money . . . you see foundations laid by the gods and Roman treaties. 55 Spaltenstein (1986), 62–3, observes that Dulichios is used here for the colonists who come from Zacynthus (an island subjected to the rule of Dulichium / Ithaca). 56 The city is also called Rutulian (4.62). Murrus himself also puns with his name in his prayer to Hercules: si tua non segni defenso moenia dextra (‘if I strive to defend your walls with no sluggish hand’, 1.507).

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Another example of the men’s attachment to their city’s heritage occurs with the ambassador to Rome, Sicoris.57 Sicoris claims his descent from the Ardeans, former inhabitants of Italy. In particular, in his address to the Roman senate, he does not hesitate to call Turnus his ancestor: uetus incola Dauni58 (testor vos, fontes et stagna arcana Numici), cum felix nimium dimitteret Ardea pubem, sacra domumque ferens et aui penetralia Turni ultra Pyrenen Laurentia nomina duxi. (1.665–9) I, an old inhabitant of the kingdom of Daunus (I call upon you as my witness, you fountains and secret pools of Numicius), when Ardea was sending out her youth, in which she was very rich, bearing the sacred things and the house and inner shrine of Turnus, I carried the names of Laurentum beyond the Pyrenees.

Sicoris identiﬁes the colonists of Saguntum as links of continuity between Italy and its Western colony, as the Ardean refugees ﬂeeing from Italy to Spain reproduce the story of Trojan Aeneas. In his speech, Sicoris ‘marries’ the Trojan and native elements of Italy, by referring to both Numicius, the place of Aeneas’ ﬁnal resting place,59 and of Turnus,60 whose Ardean heritage is now imported into the newly founded city of Spain. Sicoris’ rhetoric, however, fails to persuade the Romans to take immediate action and aid the beleaguered city. Fabius’ subsequent trip to Saguntum for autopsy and negotiations, with which the second book opens, also proves unsuccessful, as does his trip to Carthage (2.1–55). These fruitless delegations are overturned by the coming of the vessel of the Magna Mater in book 17, as we shall see in the ﬁnal chapter of this study. Just as

57 On the question of the number of Saguntine embassies to Rome, see Klotz (1933), 12–13; Nesselrath (1986), 205–6; Lucarini (2004), 107–10; and brieﬂy Gibson (2010). On the literary topos of an embassy requesting help, see Bernstein (2008), 183. 58 See Spaltenstein (1986), 99, for this reading, preferred to Daunus. 59 See below the discussion on Anna Perenna (136–44). 60 Cf. the use of Laurentia, the capital of the Rutulians, applied to the Romans in general; see Spaltenstein (1986), 23. See Bernstein (2008), 184: ‘Sicoris concludes his appeal by using the metaphor of the body politic, suggesting that his city’s relationship with Rome transcends consanguinity in order to approach consubstantiality.’

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Saguntum opens the war, the arrival of the Magna Mater brings it to a close. In books 1 and 2, however, the Romans, as outsiders, fail to succour their allied city,61 whereas the foreign goddess in book 17 comes to the help of the Roman people, who are in desperate need to expel the foreign other. Furthermore, during the battle against the Amazon Asbyte in book 2, the reader comes across several Saguntines whose heritage is not native to the Iberian land and therefore underscores their otherness. For instance, Mopsus throws himself down from the walls of the city, because Asbyte and Hannibal kill his two sons, Dorylas and Icarus. Mopsus is an outsider (Gortynius aduena, 2.148), a newcomer from Crete, who arrived in the city in search of better luck in the West (uerum ut opum leuior uenatu extendere uitam / abnuit atque artae res exegere per aequor, ‘but when he, deprived of resources, refused to continue his life in hunting, and when his poverty led him across the sea’, 2.102–3); in a word, he is another Daedalus ﬁgure, who like Marcellus cannot protect his offspring but remains an abject, an alien, memorialised only through his tragic death. Among Hannibal’s allies, Silius prominently displays an Amazontype virgin-warrior,62 Asbyte, a ﬁgure whose presence is not attested in the historical record of the Second Punic War, such as in Livy or Polybius, but rather constitutes an epic ploy, invented on the model of Virgil’s Camilla. As we shall see, Asbyte is a signiﬁcant warrior on the Carthaginian side, the ﬁrst to be defeated by the enemy, while her death is dramatically depicted by Silius among the most momentous casualties for Hannibal. As scholars have recognised, like Turnus, Hannibal is also accompanied by an Amazon, female warrior.63 61 Pace Bernstein (2008), 186: ‘The Roman refusal to honour the Saguntines’ request, however, does not imply a rejection of the claim of syngeneia on its own terms. Rather, it suggests the lesser importance of the claim relative to other considerations.’ 62 For an appraisal of ancient sources on Amazons see DuBois (1982), Tyrrell (1984), and Hardwick (1990). For iconic representations, see LIMC, 1.586–653, s.v. Amazones. On Asbyte, in particular, see the analysis by Ku¨ppers (1986), 141–53; Vinchesi (2005), 108–22; Uccellini (2006); Keith (2010). 63 See von Albrecht (1964), 172; Arrigoni (1984), 887–9; Ku¨ppers (1986), 145; Laudizi (1989), 122; Vinchesi (2005), 108–22. For Camilla in Virgil see, for instance, Rosenmeyer (1960); Hornsby (1966); G. S. West (1985); Wilhelm (1987); Boyd (1992); Anderson (1999); Nugent (1999); Reed (2007), 16–43. For the role of virginity in the Aeneid see Mitchell (1991).

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Asbyte remains aloof from any occupation that would immediately classify her as a woman: she is solely a huntress and a warrior, dedicated to Dictynna, another name for the Cretan goddess Britomartis, equal to Roman Diana.64 For his portrait Silius draws on Virgil’s portrayal of the female leader of the Volsci:65 haec ignara uiri uacuoque adsueta cubili uenatu et siluis primos defenderat annos; non calathis mollita manus operataue fuso Dictynnam et saltus et anhelum impellere planta cornipedem ac strauisse feras immitis amabat . . .

(2.68–72)

She had never experienced a man and she usually lay in an empty bed having protected her years of childhood hunting in the woods. She had not softened her hands with wool-baskets nor had she worked with a spindle. She loved Dictynna and the woodlands, as she also loved to urge with her foot a panting steed and ruthlessly to kill wild animals . . .

Throughout the episode, Asbyte’s virginity is stressed with the repetition of the word uirgo (2.84, 114, 121, 168, 176, 188, 202), a recurrence that showcases both her femininity and otherness. Asbyte is the daughter of Hiarbas, king of the Garamantes,66 and of a nymph from Lake Tritonis.67 Therefore, Silius explicitly establishes 64

See Spaltenstein (1986), 112. Cf. Aeneid 7.803–17 and 11.573–84 with Horsfall (2000), 519–30, and (2003), 296–345, respectively. Arrigoni (1984), Ku¨ppers (1986), Vinchesi (2005), and Uccellini (2006) [see also references in n.63 above] have correctly observed many differences between Camilla and Asbyte. First, since Asbyte is not introduced in the catalogue of the Carthaginian allies (1.189–238), her entrance in the poem is somewhat abrupt. Second, her companion Amazons either ride a chariot or a horse (2.82–3), whereas Virgil’s Camilla exclusively rode on horseback. Riding a chariot instead of a horse, however, brings Asbyte closer to Turnus’ practices (Ku¨ppers [1986], 145). Ku¨ppers, therefore, concludes that the African Amazons have absorbed the traits of both Camilla and Homer’s Penthesilea. Uccellini (2006) too emphasises the fusion of sources in Asbyte’s portrait, not just from Virgil, but also from other representations of eccentric and ‘dangerous’ female ﬁgures, such as Medusa and the African Amazons (see Diod. Sic. 3.52–5, 3.66.5–6). Cf. also Penthesilea in Aen. 1.493, another obvious Amazonian parallel (lunatis peltis, Aen. 1.490 Thermodontiaca munita in proelia pelta, Pun. 2.80). 66 Ripoll (1998) 48 n.116, suggests that Hiarbas’ presence here alludes to Iarbas in Aeneid 4. See also Uccellini (2006), 239–43, for Asbyte’s connection to both Iarbas and Athena, the warrior goddess, through the Lake Tritonis. 67 Notice that the only female person called bellatrix in the poem is Pallas, who is also the protecting goddess of the Lake Tritonis (see 3.323). 65

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a connection between his poem and the Aeneid and a continuation of the story of Dido’s spurned suitor, Iarbas. Moreover, as we learn from this genealogy, Hiarbas is the son of Hammon: unde genus proauumque Iouem regina ferebat / et sua fatidico repetebat nomina luco ‘Thence the queen claimed her lineage and Jupiter as her great-grandfather, deriving her name from the prophetic grove’, 2.66–7). Not only is there an inner connection established between Asbyte and Dido via Hiarbas, but there is also a connection with Camilla through Asbyte’s name. One should note, however, that Asbyte is associated with Iarbas, therefore she fosters a connection with a masculine and aggressive character in Virgil; Hannibal recognises in Asbyte a worthy ally, inasmuch as her lineage is aligned with his own lineage from Dido. In addition, Asbyte is called after Hammon’s name ı . Camilla also carries her mother’s name, slightly changed (from Casmilla to Camilla, Virg. Aen. 11.543). However, through the connection to Hammon, Asbyte’s portrait gains a prophetic dimension that Camilla’s character lacks. Asbyte’s company of women does not consist only of virgin girls:68 nec non Veneris iam foedera passae / reginam cingunt, sed uirgine densior ala est (‘And women who have already submitted to the bonds of Venus escort the queen, but the troop consists of more virgins than married women’, 2.83–4). This observation places more emphasis on virginity than marriage as an important element in Asbyte’s character. As I have observed, the word uirgo distinguishes Asbyte from the rest of her troop of Amazons. Thus, we can say that a very close connection with Camilla’s virginity is established. And yet Asbyte remains mute, with no chance to talk in direct discourse, whereas in Aeneid 11 Camilla twice addresses her victims, ﬁrst Ornytus (686–9) and then the Ligurian son of Aunus (715–17). By contrast, Asbyte’s silence adds weight to her presence: although she is the descendant of Hammon, and her ancestry links her to the fatidicus lucus (2.67) of Hammon’s oracle, she is given no voice in the narrative. Asbyte’s silence prepares the reader for the ensuing beheading which at once deprives her of voice and life (amputat . . . ora, 68

I agree with Lemaire in taking foedera passae as quaedam nuptae erant. See Lemaire (1823), 1.96. Spaltenstein (1986), 114, considers foedus as describing only sexual intercourse.

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2.202).69 Asbyte’s voicelessness agrees with her ﬁnal abjection, while it adds to her centrality in the Saguntum episode, as one of Hannibal’s closest allies, the ﬁrst signiﬁcant loss in the war. Asbyte’s devotion to Dictynna and to hunting wild animals resembles that of her ﬁrst opponent, the Saguntine Mopsus. As we saw above, Mopsus is a Cretan who left his country and pursued a better fortune by coming to Saguntum. Mopsus himself was also once devoted to a life similar to that of Asbyte—he liked hunting while he was in Crete: ille uagam caelo demisit saepe uolucrem, ille procul campo linquentem retia ceruum uulnere sistebat . . . (2.96–8) He often brought down from the sky wandering birds; from afar, he used to stay the stag that was escaping the nets along the plain . . .

Crete is the birthplace of Mopsus, while Asbyte worships Dictynna, the Cretan version of Diana. In addition to a common lifestyle that Mopsus and Asbyte at ﬁrst share, Mopsus’ Greek name reminds the reader of a famous literary predecessor, the seer of the Argonauts’ expedition.70 However, Mopsus preferred to forsake his previous life: uenatu extendere uitam / abnuit (2.102–3).71 Asbyte’s loyalty to virginity and hunting brings her in opposition to Mopsus, whom she will kill. As Mopsus targets the virgin girl, he kills Harpe instead:

69

Consider the contrast to Orpheus’ death in Pun. 11.478–80. Mopsus is a central ﬁgure also in Valerius Flaccus (e.g. Argon. 1.207–26; see Zissos [2008], 186–99). 71 The abandonment of the lifestyle of the hunter has most of the time a negative outcome in this epic. Cf. 2.141: paenitet heu sero dulces liquisse penates, ‘too late, alas, he repents having left his dear household behind’. See 14.462–76 and the deterioration of the Daphnis motif. See von Albrecht (1964), 158–61; Martin (1980); Vinchesi (1999a). Notice also Silius’ comment after the death of Mopsus: dum cadit externo Gortynius aduena bello (‘while the Cretan foreigner falls in a foreign war’, 2.148). Mopsus remains forever a Gortynius aduena, while the war at Saguntum is for him an externum bellum. Silius’ observation supports the idea that Mopsus is not integrated in his new Saguntine home but remains marginalised. If we consider that the word aduena appears four times in the poem in connection with Mopsus, Dido, Anna Perenna, and Hannibal, then I think it is safe to assume that all four times the word has a rather sinister connotation (cf. 4.765, 8.163, 17.1). 70

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tum uultum intendens telumque in uirginis ora desertum non grata Iovem per uota uocabat. namque ut fatiferos conuerti prospicit arcus, opposito procul insidiis Nasamonias Harpe corpore praeripuit letum . . . (2.114–18) Then, turning his face and spear against the face of Asbyte, he was praying to Jupiter whom he had deserted, with vain prayers. For when Harpe, the Nasamonian girl, saw the fatal bow turned around, by opposing her body to the distant danger, she snatched away death . . .

Consequently, Asbyte in tears kills with her spear Dorylas, Mopsus’ elder son (2.125–31), while Hannibal kills Icarus, Mopsus’ younger son (2.132–7). Upon the death of his two sons, Mopsus commits suicide by falling from the tower on the body of Icarus, his dead son (2.138–47).72 This ﬁrst encounter Asbyte has on the battleﬁeld reveals the importance of names with Greek origin for the whole episode (Harpe < ±æÇø).73 The signiﬁcance of Greek names is further developed by the exploitation of the name of Theron, Asbyte’s murderer. Silius introduces him as a priest of Hercules after Mopsus’ death: Alcidae templi custos araeque sacerdos (2.150).74 Theron is a Daunian (Daunius, 2.244), a native of Saguntum, and certainly does not have the usual appearance of a priest but is rather portrayed as Hercules’ reincarnation:75 atque illi non hasta manu, non uertice cassis, sed ﬁsus latis umeris et mole iuuentae agmina uastabat claua nihil indigus ensis. exuuiae capiti impositae tegimenque leonis terribilem attollunt excelso uertice rictum. centum angues idem Lernaeaque monstra gerebat in clipeo et sectis geminam serpentibus hydram. (2.153–9)

72

Spaltenstein (1986), 121, refers to the connection between Mopsus and Daedalus. For Mopsus, his sons, and the Homeric background of the scene see Juhnke (1972), 188–9. Ripoll (1998), 421 n.207, observes that the scene of Mopsus’ suicide adds to the pathos and climax of the episode at Saguntum. 73 See the discussion in Augoustakis (2005). 74 For a similar instance of a priest partaking of the battle, see Nabis in 15.672–91. 75 See von Albrecht (1964), 56 n.5. As Ripoll (1998), 114–15 mentions, Theron reminds us of the mythic past of Saguntum, a city founded by Hercules himself.

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He had no spear in his hand, no helmet on his head, but trusting in his broad shoulders and the might of his youth, he was destroying the army with his club, in need of no sword. The spoils and skin of the lion, laid on his head, raise the terrible open mouth aloft on his tall ﬁgure. He was also carrying on his shield a hundred serpents and the monster of Lerna, the Hydra that multiplied, when the serpents were cut in two.

Hercules’ priest appears to be the very embodiment of the demigod. The club, the lion skin, and the depiction of the labour against the Hydra clearly indicate Hercules’ presence in this episode.76 After all, Hercules is the tutelary god of Saguntum.77 Theron’s appearance, and more precisely the decapitation of the monstrous Hydra on his shield, foreshadows the ﬁnal outcome, Asbyte’s beheading: tum saltu Asbyten conantem linquere pugnas occupat incussa gemina inter tempora claua feruentesque rotas turbataque frena pauore disiecto spargit collisa per ossa cerebro ac rapta properans caedem ostentare bipenni amputat e curru reuolutae uirginis ora. necdum irae positae. celsa nam ﬁgitur hasta spectandum caput . . . (2.197–204) Then, with a jump he stops Asbyte who is trying to ﬂee from the battle and smites her between her twin temples with his club. He spatters the hot wheels and the horses, disturbed by fear, with the brains which gushed from the broken skull; he snatches her axe and, eager to display the slaughter, he cuts off the head of the maiden, as she is rolling out of the chariot. Not yet is his wrath stopped. For the head is ﬁxed on a lofty spear, to be seen by everyone . . .

By cutting off Asbyte’s head, Theron fulﬁls the omen portrayed on his shield, namely the Hydra’s beheading by Hercules, evoking other mythological parallels as well, such as Perseus and the head of Medusa.78 As we have discussed above, Asbyte is devoted to the

76

See Pe´rez Vilatela (2002) on the portrait of the ‘club-ﬁghter’ in pre-Roman Spain. Cf. Pun. 2.475–92. 78 See Uccellini (2006), 243–48. Marks (2008) reads decapitation in the Punica as a political act, a metaphor reﬂecting the different trajectories and ultimate outcomes for each side of the war; e.g. Paulus’ death becomes a symbolic decapitation of Rome, while the Romans decapitate many Carthaginians after Cannae, an act that forebodes 77

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goddess Dictynna, to whom she vows the exuuiae she hopes to win, should she kill Theron. When the virgin warrior catches sight of Theron, Silius refers to what Asbyte silently wishes: saeuamque bipennem perlibrans mediae fronti spolium inde superbum Herculeasque tibi exuuias, Dictynna, uouebat. (2.189–91) And aiming her harsh axe at the centre of his temple, she vowed to you, Dictynna, a glorious booty from it and the Herculean spoils.

Asbyte is not the chaser but the chased person in this case. Theron, who is the chaser for the moment, is deﬁned as such by his name. Its Greek origin from the verb Åæø is exploited by Silius, in order to underline this dimension in Theron’s masculine portrait. Moreover, Asbyte reminds us of Camilla in her pursuit of Chloreus, the eunuch priest of Cybele.79 Camilla was pursuing Chloreus, lured by the gold armour he was wearing:80 totumque incauta per agmen / femineo praedae et spoliorum ardebat amore . . . (‘Fearless, with a female love for plunder and spoils, she was raging through all the army . . . ’, Aen. 11.781–2). Although Camilla’s femineus amor and ardor for spoils is instigated by Chloreus’ alien appearance, at the end, she becomes a prey to Arruns, while her lust for booty remains unquenched. Likewise, Asbyte, who looks for spoils to dedicate to her tutelary goddess, is transformed into prey and subsequently victimised (Theron replacing praeda). Asbyte’s unrestrained life in the wilderness had enabled her to be always the hunter so far, yet she is now transformed into prey at the hands of a man whose name alludes to hunting. In addition, Theron himself aspires to despoil Asbyte when he sees her ﬁghting.81 Theron ﬁnds particularly appealing Asbyte’s chariot, her shield, and her outﬁt, decorated with gems: Asbytes currum et

Carthage’s ultimate failure. On the decapitation of Hasdrubal, see also Augoustakis (2003b). On Hasdrubal and Asbyte, see Augoustakis (2001), 65–128. 79 See G. S. West (1985) on the effeminacy of Chloreus as opposed to more masculine Roman values. 80 The word aurum is emphasised by Virgil, ﬁve times (Aen. 11.771, 774 twice, 776, 789). 81 Ripoll (1998, 242–3) discusses the role of gloria as an important motivation for Silian heroes, in particular Theron.

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radiantis tegmina laenae / poscebat uotis gemmataque lumina peltae . . . (‘Through his prayers he was seeking Asbyte’s chariot and the glittering mantle that covered her and her jewelled shiny shield . . . ’, Pun 2.166–7). The reading laenae instead of laeuae in the above verse eliminates the pointless repetition of a shield.82 The reference to the shield, decorated with jewels, and to the mantle which itself is radians as well, underlines the picture of gold and gems, which was also explored by Virgil in his portrayal of Camilla, yet in a different direction. Moreover, Camilla herself was partly naked and partly covered with a purple mantle: turbaque miratur matrum et prospectat euntem, attonitis inhians animis ut regius ostro uelet honos leuis umeros, ut ﬁbula crinem auro internectat, Lyciam ut gerat ipsa pharetram et pastoralem praeﬁxa cuspide myrtum. (Aen. 7.813–17) 82

There are two possible readings for the last word of the hexameter in 2.166: laeuae O, laenae ø), of which the former would refer to Asbyte’s gleaming shield, while the latter would describe her decorated cloak. Delz prints laeuae, a reading defended by Ha˚kanson (1976), 8–9, followed by McGushin (1985), 126, and Spaltenstein (1986), 124, and based on 2.77–81, especially fulgentem tegmine laeuam / Thermodontiaca munita in proelia pelta (2.79–80). When Silius describes the Amazon’s accoutrement, he makes no reference to a mantle. The phrase fulgentem tegmine laeuam describes Asbyte’s shield on her left arm, while tegmine is in apposition to and explained by pelta in the following line. Ha˚kanson supports the idea that the phrase in 2.79 corresponds to the hypallage radiantis tegmine laeuae in 2.166; pace Lemaire (1823), 1.104, who explains radiantis as an equivalent of purpureae and draws the parallelism with Aen. 4.262: Tyrio ardebat murice laena (‘the cloak was gleaming in Tyrian purple’). In reading laenae, I take into account the following: ﬁrst, there is a possible reference to Asbyte’s clothes in the opening of her description as habitu insignis patrio (2.77), which might well be an allusion to a mantle; second, the reading laeuae could easily be a corruption of laenae, since laeuum is repeated only four lines below, in 2.170 (laeuum per orbem, ‘by wheeling to the left’); and third, in 2.166–7, Theron craves three objects, connected with the conjunctions et and -que: the chariot, the mantle, and the shield. More speciﬁcally, by using -que the poet makes a clear distinction between the gleaming mantle and the pelta and thus does not place the two in apposition to one another. I ﬁnd that a reference to the shield twice in the same sentence would be repetitious and unnecessary. Finally, it seems sensible that Theron is after Asbyte’s chariot, cloak, and shield, a parallel with Virgil’s Camilla, who wears a purple mantle (Aen. 7.814–15). In fact, we can observe an interesting reversal of roles: whereas Camilla pursues Chloreus for his gleaming attire (Aen. 11.775–7), in the Punica it is Theron, who, as his name suggests, hunts for the woman warrior’s apparel. Therefore, I side with Duff (1934), Miniconi and Devallet (1979), and Ku¨ppers (1986), 150, who read and print laenae in their editions.

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The crowd of matrons marvels and stares at her passing by, in astonishment at how proud royal purple veils Camilla’s smooth shoulders, how a clasp of gold entwines her hair, at how she bears her Lycian quiver and her shepherd’s pike of myrtle tipped with steel.

The description of Camilla’s appearance complements Asbyte’s portrayal:83 ergo habitu insignis patrio, religata ﬂuentem Hesperidum crinem dono dextrumque feroci nuda latus Marti ac fulgentem tegmine laeuam Thermodontiaca munita in proelia pelta fumantem rapidis quatiebat cursibus axem. (Pun. 2.77–81) Thus, she was conspicuous in her native dress, with her long hair bound by the gift of the Hesperides and with her right breast naked for the cruel battle, while her left side was shining covered for the battle with the Amazons’ shield. She was shaking her smoking chariot with furious speed.

In Asbyte’s case, her outﬁt and apparel, which consist of her mantle, her chariot, and her shield, become the object of Theron’s desire, an inversion of the Camilla episode, where Camilla was attracted to Arruns’ spoils. Asbyte the huntress, devotee of Dictynna, becomes a prey to Theron, who, through his representation of Hercules, preﬁgures Asbyte’s own beheading and dismemberment. In addition, Theron’s masculine portrayal as Hercules reincarnate is reversed through the similarities with Camilla. Here it is not the woman warrior who is inspired by the amor auri but rather the chaser Theron, who tries to despoil the virgin warrior and snatch away her apparel. This observation justiﬁes the complexity of gender roles and the manipulation of the tradition on Silius’ part: both Theron and Asbyte absorb Camilla’s traits and behaviour, in a game where the female has repudiated her femininity, while the male is lured by a woman’s attire. Thus, there is a negotiation of gender roles whereby Asbyte’s ‘masculinity’ suddenly is thrown into question by her feminine appearance immediately before her death. Asbyte’s feminine side is underscored 83

Nicol (1936), 133–4, notices that ‘although the poet explicitly says that her dress was that of her native country, it is plain that Camilla and the Amazons were uppermost in his mind.’

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before her beheading by Theron, hence paralleling Camilla’s femineus amor. In addition, the attribute uirgo also intensiﬁes and reinforces our reading of Asbyte not only as a warrior, but as a woman as well, as she transgresses the boundaries of her sex.84 Therefore, Asbyte, an African Amazon, comes to the forefront of the narrative as a telling example of asymbolic autonomia, being vociferous in her silence, as she becomes abject. In a heroic epic, such as the Punica, the Amazon’s masculinity must be marginalised, while the phallic power of her head, like Medusa’s, must be annihilated. As Kristeva points out, ‘the phallic of the head increases the fear it evokes. The only possible way to represent the phallic femininity connected with the head is through decapitation.’85 From warriorhunter Asbyte is transformed into the hunted victim, the displaced female, a foreigner in a foreign land, in an alien landscape, that of epic poetry. As Keith observes, ‘the hierarchy of gender and westward impetus of translatio imperii work together to naturalise as inevitable Asbyte’s brutal death at Theron’s hands’.86 Not only is Asbyte the most prominent Carthaginian æø ºØÆ, the ﬁrst sacriﬁce in the war, but also as a conspicuous female presence she is transformed into the sacriﬁcial victim of the African continent at large in her struggle with Rome: the peripheral other that cannot be absorbed by the androcentric narrative of the epic and is therefore abject. Hannibal immediately avenges his companion’s death by killing Theron. Theron becomes the prey and succumbs to the uiolentior ira of the Elissaeo . . . tyranno (2.239), especially on account of the death of the female warrior: celsa nam ﬁgitur hasta spectandum caput; id gestent ante agmina Poenum imperat et propere currus ad moenia uertant. haec caecus fati diuumque abeunte fauore uicino Theron edebat proelia leto. (2.203–7)

84 As Uccellini (2006), 253, rightly points out: ‘Un Amazzone, dunque, Asbyte, ma non Amazzone sola, e un Amazzone sopratutto in quanto destinata ineluttabilmente a soccombere.’ 85 Kristeva (1998), 37–9, and Sjo¨holm (2005), 121. 86 Keith (2010), 369.

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For her [Asbyte’s] head is ﬁxed on a lofty spear, to be seen by everyone; he [Theron] bids his men to bear it in front of the Carthaginian troops and to drive the chariots swiftly towards the walls [of the city]. Blind to his doom and with the favour of the gods disappearing, Theron was ﬁghting this battle while death was approaching.

The spectacle of Asbyte’s head causes the death of Theron, a victim of Hannibal’s wrath.87 The wrath and resentment for Theron will be carried on by Asbyte’s troops, the Numidians, when they pay due honour during the funeral of their queen:88 at Nomadum furibunda cohors miserabile humandi deproperat munus tumulique adiungit honorem et rapto cineres ter circum corpore lustrat. hinc letale uiri robur tegimenque tremendum in ﬂammas iaciunt ambustoque ore genisque deforme alitibus liquere cadauer Hiberis. (2.264–9) But the cohort of the Numidians, frantic [with grief], hasten the mournful ofﬁce of burial and attach the honour of a pyre. In addition, having seized [Theron’s] corpse, they go three times round her ashes. Then, they cast into the ﬂames the deadly club of the man and his dreadful head-cover. And when his face and cheeks were burnt, they left the unsightly corpse to the Spanish birds.

The episode, as we shall see, is constructed around two ﬁres, the funeral pyre of silenced Asbyte and the big ﬁre lit by the Saguntines in

87

Just as Harpe had protected Asbyte, so Theron protects the moenia of his city (2.228–32) when he orders the doors to close: soli mihi claudite portas (‘against me alone, close the gates’, 232). When Hannibal confronts Theron, he utters words of immense wrath: ‘tu solue interea nobis, bone ianitor urbis, / supplicium, ut pandas . . . tua moenia leto.’ (‘You, worthy keeper of the gates of your city, pay the penalty, so that you may throw open your walls by your death’, 240–1). 88 According to Nicol (1936), 134, there is neither literary nor archaeological evidence to show that incineration was a custom among the Libyans. The error, Nicol claims, must be ascribed to poetic models. Consider also the discrepancy between the custom of the Libyans as described here and the passage where Scipio exposes the diversity of burial customs to Appius Claudius in book 13 (466–87). In 13.479–81, Scipio claims that the Garamantes bury their dead in the sand, while the Nasamones throw the corpses in the sea. For an examination of Scipio’s discourse on funerary rites see Bassett (1963); Reitz (1982), 35–43; Devallet (1987).

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order to burn their heirlooms and thus ‘burn’ their ties with their ally, Rome. Like Hypsipyle in the Thebaid, Asbyte becomes part of a tomb, as the abjection of the female is inscribed in the narrative as a monument, part of a funeral procession, and burial/absence, which is explained by the poet through an ethnographic reﬂection on the burial customs of the Nasamones, to stress one last time the distinct difference of Asbyte and her people within the geography of his epic. In addition, the description of Asbyte’s burial brings symmetry in this episode. Theron is punished for Asbyte’s death, thus unleashing Hannibal’s furor against the city of Saguntum: both Hannibal and the Numidians are frantic in their grief and wrath. Theron’s corpse is abused (rapto, 2.266), just as Asbyte is violently beheaded. And ﬁnally, only Theron’s face is consumed by ﬁre, while the remainder of the corpse is cast to the birds. The abuse of Theron’s face (ore genisque, 2.268) corresponds to Asbyte’s beheading but also points to the death of the city of Saguntum, when the ﬁre will consume all traces of the city’s past. Therefore, Asbyte’s presence is crucial to the Saguntum episode, since her death initiates the revelation of Hannibal’s raging ira against Saguntum and the Romans in general.89 What Asbyte’s death betokens for the Carthaginian general is that in her demise, Hannibal sees the elision of otherness and a reﬂection of his own end and Carthage’s ﬁgurative ‘decapitation’ at the end of the poem. Like Asbyte, Hannibal will be slowly marginalised and his voice will be absorbed as from a hero-warrior he becomes an efﬁgy in Scipio’s triumph. After all, Hannibal’s heroism proves to be of no use for the capture of Saguntum, since it is Juno’s arrangement to send Tisiphone in order to persuade the Saguntines to commit suicide that leads to the sack of the city, not Hannibal’s extraordinary bravery. Hannibal enters an empty city at the end of book 2 (irrumpunt uacuam Poeni tot cladibus arcem, ‘the Carthaginians rush into the citadel, empty by so many disasters’, 2.692), while the poet-uates closes the book with a prophecy concerning the Carthaginian’s own

89 Vinchesi (2005), 119 and n.88, correctly observes that the epithet belliger applies only to Asbyte (2.168) and Hannibal (1.38 and 3.162) in the poem.

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unheroic death and suicide (2.699–707). Theron has ultimately failed to secure his city’s salvation.90 When the city can no longer endure the long siege (and the prolonged famine),91 a sharp contrast arises to this attachment to the defence of Saguntum, which can be attributed to the Saguntines’ close relationship with the Romans (and their gods, such as Hercules). Hercules implores the goddess Fides to come to the Saguntines’ help (2.475–525),92 but in her speech, Fides reveals that human beings have long forsaken her; and indeed, the Romans themselves are included among those who have equally desecrated her name: nemo insons; pacem servant commercia culpae. (‘No one is innocent; complicity in guilt preserves peace’ 2.506).93 Now Hercules realises the futility of his plea on behalf of his people. The Saguntines’ love for their country transforms them completely under the spell of Juno’s agent, Tisiphone.94 When Juno declares her own war by inspiring the female population with bacchic frenzy, the two elements of the Saguntine people will come to the surface: they are no longer Greek or Roman, as they strive to destroy their past by the mass suicide and the burning of the city. Both Juno and Tisiphone, disguised as Tiburna,

90 As Keith (2010), 368, eloquently notes: ‘Asbyte is the ﬁrst signiﬁcant Carthaginian casualty, her death presaged by the fall of her Amazonian comrade Harpe (2.116–24) just as Hannibal will be the last, his death anticipated beyond the conclusion of Silius’ epic.’ 91 Ariemma (2004) explores the intertextual relationship of episode of the famine with Lucan’s Vulteius episode in De bello ciuili 4, as he views the Punica as a ‘retrospective anticipation’ of Lucan’s poem. 92 See Juhnke (1972), 192–3, for the Homeric background of the episode. For a discussion of Hercules’ role in the Punica, see von Albrecht (1964), passim; Bassett (1966); Kissel (1979), 153–60; Liebeschuetz (1979), 170–73; Fincher (1979), 43–52; Vessey (1982); Billerbeck (1986a) and (1986b); Laudizi (1989), 112–13; Matier (1989), 7–8; Mezzanotte (1995), 372–3; Helzle (1996), 265–6; Ripoll (1998), 112–32; Asso (1999), 80–81; Marks (1999), 147–93; Asso (2003); Augoustakis (2003a); Marks (2005a), 148–63; Moretti (2005). For Hannibal’s associations with Hercules, see the most recent discussion in Augoustakis (2003a) and Gibson (2005). 93 For the similarity with Ovid’s Astraea in Met. 1.149–50, see Brue`re (1958), 478. 94 On the role of Juno in the poem (and Virgil’s Aeneid), see Ramaglia (1952–3); von Albrecht (1964), 167–8; Kissel (1979), 30–37; Lorenz (1968), 4–67; Ha¨ussler (1978), 198–206; Ku¨ppers (1986), 61–92; Laudizi (1989), 73–92; Feeney (1991), 303–4. On the inﬂuence of Valerius Flaccus’ Lemnian episode on Silius, see Ripoll (1999), 512–13.

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address the Saguntines as Rutulians (2.541 and 567), a name with ominous reminiscences of Turnus’ loss at the end of Virgil’s Aeneid. Tiburna does not seem a coincidental choice for Tisiphone. She is the wife of Murrus and also an offspring of Daunus (2.557). Tiburna’s name carries a direct relationship with Tibur, a place of worship for Hercules, the tutelary god of Saguntum.95 The Fury uses her to avert the mothers from succumbing to Carthaginian rule and subjecting themselves to possible slavery under the Sidonian mothers (2.571–4). In effect, the beginning of Tiburna’s speech is indicative of Juno’s initiative to annihilate the identity of the Saguntine people: ‘sat Fidei proauisque datum . . . ’ ‘Enough we have given to Loyalty and our ancestors . . . ’, 2.561). The distraught and frenzied women are kindled further by the omen of the sacred serpent’s departure from Zacynthus’ tomb; Zacynthus, the founder of Saguntum, represents the city genius, whose spirit, abiding by the homonymous hero’s tomb (constructed by Hercules himself), is, therefore, now abandoning the city (2.580–91).96 Any ties between Tiburna, Hercules, Murrus, and her native city (as a descendant of Daunus, the Rutulian/ Italian) are now rescinded, unbeknownst to the woman driven by Tisiphone’s goads. The Saguntines burn their heirlooms, which once accompanied their ancestors from faraway Zacynthus and Ardea, and thus they destroy any evidence of their present, past, and future at the sight of death: certatim structus surrectae molis ad astra in media stetit urbe rogus; portantque trahuntque longae pacis opes quaesitaque praemia dextris, Callaico uestes distinctas matribus auro armaque Dulichia proauis portata Zacyntho et prisca aduectos Rutulorum ex urbe penates. huc, quicquid superest captis, clipeosque simulque infaustos iaciunt enses et condita bello effodiunt penitus terrae gaudentque superbi uictoris praedam ﬂammis donare supremis. (2.599–608)

95

See Miniconi and Devallet (1979), 60. Cf. Murrus’ last prayer to Hercules, before he dies (1.505–7). Pace Spaltenstein (1986), 162. 96 See Asso (1999), 80, on the aetiological aspect of the episode.

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A pyre, zealously built, stood in the middle of the city, whose height rose to the stars; they drag and carry the wealth of a long peace and the prizes won by valour, that is the clothes embroidered by the mothers with Gallician gold, the Dulichian weapons brought by their ancestors from Zacynthus, and the household gods carried across the sea from the ancient city of the Rutulians. Here the conquered people throw whatever is left to them, and their shields too and their cursed swords. And from the bowels of the earth, they dig up what they had hidden during the war and they rejoice in giving to the last ﬁre the booty of the arrogant victor.

The burning consists of the destruction of both works of peace, such as the clothing produced by women, and of weapons of war, carried by men, as well as the tokens of the foreigners’ arrival and establishment of the once new city of Saguntum, the images of their homeland gods. The burning at the instigation of the Erinys constitutes the annulment of the Saguntines’ recognition of their identity as ‘Ardeans’ or ‘Zacynthians’.97 Their Dionysiac frenzy will result in a Stoic, Roman death, which nevertheless wipes out the Saguntines’ ties with their Roman patria. In their stirring of the earth’s bowels, the Saguntines reverse the act of founding a city, as we know it from the foundation of Carthage, for instance, with the uncovering of the head of the horse.98 At the same time, however, their act constitutes a jarring reversal of the ritual of burial: this is a funereal pyre without subsequent burial, without hope for future rest of the souls, ensured by the return of the dead to mother-earth.99 This pyre then can be read also as a cenotaph, a tomb in which Roman identity is incinerated.100 In hybrid Saguntum, this becomes not a story of founding, but rather one of utter destruction. 97 Pace Bernstein (2008), 182, who sees an indirect assertion of the dominance of Rutulian identity in the mass suicide. 98 See Augoustakis (2003b), 124–5, for a discussion of the use of this imagery on Hannibal’s shield; on Hannibal’s shield see the following studies: von Albrecht (1964), 173–7; Vessey (1975); Kissel (1979), 185–92; Ku¨ppers (1986) 154–64; Laudizi (1989), 107–12; Venini (1991); Devallet (1992); Pomeroy (2000), 157–8; Campus (2003); Ganiban (2010) and Harrison (2010). 99 See Augoustakis (forthcoming) on the relationship between the Saguntine pyre and Cornelia’s ‘funeral’ of Pompey in Lucan 9. 100 Hardie (2002) 84: ‘The cenotaph, which does not even contain the bones or ashes of the person, is the purest, and hence most potent, case of the monument that offers a surrogate presence for the absence of the dead person.’

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The eradication of anything that reminds the citizens of their origins is only one step away from what occurs in the next scene. This obliteration effort progresses to the utter devastation of family ties.101 The public and the private merge into one and the same. The ensuing slaughter is a nefas inspired by the rage of Juno through Tisiphone: princeps Tisiphone lentum indignata parentem pressit ouans capulum cunctantemque impulit ensem et dirum insonuit Stygio bis terque ﬂagello. inuitas maculant cognato sanguine dextras miranturque nefas auersa mente peractum et facto sceleri illacrimant. hic turbidus ira et rabie cladum perpessaeque ultima uitae obliquos uersat materna per ubera uisus. (2.614–21) First Tisiphone, resenting a parent’s delay, in joy pushed the hilt forward and drove the reluctant sword, while she cracked her hellish scourge twice and thrice. They stain their unwilling hands with the blood of their relatives and they marvel at the crime, performed with loathing—and then they cry over the wickedness they have wrought. Distraught by rage and by the madness of disaster and of a life that has endured extremities, this one turns a sidelong glance at his mother’s breasts.

The various events that follow emphasise the lack of piety among members of the same family, such as the wife’s towards her husband, a son’s towards his father, a brother’s towards his own brother.102 For instance, Tymbrenus’ killing of his father is portrayed, in gruesome detail, as a deformation of the body that looks like his own: At medios inter coetus pietate sinistra, infelix Tymbrene, furis, Poenoque parentis

101 Compare the situation in besieged Capua: before the city’s surrender the goddess Fides arrives (Pun. 13.281–91), an Erinys frequents a banquet of the traitors (13.291–4), while several of the ringleaders commit suicide (13.296–8, 374–80), before the ﬁnal victory of the Romans and the capture of the city. On the connection between the suicides at Saguntum and Capua see von Albrecht (1964), 62; Kissel (1979), 97 n.25; Burck (1984a), 45; Schenk (1989), 360; Cowan (2007a), 26–30. 102 See McGuire (1997), 213–14, for the allusions to Lucan’s De bello ciuili 2.146– 57. McGuire correctly points to the text’s preoccupation with Roman civil strife and the engaging of the episode with similar passages in Lucan.

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dum properas auferre necem, reddentia formam ora tuam laceras temerasque simillima membra. (2.632–5) But in the midst of the crowd, you, ill-starred Tymbrenus, with a perverse piety you become enraged, and while you hasten to deprive the Carthaginian of your parent’s slaughter, you mutilate a face that resembles your own—and you desecrate a body very close to your own image.

By murdering his own father, Tymbrenus destroys a reﬂection of his own self and his history. Likewise, the death of the twins, Eurymedon and Lycormas, adds to the confusion and annihilation of memory and identity: uos etiam primo gemini cecidistis in aeuo, Eurymedon fratrem et fratrem mentite Lycorma, cuncta pares, dulcisque labor sua nomina natis reddere et in uultu genetrici stare suorum. iam ﬁxus iugulo culpa te soluerat ensis, Eurymedon, inter miserae lamenta senectae, dumque malis turbata parens deceptaque uisis ‘quo ruis? huc ferrum’ clamat ‘conuerte, Lycorma’, ecce simul iugulum perfoderat ense Lycormas. sed magno ‘quinam, Eurymedon, furor iste?’ sonabat cum planctu geminaeque notis decepta ﬁgurae funera mutato reuocabat nomine mater, donec transacto tremebunda per ubera ferro tunc etiam ambiguos cecidit super inscia natos. (2.636–49) Also you, twin brothers, fell in your prime, Eurymedon and Lycormas, each an exact likeness of the other, alike in every point. It was a sweet toil for your mother to recognise her sons by name and to decide who is who, by looking at each son’s face. Now the sword that had pierced your neck, had already freed you from the blame, Eurymedon, amidst the lament of your poor old mother; and while the parent, disturbed by the sorrow and deceived by whom she thought she had seen, exclaims: ‘Where do you rush? Turn your blade here, Lycormas,’—behold! Lycormas had already stabbed his throat with the sword. But she cried with a big groan: ‘What kind of fury is this, Eurymedon?,’ and deceived by the likeness of the twins, the mother kept calling back the dead by their wrong names, until, with a sword driven through her quivering breasts, she fell over her sons, whom even then she could not distinguish.

The death of the mother and her two sons brings this book to a full circle, recalling vividly Mopsus, who had also died over his two sons.

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His otherness distinguishes him as a foreigner within the city of Saguntum, a Cretan among Romans and Zacynthians, in search of a better life. In this case, the mother is unable to identify her sons properly and thus annuls the ancestral, Roman custom of conclamatio, the calling of the dead person’s name three times, rendering it futile in this case.103 Although the poet addresses such deeds of apparent bravery as infelix gloria (‘pitiable glory’, 2.613) and laudanda monstra (‘praiseworthy monstrosities’, 2.650), the result of the mass suicide remains dubious: iniustis neglecta deis (‘scorned by the unfair gods’, 2.657). As Keith rightly points out, ‘Silius both praises the Saguntines for their ﬁdelity . . . and abhors the carnage with its overtones of civil discord’.104 This idea of a loss of communal and private identity is reinforced, in the ﬁnal scene of the episode, by Tiburna’s death. As Tiburna perishes on the tomb of Murrus, she re-enacts the death of Dido, whose suicide is described in the same terms of sacriﬁce on Hannibal’s shield earlier in book 2 (422–5). Thus Tiburna stops being a Saguntine and becomes the Other, the Bacchant who in a frenzy sacriﬁces herself over the weapons and the tomb of her deceased husband (arma super ruit et ﬂammas inuadit hiatu, ‘she falls over the weapons and enters the ﬁre with open mouth’, 2.680). She comes closer to the Carthaginian Dido, whose death sets the poem in motion. Now, Tiburna not only deﬁes the norms set by her gender but is portrayed with her femininity lost, as the poet assimilates her to Allecto, the infernal Fury, at the moment when she disturbs the dead and metes out punishment for Pluto (qualis . . . Allecto, 2.671–3).105 Tiburna’s

103

See Lemaire (1823), 1.145; pace Spaltenstein (1986), 171. See Keith (2000), 92; cf. also 92–3: His [the poet’s] attribution of praise and blame in the episode also demonstrates an unfaltering commitment to the ‘natural’ hierarchy of gender in the structure of Roman epic warfare, for the glorious achievement of the Saguntines is inspired by Hercules, who sends Loyalty to fortify the citizens out of concern for the city he founded . . . , while their unheroic mutual slaughter is provoked by Tisiphone . . . 105 Dietrich (2005), 80, observes: Through his references to passages from Aeneid 4 and 7, Silius creates an association of female lamentation with bacchic frenzy and the furies in a series of connections between Tisiphone/Tiburna, and Allecto, Amata and Dido . . . In evoking Virgil’s 104

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sacriﬁce over the weapons of Murrus seals the death of Saguntum; the ﬁre ﬁnishes off what the sword has spared. Hannibal’s entrance to the empty city is marked by the lack of distinction (nullo discrimine, 2.681).106 Everything looks the same: semambusta . . . / infelix . . . turba (‘half-burned . . . tragic . . . crowd’, 2.681–2). His effort to conquer and assimilate the Saguntines has proved vain, while at the same time the absence of the Romans is underscored in the narrative as a deﬁning element of the next phase of the war. As McGuire has observed, ‘Silius encourages the reader to look for traces of Romanitas in Saguntum itself ’.107 I submit, however, that the Saguntines themselves strive to erase their ties with Rome. The obliteration of Roman identity becomes an absence at all levels, absence of strategy and common policy, absence of virtue and pity.108 As book 2 comes to a close, there is no distinction between the always cunning Carthaginians and the Romans: their mutual lack of ﬁdes proves destructive for the Iberian city. Moreover, as same and other seem to converge rather than diverge, Hannibal’s fate of exile and death by poison, an anachronistic prediction on the poet’s part, is not different from the fate that awaits so many Roman generals, even Scipio himself among others, as we saw in the beginning of this chapter. At the same time, however, it serves to underscore the Carthaginian’s own alienation from his patria, which is owed to a prolonged stay in another land, Italy, as we shall see at the end of this chapter. Both Carthage’s and Rome’s encounters with otherness utterly fail in the beginning of the poem, as the transformation of the Roman city into a diverse empire requires a prolonged process of assimilation of diversity. Saguntum’s silenced existence will speak volumes in the remainder of the Punica as the city becomes exemplary for her hybridity and unique nature as an urbs on the periphery lamenting women through the ﬁgure of Tiburna Silius emphasises her potential violence, realised in the havoc wreaked upon Saguntum. 106 As McGuire (1997), 186, observes: ‘Suicide, as eloquent an act as it might be, is an act of self destruction, and so, at the same time as it deﬁnes the absolute opposition to tyranny of the person who carries it out, it also terminates this opposition.’ 107 McGuire (1997), 210. 108 See Ariemma (2007) on Hannibal’s repetition of the burning of Saguntine monumenta at Liternum in book 6.

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that strives for her own identity, away from the big centres of either Rome or Carthage. Emphasis on Asbyte and the (m)others-murderers can only serve as a reminder of the chaotic world of the Thebaid, a reﬂection of what we could call Silius’ ‘poetics of defeat’: it is from this chaotic and civil-war-like narrative that Rome is going to emerge as an idealised entity, destined to lead the world’s future. From this regressive act, the journey between autonomia and asymbolia, the semiotic genotext and the symbolic phenotext, silence/ Bacchic frenzy and speech, hybridity is born, the sole viable way to success and revitalisation.

GERMANA ELISSAE: A CARTHAGINIAN REB ORN As has been noted in the introduction of this chapter, in the Punica, Silius fashions rivers, lakes, and their inhabitants as active ‘ﬁghters’ against the Roman or the Carthaginian forces: this is nature’s revenge for the destruction wrought upon the environment and its elements. Consider, for instance, the resistance Hannibal meets in his crossing of the Alps (in the narrative of 3.463–76 and 518–56: adverse weather, winds, avalanches) or Scipio’s encounter with the personiﬁed Trebia, whom he accuses of having become Carthaginian: quaenam ista repente / Sidonium, infelix, rabies te reddidit amnem? (‘what sudden madness has turned you into a Carthaginian river, wretched Trebia?’ 4.647–8). The river’s answer counters the general’s threat to change the river’s name (amnis tibi nomina demam, ‘I shall rob you of the name of river’, 4.645), as the Trebia calls attention to Scipio’s rashness: adde modum dextrae aut campis incumbe propinquis (‘put a limit to your deeds of arms, or else you shall fall on the nearby plains’, 4.666). In another instance, before the battle at Lake Trasimene, Juno assumes the disguise of the lake’s numen, Thrasymennus, and appears to Hannibal in a dream, revealing the lake’s Asian origins: namque ego sum, celsis quem cinctum montibus ambit / Tmolo missa manus, stagnis Thrasymennus opacis. (‘For I am Thrasymennus, the lake of shady water, whom, surrounded by high mountains, settlers sent from Tmolus inhabit’, 4.737–8). Like the River Trebia, who is

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accused of being an ally of the Carthaginians, Lake Trasimene conspires against the Romans. In truth, Silius’ geo-ethnographic digression informs us at length of the site’s origins from Asia Minor (5.7–23), from a region around the river Tmolus.109 Silius explains the story of Tyrrhenus and his son’s, Thrasymennus’, abduction by the nymph Agylle. The emphasis on the origins of rivers and their role in the war becomes crucial for the poet, who thus underscores the foreign elements within Italy. These forces work against the Romans, especially in the ﬁrst phase of the war, during the terrible defeats at the Ticinus, the Trebia, Trasimene, and Cannae. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Juno once again exploits nature’s elements before the battle at Cannae, as she aspires to help her prote´ge´, by summoning the help of Anna Perenna.110 In the opening lines of book 8, Silius underlines the importance of Fabius as the ﬁrst signiﬁcant obstacle that Hannibal faces in the completion of his plans for conquering Rome. The emergence of the famous Cunctator as a dictator of the Roman people in book 6 (609–18), upon Jupiter’s order, has caused a major difﬁculty for the Carthaginian general. The counter-action comes from Juno (8.25–38), who summons the Roman nymph Anna from the bed of the River Numicius, as the most appropriate person to inspire Hannibal with warlike action, just before the battle of Cannae. Anna follows Juno’s precepts (8.39–43). Parenthetically, in his poetic ‘archaeology’, Silius takes the opportunity to expand on the nymph’s fate after Dido’s death (8.50–201).111 After this digression, the narrative resumes to inform us how Anna’s mission is accomplished, as she appears to Hannibal and reiterates Juno’s words (8.202–25). Succumbing to the

109 See a discussion of this aetiological story in Asso (1999), Vinchesi (2004), Augoustakis (2005), and Cowan (2009). 110 Only in 12.705 does Juno for the ﬁrst time appear to Hannibal uero ore (‘in her real appearance’). 111 For an analysis of the episode of Anna Perenna see Brue`re (1959), 228–9, who discusses the inﬂuence of Ovid’s Fast. 3.543–656. See also Santini (1991), 5–62; Goldman (1997); Ariemma’s (2000a) commentary; and most recently Dietrich (2004), 2–7; Ganiban (2010); and Keith (2010). A. Barchiesi (2001a), 335, brieﬂy comments on the elegiac and epylliac tones of the episode, as a mediation between the Aeneid and the Fasti.

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divine queen’s will, Hannibal prepares his soldiers for battle, while he promises to confer due honour upon both Anna and her sister Dido (8.226–31). In this episode, the poet exploits Anna’s story to underscore both her Romanitas and her inherent otherness. Juno ﬁrst apostrophises the nymph by referring to her heritage from Belus, which she shares with Hannibal: ‘sanguine cognato iuuenis tibi, diua, laborat / Hannibal, a uestro nomen memorabile Belo . . . ’ (‘Goddess, the youth akin to you is in trouble, Hannibal, a well-known name, a descendant from your own Belus . . . ’, 8.30–1). Juno’s use of the deictic and possessive uestro emphasises the forced connection between an already Romanised Anna and the Carthaginian general. What the goddess wants to mobilise is the inherent Carthaginian in Anna’s blood and to displace the Romanised goddess from her present status, both literary and historical. Anna obeys the command by wishing to help her native people: . . . sit fas, sit tantum, quaeso, retinere fauorem antiquae patriae mandataque magna sororis, quamquam inter Latios Annae stet numen honores.

(8.41–3).

May it be proper, I beg, may I only keep the support of my ancient country and the great commands of my sister, although the deity of Anna is among those honoured by the Romans.

By attaching herself to her antiqua patria, not only does Anna renounce her new status by marginalising herself into a foreign element in Rome/Italy, but she also wishes to attach herself to a model of patria that is fraught with its own sinister elements of Dido’s death and curse that lead Hannibal to pursue a lost cause. As Juno’s instrument, like Hannibal, Anna is portrayed as a confused ﬁgure and shows the same signs as the general in misplacing her feelings towards the wrong country, thus revealing the problematics of full acculturation, present in the poem: could an imported goddess be fully Romanised and acculturated in her new abode? For instance, Silius refers with wonder to Anna’s cult as a strange occurrence in Roman culture and highlights her foreign otherness: . . . cur Sarrana dicent Oenotri numina templo / regnisque Aeneadum germana colatur Elissae (‘. . . why the Italians consecrate a temple to a Carthaginian goddess and why the sister of Dido is worshipped in the

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kingdom of Aeneas’ descendants’, 8.46–7).112 The patronymic Aeneadum is juxtaposed with the name of Elissa, the person who set the poem in motion in book 1. The paradox of Anna’s presence on Italian soil is thus highlighted from the beginning of Silius’ excursus and constitutes the driving force behind his ‘archaeological’ tour in Roman folklore, ethnography, and literature. From 8.144 to line 224a, however, the text as it stands is not derived from the manuscript made by Poggio (and his copyist) upon the discovery of the Punica in 1417 (Codex Sangallensis), but appears for the ﬁrst time in the Aldine edition of 1523, made by Fr. Asulanus.113 Much ink has been spilled in favour of the authenticity of these lines, which include the end of Anna’s narrative to Aeneas concerning Dido’s death and the conclusion of Anna’s own transformation into an Italian nymph. Heitland has maintained that the disputed lines are genuine because they might have been an omission made by Poggio’s copyist.114 In addition, Heitland argues that on stylistic grounds the scene appears to be Silius’ own creation.115 By contrast, in his Teubner edition of the Punica, Delz disputes the authenticity of the aforementioned verses; in particular, he contends that the close imitation of Virgil and Ovid in several lines is alien to Silius’ technique and style.116 Recently, Brugnoli and Santini have suggested that the Aldine addition is not a supplement created by an ingenious scholar of the Renaissance,117 but rather a genuine reworking of the Virgilian and Ovidian episodes, since many lines of the alleged ‘lacuna’ are imitated in the works of Dante, Boccaccio, Gautier de Chaˆtillon, and Petrarch, whose poems predate Poggio’s discovery in 1417.118 112

For a discussion of the metapoetics of repetam see A. Barchiesi (2001a), 335. See Volpilhac-Lenthe´ric, Miniconi, and Devallet (1981), 125–7, and Ariemma (2000a), 67–8, for a detailed discussion. 114 See Heitland (1896). 115 Heitland’s view is followed by Duff (1934), xvii; Kissel (1979), 193–6 and n.100; Volpilhac-Lenthe´ric, Miniconi, and Devallet (1981), 125–7 (with caution). 116 Delz (1987), lxiv–lxviii. 117 For instance Jacobus Constantius, as Delz surmises. 118 See Brugnoli and Santini (1995), in particular 55–98. However, Santini (1991), 54–6, notices that the problem cannot be solved, despite his personal inclination to ascribe the lines to Silius. The discussion by Brugnoli and Santini has found supporting reviews (by Devallet [1996], 376–7; Citti [1998], with reservations) but has also 113

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The present situation of the text makes it difﬁcult to decide whether or not the conclusion of the scene is genuine. Although one can argue for or against Silius’ authorship of the disputed lines, it remains difﬁcult to dismiss the fact that these verses are omitted in the Codex Sangallensis. Unfortunately, the manuscript tradition is clouded with ambiguities and the text itself poses several problems concerning its authenticity. Ahl, Davis, and Pomeroy correctly observe that any conclusion based on these lines ‘must necessarily be subject to dispute’.119 The remaining portion of the text (8.25–143), however, which includes Juno’s call to Anna and the ﬁrst part of Anna’s story, namely the events from her ﬂight from Carthage to her arrival in Italy, her meeting with Aeneas, and the beginning of her recounting of Dido’s demise, will be employed here in order to draw some intratextual parallels with other scenes in the Punica. In particular, Juno’s behaviour in book 8 reminds the reader of the goddess’s treatment of Tisiphone in book 2. As we have seen, during the siege at Saguntum, Juno summons the Fury from the Underworld in order to compel the Saguntines to commit suicide (2.526–52). Juno’s action is motivated (in the form of a counter-action) by Hercules’ plea to Fides, to intervene and help the Saguntines, who suffer from hunger (2.475–525). Tisiphone, however, causes the transformation of the Saguntine people from a pious and loyal race into a violent mass. The havoc begins with the female characters who slaughter and destroy everything in the city (553–680), thus erasing Saguntum’s past and its ties with the Romans. How can the parallel with Tisiphone be construed within the Rahmenhandlung of the poem? Juno’s intervention in book 2 secures Hannibal’s victory over the Saguntines. It is precisely the suicide

been strongly refuted by Reeve (1998); cf. the reaction by Brugnoli-Santini (1998). Braun (1999) is correct in pointing out that the second half of the study fails to persuade, namely that Silius had been available through the fourteenth century without interruption. 119 Ahl, Davis, and Pomeroy (1986), 2497. Silius’ statement that Anna’s story is obscured densa caligine ironically (and coincidentally), applies to the state of manuscript tradition of the disputed lines also: multa retro rerum iacet atque ambagibus aeui / obtegitur densa caligine mersa uetustas . . . ‘Far back in events and submerged in dense darkness, lies the ancient story [of Anna], veiled with the uncertainty of time . . . ’, 8.44–5).

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committed by the Spanish people at Saguntum, and not Hannibal’s victory, that merits the poet’s enthusiasm and praise at the end of the book. Though her purpose is to abet her prote´ge´, in fact Juno ironically accomplishes the opposite: the victory over Saguntum is not a token of Hannibal’s own heroism. Likewise, in book 8, by sending Anna to inspire Hannibal with warlike frenzy, Juno becomes the means for the completion of the fata, inasmuch as she makes Hannibal rush into a battle that marks the beginning of the end, the beginning of his own decline. In addition, the Olympian goddess uses once again a minor deity as the medium for the achievement of her plans. And yet, does Juno choose the most effective person in book 8? A closer look at Anna’s presence in book 8 reveals that the Carthaginian woman has been Romanised, by becoming a nymph of the River Numicius; at the same time, her otherness is salient in the narrative, because of her indisputable Punic descent. In his apostrophe to Anna, Silius addresses her as diua Indigetis castis contermina lucis (‘the goddess, who dwells near the sacred grove of Indiges, the native god’, 8.39), that is, a goddess, neighbour to the sacred grove of Indiges-Aeneas. In the beginning of the digression where Silius recounts Anna’s story, Anna is depicted as an alien in her own country, because of her fear of Iarbas’ plans (8.55–6); then her persecution continues, when she ﬁrst ﬁnds refuge in Battus’ land, because of her own brother’s, Pygmalion’s, pursuit (8.57–64). Finally, she arrives on Italian soil, but there also she is marked as a Sidonis (8.70), just as Hypsipyle, as we saw in the Thebaid, was exempliﬁed by her geonymic, Lemnias: ergo agitur pelago, diuis inimica sibique, quod se non dederit comitem in suprema sorori, donec iactatam laceris, miserabile, uelis fatalis turbo in Laurentes expulit oras. non caeli, non illa soli, non gnara colentum Sidonis in Latia trepidabat naufraga terra. (8.65–70) Therefore, she is driven by the sea, hostile to the gods and her own self, because she did not accompany her sister to death, until a fateful storm drove her onto the Italian shores, tossed by torn sails, a pitiable sight. Unaware of the clime and soil and its inhabitants, the Sidonian girl, shipwrecked upon the land of Latium, was in great fear.

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Anna’s otherness is showcased in the beginning of the hexameter (Sidonis, 8.70) by means of her alienation from her own country in physical and emotional terms: she feels insecure everywhere, in Carthage, Cyrene, and soon in Italy itself. Feeling guilty over Dido’s death, Anna does not hesitate to blame Aeneas directly (solus regni lucisque fuisti / germanae tu causa meae, ‘you alone were the reason of my sister’s kingdom and life’, 8.81–2). Thus Anna exonerates herself from the guilt and displaces her hurt feelings onto Aeneas. Even in the part of the text that belongs to the Aldine addition, the narrator exploits the ambiguities of Anna’s origins. For instance, Dido’s appearance in the dream forces Anna to ﬂee to the waters of Numicius, where Anna becomes Romanised (nec iam amplius aduena tectis / illa uidebatur, ‘nor did she seem a foreigner any longer in that palace’, 8.163–4).120 Even though Dido harbours Anna’s perpetual hatred against the Romans by pointing out Lavinia’s schemes, at the same time she announces that Anna will become an aeternum Italis numen . . . in oris (‘an everlasting deity in the Italian shores’, 8.183).121 Anna, however, remains a Sidonis, a numen favourable towards the Romans (Sidonis et placido Teucros affarier ore, ‘a Sidonian goddess and addressed the Trojans with friendly speech’, 8.199), though she initially faces the hatred of Lavinia (in both Ovid’s Fasti and the Aldine addition).122 Hannibal calls Anna a decus generis (‘glory of the nation’, 8.227) and a numen patrium (‘goddess of my country’, 8.239), while she reveals her presence to him as uestri generata e sanguine Beli (‘born from the blood of your ancestor Belus’, 8.221). Although Silius underlines her genuine sympathy for Hannibal, the poet also reminds us constantly that Anna has been transformed into an Italian goddess. It is precisely Anna’s ‘nationality’ that has prompted Ahl to observe that ‘Anna is the female counterpart of Aeneas’ masculinity, as latently hostile to Rome as Indiges is friendly.’123 I would like to suggest, however, that the poet also exploits the Roman aspects of Anna, which we are inclined to 120

Cf. de Bustamante (1985). Another woman who mingles with a river is Ilia (12.542–4), Anio’s wife. 122 Cf. Fast. 3.633–8 and Pun. 8.176–7. 123 Ahl (1985), 314. Ahl, Davis, and Pomeroy (1986), 2496–8, also underline this inherent ‘hostility’ of Anna’s ﬁgure for the Roman culture. See also Dietrich (2004), on the sinister association of Anna with the battle at Cannae. 121

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dismiss because of her association with Dido. Keeping in mind that the battle at Cannae signals the beginning of decline for Hannibal, Anna’s mission acquires a twofold signiﬁcance: on the one hand, as a Carthaginian and faithful to her sister (retinere fauorem / antiquae patriae mandataque magna sororis, 8.41–2), Anna is willing to help Hannibal; and yet on the other hand, as an Italian goddess, she harms her fellow citizen by compelling him to pursue a destiny that will prove self-destructive.124 At the end of the scene, Hannibal vows to dedicate a temple to Anna in Carthage, next to Dido, which, however, is impossible: Anna is a Roman nymph, with a twofold nature, but of one abode, the River Numicius. When he urges his soldiers to pursue battle at Cannae, Hannibal invokes Anna’s intervention: en, numen patrium spondet maiora peractis. uellantur signa, ac diua ducente petamus infaustum Phrygibus Diomedis nomine campum.

(8.239–41)

Behold! The goddess of our country promises a future greater than what we have so far achieved. Let the standards be pulled up, and with the goddess as our guide, let us seek the ﬁeld, which is ill-omened for the Trojans because of the name of Diomedes.

The future promised to Hannibal, however, will become elusive and misleadingly successful, since the battle at Cannae represents the zenith not only of the Carthaginian victories but also of Roman uirtus. After Cannae, the decline for both parties involved in this war is at hand, according to the poet (10.657–8). In short, Anna’s intervention in book 8 highlights the uncertainties and the ambiguity of her role as both a Carthaginian and a Roman ﬁgure.125 As we shall see in the fourth chapter of this study, the episode of Anna’s intervention plays off against the importation of the Magna Mater in the opening of the last book of the Punica. In Claudia’s case, the audience receives a clear answer from the goddess concerning the Vestal’s chastity; accusations of Anna’s chastity are never resolved but

124 In the Fast. 3.675–96, we ﬁnd out how tricky Anna’s metamorphosis can be, when she disguises herself as Minerva, a substitute that cheats Mars of his plan to seduce the virgin goddess. 125 Santini (1992), 390–92 and Dominik (2006), 118–19, discuss this ambiguity in Anna’s ﬁgure.

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rather subsumed by her transformation, as she merges in the waters of Numicius, an act that thus illustrates her future union with Aeneas. Anna is left marginal, suspended between her two countries, a patria she once had, and a new one in Rome, where, however, her voice is subject to Juno’s whimsical behest: her transformation into a ‘Roman’ numen does not allow her the autonomy that ultimately shapes identity. Even in her metamorphosis, we can observe a palpable asymbolia: Anna ﬁnds refuge in the waters of the Numicius, a waterscape clearly marked as masculine, not in the female receptacle of the choˆra, as exempliﬁed by Tellus, as we shall see next.

THE RENEWAL OF TELLUS The close relationship with, and care for, one’s fatherland proves an important component in the process of becoming Roman. And yet, rashness and irrationality of battle decisions, the electioneering practices, and contempt for Rome and by extension for one’s patria, in the early books of the Punica, are but a few examples of behaviour displayed by the Roman generals, for whom Silius draws little or no connection with their patria (Flaminius in book 5; Varro in books 9–10). Moreover, as we have observed, Saguntum breaks its alliance with Rome by burning its past, just as Asbyte is silenced forever and burned, and as Anna’s efforts to reconnect with her antiqua patria come to naught, by bringing about the opposite effect for the recipient of her favour, namely the beginning of the end for Carthage. By contrast, Nature in her appearance as Tellus in book 15 (522–63) positively reverses the weakness of fathers and sons to be of assistance to their patria. The presence of Tellus suggests a new icon of patria, where the masculine patria is fused with the feminine notion of terra mater: motherly affection and the regression to the feminine choˆra is the absolutely necessary link for the defeat of the other.126 Only after Claudius Nero dreams of the personiﬁed Italian Tellus, is he ﬁlled 126

On Tellus and her conﬂation with Gaia and Demeter as Mother goddess, see Phillips (2002), 100–101. The widely used formula Terra Mater (TLL, viii.443.6–16) gives birth to the coinage of Tellus Mater, occurring in the ﬁrst century bce (cf. Liv. 10.29.4 and Oakley [1997–2005], 4.323, with references to Var. R. 1.1.5 and Ov. Fast.

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with desire for revenge and is able to inﬂict upon the Carthaginians the ﬁrst signiﬁcant defeat in mainland Italy, at the Metaurus in 207 bce, thus preparing the ground for the ﬁnal victory at Zama, in Africa.127 Though natural as an idea, the portrayal of Tellus in Silius is unique in Roman epic,128 inasmuch as Tellus replaces a similar appearance of patria in Lucan. First the Oenotria Tellus shows Junoesque traits, complaining as Juno does in Aeneid 1.37–49, but also reversing the hostile goddess’s image in the Punica by counterbalancing her acts, since Juno has been the goddess so far who moves the plot towards a Carthaginian victory:129 tantone (heu superi!) spernor contempta furore Sidoniae gentis . . . ? decima haec iam uertitur aestas, ex quo proterimur. iuuenis . . . intulit arma mihi temeratisque Alpibus ardens in nostros descendit agros. quot corpora texi caesorum stratis totiens deformis alumnis! nulla mihi ﬂoret bacis felicibus arbor; 1.671, as well as Virg. Aen. 11.71, mater tellus, and Serv. ad Aen. 1.171, cum Tellurem deam dicamus, terram elementum). No difference between Tellus and mater terra is discerned in imperial literature, but at times also an association with Magna Mater. See Gesztelyi’s (1981) detailed analysis. On the dubious etymology of tellus, see Ernout-Meillet (s.v. tellus), perhaps from Sanskrit talam (‘plain ground’), but also compare the curious existence of a male counterpart (Etruscan Tellumo/Tellurus). For visual representations, see LIMC, 7.1.879–89. For the image of personiﬁed Italy in the Punica, see Venini (1978); Santini (1991), 80; Mezzanotte (1995), 370–72. 127 See Augoustakis (2003b), 123–4. 128 See Spaltenstein (1990), 377. It should be noted that Silius uses Cicero’s prosopopoeic portrait of Roma in Catil. 1.27 fused with the portrayal of the personiﬁed Patria in Catil. 1.18 (also called communis parens omnium nostrum, ‘common parent of all of us’). In Cicero, Roma is looking proleptically at the possible catastrophe entailed by a Catilinarian war (cum bello uastabitur Italia, uexabuntur urbes, tecta ardebunt, tum te non existimas inuidiae incendio conﬂagraturum? ‘When Italy will be devastated, the cities will be destroyed, the houses will be burnt, then do you not think you will burn in the “ﬁre” of envy?’), a description echoed in Tellus’ words about the utter devastation of the Italian countryside by Hannibal. Cf. Pl. Cri. 50a–4d. See also Ripoll (2000a), 158–9, on Cicero’s inﬂuence on Silius in this passage. On the use of the ﬁgure of Patria in Cicero, see most recently Tzounakas (2006) with further bibliographical references. 129 See Burck (1984a), 84–5, and Augoustakis (2003b), 124 n.38.

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Oh, gods! Am I so much despised and spurned by the madness of the Punic race? . . . This is now the tenth year we are being destroyed. The young man . . . brought arms against me and having stained the Alps, furious, he came down upon my ﬁelds. How many bodies have I covered! How many times has my face been misshapen by the piles of my slain children! Now no olive-tree of mine is covered with a fair crop of berries; the corn in the ﬁelds is cut down unripe by a swift sword; the roofs of houses in the country fall down into my lap and tarnish my kingdom with their ruins . . . Then the African nomad may plough my ﬁelds, and the Libyan may commit seed to the Ausonian furrows, unless I bury in one grave all the troops that so proudly tread on my wide plains.

Tellus insists on the foreignness of the Hannibalic troops, calling them by their geonymics (Sidonia gens, Afer, Libys) and lays special emphasis on the Carthaginian’s act of staining the Roman territory by his invasion (temeratis Alpibus), which results in partial to complete sterility and utter destruction. The mother-earth’s face is disﬁgured (deformis) and stained: her primary function of reproduction is eclipsed and replaced by Tellus’ task of burying her children.130 This topos of infertility, stressed by the future-less-vivid condition of Africans ploughing Italian soil, sowing, and reaping fruits from their foreign semina, becomes the source for Tellus’ quick action and dramatic appearance in a dream to Claudius Nero: hic iuuenem aggreditur Latiae telluris imago: ‘ . . . magnum aliquid tibi, si patriae uis addere fatis, audendum est, quod depulso quoque moenibus hoste uictores fecisse tremant . . . surge, age, fer gressus. patulos regione Matauri damnaui tumulis Poenorum atque ossibus agros.’

130

For this function of the proverbial tellus tumulat, see Schwartz (2002).

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his dictis abit atque abscedens uisa pauentem attrahere et fractis turmas propellere portis. Rumpit ﬂammato turbatus corde soporem ac supplex geminas tendens ad sidera palmas Tellurem Noctemque et caelo sparsa precatur astra . . . (15.546, 549–51, 556–63) Here the image of the Italian land approaches the young man: ‘ . . . If you want to prolong the life allotted by the Fates to your fatherland, you must dare something big, at which the conquerors may shudder to have performed, even with the enemy driven away from the walls . . . Come on, wake up, march! I have condemned the open ﬁelds by the region of the Metaurus to be the grave for the bones of the Carthaginians.’ Having said these things, she departs and even as she leaves, she seems to drag after her the fearing general and to push the troops out from the broken gates. Disturbed in his heart on ﬁre, Nero wakes up and as a suppliant raising both hands to the stars, he prays to Tellus and Night and the Stars that strewed the sky . . .

Tellus uses strong language to underscore the certainty of success for Nero in the upcoming battle, while she stresses that death for the Carthaginians is guaranteed by her power as mother-earth who has buried her children and now emerges as an avenger of the deaths of so many of her own. At the same time, however, Tellus acts as a medium that secures the prolongation of the life of Nero’s patria, as an ideal matrona who secures generational continuity by instructing her children to live on according to the mos maiorum. The striking phrase si patriae uis addere fatis veriﬁes the role of Tellus as the most signiﬁcant contributor to the modiﬁcation of the purely masculine term patria, whose import is utilised in the discourse between fathers and sons to inspire male heroism and to secure the continuation of the epic poem itself that is propelled by such deeds of courage in one’s effort to save the country, the fatherland. Tellus exercises a fascinating inﬂuence on Nero: she seems to drag behind her the Roman general (attrahere), Silius says, to a symbolic choˆra of motherhood, from which the general will assume unprecedented energy to annihilate the other and therefore form an identity based on the accentuated differentiation between Roman and non-Roman. A hapax in Silius, the verb attrahere complements the forceful

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presence of the personiﬁed goddess (OLD, s.v. attraho 1),131 who has abandoned her previous lament and complaint and has come to Nero resolved. Tellus’ appearance constitutes a centripetal force that aims at bringing the scattered Roman forces back to the centre, back to the female aspects, once lost from the semantic register of patria, by heightening the suffering of mother-earth but also by stressing her extensive power to inﬂict death and destruction and to exact revenge. Patria alone remains incomplete without Tellus’ intervention. Consider, for instance, the ﬁckleness that pesters Roman politics in the case of Claudius Nero’s colleague in the consulship, Livius Salinator: he goes into exile on the basis of false accusations concerning embezzlement (15.596–7). Having being recalled, however, to serve on the consulship at this critical juncture for his patria, he magnanimously behaves in a similar manner, just as Tellus instructs Nero to do: patriae donauerat iram (‘he had foregone his resentment for the beneﬁt of his fatherland’, 15.600).132 Livius assists Nero in prolonging the life of the patria by forgiving the mistakes committed by the people that constitute the body of the country.133 The use of verbs, such as addo and dono, underline the heroes’ effort for a reconnection with their patria that often alienates its children. 131 Cf. Ov. Met. 3.563 (and an interesting use in 10.143 on Orpheus’ attraction of animals) and Luc. 10.384. 132 On Livius Salinator, see Burck (1984a), 88–90, and Marks (2005a), 49–50, on the ‘rejuvenation’ of Roman political ﬁgures through Scipio. Cf. Liv. 27.34.14: ut parentium saeuitiam, sic patriae patiendo ac ferendo leniendam esse (‘as with the harshness of parents, so one must with patience and endurance be lenient to his country’). 133 Livius’ forgiveness towards his patria reminds the reader of Fabius’ fatherly instructions (7.536–66) to his son, Quintus, not to hold any grudges against the Roman people for giving Minucius equal authority to that of Fabius (7.515–16): succensere nefas patriae (‘it is forbidden to be angry at your country’, 7.555). Quintus thinks that his father is violated by the Roman people’s treatment (uiolasse parentem, 7.546), although Fabius himself strives to ingrain in the young man’s heart that proper military strategies and the ancestral values of helping one’s country, even when unfairly treated, require a certain impenetrability to anger, like that of Camillus in the fourth century (390 bce). See Kissel (1979), 118–20, and Tipping (1999) on the role of exemplarity. As will be discussed in chapter 3, Marus’ instruction to Serranus involves the same strategy, which, however, is undercut by Marcia’s scepticism concerning Regulus’ own impenetrability. On Fabius, see von Albrecht (1964), 68–77; Fernandelli (2006); Bernstein (2008), 139–45 (on Fabius and his son); Fucecchi (2010); and Marks (2010) on Fabius–Quintus vs Cato–Brutus in Lucan.

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At the same time, one does not fail to notice that Tellus is portrayed as corrupted by the strangeness of Hannibal: Tellus is not going to be the same, it seems, after this war. Same has changed into other, as other has mostly failed to become same, but unbeknownst to it (as is often the case) has inﬂuenced the perspective of same. In her discussion of foreign otherness, Kristeva aptly comments on the interaction of same and other as follows: ‘A ﬁrst step was taken that removed the uncanny strangeness from the outside, where fright had anchored it, to locate it inside, not inside the familiar considered as one’s own and proper, but the familiar potentially tainted with strangeness [emphasis my own] and referred to . . . an improper past.’134 Silius locates the change caused on Italy’s body in the past by alluding to a comparable appearance of the prosopopoeic patria in Lucan and reminds the reader that on account of Tellus’ resurrection, there will deﬁnitely be a time after the Punica when patria will suffer again, in the future, by her own, alienated, children:135 ut uentum est parui Rubiconis ad undas, ingens uisa duci patriae trepidantis imago clara per obscuram uultu maestissima noctem turrigero canos effundens uertice crines caesarie lacera nudisque adstare lacertis et gemitu permixta loqui: ‘quo tenditis ultra? quo fertis mea signa, uiri? si iure uenitis, si ciues, huc usque licet.’ tum perculit horror membra ducis, riguere comae gressumque coercens languor in extrema tenuit uestigia ripa. (Luc. 1.185–94) When he came to the waters of little Rubicon, the mighty image of the patria in distress appeared to the leader, clearly, through the murky night, most grievous in her face, her white hair streaming from her tower-crowned head, with tresses torn and shoulders bare, she stood in front of him and spoke sighing: ‘Where do you march further? Where do you take my standards, men? If you come lawfully, if you are citizens, this far only is allowed.’ Then 134

Kristeva (1991), 183. On this episode in Lucan see Peluzzi (1999); Narducci (2002), 194–207; Moretti (2007). It is noteworthy that Caesar in other sources (Plu. Caes. 32) is portrayed as having intercourse with his mother, before crossing the Rubicon. The image of Patria as a turrita ﬁgura is alluded to by Hannibal himself in Pun. 13.12–14. 135

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trembling struck the leader’s limbs, his hair stiffened, and weakness stopped his progress and held his feet at the river’s edge.

Caesar’s fear is followed by an intrepid speech in which he asks for Roma’s support (summique o numinis instar / Roma, faue coeptis, ‘O Rome, equal of the highest deity, support my undertakings’, Luc. 1.199–200). As we shall see in our examination of Pomponia’s role in Scipio’s education, the same phrase is used there by Scipio, to equate Pomponia to the goddess Roma and patria. Here, however, Caesar is seeking support for his unlawful plans, to march against his own patria, against Rome, who appears in the image of an old woman, past childbearing. Silius replaces Lucan’s patriae trepidantis imago with Latiae telluris imago not only in order to underscore the resolve of Tellus in taking the war in her hands and thus in reversing the atmosphere of civil war Rome, but also in order to stress the role of Tellus as the mother par excellence, without whom success is impossible: thus the poet emphasises the impasse of Lucanian poetics, where the old ﬁgure of the patria is literally invaded/abandoned by both the Caesarians and the Pompeians; Lucan’s poignant conclusion of the second question with uiri underlines the manly nefariousness of men turning against their patria, their fatherland. Though Caesar internalises the patriae imago by translating his prayer into a prayer to Roma herself, thus aligning patria with the feminine city, he deﬁes the warnings. Whereas Lucan’s patria comes to Caesar in a dream clara per obscuram . . . noctem, Silius transforms the details of the dream and the clarity of the vision: Nero prays to both Tellus and Nox, in a suppliant’s manner, an emphatic juxtaposition to Caesar’s haughtiness, while Tellus, the mother-earth, drags him into a feminine space, from which masculine action bursts out (fractis turmas propellere portis). Nero is still in awe and fear (pauentem), a stark contrast to Caesar’s horror and languor. In a ﬁgurative fashion, Caesar’s resolve and courage is absorbed by Tellus who now propels Nero to action, as Caesar forces his troops to cross the Rubicon. What is more, Tellus herself plays a very signiﬁcant role in the forthcoming battle, undertaking signiﬁcant action by confusing the Carthaginians into falling into a trap: implicat actas caeco errore uias umbrisque fauentibus arto circumagit spatio sua per uestigia ductos. (15.618–20)

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She confuses their tracks and makes them lose their way in the dark; favoured by the darkness, she makes them go round and round without advancing and retrace their steps.

Thus a feminine goddess, Tellus, henceforth behaves like a uir, putting Nero in the position of the person attracted to the commands of the deity, much like Hannibal appears as the object of Juno’s angry politics of revenge. As we have seen in the beginning of this chapter, Hannibal displays a misplaced attachment to Capua, by ﬁnding in it an altera patria and thus replacing Carthage with an elusive other. It is not surprising then that Hannibal’s attachment to the wrong mother-model, Dido, a mother that never was in the ﬁrst place, is reinstated in the last book, by an obsession he develops towards the Italian tellus, which again nevertheless proves to be ﬂeeting and temporary. As the Carthaginian is departing from Italy in book 17, the last book of the poem, Silius seizes the opportunity to portray the Carthaginian in the same terms as his wife, Imilce, when in book 3 she parts from her husband in Spain: ductor deﬁxos Itala tellure tenebat intentus uultus, manantesque ora rigabant per tacitum lacrimae et suspiria crebra ciebat, haud secus ac patriam pulsus dulcesque penates linqueret et tristes exul traheretur in oras. (17.213–17) Hannibal kept his eyes steadily ﬁxed on the Italian land, and silent tears were ﬂowing down his cheeks; he was sighing numerous times, not otherwise than when as an exile, expelled, he was leaving behind his country and his sweet household gods and was being dragged into dismal shores. haerent intenti uultus et litora seruant, donec iter liquidum uolucri rapiente carina consumpsit uisus pontus tellusque recessit. (3.155–7)136

136 In the Loeb and the Bude´ translations, the focalisation centres on Imilce alone, which however does not explain adequately the plural intenti uultus, especially as since in 3.152, Silius explicitly stresses the common grief of their separation: inter se ﬂetibus orant (‘they converse together and mingle their tears’).

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Their eyes cling to one another and watch the shore, until the sea made sight impossible and the land fell back, as the swift ship sped on its watery way.

In book 3, as Imilce is separated from Hannibal (abripitur diuulsa marito, 3.154), for a moment we are invited to visualise their parting, focalised from the perspective of both husband and wife, as their gaze remains ﬁxed to one another, in this near cosmogonic event, where the pontus and the tellus are separated from each other, before we see the parting through Imilce’s own eyes, when, from the boat, she sees the land recede. In book 17, therefore, the use of intentus uultus centres on Hannibal’s isolation, who is now alone and separated from another female presence, that of the Italian tellus, which he ﬁnds hard to abandon, just as if he were abandoning his own patria. When he refers to Hannibal’s famous attachment to Italy, Livy uses the words patria and terra but does not exploit the role of tellus, as Silius does: raro quemquam alium patriam exsilii causa relinquentem tam maestum abisse ferunt quam Hannibalem hostium terra excedentem; respexisse saepe Italiae litora. (Liv. 30.20.7) They say that rarely any other man leaving his country to go into exile had departed as sad as Hannibal was, when he was withdrawing from the enemies’ land: they say he repeatedly looked back upon the shores of Italy.

In the historian, however, the distinction between patria and terra bears a signiﬁcance for Hannibal’s attachment, as one not towards his own patria but towards a land that never bore him (terra [mater]). Hannibal’s act of respexisse indicates the leader’s lack of ﬁrm resolution, which ultimately proves destructive, since he wavers now, unlike his courage and resolve in the earlier books, when he crosses the Alps, for instance. In Silius, there is a certain irony that resonates with the Livian quote, such as Hannibal’s paradoxical, marginal status as a foreigner in Italy and as a strange body on the Italian tellus; but on another level also, the reader knows that Hannibal’s fate is such that he will actually be exiled from Carthage and will end his life on dismal shores. Earth, sky, and sea conspire to transform the Carthaginian general into the other, the alien from every land and sea. As Tellus acquires masculine traits in her effort to take off and discharge from her body the Carthaginian stain, so is Hannibal’s attachment represented in a reversal of genders, which blurs the boundaries of male vs female.

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The passage in book 17 recalls vividly Pompey’s departure from Italy, as Lucan stresses the connection between Magnus and his terra, as well as the patrios portus, and the litora:137 solus ab Hesperia non ﬂexit lumina terra Magnus, dum patrios portus, dum litora numquam ad uisus reditura suos . . . (Luc. 3.4–6) Magnus alone did not bend his gaze from the Hesperian land, until [he saw] his fatherland’s harbours and the shores disappear, never again to return to his sight . . .

In the Punica, we watch the same process as portrayed in Livy and in Lucan on Pompey, with the weight placed on the land, the tellus, who is modiﬁed by a different geonymic each time (Itala, Daunia, Ausonia): et sensim coepere procul subsidere montes / nullaque iam Hesperia et nusquam iam Daunia tellus, . . . (‘And [when] the mountains began to grow less and less in the distance slowly, and nowhere was the Hesperian land, and nowhere was the Daunian soil any longer . . . ’, 17.219–20). During the epic, Virgilian storm that follows and leads Hannibal back to his patria, in an Aeneas moment, the Carthaginian goes as far as to call his brother, Hasdrubal, felix for having died on the Italian tellus:138 et cui fata dedere / Ausoniam extremo tellurem apprendere morsu (‘And whom Fate allowed to “bite” the Ausonian soil as you died’, 17.262–3). It is as though Tellus’ appearance effectively set in motion the curse she promises in book 15 on Hasdrubal and the Carthaginians: tellus tumulat. A Homeric formula,139 the act of biting the soil, brings about a mysterious, eternal connection of the dead—even through a foreigner—with the soil and the maternal space of tellus.140 137

See Currie (1958); Brouwers (1982), 83–4; Ahl, Davis, and Pomeroy (1986), 2516–17; Fucecchi (1990), 159–60; and Marks (2008) and (2010) on Hannibal and Pompey. 138 On the Virgilian echoes in the storm of the ﬁnal book, see most recently Villalba A´lvarez (2004) with further bibliography and Manolaraki (2010). 139 Spaltenstein (1986) 376; cf. Il. 2.418, Aen. 10.489 and 11.418, Pun. 5.526–7, 9.383–4. 140 Cf. the beginning of book 16, after Hasdrubal’s demise: Bruttia maerentem casus patriaeque suosque / Hannibalem accepit tellus (‘the land of Bruttium received Hannibal mourning over the disaster of his country and his own’, 16.1–2). As Bernstein (2008), 139, notes, Hannibal’s speech ‘reveals a signiﬁcant contrast with

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Hannibal pursues a reunion with the Italian soil until the very end, in his ﬁnal threatening words before he disappears from the narrative, before he becomes an ekphrasis in Scipio’s triumph, portrayed in his ﬂight from the battleﬁeld (sed non ulla magis mentesque oculosque tenebat, / quam uisa Hannibalis campis fugientis imago, ‘but not any other sight was attracting the minds and eyes more than the image of Hannibal ﬂeeing from the battleﬁeld’, 17.643–4), a memorial of his ﬂeeting presence in the poem, always elusive and ever present to haunt the Romans for many generations to come: mihi satque superque ut me Dardaniae matres atque Itala tellus, dum uiuam, expectent nec pacem pectore norint.

(17.613–15)

It is enough for me and more than enough, that while I am alive, the Dardanian mothers and the Italian land shall await me, and they shall not know any peace in their heart.

Silius crafts a portrait of bloodthirsty Hannibal until the very minute of his disappearance from the poem: Hannibal vows his return and forebodes the lack of peace for the ages to come.141 Yet again, in his last words, the Carthaginian displays an imitation of Dido’s last moments and especially the curse that set in motion this poem on the Second Punic War. Lack of peace is Hannibal’s lasting legacy to the Romans, as Dido’s curse announces the three Punic wars to follow. Once more, Hannibal dons a feminine mask, that of Dido, an act that shows his attachment to the false mother-model, to the wrong country, to a hostile tellus. As Keith has recently observed in an essay on the role of Orientalism in the poem, ‘Silius’ representation of Hannibal as a female-focused hero . . . inscribes him, and his countrymen (the effeminate Tyrians), in the position of the losers in the “battle of the sexes” and thereby renders impotent the Carthaginian challenge to Roman hegemony of the Mediterranean’.142

Aeneas’ perception of the relationship between family and state. Whereas Aeneas praises a group, the Trojan men who died ante ora patrum, Hannibal directs his ÆŒÆæØ to Hasdrubal alone.’ 141 Reminiscent of Pompey’s last speech in Luc. 8.622–35. See Narducci (2002), 363 n.70, and Marks (2010). 142 Keith (2010), 372.

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From the preceding analysis of the role of Tellus in complementing the masculine traits of patria and therefore supplementing the semantic register associated with Romanness, I would like to stress the lack of clear-cut boundaries between Roman and Carthaginian dependence on the motherly, the other element in one’s self. Both Nero and Hannibal are drawn by the same desire to attach themselves to a tellus that has suffered very much and has to eject one of the two, namely the foreign and alien, after having visible stains on her body from the other’s stay on her territory for so many years. Tellus becomes the catalyst in motivating Nero to defeat Hasdrubal, Hannibal’s brother, a second Hannibal himself,143 as the Magna Mater will set in motion the expulsion of Hannibal from Italian terrain in the last book, as we shall see. Both goddesses embody two faces of the same coin, however, the same and the other, the Roman and the nonRoman, and their ultimate conﬂation is the only route to success. Silius takes us on a fascinating trip of what constitutes Roman and non-Roman, same and other, by parading a series of failed relationships between fathers and sons, metropolis and colonies, disoriented foreigners in their displaced feelings for the (m)other. During this quest, motherhood also changes, as we shall see next, from the ineffective appeal of Marcia to Regulus to Pomponia’s successful instruction of her son on how to become a true Roman.

143

On Hasdrubal as geminus Hannibal, see Augoustakis (2003b).

3 Comes ultima fati: Regulus’ Encounter with Marcia’s Otherness in Punica 6 Marcia: ‘Why do I think on what he was! he’s dead! He’s dead, and never knew how much I loved him ... Amidst its agonies, remembered Marcia, And the last words he uttered called me cruel! Alas! He knew not, hapless youth, he knew not Marcia’s whole soul was full of love and Juba.’ (J. Addison, Cato: A Tragedy, 1713, Act IV.iii.43–4, 46–9)

James Addison’s play Cato, inspired by the ancient sources, such as Plutarch and Lucan, among others, celebrates the love of the king of Numidia, Juba, for Cato’s (imaginary) daughter, Marcia, named after Cato’s wife.1 The verses of this epigraph could have been inspired by Silius’ portrait of Marcia, wife of Regulus, in Punica 6, and for the informed reader in fact the last word, Juba, comes as a surprise, since it can easily be replaced by Regulus, for the passage resonates with Marcia’s own words to her captive husband, Regulus, in the context of the encounter between husband and wife as detailed in Silius’ account, which we shall explore in this chapter. The sixth book of the Punica opens with the aftermath of the battle at Lake Trasimene: the victory of the Carthaginians has been total.

1

The passage is quoted from the edition by Henderson and Yellin (2004), 77.

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An analeptic narrative on the adventures of Regulus in Libya during the First Punic War occupies a large portion of this book (6.62–551). Regulus’ son, Serranus, wounded after the battle at Trasimene, ﬁnds refuge at the house of his father’s faithful companion, Marus. In a ﬂashback narrative, Marus relates the killing of a serpent at the River Bagrada (6.140–293), the capture of Regulus and his mission to Rome (6.299–402), Marcia’s reaction to her husband’s uncompromising attitude, Regulus’ speech to the Senate (6.403–520), and his ﬁnal return to Carthage, resulting in his death (6.521–51). The poet brings several innovations into his account in book 6 in comparison to pre-Silian tradition. He introduces three characters around the ﬁgure of Regulus who are otherwise unknown or remain anonymous in our historiographical or literary sources. The ﬁrst is Serranus, Regulus’ son.2 Clearly Regulus’ son must have participated in the battle at Trasimene, but this fabricated Serranus is called iuuenis (6.101, 415) and ﬂore nitens primo (‘in the ﬂower of his youth’, 6.65), references that further complicate historical chronology. Another Silian innovation is Marus, Regulus’ faithful companion during his tribulations in Africa. His presence ﬁts into the scheme of Silius’ portrayal of Serranus’ ‘education’ by Marus, who in a ﬂashback expounds on the story of Regulus’ heroic adventures in Africa and Rome, inasmuch as generational continuity would be guaranteed through the precepts of an older man.3 But most importantly, Silius gives Marcia herself a substantial role in the narrative. In this chapter, we shall look at how Marcia’s presence enhances our understanding of her husband, Regulus, but also sheds light on the situation in Rome during both Punic wars. By appropriating the 2 Although we know of the consulship of one of Regulus’ sons, in 227 bce, this person was not called Serranus, an agnomen of the gens Atilia, made up to pun with the etymology of the name from the verb sero (cf. Spaltenstein [1986], 395). For the etymology of Serranus and the intended pun see Virg. Aen. 6.844 (cf. Fro¨lich [2000], 150). Serranus’ youth plays off against Marus’ old age, which is several times illustrated in the narrative (6.94, 100, 118, 299). Williams (2004), 72 n.10, points to a possible association between the name and the Carthaginian names ‘Sarra/Sarranus’ (also Skutsch [1985], 632). 3 Ha¨ussler (1978), 170, correctly notices that the episode of Marus and Serranus reminds the reader of Caesar’s meeting with Amyclas in Lucan De bello ciuili 5 (among other scenes in literature, such as Evander and Aeneas). See also Brouwers (1982), 80.

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Virgilian and Lucanian traditions,4 through Marcia’s plea to Regulus, Silius underscores her husband’s weakness and inability to secure stability in Roman political affairs during and after his consulship. I argue that this female character assumes a signiﬁcant position in the poem: as the ﬁrst Roman mother to be given a voice in the authorial narrative of Marus’ analeptic narrative of the First Punic War, Marcia’s subversive presence points to the male protagonist’s failure to safeguard his own family and thus questions the value of patria over domus. As an outsider of this male-centred narrative, Marcia’s appearance raises important questions about the effectiveness of the decisions men make. In this sense, from Marcia’s point of view, close scrutiny of the portrait of ‘Regulus the Saint’ undermines his exemplary display of Stoic ﬁdes and uirtus.5 In a web of interdependence among Marcia, Regulus, and their son, this close relationship brings to prominence Marcia’s role as the embodiment of motherhood on the one hand and, in the absence of the father, as the symbol of maternal potestas on the other. The old man’s story functions both analeptically and proleptically, poised between the world of the First Punic War and the current situation in the Second Punic War, looking both in the past and in the present, the hic et nunc of Roman affairs amidst the destruction after the defeat at Trasimene. As the following analysis demonstrates, Marcia’s speeches counterbalance Marus’ androcentric narrative: even though the wife of Regulus is portrayed as the distraught woman who is separated from her husband in the First Punic War, by questioning her husband’s actions in her presence outside Marus’ narrative, Marcia assumes the same role of suspending generational continuity and once again of painting an authorial, subversive portrait of her husband’s actions, in her own brief ﬂashback.

4 Regulus’ Marcia is modelled after Cato’s Marcia in De bello ciuili 2. See Brouwers (1982), 79; Spaltenstein (1986), 419; Fro¨lich (2000), 279. On the relationship between the two poets, see Marks (2010) with further bibliography. 5 With an epigrammatic comment, Steele (1922), 325, deﬂates the role of the female in the present episode: ‘Silius tried to vary the monotony of historical narrative by the introduction of a hero of the First Punic War, with variety added by the part taken by Marcia.’

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Just as Marcia is relegated to her marginal space in the periphery of the narrative and just as her symbolic voice, to use Kristeva’s terminology, becomes mute by the semiotic noise of the oars of the boat that takes Regulus back to Carthage to die, within Marus’ narrative, so does Marcia come out of her house after several years of seclusion and utters an equally subversive speech that puts motherhood in the frame of otherhood and alienation from one’s own patria. There is nothing in Marcia’s presence that allows her to be absorbed into the symbolic of male ideology, the Kristevan phenotext, since her appearance from her domus strongly suggests her isolation in the feminine choˆra, the phenotext, from which her Maenadic voice can be heard as a unique position of a Roman mother who nevertheless behaves in a non-Roman fashion. Her voice of dissent opposes her son’s adherence to his father’s model and directs her offspring away from the destructive traits of Regulus’ character. By pointing to her husband’s failures and disagreeing with a particular course of action, Marcia signals a departure from established norms and as a result constitutes a centrifugal force from the accustomed norms of previous Roman leadership towards a new model, soon to be embodied by Scipio. The voice of the mother cannot at this point be aligned and moulded according to the demands of the male, Roman ethical code, since the latter has proved to be in many respects deﬁcient. At the same time, Marcia is marked as a ﬁgure from Rome’s past and is marginalised, signalling a departure towards a new model of motherhood, which we shall see epitomised in Pomponia and non-Roman women from the periphery in the following chapter.

REGULUS AND THE PUNICA: BRIDGING TRADITIONS? Let us begin by examining the different traditions explored by Silius in the amalgamated ﬁgure of Regulus in the Punica. According to the Flavian poet, after his unsuccessful campaign and capture in Libya by the Carthaginians’ Spartan ally, Xanthippus (6.299–345), Regulus returns to Rome upon the demand of the Carthaginians, to negotiate

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peace terms and an exchange of prisoners. Among Silius’ sources for Regulus’ recovery to Rome is Horace’s famous Roman Ode (Carm. 3.5): the Augustan poet himself is the inheritor of a growing tradition around the legend and ﬁgure of Regulus, whose mission to Rome seems certainly unknown to Polybius and Diodorus.6 Critics often dismiss the story of Regulus’ presence in Rome as ﬁctional, created by the Romans to atone for Regulus’ mistakes in Libya during his command of the army there.7 Regulus’ growing legend, commonly typiﬁed as Regulussage or Heldensage, moulded in the ﬁrst century bce by C. Sempronius Tuditanus and enhanced by Q. Aelius Tubero, is fully ﬂeshed out by Cicero and Livy.8 The former of the two early annalists turns Regulus into the Stoic hero par excellence, while the latter expands on the details of Regulus’ superhuman ﬁght against the monstrous serpent of the River Bagrada, in Africa.9 Thus, we can distinguish two different traditions in the two centuries that precede the composition of the Punica. On the one hand, Polybius and Diodorus emphasise the mistakes, ﬂaws, and failure of the Roman leadership under Regulus, while the latter also provides valuable information about Regulus’ punishment in Carthage and the vengeance that followed at Rome against Carthaginian prisoners and was initiated by 6 For an examination of Horace and Silius, see Williams’s (2004) recent treatment. Shumate (2006), 71, brieﬂy treats the role of Regulus’ wife in Horace. Polybius 1.29–35 gives the account of the battles that took place in Africa (Ecnomus, Adys, Aspis) during the year 256–255 bce but does not provide us with the account of Regulus’ mission to Rome. Diodorus does not give us any information concerning Regulus’ mission either, although he goes into detail about his punishment and torture in Carthage (23.11–16). 7 Lazenby (1996), 106. 8 Among many references to Regulus in the Ciceronian corpus, the praise of Regulus’ exemplary character in Fin. 2.20.65 and 5.37.82 and in Off. 3.99.26–100.27 epitomises Cicero’s view (the discussion continues until 3.115.32 on Regulus’ oath). Cf. Wezel (1873), 54–6, for Silius’ combination of the tradition from Cicero and Horace and Ripoll (2000a), 159, for Cicero. Unfortunately, Livy’s full account has been lost to us (Periocha 18). See n.56 below. 9 For an examination of the sources on Regulus from the second century bce onwards see Mix (1970), 14–24 and 32–55; Ariemma (1999), 80 n.5; Fro¨lich (2000), 266–9 and 305–10; Gendre and Loutsch (2001), 131–72; Williams (2004), 70–71. There is an unanswerable question concerning Naevius, whether he refers to Regulus’ punishment and death in Carthage: seseque ei perire mauolunt ibidem / quam cum stupro redire ad suos popularis (‘they prefer to die there than return to their countrymen stained with ill-repute’, fr. 46 Strzelecki). See M. Barchiesi (1962), 442–51.

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Regulus’ wife.10 What is more, in Polybius’ and Diodorus’ accounts we witness an unvarnished view of Regulus’ exploits, a reality that enables us to view later accounts with scepticism. On the other hand, the rest of our sources underscore the sanctity of Regulus’ conduct, his Stoic resistance to the ius postliminii, and his ﬁnal martyrdom in Carthage. Where does Silius stand? And furthermore, how does this affect Marcia’s representation both inside and outside Marus’ heroisation of Regulus’ exploits? Silius, an inheritor of both poetic and historiographical sources, is at the crossroads of these two diverse traditions.11 Though it would be difﬁcult to argue against the well-established theory that the poet adopts Regulus as the Stoic hero whose virtues he exempliﬁes in book 6,12 at the same time, the reader cannot fail to notice that Regulus’ heroic qualities undergo a subtle transformation in the poem’s narrative. He is considered the legendary model for younger Roman leaders (such as Scipio), and yet his actions in Libya are reprehensible on several occasions.13 In other words, the poet does not allow Regulus to emerge as the ﬂawless general Scipio becomes later in the poem.14 10 Diodorus 24.12 relates the story of Regulus’ wife’s revenge, as she allegedly tortures Hamilcar and Bodostor, two Carthaginian prisoners ÆÆ Ø’ I ºØÆ ÆPe KŒººØ ÆØ e ÇB (‘thinking that he [Regulus] died [in Carthage] because of negligence’). As Williams (2004), 71, points out, the story of Regulus’ embassy back to Rome is probably a ﬁction, ‘perhaps designed to explain or obscure the actions of his wife’. 11 On Silius’ exploitation of practices from both genres, see most recently Gibson (2010). 12 All of Silius’ critics underscore the relationship between Hercules and Regulus or Regulus and Scipio. See Sechi (1951), 287–8; Bassett (1955), 1–20; von Albrecht (1964), 62–8; Ha¨ussler (1978), 168–77; Kissel (1979), 122–3; Burck (1979), 284–5; Billerbeck (1986a), 351–2; Ripoll (1998), 126–8, 159–60, 240–41, 247–8, 348–51; Ariemma (1999); Fro¨lich (2000); Fucecchi (2003); Williams (2004), 72–6. Ahl, Davis, and Pomeroy (1986), 2522–3, view Regulus as an archetype for Fabius. 13 Williams (2004), 84:

Regulus’ policy of direct aggression and no avoidance resembles an anachronism of sorts, a form of guileless ‘uirtus’ that is no match for Xanthippus or a Hannibal, and one that contrasts with Fabius’ more enlightened strategy in the second Punic War . . . [T]he struggle . . . is not just between Rome and Carthage but also between different versions—Regulan and Fabian, even ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’—of Roman military virtue, strategy and heroism. 14

Hardie (1993a), 70–71, insists on the notion of a transformation that Regulus undergoes, a kind of psychomachia in Stoic terms. Part of this process is his ﬁght with the serpent, which reﬂects ‘Regulus’ conquest of the serpentine passions in the human breast’. Ripoll (1998), 247–8, develops the same idea of Regulus’ progress

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As an illustration of Silius’ absorption of various threads of the Regulus saga, let us turn to the series of events following the general’s defeat in Libya. Having exposed the Carthaginians’ plan to exchange hostages, Marus narrates in detail the trip from Carthage to Rome (6.350–88), concentrating on Regulus’ state of mind. He is presented as the exemplary ﬁgure of resistance, of Stoic patientia, constantia, and ﬁdes. Regulus’ companion himself, Marus, assures Serranus that his father surpassed all his expectations: spes tamen una mihi, quamquam bene cognita et olim atrox illa ﬁdes, urbem murosque domumque tangere si miseris licuisset, corda moueri posse uiri et uestro certe mitescere ﬂetu. (6.377–80) Although that inﬂexible loyalty of his had been well known to me for a long time, yet one hope I still cherished: that, had it been allowed to us, wretched, to reach the city and the walls and our house, the heart of the man could be moved and could at least be softened by your tears.

The old man’s ﬂashback constitutes a great example of a suasoria, a lesson from exemplary ﬁgures of the past meant as an instruction for the younger, male generations; and it is appropriately incorporated into the male world of epic poetry. And yet, there are moments in his narrative, as seen above, where Marus expresses his wishes that Regulus had not been so unbent! Would that he had taken advantage of his ius postliminii, according to which, once a man in captivity returns to his city, he recovers all his rights.15 Regulus, however, rejects this civil right, when he advises his fellow citizens to refuse any negotiations (6.467–89) and forthwith conﬁrms his decision to return to Carthage and endure punishment there. Throughout the towards achieving Stoic gloria and uirtus, and ranks the Roman consul in the same category with other heroes, such as Hercules and Scipio for instance. Similarly, Fucecchi (2003), 272, observes that ‘la storia di Regolo si adatta bene al tono predominante nella prima parte dei Punica, dove si esalta la constantia del popolo romano e dei suoi alleati fedeli (come Sagunto), la sua capacita` di reagire ai momenti di crisi’. Marks (2005b) explores the role of self-sacriﬁce (deuotio) in the poem but does not examine Regulus as the character who ultimately sacriﬁces his life for Rome’s salvation. 15 For a detailed examination of the ius postliminii in connection with Regulus see Kornhardt (1954), 85–123, who juxtaposes Regulus’ example to the failed efforts to retrieve the hostages after the battle at Cannae.

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episode, Regulus further annuls his ius postliminii by refusing to wear the toga (6.393–4), to salute the consul (6.396–8), or to sojourn at his house (6.432–3), even if such conduct means that he must rebuff his wife and two sons. In an atypical fashion, Marus wishes he could change the denouement of his own narrative by giving voice to a contrafactual condition he seems to have rehearsed many times as a possible scenario, as they approach Rome: his hope is that Regulus’ obstinacy will be inﬂuenced by the lament of his family (uestro certe mitescere ﬂetu).16 What is Marcia’s role then but a construct in Marus’ narrative that serves as a foil to Regulus’ behaviour? Upon Regulus’ arrival in Rome, we learn of Marcia’s appearance and her distraught condition. The wife enters the narrative by means of a vividly gestural ecce: Ecce trahens geminum natorum Marcia pignus infelix nimia magni uirtute mariti, squalentem crinem et tristes lacerabat amictus . . . atque ea, postquam habitu iuxta et uelamine Poeno deformem adspexit, fusis ululatibus aegra labitur, et gelidos mortis color occupat artus . . . me uoce quieta affatus iubet et uestros et coniugis una arcere amplexus pater,17 impenetrabilis ille luctibus et numquam summissus colla dolori. (6.403–5, 407–9, 411–14) Now Marcia showed up, dragging her two boys, the pledges of their love— Marcia, unhappy because of the lofty virtue of her great husband; in her grief, she was tearing apart her soiled hair and her garment . . . And after she saw him near, changed in mien and humiliated by the Carthaginian dress, with an extensive cry she fell in a faint, and the colour of death covered her cold limbs . . . Talking to me with a tranquil voice, your father bid me hinder the embraces both of you two and of his wife: he was impenetrable to grief and never bowed his neck to pain.

The sight of her husband’s transformation, from a Roman general to a Carthaginian prisoner, his head covered by the uelamine Poeno, triggers Marcia’s ﬁrst reaction. Regulus’ habitus is different, foreign

16 17

On contrafactuals in Silius, see Cowan (2010). On reading patet or manet instead of pater see Ariemma (1999), 88 n.21.

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behaviour accompanied by alien dress. These two aspects make him deformem, a stranger to his own country. As Marcia comes prepared for mourning, she faces for the ﬁrst time a changed, African Regulus. To a certain extent, Marcia’s expected behavioural collapse, read on the surface as grief fed by conjugal ﬁdelity and devotion,18 conﬁrms her literary ‘descent’ from other distraught women and similar descriptions of female sorrow and lament in the Roman epic tradition. It has been correctly suggested that the episode of Regulus recalls the wife of Cato in Lucan,19 from whom Silius borrows the name for Regulus’ wife. Marcia becomes the literary ‘descendant’ of Lucan’s Marcia, Cato’s wife, and also her potential historical ‘ancestress’. In this manner, Silius manufactures for the reader a perception of historical continuity.20

LITERARY CONVENTION OR SUBVERSIVE SPEECH? The description of Marcia adheres to generic representations of women in grief, such as Virgil’s Andromache and Dido or Lucan’s Cornelia.21 As we saw above, for instance, Marcia cries at the sight of her husband and temporarily faints. Again, in 6.412–13, Marus implies that Marcia’s efforts to embrace her husband, which indirectly point to the recovery of her senses, fail; Marus is explicitly told to remove both her and Regulus’ children from their father. Marcia’s 18 As Dietrich (2005), 81, observes: ‘In Marcia, Silius creates a female ﬁgure whose devotion to her husband, children and marriage, like the relationships of her counterparts in Lucan, is emblematic of Roman values.’ 19 See the relevant discussion in von Albrecht (1964), 65 n.52; Ahl (1976), 268–71; Kissel (1979), 122–3; Billerbeck (1986a), 351–2; Ariemma (1999), 87 and 96–7; Dietrich (2005), 80–83. Ha¨ussler (1978), 171, points to the relationship between this episode and Hercules’ ﬁght against Antaeus in Luc. 4.593–660. 20 See McGuire (1995), 110–18, on the use of historical personalities of later Roman history in the battle of Cannae in book 8. 21 Cf. the ﬁnal episode in book 4, where Imilce tears her hair and scratches her cheeks on the occasion of her son’s imminent sacriﬁce (see chapter 4, 199–205). On the connection with female ﬁgures in Virgil and Lucan, see also Spaltenstein (1986), 419–20; Ariemma (1999), 91–2. Certainly, Marcia is also fashioned as another Ovidian, elegiac Dido (Her. 7). Dietrich (2005) links female expressions of grief in the ﬁrst books of the poem to the description of Scipio’s grief in book 13.

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portrayal as a woman who gives in to grief has attracted critics’ comments on the topological, rather formulaic, description of her behaviour. For instance, Marcia’s behaviour has been construed as a token of conjugal ﬁdelity, an attribute that certainly cannot be denied, yet constitutes an oversimpliﬁcation.22 Within Marus’ narrative, Marcia may seem to reinforce Regulus’ ﬁrm decision to die for his country, but in her appearance in the Roman present, the Second Punic War, not the past of Marus’ story in the First Punic War, Marcia appears as an opponent to and victim of the war, when she advises her son not to follow in the footsteps of his father; thus she invalidates her position as conveyor of traditional ‘Roman’ values, as a Roman mother would do. Therefore, Marcia does not comply with the ideal of a Roman matrona but rather denounces the war as a merely futile operation. After Marus’ description of Regulus’ arrival at Rome and his encounter with Marcia, Serranus interrupts the old man and relates his own recollection of the scene. What is left in his memory is a superhuman ﬁgure (humana maior species erat, ‘his stature was more than human’, 6.426). Serranus afﬁrms that he has seen nothing similar to that image thereafter (nil posthac oculis simile incidit, ‘none like him have I seen since’, 6.430). This remark conﬁrms that Marus’ ‘instruction’ of Serranus has been successful. Marus then continues his account of Regulus’ mission in Rome, as if to corroborate and inﬂame the young man’s passion to retrace his father’s ‘journey’. The hero passes outside his house without entering it; he sojourns at the sedes Poenorum instead (6.433). From the description of the outside appearance of Regulus’ house, Marus moves to Marcia’s appearance on the threshold (in limine primo, 6.436): quo fers gressus? non Punicus hic est, Regule, quem fugias, carcer. uestigia nostri

22 Casale (1954), 32; La Penna (1981), 234; La Penna (2000), 67–9. As Dietrich (2005), 83, recognises, ‘her [Marcia’s] appearance in mourning indicates the uncertain future of Rome itself as he [Regulus] returns to Carthage’. Von Albrecht (1964), 64–5, interprets Marcia’s presence as a ﬁgure that is opposed to Regulus’ personality. Regulus does not give in to misericordia, while Marcia entreats him to surrender to sentimentalism. Therefore, Marcia reminds us of Xanthippe, who was dismissed by Socrates in the Platonic Phd. 60a.

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Where are you heading? Regulus, this place, from which you run away, is not the Carthaginian prison. This house, unstained, preserves the prints of our chaste marriage-bed and our household gods without guilt. Here, with the Senate and our country wishing us joy, once and again I bore you offspring (what, I ask, have I done to degrade you?) . . . Neither do I seek your embraces nor the union that the holy torch brings nor marriage. Stop shunning the household gods of your country and consider it proper to grant your sons one night.

In her ﬁrst speech, directly quoted by Marus and certainly reconstructed from a male perspective, Marcia dramatically emphasises Regulus’ ius postliminii.23 Marcia’s Roman, matronly presence in limine primo reminds the reader of the possibility that Regulus still has to make use of his right, and, therefore, enter his house.24 Marcia’s repeated use of words such as gressus (437), uestigia (438), and sedes (442) underscores the importance that the limen in a broader sense plays in this scene. Regulus prefers the uilla publica in the Campus Martius, the sedes Poenorum (433), to his own house, while after Marcia’s plea he continues on his way, escorted by the Carthaginians, until they reach the limen Tyrium (451). The following day, Regulus enters the Curia, where he delivers his speech. There, once again, he refuses the exhortations of the senators to sit on his solita sedes or to follow uestigia nota (459).25 Through his refusal to 23

For the elegiac reminiscences of Marcia’s Anrede, see Ariemma (1999), 92–5. Consider also the similarity with Imilce, who bids farewell to Hannibal in litore primo (3.128), with emphasis laid again on the liminality of the place. The notion of limen constitutes an important quality in imperial epic poetry, not merely in terms of topography, but in terms of the protagonists’ efforts to transgress the limits imposed by gender or tradition. Compare, for instance, Valerius Flaccus’ insistence on the ‘ﬁrst threshold’ in his account of both the Lemnian women—Hypsipyle and Medea in Argonautica 2.136, 237, 255, and 7.110. 25 This is precisely the proof of Regulus’ achievement of ‘sanctity’ through refusal to succumb to the prescriptions of earthly pleasures (cf. Billerbeck [1986a], 352). 24

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take advantage of the ius postliminii, Regulus places himself outside the Roman populace, especially when he alienates himself from his wife and children. By contrast, Marcia’s adherence to the limits of the household strongly distinguishes her from her husband, as a wife who stays within the boundaries of her household and therefore of her gender. In addition, consider the emphasis placed on words such as sum enixa tibi in 442 or mecum in 446, the companionship once shared between husband and wife, now shattered by war and alienation. Furthermore, Marcia’s words reveal the use of rhetoric by the wife who appropriates masculine language to persuade Regulus: her insistence on patria (or patrius the adjective) is characteristic (patrium, 439; patria, 442; patrios, 448). In Marcia’s vision, the patria becomes an extension of her household with its gods (Lares and Penates), as it sanctions her fertility. Motherhood and the state are aligned here to oppose Regulus’ heroic behaviour, as he hastens away to another patria. As we have seen in the previous chapter, however, displacement and dislocation from one’s patria bodes ill for the protagonist, Hannibal, or in this case, Regulus. Marcia’s rhetoric fails, as a result of a borrowed voice that rather propagates the male, heroic code. Ultimately, although she stresses her importance within her household, Marcia cannot function as the catalyst who would make her husband change his mind. In this regard, Marcia follows in the footsteps of her literary ‘ancestress’.

LUCAN’S MARCIA AND THE FOREB ODING OF DOOM . . . ÆæŒÆ, KØØŒB ŒFÆ r ÆØ ªıÆEŒÆ, æd q › ºª . . . (Plu. Cat. Mi. 25.1) [He married] Marcia, a woman who seemed to be capable and reputable, about whom there existed the most abundant talk . . .

Let us turn our attention now to Lucan and Cato’s Marcia. As I have already observed, the literary predecessor of Regulus’ Marcia is Lucan’s Marcia, the wife of Cato. Although Brouwers has long recognised the literary afﬁliation between the two Marcias, only recently have critics paid attention to some of the details of this

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intertextual relationship.26 In Lucan’s second book, after Brutus’ meeting with Cato, Marcia makes her appearance at dawn and asks Cato to remarry her (Luc. 2.326–49).27 Though previously married to Cato, Marcia has been willingly conceded as a wife to Hortensius, and after the latter’s death she is once again reunited to her previous husband, Cato. In this episode, just after Hortensius’ funeral, Marcia appears in black. The wedding that follows (Luc. 2.350–71) has correctly been identiﬁed by scholars as an ‘anti-wedding’ ritual.28 As Keith observes, Marcia’s funereal attire adds a foreboding tone to her speech and acts.29 I would like to pursue further the similarities between Cato’s and Regulus’ Marcias and interpret them within the context of Punica 6. Even though Marcia arrives at Cato’s house at dawn (Luc. 2.326–8), Lucan emphasises darkness rather than the approaching light of daybreak: quondam uirgo toris melioris iuncta mariti, mox, ubi conubii pretium mercesque soluta est tertia iam suboles, alios fecunda penates impletura datur geminas et sanguine matris permixtura domos . . . (Luc. 2.329–33) Once, as a virgin, she was joined in marriage to a better husband; soon when the prize and the reward of marriage, a third child now, was paid and, as a fertile woman, she is given to ﬁll another home [with offspring] and to ally the two houses with the blood of a mother . . .

According to Lucan, Marcia’s two marriages were contracted for the purpose of providing both Cato’s and Hortensius’ houses with 26 Cf. n.4 above. Ariemma (1999), 90, identiﬁes the fusion of elegiac and epic materials in this episode but considers Marcia’s presence as autonomous with regard to Regulus’ portrayal: ‘uno sviluppo sostanzialmente autonomo rispetto all’intera tradizione relativa al personaggio di Regolo’. Marcia’s elegiac voice adds to the polyphony of the epic, according to Ariemma (1999), 115. For Lucan’s Marcia’s elegiac voice see Harich-Graz (1990), 212–23. 27 See also Plutarch’s Cat. Mi. 25–6. On Lucan’s Marcia, see Quartana (1918) and most recently Sannicandro (2007). 28 See Ahl (1976), 247–52; Henderson (1987), 135; Bartsch (1997), 125; Boe¨lsJanssen (2002), 136–7; Esposito (2004) 41–2; Sannicandro (2007), 94–5. 29 See Keith (2000), 88. D’Alessandro Behr (2007), 150, notes: ‘As Marcia welcomes Cato in her embrace, the shadow of her funereal robe eclipses the shining purple of Cato’s senatorial toga (2.367).’

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children (fecunda and sanguine, Luc. 2.331–3). However, Marcia’s ominous presence is marked by the force of the adjectives maerens and maesta (Luc. 2.328, 337) and by the brief description of funerary rites over Hortensius’ ashes (Luc. 2.333–6). Marcia’s subsequent speech consists of a plea to her husband, Cato, to take her back, not only as his wife but also as his comrade in war. The reunion of the couple, in both private and public spheres, will then be complete:30 dum sanguis inerat, dum uis materna peregi iussa, Cato, et geminos excepi feta maritos: uisceribus lassis partuque exhausta reuertor iam nulli tradenda uiro. da foedera prisci illibata tori, da tantum nomen inane conubii; . . . non me laetorum sociam rebusque secundis accipis: in curas uenio partemque laborum. da mihi castra sequi . . . (Luc. 2.338–43; 346–8) While the blood and while maternal strength was in me, I did your bidding, Cato, and fruitfully received two husbands; with womb exhausted, tired from child-bearing, I return to be given to no other husband now. Renew the ties unimpaired of our former marriage, grant me only the empty name of spouse . . . As no partner in prosperity or joy do you receive me: into anxieties I come, to share your struggles. Allow me to accompany the camp . . .

In her speech, Marcia stresses her physical exhaustion; in Luc. 2.338–41, she underscores the importance of maternity for generational continuity. Marcia is also well aware of her role in the civil war and does not have any illusions. The words in curas uenio partemque laborum (347) pun on the description of painful childbirth, earlier in her speech, which in Latin would also be expressed through the same word, labor.31 Since Marcia’s labours have been portrayed as exhausting and bloody, her plea to share Cato’s warlike labores foreshadows the fate of her husband himself. In addition, when Marcia refers to the foedera

30 Fantham (1992), 139–40, examines the political and moral dimensions in Cato’s remarriage to Marcia. 31 Notice also the pun with partem and partu, hidden behind Marcia’s words. On women as ‘vessels’ and child-bearers, Cantarella (1995).

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prisci . . . /tori(Luc. 2.341–2) and the nomen inane / conubii (Luc. 2.342–3), she prepares the reader for the unusual non-marriage that follows. As Ahl has correctly noted, Marcia’s presence constitutes an allegorical embracing of a ghost, a dedication to death rather than life.32 What adds to the ominous tone of the episode is the poet’s manipulation of Marcia’s plea, which is repeated in book 6 by the infernal witch, Erichtho, in one of her efforts to resurrect the dead body and make it reveal the gloomy scenery of the Underworld, the Roman shades devoured by discordia and civil war. In her third speech addressed to the body of the dead soldier, Erichtho’s language alludes to Marcia’s own words: ne parce precor: da nomina rebus, / da loca; da uocem qua mecum fata loquantur . . . (‘Please, do not hold back! Give names to the events, give the places, give a voice through which the Fates may speak to me . . . ’, Luc. 6.773–4). The anaphora of the imperatives exactly repeats Marcia’s entreaty to be reunited to Cato and to be given an empty name (da foedera . . . da nomen . . . da castra).33 Thus Marcia’s speech is transformed into an infernal spell, which is intended to reveal further discord and to perpetuate the chaotic circumstances of Roman civil strife. Marcia’s presence does not release the tension but rather discloses the inextricable complexities of Cato’s private life, which ultimately reﬂects on his dedication to an ‘empty’ and lost cause. Several echoes from Lucan’s Marcia’s speech are included in her literary ‘successor’s’ ﬁrst speech, while other elements are incorporated into later speeches of Regulus’ Marcia. Like her ‘ancestress’, Regulus’ Marcia faces a similarly difﬁcult situation: her husband’s captivity has annulled their marriage, at least as long as he refuses to recognise their conjugal bonds. Marcia’s reference to the birth of her two children (enixa sum tibi, Pun. 6.442) conﬁrms her power as a mother and as a medium for generational continuity, just as Cato’s Marcia did in her speech. In addition, Regulus’ Marcia’s indication of the uestigia nostri / casta tori (6.438–9) alludes to Cato’s Marcia’s description of her own conjugal bed in terms of foedera prisci illibata / 32

Cf. Ahl (1976), 251. See Armisen-Marchetti (2003), 253, who argues that Marcia simply wants a ‘communaute´’, and Sannicandro (2007), 92 and n.34, on the Stoic ideal of marriage as ı øØ and ı ŒÆd ª ø Æø ŒØøÆ (‘living together, sharing of life and children’, Musonius Rufus 13a, 67–8 Hense). Sannicandro (2007), 92, also comments brieﬂy on the allusion to Propertius’ Arethusa (4.3.45–6). 33

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tori (Luc. 2.341–2).34 In short, both women try to defend their chastity as a means for securing their husbands’ approval of their requests. In her plea in Punica 6, Marcia explicitly states that she does not seek the bonds of marriage or a union (of whatever kind) with her husband: the words complexus, foedera taedae, and coniugium (6.447–8) allude to Lucan’s Marcia and, in particular, to her abortive efforts to reunite with her husband. However, the same words point to a pattern of behaviour that Regulus’ Marcia refuses to repeat (non ego . . . peto, 6.447–8), given that the same conduct was followed by Cato’s Marcia to no avail. Silius’ Marcia knows well what will happen to her if she asks for something she cannot obtain. It is as if she knew that Lucan’s Marcia’s plea had resulted in an anti-wedding, and is therefore careful not to ask for a nomen inane. In particular, at the end of Lucan’s description of the ‘funereal’ wedding of Cato and Marcia, the poet notices how Cato abstains from sexual intercourse, refusing Marcia’s entreaty for a renewal of their conjugal bonds: nec foedera prisci / sunt temptata tori (‘nor were the ties of the former marriage-bed attempted’, Luc. 2.378–9).35 Cato’s Weltanschauung does not permit sexual association, except for Venerisque . . . maximus usus / progenies (‘and the greatest value of Venus, offspring’, Luc. 2.387–8).36 At any rate, we know that Marcia’s maternal potency has been exhausted. Thus, as though Silius’ Marcia did not want to make the same mistakes as her predecessor, at the coda of her ﬁrst speech she anticipates Regulus’ refusal: non ego complexus et sanctae foedera taedae / coniugiumue peto.37 The alert reader recognises between the 34

See Spaltenstein (1986), 422; Ariemma (1999), 96–7. On Cato’s attachment to the Republic, as a husband and father, see Dietrich (2005), 82: ‘By remarrying Marcia, who represents a worn-out Roman Republic returning to the values represented by her ﬁrst husband, Cato becomes a “bridegroom of the state”.’ D’Alessandro Behr (2007), 148–61, discusses how Cato’s humanisation is visible in the emphasis on his luctus and fatherly attachment to the Republic. 36 See Finiello (2005), 165–9: ‘Die ganze Szene dient also nicht dazu, Catos und Marcias stoische Lebensweise ru¨hmend hervorzuheben’ (169). See Sklena´rˇ (2003), 72–9, who keenly observes that Marcia succeeds where Brutus has failed (cf. Luc. 2.350); cf. Sannicandro’s (2007) discussion. 37 As Ariemma (1999), 97–9, notes, Regulus’ Marcia’s words remind us of the Virgilian intertext in Aen. 4.431–3. I think that Regulus’ Marcia intends to contrast her plea to that of her predecessor, Cato’s Marcia. Since Dido’s words are spoken to Anna, there is not an exact parallelism between Dido’s and Marcia’s situation here. 35

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lines Marcia’s own message, non ut Catonis Marcia: ‘I will change the tradition by not following my predecessor’s conduct.’ Regulus’ Marcia is in agony to ﬁnd other means to make Regulus ‘surrender’, by reversing the plea of Lucan’s Marcia. Some other elements from Cato’s Marcia’s speech are adopted in the structure of Punica 6, in particular the darkness and funereal atmosphere of Lucan’s episode and the sinister tone of Cato’s Marcia’s prayer. The darkness that surrounds the episode between Marcia and Cato encompasses Silius’ whole book, from the very beginning to the last appearance of Marcia. More speciﬁcally, the sixth book of the Punica opens with the Sun yoking his horses at the breaking of a new day in the East: et foeda ante oculos strages propiusque patebat/ insani Mauortis opus (‘And the hideous massacre and the work of insane warfare lay open clearer before the eyes’, 6.5–6). Not surprisingly, the dawn reveals the totality of the Roman disaster, and the gleaming daylight is clouded over by the hideous sight of the massacre.38 And this is not the only instance of darkness looming over scenes in the sixth book of the Punica. The scattered troops of Roman soldiers try to ﬁnd refuge in the woods nearby, per noctem (‘at night’, 6.58), while Serranus himself, wounded and exhausted, arrives at Marus’ house furto ereptus opacae / noctis (‘rescued from doom by the connivance of dark night’, 6.70–1). What is more, the analeptic narrative on his father’s exploits will take place in the night, after Marus has taken good care of Serranus’ wounds (6.89–95), in particular while dawn has not yet broken (6.98). Later, when the news of the disaster at Trasimene breaks at Rome, there is a confusion between day and night, since the Roman population can ﬁnd rest neither during the day nor overnight (6.562–3). In addition, when Marus takes Serranus to the city to see his mother, we learn that Marcia has withdrawn from public life and shuns the light of day. Only on the occasion of the new disaster does she exit her house: hic inter trepidos curae uenerandus agebat Serranum Marus, atque olim post fata mariti

38 See Bassett (1959), 10–34, for allusions to the aftermath of Pharsalus (Luc. 7.786–95).

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non egressa domum uitato Marcia coetu et lucem causa natorum passa ruebat in luctum similem antiquo. (6.574–8) Here in the middle of the anxious crowd, Marus, worthy of honour for his care, was leading Serranus. And, although she had never left her house for a long time since her husband’s death but had avoided society and endured the light [of life] for the sake of her children, Marcia was rushing forth in mourning similar to the old one.39

Due to Regulus’ death, Marcia’s isolation points once again to the lack of light that permeates the whole book. She is sequestered in her house, as the chiastic order in 6.576 points out, non egressa . . . uitato Marcia coetu, with the word domum in the centre of the hexameter. The darkness of Marcia’s life adds another perspective to our understanding of Regulus. The hero is transformed into the light and hope of the Roman people, and when he is put to death by the Carthaginians, this beam of light seems to be extinguished, for his wife above all.40 This observation is in accordance with Marus’ earlier comment that the gods have decided to take away the Romans’ leader (6.130–1). The purpose of Marus’ narration is to secure generational continuity and literally to illustrate for young Serranus his father’s heroic exploits.41 However, the pessimistic and dark tone we discern in Lucan’s interlude between Cato and Marcia is also applicable to the sixth book of the Punica and adds ominous features to Silius’ characters as well. As we have seen, Cato’s Marcia makes her appearance still dressed in funereal attire, even though the episode takes place after Horten39 The phrase similem antiquo elliptically refers to Marcia’s mourning of Regulus. Marcia is once again prepared to mourn a member of her family, her son. See Spaltenstein (1986), 431. 40 Marcia’s conduct parallels Cornelia’s obsession with death and her isolation after Pompey’s death: decreuit pati tenebras . . . amat pro coniuge luctum . . . composita in mortem (‘resolved to suffer darkness . . . loves her grief in her husband’s stead . . . lay composed for death’, Luc. 9.110, 112, 116). On Cornelia’s and Marcia’s ‘instructions’ to their respective sons, see Augoustakis (forthcoming). 41 See Ha¨ussler (1978), 175: ‘Das ist der Sinn des 6. Buches: Verheißung aus Erinnerung’; Gendre and Loutsch (2001), 157: ‘L’originalite´ de Silius Italicus consiste a` montrer Marus nous signaler a` tout moment les re´actions que Regulus aurait duˆ avoir, s’il avait e´te´ un homme normal, mais qu’il n’a pas eues en tant que grand homme exceptionnel.’

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sius’ death, and she will ask for a remarriage to Cato. This mood of death and impending disaster overshadows the second appearance of Regulus’ Marcia, where we can see how the Lucanian tradition is further absorbed.42 After Regulus’ speech in the Senate, in which he advises his fellow citizens not to yield to the demands of the enemy, the populace at Rome is sorrowful. At this point in the narrative, Marcia reappears: tollite me, Libyes, comitem poenaeque necisque. hoc unum, coniunx, uteri per pignora nostri unum oro: liceat tecum quoscumque ferentem terrarum pelagique pati caelique labores. . . . accipe mecum hanc prolem. forsan duras Carthaginis iras ﬂectemus lacrimis, aut si praecluserit aures urbs inimica suas, eadem tunc hora manebit teque tuosque simul; uel si stat rumpere uitam, in patria moriamur. adest comes ultima fati. (6.500–3, 506–11) Take me on board, Libyans, a companion to his punishment and death. Husband, in the name of the offspring from my womb, I ask you this one thing alone: suffer me to endure along with you whatever toils of the earth or the sea or the sky . . . Take me and your children with you. Perhaps with tears we could bend the harsh wrath of Carthage, or if the hostile city closes off her ears, then the same ﬁnal moment will await you and yours together. Or, if you are resolved to end your life, let us die in our own country. Here is the companion of your fate to the end.

42

Cf. Argia’s request to Adrastus in Theb. 3.696: da bella, pater (‘give wars, father!’). The setting is the same as in Lucan, with the darkness of night adding a gloomy tone: . . . iam nocte suprema ante nouos ortus, ubi sola superstite Plaustro Arctos ad Oceanum fugientibus inuidet astris. (3.683–5) . . . now at the end of the night, before dawn, when Arctos’ wagon sole-surviving envies the stars ﬂeeing towards the Ocean.

while Argia carries at her breast her baby son, Thessander (3.682–3). Also, cf. Jocasta’s mission to the Argive camp to dissuade Polynices from initiating war (Theb. 7.470– 563), especially 7.470–1: iam gelidam Phoeben et caligantia primus / hauserat astra dies (‘now the ﬁrst daylight had swallowed up cold Phoebe and the dark stars’).

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Marcia’s insistence on the word comes, with which her speech opens and ends (6.500, 511), reveals her intentions to follow the paradigm of Lucan’s Marcia, who offers to accompany her husband in the theatre of war operations.43 As Keith has noted in a different context, such declarations question the seeming occlusion of women from the epic narrative and should alert us to scrutinise how these female voices undermine male structures of authority. Regulus’ Marcia is resolved to die together with her husband, because she is able to foresee Regulus’ death. The reference ceu in funere (6.497) discloses the extent to which Marcia is aware of her husband’s future.44 Regulus’ Marcia fulﬁls our expectations, as seen through the lens of Marus’ fashioning of a dutiful wife ready to sacriﬁce herself and to partake of her husband’s labores. Yet Marcia knows precisely that labores mean death and is ready to suffer together with her husband, though she may know that her request is futile. Her hypothetical supposition that she would be able perhaps to sway the 43

Cornelia is called a comes six times in Luc. 5.804, 8.100, 147, 190, 589, 649. In book 3, Imilce asks Hannibal to accompany him to war. She starts with the question mene, oblite tua nostram pendere salute, / abnuis inceptis comitem? (‘Do you reject me as a partner of your undertaking, having forgotten that my life depends on yours?’ 3.109–10), alluding to Dido’s reproach mene fugis? (‘Do you ﬂee me?’ Aen. 4. 314) and Cornelia’s complaint non olim casu pendemus ab uno? (‘Have we not always been subject to the same fate?’ Luc. 5.769). As a response to Hannibal’s advisory remarks, Imilce chastises him for forsaking her and their marriage and she expresses her willingness to follow him in his vast expedition as a comes (3.110) (a suauissima contentio, according to Lemaire [1823], 1.165). Imilce is prepared to cross the mountains with her husband and his army and to endure every labor (3.113). It is worth noticing that several women in literature, such as Marcia and Cornelia in Lucan, or Agrippina, Germanicus’ wife, in Tacitus, also demand that they share a part in their husbands’ expeditions (cf. Arria in Pliny’s 3.16, whose request to follow her husband in Rome was ﬁnally rejected; or Arethusa’s wish in Propertius’ 4.3 to follow Lycotas in battle). Imilce continues by assuring her husband of womanly strength (crede uigori / femineo, ‘trust female power’, 3.112–13) and of the power of love (castum haud superat labor ullus amorem, ‘no toil defeats pure love’, 3.113), declaring in her manifesto that her love and affection may overcome boundaries and transgress the limits of traditional gender roles. Despite the powerful beginning of her speech and her ardent desire to follow her husband, Imilce ends with what seems to be a conciliatory remark: sin solo adspicimur sexu ﬁxumque relinqui, / cedo equidem nec fata moror; deus annuat, oro. (‘However, if we are judged by gender alone, and it is established [for me] to be left behind, well, I for my part yield and will not delay fate . . . ’, 3.114–15). 44 Pace Spaltenstein (1986), 425, who does not think that Marcia could suspect at all Regulus’ punishment.

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Carthaginian authorities (forsan . . . ﬂectemus lacrimis) by means of female lament, renders her efforts ineffective, inasmuch as lament is conﬁned to the female space of seclusion from the manly, public domain of Roman affairs, but most importantly lament has proved to be a futile means of persuasion, as we saw above in Marus’ secret wish to bend Regulus’ obstinacy at the sight of his wife and children. In her last apostrophe, Marcia again exploits a loaded word, patria, juxtaposing it to an already distanced Regulus, who is in the liminal ‘body’ of water, in a boat ready to sail off to Africa. The repetitive emphasis on ultima (ultima comes, ultima uox) relegates, in a Kristevan reading, Marcia’s voice to the margins of the narrative, as her symbolic voice is overpowered by the semiotic noise of the oars, and her borrowed voice is silenced by Marus, who now hastens to complete his portrait of Regulus the Stoic saint.

MARCIA’S DIDOESQUE FAREWELL— IMPENETRABILITY WOUNDED What follows is Regulus’ Stoic resistance, his IŁØÆ,45 which transforms Marcia into another Dido: tum uero infelix mentem furiata dolore exclamat fessas tendens ad litora palmas: ‘en, qui se iactat Libyae populisque nefandis atque hosti seruare ﬁdem! data foedera nobis ac promissa ﬁdes thalamis ubi, perﬁde, nunc est?’ ultima uox duras haec tunc penetrauit ad aures; cetera percussi uetuerunt noscere remi. (6.514–20) Then indeed, her mind frantic with grief, unhappy Marcia stretches her weary hands to the water’s edge and exclaims: ‘Behold the man who boasts

45 It accords with Regulus’ earlier description as pacatus frontem (6.369) together with the phrase impenetrabilis ille (6.413). The closest parallel in the poem is Camillus’ description in similar terms in 7.560–1: pacata fuissent / ni consulta uiro mensque impenetrabilis irae (‘had it not been for the placid wisdom of Camillus and his refusal to harbour wrath’).

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of preserving his loyalty to Libya and its nefarious people, our enemy! Faithless man, where are now the pact made with me and the faith you promised at our marriage?’ This then was the last sound that penetrated to those impervious ears; as for the rest, the oars, thrust in the water, prevented [him] from knowing.

Marcia’s third speech abounds in Virgilian echoes, in particular the confrontation between Dido and Aeneas. The contrasting pair of ﬁdes and perﬁdia reminds the reader of Dido’s accusations to Aeneas in Aeneid 4 (305, 366, 421). In three lines, Marcia questions the validity of Regulus’ ﬁdes and condemns him as perﬁdus. The ﬁrst use of ﬁdes applies to Regulus’ faithfulness towards Rome, while the second refers to his conjugal ﬁdelity: in Marcia’s eyes, Regulus has become a Carthaginian, characterised mainly by the Punic perﬁdia! Regulus’ possession of duras aures echoes the description of Aeneas in Aeneid 4.428. What is more, Marcia’s initial exclamation en qui se iactat corresponds to Dido’s curse-speech, when she ironically says en dextra ﬁdesque (‘behold the right hand and the loyalty’, Aen. 4.597). Moreover, by means of allusion to Dido, Marcia questions Regulus’ decision to remain faithful to his oath and die in Carthage, just as Dido questioned Aeneas’ mission to found Rome.46 In particular, the word foedera (6.517) alludes to both the private and the public responsibilities of the Roman general. We should keep in mind that in her ﬁrst speech, Marcia reminds Regulus of their foedera taedae, their contract of marriage. However, the same word is used in connection with Regulus’ mission to Rome (noua Elissaei foedera patres/consultant mandare, ‘the Senate of Carthage resolved to send new conditions’, 6.346–7).47 Why then does Silius choose to model Marcia’s speech on Dido’s speeches to Aeneas? Certainly, Marcia’s Didoesque guise accentuates the climactic pathos of the episode. At the same time, however, it also reﬂects a departure from Lucan’s Marcia, and to a certain degree from Cornelia. Regulus’ Marcia is furiata dolore (6.514), an attribute

46 Ariemma (1999), 106–13, discusses the Virgilian allusions in the episode (to Andromache and the mother of Euryalus also). He observes the similarities between Aeneas and Regulus but also the differences between them (114). 47 Cf. Aen. 4.339 and 624. In the ﬁrst passage, Aeneas uses the word foedera with regard to marriage, while in the second passage Dido curses any treaties between the two races (nec foedera sunto, ‘let there be no treaties’).

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that is not applied to either Cornelia or Cato’s Marcia in Lucan. In this respect, Marcia resembles the Bacchic aspects of Dido’s distraught condition in Aeneid 4.48 What is emphasised is the bitter irony of Marcia’s words. We learn that her last words, ultima uox (6.519), were heard by Regulus, while the rest of her speech was silenced by the noise of the oars: ironically, remus is a masculine noun, viz. oars are plied by men. In Marus’ ﬂashback, Marcia is relegated to the margins of the narrative; the voice he gave her in the space of his story is now muted, her momentary autonomy turned into an asymbolia. Like Dido, Marcia questions Regulus’ alienation, his search for a substitute country. She opens her speech with Libya, her husband’s newly found allegiance, and closes with a reference to the wedding chamber, which he is now forsaking. Marcia thus distinguishes herself as a Roman, within Rome, and her domain as deﬁned by her position within the Roman domus. Regulus turns all of sudden into the Roman general who needs to situate himself in the periphery, outside the centre, in order to deﬁne his Romanness by suffering cruel death in the hands of the Carthaginians. At the same time, Marcia is a Roman woman who fails to behave like a Roman matrona, her voice is exiled in the margins of the narrative that must revolve around Regulus’ sacriﬁce. The phrase ultima uox resonates with the ending of her second speech, namely the plea to become Regulus’ comes ultima (6.511).

‘SECURING’ THE FUTURE And yet, Silius’ conclusion of an otherwise generically expected farewell episode between husband and wife deﬁes the norms of genre.49

48 Virgil twice uses the adjective furiatus, ﬁrst for Coroebus and then for Aeneas himself (Aen. 2.407 and 588). Consider also the description of Dido in Pun. 8.95–7 as furibunda (‘maddened’). 49 Compare, for instance, Statius’ Ach. 1.960, the parting scene between Achilles and Deidamia: irrita uentosae rapiebant uerba procellae (‘the windy gusts were snatching his vain words away’).

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While Regulus is described in terms of impenetrability in the whole scene, Marcia’s words function as a catalyst for the opposite outcome. The emphasis laid on the phrase ultima uox duras penetrauit ad aures encapsulates the power of Marcia’s words. Regulus’ refusal to use the rights of postliminium during this episode, and his portrayal as impenetrabilis ille (6.413), the Stoic hero par excellence, are at last questioned by Silius’ comment on Marcia’s ultimate speech. The general is indeed affected—but by which words? From the context of Marcia’s last sentence (data foedera nobis / ac promissa ﬁdes thalamis ubi, perﬁde, nunc est? 6.517–18), two possibilities arise: Regulus hears either the words perﬁde nunc est or the whole sentence. Marus’ intervention ‘saves’ the reputation of the hero, by drowning out the remainder of Marcia’s speech and by muting her voice: cetera percussi uetuerunt noscere remi (6.520). Despite the silencing of the woman’s voice, our perception of Regulus has slightly changed, as the poet has put into question the magniﬁcence of the Roman general, by using the verb penetrare immediately after Marcia’s frantic provocation. Is he the Stoic hero par excellence, as tradition has depicted him? I think there is space for some further questioning of Regulus’ role in book 6. Why does the poet choose ﬁrst to portray his heroine as another wife of Cato, then as another Dido raving at the abandonment of her partner? There is a remarkable intermingling of sources— Silius’ usual practice—yet the result is unique. An explanation on the grounds of conventionality is not sufﬁcient. As I have shown from the outset of this chapter, Marcia’s voice of dissent has a subversive role. Her display of power and ‘masculinity’ competes with Regulus’ own qualities. Therefore, we have to look into the representation of Regulus in this episode and ponder whether Regulus is truly and unequivocally portrayed as the ﬂawless general or whether his portrait contains certain ﬂaws that Silius deliberately exploits. Let us ﬁrst look at Marcia’s last appearance in the poem and her speech to her son Serranus. As we have seen, Marus takes Serranus to see his mother, Marcia, in Rome. Marcia now emerges outside Marus’ narrative; she is not the construct of Marus’ literary imagination and manipulation. Silius describes the woman’s mourning and

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isolated life, another token of his emphasis on the darkness and the difﬁculty of the period for the Roman state.50 In her ﬁnal speech, the only one that is not reported by Marus in his analeptic narrative, Marcia addresses her adolescent son before she disappears from the poem: leue uulnus? an alte usque ad nostra ferus penetrauit uiscera mucro? quicquid id est, dum non uinctum Carthago catenis abripiat poenaeque instauret monstra paternae, gratum est, o superi. quotiens heu, nate, petebam, ne patrias iras animosque in proelia ferres neu te belligeri stimularet in arma parentis triste decus. nimium uiuacis dura senectae supplicia expendi. (6.580–8) Is his wound slight? Or has the violent edge of the sword pierced deep to my vitals? Whatever it may be, I thank you, gods, as long as Carthage does not snatch him away in fetters or resume the awful tortures of his father’s punishment. Alas, my son, how many times was I begging you not to bring into your ﬁghting your father’s rage and ardour, and for the honour of your warlike father, which brings sorrow, not to spur you on for war. I have paid the harsh punishment of very long-lived old age.

As far as we can discern, Marcia’s behaviour has not signiﬁcantly changed: she is still turbata, mostly because she is being psychologically prepared for the death of her son (ruebat / in luctum similem antiquo, 6.577–8).51 From previous descriptions, she has retained this feature, now slightly altered. In 514, she is portrayed as furiata, while in 578 she is turbata, an adjective otherwise reserved for Juno in the poem (cf. 2.529, 10.337, 12.701, 17.604). In addition, Marcia emphasises once again her maternal power by referring to Serranus’ wound as the source for her own demise: ad nostra penetrauit uiscera mucro.52 The most striking expression of Marcia’s resentment of war 50

Cf. 6.552–73. After Marus’ digression, Fama ﬂies to the city and spreads uera ac ﬁcta (‘true and false tidings’, 6.554), with the result that alarm and hysteria dominate in people’s hearts. 51 Compare the difference between Marcia’s reaction and that of anonymous feminae in Liv. 22.7.13–14: several women die of joy upon seeing their sons return safe from the battle at Trasimene. 52 Pace Rebischke (1913), 13: ‘Postea Serrranus a Maro Romam ducitur ad matrem; et matri quoque poeta, ut conclusione addita episodium apte ﬁniretur, sermonem

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and her criticism of Regulus’ actions is her intention to interrupt generational continuity, to undo what Marus has achieved in his long narrative, from her perspective as mother.53 Her (striking) advice to Serranus is to avoid imitating his father’s ira et animus in war, because these are the very qualities that destroyed Regulus. Marcia calls Regulus’ heroism triste decus, a qualiﬁcation that Silius himself applies to Regulus in 2.435, when he inserts Regulus’ defeat and death in Libya as a scene on Hannibal’s shield (2.433–6). Marcia’s interpretation of Regulus’ command in Libya undermines his depiction as a Stoic hero: ira is a trait opposing the virtues of a true Stoic. How can we explain this contradiction, especially since Regulus is constantly represented in the poem as IÆŁ , pacatus fronte, placido ore, impenetrabilis? As Marcia becomes a non-Roman within Rome, Regulus’ stature as the perfect Stoic is also diminished. In this last speech, Marcia refers to Regulus’ punishment in Carthage as monstra (6.583),54 a fair statement, as Marus’ narrative shows. The penalty consisted of Regulus’ enclosure into a frame with a series of iron pikes piercing his body (6.539–44). According to Marus,

tribuit uu. 579–89, quo eius de ﬁlio recuperato laetitiam demonstrauit ultimumque Reguli uirtutem praedicauit.’ We do not learn anywhere in this description of Marcia’s happiness or rejoicing. 53 Marcia’s efforts resemble Thetis’ in Statius’ Achilleid, namely to stop her son from participating in the Trojan War by offering him seclusion in Scyros instead. 54 The type of punishment varies in different authors. See Mix (1970); Spaltenstein (1986), 428; Fro¨lich (2000), 305–10. At 2.340–44, Gestar, the Carthaginian senator, refers to a cruciﬁxion (343–4), thus making Marus’ narrative inconsistent with earlier versions of Regulus’ death in the Punica. On Regulus’ death by cruciﬁxion, see Cotta Ramosino (1999), 93–105, for a discussion of the appropriation of Christian symbolism. Is this inconsistency due to Silius’ own mistake or is it intentional in order to show the incredibility of Marus’ account? In my opinion, Silius intends to portray Marus’ narrative as extravagant and exaggerating. Consider Marus’ own comments on the credibility of his words: uix egomet credo (‘scarcely do I believe it myself ’, 6.194) on the monstrosity of the serpent; si qua ﬁdes (‘if you believe me’, 6.386) on Regulus’ unbending behaviour in Rome. In addition, Marus’ version of Regulus’ death does not involve cruciﬁxion, as on Hannibal’s shield, for another reason. When Marcia refers to Serranus’ wounds penetrating her body (6.580), she thus alludes to Regulus’ own death in the wooden frame, pierced by swords.

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Regulus was deprived of sleep as he was constantly pierced by the edges of the spears (fodiunt ad uiscera corpus, ‘pierced deep into his ﬂesh’, 6.544). I would like to suggest, however, that behind Marcia’s deﬁnition of her husband’s punishment as monstra, there is a hidden allusion. In conjunction with the type of Regulus’ torture in the wooden frame, the reference to monstra points to the relationship between Regulus’ killing of a serpent in Libya, a violation of nature, and his own death—a punishment for his transgression. As we shall see next, Regulus’ trespassing of the boundaries between nature and the imposition of culture (or in other words, Romanisation) is scrutinised by the poet as the source of the general’s death in Carthage. Excessive display of manliness ultimately leads to death, a wellknown and exploited topos in the epic tradition, but if we read this episode as Regulus’ own IæØÆ, then at the same time, the text opens up for other potential readings that lay bare several ‘cracks’ in Regulus’ saintly portrait, carefully crafted to underline the hero’s own otherness.

TRANSGRESSING AGAINST NATURE: THE SERPENT AND VIRGIL’S CAMILLA A major part of Marus’ narration to Serranus is dedicated to the defeat of a serpent at the River Bagrada (6.140–293), a place close to Regulus’ camp (in the year 256 bce).55 Extending over 153 lines, Marus’ narration focuses on the monstrosity of the serpent, its vicious behaviour, and its defeat by the Roman general.56 This episode is a major proof of Silius’ tendency in book 6 to suppress the power of light and allow

55 For an examination of the episode in terms of intertextual relations see Bassett (1955). 56 Cf. Liv. Periocha 18: Atilius Regulus in Africa serpentem portentosae magnitudinis cum magna clade militum occidit (‘In Africa, Atilius Regulus killed a snake of supernatural size, while he lost many soldiers’). Livy’s lost account is brieﬂy elaborated in V. Max. 1.8.ext.19.

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supremacy to the dynamics of darkness, as we have seen above. Both the lucus and the dwelling of the serpent lack light:57 lucus iners iuxta Stygium pallentibus umbris seruabat sine sole nemus, crassusque per auras halitus erumpens taetrum exspirabat odorem. intus dira domus curuoque immanis in antro sub terras specus et tristes sine luce tenebrae. (6.146–50) Nearby, a motionless grove was keeping the Stygian woods without sun, with colourless shades; and from it bursting through the air a thick vapour was spreading a repulsive stench. Inside there was a dreadful house and a vast subterranean cavern in a winding cave, where the dismal darkness let in no light.

In addition, we learn that the serpent’s bodily sustenance consists of devouring all kinds of animals: lions, birds, and cattle. In particular, because of hot weather the cattle are driven to the river (6.157–8), where they meet death. Thus, even the presence of light, just like its absence, proves destructive in such a disastrous location, since the sun causes death. After the serpent’s ﬁrst attack, dismemberment, and devouring of Aquinus and Avens (6.166–203), Regulus is informed of the situation while he still wages war: magna audendi ﬂagrabat amore (‘burning with a passion for great achievements’, 6.209). The Roman leader’s preparations resemble the siege of a city (6.211–15). The ﬁght follows, during which a number of soldiers and horses are devoured by the monster (216–40). Regulus’ intervention and speech aim at encouraging the Romans to face the hostile serpent. Subsequently, the Roman general casts his spear (hasta, 247) against the serpent successfully. Marus repeats the same action (263), followed by the rest of the soldiers (267–9). A catapult strikes the ﬁnal blow and the serpent is now severely weakened. Finally, the serpent is literally mutilated: its stomach is perforated with spears, its eyeballs are taken out, its tail is pinned to the ground (273–8).

57

The lack of light is a topos for the dwellings of such monstra. See Martin (1979), 33. Bassett (1955), 13–14 n.29, correctly notices that Silius’ description follows Virgil’s accounts of Polyphemus and Cacus.

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At this moment, Silius introduces a new element in his version of events, namely the tragic aftermath of the serpent’s murder and its effect on the surrounding nature:58 erupit tristi ﬂuuio mugitus et imis murmura fusa uadis, subitoque et lucus et antrum et resonae siluis ulularunt ﬂebile ripae. heu quantis luimus mox tristia proelia damnis, quantaque supplicia et quales exhausimus iras! nec tacuere pii uates famulumque sororum Naiadum, tepida quas Bagrada nutrit in unda, nos uiolasse manu seris monuere periclis. haec tunc hasta decus nobis pretiumque secundi uulneris a uestro, Serrane, tributa parente, princeps quae sacro bibit e serpente cruorem. (6.283–93) From the grim river burst a roaring, and from the inner depths growling is poured forth, while suddenly both the grove and the cave and the banks of the river wailed re-echoing to the woods. Alas, with what great losses did we soon pay for the grim battle, and how much punishment and wrath did we drink up! Nor did the pious seers remain silent: they warned us of later dangers, because we had violated with our hand the servant of the Naiad sisters, whom Bagrada nurtures with its warm stream. Then, it was this spear, Serranus, given to me from your parent as an honour and reward for the successful wound, the ﬁrst one to have drunk the blood from the sacred serpent.

Regulus’ deed is explicitly described as a violation against nature (uiolasse manu, 6.290), on which Marus blames the ensuing cata-

58 It is Silius’ own invention that this serpent is hallowed, a detail absent from Livy. See Ha¨ussler (1978), 172. Bassett (1955), 9 and n.70, gives parallels in Latin literature, where we see the motif of serpentes sacri. Various passages in Ovid (the serpent of Cadmus in Met. 3 and Cadmus’ own transformation in book 4), Valerius Flaccus (the Trojan monstrum in Arg. 2), and Statius (the female monster in Theb. 1.597–626 and the serpent in Theb. 5, in particular line 511) reconﬁrm the ‘sanctity’ of different monstra, and prove how the violation of this religiosity results in punishment and retribution. For an examination of similar landscape descriptions in Statius, see Newlands (2004), 133–55. As John Penwill rightly points out to me, one may compare and contrast Cato’s men’s acknowledgement that their attempt to march through land nature has assigned to serpents deserves punishment (Luc. 9.854–62); Cato does not resort to violence to resolve the problem but employs the potions of the Psylli.

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strophe for the Roman army in Libya and its disastrous outcome for Regulus himself.59 Both the uates and the poet portray the defeat of the serpent in terms of a transgression and ‘penetration’ of nature’s mysteries, which results in retribution. As Martin has correctly remarked, the fact that the serpent is called monstrum exitiabile (6.151) reminds the reader of the etymology of the word monstrum from the verb monere.60 Therefore, the serpent foreshadows future disasters for Regulus, since it functions as a warning sign. Moreover, the soothsayers warned the army (monuere, 6.290) and explicitly stated the serpent’s sanctity (sacro, 6.293). Knowing the tragic end that awaited Regulus, Marus is in a position to lament the tristia proelia against the serpent, followed by the wrath of nature and of its constituents, the Naiads to whom the serpent was a famulus (6.288).61 What Silius underlines is the violation and transgression against nature and the sacredness of the place intruded upon.62 Moreover, Silius’ allusiveness establishes a connection between the serpent and Camilla, which further accentuates the pathos of the episode but also the sexual overtones hiding behind the description of the defeat of the serpent. Through the association with Camilla, the poet stresses the sacredness of the serpent as famulus and at the same time the violation and ‘penetration’ of the serpent’s body by the spear, an act followed by retribution. More speciﬁcally, with the phrase princeps quae sacro bibit e serpente cruorem (6.293), Silius directly alludes to Camilla’s death in Aeneid 11:63 hasta sub exsertam donec perlata papillam / haesit uirgineumque alte bibit acta cruorem (‘Until the spear, carried through under her exposed breast, held fast and driven deeply, drank the virgin blood’, Aen. 11.803–4). The introduction of Camilla as a literary predecessor of the serpent is telling. Both Camilla and the serpent are pierced through with spears employed by male agents, precisely to signify a type of sexual pene59

Ha¨ussler (1978), 172, calls it ‘tragisch-unvermeidlicher Schuld’. Martin (1979), 30. 61 Consider as a reverse parallel the cerua in 13.115–37, which leaves Capua willingly and enters the Roman camp, to be slain by Fulvius in honour of Diana. The cerua is also called famula Dianae (13.124). For an examination of the motif see Franchet d’Espe`rey (1977), 157–72. On the cerua, see Bernstein (forthcoming). 62 See Santini (1981), 522–34. 63 Bassett (1955), 20 n.71. 60

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tration. In addition, the word famulus (6.288) reminds us of Camilla’s sacredness as famula to the Latonia uirgo (Aen. 11.558). And this is not the only other verbal echo; Marus’ lament for the tribulations that resulted from their killing of the sacred serpent resonates with Opis’ lament of Camilla’s death:64 prospexit tristi mulcatam morte Camillam, ingemuitque deditque has imo pectore uoces: ‘heu nimium, uirgo, nimium crudele luisti supplicium Teucros conata lacessere bello! . . . ’ (Aen. 11.839–42) She looked into the distance at Camilla, beaten down by grim death, and cried and gave forth this speech from deep in her heart: ‘Alas, too cruel, virgin, too cruel a penalty you have paid for having tried to provoke the Trojans in battle! . . . ’

Not only are Opis’ words luisti supplicium imitated in Marus’ speech (luimus proelia, 6.286), but also the reference to Camilla’s death as tristi morte reminds us of the tristia proelia against the serpent (6.286).65 Since the serpent’s death alludes to Camilla’s demise, Regulus here ﬁghts an Amazonomachy of sorts. By penetrating the female choˆra of mother-nature and killing one of its constituent elements, the Roman can be viewed in the act of civilising the unknown, the barbaric, the uncanny. Both the serpent and Camilla represent the other, the monstrous, the asymbolic, the locus where male and female merge into an indistinguishable hybrid. It becomes clear, however, that this area of the river, the sacred space in particular, and Africa more generally, as we have seen in the previous chapter, is especially recalcitrant to such efforts of Romanisation and assimilation. What ensues is Regulus’ own punishment as a result of transgression. The poet exploits the common feature of retribution 64

Bassett (1955), 9. In addition, after Regulus hurls his spear, the serpent is depicted as a passive recipient, unfamiliar with civilisation and in particular with weapons: et chalybem longo tum primum passus in aeuo (‘and for the ﬁrst time then in his long life he suffered the steel’, 6.255). The use of the participle passus, often ascribed to women to denote rape or invasion (cf. Adams [1982], 189–90), is demonstrative of the serpent’s inability to react. The participle is used several times with sexual connotations in connection to female ﬁgures (2.83, 5.160, 6.577, 13.548, 13.829). 65

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as the direct result of such violation: by effacing otherness, Regulus destroys himself in the end, in the same space where he encounters otherness in the ﬁrst place. If we interpret the episode of the serpent as transgression against nature and its native elements, as well as a violation of a sacred place, how does this affect our perception of Regulus’ ﬁgure? It is important to notice that Regulus is responsible for the defeat of the serpent and thus for perpetrating the crime. Regulus’ conquest of the serpent is the ﬁrst token of his heroic accomplishments in the book. When he underscores the signiﬁcance of Regulus’ bravery for the outcome, Silius also puns with Regulus and his arte regendi (6.257), as he calls it. This recognition of his ars regendi amply demonstrates Regulus’ leading position among the Roman soldiers, and correspondingly his accountability for breaching the balance in the sacred grove. All critics of Silius consider Regulus to be the mortal reincarnation of Hercules and Cato.66 Nevertheless, Silius is careful to depict the negative side of Regulus’ character as well: his inadequacy as Roman general, just like several heroes in the Punica embody the darker sides of Hercules, chief among them Hannibal. His ﬁght against the serpent can be interpreted as a struggle against the power of evil, but it also presents a picture of violation. In this respect, how different is Regulus from Hannibal and his transgression in crossing the Alps?67 In such instances, Silius deconstructs the polarities of same and other: the Roman and the non-Roman seem to converge rather than diverge, with Marcia in the centre, orchestrating the ‘demolition’ of her husband’s portrait.

66

See n.12 above. For Hannibal’s act as a violation of the Alps see Augoustakis (2003a), 235–57. There is also another instance of violation of nature, the arrival of the Carthaginian ﬂeet at Caieta (7.409–93). Proteus prophesies that the unnatural and deﬁling ‘penetration’ by the classis Phoenissa will turn against the Carthaginians in the end; on the prophecy’s retrospective references to the Trojan Paris, see Ripoll (2000c), 99–103. For an examination of the episode in book 7, see Nicol (1936), 38–9; Brue`re (1958), 496; Nesselrath (1986), 214–15; Sta¨rk (1993), 132–43; Perutelli (1997b), 470–8. 67

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As has been noted above, Marcia asks her son Serranus not to follow his father’s iras animosque (6.585), while she calls Regulus’ death in Carthage monstra (6.583). The word monstra is used there as a reminiscence of Regulus’ murder of the serpent earlier in the book and of his erasure of ‘monstrous’ otherness. His death in Carthage bears many similarities to the death of the serpent. After he is enclosed in a wooden frame, Regulus is pierced with spears (6.544). As we have seen, the serpent is also pierced to death by the spears of the soldiers and is gradually mutilated. By the same token, Regulus is forced to immobility, since whenever he turns around, he is pierced with the edges of the steel and therefore deprived of sleep until he dies. In mirroring these two death scenes, the poet reﬂects on the nature of otherness as well: Regulus negates his Romanness in order to reinforce it but only by embracing an uncomfortable otherness, that is the alienation from his patria and the adoption of Carthaginian dress and behaviour; the serpent negates the forces of Romanness that strive to assimilate the African landscape through death, destruction, and invasion. Just as Regulus emerges as the paradoxical Roman/non-Roman, Marcia further deconstructs his Stoic features. Marcia’s claim that Regulus’ motive for war was his ira questions his stature as Stoic hero by assimilating him with the serpent. In the narrative of the dragon at Bagrada, the word ira is used three times to deﬁne the serpent’s raging nature (6.234, 253, 268).68 However, during the battle between the Carthaginians and the Romans that took place in Libya when Xanthippus came, Marus notes that they were also under the inﬂuence of ira: feruebat Mauors, nec mens erat ulla sine ira (‘The battle was heating up, and there was no mind without rage’, 6.317). During

68 Von Albrecht (1964), 66, has correctly noticed that the description of the serpent’s reactions closely matches Juno’s behaviour in the Punica. Words such as turbo, spiritus, tempestas, and procella remind us of Juno’s use of storm and the forces of the Underworld in order to fulﬁl her aims.

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the same battle, Regulus is trapped and captured by Xanthippus.69 In his account, Marus leaves some space for controversy regarding Regulus’ actions: abripuit traxitque uirum fax mentis honestae gloria et incerti fallax ﬁducia Martis. non socios comitumue manus, non arma sequentum respicere; insano pugnae tendebat amore iam solus . . . (6.332–6) Glory, the stimulus of a noble heart, and false conﬁdence in ﬁckle Mars, snatched and carried the man away. He did not look back at his fellows or the throng of his companions, he did not look back at the arms of the followers; now he was pressing on alone with an insane desire for battle.

Because of his one-sided pursuit of glory, Regulus is not the same person we encounter later in the narrative. Despite the efforts of critics to explain away the phrase insano amore (6.335), there is no sufﬁcient justiﬁcation.70 Ripoll remarks that miscalculation during battles is a common feature among generals such as P. Scipio (Scipio’s father), Fabius, or Hannibal himself;71 he also adds that the pursuit of glory is often associated with fury but does not necessarily entail a critical judgement of the generals in question. Therefore, Ripoll concludes that Regulus is more heroised than denigrated through his mistakes, inasmuch as the poet blames Xanthippus’ use of fraud to trap the Roman general.72 If we take into account, however, Polybius’ version of the battle between the two enemies, together with certain allusions in the phrase insano amore, Ripoll’s conclusions become open to further scrutiny. As I observed at the beginning of this chapter, Silius is at the crossroads of tradition concerning the portrait of Regulus. Both Polybius’ account on the one hand, where there is no mention of Regulus’ mission to Rome, and the heroised and exaggerated version 69 Unlike Livy, who does not mention the use of trickery, Silius represents Xanthippus as fraudem nectens (‘weaving treachery’, 6.326). See Ha¨ussler (1978), 173. 70 Spaltenstein (1986), 414, says that the phrase ‘ne contient pas un jugement’. 71 For instance, P. Scipio, Scipio’s father, and Hannibal are led to war by cupido / laudis et ad pugnas Martemque insania concors (‘thirst for glory and kinship in their insane passion for war and battle’, 4.99–100). See chapter 2 (106–9). 72 Ripoll (1998), 240–41.

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of Cicero or Horace on the other, seem to be intermingled in Silius’ narrative. More speciﬁcally, Silius’ use of phrases such as fallax ﬁducia or insano amore points to an afﬁliation between his version and Polybius’ account of the events in 256–255 bce: under the inﬂuence of his own successes, Regulus miscalculated the opportunities of the situation. According to Polybius (1.31–2), after his victory in Africa, Regulus tried to negotiate and impose severe terms on the Carthaginians, who did not accept them and instead invited Xanthippus for help. The subsequent battle between Regulus and Xanthippus turns into a defeat due to fear and inexperience, according to the Greek historian (1.33–4). Polybius’ emphasis on the hubris that Regulus falls into explains Silius’ oblique criticism of the general’s surrender to passion (insano amore): ˚Æd ªaæ e ØÆØE B ﬁ åﬁÅ ŒÆd ºØÆ ŒÆa a PæÆªÆ KÆæª æ KçÅ AØ Øa H æŒı ı ø ø. › ªaæ ØŒæﬁH ææ P Øf º Pb ıªª Å E ÆıØ Ææa Æ ÆPe Xª Å ø æd B ÆıF øÅæÆ. (Plb. 1.35.2–3) For utterly to distrust good fortune, and especially when enjoying success, proved obvious to all at that time, because of Marcus’ misfortune. For, having shown neither mercy nor forgiveness to those who made a mistake a little before, he was being led captive himself to beg for these things in regard to salvation.73

Therefore, Regulus’ command in Africa was not free of blame.74 Silius’ knowledge of Polybius’ account could have inﬂuenced him

73

Diodorus draws a similar conclusion: P c ‹ ª ø ÆYØ KºÆåÅ æÆ B ı çæA IÅ ªŒÆ. B ªaæ æÆæåÅ ÆPﬁH Å ººÆºÆÆ c IØ Æ ŒÆd c ÆNåÅ MººÆ, E b NØ ı ÆØ f ¼ººı KÆ æØÆ çæE K ÆE KıÆØ, e b ~ æÅçÅ c IıåÆ, ø MÆªŒŁÅ c o æØ ŒÆd c KıÆ ªØ, ‰ ç æØ, æÆçÅæﬁÅ ÆıF c ıªª Å ŒÆd e ıªŒåøæÅ E KÆØŒØ º. (23.15.4) Indeed this man, responsible for the situation, did not carry away the smallest portion of the disaster. In exchange for his previous fame, he received many times greater dishonour and disgrace, and by his personal misfortunes, he taught the rest to be moderate in handling power; and the worst of all, having deprived himself of the forgiveness and the pity accorded to sinners, he was forced to endure the arrogance and the power of those whose misfortune he treated with haughtiness. 74 See also Walbank (1957–79), 1.92–4.

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in carefully incorporating elements that show the deﬁciencies of Roman political leadership during the First Punic War that are replicated in the early years of the Second Punic War. We should also keep in mind that the digression in book 6 takes place after three major Roman defeats, in the Trebia, the Ticinus, and Trasimene. Certainly, Regulus has the potential to become a model for Scipio Africanus, who in the course of the poem emerges as the chosen deliverer of the Roman people. Yet at the same time, the poet differentiates the two generals by underscoring Regulus’ shortcoming. Moreover, the phrases insano pugnae tendebat amore (6.335) together with incerti fallax ﬁducia Martis (6.333) remind the reader of the opening of book 6, when daylight discloses the catastrophe that took place in Trasimene: insani Mauortis opus (6.6).75 Here, another source is echoed in Regulus’ description during the battle with Xanthippus, namely Virgil’s Aeneid. After Allecto’s infernal intervention, Turnus is aroused for war: saeuit amor ferri et scelerata insania belli, / ira super (‘Rages the love for steel and the damnable madness for war, and above all wrath’, Aen. 7.461–2). In these two lines, we ﬁnd a summary of the incentives for conducting war, all attested in Regulus’ case as well: amor ferri, insania belli, ira.76 The parallel between Regulus and Turnus further adumbrates Silius’ intentions in portraying the Roman general as a particularly complex ﬁgure. His paradigm of bravery and Stoicism is carefully counterbalanced by his previous actions. In addition, the allusion to Virgil’s Aeneid is complemented by an intratextual allusion. The phrase insano pugnae amore (6.335) plays off against an earlier description of Regulus. The Roman general is being informed of the casualties his soldiers have suffered by the serpent, while he magna audendi ﬂagrabat amore (‘he was burning with desire of great achievements’, 6.209). At this point in the narrative, Regulus is legitimately inspired by amor belli, since he has not yet committed the sacrilege. After the

75 In 8.310–11, Varro, the consul responsible for the disaster in Cannae, is called insanus, an adjective that is not used elsewhere for Roman generals. 76 Cf. Aen. 7.550, where Allecto is willing to pursue her catastrophic plans further insani Martis amore. Further instances of the insanus amor can be found in Virgil’s Ecl. 10.44 and Aen. 2.343.

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killing of the serpent, he is transformed, and his amor belli becomes insanus.77 What is more, Scipio’s father advises his son to control his ardour in battle, a trait that will distinguish him from Regulus’ failure: ‘ . . . per nostri, fortissime, leti / obtestor causas, Martis moderare furori! . . . ’ (‘I entreat you, my bravest son, remember the causes of our death and control your ardour in battle!’, 13.669–70). As we shall see in the next chapter, Scipio’s instruction by his mother in the Underworld will safely lead the Roman general to the victory over Hannibal. But what about Marcia and Serranus?

LI OCCHI CASTI DI MARZIA TUA: EMB EDDING MARCIA IN THE PUNICA ‘ma son del cerchio ove son li occhi casti di Marzia tua, che ’n vista ancor ti priega, o santo petto, che per tua la tegni: per lo suo amore adunque a noi ti piega. ...’ ‘Marzı¨a piacque tanto alli occhi miei mentre ch’i’ fu’ di la`,’ diss’elli allora ‘che quante grazie volse da me, fei. Or che di la` dal mal ﬁume dimora, piu` muover non mi puo`, per quella legge che fatta fu quando me n’ usci’ fora . . . ’ (Dante Purgatorio, 1.78–90)78 77 Compare the ﬁrst image of the ekphrasis at Liternum, where Silius portrays Regulus as too rushing into the war. He would have chosen otherwise, had he known the outcome: primus bella truci suadebat Regulus ore, / bella neganda uiro, si noscere fata daretur (‘First, Regulus was persuading war, with his ﬁerce countenance, a war that should have been spoken against by the man, if he could know the future’, 6.658–9). For Hannibal’s visit to Liternum and the ekphrasis at the temple of the anonymous deity, see Fowler (1996), A. Barchiesi (2001b), 138–9, and Marks (2003). 78 ‘But I am of the circle where the chaste eyes of your Marcia are, who in her look still prays you, O holy breast, that you hold her for your own. For love of her, then, incline yourself to us . . . ’ He then said, ‘Marcia so pleased my eyes while I was yonder that every kindness she wished of me I did. Now that she dwells beyond the evil

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Just as Regulus rejects Marcia’s plea to honour his domus and stay in Rome, Dante’s Lucan in Purgatorio 1 is free from the bondage of the Inferno and implicitly from Marcia’s persistent gaze. Dante, as a careful reader of Lucan, encapsulates in these lines Marcia’s importance in the De bello ciuili as Cato’s wife. In this chapter, I have scrutinised the role of Regulus’ Marcia in the sixth book of the Punica. Marcia strives to abolish in Serranus’ mind what Marus has established with his narrative. Her efforts concentrate on prohibiting her son from following the destructive traits in Regulus’ character that have brought about his ruin. It is not coincidental that the poet carefully differentiates Serranus from his father by means of the representation of his hasta. Although Regulus’ hasta becomes a sacred object for Marus, who literally worships it (6.137–9), Serranus’ hasta is described as fracta (6.69–70). Thus, we are able to discern how the present generation of sons/soldiers, the epigonoi, is different from their fathers’ generation. Marcia does not guarantee the perpetuation of male ideals, precisely because the masculine qualities embodied by her partner are destructive and blameworthy. In her analysis of the relationship between Roman mothers and adolescent sons, Dixon concludes: ‘The Roman mother, aristocratic or otherwise, was expected to worry over her son and to urge him on to proper achievements. He was expected to defer to her wishes within recognised limits’.79 In Marcia, we see a fracture of this ideal relationship. Marcia’s son, Serranus, has already failed when he returns from Trasimene, defeated and wounded. Regulus cannot provide exemplary behaviour for his son to follow; Serranus, especially, although he was advised not to follow the iras animosque of his parent, has already participated in the battle at Trasimene and run away, routed and bloodstained.80 What is more, Marcia’s advice stream no more may she move me, by the law which was made when I came forth from there . . . ’ (trans. Singleton). 79 Dixon (1990), 202. 80 I do not agree with Spaltenstein’s comment ([1986], 400) on 6.138 that Silius should have been more careful in constructing a more believable scene, since Serranus ought to have heard his father’s exploits already. It is precisely Marcia’s interrogation of Regulus’ deeds that Marus is trying to deconstruct here, with his androcentric and instructive narrative (cf. emphatic negative with the imperative ne cessa, in tu quoque, care puer, dignum te sanguine tanto / ﬁngere ne cessa atque orientes comprime ﬂetus,

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reﬂects the situation at Rome during these early years of the Second Punic War. The Roman political leadership falls short in its duties to save the state. Though Regulus provides certain good qualities for future leaders to follow, no Roman leader will beneﬁcially fulﬁl the Stoic ideals until Scipio is fully empowered to face the enemy. In this chapter, we have seen how Marcia’s speeches deconstruct Marus’ androcentric narrative. Her resentful voice attempts a correction of her son’s admiration of his father as the Stoic model par excellence. In a constant play of identities, Marcia in Rome plays off against Regulus in Africa, while the wife does not embody the expected voice of the female aligned and subdued to her husband’s wishes and commands; by and large, Marcia then demolishes the male-centred construct and semantic register surrounding patria, by showing how, despite her own contributions to the country’s demands, Regulus alienates himself from Roman affairs by coming into Carthaginian territory, to redeﬁne or in effect to salvage Romanness. As Tipping has perceptively observed, there is a pervasive lack of deﬁnition in the Virgilian and post-Virgilian epic hero, ‘the difﬁculty of determining what it meant to be epic hero or Roman or both’.81 Simultaneously, however, in this constant negotiation of representations of Romans as non-Romans, we may conclude that boundaries are weakened: Marcia is transformed into the atypical Roman mother of the centre, who denounces the perﬁdia of her husband, now almost an African, a Carthaginian in dress and demeanour. As Kristeva observes, ‘by defying the polis and its jurisdiction one

‘you too, dear boy, must still think of yourself as worthy of such glorious descent and check those starting tears’, 6.537–8). After Marus’ ﬁrst reference to Marcia’s encounter with Regulus, Serranus bewails his father’s stern behaviour: cur decus hoc, o dure, negasti, tangere sacratos uultus atque oscula ab ore libauisse tuo? dextram mihi prendere dextra non licitum? (6.419–22) ‘You harsh one, why did you deny [us] to touch your sacred face and take kisses from your lips? Was it not permitted to take your right hand in mine?’

This constitutes a failed meeting between a father and a son, sharply contrasted to Scipio’s encounter with his mother and father in book 13 (see chapter 4, 213–21). 81 Tipping (2010), 218.

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implicitly challenges the founding prohibitions of established society and perhaps of sociality itself; . . . an overstepping of the prohibitions that guarantee sexual, individual, and familial identity’.82 Marcia oversteps such prohibitions, while her presence problematises the role of motherhood in the Punica. In the preceding, Kristevan reading of Punica 6, we have traced how both in the past and present realities of Punic wars, the female always seems to recede into and merge with the marginal chaos of the outside and how a mother will be neither inside nor outside, neither known nor unknown. By emphasising her husband’s failures, Marcia’s conﬁnement into the genotext of the female choˆra mobilises a departure from established norms and as a result constitutes a driving force for a new model for future Roman leadership, which at this point in the war is much needed for the survival of the Roman race, as we will see in the next chapter. Such reconﬁguration, however, will not be possible without the support of motherhood, a catalyst in the emergence of empire. 82

Kristeva (1991), 60.

4 Playing the Same: Roman and Non-Roman Mothers in the Punica The genre pervasive[ly] associat[es] women with the ‘public’ sphere, in their cultural and metaphorical relations to Roman imperialism, militarism, and colonisation. (A. M. Keith, Engendering Rome, 132)

In this chapter, the discussion will centre around two non-Roman women, two outsiders in the Punica, two foreigners, whose presence speaks volumes for the construction of sameness and otherness in this historical epic: Hannibal’s wife, Imilce, who appears at the end of book 4 to stop the sacriﬁce of their infant son, and Masinissa’s aged mother, whose prophecy in book 16 becomes the catalyst for a redeﬁnition of the role of periphery. As we shall see, although Imilce’s voice encompasses the reasonable thoughts of a civilised Roman philosopher denouncing nefas, at the same time her autonomous, paradoxically Roman, voice of freedom is marginalised. Imilce refuses to comply with the traditional ancestral customs of the Carthaginians: the poet addresses the difﬁculty of classifying Imilce as either a Carthaginian or a Roman by transforming her into a Bacchant, who nevertheless delivers a powerful speech whereby she condemns the nefas of the impending sacriﬁce as a barbaric custom, alien to the civilised empire of Silius’ contemporary Rome. Read against her foreboding speech to Hannibal in book 3, Imilce’s suasoria at the end of book 4 illuminates our understanding of Hannibal’s ascent to power and his decline and fall. Just like Marcia’s, Imilce’s hybrid voice displays the signs of autonomy; and yet, there is no space for Imilce to succeed in promoting a pure Roman ideological code of pietas and

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ﬁdes among the Carthaginians; Imilce’s Roman deportment ﬁnally becomes asymbolic. By contrast to Imilce, Masinissa’s mother, who remains unnamed in the poem, succeeds in promoting her son as a Roman ally, and her conﬁrmation of Scipio’s divine power is conducive to the Roman victory over the Carthaginians. Through his mother’s intervention, Masinissa emerges as the upright African leader (as opposed to the hostile other, Hannibal) and espouses those components of Romanness that are promoted by Scipio himself, such as uirtus, pietas, and ﬁdes. As the poem comes to a close, Silius’ portrayal of female action reﬂects the successful shift of power in the Roman political scene, by Scipio’s emergence as supreme commander. This important change is sanctioned through female power (Masinissa’s mother) and culminates with the image of the Roman priestess Claudia Quinta pulling the vessel of the Magna Mater, a goddess from the periphery. In this passage, Romanness and otherness are joined with the purpose of redeeming Roman ethics closely associated to women. At the same time, the boundaries of Romanitas are being redeﬁned. To be sure, by the end of the poem, the (African) other is reshaped into the same, as non-Roman otherness and Roman sameness have become to a degree destabilised: through Hannibal’s defeat, Scipio emerges as an Africanus;1 and the once hostile continent now becomes Roman. Furthermore, the seeming deactivation of one polarity (other vs same) is also achieved through the collapse and amalgamation of gender hierarchies, inasmuch as female ﬁgures are portrayed embracing all traditional Roman male values.2 And yet active female participation in the male world of the Punica proves to be an important force in morphing Romanness, as an all-inclusive term

1 See Tipping (1999), 276: ‘For an audience of the Punica familiar with Lucan’s poem, Hannibal must be a (p)reﬁguration of what Romanity—at least in part—will become’; and (2004), 370: ‘This epic points to a pivotal moment in Roman history: the emergence from Republican multiplicity of the single leader whose individual authority recalled Rome’s kingly beginning and anticipated its Imperial end.’ 2 See Tipping (2004), 351: ‘Read as the belated central work of a trilogy of Roman epic that begins with the Aeneid’s proto-Romanity and ends with Rome’s collapse into the De bello ciuili, the Punica promises to be . . . the epic of Rome, glorifying models of martial Romanity in victory over an external enemy at the height of the Republic.’

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for cosmopolitan identity, as we have seen in the introductory chapter. Silius’ vision of womanhood and motherhood is satisﬁed and completed with the ‘entrance’ of the female into the male symbolic, according to Kristeva, into language, politics, time, and ultimately culture.

EDONIS UT PANGAEA: IMILCE’S ART OF DISSUASION At the end of the fourth book of the Punica, after having defeated the Roman armies at the Ticinus and the Trebia, Hannibal arrives at the site of Lake Trasimene. Here Silius inserts a ﬁctitious episode, which illustrates the institution of the Carthaginian custom of child-sacriﬁce (molk).3 A Carthaginian embassy convenes with Hannibal in order to ask his opinion concerning the vital issue of whether or not his son should be sacriﬁced for the fulﬁlment of ancestral Carthaginian rites:4 mos fuit in populis, quos condidit aduena Dido, poscere caede deos ueniam ac ﬂagrantibus aris, infandum dictu, paruos imponere natos. (4.765–7) The people, whom Dido founded when she landed in Africa, were accustomed to asking the gods for mercy through sacriﬁces and to offer up their children upon ﬁery altars, a custom horrible to tell.

In this episode at the end of book 4, Imilce, Hannibal’s wife, makes her second appearance. After parting with her husband in book 3

3

Kissel (1979), 15, and Ripoll (1998), 280, comment on the portrayal of the Carthaginians as bloodthirsty. The episode has no parallel in the historical record. Silius’ knowledge of this custom must derive from Ennius’ Annales (cf. also Curt. 4.3.23): Poeni suos soliti dis sacriﬁcare puellos (‘The Carthaginians were accustomed to sacriﬁcing their boys to the gods’, 214 Skutsch). See Wezel (1873), 20; Woodruff (1910), 383–5; Romano (1965), 88–90; Skutsch (1985), 381–3; Lucarini (2004), 112 n.18. On the inﬂuence of Ennius on Silius, see chapter 2 (105–6). 4 In fact, Hannon, Hannibal’s bitter opponent (discors antiquitus, ‘an old enemy’, 4.771), lurks behind this proposal; he is the person who has brought the motion into the Carthaginian Senate for discussion and vote. For Hannon as the literary successor of Virgil’s Drances, see Brue`re (1971).

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(61–157),5 Imilce returns as a persona dramatis (4.779–802) and attempts to dissuade her fellow citizens from submitting this sacrilegious offering to the gods, an act that she describes as nefas (4.797). In her speech, Imilce directly addresses her absent husband, whom she ironically rebukes for his futile efforts to expand the power and dominion of his fatherland. Then, Imilce offers herself for sacriﬁce in the stead of her child (me, me quae genui, uestris absumite uotis, ‘slay me, me, the mother, and thus keep your vows’, 4.798). Finally, Imilce’s plea exerts signiﬁcant impact on the Carthaginian patres, who prefer to have the issue solved by Hannibal himself (4.803–7). Back in Italy, when the Carthaginian hero learns about the imminent sacriﬁce to take place in Carthage (4.808–29), he refuses to have his own child offered to the gods and proclaims that the donation to his country will consist of a sacriﬁcial substitute, namely the impending slaughter of the Roman army at Trasimene. In the portrait of Imilce, Silius draws on previous female epic characters. Her behaviour is emblematic of the pathos of a woman in grief, a feature well established in other literary sources, as we have already seen in the portrayal of Marcia’s reaction or in the depiction of several women in Statius’ Thebaid. More speciﬁcally, Imilce’s portrayal as a frenzied woman accords with the representation of

5 In the introduction to that episode in book 3, the farewell between Hannibal and Imilce, Silius informs his reader of the relationship between the Sarranian general and his wife (cf. Vinchesi’s treatment of Imilce [2005], 98–107): uirgineis iuuenem taedis primoque Hymenaeo / imbuerat coniunx memorique tenebat amore (‘Through the torches of virginity and the ﬁrst years of their marriage his wife had inspired love in Hannibal, a young man then, and had held him with a love that remembers [endures]’, 3.64–5). Hannibal’s wife detains her husband with memor amor: Silius’ words express the strong bond between the couple. However, deep inside, Hannibal faces a troubling dilemma: Imilce on the one hand represents the amor coniugis, amor familiae, that is, affection for his wife and child; but on the other hand Carthage and its founder, Dido, control Hannibal with another sort of commitment, the amor patriae. I want to thank Raymond Marks for pointing out that the last word of book 3 (713–14) is amor: Bostar / impleratque uiros pugnae propioris amore (‘and Bostar had ﬁlled the men with desire for instant battle’). Memor amor forms a contrasting pair in connection with Hannibal’s ira memor (cf. irarum elementa mearum, ‘the beginnings of my anger’, 3.77). This hatred is one of the pivotal themes of the narrative, igniting the eternal feud between the Romans and the Carthaginians (1.77–80); see Ganiban (2010).

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distraught women in Virgil, Ovid, and Lucan.6 Dido, Amata, and Juturna in Virgil, as well as Lucan’s raving matrona in De bello ciuili 1, form the backdrop against which Silius moulds a uniquely Roman Imilce, as we shall see in her appearance in the present episode. Imilce’s entrance in the narrative conforms with manifestations of Bacchic otherness in the Latin epic tradition: asperat haec foedata genas lacerataque crines atque urbem complet maesti clamoris Imilce, Edonis ut Pangaea super trieteride mota it iuga et inclusum suspirat pectore Bacchum.

(4.774–7)

Their fear was heightened by Imilce, who tore her cheeks and hair and ﬁlled the city with woeful cries, as the woman of the Edoni, maddened by the triennial festival, speeds over the ridges of Mt. Pangaeus and breathes forth Bacchus who dwells in her breast.

A close look at intertextual connections suggests that Silius’ primary model is Virgil.7 Both Anna in Aeneid 4 (673) and Juturna in Aeneid 12 (870–1), moved by sisterly love, disﬁgure their faces (unguibus ora . . . foedans, ‘disﬁguring her face with her ﬁngernails’), while the latter also tears her hair as an act of mourning over the approaching death of her brother Turnus (crinis scindit . . . solutos, ‘tears her dishevelled hair’). Imilce’s mourning alludes explicitly to such exempliﬁcations of extreme pain and suffering. Moreover, the description of Imilce’s grief, which ﬁlls the city with cries, artfully intertwines Virgilian and Ovidian models. Silius combines Amata’s lunatic reaction after Allecto’s intervention (Aen. 7.377: immensam sine more furit lymphata per urbem, ‘in a wild frenzy, she rages through the entire city, out of her mind’) with a line from Georgics 4 (515: et maestis late loca quaestibus implet, ‘she ﬁlls the places far and wide with her lamentation’), where the nightingale mourns for the loss of her brood. Further, he borrows phraseology from Ovid’s portrayal of Althea

6 One cannot fail to recognise allusions to Catul. 64.61, Prop. 1.3.5–6, Ov. Am. 1.14.21, Her. 4.47 and 10.18, and Ars 1.312 and 3.710. Statius (Theb. 5.92–4) compares one of the Lemnian women, Polyxo, to a Bacchant, yet there are no verbal allusions in Silius that conﬁrm an interdependence. 7 See Brue`re (1952), 223–4, for allusions to Virgilian ﬁgures. Brouwers (1982), 81–2, discusses these allusions to Lucan.

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losing her son, Meleager (Met. 8.447–8: maestis clamoribus urbem / implet, ‘she ﬁlls the city with woeful cries’).8 Critics have laid emphasis on Silius’ dependence on other authors and on an alleged canonisation of representations of distraught women by Silius’ time. For instance, Brue`re has accentuated the signiﬁcant inﬂuence of Virgil’s Amata, though he professes wonder that Silius also alludes to Lucan’s anonymous matrona.9 Allusions to Virgilian ﬁgures certainly cannot be coincidental, especially allusions to Dido or Amata. As we have seen in our preceding examination of the Thebaid and the Punica, however, it is not sufﬁcient to identify allusions to previous literary works without investigating the reason behind certain choices Silius makes. For instance, if we consider that Dido is the founder of Carthage and that special reference is made to her by tracing the sacriﬁcial custom back in time (aduena Dido, Pun. 4.765), then we become apprised of a connection between Imilce and Dido. Taking into account Imilce’s Bacchic reaction to her child’s sacriﬁce, we may associate her situation with the frenzied aspects of Dido’s portrayal in Aeneid 4. More speciﬁcally, the adjective furens is three times applied to the predicament in which Aeneas’ presence has put the raving queen of Carthage (Aen. 4.65, 69, 283).10 Furthermore, two similes from the fourth book of the Aeneid establish Dido as a delirious and distraught female ﬁgure: in Aeneid 4.300–3, Dido is assimilated to a Thyias, who in an ecstatic state of mind celebrates the feast of Bacchus (trieterica Baccho, Aen. 4.302), and at 4.469, Dido’s condition is compared to Pentheus’ position when staring at the frantic mothers performing their Dionysiac rites (Eumenidum ueluti demens uidet agmina Pentheus, 8

In these parallels, the compounds of pleo together with a description of sound or space are used to express distress; cf. Aen. 2.769; 3.313; 5.341; 7.502; 9.39. Brue`re (1952), 226 n.24, points to all the above mentioned allusions, yet he does not identify a possible echo of Statius’ Theb. 1.592–3, where Psamathe reacts to the loss of her baby son, Linus: ipsa ultro saeuis plangoribus amens / tecta replet (‘out of her mind, she ﬁlls spontaneously the house with wild laments’). See also chapter 1 (54 n.55). 9 See Brue`re (1952), 223: Imilce is upset about her son, as Amata had been about her daughter, and the queen’s Bacchic seizure surely suggested to Silius the comparison of Imilce to a Bacchante . . . It is curious that after having derived the notion of comparing Imilce to a Bacchante from his recollections of Virgil, Silius borrows the expressions he uses in setting it forth from Lucan. 10 Cf. also Aen. 4.376, when Dido herself admits that she is possessed by furiae: heu furiis incensa feror! (‘alas, I am borne burning with frenzy’).

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‘just as Pentheus, maddened, sees the troops of the Eumenides’, 4.469). Moreover, Imilce’s address to her absent husband and her loneliness in her confrontation with the Carthaginian elders offer yet another similarity to the abandoned queen of Carthage in Aeneid 4, as both women are forsaken by their male partners. Dido’s presence in the background of this episode establishes and conﬁrms the continuity between Virgilian female ﬁgures and Silius’ Imilce. In addition, explicit references to Amata, who refuses to accept Aeneas as her future son-in-law and husband of her daughter Lavinia, disclose other correspondences to Imilce’s refusal to sacriﬁce her son. For instance, Amata’s behaviour, instigated by the Fury Allecto, is contextualised within the frame of a Bacchic festival (Aen. 7.373–405). Amata turns into a Bacchant and addresses the rest of the women with Dionysiac exclamations, such as io matres (Aen. 7.400).11 Furthermore, Amata is determined to preserve her maternum ius (si iuris materni cura remordet, ‘if care for the maternal rights bites your hearts’, Aen. 7.402); Imilce’s decision to stop the custom of child-sacriﬁce, particularly at a moment when her own child’s fortune is at stake, highlights the assertion of the maternum ius over the patria potestas, as exempliﬁed by the Carthaginian Senate, now acting instead of Hannibal himself. Therefore, both women seek to stop the sacriﬁce of their child, either neutral or ﬁgurative, and by extension to bring to a halt the political designs of their men, Latinus and Hannibal respectively. However, we should not ignore an important difference between Virgilian women and Imilce: Amata’s frantic rout originates in Allecto’s intervention and the poisonous infection that one of the latter’s serpents instills in Amata’s chest (penitusque in uiscera lapsum / serpentis furiale malum totamque pererrat, ‘and having glided deep into her veins, the snake’s maddening venom courses through her whole frame’, Aen 7.374–5).12 By contrast, Imilce is not inﬂuenced by any external source of furor. The cause of her pain is the impending sacriﬁce of her child. Despite her outburst against the Carthaginian custom and its practitioners, Imilce is portrayed as a ﬁgure utterly reasonable, who denounces the futility of child-sacriﬁce and uses clear and concise 11

Pace Spaltenstein (1986), 329, who considers io just ‘un appel au secours’. Cf. the similar case of Tisiphone and the Saguntine women in Pun. 2.543–680. See the discussion in chapter 2 (129–36). 12

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arguments in order to persuade the elders of the Carthaginian Senate. What is more, Imilce’s rhetoric makes her a woman who knows very well what is at stake and who tries to persuade the male audience accordingly. Such elements are absent from the representation of Amata’s frenzy in Aeneid 7 or 12. The rationality that characterises Imilce’s portrait differentiates her from the irrationality of both Dido and Amata, who are completely out of control and give in to their grief.13 With this in mind, let us examine another source of inﬂuence on Silius’ representation of Imilce, Lucan’s raving matrona. The ﬁrst book of the De bello ciuili comes to a close with a series of prophecies illustrating future disasters for the Romans. The last of these is articulated by a frenzied, unidentiﬁed, matrona: nam, qualis uertice Pindi Edonis Ogygio decurrit plena Lyaeo, talis et attonitam rapitur matrona per urbem uocibus his prodens urguentem pectora Phoebum: ‘quo feror, o Paean? qua me super aethera raptam constituis terra? uideo Pangaea niuosis cana iugis latosque Haemi sub rupe Philippos . . . ’ (Luc. 1.674–80)

13

Fucecchi (1992) exploits the intertextual relationship between this episode and different scenes in Seneca’s Troades. Like Imilce in 4.798, Andromache tries to persuade Ulysses to kill her instead of Astyanax, after having declared that she would do anything to protect her boy’s safety: qualis Argolicas ferox turmas Amazon strauit, aut qualis deo percussa Maenas entheo siluas gradu armata thyrso terret atque expers sui uulnus dedit nec sensit, in medios ruam tumuloque cineris socia defenso cadam. (Tro. 672–7) As the wild Amazon kills the Greek troops, or as a Maenad, struck by the god and armed with the thyrsus, terriﬁes the woods with her Bacchic steps and, ignorant of herself, has given wounds nor has she felt any, so I will rush into your midst and, a companion of ashes, fall having defended this mound. These lines render plausible Fucecchi’s claim (1992), 54, that special emphasis is placed on both women as seruatrices puerorum.

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For, as a woman of the Edoni rushes down from Pindus’ peak, ﬁlled with Lyaeus of Ogygia, so a matron, and is swept through the astounded city, revealing with these words that Phoebus is motivating her heart: ‘O Paean, where am I borne? On what land do you place me, swept over the air? I see the Pangaean mountain white with snow-clad ridges and wide Philippi under Haemus’ rock . . . ’

As Brouwers has correctly pointed out, the Imilce simile abounds in Lucanian echoes:14 the setting for both metaphors is Thrace (Edonis, Pangaea, Pun. 4.776 Luc. 1.675, 679), a traditional locus of worship for Bacchants; both Edonian women in the similes are inspired by Bacchus (suspirat Bacchum, Pun. 4.778 plena Lyaeo, Luc. 1.675). In addition, words such as urbem, pectore, iuga are used by Silius (4.775, 777) as reminders of Lucan’s description (per urbem, pectora, iugis).15 And yet, despite the common setting of both descriptions, there is a substantial difference: Lucan names as the source of inspiration for his frenzied matrona both Bacchus and Apollo (prodens urguentem pectora Phoebum, Luc. 1.677), while in Silius there is no reference to Apollo himself as the source for Imilce’s inspiration. In the Punica, Bacchus sets into motion the raving Bacchant-Imilce who is ready to pay due honour to the god up in the mountains of Thrace on the

14

Brouwers (1982), 81–2. As Michler (1914), 36, notes (though without reference to Silius), Statius also imitates Lucan’s Bacchant simile by incorporating it into his description of a frenzied Theban woman: sparsis subito correpta canistris siluestris regina chori decurrit in aequum uertice ab Ogygio triﬁdamque huc tristis et illuc lumine sanguineo pinum disiectat et ardens erectam attonitis implet clamoribus urbem . . . (Theb. 4.378–82) While her holy panniers are scattered, suddenly snatched up, the queen of the troop of the woods rushes to the plain from Ogygia’s peak, and in her sadness waves a threeforked pine torch here and there with a bloody light; and ablaze she ﬁlls the excited town with frantic cries . . . 15

I have shown in boldface what Statius borrows from Lucan, while I have underlined Statius’ imitation of Ovid’s Met. 8.447–8. I think it is doubtful whether Statius imitates Ovid in the last line or echoes Silius’ comparable phrase in 4.775: atque urbem complet maesti clamoris Imilce. On the composition of the two poems, see Introduction (8–9 n.20).

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occasion of the trieteris. How, then, do we explain the emphasis placed by Silius on Bacchus and the elision of Apollo’s power?16 In the different treatments of Apollo and Bacchus in Lucan and Silius lies the key point for our examination of Imilce, as the latter poet invites us to look more carefully into the nature of Imilce’s character itself. In Silius’ simile, though it is deeply inﬂuenced by his predecessors, Virgil and Lucan, Apollo’s presence is not verbally evident. Yet Imilce incorporates both elements, the Apolline and the Bacchic, and can switch from the prophetic to the frantic. Imilce is depicted as a potential Bacchant-prophetess, who, though raving in her grief, delivers a speech abounding in reasonable arguments against human sacriﬁce. As I shall show, the Apolline element in Imilce’s character, though verbally absent, is intertwined with the Bacchic aspects of her nature to portray a powerful woman-prophetess,17 who does not hesitate to condemn the whole war and her husband’s enterprises as nefas. In order to synthesise our conclusions from this study of allusions, let us turn to Imilce’s speech itself and the peculiarity of its content. Although she starts with an apostrophe to her husband, she continues with a denunciation of human sacriﬁce that does not have any immediate literary predecessors. Her discourse is artistically constructed around her arguments about the futility of human sacriﬁce, in particular that of her son. Imilce’s speech, however, also has levels of irony: she opposes her husband’s imperialism and conveys a subversive message concerning the usefulness of the war in general. More speciﬁcally, Imilce’s speech is artistically constructed and rhetorically assembled: despite occasional exclamations (io, heu . . . heu), Hannibal’s wife gives us the impression of a person who by using well-prepared arguments tries to persuade the Carthaginian elders and who does not give in to grief completely. For instance, Imilce does not faint at the end of the episode, a generic ending for

16 In the De bello ciuili, Lucan intertwines the power of Bacchus and the power of Apollo in more than one place. For this duality, see Masters (1992), 118–33. 17 Cf. the Sibyl in Aen. 6.77–8: at Phoebi nondum patiens immanis in antro / bacchatur uates (‘but not yet bearing patiently the sway of Apollo, the prophetess comes to a state of wild frenzy in the cave’).

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such scenes of intense sorrow and dramatic tension.18 Her speech is divided into two symmetrical parts, consisting of twelve lines each; she ﬁrst addresses her husband (4.779–90) and then denounces the vanity of human sacriﬁce and its destructive effects on the Carthaginian male population (4.791–802). In these twenty-four lines, Imilce manages to gain a deferral of the decision, now to be taken solely by Hannibal himself. When Imilce urges her husband to continue his operations, she apostrophises him by saying: io coniunx, quocumque in cardine mundi bella moues, huc signa refer. uiolentior hic est, hic hostis propior. tu nunc fortasse sub ipsis urbis Dardaniae muris uibrantia tela excipis intrepidus clipeo saeuamque coruscans lampada Tarpeis infers incendia tectis. interea tibi prima domus atque unica proles heu gremio in patriae Stygias raptatur ad aras. i nunc, Ausonios ferro populare penates et uetitas molire uias. i, pacta resigna per cunctos iurata deos. sic praemia reddit Carthago et tales iam nunc tibi soluit honores. (4.779–90) O my husband, in whatever frontier of the world you are now stirring up war, bring your army back here. Here there is a more violent, a more pressing foe. Perhaps at this moment beneath the walls of the Dardanian city itself, you, fearless, receive the hurtling missiles with your shield; perhaps you are brandishing a dreadful torch and setting ﬁre to the Tarpeian temple. Meanwhile, your ﬁrst-born and only son, alas, is seized in the heart of his native country, for an infernal sacriﬁce. Go now, ravage the household gods of the Romans with your sword and march by ways forbidden to man. Go, break the treaty witnessed by all gods. Such is the reward you get from Carthage, and such the honours she pays you now!

Imilce’s apostrophe consists of ironic imperatives (4.787–8) addressed to Hannibal, whereby she underlines the futility of the war her husband has undertaken. Imilce raises serious doubts concerning the value of Hannibal’s efforts to save his country by implicitly criticising his 18 Cf. Aen. 4.391–2 (Dido), 8.584 (Evander); Met. 11.460 (Alcyone); Theb. 11.643 (Ismene).

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exploits: the series of imperatives (i, populare, molire . . . i, resigna) lays emphasis on the value of Hannibal’s war against the Romans. His wife questions the advantage that the war will have for his own country and family in particular, since the Carthaginians themselves are unqualiﬁed to appreciate such enterprise. Through reference to the breaking of treaties (pacta . . . per cunctos iurata deos), Hannibal’s wife criticises the war itself as a sacrilege. In their inability to deﬁne the divine, the Carthaginians uphold values that run contrary to divine law and custom. Thus Imilce delivers a speech against nefas in general. As we will see, nefas can be deﬁned as referring strictly to the barbaric custom of human sacriﬁce and/ or more broadly to the war against the Romans. After having urged Hannibal to come back, Imilce turns to the Carthaginian elders. Well aware that there will be no response, since her husband is away, Imilce’s suasoria now concentrates on another form of futility, namely human sacriﬁce: quae porro haec pietas delubra adspergere tabo? heu primae scelerum causae mortalibus aegris, naturam nescire deum! iusta ite precatum ture pio caedumque feros auertite ritus. mite et cognatum est homini deus. hactenus, oro, sit satis ante aras caesos uidisse iuuencos. aut si uelle nefas superos ﬁxumque sedetque, me, me, quae genui, uestris absumite uotis. cur spoliare iuuat Libycas hac indole terras? an ﬂendae magis Aegates et mersa profundo Punica regna forent, olim si sorte cruenta esset tanta mei uirtus praerepta mariti? (4.791–802) Moreover, what sort of religion is this, that sprinkles the temples with blood? Alas, their ignorance of the divine nature is the chief cause that leads wretched mortals into crime. You ought to go and pray for things lawful with pious incense but eschew bloody and cruel rites. God is gentle and akin to human beings. To this extent, I beg you, let it sufﬁce to see slain cattle before the altars. Or, if you are sure beyond all doubt that wickedness is pleasing to the gods, then slay me, me the mother, and thus keep your vows. Why rob the land of Libya of the promise shown by this child? If my husband’s glorious career had been thus nipped in the bud long ago by the fatal lot, would not that have been as lamentable a disaster as the battle by the Aegates islands when the power of Carthage was sunk beneath the waves?

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The ﬁnal segment of Imilce’s speech portrays the speaker as a civilised person, in complete opposition to bloodthirsty Hannibal, her husband. As has been noticed, Imilce’s denunciation of human sacriﬁce has its literary predecessors in the works of Cicero and Ovid in particular.19 Imilce’s speech, however, acquires a more general tone, since she does not borrow from the language of the previous authors or refer explicitly to the practice of human sacriﬁce. This generalisation enables Imilce to carry an important message: she is being transformed into a civilised person, whose distinctiveness is underscored by the content of her speech. Hannibal’s wife is metamorphosed into a carrier of Roman philosophical ideas against human sacriﬁce. Her denunciation of the act of child-sacriﬁce itself as a nefas coincides with the poet’s own words at the introduction of the scene: the savage rite of the Carthaginians is infandum dictu (4.767). Imilce, a ‘foreigner’ in the Punica, as the wife of the enemy, would normally be perceived by the Roman reader as an anti-Roman, a woman whose values cannot (and/or should not) be identical to a Roman woman’s beliefs. Yet Imilce’s presence in this episode conﬁrms rather the opposite. She denounces the primitive sacriﬁcial custom observed by her fellow citizens. Thus, her speech places her in the margin of Carthaginian society by rendering her a ‘foreigner’ to her own environment. To borrow from Paga´n’s terminology applied to certain Tacitean characters, Imilce’s words constitute a ‘voice of freedom’,20 inasmuch as she delivers a potentially dangerous message, while her position as an outsider renders her voice more palatable to a male, elite audience. In a sense, Imilce’s Roman voice emerges in sharp contrast to Carthaginian standards, since for them civilisation and religiosity have different meanings and connotations (lack of pietas, fas, and ﬁdes) that are sharply contrasted to those of 19 See Spaltenstein (1986), 329–30, citing Cicero’s Rep. 3.15 and Ovid’s Fast. 1.337–8. Brue`re (1952), 227 n.27, also mentions the inﬂuence of Pythagoras’ speech in Metamorphoses 15.173–5. There is another unnoticed parallel in Ovid’s Met. 13.461, namely Polyxena’s condemnation of the absurdity of human sacriﬁcial offerings to appease the gods. The similarities that this passage bears with Lucretius’ beliefs against human sacriﬁce, as expressed in book 1 (83–101) of De rerum natura, have been observed by Steele (1922), 325, although one cannot ﬁnd speciﬁc verbal allusions. The idea of scelus in connection with human sacriﬁce is certainly Lucretian. 20 Cf. Paga´n (2000b).

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her Carthaginians fellow citizens.21 Not only does she use the methodology of Roman philosophical discourse, such as that of Cicero and, to a certain extent, of Lucretius concerning the hideousness of human slaughter, but she also acquires a voice similar to Lucan’s, inasmuch as the latter uses the word nefas to condemn the insanity of the civil war in general.22 In other words, Imilce’s role in this episode is not that of a passive female ﬁgure who ‘surrenders’ to the demands of the male heroes and of generic expectations. As has become evident in our examination of the intertextual relationship between Imilce and her literary predecessors, the poet has fused several models in his portrayal of the Carthaginian queen. What are Silius’ intentions, however, in depicting Imilce, the enemy’s wife, as both a non-Roman woman-Bacchant and a Roman matrona? How can Imilce be presented as a woman overcome by furor and at the same time able to deliver a powerful, reasonable speech against human sacriﬁce? And ﬁnally, how are we to read Imilce’s presence as inscribed within the polarity between Romans and Carthaginians, same and other, male and female? In order to appreciate the blending of the Bacchic and the Apolline in Imilce’s ﬁgure, let us look back to book 3, where the poet digresses on her pedigree, from both Apollo and Bacchus: at contra Cirrhaei sanguis Imilce Castalii, cui materno de nomine dicta

21 See Ripoll (1998), 275–86, for an analysis of pietas in the poem. Ripoll (1998), 280, correctly distinguishes between the Roman meaning of pietas and the Carthaginian perversion of pietas (cf. Thomas [2001] on perﬁdia). 22 Imilce’s plea to die instead of her child echoes similar requests in Virgil (Euryalus’ mother in Aen. 9.494, me primam absumite ferro (‘ﬁrst kill me by the sword’); see Hardie (1993a), 51, and Seneca’s Troades (Andromache in 680, me sternite hic ferro prius, ‘ﬁrst lay me low with the sword’). Most importantly, however, Silius exploits Cato’s appeal in Luc. 2.315–16 to be killed before the libertas and the state perish: me solum inuadite ferro (‘do kill only me with the sword’, 2.315). Imilce’s position as a mother is similar to Cato’s, since the great leader is called by Lucan urbi pater est urbique maritus (‘he is a father to the city and a husband’, 2.388); on the dative urbi, see Sklena´rˇ (2003), 74 n.31. Furthermore, Imilce condemns human sacriﬁce as nefas, while Cato criticises the impending war between Caesar and Pompey as summum nefas (Luc. 2.286). On the failure of female rhetoric in Statius’ Achilleid, for instance, see Heslin (2005), 105–55.

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And to him [Hannibal] replied the descendant of Castalius from Cirrha, Imilce, whose city, Castulo, named after Castalius’ mother, still preserves the name of Apollo’s priest. Thus Imilce traced her pedigree to a sacred stock. At the time when Bacchus was conquering the Iberian people and attacking Calpe with his thyrsus and with the spears of his Maenads, Milichus was born of a lustful Satyr and the nymph Myrice; Milichus had held dominion widely in his native country, carrying horns on his forehead, looking just like his father. From him Imilce drew her nationality and noble blood, since the name [of Milichus] had been slightly corrupted in the barbaric tongue.

From Silius’ description of Imilce’s ancestors we gather that there is a mingling of Apolline and Bacchic traits in her personality.24 And Imilce’s Apolline features permeate the farewell scene in book 3 by means of her prophetic ability to foreshadow Hannibal’s failure (109–27): i felix, i numinibus uotisque secundis atque acies inter ﬂagrantiaque arma relictae coniugis et nati curam seruare memento. quippe nec Ausonios tantum nec tela nec ignes 119 nec quemquam horresco, qui se tibi conferret unus, 125 quantum te metuo. ruis ipsos alacer in enses 120 obiectasque caput telis. te nulla secundo euentu satiat uirtus, tibi gloria soli ﬁne caret, credisque uiris ignobile letum belligeris in pace mori. tremor implicat artus. (3.116–25)

23 I agree with Spaltenstein (1986), 189, that the phrasing of lines 98–9 is awkward; the city of Castulo could have been named after Castalius himself, not after his mother’s name (presumably Castalia?). 24 According to Picard (1968), 105, Imilce’s name would be a transcription from the Punic Himilke´, ‘sister of the king’, while Milichus comes from MLK, ‘king’.

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Go and prosper, go with favouring gods and prayers! And amid the battles and the blazing arms, remember to keep in mind the care for your wife whom you are leaving and for your child. For I fear neither the Romans nor the spears or the ﬁrebrands or anyone who might meet you in single combat, as much as I fear you. You rush ﬁercely right upon swords and you expose your head to missiles. No virtue satisﬁes you, not even on a successful occasion; you are the only one for whom glory lacks limits, and you consider it an inglorious end for soldiers to die in peace. Trembling takes hold of my limbs.

When Imilce touches upon the nature of her husband’s character, she is warning him of his impetuous temperament and simultaneously alluding to the dangers that lurk behind such behaviour, just as Marcia does to her son Serranus, concerning his father’s character. The Carthaginian woman seems prescient of the outcome, the ﬁnal defeat of Hannibal and the non-fulﬁlment of his wishes, as she emphasises with quantum te metuo (3.120), again at the beginning of a hexameter. The series of negatives (nulla, caret, ignobile) that Imilce uses implies that the subsequent expedition may be ultimately ill-fated.25 Imilce’s complex temperament, replete both with Bacchic and Apolline elements, resurfaces in book 4, where, as we have seen, she is compared to a frenzied woman, and yet one wonders whether Imilce is a true Bacchant? Does Bacchus really inspire her speech? Or is her prophetic power manipulated by the poet, and to what effect?

25 Kissel (1979), 106, does not discuss in detail the meaning of this episode. Certainly, Hannibal’s Weltanschauung, as expressed by Imilce here, echoes Roman military values. I do not agree with Ripoll (1998), 244, that Imilce understands Hannibal’s heroic ideal. I believe that Imilce disapproves of Hannibal’s enterprise to launch a war against the Romans, because she is aware of its disastrous outcome (cf. Argia in Theb. 2.332–52). In addition, Imilce’s foreshadowing of future disasters is conﬁrmed by Hannibal himself. Immediately after Imilce’s words, Hannibal starts his second speech with his own interpretation of his wife’s ‘message’:

ominibus parce et lacrimis, ﬁdissima coniunx. et pace et bello cunctis stat terminus aeui, extremumque diem primus tulit. (3.133–5) Spare the bad omens and the tears, my most faithful wife. Both in peace and in war, there stands for all of us an end to our lives, and the very ﬁrst day brings together the last one. On Imilce’s powerful presence in book 3, see Vinchesi (1999b), (2001), 62–3, and (2005), 98–107; Augoustakis (2001), 10–35.

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By conferring upon Imilce the characteristics of a distraught woman, the poet, from the outset of the narrative, relegates Imilce, the outsider in Carthaginian society, because of her Spanish origin, to the distant realm of Thracian Bacchants, a place where nefas and orgiastic rites abound. In the reader’s mind, this association with the Bacchic cult and direct allusions to other literary Bacchants (Amata for instance) turn Imilce’s voice into a hybrid, unclassiﬁed, other. She is both Roman and non-Roman, a civilised ﬁgure and a barbarian, a Roman matrona and a foreign Bacchant, an insider and at the same time an outsider. As soon as she delivers her message, her Apolline ‘voice of freedom’ is marginalised and eliminated from the narrative. From the perspective of Kristeva’s analysis, Imilce’s phenotext, produced by the genotext of the female choˆra, yields to us an image of a woman drawn to Roman philosophical ideas, a woman set against human sacriﬁce, who knows very well that her words, if interpreted correctly, can convey the message of danger. To be sure, Imilce’s persuasive voice achieves a deferral of the sacriﬁce, at least for the time being. Unlike Marcia’s, Imilce’s rupture from the Bacchic semiotic into the Apolline symbolic does not take place by means of a voice borrowed within an androcentric narrative. Yet does she manage to cancel the plans of Fate? Ultimately, the symbolic is predicated on male discourse, and the decision is made by Hannibal. Hannibal himself seems to know that the outcome of the war is ambiguous, since he makes clear that he needs his son to continue war with the Romans in the future. The general also alludes to the sacriﬁce that will replace his son’s sacriﬁce, namely his victory at Trasimene. In a word, Hannibal cancels the sacriﬁce of his son, but he promises a substitute human slaughter: at puer armorum et belli seruabitur heres. spes, o nate, meae Tyriarumque unica rerum Hesperia minitante salus, terraque fretoque certare Aeneadis, dum stabit uita, memento. perge (patent Alpes) nostroque incumbe labori. (4.814–18) But the boy will be spared as the heir of my career in war. You, my son, are my hopes and the only safeguard of the Carthaginian affairs against the threat of Italy; remember to ﬁght against the Aeneadae both on land and sea,

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as long as you live. Go forward—the Alps lie open—and apply yourself to my task.26

In Imilce’s character, we can ﬁnd the ﬁrst witness of the ‘Romanisation’ of women-foreigners, an image fully shaped in the ﬁgure of Masinissa’s mother in book 16. However, although Masinissa’s mother, as we will see, is successful in advising and directing her son’s activities, Imilce cannot contribute substantially to the welfare of her country. Her ominous speech foreshadows future disasters, while her role as seruatrix pueri does not permit her to undertake real action.27 Despite the Roman traits in her character, Imilce’s autonomous presence retains the asymbolic Bacchant status, the recession into the semiotic, a (m)other who fails in her efforts to save her child from the destruction that the war will bring, despite her Apolline ability to foresee the ultimate defeat of Carthage.28

NE BELLA PAVESCAS: MOTHERS AS ‘EDUCATORS’ AND THE REGENERATION OF THE FEMALE In an episode in Punica 16, we can see that mothers are positively represented as inﬂuential and beneﬁcial for both the outsiders, non-Romans, and the Romans themselves. After telling of the Roman victories over Hannon and Hasdrubal at the opening of book 16 (38–114), Silius relates the events of the alliance between

26 Yet cancellation of rites eventually entails destruction, as Hardie has pointed out (1993a), 51: Sacriﬁcial substitution intersects with, and threatens to annihilate, generational replacement. Hannibal sees his son not as the one sacriﬁcial victim but as the ‘one hope’ of his family and of Carthage . . . Hannibal’s hopes that his son will take place as great leader of his people (4.818: nostroque incumbe labori) will come to nothing.

See also Ripoll (1998), 68. 27 See also Dietrich (2005), 82: ‘Imilce exempliﬁes the values that Rome prized in its mothers and wives, especially the preservation of family relationships.’ 28 Silius mentions the son twice in the rest of the poem: in 13.880, with reference to Hannibal’s exile and death away from Carthage, and in 17.334, when Hannibal exhorts his soldiers at Zama.

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Masinissa, king of Numidia, and Scipio (115–69).29 The poet’s inventiveness is manifested in his account of a divine omen, which ostensibly makes Masinissa change sides and ally himself with the Romans: huic fesso, quos dura fuga et nox suaserat atra, carpenti somnos subitus rutilante coruscum uertice fulsit apex, crispamque30 inuoluere uisa est mitis ﬂamma comam atque hirta se spargere fronte.

(16.118–21)

Masinissa, tired out, was enjoying sleep, which the hard retreat and the darkness of night had made welcome, when suddenly a ruddy tongue of ﬁre was seen to burn bright on the crown of his head. The harmless ﬂame caught his curly hair and spread over his shaggy brow.

A long tradition of similar episodes in pre-Silian literature could explain the presence of this scene in book 16.31 More speciﬁcally, the Virgilian models of Ascanius’ and Lavinia’s burning heads undoubtedly stimulated Silius to create a comparable episode.32 As Marks has observed, the omen justiﬁes Masinissa’s decision to change sides as morally right, one which enjoys the support and favour of the gods;33 according to Ripoll, Silius exploits the omen to underscore the absence of calculating duplicity behind the Numidian prince’s diplomatic decision.34 I would like to focus on a particular aspect of this episode, namely the treatment of Masinissa’s aged mother and her role in determining her son’s decisions. After the appearance of the omen, she is asked to construe the will of the gods: 29 See Marks (1999), 258–73, and (2005a), 169–71, as well as Ripoll (2003b), for an analysis of 16.115–274. 30 Notice the emphasis on Masinissa’s curly and shaggy hair, a sign of his exotic provenance, coupled with manliness (hirta), possibly to avoid ambiguity with the well-known (effeminate) curly hair of Dionysus/Bacchus. 31 See Marks (2005a), 170 n.21, and Ripoll (2003b), 97–102, for a discussion of other instances in Latin literature. 32 See Spaltenstein (1990), 405–6. It is not coincidental, however, that Silius chose to replace the father (Anchises) with a mother ﬁgure at this point, going back to the Livian tradition of Tanaquil (Liv. 1.39.2–3). On the historical role of Masinissa see Walsh (1965) and Decret and Fantar (1998), 103–15. 33 Marks (1999), 259. 34 See Ripoll (2003b), 99 and 111, who places the episode in the historical context of Flavian policies concerning the Romanisation of Africa. For the meeting between Masinissa and Scipio, see Liv. 28.35.

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at grandaeua deum praenoscens omina mater ‘sic, sic, caelicolae, portentaque uestra secundi condite’ ait. ‘duret capiti per saecula lumen. ne uero, ne, nate, deum tam laeta pauesce prodigia aut sacras metue inter tempora ﬂammas. hic tibi Dardaniae promittit foedera gentis, hic tibi regna dabit regnis maiora paternis ignis et adiunget Latiis tua nomina fatis.’ sic uates, iuuenisque animum tam clara mouebant monstra nec a Poenis ulli uirtutis honores, Hannibal ipse etiam iam iamque modestior armis. (16.124–34) But his aged mother, foreknowing the omens of the gods, said: ‘Be it so, o inhabitants of heaven! Be propitious and ratify your portent! May the light shine on his head for all ages! Do not, my son, do not fear such favourable signs of the gods; do not be afraid of the sacred ﬂame on your brow. This ﬁre promises you an alliance with the Dardan people; this ﬁre will provide you with a kingdom wider than your fathers ever ruled and shall add your name to the history of Rome.’ Thus spoke the prophetess, and the young man’s heart was moved by a miracle so unmistakable. Also his valour had received no recognition from Carthage; and even Hannibal himself was less valiant in the battle day by day.

The poet explicitly intertwines the prophetic power of Masinissa’s mother with the prediction of prosperous events. The anonymous mother possesses the power of foreseeing the future (deum praenoscens omina, 16.124, and uates, 16.132). Yet the most signiﬁcant part of her short speech is the intratextual connection it yields with Pomponia’s speech to Scipio, to which I will turn for a moment. In his descent to the Underworld in book 13,35 Scipio has the chance to gaze at the panorama of past and future Roman history. Among the highlights of his journey is the meeting with his mother, Pomponia. During Scipio’s ‘educational’ trip, the Sibyl urges him to see his mother, who had died in labour:36 ‘. . . sed te maternos tempus

35 There is extensive secondary literature on the Nekyia of book 13. In particular, see De Luca (1937); Ramaglia (1954); von Albrecht (1964), 149–52; Juhnke (1972), 280–97; Reitz (1982); Billerbeck (1983); Ripoll (1998), 248–51; Marks (1999), 88–146 and (2005a), 133–47; Hardie (2004), 151–3; Klaassen (2010); and Tipping (2010). 36 Juhnke (1972), 286, points to the similarities between Scipio’s meeting with Pomponia and Odysseus’ with Anticleia in Od. 11.152–225. See also Kissel (1979), 169

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cognoscere uultus, / cuius prima uenit non tardis passibus umbra’ (‘. . . But it is time for you to learn your mother’s face, whose shade comes ﬁrst, not in slow pace’, 13.613–14). The Sibyl’s announcement emphasises the importance of Pomponia’s appearance and encounter with her son, a meeting during which the Roman mother will enlighten her adolescent son concerning the divine identity of his father.37 The emphasis on the inﬁnitive cognoscere surrounded by the phrase maternos uultus suggests that Scipio’s meeting with his mother acquires signiﬁcance, not only as a revelation of true parenthood through the mother, but also as a cognitive ‘trip’ back to the maternal choˆra, which the hero did not have the chance to experience during the formative years of his childhood and adolescence.38 Separation from the maternal womb at the time of birth in Scipio’s case coincides with the death of the mother: the lack of the maternal presence is revealed to us now, as Scipio must see his mother’s face ﬁrst, in order to become acquainted with her features, even those of a dead person, a ghost. In her address to her son, Pomponia stresses the difﬁculty imposed on her during the day of her impregnation by Jupiter.39 She is careful in explaining and insisting that Jove is Scipio’s real father. Pomponia also lays emphasis on the fact that she was forced to surrender (membra ligauit / amplexus, ‘an embrace clasped my limbs’, 13.638–9) and accentuates that her pregnancy has been necessary for the welfare of Rome.40 Once she delivers Scipio, Pomponia is freed from the n.21, Reitz (1982), 92, and Ripoll (2001a). One should also keep in mind that there is a constant interaction with Aen. 6 and the meeting between father and son there. 37 Venus’ role in the Punica, albeit restricted, is signiﬁcant for the completion of fata; see Kissel (1979), 170. For instance, consider the scene with Jupiter in 3.557–629 (Feeney [1991], 304) or her role in corrupting the Carthaginians in 11.385–409 (see also chapter 2, 109–12). For the scene in book 3, see Czypicka (1987); Taisne (1992); Ripoll (1998), 509–15; see Marks (1999), 436–50, and (2005a), 211–17, for further bibliography. 38 Contrast Achilles in Statius’ Ach. 1.250: dubitatque agnoscere matrem (‘and he hesitates to recognise his mother’). The verb cognosco is used seven times (out of a total of nineteen) in book 13, a sign of the emphasis laid on Scipio’s ‘educational’ experience in the Nekyia. 39 On the ﬁgure of Pomponia, see the analyses of Reitz (1982), 90–92; Marks (2005a), 137–9; and brieﬂy Tipping (2010). 40 Critics have long recognised that behind the myth of Scipio’s divine parentage lies the inﬂuence of the Alexander tradition. See Laudizi (1989), 126; Rocca-Serra (1990); Ripoll (1998), 248–51; Marks (1999), 106 and 116–38, and (2005a), 142–7,

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aetherium pondus (‘divine weight’, 13.629). Thus, she becomes the carrier of divine will, without damaging her chastity and reputation as uniuira. In a word, Scipio’s mother is converted into the medium for Rome’s salvation, while she retains all the grandeur and majesty of a Roman matrona. The most signiﬁcant moment in Pomponia’s speech lies in her exhortation to young Scipio. The Roman is urged to pursue war, because the victory belongs to him, in particular on account of his divine origins: uerum age, nate, tuos ortus, ne bella pauescas ulla nec in caelum dubites te attollere factis, quando aperire datur nobis, nunc denique disce. (13.634–6) But mark me, my son, and at last you shall learn what I am permitted to disclose—the secret of your birth; then you shall not fear any wars or may be secure that you shall raise yourself to heaven by your deeds.

Pomponia advises her son to be fearless and brave. The subjunctives in the negative purpose clauses used at this point in the narrative (ne . . . pauescas, nec . . . dubites) together with the imperatives (age, disce) formulate the basis of Pomponia’s advice and of masculine presence.41 As we have examined previously, in the Punica, we often ﬁnd fathers educating their sons and inspiring them with love for their country.42 By contrast, what we witness here is a mother, who educates her son

for further discussion; Tipping (2010). A. Barchiesi (2001a), 340, has pointed out that such a genealogy is painted by Silius in Ovidian colours (also cf. Wilson’s [2004] study), portraying a Venus ‘licenziosa, senza cui lui [sc. Scipio] non potrebbe essere l’indispensabile salvatore di Roma’. As Barchiesi stresses, Scipio oscillates between Republican myth and imperial apotheosis. The reader is also invited to draw a parallel with Plautus’ Alcmena in the Amphitruo. 41 Compare the contrast with Scipio the Elder’s advice to his son, when his father advises Scipio against immoderation (Martis moderare furori, 13.670), just as Marcia did her son (discussed in chapter 3). Scipio the Elder’s justiﬁcation of his piece of advice is sat tibi sint documenta domus (‘there is enough experience of your kinsmen’, 13.671), i.e. his and his brother’s death in Spain (dramatised in Silius’ narrative here, when compared to Liv. 25.36). Scipio needs such admonition, as in the siege of Capua, in the beginning of the book, he is portrayed as insatiabalis (13.218; the adjective is applied to Scipio again when he meets the lawgivers of the Twelve Tables in 13.755), while the verb furit is also employed (13.392). 42 See chapter 2 (97–112). Contrast Marcia in chapter 3.

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according to the interests of Roman affairs, because she is aware of the truth about Scipio’s divine parentage and destiny.43 In particular, Scipio’s address to his mother, which precedes Pomponia’s speech, conﬁrms the uniqueness of this encounter and the signiﬁcance of the mother-ﬁgure for the development of her adolescent son’s character: ergo ubi gustatus cruor admonuitque Sibylla et dedit alternos ambobus noscere uultus, sic iuuenis prior: ‘o magni mihi numinis instar, cara parens, quam, te ut nobis uidisse liceret, optassem Stygias uel leto intrare tenebras . . . ’ (13.621–5) So, when the ghost had tasted of the blood, and the Sibyl had informed her and given to both the opportunity to recognise each other’s face, thus the young man spoke ﬁrst: ‘O dear mother, as dear to me as a mighty god, how much would I have liked even to die and enter the Stygian darkness, for a sight of you! . . . ’

Scipio’s address to his mother as magni mihi numinis instar demonstrates Pomponia’s sanctity and prophetic ability.44 Through her death, she is able to retain all the characteristics of a chaste Roman wife and also to acquire a special place in the Underworld. Pomponia’s ability to foresee the prosperity of her offspring differentiates her from other mothers in the poem who may possess prophetic power but foreshadow a negative rather than a successful outcome. By contrast, Pomponia furnishes her son with advice about the values he will need in order to overcome the enemy. Furthermore, Scipio’s words allude to Caesar’s address of Roma in Lucan: summique numinis instar / Roma (‘Rome, equal to the highest deity’, Luc. 1.199–200). By establishing such a strong intertextual association, Silius adopts and reverses the Lucanian context: Caesar’s words preface his crossing of the Rubicon, an act that ruins any link with his patria and the goddess, Roma; Scipio’s address, conversely, bonds his mother, Pomponia, with the ﬁgure of Roma, a link that betokens the alignment of the maternal ﬁgure with the City, Scipio’s (mother)land. Pomponia’s deiﬁcation in the eyes of her son is not an exaggerated rhetorical convention but most importantly an 43

Marks (1999), 101, discusses the didactic purpose of the Nekyia. Helzle (1996), 274, points out that this phrase differentiates Scipio from Odysseus in Odyssey 11. 44

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elevation of motherhood to the same height as the personiﬁed Roma. By meeting his mother, Scipio comes to terms with his own ‘foreignness’: as Kristeva points out, ‘the foreigner has lost his mother’;45 therefore, by reconnecting with the lost motherly space, Scipio discovers not only his identity, but also the sameness within his otherness, that is to say, his Romanness and what makes him stand out as Roman. If we compare the two episodes where the mothers assume a protagonist’s role, we can immediately recognize the resemblances. Aside from the similarity of Scipio’s and Masinissa’s age (both are called iuuenes, 13.623 16.132), there are other points of contact also.46 First, both sons remain dutiful to their mothers and value their opinions highly.47 Second, both mothers advise their sons to be fearless, while they predict their offspring’s future renown. In particular, when Masinissa’s mother states ne . . . pauesce prodigia (16.127–8), this phrase reminds us of Pomponia’s remark to Scipio ne bella pauescas (13.634). Just as Pomponia is well aware of Scipio’s divine parentage, so Masinissa’s aged mother possesses the prophetic ability that enables her to know precisely the will of the gods. This is the most important connection between the two scenes: Masinissa’s mother is called uates (16.132), while Scipio addresses his mother as magni mihi numinis instar (13.623). Moreover, as Marks has correctly noticed, there is a signiﬁcant difference between Silius’ and Livy’s accounts concerning Masinissa’s change of political alliance during the war.48 In Livy (28.35), there is no divine intervention, no explanation of Masinissa’s action, and no indication of his mother’s presence. More speciﬁcally, Silius is our only source for Masinissa’s mother’s useful intervention to persuade her son.49 In addition, Masinissa himself mentions his mother in his speech to Scipio and thus adds weight to her presence in the episode. During his address to the Roman general (16.140–53), Masinissa 45

Kristeva (1991), 5. On the role of age in Silius see Ripoll (2003a). 47 See Marks (1999), 261 and 262 n.24. 48 Marks (1999), 268–70. 49 See Nicol (1936), 50–51, who considers her to be a historical person. Zonaras (9.12; Dio Cassius 17) also mentions Masinissa’s mother in a different context (how she and some augurs were part of Hasdrubal’s plan to corrupt the Spaniards in Scipio’s camp): 46

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refers to his mother as sacra parens (16.140), whose good advice made him seek alliance with the Romans. It is intriguing that the role of the mother is given the ﬁrst place in the narrative. This choice is not coincidental. In the same speech to Scipio, Masinissa apostrophises him as nate Tonantis (16.144), a phrase whose implications have not been suggested in the poem since Pomponia’s revelations in book 13.50 In other words, a foreign king is the ﬁrst person to remind Scipio of his own mother’s assertion earlier in the poem, namely that he is the son of a god. By referring to his own, ‘barbarian’, mother and at the same time appropriating the words of Pomponia, Masinissa marks the connection between the two episodes and afﬁrms the importance of mothers for both his own and Scipio’s development. Through the divine manifestation of his destiny and his mother’s intervention, Masinissa ﬁnds his identity; by this time in the poem, Scipio has also been able to learn the truth about himself through his meeting with Pomponia. And yet Masinissa himself is the ﬁrst person in Silius’ narrative to make the connection, which is to say, to acknowledge Scipio’s divine origins and to address him with due honour. This leads to another important aspect of Masinissa’s mother’s character that needs to be discussed. It should be surprising to see that the Roman Pomponia and the foreign mother of Masinissa complement each other by sharing the same ideals and values.51 Masinissa’s aged mother, though an outsider, is an atypical barbarian, inasmuch as she has been assimilated to Roman ideology and Œi KØæªÆ Ø, N c ¥ Ø e OæŁø KŒÆæÆåŁ ŒÆd ﬀ ÆØı Åæ ŁØÆÆ Ç ÅØ ÆPø ~ ª ŁÆØ KÅÆ. And he would have accomplished something, had not the soothsayers, frightened by the actions of the birds, and the mother of Masinissa, through her prophetic utterances, caused them [the Spaniards] to be examined. 50 See Marks (1999), 260 n.22. 51 See Dra¨ger (1995) for an examination of Jason’s mother in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica 1, and how she is transformed into a Roman matrona; cf. Zissos (2008), 379–81, and Manuwald (2000). Consider also the emphasis Tanaquil places on her foreignness, when she urges Servius Tullius to become king, after the attack on Tarquinius Priscus: erige te deosque duces sequere qui clarum hoc fore caput diuino quondam circumfuso igni portenderunt. nunc te illa caelestis excitet ﬂamma; nunc expergiscere uere. et nos peregrini regnauimus . . . (Liv. 1.41.3)

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civilisation as a prospective ally.52 In spite of this acculturation, she nevertheless keeps her identity as the mother of a foreign king, and thus is viewed as an outsider who implements and enriches the centre but also sanctions the centre’s political ideology by admitting Scipio’s divine power. By this time, Rome has found its saviour, the true Stoic hero, the man who has been chosen to impose peace and security in Roman affairs. Thus, traditional Roman values, once in danger of being irrevocably extinguished, are now regenerated, reinforced by new elements that stem from the periphery.53

TEMPUS COGNOSCERE MANES FEMINEOS: THE ˆ RA IN THE GEOGRAPHY FEMALE CHO OF THE UNDERWORLD Let us now turn to some other examples that epitomise chastity and womanhood in this last pentad in the Punica (books 13–17). In the Arouse yourself and follow the guidance of the gods, who once foretold that this head shall be famous, by the token of divine ﬁre poured out upon it. Now this divine ﬁre urges you on, now wake in earnest. We too ruled, even though foreigners . . . Tanaquil exploits the prodigy of the ﬂames around Servius’ head to promote him as the future king of Rome, stressing the fact that Tarquinius Priscus was also a foreigner who managed to climb up to the throne. 52 This is the most important alliance of the war. At the end of their meeting, Masinissa and Scipio exchange gifts; in Livy, however, the exchange of gifts takes place after Sophonisba’s death, as a means to appease the distraught mind of Masinissa: addit uerbis honorem: neque magniﬁcentius quicquam triumpho apud Romanos neque triumphantibus ampliorem eo ornatum esse quo unum omnium externorum dignum Masinissam populus Romanus ducat . . . (Liv. 30.15.12) He added another tribute with the following words: that there was nothing higher for the Romans than a triumph and that from those who triumphed, no one had a more magniﬁcent array than the one Masinissa, deemed worthy by the Roman people, alone of all foreigners . . . Masinissa had already played a key role in the campaigns in Spain, which even led to the deaths of Scipio’s father and uncle; cf. Liv. 25.34, for Masinissa’s attack that precipitates the Elder Scipio’s death. 53 A parallel change of political alliance involving women can be found in a wellknown vignette on Trajan’s column (scene 45), which has recently been reinterpreted (R. R. R. Smith [2002], 79) as portraying local provincial women torturing Dacians (and not Roman soldiers, as was heretofore maintained). These women seem to be on the side of Rome, just like Masinissa’s mother.

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Nekyia in book 13, after Scipio sees the shades of Alexander (762–76), of Homer (778–97),54 and of other heroic ﬁgures (798–805), he suddenly notices Lavinia (806). Then, the Sibyl seizes the opportunity to present to the young general the shades of various female ﬁgures of the Roman past (nam uirgo admonuit tempus cognoscere manes / femineos, ‘for the Sibyl warned him that it is time to learn the ghosts of women’, 13.807–8). This review of female ﬁgures among the dead involves again a strong instructive element (cognoscere), such as the one we saw in the case of Scipio’s mother, Pomponia. This catalogue of women, modelled on Homer’s,55 is divided into two parts: in the ﬁrst section, the Sibyl demonstrates to Scipio the virtuous heroines of Roman history (13.809–30), while in the second part, at Scipio’s request, the prophetess reveals the reasons behind the severe punishments of three women, well-known for their ill conduct (13.831–50a).56 First Scipio stares at Lavinia, Veneris nurus (13.809),57 the originator, Urmutter, of all Roman mothers. Together with Hersilia, Romulus’ wife, Lavinia is characterised by her ability to associate two different races and blend them into one: Lavinia brings together the Trojans and the Latins (13.810), while Hersilia’s intervention conjoins the Latins with the Sabines (13.812–15).58 Thus, the ﬁrst pair of female ﬁgures possesses the ability to bring peace. The second pair of women is connected through their ability to foresee the future: the nymph Carmentis, Evander’s mother, predicts her son’s and the Romans’ illustrious future (nostros tetigit praesaga labores, ‘she “touched” with her prophecies on our toils’, 13.817),59 while 54 On Homer, see e.g., von Albrecht (1964), 151–2; Reitz (1982), 115–17; Hardie (1993a), 115; Marks (2005a), 145; and extensively Manuwald (2007), 82–90. 55 Cf. Od. 11.235–330; see von Albrecht (1964), 150; Juhnke (1972), 404; Spaltenstein (1990), 273. 56 Kissel (1979), 182 n.61, notices that the catalogue of women is divided in three parts: a. 806–22, b. 824–30, c. 833–49. Thus, he separates two bigger parts of seventeen lines each with an interlude of seven lines. This is in accordance with the Prinzip des goldenen Schnitts. See Reitz (1982) and (1993) for an analysis of the catalogue. 57 Dido also calls herself Veneris nurus in Pun. 8.143. 58 The poet draws from Ovid’s Fast. 3.206–12, a detail absent from Livy’s account in 1.13. See Spaltenstein (1990), 274. 59 Cf. Aen. 8.336–41.

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Tanaquil, the wife of Tarquinius the Elder, is the woman who predicts her husband’s coming reign (castae / augurio ualuit mentis uenturaque dixit / regna uiro et dextros agnouit in alite diuos, ‘possessing a pure heart, she prophesied the future kingdom to her husband and recognised the divine favour in the ﬂight of a bird’, 13.818–20).60 Both women possess the visionary ability to inﬂuence those actions of their relatives most conducive to success. A pair of female ﬁgures that epitomises pudicitia follows, Lucretia and Verginia, who die for their country’s common weal:61 ecce pudicitiae Latium decus, inclita leti fert frontem atque oculos terrae Lucretia ﬁxos. non datur, heu, tibi, Roma (nec est, quod malle deceret), hanc laudem retinere diu. Verginia iuxta, cerne, cruentato uulnus sub pectore seruat, tristia defensi ferro monumenta pudoris, et patriam laudat miserando in uulnere dextram. (13.821–7) Behold! The Roman glory of chastity, Lucretia, famous for her death, comes forward, her eyes ﬁxed upon the ground. It is not given to you, alas, Rome, to preserve this praise for too long (nor is there anything else which it would behove you to prefer). Next to her, see, Verginia keeps the wound under her bloody chest, the sad record of her modesty, which was defended by the steel; and she praises the right hand of her father for the lamentable wound.

Herself a uirgo, the Sibyl exalts the examples of Lucretia and Verginia, since they epitomise traditional Roman values of bravery, loyalty, and chastity. They prepare the reader for the last female ﬁgure of the ﬁrst section, Cloelia, who concentrates the characteristics of all previous pairs: illa est, quae Thybrim, quae fregit Lydia bella, nondum passa marem, quales optabit habere quondam Roma uiros, contemptrix Cloelia sexus.

60

(13.828–30)

Cf. Liv. 1.34.8. See Spaltenstein (1990), 274–5, on Silius’ sources for these two stories (Lucretia: Liv. 1.57–60; Verginia: Liv. 3.44). 61

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She is the one who crossed the Tiber,62 who broke the Lydian wars,63 not yet having experienced a man: Cloelia, a despiser of her sex. One day, Rome will pray for men like this girl.

These lines bring to mind the story of Cloelia, told to Hannibal, upon his request, in book 10 during the battle of Cannae.64 At the death of Cloelius, a Roman soldier, his horse manages to come and ﬁnd him amidst the heap of corpses, offering him its back to mount on (10.449–71). Marvelling at the horse’s behaviour, Hannibal asks Cinna (a Roman turncoat) who this man is, while at the same time he prepares to kill him.65 Cinna says that this is Cloelius, a man of a mighty stock, whose ancestor is Cloelia: bis Cloelia senos nondum complerat primaeui corporis annos, una puellarum Laurentum et, pignora pacis, inter uirgineas regi tramissa cateruas. facta uirum sileo. rege haec et foedere et annis et ﬂuuio spretis mirantem interrita Thybrim tranauit frangens undam puerilibus ulnis. cui si mutasset sexum natura, reuerti forsan Tyrrhenas tibi non licuisset in oras, Porsena. (10.492–501) Cloelia had not yet completed twelve years of youthful life, one of the Roman girls and in the midst of the maidens’ band, and she was sent to the king as pledge of peace. I keep silent about the deeds of men. Having spurned the king, and the treaty, and her age, and the river, being fearless, she swam across the Tiber, breaking the wave with her childish elbows. If nature had changed her sex, perhaps it would not have been allowed you, Porsena, to return to the Tyrrhenian shores.

With the phrase facta uirum sileo, Cinna underscores Cloelia’s heroism, her chastity, and her bravery at the same time. Cloelia’s transgression of gender roles and of the limits her sex imposed on her 62 Cf. Aen. 8.651: et ﬂuuium uinclis innaret Cloelia ruptis (‘and having broken the chains, Cloelia swims in the river’). 63 In Liv. 2.13, the peace is made before Cloelia’s escape. 64 On stories narrated to Hannibal, see chapter 2 (106–7 n.31). 65 Ripoll (1998), 54, brieﬂy discusses Cloelius’ ﬁgure. Nicol (1936), 13–14, quotes a similar episode in Pliny the Elder.

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becomes a positive attribute for the young woman. As Keith has shrewdly observed, ‘the heroism of the masculine Roman west constitutes a perfectly balanced counterweight to the fatal eastern effeminacy of the Carthaginian foe in the Orientalist and sexist plot of Silius’ epic.’66 All three pairs of female ﬁgures in this catalogue reestablish order in the Roman state by means of their virtues; with Cloelia we reach the climax of this ascent to glory. The second part of the catalogue intensiﬁes the integrity of women in the ﬁrst section, by elaborating on the examples of three women who were punished for their crimes: Tullia (13.833–8), Tarpeia (13.839–43), and the anonymous Vestal virgin (13.844–50a). Tullia and Tarpeia betrayed their family and country,67 while the Vestal lost her virginity (exuta sibi uirginitate, ‘by “taking off ” her maidenhood’, 13.849). Critics have maintained that the anonymous Vestal is probably Cornelia, punished in 89–90 ce by Domitian and buried alive.68 Silius places the punishment of Cornelia last in the list, not only because of its contemporaneous relevance to the Domitianic regime but also because of the association of Cornelia with the house of the Cornelii and Scipio himself, as his direct descendant. From Suetonius, we learn that Cornelia had been acquitted once before: Nam cum Oculatis sororibus, item Varronillae liberum mortis permisisset arbitrium corruptoresque earum relegasset, mox Corneliam maximam uirginem, absolutam olim, dein longo interuallo repetitam atque conuictam defodi imperauit, stupratoresque uirgis in comitio ad necem caedi, excepto praetorio uiro . . . (Dom. 8.4)

66

Keith (2010), 373. See Spaltenstein (1990), 276 (Tullia: Liv. 1.48 and Ovid’s Fast. 6.585–636; Tarpeia: Liv. 1.11 and Prop. 4.4). 68 See Wistrand (1956), 45–6; Laudizi (1989), 30–32; Mezzanotte (1995), 367–9. On Domitian as a despot in this punishment, see Tipping (2010). The punishment of the Vestal Cornelia is related in Suet. Dom. 8.4, Dio Cass. 67.3.3–4, Plin. Ep. 4.11, and is alluded to in Statius’ Silu. 1.1.36 (exploratas iam laudet Vesta ministras, ‘does Vesta now praise her endorsed servants?’). For the precise date of Cornelia’s punishment see Courtney’s comment on Juvenal 4.9–10 (1980), 202, who places the incident in 93 ce, and Jones (1996), 77–8, who dates it in 89–90 ce. We know very little about Cornelia (see Raepsaet-Charlier [1987], 245), perhaps the same Cornelia who takes ofﬁce in 65 ce (Tac. Ann. 15.22), daughter of Cornelius Cossus (Tac. Ann. 14.20). 67

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For while he allowed the Oculatae sisters and Varronilla to choose their own form of death and relegated their seducers, soon afterwards, when the senior Vestal Cornelia, who had been acquitted some time previously, was again, much later, accused and convicted, he ordered that she be buried alive and that her deﬁlers should be beaten to death with rods in the Comitium, with the exception of a man of praetorian rank . . .

As we shall see in the next section, the participle absolutam olim plays off against the representation of Claudia Quinta, who manages to release herself from the crime, alleged against her by the people, through the intervention of the goddess.69 As becomes evident, the ﬁrst two guilty female ﬁgures in the catalogue, Tullia and Tarpeia, play off against Hersilia, Verginia, and Cloelia, while the chief Vestal reverses the illustrious example of Lucretia’s chastity. It has been acknowledged by critics that the purpose of this list of female ﬁgures that dwell in the Netherworld is to enlighten Scipio and Silius’ audience alike on the mos maiorum and traditional Roman values that had perished in their time.70 It has also been recognised that this 69 What is more, in Pliny’s account, the Vesta Maxima is portrayed in terms similar to Claudia Quinta. By his right as pontifex maximus, but also as a sign of his cruelty, Pliny comments, Domitian summons the rest of the priests in the Alban palace: Quin etiam cum in illud subterraneum demitteretur, haesissetque descendenti stola, uertit se ac recollegit, cumque ei manum carnifex daret, auersata est et resiluit foedumque contactum quasi plane a casto puroque corpore nouissima sanctitate reiecit omnibusque numeris pudoris ººc æØÆ å På ø E. (4.11.6–9) Moreover, when she was sent down to that underground chamber and her robe was stuck as she descended, she turns back to catch it; and as the executioner gave her a hand, she drew away springing back in horror and as if clearly in a last act of chastity, she avoided the loathsome touch from her pure and unstained body. Then observing all the rules of shamefulness, she ‘took great care to fall in a decent manner’.

As Cornelia is led to her tomb, her stola, the emblem of her chastity is stuck, she turns back to pick it up, while she avoids touch with the impure hands of the carnifex, a man whose name denotes ﬂesh and its passions. She is able to save her castum et purum corpus from pollution. Pliny exploits Cornelia’s death as an example of Domitian’s harshness (ardebat ergo Domitianus et crudelitatis et iniquitatis infamia, ‘therefore, Domitian was burning with his infamous cruelty and injustice’, 4.11.11). See Vinson (1989) for her analysis of Pliny’s technique of uituperatio in 4.11. 70 See Casale (1954), 33–6; Kissel (1979), 181–2; Reitz (1982), 125: ‘Die beiden Frauenkataloge geben eindrucksvolle positive und negative Beispiele der altro¨¨ berzeugung das Fundament des gesunden mischen Tugenden, die nach stoischer U

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catalogue of illustrious women anticipates the episode with Claudia Quinta at the opening of book 17 (1–47).71 I would like to take the instructive aspect of the catalogue in book 13 a step further. The image of Claudia Quinta’s chastity and religiosity announces the restoration of ethos and the ascent to glory for the Romans, following the path that Pomponia and Masinissa’s mother have paved in previous books. Before we turn to Claudia Quinta and the arrival of the Magna Mater, it is important to remember that Silius omits or changes important details of the historical record in order to ensure Claudia’s indisputably prominent position in the beginning of the last book of the Punica. In particular, the poet downplays the role of Sophonisba during the last years of the war and her heroic death as described by Livy (30.11–15) and famously expanded upon in the Renaissance Latin epic tradition by Petrarch (Africa 5–6.73).72 Sophonisba, daughter of Hasdrubal, son of Gisgo, was married to Syphax, the Massylian king, thus causing the latter to join the Carthaginians in alliance and to turn down Scipio’s friendship:73 fasque ﬁdemque simul prauo mutatus amore ruperat atque toros regni mercede pararat. uirgo eximia specie claroque parente, Hasdrubalis proles. thalamis quam cepit ut altis, ceu face succensus prima taedaque iugali74 uertit opes gener ad Poenos, Latiaeque soluto foedere amicitiae dotalia transtulit arma. (17.69–75)

Gemeinwesens bilden.’ Reitz (1993), 316, continues: ‘Propositum autem singulis partibus commune est Romam conditam creuisse potentemque factam esse uiribus operaque singulorum hominum uirtute praestantium.’ Mezzanotte (1995), 366–9, discusses the movement towards the so-called correctio morum under the Flavians. 71 Mezzanotte (1995), 369. 72 See Burck (1984b), 110–23, for a comparison of Silius’ and Livy’s accounts. 73 In 16.168–274, Syphax makes a treaty with the Romans; he is portrayed as pacator Syphax (16.221), the model surrogate king (domesticating lions, 16.235–6), when he meets with Scipio, another pacator (16.245). When Syphax is attacked by the Romans, however, he barely escapes his camp (set on ﬁre), almost naked (se uelamine nullo / uix . . . ereptum, ‘scarcely rescued, with no clothes on’, 17.114–15). His nudity extends to a metaphorical level too, since it plays off against his presence in book 16, where dressed up as a king, he is called nec nudus uirtute (‘not bare of manliness’, 16.171). 74 Syphax was a widower when he married Sophonisba.

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Having been changed by vicious love, he [Syphax] at one and the same time had broken the propriety and loyalty and had procured marriage at the expense of his kingdom. There was a virgin girl of extreme beauty and of an illustrious parent, the daughter of Hasdrubal. When he received her in his lofty chambers, as though inﬂamed by a torch and the ﬂame of a ﬁrst marriage, he turned his wealth over to the Carthaginians, as a son-in-law, and having broken the Roman treaty of friendship, transferred his forces as dowry [to the Carthaginians].

Sophonisba is mentioned in two other places in the narrative, to illustrate that she is the cause of Syphax’s destruction and defeat (nam surdas coniunx obstruxerat aures, ‘for the wife had blocked the ears of Syphax and made them deaf ’, 17.84; and ira pudorque dabant et coniunx, tertius ignis, / immanes animos, ‘anger, shame, and a wife, the third incentive, were supplying him with immeasurable passion’, 17.112–13).75 However, Silius does not mention Sophonisba’s courageous attitude to enslavement and her heroic death. When Syphax is defeated by Laelius and Masinissa, Sophonisba asks Masinissa to make the best decision for her, even if that entails death (Liv. 30.12.12–16). Parenthetically, Livy notes that she was of outstanding beauty and at a ﬂourishing age (forma insignis et ﬂorentissima aetas, ‘a remarkable beauty and very young age’, 30.12.17). Then, Masinissa marries her; when Laelius and later Scipio ﬁnd out, they are clearly displeased with the young man’s irrational behaviour (30.12.21–2 and 30.14.4–11). 75

Line 84 presents an interpretative puzzle: is it Sophonisba, who obstructs Syphax from allying with the Romans, or is it the love affair of the old man that has reduced him to an observient coniunx? Both interpretations seem possible. Cf. Liv. 30.13.12 (Syphax’s claim): illis nuptialibus facibus regiam conﬂagrasse suam; illam furiam pestemque omnibus delenimentis animum suum auertisse atque alienasse, nec conquiesse donec ipsa manibus suis nefaria sibi arma aduersus hospitem atque amicum induerit. From those wedding torches his palace had been burned down, that pestilential Fury with all her allurements had enticed and deranged his mind. She had never rested until with her own hands she had put on him unspeakable arms against his guest and friend. However, Livy observes that these words were said by Syphax on account of his jealousy for Sophonisba’s marriage to Masinissa (30.14.1–2). Syphax’s change of alliance ominously underscores his breaking of ﬁdes and fas (he is called barbarus in Pun. 17.113).

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Finally, in order to save Sophonisba from becoming a captive of the Romans, Masinissa sends poison to her, which the young woman bravely takes and dies (30.15.7–8).76 What is the reason behind Silius’ omission of this episode? Signs of hasty composition in the last books of the poem have been variously explained by critics who construe certain omissions on account of Silius’ illness and death in 101 ce.77 In addition, Marks’s observation that Claudia’s chastity and Scipio’s sexual continence are meant to play off against Syphax’s lust, is correct.78 However, this explanation does not account for the erasure of Sophonisba’s important role in African affairs. In my opinion, an insertion of Sophonisba’s marriage to Masinissa would damage the portrait of the latter. We have already examined how important he becomes in book 16 through comparison to Scipio. Moreover, the details of Sophonisba’s heroic death would considerably ‘challenge’ Claudia Quinta’s supremacy as an exemplary ﬁgure in the book, to which we now turn.

CAELICOLUM PHRYGIA GENETRICEM SEDE: A FOREIGN GODDESS IN ROME In the last books of the Punica (13–17), the representation of Roman values of motherhood and womanhood reﬂects the complete reor76 Contrast to Silius’ omission of the Sophonisba drama, Petrarch’s expansion on the Livian episode, with the Didoesque descent of Sophonisba to the shades, in the opening of the sixth book of the Africa (6.1–73). Petrarch exploits the episode as a discourse on his own unsuccessful love for Laura; see the relevant discussion in Warner (2005), 20–50. Petrarch could not have read the Punica; see von Albrecht (1964), 118–44, and more recently, Schubert (2005), pace ter Haar (1997). 77 See, for instance, Mezzanotte (1995), 369: In quest’ottica non deve percio` apparire sorprendente il fatto che Silio menzioni appena un personaggio femminile, Sofonisba, a cui Livio, invece, aveva dato ben altro peso e spessore. Lo storico patavino l’aveva infatti rafﬁgurata come un personaggio di rara belezza e di grande fascino e seduzione. Silio le dedica, al contrario, appena cinque versi: forse si puo` spiegare col fatto che il poeta avesse fretta di concludere il poema, ma non va per questo trascurato l’attaccamenti ai valori tradizionali (in auge, in epoca ﬂavia) di Silio. 78 Marks (1999), 350–53. On Scipio’s sexual continence, see the Epilogue (245–6).

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ganisation of Roman affairs in the last years of the war on a political level and by extension reﬂects on the changes wrought on the semantic register of Romanitas as well. More speciﬁcally, Scipio becomes the catalyst for Roman political life; he incorporates youth, bravery, trustworthiness, and decisiveness, elements that lead to the ﬁnal victory over Carthage. Yet it is not only the change in the male protagonist’s behaviour that can be observed in these later years of the war. The system of values that women exemplify has also changed.79 Silius has us take particular note of symbols of chastity and loyalty among the female ﬁgures that emerge towards the end of the poem.80 Let us look at the opening of book 17 in detail. After the debate in the Senate between Fabius and Scipio (16.600–700) concerning the destruction of Carthage,81 and before the conclusion of the war with the battle at Zama, we learn about the advent of the Magna Mater at Rome (1–47).82 According to a Sibylline prophecy, the importation 79

Consider for instance the difference in the behaviour of the female population in books 7 and 12. In 7.74–89, a group of women (femineus . . . chorus, 7.76) prays to Juno for deliverance from Hannibal’s ‘plague’. In vain, they offer a uelamen to the queen of the gods and other gifts to Pallas, Apollo, Mars, and Dione (7.82–7). Another massive presence of women is attested in book 12, when the matrons offer their jewellery and precious belongings for the sake of preserving the well-being of public affairs (12.306–13). As Silius notes, the women’s motive for such a forfeiture has been their willingness to partake in the laus that a victory against Hannibal would bring to the Roman people (laudis poscere partem, ‘demanded part of the praise’, 12.307). Yet the behaviour of women has changed since book 7. Their hopes have been refreshed and therefore they have become more active partakers in the action than submissive spectators of events. It is noteworthy that Silius is not following Livy in this particular episode of the women’s contribution, for in Livy (26.36.5), it is the Senate that orders that Roman citizens submit a public toll for the needs of the war. Moreover, Livy situates the event later than Silius. By emphasising the willingness of the female population, Silius underlines the change that they have undergone and their eagerness for action. 80 Mezzanotte (1995), 369. 81 See Marks (1999), 311–47, and (2005a), 47–55, for an analysis of this episode. 82 For an analysis see Casale (1954), 36–8; Brue`re (1959), 243–4; von Albrecht (1968), 76–95, and (1999), 301–16; Marks (1999), 347–50, and (2005a), 240. Klotz (1933), 22–3, compares this episode to Livy’s account (29.10.4–11.8 and 29.14.5– 14.14). See also Nesselrath (1986), 223, and Burton (1996) on the Livian account. Stehle (1989) discusses the political implications of the importation of both Cybele’s and Venus’ cults into Rome during this period, and in particular, how female sexuality is deployed as a metaphor for Rome’s power as a state. Silius chooses to blur the chronology of the importation of the cult: it seems as though he dates it in

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of the cult of Cybele to Rome would chase away the enemy. P. Scipio Nasica is chosen to welcome the goddess to the city (17.5–15), until a crowd of women takes over the task of dragging the ship with ropes (quae traherent celsam religatis funibus alnum, ‘to draw the tall vessel with secure ropes’, 17.17). When the boat stops and refuses to proceed any further (substitit adductis renuens procedere uinclis / sacra ratis subitisque uadis immobilis haesit, ‘refusing to move further by the pulling of the ropes, the sacred ship stopped and suddenly it became stuck motionless on the river-bed’, 17.24–5), the priest of Cybele demands that the task be ﬁnished by a pure and chaste woman: parcite pollutis contingere uincula palmis et procul hinc, moneo, procul hinc, quaecumque profanae, ferte gradus nec uos casto miscete labori, dum satis est monuisse deae. quod si qua pudica mente ualet, si qua illaesi sibi corporis adstat conscia, uel sola subeat pia munera dextra. (17.27–32) All you unchaste, refrain from touching the ropes with guilty hands! Leave far away from here, far away, I warn you, and do not share in the sacred task; or the goddess may not be content with a mere warning. But if any woman has strength on account of her chaste mind, if any woman who stands here is conscious of a body unstained, let her, even with her right hand alone, undergo the pious duty.

Then though her reputation is darkened by false reports (non aequa populi male credita fama, ‘discredited by a false rumour among the people’, 17.34), Claudia Quinta undertakes the task and prays to the goddess (17.36–40). An important aspect is revealed in Claudia’s genealogy, as we have seen with so many other female ﬁgures so far: Hic prisca ducens Clausorum ab origine nomen / Claudia . . . (‘Here was Claudia, who derived her name from the ancient stock of the Clausi’, 17.33–4). Silius exploits her genealogy to point to Claudia’s Sabine origins,83 as she becomes an example of the successful amalgamation 202 instead of 205 bce. The poet, however, exploits the speciﬁc details from the Livian account, such as the report that Rome was lacking alliances in the East at the time: nullasdum in Asia socias ciuitates habebat populus Romanus (‘in Asia, the Roman people had as yet no allied cities’, Liv. 29.11.1). 83 See Lemaire (1823), 2.345–6, and Spaltenstein (1990), 447, who point out that the detail is absent in Livy but found in Ovid’s Fast. 4.305.

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between the Latin and the Sabines into one race, the Romans. Claudia will offer to her people the chance to stand united and conquer Hannibal, by facilitating the importation of the Great Mother’s cult into Rome. She concludes her speech in the following manner: ‘si nostrum nullo uiolatum est crimine corpus, / testis, diua, ueni et facili me absolue carina’ (‘If my body has not been violated by any stain, you, goddess, come as a witness and prove my innocence through the vessel’s easy movement’, 17.39–40). Immediately after Claudia’s intervention, the ship begins to move and everyone’s hopes are restored that the end of the war is indeed approaching (17.41–7). Scholars have correctly observed the signiﬁcant role that chastity, piety, and morality play in the episode of the Magna Mater.84 It has also rightly been maintained that the elevation of morale from Cybele’s arrival at Rome corresponds to the military success later in the book, at Zama.85 I would like to suggest, pace von Albrecht,86 that Claudia herself takes a central place in Silius’ narrative. If we pay close attention to the description of the hesitation of the ship and Claudia’s intervention, we see that references to chains and bondage are salient. The word uinclum is used to illustrate the refusal of the ship to surrender (adductis renuens . . . uinclis, 17.24), while the ropes are fastened together in order to drag the vessel (religatis funibus, 17.17). Then, the priest of Cybele demands that no polluted hands touch the uincula (17.27); the contact of the profanae with the statue of the goddess would result in failure and corruption. These references to the chains reﬂect the moral ‘captivity’ of the Roman people, from which the goddess supposedly will set them free. However, no polluted women may touch the ropes of the boat. Only Claudia can serve as intermediary to Cybele; when she entreats the Magna Mater to free her from the ignobility of her crimen (17.39–40), the priestess uses the imperative absolue (17.40). The verb is also used in connection with the uincula of the boat, since the goddess nods positively to Claudia’s plea and surrenders to the power of the

84

See von Albrecht (1968), 95, and (1999), 310; Marks (1999), 349. Marks (1999), 350, and (2005a), 240. 86 Von Albrecht (1968) and (1999), 301–16. See also Brue`re (1959), 243–4, for a comparison to Ovid’s Fast. 4.249–349. On Claudia’s pudicitia in Livy, Propertius, and Ovid, see Langlands (2006), 65–9. 85

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ropes. Tum secura capit funem is the phrase used after Claudia’s speech (17.41) to demonstrate that Claudia is in control of the ropes and does not surrender to the vessel but rather actively drags it to the shore. What is more, the verb ab-soluere metaphorically re-enacts the ‘moral’ release that Claudia’s reputation will enjoy. Both Claudia and the Romans are freed from their burdens, she of the crimen, Rome of the foreign enemy. There is an additional reason why the verb used in Claudia’s case is not unintentional. It can be contextually associated with Pomponia, Scipio’s mother. What we learn from Pomponia’s account to Scipio about her pregnancy is striking, namely that her labour was painless:87 excipit his mater: ‘nullos, o nate, labores mors habuit nostra; aetherio dum pondere partu exsoluor, miti dextra Cyllenia proles imperio Iouis Elysias deduxit in oras attribuitque pares sedes, ubi magna moratur Alcidae genetrix, ubi sacro munere Leda . . . ’ (13.628–33) The mother replies with these words: ‘No suffering, my son, attended my death; when through my delivery I was freed from the divine burden, the offspring of Cyllene, with his mild right hand, has led me to the shores of Elysium by the command of Jove and has given me the same place, where the great mother of Alcides, where Leda dwells with sacred honour . . . ’

Pomponia stresses the word exsoluor, which plays off against the verb used later in her speech to portray her impregnation by Jupiter: membra ligauit (13.638). We can discern how the poet carefully reverses the image of Pomponia’s ‘rape’ and transforms it into an episode where only the positive result is exalted, namely Scipio’s birth. After we have listened to Pomponia’s account, there is no space to question her chastity as uniuira and wife of Scipio’s mortal ‘father’. In other words, Scipio’s mother retains all the grandeur and majesty of a Roman matrona. Likewise, Claudia is ‘delivered’ from the afﬂictions of ill reputation and sets in motion the beginning of a new generation of morality at Rome.

87 Marks (1999), 100–01, correctly notices that Pomponia responds quite casually, even cheerfully, to Scipio’s words.

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Claudia’s successful intervention reﬂects the reorientation of Romanitas in the poem. By placing the Vestal at the opening of the last book, Silius opposes her character to other female ﬁgures in the poem. Claudia Quinta becomes the only female whose plea is answered. Not only is her name saved from ill reputation (crimen), but she is also transformed into an effective ﬁgure who can bring prosperity and moral regeneration to Rome. Claudia Quinta is the only woman in the poem who succeeds in both her private and public lives, to become the embodiment of Roman values and ideas concerning womanhood. This Romanisation of the Magna Mater and the adoption of a foreign cult in Rome plays off against the presence of Anna Perenna in book 8. As we have seen, the Carthaginian goddess remains in the fringes of the narrative, as both Roman and non-Roman, a Sidonis and a numen assimilated to the Italian landscape. The portrayal of Anna as a displaced person who longs for the antiqua patria is juxtaposed to the Magna Mater’s presence in Rome as the goddess who sanctions her new country by ‘blessing’ the chastity of the chief Vestal. There is, however, another layer of meaning to explore in the scene, one that reveals the foreign elements crystallised by the arrival of the Phrygian goddess. When the vessel is on its way to its destination and just before Claudia’s interference, the poet invites us to visualise the whole group of followers of the Magna Mater: circum arguta cauis tinnitibus aera, simulque certabant rauco resonantia tympana pulsu semiuirique chori, gemino qui Dindyma monte casta colunt, qui Dictaeo bacchantur in antro, quique Idaea iuga et lucos nouere silentes. (17.18–22) All round the cymbals made a noise with their hollow tinklings, and at the same time the drums vied with the cymbals resounding with their hoarse note, and the choruses of the half-men, who worship her in the twin peaks of chaste Dindyma, who revel in the cave of Dicte, and who have known the heights of Ida and the silent groves.

On the one side, women only must drag the ship, while on the other side we see the followers of the goddess lining up with their char-

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acteristic and well-known equipment.88 The use of the verb bacchor in this case is characteristic of the new, rather cosmopolitan order announced by the arrival of Cybele, the coexistence of an exotic cult with a purifying ritual. These novelties of the imported cult, viewed from a Roman perspective, eradicate the differences between centre and periphery and make Romanness an ever-changing feature which can, and should, be reinforced from the outsider others. Simultaneously, however, behind the depiction of, and the emphasis laid on, the Eastern provenance of the cult, as a worship performed by choruses of semiuiri in a Bacchic state, lurks Silius’ foreknowledge and therefore problematisation of such an importation for its implications on future Roman civic life: the Magna Mater cult will soon give rise to the Bacchanalian affair, in 186 bce,89 an event outside the perimeter of the poem. Thus Silius intimates that the Punic War is after all the zenith of Rome’s moral ascent, as well as a reference point for subsequent generations, such as his audience under the Flavians. We see that the poet introduces the ﬁgure of Claudia Quinta and juxtaposes her indisputable chastity to the presence of the goddess, who comes from outside the centre and thus introduces new standards within the walls of the city (Phrygia . . . sede petitam / Laomedonteae sacrandam moenibus urbis, ‘sought from her seat in Phrygia, to be worshipped within the walls of the Laomedontean city’, 17.3–4). A Roman matrona as a priestess meets with the foreign deity and

88 The orgiastic rites underscore the effeminacy of the Eastern people, including the Trojans/Romans themselves (cf. Numanus Remulus and Ascanius in Aen. 9.617 or Parthenopaeus’ attack on Amphion in Theb. 9.800, uestri feriunt caua tympana patres, ‘your fathers beat hollow cymbals’). 89 On the Bacchanalian affair, see most recently Taka´cs (2000) and Paga´n (2004), 50–67. Certainly, the ﬁnal lines of the poem are open to interpretation, as the rise but also the future decline of the empire seemingly coincide: cf. Silius’ apostrophe to Rome exactly in the middle of the poem:

nam tempore, Roma, nullo maior eris. mox sic labere secundis, ut sola cladum tuearis nomina fama. (9.351–3) Rome, you will be greater at no other time; soon you will fall by later victories so that you shall be looked upon only by the rumour of your defeats.

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through a prayer makes a pact: the goddess lets the vessel be landed and approves of the woman’s chastity and pudor. The outsider goddess becomes the catalyst for the annihilation of the Carthaginian other, the enemy par excellence, who could not be absorbed or acculturated and therefore had to be extinguished.90 Thus, in book 17, Silius chooses to portray Claudia as the embodiment of chastity and purity and places her at the climax of a series of female ﬁgures that have paved her way, such as Pomponia and Masinissa’s mother. Clearly, the voice of women in the last books of the poem conveys overt male values and ideals with regard to motherhood and matronhood. ‘Barbarian’ (m)otherhood has become assimilated to the sameness of the Roman male ideal. Yet there is a price to be paid. Romanness itself becomes more ﬂexible and pliable by the forces of the periphery. This reconﬁguration of female morality according to male principles amply demonstrates the importance of female action for the completion of the war and the vital role of women in the Roman society as mothers, educators, and—most signiﬁcantly—guardians of generational continuity. One feels that cosmopolitanism emerges from the core of a global movement that makes a clean sweep of laws, differences, and prohibitions . . . A challenge to the very principle of human association is what is involved in cosmopolitan utopia: the rules governing exchanges with the other having been abolished (no more State, no more family, no sexual difference), is it possible to live without constraints—without limits, without borders—other than individual demands? Two possibilities are then open: either absolute cynicism based on individual pleasure, or the elitism of lucid, self-controlled beings, of wise men who manage to be reconciled with the insane. (Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves, 60–61)

In the above quote, Kristeva delineates the trends visible in Hellenistic cosmopolitanism and concludes that the Stoics opted for the

90 Wilson (2004), 235, observes that ‘whereas Silius begins the main narrative of the Punica in a Virgilian mode, with his recapitulation of the myth of Dido’s foundation of Carthage . . . , he concludes the poem in an Ovidian mode, converting Livy’s account of Scipio’s triumph . . . into a mirror of Ovid’s climactic celebration of the paradox of human immortality.’

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second possibility, namely of a utopian ideal rather than a concrete reality—what I would say belongs more in the sphere of literary imagination than serves as a reﬂection of historical actualities. In Silius’ reconstruction of the glorious past and of events that took place more than 250 years before his time, the role of otherness and of the periphery becomes a catalyst for the welfare of the empire. Female power proves to be an important factor in the shaping of Roman identity, since women emerge as important factors in this reﬂection on idealised cosmopolitanism, on what is Roman and what has the potential to become Roman. Moral values of the past are revived and underscored as paragons necessary for prosperity and success. The system of these values (pietas and ﬁdes) is reinforced from the periphery by the incorporation of outsiders, as prospective associates, and by their assimilation to the ideological code dictated by the centre. At the same time, however, the notion of Romanness undergoes a signiﬁcant change as it becomes mandatory for Romans to embrace otherness and to accept the terms of this coexistence, even if this coexistence betokens the destabilisation and ﬂexibility of polarities such as centre and periphery, male and female.91 91

As Tipping (1999), 277, reminds us: The ﬁnal scene is a good example of the way in which, even as it constructs model Romanity, even as, perhaps, it assumes an apparent air of nostalgia, the Punica raises questions about those models that it presents, and so challenges any comfortable sense that the past was a Republican paradise. also in (2007), 241: While the Punica’s apostrophe to Scipio may create the illusion of foreclosure on history, history had, as Silius raced to complete his epic, brought to pass not only the civil war and Caesarism in Lucan’s poem, but also the political demise of the controversially individualistic Scipio Africanus. Cf. also Dietrich (2005), 85 and 87, on how Scipio as a lamenting ﬁgure problematises the role he will play in Roman politics after the Punic Wars and Rome’s dangers from forces within, once the external enemy is defeated.

Epilogue: Virgins and (M)others: Appropriations of Same and Other in Flavian Rome Nam michi si, cogente Deo, patrieque cadendum est, Quid iuuat obniti contra Fatoque prementi Humanas afferre manus? Moriamur inermes! Viuat et in toto regnet ferus Hanibal orbe! (Petrarch, Africa 2.27–30) For if according to God’s plan my fatherland has to fall, what help is it to strive with human efforts for the opposite, with Fate resisting? Let us die unarmed! Let barbarian Hannibal live and rule over the whole world! ˚Æ æÆ Ł ª ı åøæ Ææ æı. ˇƒ ¼ŁæøØ ÆP qÆ Ø ŒØÆ ºØ. And now, what’s to become of us without barbarians? These people were some sort of a solution. (C. Cavaﬁs, Waiting for the Barbarians, 1904)1

In Petrarch’s Africa, Scipio ﬁnds out that his victory over Hannibal will not rescue the Roman state ultimately from its fated downfall. In the lines above, Scipio reviews a well-established topos in Latin literature, Rome’s inevitable gradual decline and fall after the destruction of Carthage, after the elimination of the barbarian enemies, who present the ﬁnal stumbling block to the expansion of the

1

Translation K. Friar.

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empire and the spread of (Roman) civilisation.2 In the preceding chapters, the focus has shifted from the tension between Argive and Theban women in Statius’ Thebaid, on the one hand, through the open-endedness of the poem and the poet’s confession of poetic powerlessness, to the optimistic closure of the Punica, on the other hand, with its positive integration of Roman and non-Roman female ﬁgures, an assimilation made possible only through the long process of the restoration of the res publica in the hands of the great patriarch Scipio.3 By contrast to the Thebaid, where the semiotic choˆra of female lament ﬁnds its rupture into the symbolic realm of Statius’ poetry temporarily, only to be dismissed by the poet as a mode transgressive from the epic discourse, Silius presents us with an ideal fusion, whereby the female presence activates those mechanisms conducive to the resolution of the conﬂict—male and female, same and other collapse into one, collaborative group, as Claudia Quinta hauls the vessel of the foreign goddess into the City and thus displaces Hannibal from the Italian tellus towards the margins of the poem and, in a way, of history itself. Let us now turn to the epilogues of both poems for another glimpse at the boundaries that have preoccupied us in the course of this book: salue, inuicte parens, non concessure Quirino laudibus ac meritis non concessure Camillo: nec uero, cum te memorat de stirpe deorum, prolem Tarpei mentitur Roma Tonantis. (Pun. 17.651–4)

2

See e.g., Sal. Cat. 2; Liv. Pref. 9–10, probably itself an embryonic concept found as early as the mid-ﬁrst century BCE in Porcius Licinus’ fragment: Poenico bello secundo Musa pinnato gradu / intulit se bellicosam in Romuli gentem feram, ‘In the Second Punic War, the Muse with her winged pace brought herself to the Roman people in a warlike manner’, (fr. 1 Courtney), where the adjective bellicosam applies well to both the Muse and the Roman people. On this controversial fragment, see Skutsch (1970), 120–21; Mattingley (1993); and also Whitmarsh (2001), 9. 3 Marks (2005a), 284: ‘The epic . . . makes the argument that one-man rule can be a stabilising and unifying force, especially in times of extreme peril . . . The epic teaches us that one man alone is not enough to achieve stability, however; he needs the consensus of the people and senate of Rome . . . ’

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Hail to you, undefeated father, who will not yield to Quirinus in glory or to Camillus in meritorious deeds! Rome tells no lie, when she calls you an offspring of the gods and the son of the Thunder-god of the Tarpeian Capitoline. durabisne procul dominoque legere superstes, o mihi bissenos multum uigilata per annos Thebai? . . . iam te magnanimus dignatur noscere Caesar . . . uiue, precor; nec tu diuinam Aeneida tempta, sed longe sequere et uestigia semper adora. (Theb. 12.810–12, 814, 816–17) My Thebaid, on whom I have spent twelve wakeful years, will you long endure and be read when your master is gone? . . . Now the magnanimous emperor deigns to know you . . . Live, I pray, and do not compete with the divine Aeneid, but ever follow her footsteps from afar in adoration.

Both epic poems end with exhortations, in the form of imperatives: Silius apostrophises Scipio, son of Jupiter, the parens of the Republic, with the assertion that the victorious Roman general is equal to Romulus, the founder of the state and of the empire in general. Statius addresses his own Thebaid, with the hope that as a poem it will withstand successfully the comparison to the divine Aeneid, an epic with an already god-like status.4 Behind Silius’ address to Scipio, however, lurks a literary gesture, as well, not to Virgil, but to Livy. After Romulus’ miraculous ascension to heaven, Livy claims, the patres urge the Roman military youth to perform and thus seal what will become the ritual invocation for the feast of the Parentalia:5 parentemque urbis Romanae saluere universi Romulum iubent (‘All order that Romulus should be hailed as the god-parent of the city of Rome’, Liv. 1.16). Silius invokes the intertext of this formula (saluere iubent) as a gesture to his historian-predecessor, whose text has been instrumental for the composition of the Punica, just as the Aeneid has admittedly been the poetic antecedent for Statius. As the Thebaid is proclaimed equal to the Aeneid, with a gesture towards the divine 4 Pollmann (2004), 284–9; Rosati (2008) connects the prologue of the poem to Domitian with the epilogue in terms of acknowledging political and literary ‘paternity’; cf. also Rosati (2002) on Statius’ negotiations of poetic inspiration. 5 See Ogilvie (1965), 86. On Domitian as Romulus, see Cowan (2002), 170–76.

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nod of the emperor with regard to the poet’s laborious enterprise, so is Scipio elevated as identical to Quirinus, and consequently the Punica is placed as a commendable successor in a long line of Roman epic poets and historians.6 Scipio is by no means inferior to Quirinus: the phrase echoes Jupiter’s similar pronouncement in book 3, when the divine king proclaims that Quirinus himself will yield his place in the future apotheosis of Domitian (solioque Quirinus/concedet, ‘Quirinus will give up his throne’, Pun. 3.627–8).7 Thus both poets express their debt to tradition and place themselves within the sequence of Latin literature, which they have helped to enhance in their own right, as they engage in a ﬁgurative dialogue with the emperor, a prominent ﬁgure in both epilogues. Even though discussion of the epilogues has centred around the picture of Domitian as a reﬂection of the pro- or anti-Domitianic views of the poets and their poems, I would like to move away from this debate:8 as Domitian ﬁgures in no uncertain terms in both

6 On the relationship between Silius and Roman historiography, see most recently Gibson (2010) and Pomeroy (2010). 7 Jupiter’s prophecy of a tantum regnum (Pun. 3.588) rests upon the conquering of the world as expressed by Vespasian’s and Domitian’s own feats: the empire’s borders will extend to the north as fas as Thyle and the Rhine and south in Africa and the Near East. Domitian himself is apostrophised as Germanicus (3.607), an appellation indicative of the empire’s close relationship with the periphery, upon which its vitality rests. On the prophecy, see Marks (2005a), 211–17. McDermott and Orentzel (1977) examine the connection between the prophecy and the end of book 14 (686–8). Marks (2005a), 209–44, offers a comprehensive study for the connection between Scipio and Domitian; see also Stu¨rner (2008) and Bernstein (2008), 156, but contra see Tipping (2010), 218: ‘[T]he shifting ﬁgure of Scipio with which the Punica ends is also suggestive of the Virgilian and post-Virgilian epic hero’s lack of deﬁnition, of the difﬁculty of determining what it meant to be epic hero or Roman or both.’ 8 On Statius’ views on Domitian in the epilogue, see Ganiban (2007), 231–2, who interprets the epic as a critique of kingship but not of Domitian himself; McNelis (2007), 176–7, points to the lack of satisfactory closure at the end of the poem as emblematic of Statius’ views of the Flavian regime. Cf. Augoustakis and Newlands (2007) and Augoustakis (2007) on the ‘poetics of intimacy’ that appropriately conveys Statius’ anxieties. See Marks (2005a), 245–88, on the Punica’s association with the Domitianic principate, where the critic concludes that the poem ‘was as much an epic for Domitian’s Rome as it was an epic about the Second Punic War. So much so that when Domitian died, it lost its ideal reader, its didactic purpose, and its raison d’ eˆtre’. See Coleman (1986) and (2000) for literary production ‘under the wings’ of the emperor and its status upon the emperor’s murder respectively. Ko¨nig (2005), 205–53, interprets the games in book 16 in the light of the Domitianic regime ‘as a

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epilogues, in a manner of a conclusion to this study, I would like to offer a suggestion about the importance of polarities, such as centre and periphery, for the culture and society of Domitianic Rome.9 The two Cancelleria marble reliefs,10 discovered in 1937 and 1939, provide ample illustration of a shift in Flavian art from themes of fertility and the imperial family in detail (as witnessed in the Ara Pacis, for instance), to the new dynasty itself, Vespasian and Domitian in particular, where gods (and personiﬁcations of abstract notions) mingle with humans, in the absence of mothers and children.11 The prevailing opinion is that Relief B portrays Vespasian’s aduentus to the city in 70 CE, with Domitian at his side (ﬁg. 1).12 On the left side of the fragmented relief, our gaze is directed towards the personiﬁcation of Roma, in Amazonian costume, and one of the Vestals (ﬁg. 2). Roma is seated on a throne, spear in one hand, waiting for the new emperor to come into the city’s pomerium.13 There is little consensus, however, concerning Relief A, which has generated debate among critics (ﬁg. 3). Domitian is the central ﬁgure of the relief, either in a profectio, setting out for war in the frontiers of the empire, or an aduentus, a victorious return from his war against the Chatti (in 83 CE). The last of the Flavians is accompanied by Minerva and Mars on his left side and an Amazonian ﬁgure on his right side, who appears to be urging him on. Because of the similarities between the two Amazonian ﬁgures in the two reliefs, it has been concluded that reﬂection of the passivity which the Roman people have chosen, or been forced to choose, in their viewing of the horrors of contemporary warfare’ (253). 9 Most recently, Keith (2007) has contributed to our understanding of ekphraseis in Statius’ Thebaid (and Ovid’s Metamorphoses) as a reﬂection of imperial (Domitianic) architecture, without drawing speciﬁc analogies, however, as I shall try to do in this epilogue. 10 The reliefs have attracted the attention of scholars and art historians alike. I indicate some representative studies, with often opposing views, concerning the theme of each relief: Magi (1945); Toynbee (1957); Bonanno (1976), 52–61; Kleiner (1992), 191–2; Darwall-Smith (1996), 172–7 and 303 (bibliography); Newlands (2002), 16–17; Henderson (2003). 11 Newlands (2002), 16. 12 By both Magi (1945) and Toynbee (1957); while Magi supports the idea also for Relief A, Toynbee proposes that Relief A represents a profectio, a predominant view now (see e.g. Darwall-Smith [1996], 174 n.214). 13 Cf. BMC, 2.121 no. 565 and pl. 21.9, Roma helmeted with spear in right hand and round shield, with Vespasian laureate.

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Figure 1. Rome, Cancelleria Relief B, Vespasian’s Aduentus.

Figure 2. Rome, Cancelleria Relief B, Vespasian’s Aduentus, detail of Roma.

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Figure 3. Rome, Cancelleria Relief A, Domitian’s Profectio.

the second woman is also Roma, though many support the idea of a personiﬁed Virtus.14 Roma in an Amazonian costume, with bare breast, is not a Flavian innovation. Roma is often portrayed in such clothing and posture.15 What keys into our reading of the Flavian epics under discussion is the visual depiction of Roma in Flavian art as a warrior, with her adopted Amazonian apparel, as one reinforcing the divide between insiders and outsiders. On the widely accepted reconstruction of the relief as a profectio, with Domitian setting out against the Sarmatians (in 92–3 CE), then we are gazing on Roma fashioned as Hippolyte, in the same manner we have seen Statius portraying the Amazon whom Theseus brings to Athens, an outsider, 14 Keller (1967), 194–202 and 209, suggests that both female ﬁgures portray Virtus rather than Roma, and in particular, Domitian’s Virtus (also Darwall-Smith [1996], 173–4). I follow Toynbee’s (1957) interpretation of Roma in both reliefs. For Domitian’s effort to redeﬁne Virtus, see Tuck (2005). McDonnell (2006), 146–9, examining similar representations of Virtus, concludes that: The ancient Romans had no conceptual difﬁculties in conceiving of an armed Amazon seated in the attitude of a city goddess as Roma, and of a standing Amazon as Virtus. What is signiﬁcant about the relationship between the two images is that when the Romans wanted to represent Virtus in cult, on coins, and in art, they employed the very same image used for the personiﬁed Roma. (149) 15 See Calza’s (1926–7) still informative examination and appendix with all of the representations of Roma as an Amazon (notably, in the Temple of Augustus and Roma in Ostia), as well as Arrigoni (1984), 884–7 and especially n.41. For instance, cf. Roma on the Ara Pacis and the Gemma Augusta; see D’Ambra (1993), 89, and Castriota (1995), 142–3.

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and yet a prospective Athenian. While the female warrior covers the emperor’s hand, as she urges him on to pursue fearlessly his undertaking, another goddess, Minerva, the emperor’s own protectress, escorts him on the road.16 Memorialised on the Cancelleria Relief B, we ﬁnd Rome as an Amazon, a virgin woman-warrior, appropriately positioned together with the Vestal virgin, not in the central location of the frame but in the borders of the visual narrative instead. Conceivably Rome is waiting to usher and sanction the emperor into the city. In the visual arts, clear emphasis is laid on virginity, and the war-like imagery of both Minerva and Roma mark the conspicuous absence of motherhood, from both reliefs. It is the same topos we have examined in the ﬁnal book of the Punica, a contrast to the rampant effeminisation at the end of the Thebaid: in Statius, female lament prevails, its silencing (successful or not) by the authorial voice notwithstanding, while Hippolyte, an Amazon who embodies (m)otherhood, is about to bear offspring to Theseus; and yet in Silius, Claudia Quinta, the Vestal Virgin, whose pudicitia is documented beyond doubt, overshadows the dangerously heroic Sophonisba, the other, who stays in the margins of the narrative, remaining voiceless and anonymous. As motherhood becomes idealised in the ﬁgure of Pomponia and the mother-prophetess of Masinissa, at the same time virginity and the reformation of moral values by the Flavians comes to the forefront of the narrative in the Punica, as a manifestation and reﬂection of the trends in Flavian art. Since the Roman ideals of the past are exploited to reinforce gender boundaries, by reimposing the cosmic order through Scipio’s victory over the African other, boundaries collapse: an Amazonian other is now in the centre. Roma is portrayed as a ﬁgure from the periphery, since the periphery provides those examples that the centre has failed to project.17 This image of purity and virginity is also emphasised by the punishment of the Vestal Cornelia, mapped by Silius on the

16 Henderson (2003), 250–51: ‘Side by side with Mars, hustling in hot pursuit of Victory for Rome . . . This myth hems the hero in with the unwomen warriors, but the massive god of war pledges that manliness (uirtus) brings Roman success.’ 17 Ending with Nero’s regime. See Joshel (1997) for the corrupt centre vs the ideal periphery (Messalina vs the German wives in Tacitus’ Germania, for instance).

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geography of the Flavian Underworld, or by Scipio’s rescue of the virgin Spanish princess:18 quin etiam accitus populi regnator Hiberi, cui sponsa et sponsae deﬁxus in ossibus ardor. hanc notam formae concessit laetus ouansque indelibata gaudenti uirgine donum. (Pun. 15.268–71) Moreover, by Scipio the ruler of a Spanish tribe was summoned, who had a promised bride and loved her passionately. And Scipio joyful and triumphant gave her back, remarkable for her beauty, freely to the bridegroom who rejoiced in an unpolluted bride.

Scipio’s continence celebrates the new order proclaimed by the Flavian gens and Domitian in particular.19 Pudicitia and pudor are reinstated after the decadent years of the last of the Julio-Claudians. This portrayal of Rome’s Amazonian status, however, is sanctioned and approved by the periphery also, as becomes evident in the seldom recovered female voice within the androcentric milieu of Roman or Romanised elite provincial culture: the Hymn to Rome (N # P Å) by the Greek poetess Melinno, epitomises the ideas examined in our analysis of the Flavian epic poets:20 åÆEæ Ø, # P Æ, ŁıªÅæ @æÅ, åæı æÆ Æ$çæø ¼ÆÆ, e L ÆØ Kd ªA …ºı 18

Cf. Plb. 10.19.3–7; Liv. 26.50; V. Max. 4.31.1. The episode recalls Alexander’s similar gesture to Darius’ female relatives (Curt. 3.12.21). See Nicol (1936), 119; Spaltenstein (1990), 358; Ripoll (1998), 462–4; Marks (2005a), 237–8. The subject is exploited in later art also in a similar manner (see book cover), for instance, in Van Dyck’s painting The Continence of Scipio, now at Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford; the analogy intended here is between Scipio and James I, who intervenes for the marriage of George Villiers, ﬁrst duke of Buckingham to Lady Katherine Manners. It seems that ideals such as this always ﬁnd fertile ground before elite audiences, either Flavian or Jacobean. 19 For the moral restoration promoted by Domitian, see Grelle (1980) and D’Ambra (1993); in the Punica, Mezzanotte (1995) and Marks (2005a), 235–42. 20 Melinno is called Lesbian in the sources, but of course both her name and the island of origin exemplify the presupposition that all melic poets come from Lesbos; see M. L. West (1978), 104; De Martino (2006), 284–92. Of course, the verbal exploitation of the pun between the noun Þ Å (‘strength’) and the city’s name is obvious.

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ÆNb ¼ŁæÆı. d Æ ﬁ , æ ØÆ, øŒ EæÆ ŒF Iææ Œø ÆØºB ﬁ IæåA, ZçæÆ ŒØæÆB ﬁ åØÆ Œæ Iª ﬁÅ. ~ ﬁ Æ Pa ªºÆ ﬁ ŒæÆæH ºø æÆ ªÆÆ ŒÆd ºØA ŁÆºÆ ﬁ Æ çªªÆØ. f IçÆº ø Œı æ~ ¼Æ ºÆH. Æ b çººø › ªØ ÆNg ŒÆd Æºø ¼ºº ¼ººø d Æ ﬁ ºÅØ sæ IæåA P Æ ººØ. q ªaæ KŒ ø f Æ ŒæÆı ¼æÆ ÆNå Æa ªºı ºåØ hÆåı ˜ Ææ ‹ø IEÆ ŒÆæe { I IæH. (Suppl. Hell. 541.1–20 [1983], 268–9)21 Hail Rome, daughter of Ares, warlike queen with your golden belt, you who dwell in holy Olympus, unshakably always set on the earth. To you alone, elder daughter, Fate gave the royal glory of unbroken rule, in order to be the leader, having royal power. Under the straps of your strong yoke the breasts of the earth and of the grey sea are bound tightly; you govern the cities of people securely. Greatest Time, who causes all things to falter and alters the life sometimes this way, sometimes another, for you alone does not change the favourable wind of your rule. For you indeed alone from all the cities give birth to the strongest, spear-bearing, great men, as if from men[?] you brought forth the rich crop of Demeter’s fruit.22

Even though Melinno’s poem has been dated to various different periods, from the Hellenistic times to the early second century CE,23 21

The text is attested in Stobaeus 3.7.12, in the section æd IæÆ. Translation modiﬁed from Lind (1972), taking into account Bowra (1957). 23 In the Suppl. Hell., Lloyd-Jones and Parsons (1983), 269, describe the style of the poem as turgidus iste stilus et inanium iterationum strepitus, dating it in the Hadrianic period. Usener (1900), 290, proposed metrical afﬁliations with Statius’ Silu. 4.7, also in Sapphic stanzas, and therefore dated the poem in the ﬁrst century CE, between Horace and Statius; contra see Giangrande (1991). For conjectures on the Hellenistic origins of the poem, see Bowra (1957); Lind (1972), especially n.84, on the worship of Rome as a goddess attested as early as 195 BCE in Asia Minor, the festival 22

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we can safely follow the recent consensus concerning the dating to the end of the ﬁrst and beginning of the second century CE. Melinno’s perspective of Rome’s grandeur and primacy over the world reﬂects the representation of Roma as a warrior Amazon, as we saw above, but also, and most importantly, supports the goddess’ alignment with the role of Tellus, Terra Mater, since the city bears the greatest men, as seen in the ﬁnal stanza. Melinno’s poetic tropes echo the patterns of Greek epic poetry, a tradition subsumed into the long line of Latin epic: Rome is apostrophised as the daughter of Ares in the ﬁrst line, a clear allusion to the opening lines from the cyclic Aethiopis, @æÅ ŁıªÅæ ªÆº æ IæçØ (‘daughter of greathearted Ares, murderer of men’, fr.1 West). Melinno repositions Penthesilea’s description from the beginning of the hexameter to the end, thus allowing place for the hymnic åÆEæ and the name of Rome. The hymn also ends with epic overtones in ŒæÆı ¼æÆ ÆNå Æa ªºı evoking the great tradition in which the poetess situates her work, but also refashioning the cosmos of martial epic poetry into a female space, where the city clearly plays the role of the mother, by means of images of fertility in the last stanza, reinforced by the maternal earth and sea in the exact middle of the poem ( æÆ ªÆÆ ŒÆd ºØA ŁÆºÆ, 10). As Mellor has pointed out, ‘despite its brevity, this little poem impressively encapsulates the themes of Roman rule found in later Latin poetry’.24 Although the negotiation of Greekness vs Romanness in imperial Greek literature is by no means the subject of this book,25 I submit that Melinno’s uniquely female voice contributes to our understanding of the negotiation of gender and identity as attested in imperial Latin epic poetry, from the male perspective, especially when considered as a parallel with the representation of Roma as a virgin Amazon in Flavian art. Where literature problematises the relationship between called Romaia earliest known from Delphi in 189 BCE, among other indications of Rome’s prestige in the eastern Mediterranean in the second century BCE; Mellor (1975), 121–4. Gauger (1984) dates Melinno in the early principate, followed by Raimondi’s (1995–8) perceptive study of Melinno and the themes of the poem, dating it most probably in the early second century CE, Torres Guerra (2003), and Alekniene´ (2006). 24 Mellor (1975), 124. 25 See e.g. Whitmarsh’s (2001) perceptive and insightful study on the subject.

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virginity, pudicitia, and the dangers of motherhood on the one hand, art elides the latter, refocusing the lens solely on the former. While sexual continence in the form of virginity represents the ideal correctio morum promoted by the new regime and the princeps pudicus, the presence of Amazonian imagery, in the ﬁgures of Roma and Minerva, is not altogether lacking further undertones. Minerva’s adoption for the championship of the last of the Flavians underscores her status as the virgin protectress of the arts and especially weaving.26 Unfortunately, the state of the Cancelleria Reliefs will never allow us to know their exact placement within other Flavian monuments27 and to prove a direct correlation between Minerva the warrior and Minerva the punisher, as clearly depicted in the frieze of the Forum Transitorium. Arachne’s execution conceals Minerva’s double power as civiliser and ruthless warrior. As D’Ambra has correctly observed, ‘[Arachne] is trapped in her virginal state without ever being able to become a bride, to marry and have children. Her labor is sterile and fruitless.’28 Virginity has its own limitations. It is only recognised as the antecedent of marriage; weaving and woolwork are not devoid of consequences. As we have seen, Hippolyte is transposed into the Athenian culture and will contribute to the future of the Athenian king, however gloomy that may prove by the birth of Hippolytus. Preoccupation with Virtus and warrior Amazons does not stop in the Cancelleria Relief and the Forum Transitorium, however. Domitian’s building programme, it has been observed, serves his ‘policy of cultural renewal’, his vision of moral and social reform.29 Is it mere coincidence then that the fountain in the lower level of the Domus Augustana, the private section of the imperial abode on the Palatine, is made in the shape of Amazonian peltae (ﬁg. 4)?30 This lower ﬂoor 26 Henderson (2003), 253: ‘no one should forget for a moment that this virgin [Minerva] can be a killer . . . Mind Minerva on the war-path. Worth avoiding.’ Cf. also Dominik (1994a), 177, on Minerva in the Thebaid. 27 See Darwall-Smith (1996), 176, for possible positions in the Temple of Fortuna Redux or the Porticus Diuorum. 28 D’Ambra (1993), 108. Also Fredrick (2003), 223–7. 29 D’Ambra (1993), 5. 30 For Domitian’s palace (Domus Flavia and Augustana), see Darwall-Smith (1996), 185–201, and Packer (2003).

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Figure 4. Rome, Domus Augustana, lower peristyle.

is one of the few places of the complex visible from below the Palatine,31 thus exposed to the people’s gaze, while at the same time one of the emperor’s most private rooms (room 8 in ﬁg. 5) leads directly to the Amazonian fountain.32 Coincidence or wellcalculated imperial propaganda? As MacDonald observes, ‘[Domitian] claimed the rounded whole of the earth, and it was this that Rabirius’ [the architect’s] creation was intended to declare.’33 If we can judge from the pervasive use of the theme of Penthesilea’s defeat in the hands of Achilles, for instance, as preserved in the newly excavated villa of Herodes Atticus in the Peloponnese, chronologically of the same time period at the beginning of the second century CE (copied from a Hellenistic original), then we may draw some 31

Darwall-Smith (1996), 200. MacDonald (1982), 74, observes that ‘the domed octagonal chambers of the lower level, each generated in radial symmetry from a vertical center line, implied seamless perfection’. 33 Ibid. 32

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1

3

2

5 4

14 13

12

7

8

10 11

6 9

15

18

17

16

012 345

10

15

20

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30 METERS

Figure 5. Rome, Domus Augustana, lower level, reprinted from MacDonald.

conclusions about the importation of such depictions from the periphery, as well as the inﬂuence of similar depictions of the Roman centre in the art of the periphery of the empire.34 The conquered periphery comes into the heart of the city, in the Palatine, while Domitian fashions himself as the conqueror and paciﬁer of the barbarian extrema mundi. The relationship, however, seems to be one 34

See Spyropoulos (2006) for pictures of fascinating mosaics from Herodes’ villa. For other iconic representations of Penthesilea and Hippolyte, see LIMC 1.596–601 and 601–603 s.v. Amazones.

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of mutual inﬂuence and interaction: the periphery is Romanised, but at the same time certain elements are being adopted by the centre and ﬁnd their way into the emperor’s private abode, the Domus Augustana.35 And yet, we should beware: as Fredrick has correctly pointed out, this is an emperor who meticulously exploits his building programme to facilitate his ability to ‘invade the supposedly impenetrable elite male body through surveillance and violence’.36 In light of our examination of both the Punica and the Thebaid, even under the emperor’s penetrating gaze, the poets of the period endorse the emperor’s strategy of acculturation and assimilation, by idealising the trends already visible in the Second Punic War or by pointing to the failures following the Theban (and consequently Roman) fratricide. In any act of reading, there will always be many levels at work . . . [E]very time we read something, we play the role of a reader for whom this is new, while at the same time playing other reading roles which are not. It is in both the gap and the communication between these levels of reading that intelligibility can occur. (A. Sharrock, Seduction and Repetition in Ovid’s ‘Ars amatoria’ 2, 292)

This study does not seek to claim that the Flavian poets are prescient feminists, of course, but rather to underscore the problematisation of deﬁning polarities, such as the ones we have been used to employing in categorising Roman vs non-Roman, male and female, the civilised vs the barbaric and monstrous. In Domitianic Rome, as the foregoing analysis has indicated, there is a subtle renegotiation of such binarisms, both on the narrative and visual levels, with the epic poets in the forefront of such, in a sense paradoxical, ‘dialogue’ vis-a`-vis the elusive and often misinterpreted emperor, if we can claim such a relationship in historical terms. 35 In the opening quotation from Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica in the Introduction to this volume, Venus urges Medea to leave the isolation of her Amazonian land and follow Jason, a Roman Jason this time, to the centre of action. She urges Medea to become a Roman! 36 Fredrick (2003), 201, making clear that this is not a trait of the ‘bad’ emperors alone. See Vout (2007) on how the emperors’ ‘objects of lust’ are transformed into visual representations of Roman hegemony.

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My own Kristevan lens, even though conﬁned in its own limitations of modern psychoanalysis, nevertheless proves an important tool in analysing imperial Latin literature, a period fascinating in its own right from our modern perspective: a big empire that reaches its peak, with a growing anxiety concerning its future, and a profound questioning of the Virgilian aphorism sine ﬁne. Upon this multifaceted tableau, the poets embroider several female ﬁgures both as autonomous and as asymbolic, both monstrous and grotesque, compelling and captivating, unexpected and yet predictable. In an era when the other does not and rather often should not constitute or be conﬂated with the same, in an age when breaking the norm is not always appreciated and endorsed, despite our claims to the opposite, the Flavian poets lure us into partaking of a multilayered discourse on similar issues, in this incessant process of respicere, of ana- and proleptically looking forward to the future with a ﬁrm foot placed on the preceding literary history and historical exempla. Otherness not only as ethnic, cultural, religious, or political (with its pro-, or anti-Domitianic overtones) but also as a renewal wrought on the core of the epic tradition, a breaking away from the norm, either by a detour towards purely mythological themes, such as the Thebaid (perhaps to extend the analogy, the Roma-id) or by a turn in the direction of a seemingly, wholesome national epic, which nevertheless is called by the enemy’s name, the Punica.

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Index Locorum AESCHYLUS Septem 580–3 66 n.81 AETHIOPIS fr.1 W 248 APOLLONIUS OF RHODES Argonautica 3.678–80 2 APPIAN Spanish Wars 12 113 n.46 CATULLUS Carmina 64.61 200 n.6 CICERO De Finibus 2.20.65 160 n.8 5.37.82 160 n.8 De Ofﬁciis 3.99.26–100.27 160 n.8 De Republica 3.15 208 n.19

DIO CASSIUS 13 113 n.46 17 219–20 n.49 67.3.3–4 225 n.68 DIODORUS SICULUS 3.52–5 118 n.65 3.66.5–6 118 n.65 23.11–16 160 n.6 23.15.4 190 n.73 24.12 161 n.10 25.15 113 n.46 ENNIUS Annales 34–50 (Skutsch) 72 n.94 214 198 n.3 EURIPIDES Fragments (Kannicht) 777 5 n.10 902 5 n.10 1047.2 5 n.10 Hecuba 342–78 66 n.81 550–3 66 n.81

In Catilinam 1.18 145 n.128 1.27 145 n.128 1.24 101 n.19

Helen 1478–86 2 n.3

CURTIUS RUFUS Historiae Alexandri 3.12.21 246 n.18 4.3.23 198 n.3

Hypsipyle fr.60.10–12 (Bond) 60 n.63 fr. 60.90–96 58 n.60 fr. 64.72 43 n.33 fr. 64.77 50 n.47 fr.85.6 54 n.54

CYCLICTHEBAIS fr. 1 W 35

Hippolytus 732–51 2 n.3

288 EURIPIDES (continued) Ion 796–99 2 n.3 Phoenissae 88–201 69 n.88 452–585 62 n.68 1274–6 67 n.82 1427–59 74 n.102 Suppliants 1034–71 88 n.134 HOMER Iliad 2.418 153 n.139 Odyssey 11.152–225 215 n.36 11.235–330 222 n.55 HORACE Carmina 3.5 160 JUVENAL Satires 2 10 n.23 3.58–125 10 n.23 4.9–10 225 n.68 LACTANTIUS Diuinae Institutiones 6.6.19 7 n.15 In Thebaida Commentum 793 87 n.132 LIVY Ab Urbe Condita Pref.9–10 239 n.2 1.11 225 n.67 1.16 240–1 1.34.8 223 n.60 1.39.2–3 214 n.32 1.41.3 220–1 n.51

Index Locorum 1.48 225 n.67 1.57–60 223 n.61 2.13 224 n.63 2.40.3–5 66 n.81 3.44 223 n.61 10.29.4 144 n.126 Periocha 18 160 n.8, 182 n.56 21.1 97 n.12 21.7–15 113 n.46 21.46.7 107 n.33 23.8–9 109 n.37 23.34.10 105 n.26 23.40.1 105 n.26 25.34 221 n.52 25.36 217 n.41 26.13–14 113 n.46 26.36.5 230 n.79 26.50 246 n.18 27.7.13–14 180 n.51 27.26.12 104 n.22 27.27.7 105 n.25 27.34.14 148 n.132 28.35 214 n.34, 219 29.10.4–11.8 230 n.82 29.11.1 231 n.82 29.14.5–14.14 230 n.82 30.11–15 227 30.12.12–17 228 30.12.21–2 228 30.13.12 228 n.75 30.14.1–2 228 n.75 30.14.4–11 228 30.15.7–8 229 30.15.12 221 n.52 30.20.7 152 LUCAN De Bello Ciuili 1.185–94 149–50 1.188 101 n.19

Index Locorum LUCAN (continued) 1.199–200 150, 218 1.450 106 n.28 1.674–80 203–4 2.146–57 132 n.102 2.286 209 n.22 2.315–16 209 n.22 2.326–71 168 2.328 169 2.329–33 168–9 2.331–7 169 2.338–43 169–71 2.346–8 169–70 2.350 171 n.36 2.367 168 n.29 2.378–9 171 2.387–8 171 2.388 209 n.22 3.4–6 153 4.593–660 164 5.769 175 n.43 5.804 175 n.43 6.654–6 63 n.70 6.773–4 170 7.786–95 172 n.38 8.100 175 n.43 8.147 175 n.43 8.190 175 n.43 8.589 175 n.43 8.622–35 154 n.141 8.649 175 n.43 8.869–70 112 9.110 173 n.40 9.112 173 n.40 9.116 173 n.40 9.854–62 184 n.58 10.384 148 n.131 LUCRETIUS De Rerum Natura 1.83–101 208 n.19

MARTIAL Epigrams 1 8 n.20 MELINNO Hymn to Rome 1–20 246–8 MIMNERMUS fr.21 W 71 n.92 MUSONIUS RUFUS What is the primary goal of marriage? 13a, 67–8 (Hense) 170 n.33 NAEVIUS Bellum Poenicum fr.46 (Strzelecki) 160 n.9 OVID Amores 1.14.21 200 n.6 Ars Amatoria 1.312 200 n.6 3.710 200 n.6 Fasti 1.337–8 208 n.19 1.671 144–5 n.126 3.206–12 222 n.58 3.543–656 137 n.111 3.633–8 142 n.122 3.675–96 143 n.124 4.249–349 232 n.86 4.305 231 n.83 6.585–636 225 n.67 Heroides 1 46 4.47 200 n.6 6.19 46 6.114 46 n.40

289

290 OVID (continued) 6.135 46 n.40 6.136 46 6.139–40 46 n.40 7.133–8 95 n.9 10.18 200 n.6 Metamorphoses 1.149–50 129 n.92 3.563 148 n.131 8.447–8 201, 204 n.15 10.143 148 n.131 11.460 206 n.18 13.461 208 n.19 15.173–5 208 n.19 15.862–3 99 n.14 PLATO Crito 50a–4d 145 n.128 Ion 533e–534a 16 n.44 Phaedrus 60a 165 n.22 Timaeus 52a–b 15–16 PLAUTUS Poenulus 112–13 92 n.1

Index Locorum Cato the Younger 25–6 168 n.27i 25.1 167 POLYBIUS 1.29–35 160 n.6 1.31–4 190 1.35.2–3 190 3.17 113 n.46 10.3.3 107 n.33 10.19.3–7 246 n.18 PORCIUS LICINIUS fr.1 (Courtney) 239 n.2 PROPERTIUS Elegiae 1.3.5–6 200 n.6 4.3 175 n.43 4.3.45–6 170 n.33 4.4 225 n.67 SALLUST Catilina 2 239 n.2 SENECA THE YOUNGER De Otio 4.1 5–6 Epistulae Morales 28.4–5 5 n.11

PLINY THE YOUNGER Epistulae 3.16 175 n.43 4.11 225 n.68 4.11.6–9 226 n.69 4.11.11 226 n.69

Phoenissae 442–664 62 n.68 446–58 66 n.81

PLUTARCH Caesar 32 149 n.135

SERVIUS Ad Aeneida 1.171 145 n.126

Troades 672–7 203 n.13 680 209 n.22

Index Locorum SILIUS ITALICUS Punica 1.2 92 1.7–8 92 1.14 92 1.38 128 n.89 1.70–139 97–100 1.77–80 199 n.5 1.78–80 98 1.81 99 1.104 99 1.108 99 1.111–12 99 1.137–9 98 n.13 1.144–81 92 n.1 1.189–238 118 n.65 1.218–19 92 1.273–90 114 1.377–9 115 1.384–5 115 1.389–90 115 1.444–7 115 n.54 1.507 115 n.56 1.665–9 116 2.1–55 116 2.3–6 106 n.31 2.66–7 119 2.68–72 118 2.77–81 124 n.82, 125–6 2.80 118 n.65 2.82–3 118 n.65 2.83–4 119 2.83 186 n.65 2.84 118 2.96–8 120 2.102–3 117, 120 2.114–18 121 2.114 118 2.116–24 129 n.90

2.121 118 2.125–47 121 2.141 120 n.71 2.148 117, 120 n.71 2.150 121 2.153–9 121–2 2.166–7 124, 124 n.82 2.168 118, 128 n.89 2.170 124 n.82 2.176 118 2.188 118 2.189–91 123 2.197–204 122 2.202 118–20 2.203–7 126–7 2.228–32 127 n.87 2.239 126 2.240–1 127 n.87 2.244 121 2.264–9 127–8 2.311 102 2.422–5 134 2.433–6 181 2.475–680 140 2.475–525 129 2.475–92 122 n.77 2.506 129 2.529 180 2.541 130 2.543–680 202 n.12 2.557 130 2.561 130 2.567 130 2.571–4 130 2.580–91 130 2.599–608 130–1 2.613 134 2.614–21 132 2.632–5 132–3

291

292 SILIUS ITALICUS (continued) 2.636–49 133–4 2.650 134 2.657 134 2.671–3 134 2.680 134 2.681–2 135 2.692 128 2.699–707 129 3.1 114 n.50 3.61–157 198–9 3.64–5 199 n.5 3.77 199 n.5 3.97–107 209–10 3.109–27 210–11 3.109–10 175 n.43 3.112–15 175 n.43 3.128 166 n.24 3.133–5 211 n.25 3.152 151 n.136 3.154 152 3.155–7 151–2 3.162 128 n.89 3.178 115 3.204–13 98 n.13 3.222–441 93 n.3 3.323 118 n.65 3.463–76 136 3.518–56 136 3.557–629 216 n.37 3.588 241 n.7 3.607 241 n.7 3.627–8 241 3.700–12 98 n.13 3.713–14 199 n.5 4.62 115 n.56 4.99–100 189 n.71 4.122–30 98 n.13 4.135 98 n.13

Index Locorum 4.454–9 107 4.465 107 4.472–7 108 4.475 109 n.38 4.645 136 4.647–8 136 4.666 136 4.682–97 93 n.4 4.737–8 136 4.765–7 198 4.765 120 n.71, 201 4.767 208 4.771 198 n.4 4.774–7 200 4.775–8 204 4.775 204 n.15 4.779–829 199 4.779–802 206–9 4.798 203 n.13 4.814–18 212–13 4.818 213 n.26 5.7–23 137 5.160 186 n.65 5.526–7 153 n.139 6.5–6 172 6.6 191 6.58 172 6.62–551 157 6.65 157 6.69–70 193 6.70–1 172 6.89–95 172 6.94 157 n.2 6.98 172 6.100 157 n.2 6.101 157 6.118 157 n.2 6.130–1 173 6.137–9 193

Index Locorum SILIUS ITALICUS (continued) 6.140–293 182 6.146–50 183 6.151 185 6.157–8 183 6.166–203 183 6.194 181 n.54 6.209 183, 191 6.211–40 183 6.234 188 6.247 183 6.253 188 6.255 186 n.65 6.257 187 6.263 183 6.267–9 183 6.268 188 6.273–8 183 6.283–93 184–5 6.286 186 6.288 186 6.299–345 159 6.299 157 n.2 6.317 188 6.326 189 n.69 6.332–6 189 6.333 191 6.335 191 6.346–7 177 6.369 176 n.45 6.377–80 162 6.386 181 n.54 6.393–4 163 6.396–8 163 6.403–5 163–4 6.407–9 163–4 6.411–14 163–4 6.412–13 164 6.413 176 n.45, 179 6.415 157

6.419–22 194 n.80 6.426 165 6.430 165 6.432–3 163 6.433 165–6 6.436 165 6.437–42 165–6 6.438–9 170 6.442 170 6.447–9 165–6 6.447–8 171 6.451 166 6.459 166 6.467–89 162 6.497 175 6.500–3 174–5 6.506–11 174–5 6.511 178 6.514–20 176–8 6.514 180 6.517–18 179 6.520 179 6.537–8 193–4 n.80 6.539–44 181 6.544 182, 188 6.552–73 180 n.50 6.562–3 172 6.574–8 172–3 6.577–8 180 6.577 186 n.65 6.580–8 180 6.580 181 n.54 6.583 181, 188 6.585 188 6.609–18 137 6.627–40 106 n.31 6.658–9 192 n.77 7.34–68 106 n.31 7.74–89 230 n.79

293

294 SILIUS ITALICUS (continued) 7.409–93 187 n.67 7.515–16 148 n.133 7.536–66 148 n.133 7.560–1 176 n.45 8.25–143 140 8.25–43 137 8.30–1 138 8.39 141 8.41–3 138 8.41–2 143 8.44–5 140 n.119 8.46–7 138–9 8.50–225 137 8.55–70 141–2 8.81–2 142 8.95–7 178 n.48 8.143 222 n.57 8.144–224a 139 8.163–4 142 8.163 120 n.71 8.176–7 142 n.122 8.183 142 8.199 142 8.221 142 8.226–31 138 8.227 142 8.239–41 143 8.239 142 8.310–11 191 n.75 8.332–3 103 8.356–621 93 n.3 9.351–3 235 n.89 9.383–4 153 n.139 10.134–69 106 n.27 10.337 180 10.421–5 103 10.433–4 103 10.447 103

Index Locorum 10.476–502 106 n.31 10.492–501 224–5 10.657–8 143 11.4 112 11.123–9 111 11.185 110 n.40 11.179–84 110 n.40 11.196 110 n.40 11.262–6 100 11.288–97 100 n.18 11.303–68 109–12 11.304–6 109 11.306 109 n.38 11.311 109 11.332–6 109–10 11.356–8 109–10 11.361–6 110 11.377–84 111 n.40 11.385–409 216 n.37 11.424–5 100 11.440–80 101 n.18 11.478–80 120 n.69 11.482 101 n.18 12.19 100 12.306–13 230 n.79 12.344–9 105–6 12.410 106 12.414 106 12.418 106 12.479–752 113 12.542–4 142 n.121 12.701 180 12.705 137 n.110 13.12–17 101 13.12–14 149 n.135 13.30–81 106 n.31 13.115–37 185 n.61 13.218 217 n.41 13.281–94 132 n.101

Index Locorum SILIUS ITALICUS (continued) 13.296–8 132 n.101 13.374–80 132 n.101 13.392 217 n.41 13.466–87 127 n.88 13.514–15 108 13.548 186 n.65 13.613–14 216 13.621–5 218 13.623 219 13.628–33 233 13.629 216–7 13.634–6 217 13.634 219 13.638–9 216 13.638 233 13.663–86 108 13.669–70 192 13.670–1 217 n.41 13.755 217 n.41 13.762–76 222 13.778–830 222 13.818–30 223–4 13.829 186 n.65 13.833–50a 225 13.880 213 n.28 14.462–76 120 n.71 15.268–71 246 15.353–60 104 15.376–80 104–5 15.522–63 144 15.523–4 145–6 15.526–7 145–6 15.529–35 145–6 15.538–41 145–6 15.546 146–7 15.549–51 146–7 15.556–63 146–7 15.596–7 148 15.600 148

15.618–20 150–1 15.672–91 121 n.74 16.1–2 153 n.140 16.19–20 106 n.28 16.38–114 213 16.115–69 214 16.124–34 215 12.127–8 219 16.132 219 16.140–53 219–20 16.168–274 227 n.73 16.600–700 230 17.1–47 227, 230 17.1 120 n.71 17.3–4 235 17.5–15 231 17.17 231–2 17.18–22 233–4 17.24 232 17.27–34 231 17.27 232 17.36–40 231–2 17.41–7 232 17.41 233 17.69–75 227–8 17.84 228 17.112–13 228 17.113 228 n.75 17.114–15 227 n.73 17.197–8 102 17.213–17 151–2 17.219–20 153 17.262–3 153 17.331–6 102 17.334 213 n.28 17.604 180 17.613–15 154 17.643–4 154 17.651–4 239–40

295

296 SILIUS ITALICUS (continued) 17.654 29 STATIUS Achilleid 1.250 216 n.38 1.960 178 n.49 Siluae 1.1.36 225 n.68 3.5.35–6 89 n.137 4.7 247 n.23 5.3 89 n.136 Thebaid 1.1–3 35 1.16–17 35 1.135–6 35 n.12 1.243–5 36 1.312–13 54 1.571–95 54 n.55 1.592–3 201 n.8 1.597–626 184 n.58 1.680 45 n.37 1.681 36 n.15 2.95–100 63 n.70 2.204 73 n.97 2.332–52 211 n.25 2.361–2 82 3.133–68 62 n.67 3.682–5 174 n.42 3.696 174 n.42 3.718–19 44 n.34 4.38–344 36 4.88–92 82 4.378–82 204 n.15 4.610 45 n.37 4.646 37 4.649–51 37–8 4.652–715 37 4.676 45 n.37

Index Locorum 4.727 37–8 4.729 51 4.746–52 38–9 4.750–1 44 4.766–7 43 4.775 53 4.785–9 39 4.785–6 41 4.786–7 52 4.788–9 54 4.789–92 51 4.793–7 41 5.8–9 43 5.23–7 44 5.28–32 45 5.29 53 5.53–4 48 5.81–4 48 5.92–4 50, 200 n.6 5.105 65 n.78 5.142 48 5.162–3 47 5.260 56 5.305–9 48 5.347–9 49 5.397 51, 65 n.78 5.454–7 51–2 5.461–5 51–2 5.494–5 53 5.499–500 53 5.588 53 5.591–2 47 5.608–10 54 5.615–18 55 5.659 56 5.681 45 n.37 5.720–4 56–7 5.723–8 52 n.50 5.727–30 57

Index Locorum STATIUS (continued) 5.743–5 44–5 5.745 45 n.37 6.35–6 58 6.42 45 n.38 6.45–50 58 6.132–4 57–8 6.146–50 40 6.161–7 52–3 6.169–83 59–60 6.174–6 88 6.242–6 61 6.268–95 36 n.19 6.342–3 52 n.50, 58 6.464 58 6.466 58 6.476 58 6.509 53 n.53 6.515 45 n.37 7.243–5 69 7.247–50 69 7.281 74 n.103 7.452–69 63 7.470–563 174 n.42 7.474–7 62 n.70 7.477–81 62–3 7.479 71 n.93 7.483–4 64 7.493–8 63–5 7.503–4 63–5 7.514 64 n.74 7.519–21 63–5 7.527–9 63–5 7.534–6 63–5 7.816–17 42 8.297 42 8.303 42 8.317–22 42–3 8.600–5 70 8.607–13 71

8.625–35 72–3 8.647–50 73–4 8.653–4 73 9.49–85 65 9.155 79 9.255 45 n.37 9.294 45 n.37 9.351–403 62 n.67 9.570–636 62 n.67 9.570–601 72 n.95 9.800 235 n.88 10.594 45 n.37 10.792–826 62 n.67 11.142–3 82 11.193 58 11.318–20 62 11.318 65 11.321–3 65 11.338–42 66 11.352–3 66 11.354–7 67–8 11.361–4 67–8 11.372–8 67–8 11.633 76 n.106 11.639–40 74 11.642–7 75 11.643 206 n.18 12.33 76 12.45–8 76 12.47 84 12.58–9 77 12.77–9 77 n.107 12.105–72 77 12.141 83 n.122 12.177–9 80–1 12.178 65 n.78 12.185–91 80–1 12.198–202 80–1 12.256 80–1

297

298 STATIUS (continued) 12.259–61 80–1 12.325–8 82 12.349–50 83 12.366–7 83 12.367 60 12.380 83 12.382–3 83 12.385–91 83 12.429 83 n.122 12.444–6 84 12.457–62 84–5 12.481–518 77 12.523–39 78–9 12.635–8 79–80 12.773 83 n.122 12.782–6 86–7 n.131 12.786–96 86–7 12.789 83 n.122 12.797–809 87–9 12.810–12 240 12.811–12 90 12.814 240 12.816–17 240

Index Locorum Historiae 3.25 108 n.36 TERTULLIAN De Pallio 4 8 n.18 VALERIUS FLACCUS Argonautica 1.207–26 120 n.70 2.77–427 38 n.25 2.136 166 n.24 2.237 166 n.24 2.255 166 n.24 2.408–17 61 n.65 6 3, 68 n.85 7.110 166 n.24 7.227–30 1–2 7.231 4 7.232 4 7.234 4

STESICHORUS 222(b) PMGF 62 n.68

VALERIUS MAXIMUS Facta et Dicta Memorabilia 1.8.ext.19 182 n.56 4.31.1 246 n.18 5.4.2 107 n.33 9.3.ext.3 97 n.12

STOBAEUS Florilegium 3.7.12 247 n.21

VARRO Res Rusticae 1.1.5 144 n.126

SUETONIUS Domitian 8.4 225–6

VIRGIL Aeneid 1.37–49 145 1.95 107 n.35 1.153 99 1.223–96 99 1.490 118 n.65 1.493 118 n.65

TACITUS Annales 14.20 225 n.68 15.22 225 n.68

Index Locorum VIRGIL (continued) 2.343 191 n.76 2.407 178 n.48 2.769 201 n.8 2.588 178 n.48 3.313 201 n.8 4.65 201 4.69 201 4.262 124 n.82 4.283 201 4.300–3 201 4.301–3 49–50 n.47 4.305 177 4.314 175 n.43 4.327–30 95 n.9 4.339 177 n.47 4.366 177 4.376 201 n.10 4.391–2 206 n.18 4.421 177 4.428 177 4.431–3 171 n.37 4.469 201–2 4.597 177 4.624 177 n.47 4.673 200 5.341 201 n.8 6.32–3 107 n.35 6.77–8 205 n.17 6.458 81 6.844 157 n.2 7.189–91 4 n.9 7.373–405 202 7.377 200 7.415–18 63 n.70 7.461–2 191 7.502 201 n.8 7.550 191 n.76 7.803–17 118 n.65

7.813–17 124–5, 124 n.82 8.336–41 222 n.59 8.584 206 n.18 8.651 224 n.62 9.39 201 n.8 9.494 209 n.22 9.617 235 n.88 9.641 109 n.38 10.489 153 n.139 11.71 145 n.126 11.418 153 n.139 11.543 119 11.558 186 11.573–84 118 n.65 11.686–9 119 11.715–17 119 11.771 123 n.80 11.774 123 n.80 11.775–7 124 n.82 11.776 123 n.80 11.781–2 123 11.789 123 n.80 11.803–4 185 11.839–42 186 12.435 104 12.837 2–3 12.870–1 200 Eclogues 4.4 112 10.44 191 n.76 Georgics 4.515 200 ZONARAS Epitome 8.21 113 n.46 9.12 219–20 n.49

299

General Index This index is selective in references to centre, gender, motherhood, otherness, and periphery, since these terms are discussed with frequency and passim throughout the book. abject, see Asbyte; Hannibal; Kristeva Achilles 101 n.18, 178 n.49 Addison, J. Cato: A Tragedy 156 Adrastus 36, 43, 54–5, 58 Adys 160 n.6 Aegates islands 207 Aeneas 38 n.24, 55 n.58, 64, 88 n.117, 157 n.3 and Ascanius 104 as Indiges 141 see also Anna Perenna; Regulus Africa as belligerent ground 92–3 Romanisation of 214 n.34 see also Petrarch Agamemnon 78 n.111 Agylle 137 Alcmena 217 n.40 Alcyone 206 n.18 Alexander 216–17 n.40, 222, 246 n.18 Allecto 62–3, 134–5, 191, 200, 202 Alps crossing by Hannibal 93 n.3, 98 n.13, 136, 146, 152 Althea 200–1 Amata 134 n.105, 200–3 Amazons 117 n.62, 242–52 see also Asbyte; Camilla; Hippolyte; Penthesilea; Regulus; Rome

Amphiaraus 44–5 death of 42–3 Amphion 101 n.18, 235 n.88 Amyclas 157 n.3 analepsis 98 n.13, 157–8, 172, 180 Anchises 214 n.32 Andromache 164, 177 n.46, 203 n.13, 209 n.22 Anna Perenna 136–44, 200, 234 and Aeneas 141–2 and autonomy 25 and Dido 137–40 and Hannibal 25, 96–7, 137–44 between two patriae 138–44 Carthaginian identity of 141–4 in Ovid 137 n.111 Romanisation of 138, 141–4 Anticleia 215 n.36 Antigone 22, 60, 63, 66–8 and Argia 33–4, 83–5 and Ismene 68–75 as Maenad 33 gaze of 68–70 in Sophocles 71 n.93 teichoscopia of 68–70 uirginitas of 68–70 Aonia, see Thebes Apollo 37, 44, 204–5, 209–12, 230 n.79 Apollonius of Rhodes, see Chalciope; Valerius Flaccus

General Index apostrophe 65 and n.76, 83 n.122, 85, 104, 106 n.27, 109, 138, 205–6, 235 n.89, 237 n.91, 240, 241 n.7, 248 apotheosis 217 n.40, 240–1 Apulia 104 Aquinus 183 Ara Pacis 242 Arachne 249 Archemorus, see Opheltes Ardea 114–16, 130 Ares, see Mars Argia 33, 174 n.42, 211 n.2 gaze of 81–2 marriage to Polynices 36 trip to Thebes 77, 80–5 see also Antigone Argonauts 101 n.18 in Lemnos 51–3 Argos alienum 33 as periphery 34–7, 90–1 as doublet for Rome 36 reconciliation with Thebes 86–91 women of 31, 77, 86–91 Arion 101 n.18 Asbyte 114, 117–29 and asymbolia 24, 95–6 and Camilla 117–19, 123–6 and Dido 119 and Hannibal 126–9 and Theron 122–6 as abject 95 as transgressive other 114 decapitation of 24, 95–6, 122–3, 125–6, 128–9 femininity of 114, 123–5 mantle of 124–5 and n.82 masculinity of 125–6 virginity of 114

301

Ascanius 214 see also Aeneas Aspis 160 n.6 Astraea 129 n.93 Astyanax 203 n.13 Asulanus, Fr. 139 asymbolia, see Asbyte; Bacchants; Hannibal; Hypsipyle; Imilce; Kristeva; Lemnos; otherness Atalanta 62 n.67, 72 n.95, 87–8 Athenians gaze of 79–80 Atys 33 and Parthenopaeus 70 n.90 death of 33, 70–4 gaze of 73–4 see also Ismene Ausonia, see Italy autonomy, see Anna Perenna; Hypsipyle; Imilce; Kristeva; Marcia; otherness Avens 183 Bacchanalian affair 235 Bacchants and asymbolia 20–1 in Lucan 203–5 in Silius 96, 129–36, 159, 196–7, 201–5, 234–6 in Statius 22–3, 34, 49–50, 62, 87–91 Bacchus 37, 201–2, 204–5, 209–13, 214 n.30 and Hypsipyle 50 and the trieteris 51, 205 conquest of India 86 Bagrada River 26, 157, 160, 182, 184, 188 Battus 141 Belus 138, 142

302

General Index

Boccaccio 139 Bodostor 161 n.10 Boeotia 49 Bogus 98 n.13 Britomartis 118 Bruttium 153 n.140 Brutus 148 n.133 Buckingham, 1st Duke of, see Villiers Cacus 183 n.57 Cadmus 36, 184 n.58 Caesar, C. Julius 149–50, 157 n.3, 209 n.22, 218 Caieta 187 n.67 Callimachus Victoria Berenices in Statius 37–8 n.22 Calpe 210 Calybe 63 n.70 Camilla death of 185–7 victims of 119, 123 see also Asbyte Camillus, M. Furius 148 n133, 176 n.45 Campus Martius 166 Cancelleria reliefs 242–5 and ﬁgs. 1–3, 249 Cannae 94–5 and n.6, 103, 122 n.78, 137, 142 n.123, 224 as Hannibal’s decline 143 Canusium 103 Capaneus 88 n.134 Capitoline Triad 103 Capua 109–12 and decadence 100 as hybrid city 95 as altera Carthago 100, 151 as altera Roma 100 citizen rights 111–12 demand to consulship 111–12

siege of 132 n.101 suicide at 113 n.46, 132 n.101 Capys 101 n.18 Carmentis 222 Carneades 7 n.15 Carthage ﬁgurative ‘decapitation’ of 128 foundation of 131 personiﬁed 101–2 see also Capua Carthaginians and child-sacriﬁce 198–9, 205–9, 212–13 effeminacy of 97, 154 perﬁdia of 92 and n.1, 113, 177, 209 n.21 struggle for world domination 92 Castalius 210 Castulo 210 catalogue epic 36, 93 n.3, 221–9 Cato the Younger 148 n.133, 167–72, 184 n.58, 209 n.22 attachment to the Republic 171 n.35 sexual abstinence 171 see also Addison; Marcia; Regulus Cavaﬁs, C. 238 Chalciope in Apollonius 1–2, 4 Chatti 242 child-sacriﬁce, see Carthaginians Chiron 101 n.18 Chloreus 123–4 choˆra, see Kristeva Cicero, see patria Cilnius 106 n.30 Cinna 224 Circe 1–2, 4 and n.9 Cirrha 210

General Index civil war, see Lemnos; Saguntum; Thebes; Valerius Flaccus Claudia Quinta 28, 197, 226–7, 229–37, 239, 245 crimen of 231–3 Claudia, wife of Statius 89 n.137 Claudius Nero, C. 97, 144–51 Clausi 231 Clementia altar of 77 Cloelia 106 n.31, 223–4, 226 Cloelius 224 closure, see Statius Coelius Antipater 113 n.46 Colchians as barbarians 2, 4 conclamatio 134 Constantius, J. 139 n.117 continuity generational 32, 54–5, 157–8, 164, 170, 173, 181 see also Marcia Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi 12 n.31 Cornelia, Vestal virgin 225–6, 245–6 Cornelia, wife of Pompey 131 n.99, 164, 173 n.40, 175 n.43 Coroebus 178 n.48 cosmopolitanism and universal citizenship 4–5, 7, 42 in Cynic philosophy 6–7 in Stoicism 5–8, 42, 236–7 negative 7 positive 7 see Domitian; Kristeva; Romanness; Seneca the Younger Creon 77–8, 87 Crete 117 Crista 106 n.27

303

cunctatio, see Fabius Curetes 50–1, 54 Curia 166 Cybele 50–1, 54, 123, 230–7 see also Magna Mater Cyrene 142 Daedalus and Icarus 104–5, 107 n.35 see also Mopsus Danaids 18–19 Dante 139 Purgatorio 192–3 Dardanus 101 n.18 Darius 246 n.18 Daunus 115 n.54, 130 De Chaˆtillon, G. 139 Decius 110–11 n.40 Deidamia 178 n.49 Delphi 247–8 n.23 demagogues 96 n.10, 103 n.20 see also Flaminius; Varro Demeter 144 n.126 Diana 118, 120, 185 n.61 Dictynna 118, 120, 123, 125 Dido 38 n.24, 81 n.117, 164, 200–3, 206 n.18, 222 n.57 as Carthaginian Urmutter 94–5, 97–100, 198, 199 n.5, 201, 236 n.90 as Elissa 99 n.14, 139 as the choˆra 95 death of 137 furor of 201–2 see also Anna Perenna; Asbyte; Hannibal; Marcia; Tiburna digression error as 37–8 Diogenes the Cynic 5 n.10 Dione 230 n.79 Dionysus, see Bacchus

304

General Index

Dirce 86 Domitian and cosmopolitanism 29 as Romulus 240 n.5 correctio morum of 225–6, 249 Domus Augustana of 249–52 and ﬁgs.4–5 profectio of 242–5 regime of 3, 240–52 see also Cancelleria reliefs; Silius Italicus; Statius Drances 198 n.4 Druids 106 n.28 Dulichium 115 and n.55 Ecnomus 160 n.6 ekphrasis 98 n.13, 99 n.15, 105, 154 see also Hypsipyle Ennius 106 epic cycle Aethiopis 248 Thebais 35 epic poetry and elegy 34 and the Œº Æ IH 9, 34, 43 recitationes of 13 Epigonoi 22, 33, 55 epilogue in Silius 239–41 in Statius 239–41 Erichtho 63 n.70, 170 Erigone 75 Erinys, see Furies escape from reality in Euripides 2 and n.3 Eteocles, see fratricide; Jocasta ethnicity and gender 8–9 and geographics 9–19 Euneos, see Hypsipyle

Euripides, see escape; Hypsipyle; Jocasta Euryalus mother of 177 n.46, 209 n.22 Eurydice, mother of Opheltes 62 n.67 and Hypsipyle 40–1, 57–60, 88 Eurymedon 133–4 Evadne 60, 87–8 Evander 157 n.3, 206 n.18, 222 exile, see Hannibal; Hypsipyle; Scipio Africanus extrema mundi 4, 251–2 Fabius Maximus, Q. 95 and his son 148 n.133 debate with Scipio 230 embassy to Carthage 116 trip to Saguntum 116 policy of cunctatio 137 see also Regulus ﬁdes 11 personiﬁed 129–30, 132 n.101 see also Regulus; Saguntum; Scipio Africanus Flaminius 95, 96 n.10, 103 n.20, 144 foreigners in Rome 13 nn.35–6 Fortuna Redux Temple of 249 n.27 Forum Transitorium 249 fratricide Eteocles and Polynices 36, 47, 58, 66, 71, 82 Romulus and Remus 36 n.16 Spartoi 36 n.16 Fulvius, Q. Flaccus 185 n.61 funeral, see Opheltes Furies, see Allecto; Megaera; Tisiphone

General Index furor in Statius 47–50, 47 n.54, 84–5 see also Dido; Hannibal; Marcia; Scipio Africanus Gaia 144 n.126 Ganges 86 gaze, see Antigone; Argia; Athenians; Atys; Ismene; Polynices genealogies in epic poetry 10 n.31 see also Hannibal genotext, see Hypsipyle; Kristeva Gestar 181 n.54 Haemon 71 n.93 Hamilcar, Carthaginian prisoner 161 n.10 Hamilcar, father of Hannibal 97–100 Hammon 98 n.13, 119 Hampsagoras 105–6 Hannibal and asymbolia 24, 95 and sacriﬁcial substitutes 199, 212–13 and n.26 and the cancellation of motherhood 99–100 and Dido 24–5, 94–5, 97–100, 154 and Romanness 24 and the patria 99–102, 151–4 as abject 95, 151–4 as misplaced foreigner 95, 151–4 as Pentheus 100 attachment to Italian Tellus 151–4, 239 death of 135 effeminisation of 99–100 exile of 135 furor of 98–100, 128–9, 141

305

genealogy of 97–9 ira of 126–9 pietas of 94 plan to kill 109–10 transition from semiotic to symbolic 98 uirtus of 94 see also Alps; Anna Perenna; Asbyte; Cannae; Hamilcar; Hasdrubal; Imilce; Rome Hannon, Carthaginian commander 213 Hannon, Carthaginian senator 102, 198 n.4 Harpe 120–1 Greek name of 121 Hasdrubal, brother of Hannibal 97, 123 n.78, 153–5 Hasdrubal, son of Gisgo 213, 219 n.49, 227–8 Hercules in Silius 114–15, 121–3 see also Regulus; Theron Herodes Atticus villa of 250–1 and n.34 Hersilia 222, 226 Hiarbas 118–19 Hippolyte 244–5, 249, 251 n.34 in Statius 22, 34, 78–80 Hippolytus 249 Hippomedon 43 n.31, 79 Homer shade of 222 Hortensius 168–9 Hostus 105–6 hybridity, see Capua; Imilce; Saguntum Hydra 122 Hypsipyle and asymbolia 22, 31, 40, 56 and autonomy 31

306

General Index

Hypsipyle (continued) and her father, Thoas 32, 40, 53 and Jason 51–3, 79 and sons, Euneos and Thoas 52 and n.50, 53 n.53, 61 and the Kristevan choˆra 31–2, 39, 46, 48 as dislodged mother 31, 39, 53 as ekphrasis 61 as narrator 32, 40, 43, 46–7 exile of 31–3 fraud of 50 from phenotext to genotext 61 in Lemnos 44–58 in Euripides 43 n.33, 47, 50 n.47, 58 n.60, 60 n.63 in Ovid 45–7 in Statius 21–2, 31–62 in Valerius Flaccus 38 n.25, 61 n.65, 166 n.24 lullaby for Opheltes 39–40 pietas of 50, 56 see also Bacchus; Eurydice; Opheltes; Polynices Iarbas 118–19, 141 Icarius 75 Ide 62 n.67 identity, see Anna Perenna; Lemnos; Romanness; Virgil Ilia 72 n.94 Ilus 101 n.18 Imilce, wife of Hannibal 27, 151–2, 164 n.21, 175 n.43, 196–213 and asymbolia 27, 196–7 and autonomy 196–7 and Roman philosophical ideas 208–9 and the Kristevan choˆra 212–13 as frenzied woman 199–205, 209 as prophetess 205, 209–12

as Roman matrona 209 as seruatrix pueri 203 n.13, 213 hybrid voice of 27, 196–7 name of 210 and n.24 parting with Hannibal 198–9 rhetoric of 203 suasoria of 196, 205–9 voice of freedom 196, 208 Inachus 43 Irigaray, L. 16 n.46 Ismene 33, 63, 90, 206 n.18 and Atys 70–4 and the Kristevan choˆra 70–4 gaze of 72 uirginitas of 73 Italy 4 Ithaca, see Dulichium James I 246 n.18 Jason 1, 46, 57, 220 n.51, 252 n.35 see also Argonauts; Hypsipyle Jocasta 22, 62–8, 110, 174 n.42 and Eteocles 65–6 and male uirtus 33 and Polynices 63–5 as Agave 62 as Fury 62–3 as Maenad 33 efforts for reconciliation 62–6 in Euripides 62 n.67, 67 n.82 in Senecan tragedy 62 n.67 in Stesichorus 62 n.67 suicide of 33, 74–5 Juba 156 Juno in Silius 25, 97, 98 n.13, 128–30, 136–44, 230 n.79 in Virgil 2–3, 145 Jupiter in Silius 216–17 and n.37 in Statius 35–6, 42 n.30, 50–1

General Index Jupiter (continued) in Virgil 2–3, 99 see also Scipio Africanus Juturna 200 Kristeva, J. 14–29 and the genotext 15–16, 34 and the phenotext 16, 34 and the semiotic 14–15, 22–3 and the subject-in-process 17–20 and the symbolic 14–15, 22–3 ‘man’s time’ 18, 32 ‘mother’s species’ 18 on abjection 19–20 on asymbolia 20, 96 on autonomy 20, 96 on female marginalisation 16–18 on foreign otherness 17–19 on hysterics 29 on motherhood 17 on phallic femininity 126 on pregnancy 17, 31 on Stoic cosmopolitanism 236–7 on the choˆra 15–17, 23, 28–9 on the Law of the Father 15 on the rupture of signiﬁcation 14–15, 73 Powers of Horror 19 non´ 17 n.47 Strangers to Ourselves 18–21, 30, 236–7 Tales of Love 19 Women’s Time 17 see also Bacchants; Dido; Hypsipyle; lmilce; Ismene; lament; Marcia; otherness; Ovid; Tellus Labdacids 35

307

Lacan, J. on subjectivity 8 n.19 Laelius 228 Laius 63 n.70 lament as manifestation of otherness 31 as return to the semiotic choˆra 34 female in Silius 176 female in Statius 30, 34, 41, 55–61, 74–91 male in Statius 64–5 and n.75 Langia 37, 40, 55 Lausus 104 n.23 Lavinia 142, 202, 214, 222 Lemnos asymbolia in 49 identity in 49 in Statius 21–2, 42, 45–54 massacre as civil war in 48–9 women of 45–54, 62 see also Argonauts; Bacchants; Hypsipyle; Thrace Linus 201 n.8 Liternum 135 n.108, 192 n.77 Livius, M. Salinator 148 Livy, see Masinissa Lucan, see Bacchants; Marcia; matrona; patria; Silius Italicus Lucretia 223, 226 Lycormas 133–4 Lycurgus 22, 54–5 madness, see furor Maenads, see Antigone; Bacchants; Jocasta; Marcia Magna Mater importation in Rome 197, 230–7 priests of 235 see also Claudia Quinta Magnesia 3 Manners, K. 246 n.18

308

General Index

Marcellus, M. Claudius 95 and his son 104–5 death of 104–5 Marcia, wife of Cato the Younger 156, 164 in Lucan 167–72 remarriage to Cato 168–72 Marcia, wife of Regulus 26–7, 156–95 and autonomy 178 and the Kristevan choˆra 159, 194–5 as Dido 176–8 as distraught woman 162–7 conjugal ﬁdelity of 165 furor of 180 Maenadic voice of 158, 178 rhetoric of 165–7 suspending generational continuity 158, 178–82, 194–5 withdrawal from public life 172–3 marginalisation, see Kristeva Mars 230 n.79, 242, 248 Martial 8 n.20 Marus 26–7, 156–95 androcentric narrative of 158, 193 n.80, 194 as Regulus’ faithful companion 157 Masinissa alliance with Romans 213–21 in Livy 219–20, 227–9 mother of 28, 196–8, 213–21, 227, 245 Massada 113 n.46 Massylians 227 matrona anonymous in Lucan 201–5 Medea in Ovid’s Heroides 46 in Valerius Flaccus 1–5, 68 n.85, 166 n.24, 252 n.35 Medusa 118 n.65

decapitation by Perseus 122 Megaera 82 Meleager 201 Melinno Hymn to Rome 246–9 Menoeceus 70, 76 n.107 deuotio of 59 n.61 mother of 62 n.67 Mercury 98 n.13, 115 Messalina 245 n.17 Metaurus 97, 145 Metellus, L. Caecilius 103 Mezentius 104 n.23 Milichus 210 and n.24 Minerva 118 n.67, 143 n.124, 230 n.79, 242, 245, 249 Minucius 148 n.133 Minyans, see Argonauts moenia as motif 113 molk, see child-sacriﬁce Mopsus and his sons, Dorylas and Icarus 117, 120–1, 133–4 as Daedalus 117 in Valerius Flaccus 120 n.70 morality female 11–12 motherhood and male ideology 12–13, 241–53 and matronhood 12 andthemosmaiorum 12,2,241–53 see also Hannibal; Kristeva; Statius mourning, see lament Murrus 115, 130, 134 Myrice 210 narrative ktistic 2 Nasamones 128

General Index nature in Silius 136, 182–7 see also Regulus Nekyia, see Silius Italicus Nemea as alterae Thebae 33 as dangerous landscape 47, 55 Nox personiﬁed 147, 150 Numanus Remulus 235 n.88 Numicius River 116, 137, 141–2 Numidians 127–8 Oculatae 225–6 Odysseus 64, 203 n.13, 215 n.36, 218 n.44 Oedipus 35–6 lament of 76 n.106 suicide attempt of 76 n.106 Opheltes 22 as substitute for Hypsipyle’s children 54–5, 57–8 death of 47, 54–5 funeral of 61, 88 funeral games 44 transition from semiotic to symbolic 39 see also Eurydice; Hypsipyle; Lycurgus; Nemea Opis 186 orientalism in Silius 154, 225 Ornytus 83 n.122 Orpheus 101 n.18, 120 n.69, 148 n.131 otherness and asymbolia 20–1 and autonomy 20–1 and gender differentiation 30–1

309

foreign 3 see also Kristeva; lament; Romanness; Statius Ovid the Kristevan choˆra in the Heroides 16–17 see also Hypsipyle; Medea Pacuvius 109–10 Palladium 106 n.31 Pallas, see Minerva Pangaeus, Mt. 200, 203–4 Paris 187 n.67 Parthenopaeus 40 n.27, 43 n.31, 87–8, 235 n.88 see also Atys patria in Silius 24, 92–155, 194–5 personiﬁed in Cicero 145 n.128 personiﬁed in Lucan 149–50 see also Anna Perenna; Hannibal; Scipio Africanus patriarchy 16 Paulus, L. Aemilius 95, 103 Peloponnese 41, 55 pelta 249–52 Penthesilea 118 n.65, 248, 250–1 and n.34 Pentheus 202 see also Hannibal perﬁdia, see Carthaginians; Regulus periphery as an idiosyncratic body 93 see also Argos Perolla 109–10 Perseus, see Medusa Petrarch 139 Africa 227, 229 n.76, 238 and Laura 229 n.76 Pharsalus 172 n.38 phenotext see Hypsipyle; Kristeva

310

General Index

Phlegraean ﬁeld 106 n.31 Phoebus, see Apollo Phoenix 98 Phorbas 68–9 pietas 11, 24 see also Hannibal; Hypsipyle; Scipio Africanus Plautus 92 n.1 Amphitruo 217 n.40 Poggio Bracciolini 139 Polynices 31, 58 and Hypsipyle 54 gaze of 82 lament for Tydeus 65 n.75 see also Argia; fratricide; Jocasta Polyphemus 183 n.57 Polyxena 208 n.19 Polyxo 48–9, 200 n.6 Pompey 153, 209 n.22 death of 112 see also Cornelia Pomponia, mother of Scipio Africanus 28, 108, 245 as uniuira 233 meeting with Scipio 213–21, 227 Porticus Diuorum 249 n.27 proemium in Silius 92 in Statius 34–5 prolepsis 33, 56, 98 n.13 prophecy 98 n.13, 241 n.7 anachronistic 111–12 prosopopoeia 145 n.128, 149 Proteus 187 n.67 Psamathe 201 n.8 Psylli 184 n.58 Punic wars 157, 195 First 99, 157–8, 165, 191

Second 102, 154, 158, 191, 194, 241 n.7 see also Carthaginians Pyrene 93 n.3 Pythagoras 208 n.19 Quirinus 240–1 see also Scipio Africanus Regulus, M. Atilius 26–7, 156–95 and Cato 187 and Hercules 161 n.12, 162 n.14, 164 n.19, 187 and Scipio 159, 161, 191–2, 194 and the ius postliminii 161–3, 166–7, 179 and the serpent 157, 182–7 as Aeneas 177 as archetype for Fabius 161 n.12 as Stoic hero 158–62 as Turnus 191–2 constantia of 162 death of 157, 181–2 and n.54 ﬁdes of 158, 162, 177 impenetrability of 176–8, 181 in an Amazonomachy 186 in pre-Silian tradition 160 ira of 188–92 mission to Rome 157 name of 287 patientia of 162 perﬁdia of 177, 194 psychomachia of 161–2 n.14 speech to the Senate 157, 174 transgression against nature 182–7 uirtus of 158 see also Marcia; Marus; Serranus Rhine 241 n.7 Romaia 247–8 n.23 Romain de The`bes 70 n.90

General Index Romanisation 10–11 and amalgamation 10 see also Africa; Anna Perenna Romanness and cosmopolitanism 8 and male identity 20, 97 and non-Roman otherness 8, 28 as literary construct 11 boundaries of 197 ciuis Romanus 8 construction of 9 in Silius 94–7, 155 in the margins 96 Romanitas 8 n.18 see also Hannibal; Saguntum; Scipio Africanus; Tacitus; Virgil Rome as Amazon 242–5 Hannibal’s attack of 113 personiﬁed 218 see also Argos; Capua; foreigners; Magna Mater; Melinno; Regulus; Thebes Romulus 222, 240–1 see also fratricide; Quirinus Rubicon River 218 Rutulians 96, 130 Sabines 222, 231 Saguntum 113–36 and Romanness 113, 129, 135–6 as hybrid city 24, 130–1, 135–6 eradication of family ties 132–4 ﬁdes at 113–14 pyre at 130–1 siege as civil war 132–4 and n.102 siege of 113 and n.46, 129 suicide at 115, 132–6 women of 96, 129–36

311

Sardinia 105–6 Sarmatians 244 Sarranian, see Carthaginians Satricus 108 n.36 Scipio Africanus, P. Cornelius 25, 28, 103 and his father, Scipio the Elder 106–9, 189, 192, 217 n.41 as Africanus 197 as patriarch 239 as Quirinus 239–1 as son of Jupiter 29, 107, 215–17, 239–40 continence of 229, 245–6 divine power of 197 education of 216 exile of 108 ﬁdes of 197 furor of 107 in the Underworld 107, 215–26 pietas of 197 rashness of 136 rescue of his father 108 rescue of his patria 108 Romanness of 218–19 suicide attempt of 107 triumph of 154 uirtus of 197 see also Fabius; Pomponia; Regulus; Van Dyck Scipio, P. Nasica 231 Scipio the Elder, father of Scipio Africanus death of 221 n.52 see also Scipio Africanus Scyros 181 n.53 semiotic, see Hannibal; Kristeva; lament; Opheltes Seneca the Younger on cosmopolitanism 5–8 see also Jocasta

312

General Index

Serranus, son of Regulus 26–7, 157–95 name of 157 n.2 Servius Tullius 220–1 n.51 Sibyl 205 n.17, 215–16, 218, 222–3, 230 Sicoris 116 Silius Italicus Aldine addition of book 8 of 139–40 and Lucan 23 and the Domitianic regime 240–1 and Valerius Flaccus 129 n.94 Codex Sangallensis of 139–40 composition of the Punica 8–9 n.20 fathers and sons in 93–5, 97–112 Nekyia in 215–26 poetics of defeat in 136 women as symbols of chastity in 230–7 see also Bacchants; epilogue; Hercules; Juno; Jupiter; lament; nature; orientalism; patria; proemium; Romanness; Tellus; Venus Social War 111 and n.42 Socrates 5 n.10, 165 n.22 Sophonisba 221 n.52, 227–9 Spartoi, see fratricide Spenser, E. The Faerie Queen 75–6 sphragis 30 Statius and the breakdown of authorial voice 34, 87–91 and the Domitianic regime 240–1 closure in the Thebaid 87–91 composition of the Thebaid 8–9 n.20

foreign otherness in 21–3 motherhood in the Thebaid 22–3 relationship with Virgil 30 see also Bacchants; Callimachus; Claudia; epilogue; furor; Hippolyte; Hypsipyle; Jupiter; lament; Lemnos; proemium; Tellus; Thrace Stesichorus, see Jocasta Stoic(ism), see cosmopolitanism; Kristeva; Regulus Strabo Geography 10 subject-in-process, see Kristeva subjectivity, see Lacan symbolic, see Hannibal; Kristeva; Opheltes Syphax 227–9 Syracuse siege of 104 Tacitus and Romanness 11 Tanaquil 214, 220–1 n.51, 223 Tantalus 36 Tarpeia 225–6 Tarquinius Priscus 220–1 n.51, 223 Teiresias 63 n.70 Tellumo 145 n.126 Tellurus 145 n.126 Tellus and the choˆra 97, 147–8 as creatrix 42 n.30 as mother-earth 42, 97, 144–55, 248 as unreliable proxy in Statius 31, 39–43, 54 in Silius 24, 95, 97, 144–55 masculine traits of 147–8, 152

General Index Tellus (continued) prayer to 42, 147, 150 see also Hannibal terra mater, see Tellus Teumesos 49–50 Teuthras 100–1 n.18 Thebes 42, 44–5, 90–1 as Rome 34 and n.8, 90 civil war in 33–4, 47, 54–5, 88 see also Argos; Nemea Theron 121–8 death of 126–8 Greek name of 123 reincarnation of Hercules 121–2 see also Asbyte Theseus 77–80, 87 see also Hippolyte Thessander 174 n.42 Thetis 181 n.53 Thiodamas 42–3 Thoas, see Hypsipyle Thrace and Dionysus 49–50 and Lemnos in Statius 47–50 Thrasymennus 136–7 Thyads, see Bacchants Thyle 241 n.7 Tiburna 25, 96, 129–30, 134–6 as Dido 134–6 Ticinus River 94 n.6, 137, 198 Tisiphone 25, 58, 62–3, 66, 128–30, 140–1, 202 n.12 Tmolus River 136–7 Trajan column of 221 n.53 translatio imperii 126 Trasimene, Lake 94 n.6, 95, 136–7, 156, 198–9, 212 Trebia River 93 n.4, 94 n.6, 136–7, 198 Tritonis, Lake 118

313

Tros 101 n.18 Tubero, Q. Aelius 160 Tuditanus, C. Sempronius 160 Tullia 225–6 Turnus 116, 200 Tydeus, see Polynices Tymbrenus 132–3 Tyrrhenus 137 Ulysses, see Odysseus Umbricius 10 n.23 Underworld, see Scipio Africanus Valerius Antias 113 n.46 Valerius Flaccus 1–5 and Apollonius 1–2 civil war in the Argonautica 3 composition of the Argonautica 8 n.20 see also Hypsipyle; Medea; Mopsus; Silius Italicus; Venus Van Dyck, A. Continence of Scipio 246 n.18 Varro, C. Terentius 95, 102–3, 144, 191 n.75 Varronilla 225–6 Venus cult in Rome 230 n.82 in Silius 216 n.37 in Valerius Flaccus 1–2, 252 n.35 in Virgil 99 Verginia 223, 226 Vespasian 241 n.7, 242–6 aduentus of 242–5 Vestals 242–5 Vesulus 106 n.27 Veturia 62 n.68 Villiers, G. 246 n.18

314

General Index

Virgil Roman identity in the Aeneid 3 n.5 see also Juno; Jupiter; Statius; Venus uirtus 12, 24 personiﬁed 244–5, 249 see also Hannibal; Jocasta; Regulus; Scipio Africanus Volsci 118 Volumnia 62 n.68 Vulcan 53 n.53 Vulteius 129 n.91

Whitman, W. Leaves of Grass 15 n.43 Xanthippe 165 n.22 Xanthippus 159, 188–91 Zacynthians 96 Zacynthus 114–15, 130 Zama 102, 145, 213, 230 Zeno Republic 5 n.10